Mexicore

The bridge we'd chosen to shelter us crossed the (shallow) depths of a man-made lake. Obviously the lake had been emptied (just for us, I like to think,) but we woke up just as wet as we would have had we attempted to sleep underwater. We'd misjudged the integrity of our bridge: rain had snuck through cracks in the wood planks, slowly at first, until buckets of the stuff began pouring down on our already-sodden huddling mass. Our cardboard disintegrated, our teeth chattered, our socks sogged. Thanks again, Quebec, for another fantastic morning.

We rose with great irritation. Hades was ruined. We couldn't talk to him anymore. The psychedelics had tarnished his beautiful, fragile mind and reduced him to a yammering chatterbox. Fernweh, at least, could make sense - but none of his aggressive accusations could benefit the group. I believe it was this lack of solid conversation that allowed me to misjudge Squanch's stupidity by holding the few conversations we did have in such high regard. For the time being, it saved me from insanity.

A few determined joggers cast us queer glances through the sheets of rain as our dripping, zombie-esque figures packed our shit. Our first order of business to grab ourselves a 40 - I'd warned Hades and Squanch that Montrèal's liquor prices could turn even the most seasoned of hobos into alcoholics, and we were about to step off the alcohol cliff sending us far deeper than we hoped. We'd been drowning ourselves in the stuff already, but we'd been so preoccupied with psychedelics and hadn't truly danced with the devil yet. To the depanneur!

With our 40 and ten cents left our names, we headed across the street from the dep to set up camp for squeegeeing. Another catalyst for alcoholism - being the squeegee capital, you can literally make money at any intersection in the city. Everyone`s used to it. This opened up endless doors for cheap drugs and drinking.

We had shit luck this morning though. The first car who drove by apparently called the cops, but we didn`t realize until after we`d squeegeed the next car. Some fat Mexican fuck threw the door open and jumped halfway out, ending up in a bent-over position that wasn't nearly as intimidating as he'd hoped it would be.

"Are you fucking stupid? I'm a CRIMINAL," he roared. Unsure of what he was implying, I feigned stupidity.

"You mean... squeegeeing's illegal?"

He growled. "Don't play stupid, punk. I'm a fucking criminal, and I'd better not see your fucking face around here again. I'll be coming back with a nine millimetre."

It wasn't the first time I'd been threatened with gunplay while squeegeeing - usually empty threats - but we figured we'd go somewhere else anyways. Once the guy drove off we sat down to finish our 40 before leaving - that was when the cops showed up. The woman-cop got out of the car after the dude-cop who had already seen our 40, but we shoved its lidless entirety, upright, into our bags before she could ese it. They strode over and lectured us about squeegeeing.

As they were about to leave, the man-cop starred to say something about our 40 as we simultaneously took a spotlight interest in the female cop. The dude-cop couldn't get a word in sideways, and eventually just gave up and headed back to her car. Victory. We stopped hitting on the she-cop and waited for them to drive off before taking our victory slams.