Penultimate Decision

For a brief moment in my life I took a summer job as a bicycle messenger in San Francisco. In the days before pdf's and email, large business districts of major urban areas relied on folks like us to deliver important documents of all sorts. The job was basically like being a cab driver for papers. I had a radio, and a dispatcher, a bag and a bike. The thing that distinguishes being a messenger in San Francisco from other cities like say New York is, you guessed it, the hills. And when I say hills, I mean hills with a capital H. Other than that, I think messenger culture was probably fairly similar in most cities.

Financial districts have a very distinct caste system, and of all the castes, messenger is the absolute lowest. It didn't take long to realize this. Drivers on the road hated you for weaving in and out of traffic and generally causing a vehicular ruckus. Office building folks hated you because by and large most messengers look like they are extras from the movie road warrior. One fellow I met looked rather normal. He had a baseball hat with longish hair coming out of it. Thing was, his head was shaved shiny all around the top, right where the rim of the hat began. His thing was that every time he would make a delivery, as he was leaving, he would tip his hat to the receptionist and wish her a nice day, leaving always a rather stunned expression in his wake. He was also known to write obtuse messages on his dome from time to time. The sheer creativity expressed in the diversity of shenannigans lead me to believe that this might be a culture in which I could thrive. But it was a closed culture, and I needed I guide to show me the underside of these invisible people. That person turned out to be Mike Mowhawk. He was named such because well, his name was mike and he had a bright blue mowhawk. We hit it off immediately. And slowly over time, he revealed many secrets of the downtown pariah.

Since most of the messengers lived in squats and such, most of them had no bank accounts, so being paid by check presented a problem. Mike showed me the Korean liquor store that almost all the messengers went to cash their checks on payday. Payday was once a week, and so this little hole in the wall turned into quite the circus every seven days. Now there are many Korean and Vietnamese liquor stores in SF, who will bend all sorts of rules so I always wondered why this one was the chosen one for nearly all the vagrant messengers. Once I had put some time in, and folks figured I "was ok", I was allowed to find out why. A half block down from this particular store was a large sheet metal fence. The fence could be peeled back giving enough room for a person and a bike. Behind the fence was a large empty lot surrounded by tall windowless buildings on the three other sides. This was messenger party town, and every payday, flush with the cash for their vice of choice, the messengers would party down. I was young, but still I thought I had seen a few things in my time, but this... this was something else. I can remember just staring, soaking it all in, this hidden world that I had somehow found my way into. It left an impression.

Now just like that fellow with the baseball cap and the semi shaved head, I began to learn that most everyone had a "thing". For some, like Mike, it was his bright blue hair do. For others it was more complex games - like taking a huge hit of weed right before entering a building and elevator and trying to hold it in until no smoke came out. Most of the larger buildings had separate elevators for pond scum like us, so it wasnt that big a deal, but did hear tales of messengers pulling it off in the main lobby elevators as well. These stories were carried like trophies, with everyone trying to out crazy the others. Keying cars while in motion. Throwing AA batteries at cars that cut you off or curse you. Now I was young, and not up to any of these potentially litigous antics, but still... I wanted a "thing" of my own. A game I could play throughout the day, something that amused me.

It started accidentally. Every receptionist must sign for a received or picked up package. I would then have to make my own initials on the form. Once I had a woman sign, and then found myself without a pen. I asked to borrow hers, made my initials and then unthinkingly left with her pen. I didn't even realize it until I was out of the building. Thing was, it was a really nice pen - Parker medium ballpoint black, if memory serves. As I clicked the pen, it clicked in my head, for reasons that make no sense at all. I would try to see how many pens I could get a day. Absurd? Yes. But mostly harmless, and it gave me something to think about whilst dueling with the three mortal enemies of all bicyclists: rail car tracks, wet bald, and drivers that have no idea you are there. I had found my zen by collecting pens.

And I was good at it too, maybe 10-20 a day, all shapes, sizes and colors. I would sometimes pass Mike and he would shout "How many?" as a greeting. I would always reply "Six!", or wherever I was in my count, as a response. I kept them in a big box at home for reasons that were entirely unclear to me. I mean, this ink armada was way beyond what an average person could  use in a lifetime. Still, I got this odd sense of satisfaction out of that box of ill gotten writing implements. Was it the minor transgression? Was it a developing obsession? Is this how the concept of "hobbies" came to be a part of the human mental landscape? A minor amusement slowly creeps into the grey area bordering the realm of sanity? How many other aspects of my life have yet and since followed this slow winding path from pass-time to albatross?

As the box filled up, I began to worry. Its as if I could see the writing on the wall in a thousand different color inks. I could see myself sitting in that back lot with my head shaved into a reverse hare krishna, mumbling incoherencies and non-sequetors between gulps from my Mad Dog 20/20, celebrating yet another meager payday. But I had found some friends, outcast and odd though they may have been, and had carved out my own peculiar little identity as the guy you went to if you ever needed a pen. I was the pen kid, and god knows why, I kinda liked it.

I still had three weeks before I was to return to Santa Barbara for my second year of college, so I knew this mental mobius strip of mental hopscotch had a punctuation mark. This was a fact I never divulged to my fellow riders... I wanted to be the pen kid, not the college boy. But my box was nearly full, and when I considered starting a second - I wondered if I would even make it three weeks. I was addicted to the thrill of riding fast through the streets. I was enamored of the underdog access that being an accepted member of the pariah class afforded. And I liked stealing pens. My friends, I was at a crossroads.

And I was literally at a crossroads, 5th and Market, I believe, when my path was decided. The radios are set up so everyone can hear everyone else. This allows for the en route transfer of documents from messenger to messenger, and we were constantly handing things off. I was on a corner, waiting to meet another messenger to pick up some archetecht blueprint something or others, so I was monitoring my radio. On it, Mike was confirming a pick up and heading out for a delivery. Mid-sentence there was a horrible crashing screaching sound, and then total silence. The dispatcher then asked Mike what the hell was that but got no response.  And again. No response. A little while later, I found that my friend Mike had been hit and crushed by a muni bus and killed. I had quite literally just heard someone, someone I knew, die on the air. It was the jolt that shook me from my obsession. It was payday, and I went and turned in my radio and id, collected my last check and never looked back. I never even went to the back lot payday party. My career, sanity lay elsewhere.

And to this day, if I find myself in possession of a pen that is unfamiliar, I often imagine Mike up there somewhere with a bright blue halo saying "Only one? Weak!"