Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Monster


I first met the monster in the winter of 90-91 , I was riding along the shoulder C st. between International and Tudor late for a shitty job. Suddenly in front of me was a city truck, to my left heavy fast traffic to my right a three foot high snow berm it looked sold enough. Suddenly I was on top of the snow berm ahead of the slow city truck then back on the shoulder, well past the truck. I can't tell you how I did it I just did. The monster is ones own force of will becoming almost a seperate being. It wants to be somewhere and it wants to be there now. It's heady mix of all ones emotions, your happy, your pissed-off, your screaming, your giggling and grunting and snarling alternately. The Monster likes to help out at work.
One day that sticks out in my mind. It's 4:24 Pm. I'm standing outside the courthouse. I'm thinking "The bags empty, filing deadlines 4:30, I'm pretty much done for the day. Yeah just head back to the office, do some paper work, unwind, yeah, groovy cool." Bam! The pager goes off, it's a rush job for one of my favorite clients a divorce attorney, sole practitioner, office two blocks away. "It can't be a court filing?" I pick-up, it is. To add a little color it's the peak of tourist season. Package trip tourists and cruise ship tourists allover Fourth avenue wearing matching jackets and mildly stupid. I head down Fourth. At the intersection with G st. there's a group walking across strung out so as to almost block the road. I don't remember if they were jaywalking or I was going to run the light, it's an easy one to run and there were minutes to spare. In that brief moment in time I wanted to say as quickly as possible. "Hey, look I know you folks are here on the vacation of your dreams and stuff but this isn't some quaint little fucking Disneyland, it's a city people have lives and jobs and my job is to get this piece of paper two blocks from here now! If I don't the person paying the person paying me , well their life could suck a little harder" The Monster says. "Hey I got it" His answer is from the movie "Full metal jacket", Joker let me see your war face! ARGHHHHHHH! It was just the thing to make one of the tourists break stride. Slipped between them and made the filing with a minute or two to spare. These days I don't get as many of those kind of rushes more same-days and the odd one-hour. He doesn't help out as much at work but when I'm eager to get home to my wife and our little cat he'll always drive me home. I still miss the divorce attorney she was a good client, the last minute rushes were good fun, most of the time.

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