Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Sept 7, 2007WTF, I live in a small city ass-ended up against the Mexican border in an obscure corner of the State of Disbelief and Paranoia. I only live nine blocks from the international line.
Today I was out walking west of town in the desert by myself and without my dogs tagging along. I was just walking, minding my own business.
I wasn’t within a hundred yards of the international boundary. Walking along, spacing out in my own head, working on writing with my mental computer. I had just re-booted and all the electrons, the neurological synapses, were clicking.
I could have walked off the edge of the world and not realized it.
If the ‘puter were whirling any faster, I would be floating in the air, a balloon drifting free of its tether.
It’s moments like this I think of when I’m offered a joint. I tell people no thank you, I’m crazy enough anyway. I don’t need any help.
So I’m out there, having slipped the moorings within myself, totally fucked up in my own natural pleasant way. You could have walked up to me and sucker punched me, and I would have no idea of what happened. It’s a great space I don’t have the opportunity of reaching often.
I’m not too pleased when I find this meditation is going to be broken. Who would be?
A Border Patrol Agent comes racing up to me in a brand new Dodge four-wheel drive pickup, with a holding box for undocumented border crossers on the back.
He’s raising a hell of a lot of dust, and doing great damage to the desert. He flattens at least an eighty-year-old barrel, squashes it to a green slippery mush.
I’m a blood-shot blond and fair skinned with All-American red white and blue eyes.
This kid of about twenty-two, looking like a young Tom Hanks, comes up to me very threateningly and demands, “Where are you from?”
Christ. I’m a native Arizonan, an American and spent two years in Nam, and most everyone around here knows me.
“Vulgaria,” I say. I think this is a legitimate response because vulgar thoughts are almost always running through my mind.
This throws him for a loop. I realize he thinks he heard Bulgaria.
He almost screams in my face, “Got any ID?”
I decide to fuck with him. This farm boy from the mid west is making over eighty grand a year with overtime of my taxpayer money. “Si,” I say.
He bares his teeth in a grimace and says, “Let me see it.”
“Chinga tu madre,” I say, “No necesito mostrar nada a ti.”
This slows him down. I can almost hear the wheels in his head turning. He says in his cleaver chopped Spanish. “Tu,” (he points to me) necesita come me (and he points to himself).
I shake my head my head and start to walk away.
He grabs my arm and twirls me around.
I shake this young National Socialist Democrat (aka Nazi) off and I think he’s going to go ballistic.
I’m unarmed and not even wearing a hat.
As he is going through this tirade I notice a couple of typical Mexican border crossers slip down a wash. The agent is oblivious and hasn’t caught sight of them.
He pulls out his gun and levels it at me. I generally don’t like to have guns aimed at me.
He gestures with his gun to the truck and says, “Ondale.”
I walk slow and don’t rush ondale, and say, “Tango derechos constitucionales.”
He says, ‘Fuck constitutional rights.”
As I climb up into the back of the truck, he jabs me hard in the back with his gun and I go sprawling into the back of the dirty prisoner carrier.
This really pisses me off.
We haul ass to the Border Patrol Station. I’m being thrown all around the place, because this young Nazi asshole is driving through the desert like it’s a fucking race track, chewing great stretches of it up in the process and polluting the air with mononucleosis carrying dust.
My blood is starting to boil. I really don’t like dealing with these motherfuckers.
At the station I’m shoved into a small gray holding cell with a metal bench and stainless steel toilet. I don’t think the toilet has been flushed in weeks.
I stew in this vile shit smelling room for almost two hours.
Finally I’m led out. We go up to an older agent behind a desk. He is obviously a supervisor. I don’t know him by name, but I’ve seen him around town, and I know he recognizes me.
He frowns and says, “What’s the problem?”
“There was no problem,” I say, “Until your agent started abusing my constitutional rights.”
This angers him. He says, “Fuck your constitutional rights.”
This pisses me off even more. Why are we paying for this dick-head government? I say, “If that’s the way you want it.”
They give me a ride back into town, again in the back of a paddy wagon, but at least this time we use the highway.
At one time I knew a great deal about the law, but that was a distant past life in this incarnate.
I go home, do some research and file a lawsuit against the Border Patrol and US Federal Government.
I continue to hit the law books, and know I will be offered a settlement.
I won’t accept anything less than twenty-five grand for my lost time, and for disturbing the perfect equilibrium of my mind which said events totally fucked.
Dandelion Salad 