Feeling my stability drift away was enough for me to relinquish any illusions of a normal life. And I felt myself becoming more comfortable with that notion. Everywhere I looked, people were still shopping at expensive stores, overeating at food carts and boozing it up at upper class city bars. It all seemed so trivial, like ants wiling away the hours with self-stimulating pleasantries. But a man who can call any piece of cold concrete his own experiences a level of independence unknown to his home dwelling compatriots. There is an existential freedom to be won on the streets of America, for those who know how to get by on very little. Suddenly, I found myself with nothing to worry about. The collective had community tobacco, and anyway, I had money for my own smokes. I gave most of them away to those who had need for tailors. Typically, any number of the people I ran with had herb, and beer was usually purchased by one or two people on any given night and passed around as much as our women were. We shared our meals, usually stored in stolen supermarket food carts and prepared by the quiet, dignified and gentle Body. It struck me that I actually did not want for any basic necessity while with the occupants there at city hall and later outside of the police station.
My first order of business was, as a matter of course, becoming friendly with the regulars. At a glance, my intention was simply to live among the occupants, observing their behavior and the ways in which their general assembly meetings and spoke councils worked. As a newly homeless youth, I could slip into the ranks quite easily, and I hoped to be a fly on the wall, writing as my life developed among the activists. Sooner than later, I was assimilated into the team. I found myself sympathizing and resonating with them in a way that is hard for me to explain, even now. Maybe it was the lack of direction I had found my life to possess, my general listlessness in dealing with Richard and Jean, who seemed to be unfeeling towards my general wellbeing. I was given allowance to stay with them until I had found an apartment, but when Stephanie showed up the awkwardness prompted me to opt for the street life. It was a relatively unknown quantity, but at least I didn't have to deal with the ugly ways in which the girl had treated me- dealing with me as if I were an unwanted rodent nesting in her underwear drawer.
The people on the street were friendlier. My first strong impression, other than Whitten, who spent most of his hours journaling quietly and keeping to himself, was the most regular night watchman, 99. 99 ran security every night, solid as a rock. Looking like a mixture between an alpha male Rasta man and the Predator, I spent many a night drinking beer with him and discussing the overall strategy of the safety crew and the movement. He kept an eye on things always, and kept them running smoothly. We had an implicit respect for one another, although I could tell we came from different worlds. 99 had done hard time in prison for aggravated robbery and was now on the outside, probably without a place to call his own. On this matter, we could understand one another. His heart and spirit were relentless, and he could be found every night on the same corner, come rain or snow or hail or sleet.
There was Whittenwolf, a ragged, skinny puppy who often bragged of his heritage, claiming "legitimate Scottish Royalty". You could often find him outside of the 7/11 after dark, schmoozing with the other schwillies. He was a drunken animal who boasted openly about any number of unlikely scenarios, but we had been friends until the stabbing incident with Marco, a stabbing that occurred like a good many stabbings do: over a woman. This incident with Marco was enough to cause me to distance myself from Mr. Wolf, a reasonable thing to do out of concern for Marco, and Whittenwolf had been on the run since the stabbing, anyway. Which brings me to Marco.
Marco Polo. With looks like a young Che and the mentality of a young Horus. Marco had a genuine vendetta against society. A streetwise hustler with a soft spot for shitty women. I could never understand how Marco managed to survive the streets for so long with such little common sense when it came to sex. Marco's dossier and his little black book read like a how-to on picking up every psychotic batshit crazy baglady in sight. Marco was, for a time, my most solid connection on the streets. We traveled together, we slept together often side by side, I taught him everything I could about psychic self defense and the arts and he taught me everything he could about being a street kid. When the heat was on, Marco, Nameless and myself took a camping trip to Vancouver, where I initiated Marco into witchcraft. Marco initiated me into the gutter. We were both born anarchists, and as such we sympathetically resonated with one another. Marco's family roots were steeped in the Hell's Angels generationally since the 1960s, and he inherited his distaste for hierarchy and government with a vengeance from his father's father, presumably.
Up until the very bitter end I had fed Marco, paid for his cigarettes and his drugs. After some time spent together in the trenches, his aggressive policy towards women had caused him to disrespect me publicly on more than a few occasions. This is when I first began to feel his competitive machismo turn ugly. After a brief stint in a psychiatric ward I had spent due to mental exhaustion, Marco came back around to the Falcon where I was staying, a boarding house for young mutants and political refugees. My good friend and fellow zen enthusiast Orion caught Marco using my work computer for browsing child pornography, and my better judgment told me to finally give him the boot. This was shortly before I left Portland, the event serving as the last straw that broke the camel's back. He looked at me in the eyes then, knowing that his facade had been lifted and I would now see the naked demon underneath the flesh.
"You're going to have to leave now, Marco."
"That's fine. I'm so sorry. I don't even know what to say... Can I at least have a cigarette before I go?"
"Get the fuck out."
This should have been more depressing to me than it was, but after my break with reality I was left with but a tenuous grasp on my situation until I finally split for the midwest again. And I will explain this, in due time. Concerning the Goetia, the Lesser Key of Solomon and the works of witchcraft, Marco and myself had made a trek into the darker aspects of sorcery together, and I can say now in all honesty that I was hardly surprised. It occurred to me at one point that Marco had served as a familiar, and nothing more. He might have been a demon all along, as Piper at the Falcon had once idly speculated. The truth of the matter was, with my homelife falling apart, my lovelife imploding, and my mental health atrophied from the shock of seeing with a second sight, I could hardly bring myself to care. Hardcore political activism, urban shamanism and drug use had burnt me out. I couldn't even bring myself to feel that last goodbye. I had felt myself to be the stick of dynamite that had exploded, causing the order and stability of the Falcon to collapse around me. Shortly after this, I packed up and left for good. That was the last time I saw Marco.
I first met Marco in the Federal park across the way with Jesse. We smoked a joint, discussing the finer parts of Occupy's general strategy, and how underground journalism might figure into it. I discussed my writing with Modern Mythology, and how I thought writing could be a way to hit the bastards below the belt. "Weaponized art, journalism as a hammer to smash the status quo."
"We aren't looking for that," said Marco, flatly. "We have to be on the high ground. We shouldn't resort to tactics like blackmail or emotional manipulation like they do. We need to be on the up-and-up. Writing is good, but you need to do it with class." I didn't know it at the time, but Marco accusing me of not having class was a tar baby argument. Classy gentleman do not roll like Marco, but I loved him just the same. I stand by my argument that journalism can and should be used as a weapon to level against the establishment. I have followed money trails and legally outed politicians in plain sight, mostly for shits and giggles. There is a sort of a strength in knowing you can harm your enemies through basic manipulation of symbols, another great strength of sorcery. Through the manipulation of logic, we can bring them to their knees and make them pay. The law of the jungle is and has always been, and I would rather be at the top of the human centipede than trailing behind on the caboose. In love and war, there are no rules.
Other regulars were Jesse, a fling of mine and, as I later found out, most of the camp. (Glenn had asked me casually once, "Well, did you flog her, then?") And there was Glenn, a young skater who sold acid with his platonic fuckbuddy Constance. There were the schwilly kids, across the street from city hall. Blue was a good kid, often found painting or playing his guitar which he smashed in front of me one day, when he wasn't drinking. I once gave him a PBR t-shirt I won at an open mic with Amy in Oceanside, just out of love. And there was Maggie and Mike, who had a keen taste in music that kept me talking to them for hours. There was Mick, an older community organizer many suspected to be on the payroll of the police who was a hemorrhoid on my ass from day one. At one point, Mick tried to initiate a rumble over my shagging a girl on the sidewalk. Whittenwolf had slipped me a knife which I held in trembling hands, waiting for Mick's advance while the schwilly kids pleaded for us to stop. The police station being across the street from the park, I dropped the weapon and walked away. I never wanted to cut him. These things, they happen. I myself am not much of a rumbler, but after a few weeks on my own on the streets, I learned to carry a blade of my own, just in case.
