Saltwater Tibs Versus American Justice

I was just chillin' at the flat one saturday night during the memorial day weekend. (U.S.) I was polishing off a bottle of Cabot Tower (Rum, 100 Proof, 50%) with some frozen ice tea. A real pirates drink. We were having a few rounds of Melee, trying to make it a "light" night to recharge our social-butterfly-like batteries. Then Jack Fountain shows up.

The phone rings.

Coffee answers the phone.

There is a rap at the door.

"I'll get it" I say as he continues on the phone. He was talking to a girl, he had to take it. I walk down the stairs, turn on the porch light, pull back the curtain (with authority) and peer out the window to see Fountain: smiling. I unlock the door and let him in.

"Hey"

"Hey, you guys got any pot?"

"One sec I'll talk to Coffee." I turn and shout up the stairs, "Coffee, pot?"

He gives me a weird look from the top of the stairs, he's still talking on the phone and shakes his head.

"Cause I got these guys from a band."

"Ah, shit, ah, ok. Bring them in." I look up to Coffee, "Shotgun?"

"...ah, yes dear."

Jack leaves down into the van, I walk back upstairs and share a drink with Dan. Coffee curtly finishes his call. Fountain comes back and we're introduced to Oliver and Howard. Two cats from Southern Ontario, playing that scene, they were from St. Catherine's, cool, I had family there. They had some new tunes and hopping beats.

"We're celebrating Substance Abuse Sunday, here on Saturday Night." Coffee explains as he pulls out The Shotgun.

"Oh we celebrate Substance Abuse Saturday, we're early morning people." Replies Howard. He was a Dj/merch guy, playing some acoustic songs when the promoters would dig it.

Dan and I go into the living room, refill our glasses and start talking about girls.

"I got this girl taking me to a wedding."

"Oh yeah?" Dan replies

"Yeah her names Beth."

His eyes widen. Coffee reenters the room.

"What?" He throws.

"Beth, as in B."

"She was my wife for four years." Coffee says.

"I was his divorce lawyer." Dan follows.

"Ah shit! I already confirmed I was going. I'm sorry dude."

"How did this happen?!?"

"My agent has a girl. That girl has a friend, the four of us are going to this travesty."

"Just stop right there. I have no desire to learn anymore." He lifts a glass to his lips, "I'm going to do the things I enjoy to do. But look at me dude, I live in a shit hole apartment in the North End. I moved from a farmhouse ocean front property in South Bar! She did this to me. I'm broke, I lost it all in the divorce."

"When I lost the case I went out of buisness, the both of us invested too much time and money into it. I went from being a respected divorce lawyer to a meat cutter at Sobey's."

"Oh great so this is the girl The Agent is trying to get me setup with. Why can't he just stop his needless string games and let me drink and write. I am a writer and no one is my master, I don't need any more drama in my life than the fictious ones in my head. I've got enough boy still left in me that I don't feel the need to spill my seed on a different girl every night. It's the romantic in me." I say sarcastically.

We spend the rest of the night watching the sports highlights. That letter is still in my pocket, unopened.

From a sunken couch,

S. Tibs

Love,

a distant vessel,
which carries us across the sea of life.

I peer out my window to the street below. I see the biggest cliche of my life, a beautiful woman. But something is different, I can tell even at this distance that there's something very special about her. She carries herself in this strange empathic way. Or am I just making a psychic/physological connection? Her clothes are a vibrant tapesty of colour. I see her watching a mother hen and her young falling out of a tree, the chicks are too young to fly and when they plop onto the cement a yelp jumps from her throat.

The breeze from my open bedroom window sends shivers down my spine. My t-shirt reverberates and I clutch onto the guitar in my lap. I look out my window again and see her walking onto the road, ensuring the mother can fetch her infants without fear of the automobiles. She helps them onto the curb. She looks stunning in the afternoon sun. She walks across the road and takes a seat on a park bench. I turn up my amp a little, hoping the pleasant chords will float above the din of the day's traffic.

I slam away on my "Old Black" guitar. I play my heart out, letting my soul sweat from my skin and sink into the stratosphere. I sing, projecting out the window, with a hint of melancholy, just the right amount inorder to perfume the air like freshly baked muffins. She shifts in her seat. I notice her head move as she picks up on the occasional note thrown from my bedroom window and into the harbour, sailing through the sky like fishing line, then falling sharply as if an anchor were attached to the end.

"Who is this girl?" I wonder as my wrist cramps and I put the guitar down. She's resting peacefully now, staring at the sailboat in the harbour, eating a bag of popcorn. She looks Zen. I look down the road and see Hammerstein coming up the sidewalk. Egads! This is my excuse to go outside and get seen by this girl. I throw on my jacket and chapeau and rush out the door, skidding out my apartment building door and into the street.

"Tibs!" Hammerstien shouts from down the road. I see the girl turn towards him, catch his line of sight and follow it back to me, she quickly snaps her sight away once she realizes that my peripheral vision has her in its sight.

I walk towards him, "what's up dude?" I ask.

"Not too much man, just out for a walk, you wanna go to the casino?"

"Sure dude. Breakfast special?"

"Fuck yes! Hotblood!"

He turns and we head south to the Cafe American in the foriegn casino. I peer over Hammerstien's shoulder and catch a quick last glimpse of the girl, still sitting statuesque on the park bench. Serene. The image is permanently sketched into my memory. A love of another universe, gone down the road of alternate reality, one where Hammerstien doesn't come up the street and I have the courage to approach her.
C'est la vie, regrets.

"Tibs. I've got problems. I'm trying to be level headed about it, ya know?"

"Yeah, I'm kinda level headed too."

We grab our usual poisons. Hot coffee, tea, and the Country Style Breakfast. We batted back and forth about our girl problems, the loves lost and the troubles gained and some other philosophical nonsense.

I was feeling gutterish. "This sinking ship has got to go." I tell Hammerstien. I head back to my apartment alone.

There's a letter in my mailbox. What could this be?

From the porch,

S. Tibs

"And we're worried about our rate of attrition, although we don't know what we can do about it. It's the nature of the buisness, people die, or don't want to work. Lazy bastards. We've got to turn this around if we want to remain profittable in the market place. We simply can't afford to be training all these people only if we don't retain them." - The Warden

A prison with dull gray, prefab walls. Cubical Catacombs.

I managed to get a typewriter smuggled in. A beat up, IBM machine, circa 1962. Dark gray, with five missing keys, one half smashed space bar, and a severe sticking problem. I payed 42 cigarettes for it, a small fortune. And I had to get the ribbon replaced within a week. I'm not sure if the trauma happened on route, or if its the only thing they could get, but it'll have to do for now. Whatever poor souls have touched its keys are the only thing giving me strength in this paper prison. Where memos and reports are whips and chains. Most of us in here are political prisoners, members of society the elite, tie wearing-investment bankers, are shaken up over and are thus enslaved.

It was like something out of '39. I had been writing for the "freepress", an independant news paper on the north end of town. I was one of the art and culture contributors, I published poems, and wasn't connected to some of the more opinionated, and sometimes violent, politcal voices of the paper. One night, while supervising the presses; an old devil, hidden away in a basement to prevent the thought police from cracking down. It was an old colonial-period prison cell, oh the poetic symmetry! We were targetted, and raided. I, along with two journalists, an editor and two rum-runners turned bundle carriers were arrested. We were arranged, processed and transported to a high-tech, high security, low cost prison in the same night.

The trip there, chained, sitting in the back of a prison bus, was surreal. Just hours earlier I had been sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette in my underwear on my back fire escape. What do I do now? Would I never see the rising sun again a free man? We had no idea how long our sentances were. I had regrets. Not kissing that fiery girl from down the street was high up on that list. Not playing guitar that day was up there too. Half way there, the black hoods came down. I don't know how long we were on the bus, most of the night, I'm sure, I couldn't sleep and tried to keep track of the turns and twists with the pressure that was being placed on each corresponding ass cheek. Didn't work.

I was strongarmed into a cell, no bars here, just tall plexiglass walls covered in spit and dried blood. They removed my hood. The floor had tough, industrial grade carpet and when they threw me down it cut my forearms. Meals were once a day for the first week, and then based off a work commission. I didn't realize until later that those who didn't work, and didn't work well, didn't eat. The first night there I expected to freeze, a psycological mind game trick common for intimidation purposes, but no, it was the opposite. They cranked the heat, it was swealtering, no one could sleep. The florescent lights stayed up all night. Sleep deprivation. A weary spirit doesn't make for good work, or good meals, I kept thinking.

The first few weeks was "orientation". Meeting the guards, the warden, regular beatings and avoiding some of the more pleasant inmates. It took a very special type of conditioning, bordering on complete insanity, and a loss of identity to become agreeable with this place. The rapists and axe murders seemed to be happy enough. "Better this than the chair" I recall hearing in hurried tones.

I was set a task. Chained to a desk, pushing buttons for hours (or days or weeks, you worked until you collapsed) trying to enter data, all seemingly disconnected and without purpose. I was told it was needed for "the war effort" and the guards would sneer, saying "don't you support the troops?"

My heart is on the verge of collapse. The voice of the Judge echos in my head "to be sent, for an indeterminate amount of time..."

Strength Tibs, you'll get through this on the otherside, somehow.

American justice be damned.

From tattered prison garb,

S. Tibs