20 Years Since Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle

Smoke weed every day for 20 years and you too will see the light of Rastafari.

Twenty years ago this week, Death Row Records released Snoop Doggy Dogg's first album, Doggystyle.  Everybody seemed to have that album.  It was really good music for driving around, getting high.  I didn't know this at the time, but that was because the whole thing was built on samples from old Parliament and Funkadelic songs from the 1970s.

When you listen to the album now, it's striking that most of the songs are in such bad taste.  There's a lot of "keepin' it real" ghetto gangsta nonsense that had people up in arms, I guess because the lyrics were going to be a bad influence on the vulnerable Youth of America.  Except that jazz was going to do that in the 1920s, and Elvis was going to do it in the 1950s, and Metallica and Madonna and Miley and etc.

Whatever.

In any case, the album still sounds great, as long as you don't listen too closely to what they're saying.  Then it sounds dumb.  Embarrassing.  Still, it's hard to find fault - Snoop was only 21 at the time of the album's release, and the actual masterminds behind it, Dr. Dre and Suge Knight, weren't too much older.  I think you and I would be mortified if someone played us a tape of the things we were saying when we were 21.      

Here's an interview in Rolling Stone with Suge Knight about the recording of Doggystyle (you didn't think I actually knew, on my own, that this was the 20th anniversary, did you?):

Suge Knight interview  

         
And here's the first single from the album, the signature Who Am I? (What's My Name?).  Enjoy:

How did you get a book deal with Rutger Hauer?

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.  Time to die."

People ask me this a lot.

In early 2005, my novel SMOKED had just gotten a deal from St. Martin's Press in the United States, and a worldwide deal from Headline Books in the UK.  I had never had a book deal before, after years of trying, and now I had two big ones in one month.  So I was hyperventilating a lot.

One night, my agent called me and said, "Do you remember Rutger Hauer?"

I said, "The name rings a bell.  He was only like my favorite actor when I was a kid.  Blade Runner, Nighthawks, The Hitcher... Yeah.  I remember Rutger."

"So," he went on, "I've been trying to get him interested in doing a book for a while, and he finally said yes.  I think you're the guy to write it with him.  You guys will have to do a book proposal on spec, but once we get a deal, you'll be the one.  How does that sound?"

Glub. 

"Pat?"

"Uh, sure..."

"Okay, good.  He's in New York at a hotel, waiting for your call.  Here's the number.  Give him a shout.  Let me know how it goes."

So I called Rutger.  We chatted somewhat awkwardly.  He sounded just like Roy Batty from Blade Runner.  He said, if I could be in New York in a few days, maybe I could stop by his hotel room and we could do a little work together.

That seemed weird.  I had this image of turning up at his hotel room, and then what?  The two of us, sitting on the bed together, with a notebook and a pen.

I didn't have to worry.  He was in New York shooting a movie, and the film company was paying his expenses.  The "room" was a two-story, three bedroom, two bath penthouse, with a full kitchen and dining room at the top of a hotel in mid-town Manhattan.  The sundeck gave 180 degree views of the skyline, including the Empire State Building, which seemed like you could almost reach out and touch it.

I was 34 years old.  It had actually never before occurred to me that there were hotel rooms like this.  So much for seen-it-all, done-it-all Quinlan.

Two things about Rutger surprised me as soon as he answered the door.  One is, he's old.  That was the most surprising.  Rutger is no longer the beautiful young thing from Blade Runner.  Oh, he's still handsome and all, but his face is very lined, and it appears that Rutger, unlike so many celebrities, is too modest to go in for facial surgery.

The other surprising thing is I'm just as tall as he is.    

This was the very beginning of a two year process that eventually resulted in Rutger's autobiography, ALL THOSE MOMENTS.         

Full Contact Medieval Jousting

Went to the Sarasota Medieval Festival over the weekend.  It was fun.  The funnest part was watching the Knights of Mayhem, full contact jousting.

These guys really do gear up in armor, climb aboard massive horses, and race at each other at top speed, with solid wooden lances at the ready.  The collisions are amazing.

The guy who runs this attraction is named Charlie Andrews.  He goes by the name "Sir Charles" during the show, since, of course, he is supposed to be a medieval knight.  Every time the announcer called him Sir Charles, I thought of Charles Barkley.

Sir Charles is a weird mix of entertainer, megalomaniac and menace to himself and others.  He refers to himself, and has others refer to him, as "The World Champion of Full Contact Jousting."  This is probably true, as far as it goes.  But since there can't be more than a dozen people who actually participate in this sport, it doesn't go all that far.

During breaks in the action, he was hitting on a young woman in the audience, from atop his mighty steed.  When her boyfriend took offense, he openly mocked the guy, and seemed to threaten to kick the guy's ass after the show.  Which he could have easily done.

Charlie Andrews is around the size of your typical NFL linebacker.  Big.  And he was very eager to demolish his opponent, a young jouster who, as an employee of the Knights of Mayhem, actually works for none other than Charlie Andrews.  How'd you like to have as your boss, a gigantic madman who every day is trying to obliterate you?

On his website, Charlie suggests that very soon, the sport of Full Contact Jousting will catch on, and he will be a household name worldwide.  Hmmm.  In any case, it's fun to watch.    

Maine city votes to change name from "Portland" to "Panhandle"

The city formerly known as "Portland, Maine" has voted to change its name to "Panhandle Maine."  The vote came about after an alarming increase in the number of people visibly begging along city roadways.  The problem was most acute in the late fall of 2012, when the spectacle of two, three and sometimes four people jockeying for position on the same street corner became a common sight. 

City officials commissioned a study, and discovered that fully one out of every two adults in the city is a homeless person who holds a cardboard sign and asks passersby for money at traffic stoplights and along median strips.  The city Tax Department also did an exhaustive audit of their files and found that "Homeless" (including alternative spellings such as "Homless" and "Hoamles") was far and away the source of income most often described on city tax records.  "Social Worker" was a distant second, followed by "Barista."  "Municipal Employee" was fourth, with "Lawyer" in fifth place.  There were no other jobs mentioned.

"We feel like Panhandle Maine sends the right message," said mayor Michael Brennan.  "It really tells you what this town is about.  And you'll notice we took the comma out between the words Panhandle and Maine.  That's because it's not just a name, it's also a command.  It's an exhortation.  We want you to get out there and really do it, really get after it.  You've heard of Ski Maine?  You've heard of Build Maine?  Well, we're Panhandle Maine, and we're proud."

The Mayor went on to add that city councilors are currently exploring the possibly of adding an exclamation point to the name, which would effectively make the city "Panhandle Maine!"  The City Attorney, notably both a Municipal Employee and a Lawyer, was thought to be studying the constitutionality of such a move at press time.   

Can you feel better on a banned performance enhancer?

Me & OJ.  NBA player OJ Mayo served a ten-game suspension in 2011 after he tested positive for DHEA.  Stanley Kubrick loaned him that chair to sit in while he wasn't playing.

If you're anything like me, you spend your life careening from being severely bummed out, to optimism that borders on delusion, to periods of fear and loathing, and finally paranoid terror.  It's fun!

Eh, not really.

Recently, a naturopathic doctor recommended that I start taking a supplement called DHEA.  DHEA is short for Dehydroepiandrosterone.  Yeah, it's a mouthful, and with a name like that you know it's gotta be a steroid.  Which it is.  In fact, it's the most abundant steroid that the human body produces, and it appears to help the body manufacture both testosterone and estrogen.

Although DHEA is available over the counter in the United States, it's a prescription drug pretty much everywhere else.  It's also a banned substance in sports, policed by the World Anti-Doping Agency.  Several professional and amateur athletes have been temporarily suspended from competition for using it.  

I was reluctant to take it.  Long-term, nobody knows what this shit can do to you.  Some researchers believe that long-term use of DHEA can lead to prostate cancer in men, and breast cancer in women.  There's no hard and fast evidence that that's true.

Here's what is known to be true:

- Numerous studies have shown that low doses of DHEA (25 to 50 milligrams per day) for periods up to a year have few if any side effects.

- Levels of DHEA peak in your 20's and slowly fall as you age. By the time you reach 40 (as I have already done), your body makes about half as much DHEA as it used to. By 65, levels drop to 10 to 20 percent; by age 80, it plummets to less than 5 percent.

- Numerous studies, including large-scale studies, have shown that supplementation with DHEA alleviates depression, especially in middle-aged and elderly people.  Also, low levels of DHEA are associated with higher rates of depression.

My doctor thinks the mindless, random terror I experience, and my frequent bouts of health anxiety are actually symptoms of depression.

Okay.  So I started taking the stuff.  I mean, what the heck, right?

Sure, I'm only taking a tiny amount for starters (about 5 mg a day), and I have to constantly refrain from administering a prostate self-exam. 

But I'll tell you what.  I feel a little better.  I have more energy than before, and it's not frantic, panicked energy.  For example, I've gone skiing three times in the past two weeks.  That's a big deal.  Just a month ago, the mere thought of getting on a ski lift made me dizzy and afraid.  Now I'm ripping up the hillsides pretty good.

And I've just started working on a new book, after months of not doing anything constructive at all.

Could be DHEA is just what the doctor ordered.      

Then again, could be a lot of things.

How to Smuggle Dope into the US from Canada

The Peace Arch border crossing between British Columbia and Washington State.

When you think of the phrase "illegal drug trade," you probably don't often think of the word "Canada" during that same thought.  Usually, you probably think the word "Mexico."  This is natural, because the drug trade from Mexico gets all the headlines.

It turns out that Canada, and especially the province of British Columbia, is one of the major sources of high-quality marijuana coming into the United States.  The Council on Hemispheric Affairs estimates that anywhere from 60% to 90% of all the marijuana grown in Canada is smoked in the United States.  The trade could amount to as much as $20 billion a year, making marijuana the most lucrative agricultural product Canada produces, one that employs hundreds of thousands of people.  

So let's just say you want to bring some of this dope into the US for yourself.  The border between the two countries is 4,000 miles long, and not exactly what you'd call heavily defended.  Even so, it might not be immediately obvious how to go about it.  Here is a way that has been described to me by someone who has pulled it off.  The method isn't without risks, but has apparently worked more than a dozen times without a single failure.  Proceed with caution in any event, and don't blame me if something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

You will need three things to carry out this method: a reliable car, outfitted with a secret storage compartment; a good place to cross; and a mule to carry the drugs, one who is unlikely to attract much attention.

1. The Car.  Pretty much any late-model sedan in good to excellent condition will do.  The inside is clean and well-kept.  The outside doesn't have to be immaculate, but no big dents, no broken lights, no obvious rust.  Depending on the size of the load you want to bring across, you have options on where and how to build your storage compartment.  For example, you can create a false bottom in your trunk.  If you're planning to bring a lesser amount across, you can always build a compartment inside your dashboard.  The possibilities are as wide as your imagination.

2. The Crossing.  An excellent place to cross is the Peace Arch border crossing between Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia.  It's a good place because it's close to where the dope is grown.  It is also a hugely busy border crossing, the busiest US-Canada crossing west of Detroit.  The sheer volume of visitors means that most visitors are unlikely to get much scrutiny from the border guards.  Further, this is a crossing that literally thousands of bargain-hungry shoppers from Canada pass through each day.  The combination of high sales tax in Canada; the rise to parity of the Canadian dollar; an increase in duty-free limits; and American free-trade policies that mean retail stores in the US are cheaper than ones in Canada, make the big box stores in Bellingham, WA an irresistible destination for Canadians.  This is important because your mule is going to look like a shopper.

3. The Mule.  First and foremost, the mule is someone who can remain calm during stressful situations.  If everything goes according to plan, the mule will have to do no more than exchange a few pleasantries with the border guard.  Considering she'll be driving a car loaded with illegal drugs, this would be enough to give a normal person a very visible nervous breakdown.  Your mule will not be a normal person.  She will be Grace Under Fire.  And yes, it will be a she.  Your mule should be a woman, middle-aged to early senior citizen, wearing nice, but casual and comfortable clothes.  See, your mule is going bargain shopping at the Costco in Bellingham. 

As an aside, make sure your mule is a white woman.  Under no circumstances try to send anyone of any other race across as a mule.  An open secret about the US-Canadian border crossings is that racial minorities get hassles that white people don't get.  Also, when the mule goes home at the end of the day or the next morning, carry the cover story through to the end and make sure the car is full of stuff that she purchased at Costco during her visit to the United States.  Hell, make sure she has the receipt. 

There you have it.  A three-step tried and true method for bringing dope over from Canada.  Give it a shot, be careful, and let me know how it goes.       

       

How I'm Like Woody Allen

"Has anyone ever told you that you remind them of Woody Allen?"

This is a question I've gotten a lot in my life.  The answer is yes.  Plenty of people have told me that. 

It isn't that I look like Woody Allen.  I don't.  In fact, people have often told me that I look a lot like the notoriously handsome Irish actor Colin Farrell.  So much so, in fact, that I apparently make a lot of the same facial expressions as Colin Farrell.  Could be we're related.  We come from the same gene pool, and there's only so much genetic material to go around.  

This is a facial expression I make a lot.  Normally, it has to do with gas pains from eating too much roughage.

Less often, but still enough to be worth mentioning, people have mentioned that I bear more than a passing resemblance to that other notoriously handsome actor of Irish descent, George Clooney.  Depends if you catch me on my good side.

Hooray for me.  A few acting classes, a trip to Hollywood, and I should be all set.

In the meantime, how am I like Woody Allen?  Here's how: I often think that I'm dying.  Or rather, I often think that I have a dangerous or potentially life-threatening disease.  This can be funny.  For a while.  Then it's not funny.  In my case, it stopped being funny a long time ago.  It's much funnier when Woody Allen does it in the movies.   

I've believed, at one time or another, that I've had about a dozen different serious illnesses.  They include diabetes, melanoma, colon cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors, and heart disease, to name a few.  In many cases, I've gone through more than one episode per disease.  For example, I've been convinced I had diabetes on at least four separate occasions.  I went to the doctor in each case, and got checked for diabetes, and in each case didn't have it, not even close.

The odd thing is I've almost never actually been physically sick in my life.  I've had strep throat twice.  I can remember a pretty gnarly bronchitis I had back in my 20s, when I needed an antibiotic.  And I had chicken pox when I was in high school.  And that's about it.

The amazing thing is I get the symptoms, right up until they tell me I don't have the disease.  Then I go home, some time passes, and I get the symptoms of something else.  And I get the fear, of course.  And in my quieter moments, I grow reflective, and I sit on the patio and watch the sky, and the water, and I reflect about God and about what a beautiful life it's been.                     

Petraeus Ain't My Hero

"About this big, Senator."



So we've got one of these spectacular flameouts that happen from time to time.  Four star general with a Roman Legion sounding name, moves from big post to bigger post to head of the CIA.  There's talk that he might consider a run for President one day.  Suddenly he resigns, caught up in a sex scandal where he was cheating on his dowdy, grandmotherly wife with a sexy, chiseled newcomer 20 years his junior.  Every ambition he had is toast in one nanosecond. 

The thing that I don't really grasp about this whole event is the thing that remains unsaid.  What did we ever like about this guy?  In any coverage I've seen, it's just assumed that Petraeus is an American hero, a great man brought low by something that eventually brings many a great man low.  Yeah, but why is he a great man?

Until a minute ago, he was head of the CIA.  I don't know about you, but I don't like the CIA.  I'm afraid of the CIA.  The very idea of the CIA used to keep me awake at night.  The CIA does bad things, often enough to good people.  In fact, that's what they do for a living.  The CIA is exactly the type of agency that Darth Vader would run, if he were to live here on earth rather than wherever Star Wars happened.

Before the CIA, Petraeus was in charge of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Personally, I was against these wars.  I protested against these very same wars, which I saw as colonial dirty wars.  I know that millions of people did the same, and felt the same way.  The fact of these wars also used to keep me awake at night.  Of course, nowadays I rarely think about them, but I'll just weigh in here and note that I'm still against them.

It says a lot about the USA that the news coverage of Petraeus is generally so positive.  I'd like to see a headline that says, "Creepy Warmonger and Spymaster Caught With His Pants Down."

Mad Season



 

Dreary, rainy day and night in Maine.  Has me thinking about Layne Staley.

Need a Murder Weapon? Try Rice.

"Yummy rice!"

So rice is in the news, and for all the wrong reasons.  Come to find out, rice is loaded with arsenic.  This according to a new study released by Consumer Reports.

Arsenic, as you may know, is a heavy metal with many uses, not least of which is murder through poisoning.  Arsenic intake at high doses causes diarrhea, vomiting, blood in the urine, cramping muscles, hair loss, stomach pain, and convulsions.  It shuts down the lungs, kidneys and liver.  Eventually, it results in coma and death.

Now, no one is saying that there's a lot of arsenic in rice.  There's just a little arsenic.  Chronic exposure to arsenic in low doses over time is associated with heart disease, stroke, bladder cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, and diabetes.  These are things that won't kill you today, but you still might prefer not to have.

I mention this because I eat a lot of rice.  Or did until yesterday.  Rice is (was) a staple of my diet.  For example, I've often eaten rice cakes as snacks.  Rice cakes make good snacks because 1) they taste like cardboard and 2) within 15 minutes of eating one, you become much hungrier than before, so ravenously hungry in fact, that you feel sick and your body starts to shake with hunger sickness.  The combination of 1) and 2) tends to discourage you from snacking between meals.  This keeps you thin.

Mostly, I have eaten a lot of chicken and rice.  I do (did) this because, eaten along with a vegetable like broccoli, chicken and rice is (was) a very healthy meal.  To be clear, the chickens I eat are not your typical factory-farmed chickens, who are basically victims of a chicken holocaust, living and dying in mini-chicken-Auschwitzes across this great land of ours.  No.  The chickens I eat are the very most organic happy chickens, who are treated much like guests of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, and who are priced accordingly.  These are healthy chickens.

Do you love dogs?  CLICK HERE for a dog love story.

But we were talking about rice, weren't we?  Yes.  Very bad.  The rice is poisoned with arsenic.  Arsenic is a toxic chemical.  For those of you that enjoy irony, the good healthy brown rice has higher levels of arsenic than the vitamin-denuded and much-maligned white rice.  Also, the rice you buy at fancypants Whole Foods tends to have more arsenic than the rice you buy at regular po' people supermarkets.

Thankfully, we have the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is tasked with making sure that our food supply and the prescription drugs we take are safe.  The FDA has weighed in on this rice issue, saying, "Based on the currently available data and scientific literature the FDA does not have an adequate scientific basis to recommend changes by consumers regarding their consumption of rice and rice products."

I've worked in government and feel qualified to translate gov-speak into a language everyone can understand.  It goes a little something like this: "Rice growers are a powerful lobby.  It's better that we don't annoy them.  So keep eating rice, you dummies!  It probably won't kill you.  Today."

                    

When She Says: "Does My Ass Look Big in These Pants?"

The correct answer, in most cases, is:

"No."

Stop Alien Mind Control with the Thought Screen Helmet

Melissa demonstrates how to wear the Thought Screen Helmet

Stop Making Sense

Mitt Romney had a dad who also wanted to be President.  Dad's name was George Romney, and George, oddly enough, was born outside the United States (in Mexico) to Mormon separatists from Utah.  They had left the country because they were against the idea that marriage should be between one man and one woman.  Naturally, they felt it should be between one man and several women. 

George Romney had a tendency to say things he later regretted.  The most famous of these described his interaction with American generals while on a fact-finding trip he had taken to Vietnam in 1965: "When I came back from Vietnam, I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get."   

The public, perhaps rightly so, felt that someone who wanted to be President shouldn't be so easily led.  They also wanted someone who had better control over his own mouth - in George's case, someone who could lie a little more.

In a lot of ways, George and Mitt couldn't be more different.  George Romney was by many accounts a decent man.  He was an early supporter of Civil Rights.  When he decided to run for office, he immediately released ten years' worth of his tax returns.  They showed that he was wealthy, but that he also gave large sums of money to charity and to the Mormon Church.  George was the CEO of a company, American Motors, that actually made something: cars.  Not very good cars, but cars nonetheless.   

Mitt, as we know, made his living by borrowing huge amounts of money to buy, and then gut, formerly productive companies.  By his own account, Mitt likes to fire people.  He ties dogs to the tops of cars.  He steals money from working people, then hides that money in anonymous accounts on Grand Cayman.  He buggers small children.  He eats the flesh of the living to satisfy his inhuman appetites.

With all these differences in mind, I find it interesting that one trait Mitt did inherit from his father is George's gift for saying the wrong thing.  And in all likelihood, for not becoming President of the United States.      

Neat Ivory Trinkets Made from Dead Elephants (WARNING: Graphic image ahead. Read at your own risk.)

Oooh...  Lovely ivory figurines.

Ivory is so nice.  People - artists, you might even call them - make really nice little carvings out of it.  It's all so nice, in fact, that it's quite expensive.  Check out this ivory Buddha statue: 

Neat, right?  I spotted this bad boy for sale on a Hong Kong based website.  It's the "Ivory Happy Money Buddha with Children and Money Bag."  It's two inches tall, an inch and a half wide, and will run you $669.95, plus shipping.  I bet you'll feel good about having that on your coffee table.  Show it to your friends.  It'll bring you peace and prosperity.  It's a conversation starter, at the very least.


Here's where it came from:

 
They kill the elephant first.  As you can imagine, it would be time-consuming and problematic to remove the tusks from a live elephant.  Then they cut the elephant's face off.  The reason they do this is 25% of the ivory is actually embedded in the face. 

Elephants are smart.  No one really argues against this anymore.  Like apes, whales and dolphins, they have huge brains.  They have highly organized social structures.  They express grief.  They have death rituals.  They play.  They use tools.  They solve problems.  Apparently, they even play music.

In fact, killing elephants is a lot like killing people.  And we'd never allow people to die just so we could get our hands on some overpriced baubles, would we?

Sex Among the Mainers

Recently, a man from New York City moved to rural Maine.

His first afternoon there, as he was just settling in, his next door neighbor, a long-time farmer in the area, came to his door.

"I'm having a little party tonight, and seeing how you're new and all, I thought I should invite you," the farmer said.

The man from New York was pleased.  Clearly, people in Maine were friendlier than outsiders supposed.

"I'd love to come," the New Yorker said.

The Mainer held up a big hand.  "I just gotta warn you, there's gonna be some drinking."

The New Yorker smiled.  "I like to drink."

"And there's gonna be some fighting," the Mainer said.

The New Yorker was undeterred.  "That's okay.  I'm from New York.  I've been in lots of fights."

"Well," the Mainer said.  "There's gonna be some sex."

"Are you kidding me?" the newcomer said.  "This sounds like a great party!  What should I wear?"

"Don't matter," the Mainer said.  "It's just gonna be you and me."  
  

Quick Fix for Global Warming #1 - Blank White Canvas

Surprise!  There's more bad news on the Global Warming front.

I know: Global Warming.  That's so, like, Al Gore, 2004.  Nobody cares about that anymore.  In any event, this summer the Arctic Ocean ice cover reached its lowest level since they started watching it with satellites over 30 years ago.  It's less than half as much ice cover, and about a quarter as thick as it used to be.  It'll be totally gone by 2030, or sooner.

Why is this a problem?  Apparently, the whiteness of the sea ice reflects heat from the sun back into outer space, where it melts the blast shields on passing alien star cruisers.  This is a good thing.

But when the sea ice is gone, the dark water absorbs more heat, which intensifies and accelerates the whole warming process.  This makes climate scientists nervous because they don't believe in God, and are afraid of dying.     

Now, I've spent some time mulling this over, and I think I've hit upon a relatively easy, low-tech solution to the Arctic Ice dilemma.  Blank white canvas.  See?  You probably already get where I'm going with this.  The most elegant solutions are often like that - they're self-explanatory. 

In case you don't get it, what I'm saying is let's just make a gigantic white canvas, and stretch it over the entire, what used to be ice-covered, surface of the Arctic.

I know what you're thinking.  What about price?  Well, you can get a 5 foot by 3 foot canvas tarp online for about $6.  So that's 15 square feet right there.  The Arctic Ocean is about 5,400,000 square miles.  You'll have to finish the math on that one. 

Listen, pass this beauty on.  Let's get it to Obama.  And don't worry about copyright or anything like that.  I don't feel like I need to take the credit for it.  I'm just glad to have a hand in saving the human race.           

I Might Have Killed This Person

Toina Hanson

 

If so, it was an accident. 

 

Sometime last fall, I was driving in the jalopy with Susie Sue.  We were coming into downtown Portland, along a strip where homeless people often stand by the road, "signing."  Signing means standing where people stop for a red light, holding up a sign asking for money.  "Hungry.  Please help."  That sort of thing. 

 

The woman you see here, named Toina Hanson, was there, holding a sign.  I must have barely noticed her (there are a lot of homeless people in Portland, Maine), because I barely remember the incident.  But Susie Sue remembers.  She nudged me as we stopped at the light, and I took this to mean: "Give the woman something."

 

The smallest thing I had was a $20.  So I opened the window and gave it to Toina.  She was excited.  Said: "God bless you!"  Something like that.  I guess you don't get a lot of twenties while out panhandling. 

 

Susie Sue said: "Did you give her a twenty?"

 

I said: "Yeah."

 

"Jesus, Patrick.  She's a junkie.  That's way too much money.  You probably just killed her."

 

Toina's body turned up recently in a wooded area on the edge of town, a couple of miles from that stoplight.  A hiker out picking wild blueberries found her skeletal remains.  The cops estimate she was laying there in the woods since last fall, right around the time I gave her all that money.  They say there were no signs of foul play.

 

If she were alive, Toina would now be 31 years old.  She doesn't look anywhere near that young in her photo.  I know people her age who still look like teenagers.  Toina had no home.  I'd guess she weighed about 70 pounds.   

 

We've got a machine here, and it grinds people right up.  Disappears them.  Leaves them for dead.  Nobody misses them.  Nobody notices.  The wheels roll on.  Some random nature lover finds the body almost a year later.