This coffee’s too strong and I’m too sober. Life’s got ahold of me again, in the form of a 5’9’’ brunette with big tits and, oh no, a sense of humor… or so she thinks. A bar babe, a total bro-nette, and I, deep with wine and whiskey, and wearing a cape with my friend Captain C. Clairvoyance and his new black pal Tat’d Tony — right off the streets and out of the gutter — asking for change, any and all. All he could get out of us was a drink, and we, well, we’d get his conversation. What does a black man with face tats and a leather cowboy hat think? Much less think about rollerblading?

I’m coughing up blood again. Hold on, I’m going to have a cigarette.

Somehow; I feel worse. A little dizzy now. Normally, I’d drink my way out of this. I’d have whiskey in my coffee, as I do in the morning, take a few klurplunks for the shakes, for the mind, to help with my constant mourning, my life of mis-done. Tonight, I can’t afford whiskey. I just paid rent. Well, this girl I mentioned, the one with the gazongas, well, she didn’t like me smoking. She told me when she met me. I threw down my cig and acted like I’d never touch the things. I continued my monologue about my jenkem addiction, she smiled well enough (she had all her teeth, a good sign). I don’t think she really believed me about my jenkem addiction, maybe she didn’t know what jenkem was. I closely related my being a jenkem junkie to my fall from grace from Ultimate Frisbee. I told her I used to be real big into UF until a gut-wrenching accident, a dislocated shoulder I’d received a year prior while trying to rescue a cat from a tree, and in the rain at that. I was lying through my yellow teeth and wondering why she was buying it all. And pondering if she knew I was talking about huffing fermented shit, or if she thought I was athletic for UF, or just sensitive yet courageous for saving a pussy.

The bro-nette was well-entertained and smiling. It was three a.m. and the bar lights went on. She was still pretty. I met up with Captain C. Clairvoyance, but the spade was nowhere in sight. Apparently, he’d gotten in a fist fight with the bouncer. I was too busy flirting my fuck out. It’s dangerous these days walking around with a loaded gun. Especially here in Saint Louis.

It’s dangerous to skate in this town, much less to exist, and even worse as a rollerblader, a victim of counter culture, a ’90s trend, a relic of the eight wheeled revolution, and now an anti-rocker in a rap town. It’s not safe to be anything, in all honesty. Captain C. Clairvoyance was on his way to get some ice cream just last week. He’s foreign, and in a taxi in a dodgy neighborhood — unknown to him. He was at a light watching this black kitten walking across the intersection, admiring her stride, when he saw her apparent boyfriend run up behind her and blow her brains out. He’d never seen a murder before, much less a dead body. And there were both and blood on the windshield. He’s had his fair share of ex-girlfriends and somehow he understood.

Things like that happen everyday in this snot city. I was riding the metro to school, without my Shuffle, when a group of thugs commented on the low collar on my button up, particularly, the chest hair sticking out. I said something about, yeah, yeah get over it. They turned around, and one ran back to the other train car to get some friends. I didn’t think much until this black girl, on her cell phone nearby starts yelling, “Please don’t box this white boy, don’t box him near me…” and then into her phone, “they’re going to box this boy on the train.” This town has been killing me for years now. I just stood my ground and looked at the back of their hair nets, with balled fists and a thumping chest. Two days later, I’m walking through the park by my house and this too buck fuck comes up and threatens to shoot me in the face. I pulled out my pockets, and dared him. I got nothing special to live with.

The following day on my way back from the Shur Sav, I’d gotten a 40oz and a pack of Decades, well, I was almost home, and passing a different park, when I overhear five thugs, “look at that boy, just look at him, let’s get him.” I hear sloshing mud as their footsteps approach. I see a woman across the street with her little kids, she was wearing some African day dress. I just walked across the street and stopped and asked her about her day, and what she was doing. At first she looked at me as though I were the white devil himself — I dressed in all black, with a black hoodie, and malt liquor nestled in my arms like some football frat fuck. Then I watched the whites of her eyes go to the group behind me, still on the other side of the street, and she paid me time. I ran around the corner and drank the forty in ten flat, and it wouldn’t be enough, nothing is enough in this neighborhood. I cut my hair drunk, short enough to be serious, then cut lines in my sides — to look tougher. So far so good.

Everyone can sense when I’m walking around with a loaded gun — the ballsy bravado. Now that it’s spring and all the hunnie dips have come out of hibernation, and we’re all out and about on our porches, or drinking day’s nights away at different holes in the wall, each one just seems a little bit more available, and better yet, aroused.

When the day to day is life or last breath, it’s better to get in where you fit in. It’s a cold crank call to arms when you realize you don’t fit in anywhere — in your city — or with anyone; you and your unique perspective, my blader mindset is too far out. I’m playing Boggle looking for the right words, and nothing sounds worth writing, so I shake things up again and again and again. Still shook up, and there are no right words worth saying, ’cause people already know and relate, or don’t know and won’t know, at least not soon enough.

The lights were on at the bar, she was still stunning, and I was still standing. I’d made it to the end of the night, but at the same time started a new day — what a rip off. She offered her number, and I said I don’t have a phone. She looked surprised. Somehow she believed the jenkem, volleyball career, and pussies, but she couldn’t fathom that I in fact owned no phone. It was like I was blowing her off. That’s when I noticed her Buddah-type purse — her pubes my as well been dread-locked. She pulled out a pen and signed her name and number on my arm with an aching smiley face. A future happy ending. She said me not having a phone was edgy, it was just honest though. I suspected her rich, really rich — a squeeze. I walked home for a few nights.

My main mistake was calling her. Jumping into her world with my roommate’s phone. His phone was the foundation for our fuck. Here he gets all alone, with me chatting up some girl, telling her about growing up in a Catholic cult and never explaining “VG11,” just my disdain for “VG11,” and having a fine time listening to her smile through my shitstorm, and here he is in the other room counting up his minutes and wondering when it’ll end. It was then I knew it’d end, at the end of the call, when she offered to pick me up at ten the next night. We’d go to some bro bar, and get pulverized. Worst of it was, I’d have to pay. We’d come back to my place, watch the good half of “Hook,” and then go to my room and bangaraid for four and a half hours. She was such a lousy lay, poor three out of thirty-two. I’m no X-wing fighter or anything, but running twelve miles ain’t easy for an anorexic with smokey lungs. The whole time wasn’t on screwing, it was on the bar tab that I was coaxed into picking up. Here I was poking the live long away, birthing all new problems, and all I could think about was the thirty-five bucks, the price of this fuck. I’m used to thrift store chicks with the same schtick as me. Not steak and potatoes with their necks raised — it’s like, what the fuck are you looking at up there? You some kind of optimist? Some have more to lose ’cause they’ve had it all. I just concentrated on the pre-existing hickies, thinking about my bank statement and if I was now syphilitic. It was post-dawn when she finally limped out of my bed and my life.

I awoke in the afternoon and Captain C. Clairvoyance asked why I was so depressed; was new found euphoria draining away at my brain, had I lost balance? I could have gone skating for free and it’d have been better than that sex. I could have used that money to pay for my electric shock or to get drunk for a week. Instead, I got half drunk, laid, and expected prime rib, a will to live, and all I got was ham on rye.

The next day I get an email saying she’d be over at four. She was a substitute TILF, now she was just on my nerves. She arrives as I’m getting out of the shower. She buzzes, and I’m standing in a puddle all my own, wondering if she’d ever leave. She just walks to the bedroom, and spreads her figlet, her too long legs on my shoulders like some junior high chumpionship trophy. I t***y***k her and she says something about how she wants to go get food, and I could of just then and there shat on her chest, beer belly mid-thrust. More money? It was then and there it hit me, dating is dumb, it’s paying for sex, and here I was some lonely guy screwing my money budget and just feeling extremely cheap. So instead of stopping I just shut her up.

“You know I skate, right?”

“Like skateboard or rollerblade?”

“Rollerblade.”

“Oh.”

And I just flip her over and continue to talk about rollerblading in detail. The trick names, even mentioning her own (which I’ll omit), I started talking about why I started, and the feeling I get from it, and how spending time with her is so empty in comparison, and how when she speaks, I can just understand how it must be for an outsider to be around a bunch of bladers yapping about skate videos and the pre-cum un-industry. ‘Cause you know what? If I’m going to waste my money fucking a dead fish I my as well enjoy it all and all out loud. I came, slapped her ass, and went to finish my shower. Unfortunately, she was still waiting when I came out. I brought her out to stuff her face, and was miserable at the cafe without a cigarette. Afterwards, she kissed me goodbye and her breath smelled worse then my balls.

I’m an atheist, and here I was praying all night I’d never see her again. She blows up my roommate’s phone, wondering where I am; he laughs, and gives me the karma. She’s been at a bar all afternoon and night trying to wrap her head around all the shit I was saying, and said it turned her on how I made up all that stuff about blading. I told her it was true and I didn’t want to hang out. She said there’d be a 40oz in it for me. I say, no. She said there’d be two 40ozs for me, and one for my roommate. He says yes for me, mind you we keep her on speakerphone. We get drunk enough to stand her while watching “Waynes World.” She tells and re-tells the same stories again and again. Then she walks into my room and asks me to tell her another story. I lay her out, spread her legs, and started talking about Soap shoes. And how I have special shoes made for grinding. Explain their grind plates, their grinds, and how the parkour industry is killing the Soap shoe industry. And how people always come and ask if I can do flips or do leap frog wall runs. I tell her how I look at the world as a series of obstacles, and now she’s one, as I grind away. I tell her how she’ll never know me or see as I see, and how bad in bed she is, and how all I can think about is how I want to walk away, go grind a bench instead, shred a rail, pound some pavement instead. She climaxes with insignificance. She takes up half the bed and snores all night. I, an insomniac, stay up till ten am, hating her. I make her leave, and leave myself. That was it, I went and scrubbed the floors, dusted off, and tonight I’m going to go blade in the rain.

— Dan Leifeld