Time For Some Change

The tired custodian emptied the trash and locked up, departing to Al’s Liquor via bicycle for his standard three quarts of Schlitz Ice. He pedaled off, not knowing the bank he had just cleaned so meticulously was about to be visited by yet another customer. He didn’t even crack the first quart before the commotion began.

"KLAK-GRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGTTTTTTT…"

A few seconds later, this unusual sound was followed by another one, different, yet equally foreign and intriguing.

"TSHHHHHHHHHHHT…"

The aural combinations would be juggled and repeated for hours into the night. The smooth, marble benches and red, painted curbs surrounding the monetary fortress have provided skateboarders with a challenging playground for years, ever since they replaced the ugly, dried-up grass that used to run the perimeter of the building.

€œ"KLAK-K-SSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTT…"

Jake smiled, rolling away from his backside tailslide feeling empowered and having a lot more fun than usual.

Amazingly enough, nobody ever really bothered the skaters who went there. They would often roll into the early morning hours with no contact from society whatsoever, save a few pass-by’s from the local cholos or an occasional visit from the testosterone charged security guard, whom they tauntingly referred to as "The Tough Guy." Every time they saw the headlights of his weathered Mazda mini-truck approaching, they would give each other a heads up by calling out "TGA," which stood for "Tough Guy Alert."

"KLAK-SSSSSSSSSSTTT…"

Jake whizzed through a clean frontside boardslide. A car pulled in.

Expecting The Tough Guy, Jake was ready to skip the drama and skate off, but as the car came closer, he saw a face he didn’t recognize. It was the stern and emotionless face of an unhappy, aging man, no doubt an employee of the bank coming to catch up on some work. In the middle of his hurried walk to the door, his briefcase somehow managed to escape the vice-like grip of his pale fingers.

"Ah son of a bitch…" he hissed as documents scattered all around.

He gathered them up. As he rose, the searing pain in his lower back reminded him of his deteriorating physical condition. As he passed Jake, their eyes met for a fleeting second. The man immediately glanced away to save himself from having to acknowledge Jake, a common social behavior of a culture subdued by routine, impatience and isolation. It didn"t phase Jake, though. As a skateboarder, he had grown used to the looks of contempt and ridicule aimed his way by the other, more respectable, members of society.

"Man, I’m thankful to be havin’ fun and not working," he thought to himself in between a flatground nollie and a 360 powerslide. Another hour passed and Jake found himself working on a rare technical trick, varial heel back nosegrind.

"Damn, that was tight…you see that fool?"

The biggest of the three homies slapped his younger counterpart upside the head and demanded that he hand him the joint they were passing.

"Here, gimme that thing homes…"

      

Jake had been too engulfed in his pursuits to notice the three of them smoking and drinking forties under a tree. He wondered why they had never really started anything with the skaters. To him it was ironic that these so-called gangbangers, considered subhuman fragments of society, could give Jake’s maneuvers the appreciation they deserve while the rest of the ‘upstanding’ civilization simply passes by with indifference, judgment or outright scorn.

"Those vatos are chill," Jake thought to himself.

All the pressures and anxieties of twenty-something life dissipated as Jake found his lines, functioning in the state sports psychologists refer to as ‘the zone.’ His brief moment of satori-like bliss was abruptly interrupted by the sound of keys and a slamming door that commanded attention. The middle-aged guy was finally on his way out of the office, at 1:48 a.m., three hours later. Jake sat down on his board, sweaty and exhausted.

"CLICK-CLACK-CLICK-CLACK…"

The sound of uncomfortable shoes came nearer. He turned the corner and there sat Jake on his skateboard, in such close proximity that the man was forced into eye contact this time.

"How’s it going?" Jake asked.

"Oh, just fine," the man snapped, almost angrily. Jake sensed that something else would soon follow his sharp response, something hostile and critical.

"…except that you damn kids have practically wrecked everything around here…" he blurted out, motioning towards the curbs.

"It’s a curb," Jake responded. "They paint right over it three times a year!"

"Just a curb, huh? I’ve spent the last eighteen years of my life here and that’s all you have to say for your damage?"

"Why don’t you complain about that?" Jake pointed to the numerous graffiti tags along the trash-littered retainer wall.

"When I was your age I had two jobs. What are you doing’?" The man attempted a lecture of some sort. "I ought to call the police."Â?

"Yo, I’m over all this guilt trip crap. What are you my dad or somethin’?" Jake got up. He didn’t display the reaction of submission the man was expecting. Jake just chuckled to himself, nodding in disgust at the high-strung seriousness overly-material systems can produce.

"Everything is a joke to you people!" the man screamed as Jake skated off.

Often times Jake had the most fun skating home from these late night sessions. There are a ton of obstacles to hit on the route: curb cuts, the wallride behind Speedy Stop, some planter gaps, the gap to manual…the list is endless. He always seemed to find some acceptable canvas for his maple-titanium-urethane brush.

"That guy at the bank needs to chill…" he thought to himself after popping out of an extended manual.

At this same moment the guy from the bank was traveling eastbound to his elaborate home in north Scottsdale, the wanna-be Beverly Hills of the Arizona desert. It was not unusual for him to spend his entire drive dwelling over the petty, insignificant aspects of his own personal microcosm. For some reason he found music uninteresting, so he just thought about his life as he drove, juggling scenes of his children asleep mixed with flashes of his wife impatiently awaiting his arrival.

"Damn…that’s all I need is her bitchin’ at me for not spending enough time with the kids again…" he thought to himself as he pulled into the gas station.

"These and ten on pump nine," was the extent of his acknowledgment to the younger human behind the register that he deemed a cashier. They were muttered very demandingly with an expectant voice as he slapped two candy bars and a pint of Vodka down on the counter. "At least I can slip these in their lunches before school…" he thought. "That’ll make’em happy…"

Two hours later he sat staring into the television, having undergone the smooth transition from up’n at’em banker to drunk and frustrated apathetic. A constant barrage of images served as his numbing anesthetic while he sat and envied other people doing other things in other times. Once again his attention left his environment and turned inward. He flicked the channel.

"What a rough day…punk kid…I hate that place anyways…I’d really like to leave, but what about my retirement?"

Another scene popped onto the screen, one that evoked memories of friends, fun and happiness, all feelings he hadn’t really felt for a long time. His memories drifted from one to the next. He recalled the feeling of younger hands sliding across fresh felt, the smells of perfumed adolescent girls and chalk freshly ground into the cue and the sounds of laughter and vitality exchanged amongst his fellow pool enthusiasts. From the age of seven he had displayed extraordinary proficiency in the game, so much so that he was highly esteemed by the local professionals before he could even vote or smoke cigarettes while he played.

With a semblance of a smile, he sat and watched the game unfold. It was nine ball.

"I bet I could give any of these guys a run for their money…" he thought to himself. "What a life they have. If only they knew."

In the back of his mind he wished he had not chosen the life he was living, a constant jumble of financial stress, marital concerns and ever-increasing tension. He felt shackled by a self-constructed prison of his own thinking. Embittered all over again, he rose abruptly, hitting his balding head on the corner of the metal lampshade drawing a pinprick’s worth of blood. He cursed before returning to deficit thinking.

"If I wasn’t at that damn bank half the time I could get a chance to shoot again…" he thought, finishing his pint. Buzzed, he decided to retire for the night, only to get up five hours later and start the cycle again; one more revolution, one more turn of the gears.

The next day while walking back to his car from lunch, he saw a carefree skateboarder approaching him, cruising down the sidewalk with headphones on, completely lost in soulful carves. For a split second he assumed his usual reaction of scorn when suddenly, the scenes of the nine ball game on television the night before were recalled to his mind. He had forgotten about them completely until that seemingly random, unrelated moment.

As the carefree skateboarder neared, he still looked in the other direction as usual, but this time he just laughed to himself, continuing the walk to his car. He suddenly stopped his robotic pace noticing a pay phone a stone’s throw away. He dug through his pockets. It was time for some change. He found a quarter, dropped it into the slot and dialed the number to his secretary.

"Hey Jane, it’s me. Listen, uh…something just came up that I really need to take care of. I’ll be back in around two or so. Tell Allen I’ve got the reports and I’ll be there as quick as I can. Thanks…"

He hung the phone up and headed in the opposite direction, at first hesitant, but as the reality of his decision set in he picked up his stride. There was a small dive bar about three blocks down.

"Ah, what the hell…the cue sticks are crappy but it’ll be fun…"