the flight from san diego was relaxing.

the morning before the flight, i was a nervous wreck. i slept on the couch. it was a green leather couch that we got for free, as 'the dude' would say, it really tied the room together. it was a one bedroom apartment a block from the ocean at mission beach that i shared with a big surfer from northern california. we got along pretty well, especially when we were sober.

i enjoyed my life in san diego.

it had a great live music scene, a kickass drunken poetry night at a nearby bar in OB, a couple nice coffee shops, beautiful women, great surf, trendy bars, dive bars, bums with guitars, bums with scars, and a public library with internet access.

i had been without a cell phone for three months.

i was happy, alone, and trying to forget the life that i left behind. but, then i received an email from an old friend. he was talking about how the value of copper was rising exponentially. he reminded me of the beach town that we grew up in and talked about how everyone deserts it during the winter. he was planning a copper heist and wanted me to be involved.

it was an excuse, and i was broke.

i woke up on the green couch with 400 dollars in my pocket. I took a bus to Old Towne, hopped on a train, then took a taxi to the airport. I bought a one-way ticket to Philadelphia for $245 dollars. It was a Friday morning, and the plane was empty. I drank jack and cokes the whole way and wasnt charged for any of them. we had a layover in Atlanta. It felt so great to be back on the East Coast, to be able to smoke in the bars, to be able to talk to people the way that I enjoyed talking to people.

I met my friend at a bar called The Nineteenth Hole two days later.

It was a shitty titty bar outside Philadelphia. The lighting was dark, the beer was cheap, and the girls were 'butt ugly'. It felt so good to be back home. There would be three of us doing the heist. Apparently, the housing market hit our Jersey beach town pretty hard. There were a bunch of foreclosed homes with plenty of copper to be stolen. The price of metal was rising astronomically, and thieves were hitting construction sites, vacant buildings, communcication towers, electrical sub-stations, and of course foreclosed homes. My friend had already stolen about $30,000 worth of copper from a communication site and sold it to his uncle who was a contractor. He had a map of all the houses that were foreclosed, and knew exactly how to get the copper that was really worth any money.

I longed for my life by the beach.

01/16/2009

Author's Note: another part of the puzzle

Posted on 01/17/2009
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