mexican dude named thom.
he said he knew who i was and it was an honor to hook my ass up.
he gave me a new directv receiver with tivo built in. he ran a second line from the dish.
we talked about baseball, black girls, and linux.
when i tell you i have the greatest life in the world
then he said have you ever seen the vaporizer
i was all, yeah, i saw it on venice beach two days ago.
he said its healthier for you yo.
77. tom
thom was about 25, his two way nextel kept beeping and he would say
im with a customer and shit essay
and i was telling him about turning the tivo into a 200 hour box and he was all you need a plasma in here
i was all, duh.
he told me that hes about to get one for twenty five
i was all thats a great price
and he was like yeah
fell off a truck.
i laughed and said cant fight gravity.
when he made the call into direct tv i gave him ten bucks. the whole thing lasted maybe a half hour.
most of the time he was telling me how sorry he was about the cubs.
i was wearing my white w tshirt.
its a white shirt with a huge blue w on it.
when the cubs win a game they raise a white flag on the flag pole on the corner of waveland and sheffield. on that white flag is a blue w. if they lose they raise a white flag with an l.
if i was in an punk band i would wear a ripped white tshirt with a big l on it.
thom said hey how come your house is so messy?
i said, cuz im about to write a novel.
he said make sure it starts off great. i’ll put a book down after 5 pages if it starts bad.
i said, its gonna start off describing this girl from her shoes up to her socks to her knees to her skirt up her blouse over her neck through her hair up and around her lips and eyes and see that shes kissing another girl
and theyre kissing because theyre happy
and excited.
and then we will describe the other girl, but this time from the inside starting at the top through the brain, down the throat through the heart and the lungs in the gut out the ass in through the sex down the legs cuz you can split in two in novels down the calfs and out through the toes.
thom said and then what.
and i said and then everything.
and he said, no specifically what right after that.
and i said strap on
and he said strap on? isnt that, you know, played out, obvious.
i was all, its symbolic
she straps it on and the chapter ends right there.
new chapter
he handed me the phone and i talked to the directv woman and she hooked me up with a sweet little package for six months and we talked about oklahoma football, to which she was quite knowledgeable.
and we were done and he wrote his name and number on the back of my receipt and he said any time you need anything
and as good as i was as an installer, i was never half as a good as my man thom was this morning.
he stays down in hawthorne