Sean Patrick Hill

The Los Angeles basin was bought out by two prominent hip-hop recording artists. Surprisingly, they replaced most everything with mountains and trees and country roads. Still, things were somewhat rough at night. Like the time I was held prisoner in a multi-level parking garage, tastefully decorated with plush carpet and strobe lights. A detective grabbed me by the collar and lightly punched me on the bridge of the nose, counting all the while. After twenty times I thought he was kidding me, but twenty-one and twenty-two were bone-cracking. I was locked up in a condominium that resembled Perry Mason’s office, but I escaped. I hid out in my storage unit, which I converted into a wood-paneled living room. I repeatedly watched the film version of The Great Gatsby, filmed on location in a wood-paneled mansion. In the midst of all this, my foot lockers were stolen by tweakers. I couldn’t remember what I owned anyway, except for a box of Christmas ornaments, a Robert Redford cardboard cutout, and a skateboard. When the police came armed with a tea cup poodle-cum-snarling pit bull, I reached for my gun.

     "Art is never real life."
                –H.D. Lewis, mistakenly attributed to Wallace Stevens

Some questions simply never come up when you’re young. Like: where do all these bowling balls come from? They were just everywhere—along curbs, next to couches on Big Garbage Day. Think about it: how do you steal a bowling ball? Like anything else—pretend you belong by the fire exit. So we took up a collection. Then we had bowling balls around the house. I used to stand on one for hours, balancing. Best thing about them was to drop them like a bombardier into a milk carton full of ready-for-recycling Snapple bottles. I never forgot that explosion. Another time, we had a bowling ball shot-put contest to determine who could make it over the sidewalk from the roof. The tall guy heaved it so hard it left trailers in the streetlight. Damn thing bounced in the middle of the street, arced over a median, and landed under a moving Oldsmobile. That car sparked like a Roman candle. Needless to say, the tall man won. We found the ball later in two pieces.