you're the weak [or chasing the fire]. trucker's log, year zero. lchristopher.

you need to set your motherfucker to receive.

author photo — i blew this truck up a day later and had to fight a lunatic marine in the P-Lot shop’s drive bay for the replacement rolling iron i was issued. fun times.

you're the weak. lchristopher. trucker’s log, year zero.

one of our drivers got run over by his girlfriend last night. which might have been all right, as he got back up. but then she backed over him and ran over him again. how long this went on i can't really say.

my day off: my job consisted of listening to them try to find me on the antiquated two-way CB systems we still use and then compare notes as to where everyone thought i lived so they could recoup my rolling iron. this was as i was at the junkyard scavenging for a new brake caliper and in the low southeast looking for close-in dwellings on my day off. when they went southeast, i went north. when they went north, i went west. finally i said fuck it and found a driveway to occupy for a few hours while i lay in the sun and read jim harrison americana as my heart beat faster and on. girls looked at my body as it crisped and i knew that i had to find less terrifying work.

today my West Texas boss had this to say: when you disappear with a sixty thousand dollar truck and my ass gets bit, i bite you, and i bite you harder, boy. i told him about my state of near homelessness and squattage and he said, that is fine, son. just let me know is all. i'm not saying we were worried that you stole the tow truck, but its happened before (true story - someone once robbed a bank with one on his lunch break. his apprehension was swifter than the punctuation clearing this sentence). who in the blue hell would steal a bright green tow truck covered in DUCKS? i mean, that'd be really easy to flip, all right. so the invisible owner, bruce, is disturbed by me once more. i have this to say: good.

i had to take a volvo out of “the ghetto” [the ghetto in portland apparently means “normal everyday black people live here”] on labor day, which nearly incited a riot. twenty drunk africans [Zimbabwe flag outside] stormed the balustrades. luckily, i already had the car on the hook and got inside before they steamrolled me, locking the doors and cutting the power. i think the night dispatcheress is trying to kill me. i 10/200'd (call the police, driver under attack) and actually got a response. the cops didn't know what to do so i told them if they ordered the car dropped i could get paid the sixty dollars for the drop fee and go home with all of my teeth. the cop: "who authorized this?" me: "you did, sir. towdesk made the call twenty minutes ago. [shows papers]". he looked at me and said to the crowd, you have thirty seconds to start being very, very nice to this man. i just wanted to go home. i wanted to get the mud off the cuffs of my jeans.

a few nights earlier, i ended up in the far far far far FAR reaches of north portland, where i towed a gold infiniti back for a black kid and his friend who then insisted, after waking my ass up to be on call for them, to come inside to smoke herb. they fed me a blunt that you could have rolled a moderately sized winnebago inside (and parallel parked it, no less) whilst playing tetris on a plasma screen the envy of NORAD and listening to ambient hip hop while their mother took drink orders - serving tray, notepad and all - at three o clock in the damn morning. talk about the proverbial grain of salt in the pepper pot - you want to know what it's like being black in a white neighborhood, tow a car into the projects at three thirty am and walk into a room filled with twenty neighborhood people who aren't even remotely the same color as you. t'will wake you up real fast (and is not something i advise - actually, this was quite stupid, but i have been sorrowful lately). i told myself to have faith in the human condition while reassuring myself with the feel of the .357 snubnose tucked into the side of my pocket and a speedloader on my other hip. i totally bagged on Kevin Spacey a la American Beauty: "thanks....for the thing, you guys." and got the hell out of there.

i still have no idea how i got home as i was hallucinating so badly i thought of how i used to build spaceships out of refrigerator boxes as a boy and make thousands of buttons via black magic marker until the chemical smell filled the tiny cabin of my cardboard ship and made me dizzy; row after row of neatly labeled buttons, a la charlie and the great glass elevator, UP AND OUT, UP AND OUT.

most notable was when the customer’s brother came home, who was more my age, and pounded my hand with a bunch of complicated digital finger algorithms. i remember quite clearly there were ten of them, handslaps, snaps, pounds, shoulder butts, etc etc etc. [of course i had absorbed this particular street genuflection from my nickel spent in a rent-controlled apartment in Jersey City Westside-Off-Communipaw, i had been initiated, you might say] and he looked at me in a picture of mock surprise and said to the crowd behind me, the man knows what time it is, and i still don't know what he's doing in my house but i'm ready to fall the fuck out now. i haven't heard that expression in ages. i didn't know it was still in vogue, and i'd use the word ebonics to classify this last but the latter is certainly no longer the former. there's nothing vogue about the past. i'm alive and still creating the future. experience ties and binds but i still hold hope for happiness and success by my own terms.

~Rose City - stumptown; bridge city; bridgetown, portland, portlandia USA, forever anon.

it's late and i need to sleep. so i can make money. i sat in bed next to someone tonight and couldn't speak. eventually i got up and left the room. i got robbed last night when another driver found the drop and snagged it. out sixty dollars but have a team of drivers ready to"roll in the gravel" with him at a moments notice. he tried to sell me a Tec-9 last week while i pulled the wheel off of my car. how dumb can you get.

the sad thing is, he's the only latino at our company. and he's pointed an arrow directly to himself by coming on just a week or so ago and robbing the place blind without prejudice or consideration. which means we'll probably be a conglomeration of barely educated white lower class blue collar lunkheads forever, and the chances of getting a black man on the rotation are probably one in a hundred thousand as it is. not like i'm a champion of the races or anything. i just wish people weren't so damn stupid is all. sixty bucks buys me food for three weeks out here.i don't want to fight anyone anymore. i haven't lost in ten years. it's high time someone stomped the crap out of me. *nod* bed now. i'm trying, people. i'm trying real hard to be the shepherd.

FIN -lchristopher. Friday, May 22, 2026 9:04AM, Fort George, Manhattan Island, NYC.