Jim Beam Bummer

When Things Go Wrong (autobiographical fiction)

Photo by Erik Gazi on Unsplash

Rita was the getaway driver; we’d always done it that way. She had a magenta-colored Jeep Cherokee. This was in Ojai, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, a small sleepy hippie town nestled in the Topa Topa mountain ranges, filled with orange groves, coffee shops, a cute little downtown, and Bart’s Books.

The year: Roughly 2003. I was either 19 or 20, I can’t precisely recall which. I was a year or two out of Catholic college-prep high school. (A real hoot.) I’d somehow managed to get my diploma, though I hadn’t graduated with my class due to an incident related to booze and pot three weeks shy of senior graduation.

Anyway on this particular night we decided to hit the Vons at the “Y,” easily the biggest grocery store in town. Rita—with her cool blue eyes and dirty blond hair, that edgy look of devilish anticipation mixed with concern—pulled into the lot. It was dark by now, perhaps around 8:30pm. The lot was fairly empty. We should have seen that as a sign. A fat, nearly full moon was rising up above the distant jagged mountains. It was late August and you could sense the early tentacles of fall feeling into the air already. School starting again. For me: Whatever dead-end job I was working at the time, drinking, girls.

Anyway she parked and cut the engine and we sat there in the silence for a moment, some cars moving along Highway 33 behind us, slowly, the engine noise rising and gently falling. I’d lived all my life in this town, this sleepy, small, safe town. But I’d discovered The Ramones at a little hippie music store one day in 7^th grade and that’d been it: From that point forward punk rock had opened up all the inner doors I’d wanted to open, allowing me to do things and say things and witness things I’d never thought possible. With high school came a classic Catholic education, sure, but it also brought raging sordid anarchy; rebellion, fighting, fast-cars, chaos. I loved it. I thrilled to it. Rita and I’d met sophomore year. We’d briefly dated and then become friends. Now she drove me around at night and we talked, bullshitted.

“Just be careful,” she said. Surprising me she reached across the seats and grabbed my hand. Her palm was warm and sweaty and it sort of turned me on.

I smiled my classic sinister grin. “Don’t worry. I do this all the time. I’ll be fine. I’m a pro.”

She giggled, throwing her head back. “You know how shady you look, right?”

I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror, seeing my tight black hoodie, the hood up, punk rock patches sewn all over the thing with green mint floss which still carried that lovely minty smell. And my dark, sketchy eyes, beady and abhorrent. I craved a cigarette but didn’t have one. I wanted a beer or a drink but didn’t have that, either. Soon I’d change this, of course. Maybe some cocaine. A girl. Or to be completely alone, listening to The End by The Doors. Sometimes I sat in my little room in Ventura and played that song over and over, slugging from a pint, by myself in the darkness. I loved being alone. Solitude. Loneliness. I craved it.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

I opened the door, glanced one last time at Rita, nodded, adjusted my hoodie, and slammed the door. I turned and walked towards the Vons. The lights were bright white and glowing. I saw people inside, lazily browsing for food. What a bunch of suckers, I thought. Mass man. The bourgeoisie. The 9-5ers. The sheep.

Above the sliding-glass electric doors it said “VONS” in huge red letters. I entered, confident. I’d done this dozens of times. It was a Tuesday night. I’d be fine.

I walked along the bustling aisles until I found the alcohol aisle. Bingo. When I got to the middle of the aisle I glanced both ways and saw no one. I smiled. My hoodie was tight but had big, wide deep pockets. I cleared my throat—a strange habit of mine which occurred whenever I was about to steal—and snatched two pints of Jim Beam, the brown, caramel liquid sloshing inside of the thick glass, looking wondrous and perfect. I couldn’t wait to slug from it. Maybe me and Rita would even get drunk and make out. Or even more.

As I walked medium-pace down the aisle in the direction of the entrance, suddenly a husky man’s voice came out of a loudspeaker and said, “Can we get someone over to aisle 13, please?”

With a thudding heart I looked up and, sure enough, the alcohol aisle was aisle 13. What the fuck? How was that possible? I turned back momentarily and scanned around. Then I saw the hanging camera in the aisle. Shit. Damn it. Fuck.