It went like this, the tale of . . .

THE BRIDGE
AND THE TOWER

In the afternoon I paused my nonstop James Bond marathon and drove with McCune in the Heshmobile to Oakland to get to his pizza shop there. He told me to grab a salad from the walk-in freezer and I wolfed it down before the first customer even walked through the door. With many hours to kill until we’d be able to go home to Vallejo, I decided to walk from Jack London Square all the way up Broadway till I got to 20th, and then hook left onto Telegraph towards Berkeley to see how much things had changed since I had last seen it, which was only six months ago. With trepidation I went towards that fated place. Well, I’m here to tell you that I felt despair seeing what it had become . . . a few vape shops and dispensaries and personality-less restaurants that will be out of business by the end of the year were scattered around between sad and empty storefronts—storefronts that have sat empty since I stopped living in West Oakland nearly ten years ago. Burrito Express and Telegraph Beergarden remain, and John Waters and his friends have brought Stork Club back from the dead. I looked inside and I GOTTA SAY: it looked pretty cool. And of course the seemingly invincible Korean grocery store and the pool hall next door are hanging in there, but I expect them to still be standing even if California slides into the ocean like the mystics and statistics say it will. . . .

I kept walking. I got to the underpass at 34th and Telegraph near where Daphne and Emma used to live and saw that essentially all the businesses nearby had shut down and were now darkened storefronts with no promise of a new thing in the future. Oakland is all darkened storefronts anymore.

And even where there was light, it gave me an unsettling feeling. The CVS just before the underpass is now a heavily protected lot with an wrought-iron fence around it about eight feet high, and inside it is lit like the surface of the sun, presumably to discourage The Bridge Dwellers, bless them, from migrating over and forming a Mad Max encampment. Affixed to the street lamps are flashing blue lights that ignite a little Pavlovian response in you as you walk by. You think: “The police are here. And if they aren’t, then they’re on their way.” It makes you want to get the hell out of there, which is exactly what I did.

There was no way around it: I had to walk through the darkness beneath the underpass to get to North Oakland, which I had done so many times before on so many bad nights. Even if I had taken an adjacent route, I still would have ended up beneath some other godless segment of it. At least this part I knew well. And so in I went, and once I was fully beneath the bridge, I scanned the shadowy corners of it for human life but found none. It was a desolate place of non-being, and filled with trash. It felt to me like a total summation of Oakland anymore. Somberly I passed through as though it were Purgatory:

And on and on I walked until being in Oakland made me feel sick with sadness. I could feel the city convulsing and choking and breaking under the weight of its own discarded dead, and I among them. On the bridge from 40th towards Bay Street in Emeryville, gazing out at the police state that Oakland has become, the high gates and fences and rent-a-soldiers lined up outside Starbucks and Best Buy and Target and all that other hateful stuff, I went ahead and admitted to myself that I just don’t like this place anymore and that I should probably stop coming here so often. I texted McCune and said as much. He said, “You’ve been replaced.” He ain’t wrong. I told him I missed how we used to get stoned and bring coffee to Target on weeknights IN OUR OWN MUGS and just walk around for the sake of the song . . . because it was something to do! He said, “O! Those halcyon days!” How could you recreate such a thing now? It would be like trying to throw a children’s birthday party at a war-torn Chuck E. Cheese guarded by multiple RoboCops. What a tragedy.

I wonder: WHO KILLED OAKLAND? Are they the same creeps who KILLED THE WORLD? (The answer is . . . yes! if even by proxy. We have entered the new Dark Age. Or didn’t you know? Spoilers: It’s Oops! All Turds all the way down. It is the final midnight which goes on forever, and maybe even longer than that . . .)

Thought I:

ALAS!
THAT THESE
DARK DAYS
SHOULD BE MINE.

Anyway: I bought a froyo cone at IKEA like I always used to, and then I went to Uniqlo and bought thermal tights. I walked through soulless Bay Street to get to my old Traitor Joe’s, which was essentially empty of food. And so saying, I took the 29 bus all the way to my old Traitor Joe’s by Lake Merritt and bought a bunch of fruit both FRESH and FROZEN to take back to my luxury bungalow in Vallejo, AS IS MY WONT. Another bus ride full of psychopaths later, I arrived at Hesher’s Pizza and sat down and began writing whatever this is. At 10 on the dot, McCune and I drove home and watched BERSERK, which we have almost finished. We have arrived at the most insanely dark part of the whole series. Have you seen or read BERSERK? It’s extremely good . . . one of my Favorite Things ever now!

That night I dreamt of Guts:

. . . and next day early I was greeted, as I am every morning these days, by my perfect baby nephew and future savior of the world, who is known by many names, but chiefly by his Christian one, being . . .

TOWER MCCUNE

Behold:

This guy loves biting and putting stuff in his mouth! He’s got four whole teeth now, which he proudly shows off, and they tell me he’s got a whole other row of them on the way. Who knew! Maybe that’s why he’s always chewing on stuff. Don’t they call that teething? And look at this kid’s big-ass head. His mother says Tower’s baby head is in the 99th percentile for baby heads . . . it’s that big! Well, seeing as how Tower is humanity’s last hope, it makes sense that he would need plenty of space for the super-brain he no doubt houses inside that prodigious skull of his. Now all we have to do is protect and train him as our species wades further into that dark future, that great abyss governed by almighty Death, so that the prophecy may be fulfilled—the one in which warrior-monk Tower McCune rises up from the nightmare ruins to triumph over eternal evil and push away the darkness forever, ushering in happier days not known since Eden. And then we will finally have peace in the valley, if such a thing can be got.

And if that day never comes?

IF THE DARKNESS BENEATH THE BRIDGE WHELMS THE LIGHT FROM THE HIGH TOWER?

Well then . . .