Author Information
Lancaster California
Lancaster, California.
The year was 1989.
I had a pal named Willie Santos.
He hailed from Costa Rica.
We we inseparable until somewhere along life’s line he turned champion for the Mormon Church, but more power to him, I say.
Godspeed, Willie.
This particular night though, we were walking home from doing God only knows what.
Our buzz, wearing off.
2:30ish am or so.
We were shuffling our way down one of the main thoroughfares, cutting through the heart of town.
Halfway home, I had to piss something awful and noticed a hair salon coming up on our left.
“Gotta piss, Willie. Hold up man.”
We dipped off the sidewalk and went in between the salon and the business nestled next to it.
Willie followed suit.
I noticed a small window just above my head. It was one of those smaller bathroom windows or maybe a break room type, for natural light, ventilation, whatever.
I took off my jacket and rolled it around my fist and in the same instance, I swung my arm overhead and smashed the window out. I turned my head quickly to shield from the shards of glass raining down on me.
Willie just looked at me, befuddle.
I called over to him,
“Hurry up! Come here and boost me up.”
He quickly obliged.
He hoisted me up to the window’s edge. It was a tight fit but i managed to squeeze through.
I lowered myself down inside and just as I’d thought, my feet found a toilet. I secured my footing.
“Ok! Come on! Hurry up.”, I said.
I grabbed Willie’s forearm and pulled as hard as I could as he shimmied up the wall.
Once inside, we used our lighters to navigate into the main part of the salon. There, we could see clearly as the yellowish, orange street lights were flooding through the floor to ceiling plate glass windows.
They illuminated the chairs, shampoo bowls, and all those God awful Patrick Nagel prints in cheap plastic frames.
“Let’s find some trash bags or something to put shit in!”, I said.
We scurried around, looking frantically in all the cupboards and cabinets under the stations until, jackpot!
My heart was pounding as we both stood there scoping out the layout of the salon, bags in hand.
We started stuffing them with Sebastian moulding mud, blow dryers, combs, clips and thick, glossy magazines laden with the finest specimens you’d ever seen.
I’d never liked nudity in my girlie mags, but more so preferred something left to the imagination, so these were perfect for my future endeavors, or what have you.
We were just starting to relax and pace ourselves, when I swear by all that has ever been holy, the entire salon lit up with the force of something that I likened to the face of God. That kind of light that would light up your bones, your innards, and your carnal fears.
They flashed red, blue and mixed with blinding white intervals.
Our eyes couldn’t have possibly opened any wider. We stared at each other, frozen in time,
our mouths agape.
We dropped our bags, throwing ourselves face first to the floor.
In that moment we had been reduced to trembling piles of shit, right there on the Masonic style, black and white checkered flooring.
Willie forcibly whispered,
“We’re so fucked man!”
“Shut the fuck up, Willie…I know!”
I could hear my heartbeat pounding against the floor, in between each word that we spoke.
The cops were just outside.
Waiting. Watching.
“Don’t move, Willie. Don’t fucking move…just be still. They’ll kill us man.”
We didn’t budge.
We were paralyzed with fear,
all awash in red and blue hyper oscillating lights.
We waited hopelessly for the loudspeaker to instruct us on what our next move should be. I didn’t move a finger. Neither one of us did. We were covered in sweat,
our jackets squeaking in time to our labored breathing.
10 minutes crawls by,
then 15,
20.
Around the 30 minute mark, I slowly started to army crawl towards the plate glass window as slow as I could ignoring Willie’s protests.
The bottom of the window was about 2 feet from the floor. I got to the frame of the glass.
I did a half assed push-up to assess the situation. My eyes came to rest on a the black-and-white squad car just outside the salon.
It’s lights all ablaze.
And there, just In Front of the goddamn thing was an older model BMW. The cop was just handing over A ticket for whatever violation that had went down.
I lowered my head back down to the floor in disbelief.
“Willie….you’re not gonna believe this shit.”
Eventually, after the lights stopped and obviously the vehicles had cleared the scene, we decided the coast was clear.
We crammed our hefty bags through the tiny bathroom window, letting them crash to the ground.
Once outside, we flung the bags over our shoulders. We decided that the best strategy was just to carry-on down the Main Street.
We figured we’d be sitting ducks on the back streets.
Play pussy, get fucked.
Tried and true.
I’m glad we did because not more than half a block down, we came across an abandoned shopping cart on the sidewalk. Relieved, we flung our heavy bags in and pushed the damn thing right on down the sidewalk. It was almost as if the patron saint of lost causes had been watching over us that night and was feeling charitable.
Raymond Strickland
January 17, 2022
