backforthmenu Dynastic. The radio drones on in my car as I drive, the sound a series of flat tones. I am tired and dull from lack of sleep and haven’t really been listening until I hear the word DYNASTIC. Somewhere in South America, a man is busy, day-and-night, they say, tracing the dynastic lines of an ancient Mayan tribe that went completely undiscovered until recently. The ruins had been covered so thick in vines and general vegetation, that not even clever vandals could find the site. I stop at the silent intersection of 9th and Cabrillo at a red light. It’s late, 11pm, there are no other cars or people around. Across the street is a LED trailing read-out sign in the window of a seemingly abandoned real estate office; Welcome to San Pedro! Thinking of selling? Buying? Come all you ancient, displaced Mayans! Now is the time! I pull into the local open-24-hours-a-day-everyday drugstore. The parking lot and surrounding area show the wear of constant patronage. Grimy and beat under the bright, outdoor fluorescents. There is a group of three young Latino men standing in front of the electronic doors, talking loudly—half English, half Spanish, half drunk. I park and walk towards the door, the young men now inside after being joined by 4 or 5 others. The scene would be a little intimidating at this hour, had they not been buying lawn chairs. A spindly security guard is trying not to eyeball them too closely for fear of inciting anything. The place is crowded with merchandise, if not people. The shelves are 10 feet high and throbbing. I stop. I get an instant feeling of vertigo and confusion. Where the hell is the pharmacy? In the back, must be in the back. I walk to the back. “Hello, may I help you?” I give him my business. “I’ll need 15 minutes.” he says, and slowly shuffles off to do what pharmacists do—getting on the phone to exchange information with someone on the other end. Who is on the other end that would know anything about me at 11pm on a Friday night? I can’t get a hold on the thought, so I find the waiting area and just sit. A small Mexican man is hobbling around the pharmaceuticals when a stout younger man approaches. “Hey, Javier. What’s up, man?” “Heeey. Que pasa, hombre?” They shake hands. “No much. You?” “No work for me. Not working at all—you know where the Ben Gay is?” The young man pauses. It is now that I realize the air in here is thick with the most average of white music. Middle-of-the-road, spiritless pap that seeps in and out of the mostly Hispanic ears wandering and working the premises. “Ah, you know, probably in the same place they keep the cortisone.” “Excuse me sir...” The pharmacist. “I need your date of birth.” I tell him. “Hmmm, there seems to be some discrepancy here. Are you sure that’s right?” A woman walks up and barges in quickly. “Do you know where the Ben Gay is...” then quickly follows up her question with a tag line from the commercial, “...for pain relief?” I am back in the car, a bottle with 4 Vicadin tablets in my hand. He wouldn’t give me the entire prescription because of the discrepancy. Vicadin is for pain. My wife has the pain, but I want to take these tablets myself. I don’t, of course. Perhaps I should go back in and get some Ben Gay for Pain Relief? Just saying Ben Gay, brings on the hyper-medicinal odor of the stuff. Takes me back to the previous night in the emergency room of Peninsula Hospital where a young girl had a generous amount of it wafting off her sickly body. She walked back an forth for hours before anyone helped her. There was no place for her, or many of us to sit, it was a very busy night. The attendant told us that if we’d come in an hour earlier, the doctor could have seen Kelley right away. Is that a strange thing to tell a woman with severe chest pains? Against the far wall, up near the ceiling, was a TV blasting the Jerry Springer show, and under it a huge snack machine filled with crap. Are they healing or killing people in there? A look around the room of faces revealed, more than anything, boredom or defeat. Only one older woman was the exception. She looked as though she was in excruciating pain, shaking her head back and forth while holding it up against the wall behind her chair. Her hair was pulled back by a headband... or was it a bandage? Next to her was a middle-aged black woman on a cell phone, her husband in a wheelchair, leg propped up with ice packs surrounding the knee. She complained loudly about the situation to the person on the other end of the line. A little boy, barely of walking age, wandered the room sprinkling the floor with potato chips, his parents enthralled with a pathetic love triangle being moderated by Jerry. Sitting in the car, I take one of Kelley’s Vicadin—for pain relief—and put my head back. On the radio, the man tells me more about the ancient race of people that vanished without a trace. 9/9/00