RETARDAR: Hippie Vagrant

[This also is from an unpublished zine from like ten months ago.]
The next day, I had band practice for our big first show of the stupid rap group that weekend, and I knew I'd want a giant cold beer to hold in my hands like a microphone as I ripped through the 3000 lines of handwritten text I'd memorized in the past two weeks, so I dug together $3.50 in quarters from the floor of the truck, for a pair of Miller forties, ideally. Drove the wife's car since my truck's service engine light was harshing my life buzz, and of course, there was no gas in it, so I was gonna have to put the drinking quarters into the oil industry's coffers instead of my decrepit shriveled liver. But then it occurred to me that our lone credit card's finance charges hadn't went through, so even though it was near the limit, there was that brief touch of under-limit to use on gasohol so I could use my quarters for gassing myself up. Which I did, but since the only gas pumps in Palmyra are full serve (meaning over-priced) run by a big fat dude who always acts like I'm some sort of freakish albino not-from-around-here monster (it's the dreads) where if you had to pay with a credit card, he'd grumpily waddle his way into the tiny office area of his establishment (one of them old school gas joints with the single pair of pumps under an overhang that comes off the front of the building), sighs as he sits behind the thrift store desk and runs through your card, internally cursing the five percent he's losing because I wasn't from around there, then struggles to get up after it takes nine minutes to process through his phone line, on and on and on and none of it comforting. So I rode to Zion's Crossroads to the big interstate intersectional trucks top gas joint by the Wal-Mart distribution center, knowing that even if I couldn't buy any, I'd get to sniff at those lovely fried chicken thighs. Got my gas, and knew I could even get my forties on the credit card, but only got one because buying ten bucks of gas and two forties on a credit card seemed a little too scummy a Thursday evening thing for me to do that week, even if it technically was Little Friday. Some road dog ragged straggly haired hippie dude was sitting there with a patchwork backpack, flashing me a peace sign (which always makes me laugh; who the fuck believes in peace anymore after all the diseased brains we know exist parade around us all day long?). As I walked to the store, he said, "Can you spare any change, brutha?" I said, "Catch me on the way out, man." Got my forty and gas squared away, at least until the finance charges come due over the course of the next nine years of my life, came out and went to the car and got the dude the $3.50 in quarters, figuring they were probably gonna be drinking quarters for him too (or maybe smoking quarters if he feared the local authorities of central Virginia). He told me he had just come from a Rainbow gathering up in Maine, hung with a bunch of college kids who took him back to New York City and styled him out in bars and all, but he had to roll because he, like any sensible person, figured out New York was straight devilry. I asked where he was going. "California." I told him to tell California I said hey, and then he asked if I had any nuggets.