From Spinning Real Life



The gaunt and shaggy man who answered the door looked not much older than Scott. He was several inches shorter and was very pale. His long dreadlocks were almost black, and he had a full, curly beard. He looked a mix of bleached rastaman and 60s hippie. Rather than a simple hello, he said, “Are you lost, like damn near everyone else?”
Scott was only taken aback for a moment, recovering to say, “I’m Scott, a writer, and I just moved in. I like your graveyard.”
“Writer? Sure. OK. I’m Buck Rogers, spaced asshole. What you write, shopping lists?”
“I’m working on a novel based on the real people I’m meeting.” Shit, he thought, that sounded lame.
“Like people around here?” Buck gestured around him. “Good, I’ll want to read it. You get high?”
Cyn had introduced Scott to pot, but he hadn’t had any since they’d broken up. “Sure.”
Buck’s place was filled with books, magazines, papers, posters, flyers; and everything seemed coated with a layer of dust. There were two old office chairs  and a very old desk.  They sat down on either side of an old Macintosh computer with every imaginable device daisy-chained to it. “I needed a break from work,” Buck said as he lit the joint and passed it to Scott.
Scott took too big a hit from the harsh dirt weed and coughed a bit. He cleared his throat and asked, “Work? What do you do?”
“Shock the establishment and mind fuck the masses. I try to drag the complacent, kicking and screaming, into some level of awareness. Like I’m not just an asshole,  I’m a professional asshole.”
“And you accomplish this how?” Scott wasn’t yet inclined to give Buck much credence.
“I’m associated with a couple other guys. Print set up in town. We do bumper stickers, posters, tee shirts. Check this out.” He pulls a bumper sticker out of a stack and hands it to Scott.