Guilty of kidnap


I received a polite email from a gal named Vicky suggesting that I actually attend the meetings that were required of the summer interns. ‘If you want to actually write for the paper, you may want to start by actually writing for the paper.. and showing up to the mandatory meetings.. and showing a little responsibility.. ’ she listed out a few other civil suggestions in response to my evident languor. I had been in the program for a few weeks without a story to my name. It was the sticky clam summer of 2008 and I was more interested in long walks around green lake with a charming brunette than I was sitting behind a typewriter. Add to stack, the frugality of pennies in a tin can, literature is easier read then written, and talk is cheaper than action- of which I must have thought- I could not afford.
Maybe I would have been a little more willing if I wasn’t tasked to write articles about kitchen utensils and statues on campus. ‘Can’t I write about the drunk kids falling to their death out of fraternity windows, or about that wacky dingbat that rides around on his bike all night looking for fights to break up with his tasor gun?’ What a silly cramp for a budding writer. But I am in the study of poltical science, writing fluff was not the problem- the burnette was the problem. Ok- I was the problem. Either way, Vicki let me know that the upcoming meeting was to be the most important of all meetings- with an important guest speaker- and if I failed to make an appearance, I shouldn’t bother ever appearing around her again. Well, fair reader, I did not show.
Now, anyone whose anyone (which I suppose would be everyone) that knows me- can tell you that I’m all about appearances. So why, you may be asking yourself, did I not appear to this- the most important of all meetings..? I’m glad you asked yourself.
I think I can satisfy your curiosity by explaining how a kidnapping comes into fruition:
First of all.. kidnappings don’t just poof up out of a magic lamp-
You only find yourself tangled up in a kidnapping after a strange and slapdash web of events has been spun.
It all started with a phone call demanding I volunteer for deployment. ‘Ok’ I thought out loud. ‘Good then’ the man responded. I was slated to deploy to the Middle East and was two days away from leaving when I was attacked by that frenetic flesh eater- MRSA. My Doc and Chief were not impressed by the outbreak and kanked me from the deployment, stamping me as diseased and incapable.
I was low and dry. I had dropped school, housing, and work for the deployment.
The high hopes I had, was in finding meaning behind this curious episode. How often in life are you absent of all responsibility. It was my first since sixth grade- so I gathered my spare change and purchased a ticket for the east coast. I had heard of a small commune in Lakeshore Florida were you become a ranch hand for Katrina victims in exchange for room and board. It was here, in the raw beauty of simple life and people, in the absence of career strain and social ladders, that I felt an acute and uncanny desire to write. It was the amazing people and their incredible stories that simply needed to be written down. I kept a journal. That’s when I started calling myself a journalist. ‘I gota get this back to the yanks’ I felt like my brain was itching- and writing was the scratch. Naturally, I found my way back home and wandered into the school paper’s headquarters with nothing more than a moleskin notebook full of unorganized, shoddy writing.

The Sicilian Etna

I spotted a bonnie lass hiding behind her work. “Yes, I heard your looking for writers. Well, you’re in luck, for I’ve just become one.” Why not put a salvation twist on it. A born again writer.. that sounded real fine. The lady behind the desk with teetering stacks of paper did not look up at me. Her glasses were hanging from the very tip of her nose- and they surely would have dropped off her face is she moved- so I don’t blame her.
“I eh.. don’t have a portfolio because I never really wrote for anyone persay..” She still didn’t budge.“But I can give you a sample of something I wrote recently when I was doing charitable work on my own accord.” Of course it was necessary that she know I was a pretty good guy.
Then she spoke. “Ok, just fill out the application and staple your piece to the back.”
“Alright!” I hollered. I looked around the stale brick room with a winner’s grin. I put my nose in the air as if taking a whiff of my surroundings. Like a dog. I closed my eyes and listened to the tip- tap of computer keys, the heavy nose-breathing of some of the writer’s lost in their writing, the zip-spitting persistence of the copy machine.. ‘ah’ I thought aloud- this was home for me now.
The lady finally looked up at me, probably wondering as to the sake of my lingering. Her glasses still anchored to the edge of her nose. Her eyes were peeking out from under her eyebrows like someone hiding indoors may peer through closed blinds. She didn’t have to say anything. I knew I was being dismissed.
“Good day to you miss!” I bowed and skipped out of there. I shot like a laser all the way home, broke open my moleskin and picked out one of my favorite passages. Feeling an inspiration only a naïve, budding writer can- I typed up a pretty ridiculous little piece about swimming around in some rich man’s pool- cleaning the sand out of my shorts… It was about as well organized and meaningful as this current piece, but it was sincere.
As confident as I was, I was still surprised when I got the call-back.
“You want that job.”
I snickered. It was like I had gotten away with cheating, but I was an honest weasel about it. It was a good feeling. They had made the right choice; I was going to be their Sicilian Etna.
A few hazy summer months later…
The meeting- the important one that Vicki said I must attend. I may have been there an hour early, and I was even thinking of bringing a fresh article hot and ready for the press. Despite my intentions, on the eve of this critical meeting, despair made its merry way into my head. .
In some lame mutiny towards things not going my way, I picked up two bottles of wine. I summoned my friend Gabriel to aid me in comforting conversation. Our summer was what a gentleman or common scholar would call preposterous. We lived in a three story fraternity style house that was primarily vacant for the summer. We threw down a few hundred bucks and got to live there the summer through.. we spent the summer like boys with bikes do on a cul-de-sac. Mischief mostly, that I’d be foolish to repeat on paper, and naïve to risk sounding proud of such stupid behavior. But I will risk it with this one, because I don’t want to soon forget the obnoxious tendency of alcohol to club your senses to a dumb pulp and almost get you chopped to bits.
If you must know…
We had done one hundred pull-ups each, drinking vino between sets. The blood-rush must have shot the juice strait to my head. I could hardly talk without giggling. “You’re all wax and no wick my friend. Now lets make a merry double to the gas-station for some more wine.”
Ok my friends- we are soon approaching the kidnapping.. I must remind you- this is pure nonfiction..

The Mystery Machine

The explanation lies in our trip to the local grocer with the man outside chanting
“Real change?”
“No thanks”
“Have a great day sir”
There was the familiar noxious aura and florescent buzz from the corner gas-station. But tonight, our antagonist was parked next to a fuel pump. Fueling up and streaming vampire rock and roll. It was far too loud, I admit, and the blokes running the pumps were looking anxious. It was the sort of scene that may scare away customers. But the carnival energy was the kind of scene that drew two inebriated comrades to walk right in. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the antagonist was surely thinkin, ‘like bugs to the zapper’.
His name was Erik Nye. He called himself Erick Nye ‘the tree guy’ for he was in the business of trees (and kidnappings). I still have his business card, and I found a picture of him online:
http://www.ajs-trees.com/gallery/index.album/erick-nye-the-tree-guy?i=6&s=1
There was a lady also, maybe his secretary or some kind of business partner. She’s may as well have not existed.. as far as this story goes..
The back of his van was caged off from the front. I probably would not have even noticed if it wasn’t for the hand that suddenly appeared from inside the cage. The hand clenched onto the links and started to rattle the fencing aggressively. “Let me out of here!” a howling voice demanded from inside the van. My imagination couldn’t handle such eccentric spontaneity. It sounded like a wild boar or some feral, freakish beast. “Jiminy Christmas!” I gasped. My curiousity needed no more prodding. At once, I was up in the van talking to what appeared to be a man locked inside the cage. Gabriel was shooting breeze with the hippies by the gas pump. I yelled out to Erik, “Let this guy out man!” Erik immediately shot back, “No way, you can’t let Pitbull out! He’s dangerous!” I looked back at Pitbull, he had no more than carpenter denim on. His body was covered in tattoos, bald, had a Jay Buhner goatee, and the build of a retired prize-fighter. “I’m sorry Pitbull, he said I can’t let you out. I’m Mikie by the way.” I stuck out my hand and he gave it a sincere shake. If I had possibly a minute more to think, I hope I would have left this funny business. But Erik had somehow convinced Gabriel we needed to join them in a search for local festivities. As soon as we got that word- it was like locking ourselves in the cage with Pitbull was a good idea.
I must admit that I was drowning myself in some ridiculous case of child-like giggles. As soon as they locked us in the cage I was grabbing Gabriel by the throat screaming, “Gabe! We’ve been kidnapped!” then I would start to howl with laughter - when Erik punched the accelerator and we all flew to the back of the van- I lost my balance and composure so completely that I slammed into the floor in belly flop fashion. I was still laughing so hard I couldn’t feel the pain of impact. Just the strange sensation of my belly tightening when the laughter had stolen all my air.. I even had tears sliding down my cheeks. “We’ve been kidnapped!” was all my extra breath could muster between throbbing sets of laughter. This went on for quite a while as Erik ripped through the U-district yelling back at us every now and then ‘I’m trying to shake this cop!’ Gabriel was looking through a small window on the back door- “There’s no cop…” he kept murmuring. After we managed to crawl to the front of the mystery machine, we grabbed hold of the cage fencing that separated us from Erik.
Gabe did most of the business dialogue.
“Erik man, where is this party.”
Erik’s reply, “I thought you knew were the party was?”
“Well drive down this street here”
“We’ve already been down this way”
“I know, drive further down”
“No, just relax we’ll find something soon”
I was lost. The conversation may have made sense to them, but I could not understand how both of them thought the other one knew where the party was. So I popped the cork off another jug of wine, and gave Pitbull a swig. “High times aye Pitbull?” I still had a boyish smile on my face- and was fighting hard to keep it together. He nearly emptied the bottle in one gulp. “O dear, my friend, you have a drinking problem.” I cannot fabricate the conversation that I had with this man, because we are coming to the point of the night where I started to draw blanks in my memory. Blanks that I wish I could fill, because the next morning I woke up in a suitcase inside my room. Between what I do remember and Gabriel’s testimony- here’s the facts:
I became very good friends with Pitbull. We were drinking, singing, talking about the ups and downs of being kidnapped, etc. I think in real life I would walk on the other side of the street if I saw this goony toon trotting down the Ave. But under the circumstances (kidnapped and drunk) I apparently had plenty of heart-warming dialogue with the fellow. Gabe was fairly fixed himself, but always seemed to maintain a little more bearing than I. He had enough burl for us to call him a ‘greek god’, he held his liquor, and was also a budding lawyer. Rarely did he not have his wits about him. He maintained some sort of level with Erik.
I believe we launched out of the gas station around 11:00. The dialed calls on my phone read 3:00 in the a.m.. So we had been driving for some time, enough time for me to polish off the second bottle of wine; sending me into a nauseous swoon. “I don’t feel too hot Gabe…”
The grapes of wrath
Then to the familiar fetal postions of a man brought to the ground by a not-so-moderate lifestyle. ‘This is a drunk sailor’s nightmare’ I kept mumbling.. I was lying on the cold, slimey, hard base of a dark underbelly.. The womb of a beast even, too inept and unwilling to move in my putrid state. ‘So this is what it feels like to be slowly digested..’ I could only manage some inflated one liners that Gabe would caw at, ‘You’re not helping’.
Not long into the roadtrip, we were both laying on our backs- moaning…
I’d fade out.
Then back in..
Then back out..
When I was in- I remember-
Quick beams of light that would shoot through the back window every time we passed a street-lamp. It exposed the lumberjack’s cutleries. A whole flotilla of sharp, glistening blades I had somehow managed to ignore up to this point. They were clinging and clanging against each other quite dauntingly. What’s more, Erik was sucking plumes of smoke out of a shisha or some ottoman device; and he was blowing them sadistically around like the caterpillar from wonderland. I watched them float by above me like character clouds in a blue sky. I was being hot-boxed against my will. But this was not a tranquil ambiance; it was obviously part of his plan to bungle us to the point of dumb numbness. The only thing probably keeping me from this point was the terrifying reality of being skinned by this freak. Maybe even scalped, if he was of native origin.
I was in a mobile, psycadelic butcher shop. From a scythe to a chainsaw, the variety was uncanny and uneccessary. ‘Lord, why would a lumber-jack need a scythe?’ I had read about these stories. I heard about them in the class-room. Every now and then the evening news would actually get a hold of these eerie cases. My cronies told twisted tales like these around the fire at night. Exaggerated to get the fear boiling, but always scary; for, naturally, it was based on a ‘real event’. Well I never had much taste for the gruesome tales, and I sure did not want to be a victim of one.
The sway, in and out of consciousness, was comparable to the consistent jerking turbulence of a queasy red-eye flight. My stomach felt like it was churning rotten, clumpy milk- and battery acid. This was the not so glorious reality of red wine.
In the miasma of these moments- a severe paranoia inked into the dark side of my mind. All the intoxicated bike rides to Gasworks park, the fire-extinguisher fights, the ill-clad trampoline photo-shoot, the brave raid through the farm-land of Auburn; the countless acts of raw, foolish delinquency had finally come full circle. This would be the last of our misadventures, and it would end in a front-page story that had all the facts crooked. The throb of woozy paranoia is one of my least favorite feelings; it had not struck this bad since the ninth grade when I had gotten expelled from a private school that included in its expulsion package- excommunication. Now, I had added juice to whatever messenger nerves were delivering this painful experience to my receptors.
The blinding light from the little geek in the balcony was being blasted right in my eyes. So much exposure there was little to see except for…
My excommunication, my ghastly situation, and sure death… these were enough to make a poor junior in college soak his britches..
We were at a shipyard.. or maybe a railroad graveyard.. somewhere perfectly desolate for a bizarre skinning episode- when the van stopped.
Erik casually opened our prison door and came meandering into the back of the van shuffling through his primordial paraphernalia. The flow of the night was interrupted- which triggered in my subconscious- one thing- Escape. The gate was open. I was so green that I did not even think about my comrade.. though I don’t think he thought much about me either.. we were both on our feet and dashing for the door in gauche unison.
We launched out of the van. As rockets break the atmosphere and jettison into space. We were out of breath after about four blocks. I thought for sure the van was still creepin around looking for the escapees.. with a big bat-light on top.


Nuts and Barley.

‘Well, you’ve been in the pigsty again haven’t you’
After a narrow escape I woke up in a suitcase in my room an hour after the weekly writer’s meeting had started. After attempting to explain to my twin how I had gotten kidnapped I trekked down to the stale brick newsroom, still drunk, and getting sicker as I unsettled my insides. It was almost two months into the program and I had only written one article that I didn’t even turn in. I plopped down on the floor, knowing this would be my last meeting. That’s when my stomach started to bubble and I could taste the froth creeping up the back of my throat. I stood up and ran to the bathroom. Once inside I started to dry heave over the garbage can. My system was not cooperating, so I stuck a finger down my throat in retaliation. Then that burning venom finally erupted out all over my hand hardly making any of the actual vomit in the garbage can. I made a few dramatic heaves out of reflex thinking more was on its way. Nothing, so I just started to curse arbitrarily under my breath. I heard a nervous cough behind me. I looked through the mirror to see a head member of the news-team gawking at my performance.
He said nothing. It brought me back to the lady at the desk; I knew when I was being excused. I smiled at him like a criminal covers up his shame by smiling in a mug shot. I had bartered my opportunity for a bottle and a half of wine, and I simper in retrospect..

‘Like a dog returns to his vomit.’ I was thinking as I trudged home .. When I got there- I read the email I half expected to be worse:

I very much want my writers to succeed in the program, and this means entrusting reporters with a substantial amount of responsibility. As you know, responsibilities include attending mandatory weekly meetings, maintaining constant communication with the development editor and meeting all assignment deadlines. Unfortunately, I have not seen an adequate effort on your part in fulfilling those responsibilities. Consequently, I have no choice but to remove you from the development program.

- Vicki


Author’s note:

I wrote this not long after I received this email- I was going to send it to Vicki in attempts to get my job back.. after re-reading it.. I’m not sure how I thought this would get me my job back- but I did think- It would be a good piece to put on my blog.