These are quotes from my recently published novel A Long Slow Aftermath,, the story of Preston, a working class punk who is trying to get his life together after leaving a drug rehab. Think of them as mini-excerpts!

My book is available in Kindle format on Amazon.com!

     “Aw. I wanna small doggy I can carry around in my jacket.”
     “If you got a dog, wouldn’t it have to be a seeing eye dog?”
     She tilted her head as she thought about it. “Maybe I can have both. One big seeing eye dog and one little dog I can carry.”
     “You could always have the little dog ride the big dog like a horse.”

     “Ain’t you worried about walkin’ around here at three in the morning?”
     She looked Preston right in the eye. “Aren’t you?”
     “Not so much since I’m a scrungy lookin’ guy. An’ I got this pit bull with me.”
     She looked down at the still tail-wagging Joey. “Yes, she looks really vicious,” said Miranda as she arched an eyebrow again.

     Preston did not feel like moving anymore, but he had to walk Joey. Putting the collar and leash on her took extra time because she would not stop squirming and jumping. Bringing her out to the street, he decided he would take the short, gratuitous dog walking route.
     Joey zigged and zagged, and jumped up and down whenever she saw another dog. She also scanned the trees for squirrels, as barking at and chasing after squirrels was one of her favorite pastimes.
     Preston was not sure what Joey would do if she actually caught a squirrel. She was such a happy dog that he assumed she would try to play with it.

     “Do all of your women taste like beverages?”

     Preston shook his head. “I know they said money can’t buy happiness, but I can’t shake the feeling I’d be a lot happier if I had a lot more money.”
     “Hell yeah” said Lanelle. “If I won the lottery I’d buy so many damn shoes they would need their own room.”
     Jeffers winced at Lanelle. “Y’all gonna be Imelda Marcos?”
     “Welcome to my shoe room!” she announced as she waved her hand.

     Toshi held up a hand. “Just so you know, I’ve already heard the blind lesbians joke, too many damn times.”
     “What’s the blind lesbian joke?” asked Lanelle.
     “You never heard the blind lesbians joke?” asked Preston.
     “Naw,” said Lanelle. “There’s only one?”
     “I’ll tell it to ya later.”
     “Don’t tell her the blind lesbians joke,” said Toshi.
     “How am I not gonna tell it to her?”

     Miranda looked in Preston’s direction. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
     “You think I’m cute?”
     “I was talking to the dog.”

     Dassler Street had a long stretch of houses that were marked by standard ghetto chaos such as derelict cars, unmowed lawns, and hoarder houses. Many of those houses had outdoor artwork and plenty of political signs of the progressive and leftist variety, and many houses were quite distinct in their own right. There was the hippy house with a communal hot tub in the back, usually full of naked residents and various neighborhood characters. There was the House of Raging Women that had a front yard absolutely littered with shoddily made artwork and modern day relics such as used toys and old placard advertisements. There was the PR House, a place full of recovering addicts, all of whom went for early morning and evening runs, and who had recovery paraphernalia posted in their windows and their yard. There was the Johnny Trouble house which was absolutely riddled with outdoor and indoor graffiti, their windows covered with band posters and flyers. The Johnny Trouble House was also a frequent site for backyard punk shows.

     “I’m tryin’ to keep my band Hat Confusion together.”
     “Okay. I haven’t heard about that gig. I’ve been outta the loop for a time.”
     Molly looked out into the meeting hall crowd. “Synth pop. I’m tryin’ to go totally eighties to piss off the punks.”
     “Gotcha. Is it workin’?”
     She shrugged. “Eh. Turns out punks really like it.”
     “So much for pissing them off.”
     “Really. They used to be a lot touchier.”

     He quickly changed out of his work pants and put on his best pair of black jeans. He scanned his band shirts. He tossed aside his Subhumans shirt before contemplating his Bikini Kill shirt. Setting that one aside, he contemplated his remaining array of clean band shirts: Naked Aggression, The Descendants, Aus Rotten, Pennywise, Killing Joke, Operation Ivy, Distillers, Condemned to Death, Svetlanas, DOA…
     He tossed aside his Crass shirt as too old school. He wondered what he was doing with a Venom t-shirt until he remembered that his friend Scary Mary had given it to him as a birthday present.
     He finally decided on his Leftover Crack shirt, especially since it was the newest band shirt.

     “Oh my God!” exclaimed Toshi. “You really are tall for a girl.”
     “Yeah.”
     “You think you can carry me to the frozen yogurt stand?”

     “I don’t suppose there’s people who have a blind fetish, is there?” asked Toshi with an impish smile.

     “Okay,” said Miranda, “you wanna go on a date?”
     “F’real?”
     “Yeah. Let’s do a normal person date.”
     He stared blankly for a moment. “Like, what would we do? What do you do on a date?”
     “Dinner and a movie. That’s a standard date night, especially for couples.”
     “Couples go on dates?”
     “Of course they do. Especially if they don’t have a lot of time on their hands.”
     “We got plenty of time on our hands.”
     “Yeah, sure we do. So why not?”
     “I don’t know. Sounds kinda weird.”

     “Doesn’t this car go boom?” asked Preston.
     “Hell yeah. You should see how many batteries are in the trunk!”
     “Why ain’t it goin’ boom now?”
     “Well, I didn’t want to rattle your bones. Or make you deaf.”
     “Man, I’ve been to five million punk shows. I got no high frequency hearing left.”
     “So what you sayin’?”
     “I’m sayin’ crank it up. Let’s hear the boom!”

     “Seriously, that dog is not a seeing eye dog,” said the young man as Joey shuffled her paws in place and wagged her tail.
     “She is too!” protested Toshi. “I should know.”
     “If she thinks it’s a seeing eye dog then it’s a seeing eye dog,” said the young woman.

     “I went through all of that shit, the shaking, the throwing up, the hardcore DTs. I just stayed in my room. I kept all the shades drawn and spent all of my time sealed up in a dark room.”
     “Okay.”
     “All I did was read. I read Kerouac, and Thompson, and Bukowski, and guys like Orton and Mamet.”
     “You read Bukowski and Thompson while you were detoxing?”

     “I couldn’t find Irvine Welsh,” said Miranda.
     “What?”
     “I’ve been on a quest to find an Irvine Welsh book in the wild. Hasn’t happened yet.”
     “Can’tcha just order one online?”
     “I’ve done that. I want to find one in a bookstore.”

     “Damn. Things goin’ crazy again. Before you know it all those junk houses are gonna get snatched up by more tech bros for way too much money.”
     “No shit. If this keeps up, you think you gonna have to move soon?”
     “Fuck it. I’m goin’ to hold out as long as possible. Oakland’s the only home I’ve ever known.” Donjee turned around and looked at his house. “I’ll probably be the last black man in Oakland.”

     Preston leaned towards Miranda. “Get this. He hasn’t had sex in like, thirteen years.”
     Miranda’s eyes popped open. “You’re kidding!”
     “Nope.”
     Miranda glanced in Carey’s direction and then looked back at Preston. “He does know you can order out for that, right?”

     “You know the kind of women I usually end up with.”
     Lee looked right at Preston. “If you were really being careful you wouldn’t be with women like that at all.”
     “Yeah sure.”
     “She’s different. Very different,” said Lee quietly as she saw Miranda and Toshi making their way back to the table. “So you have to do things differently. She’s not for amateurs.”
     “I’m no amateur,” said Preston.

     Miranda walked up to them. “Hey, you tryin’ to steal Preston?”
     “I was gonna kidnap him and hold him for ransom,” said Lee.
     “Please, what could you get for me?” asked Preston.
     “I figure at least three dollars fifty cents.”
     “Hey!” said Miranda.
     “What? They only got two fifty for me.”

     “That’s all I need right now is my man fallin’ in love with a crazy white wonder woman who can kick my ass.”

     Haste shook Toshi’s hand. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
     “This is my first ever punk show.”
     “No shit? Damn. I’ve been to about a million of them.”
     Toshi turned to Preston. “So is Haste handsome? Is he a total catch?”
     “I’m dead ugly,” said Haste. “Seriously.”
     “No you’re not,” said Miranda. Miranda turned to Toshi. “He’s just being a dork.”
     “No really,” said Haste. “I was recently identified as the leading cause of vaginal dryness.”

     “I was in a band called the Undead Bettys,” said Miranda. “We had songs about poodle skirts from hell, about aliens attacking Earth, and we had one big hit that was all about girlfriends attacking their boyfriends and slicing them into pieces and hiding their bodies.”

     “He’s a musician,” said Toshi. “He just joined a new band.”
     “Really?” said Thea as she looked at Preston in surprise.
     “A punk band?” asked designer jeans.
     “Actually a synth band,” said Preston. “Kinda like an eighties retro band.”
     “Oh! Like Flock of Seagulls?” asked the blonde pants suit.
     Preston stood still as he shrugged.
     “More like Bauhaus I’m sure,” said Thea.
     “Bauhaus?” said the blonde pants suit. “The art movement?”

     “Are you my new mistake?” she asked.
     “Probably.”
     She closed her eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not sure what’s going on.”
     “Why do you say that?”
     She slowly opened her eyes again. “I don’t know why I trust you so much.”
     He looked around in thought. “I don’t know either.”