The Tragedy of Dolouz

Ogre and I are walking around downtown, hands shoved in our pockets. I say, “It’s June, it should be like 60 degrees right now, for Christ's Sake.”

Ogre shrugs and lights another cigarette. “Is that real blood?” he asks. It's doubtful that the foot-diameter crimson pool could be anything else. The news reports have been screaming that the city is more dangerous than ever before. There's a new shooting, or stabbing, or drug arrest every night. Of course, news cameras try and focus on the black offenders. The only white kids shown are scrawny with shaved heads and wife-beaters displaying prison-quality tattoos.

A few months back, I found a pamphlet on my door for a town meeting to discuss the "obvious criminal element" infiltrating the area. Assuming this was about me, I attended several meetings, jacket collar pulled up to my hat pulled low, so I could hide quietly in the back. The real threat was the black family that had moved in down the street from the upper middle class houses surrounding mine. The slum across Main Street had long been a point of contention, but now the problem was creeping into decent neighborhoods. These same Born Agains called me each night to demand I move my car because they didn't like my "devil stickers."

Police were called for even the slightest infraction. Time progressed and frustrations grew, until the night five police cars blockaded off the street in hopes of inciting a riot. On the other end of the street, Ogre and myself would stay up until all hours of the night, drinking and being shouting in attempts to provoke a similar response, but the police didn’t come once. The message was very clear: “Nigger, don't let the sun set on you here.” In the Roaring Twenties, Parlor City was the epicenter of the Klan movement in the North.

“That’s pretty fucked up,” I say, pausing over the pool of red and stare into it a moment. I’ve had a quite a bit to drink today. I'd planned to lock myself in my room all evening but came home to a message from Ogre that his new brother-in-law committed suicide. Ogre was already drunk and needed someone to convince him he should drink more.

I found him on his front porch when I showed up, flipping through our middle school year books, circling the pictures he planned to make T-shirts from. “There’s beer in the fridge,” he said, circling a tiny picture of me with a mullet without looking up. I grabbed a bottle and joined him.

"I was at this dude's wedding a week ago. My sister was so happy. I thought he was one of us,” Ogre told me. “You may have figured out I’m kind of an elitist, and I really do think that people like us really are better than everyone else. I thought he was one of us, but he went and did this. She must have been quite the bride.”

Ogre lives in the shittiest part of town. We drank a while until the neighbors started beating their kids to sleep. We walked downtown, towards the bars, where the college kids hang out. They're gone now, much to the relief of so the locals. "Parlor Monkeys," the Long Island kids call us. "Not much better breeding than a gorilla and a pit bull." When I see the apes coming down from the trailer parks on the hills to dance and club bleach-blondes over the head on a Saturday night, I'm not sure I disagree.

The transient student population is the last gasp of life left in this terrible place. They come and they go, and the locals hate them for taking our best and brightest with them. The rest wallow in collective misery. It's jealousy if you ask me, spawned from impending doom of fading away in this black hole. I spent so much time there myself that I'm freq1uently asked my major. I always respond, ‘lunacy.’

College let out a couple weeks ago. Most of the closest people in the world to me have gone away on planes and trains and bicycles. Ogre's somber mood pulled me down with him. As we drank, I began to lament the beautiful people I may never see again. They were friends that I loved to no end. Gone, like whisps of wind.

“What time is it?” I ask Ogre as we pass by the trashy bar where I used to hang out with all those phantom-friends.

“Two-thirty,” he says, lighting another cigarette.

“Fuck,” I say. “Everything is closing soon. Let's go to State Street.” My vision is a little blurry from all the cheap wine I drank back at Ogre’s place. It tasted like brown sugar and battery acid, but if it’s good enough to kill Kerouac, it’s good enough to kill me.

"I hate State Street," Ogre says. "Let's stay here at the Spot."

"I can't take a minute of the Spot right now," I moan, and continue walking, careless of whether he follows or not.

The sun was still up when Ogre and I sat looking up at the grey sky. “This has really set my mind," he told me, finishing the fifth or sixth beer since I arrived. "I've been saying for years I want to see fireworks over the Pacific, but I've never made it west of Corning. Life is too short.” He looked over at me. “Are you in?”

That would cost a ton of money. Gas prices are up, and I’m pretty poor at saving. The Fourth of July is only three weeks away. I probably wouldn’t even be able to get the time off work. It’s totally infeasible for me to go. I shrugged. “Count me in. If they don't give me the time off from work, I'll burn the place to the ground.”

“I’m glad we’re out of that section of town,” I tell Ogre as we walk past the high school. Most of the college students live in the maze of houses behind the school. It’s ghost town now. Not far from here, past the river, is where all the bars and trashy dance clubs are. During semesters, we'd go there to start mosh pits when the DJ's threw in the occasional hardcore song. We'd bash the hell out of frat boys and start conga lines to run between the meatheads grinding on girls in tight black pants. I got punched by a chick once. None of the frat boys ever had the guts. We’d end up wild with laughter, wandering back to someone’s apartment. Score one for the bad guys.

Just before the bridge, Ogre and I stop at Meaty Boyz Polish Sausage for dollar subs. At this hour, and this level of intoxication you can’t beat the price, even with the knowledge those sausages have been simmering in the same dirty water for a week or more. The round-faced man behind the counter sports a red hat and bushy mustache like Super Mario. He doles out grey sausages in fresh-baked buns soggy with mustard and fried onion grease. “I hate it here,” I confide when Ogre and I are back outside, looking down over the edge of the bridge into the sluggish river. It stinks of rot and dead fish. “I absolutely hate it here. I can’t wait until I get away.”

“Yeah,” Ogre says, lighting up another cigarette. “I have to get away from here at some point too. I have to die here though, have to die where I was born.”

“Why?” I ask, spraying a mist of sausage grease on the pavement.

“I’m Italian,” he responds. “You wouldn’t understand.”

And I don’t. I just shrug and we walk over the bridge. This is the first day in weeks there hasn't been a torrential downpour. The water below roars on the arched supports of the concrete bridge that cracked and broke less than a year after being restored for its Centenary. Only the sidewalk on this side is advisable for use, though cars are still allowed on both lanes. The handlebars and tire of a discarded bicycle reach for air above the surging muddy current painted orange in the street lights.

I doubt I'd have come out here had I realized how cold it is. Maybe still, we're more drunk than the fruitcakes that spend their nights in doorways and under the bridge because they can't find a ride back to the mental institution in the castle on the hill. If I have a little more, the cold may not even matter.

We round the corner of State Street. The seedy, orgiastic thump of the dance clubs still pumps from a few, steaming doors, drowning out our words. Most have lights on and stumbling patrons being ushered out the door. There are cop cars here with their lights on. It's their Saturday night parking spot. If we're lucky, there will be a fight. Stories of broken bottles and stabbings are shouted from the club across the street, but that's most often not true, and usually at least half an hour before police can make their way inside. Locals say the college kids are good for no more than entertainment.

These aren’t the college kids from Long Island, or New York City, or even Buffalo. These are the local kids, having just returned from ravaging college towns abroad. Only a fraction of those that make it out ever return, even to visit. Life goes by without them, so to speak. An ordinary, mundane life that leaves much to be desired, but the city continues on nonetheless. Late August will arrive, and the complaints will begin anew. Rumor has it Parlor City was named for it's record-setting abundance of bars. That should tell you the state of mind of most of the people around here. Take as needed for pain.

It’s even colder now than when we started, and I can see my breath. There is frost over the pool of blood when we pass it again. Finally, back to Ogre's place, all the booze has sapped my strength, and I’m ready to go home. As I'm driving away, I sing along with Bob Dylan, “I’ve been weak, and hard like an oak. I’ve seen pretty people disappear like smoke. Friends will arrive, friends will disappear. If you want me, honey, baby, I’ll be here...”