The Bad Mom

As the hum of the gun began, the tattoo artist asks: so why red roses?

I’m from Portland, City of Roses. 10 roses for the 10 years I lived there.

Why’d you leave?

I’m on the run.

Is there a reward?

I’m not worth very much.

Are you really on the run.

Kinda, I just got fired for stealing at my work. During the investigation I asked if I could go smoke a cigarette. That was their own mistake.

You bounced?

Hell yeah I bounced, I wasn’t gonna go back in there so they could fire me or with my luck press charges.

So what brought you to Santa Cruz?

I grew up here. My younger sister just separated from her old man. She has three kids and now that I have a kid it just made sense for us to help each other out.

How old is your kid?

Ozzy just turned a year old, in fact I got canned on his birthday. I’ve never lost a job in my life, this was just stupid. One of those moments where you look back and say what the fuck was I thinking?

I knew I was gonna get caught from the moment I did it. Then the Omens came and I knew I was in trouble.

You got Omens? Right on!

No dude, these were bad, fucked up shit.

What happened?

Let me just set this up. I’m a stoner. Always have been always will be. It’s just who I am.

I had been good for a while, mostly because I was living in a studio apartment with my mom and my baby. And mom was NOT cool with me and Mary Jane hanging out.

But the sun was shining in Portland, which never happens in April, and mom was spending the weekend at her crazy boyfriends house. I can’t smoke weed but you can date a lunatic. (We all have out faults) I was broke $$.

So I reached into my money making goody bag:

Sell Books+ $7.00

Donate Plasma+$40 (I’m not jonesen that much)

Sell clothes+13

Cans+4.20 (oh yeah baby that’s an Omen!)

Unemployment, ding. That’s the ticket!

So I credited my account, enough for a bag then a greedy impulsive thought popped into my head.

Take more it said, so I did.

I went to see my buddy I get weed from. We smoked a bowl with the baby on my back. I wrapped my bag in the baby’s sweater and shoved it in my Marc Jacobs handbag. I walked to the bus stop a few miles away. When I stopped at the 75, a conservative looking woman approached me and said you dropped this. It was the baby’s sweater.

Oh thank you! I said not even realizing that my weed was gone. The universe slapped that bag right out of my hands. SHAME ON YOU!

Paranoia kicks in and I begin to run down side streets hoping that woman didn’t call the cops.

So here I am on welfare living in my sister’s garage otherwise known as my life as a writer.

Enjoy the follow-up to Scars of Paris, I wrote in 2007. I know. Insert plug now right? But again I’m on welfare so purchase your very own copy today at Amazon.com. Wink Wink.

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