The Ways of a Righteous Dude (Part Four) TBC

A Story by Paris Hlad

Have you ever heard the name, Danny Dolo? No? Maybe? Well, I know that blind son-of-a-b***h; and I can guarantee you, there isn’t a guy who knows more about robbing the dopes than he does; and, I mean, talk about taking care of his crew! That guy practically invented it. At one time, he was sort of like the alpha stud of the biggest theft operation in the Garden and had connections all over the place. He was the bad boy that worked it out with a whole army of worm-makers, so he could rob what was thought to be about the richest beehive there ever was. In fact, Danny did such a bad-a*s job as a robber, everybody wanted him to take over the entire Ruins Hill syndicate, but he had to let the offer slide because he was like 90 years old at the time and had always been more into the actual robbing and s**t. But no kidding chief, a pretty good slice of the Garden was made unbelievably attractive because of his legacy, and even the holy rollers felt obliged to entomb his lousy body at St. Sophia’s, which is about the most beautiful cathedral in the whole damn Garden.

Anyway, Danny’s a very interesting guy, and I do know him. He's a very funny guy, too: He sometimes sings this crazy-a*s song he calls “Rockin’ Robber” just to amuse the s**t out of us. I guess you'd have to be there because Danny has a very high-pitched voice and crosses his gigantic dead eyeballs in this hilariously stupid way when he does that shtick. He's the kind of loud-mouthed insect I’ve always sort of looked up to. I'm a little surprised you never heard of him, though. I mean, the son-of-a-b***h is a real legend, at least down here, and that’s where a reputation like his matters the most.

Now, another thing I think is sweet about hell is that luck or chance or whatever isn't too much of an influence on things; I mean, I don't have an ax to grind against chance or anything, because back in my Garden days I was just about the luckiest lowlife you were ever going to know. My luck was what you might call uncanny. For example, I could always pick winners at the races, and I almost never got the blame from a boss when I screwed up something. I know that more than chance is involved in that one, but luck still has a lot to do with who gets hurt and who doesn’t. You know those church bingo deals they sometimes do to feed the retards or whatever? I won a big one once; something like the biggest of all time as far as the Ruins Hill parish is concerned. I mean, I didn’t really win it, I sort of just took it, but to me, it was better than winning it, even though I got apprehended and did some hard time, too.

Looking back on that fiasco, it might have been a major turning point in my life because the whole thing was totally unnecessary and pretty stupid. Like I mentioned, I am phenomenally lucky and probably could have come out on top that evening without going bad-a*s and s**t. Still, I do like things to be a little in my favor, so things started out as just a normal evening of cheating the dopes. But everything suddenly morphed into like the biggest damn lollapalooza heist I ever did. You see, there was this messed-up cockroach named Father Judas Divine who worked it out, so I could be the caller that evening. You get the picture.

But things just spun out of control right away because I got so crazy impatient and just grabbed what cash I could and sort of ran out the door; and, I mean, I ran like a bad-a*s football guy plowing through a line of flimsy card tables. I guess this one old b***h ended up with a nasty head injury because she couldn’t get the hell out of the way - Completely unintentional on my part, and yet I got charged for that, too! That’s pretty messed up when you consider that Father Divine got off scot-free, even though everybody knew he was crooked and had molested maybe a million Catholic schoolboys in Ruins Hill. And, believe me, everything that dingus ever did was intentional. But I guess you can't always choose who you work with.

But the point I was trying to make before I got all side-tracked is that chance plays a much smaller role in hell than it does in the Garden. I say that because there are no odds about whether I'm going to get high and stay high every damn day. No question about whether I'm going to do any of the crazy things I do here. Everything about my life is an absolute sure thing. Am I going to bully my entourage? Yes! Am I going to intimidate the newbies? For sure! Am I going to do some brainless bag-over-her-head hell chick? Absolutely. I mean, nothing gets in my way: No distractions, no unforeseen circumstances. I am free to do what I want to do whenever I want to do it!^{^[1]}

Still, I need to break away a little here because I feel that a certain point needs to be made. I mean, maybe to your mind I come across in some incredibly s****y colors, like there isn’t one damn thing that’s good about me. And honest to God, I don’t like anyone having a wrong impression of me. I actually have done things in my life that a lot of holy roller types might call good, maybe even really good in some ways. In fact, I’ve always been sort of known for my sense of right and wrong, and I’ve always stood up for my friends when somebody pisses me off or interferes in one of my relationships. For example, when I was a punk kid, I had this friend named Richie Darby,^{^[2]} a little piss ant kind of guy who really looked up to me and was always willing to do the kind of things I liked doing when there was nothing to do. Well, Richie lived right across the alley from me, so most every day, I’d pop over so we could crawl together to school and s**t. But Richie’s mom was about the meanest and maybe the craziest b***h I ever knew, because every day (and I swear to God this is true), Richie’s mom would hand him his bag lunch, kiss him on the forehead, and then, for no reason in the world, give Richie a pretty good slug in the stomach - Not too hard you know because Richie could still get out the door and whatnot, but hard enough to double up the little guy and make him cry a little, too. I mean, at my young age it was the craziest thing I ever saw,^{^[3]} and I really didn’t know if maybe I should do something about it because Richie was my friend, not hers. But righteous young stud that I was, it just stayed in my head and sort of made me feel like she was punching me in the stomach and that made things decidedly personal �" Almost like that b***h was giving me the finger.

[1] Bobby enthusiastically embraces the Satanic commandment: Do as you will. To him, hell is paradise. But many things a person wants conflict with the desires of others. Worm-makers recognize and value that part of the credo. They derive their pleasure from the harm they do to others, not the good they gain from a free-wheeling life-style. Paris believed that when a confetti bee is ignorant of this principle, he is more likely to become a worm-maker’s victim.

[2] As a child, Paris witnessed the physical abuse of a friend for over a year. In earlier days, a child belonged to his parents, and the use of corporal punishment was widely accepted as a legitimate means of correcting a child’s bad behavior. Therefore, much of what would be recognized as abuse in the present age was regarded as straddling the line between propriety and excess in the 1950s. The poet felt sorry for his friend, but he was too small to intervene and accepted that his friend’s mother was within her rights when she slapped her boy around before he left for school.

[3] Even a congenital criminal like Bobby Casanova is bound to be surprised by a demonstration of an evil that he did not know could be done. The reasonably well-adjusted person internalizes and bleeds. The worm-maker learns a new way to express himself to others. Bobby does not defend Richie because he cares about him, but because Richie’s mom has encroached on his territory. Mrs. Darby represents the authority he hates because her son belongs to him, not her. It may interest the reader to know that Richie later became a celebrity of sorts, opening Minnesota’s first “Head Shop” on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis in 1967.