Nov 2, 2014

I've told you about Carbo; he's an angry man.  Always has been, and will be. There's nothing he enjoys more than needling people, than undoing them in some way.  His father was a college soccer referee, a little bitty guy and famous for giving out red cards at the beginning of games.  Normally, a referee would give a warning and then if that wasn't heeded, a yellow card, and if that didn't instill order, red. But Carbo's father didn't give a damn about protocol and he would wave a red card with no warning. He told Bernie once he did that because he wanted the players and coaches, and of course, the fans to know that he was in control, that he was never going to be invisible.  He wanted to be part of the show....  But above all, he liked to piss people off.

We were on the phone on Halloween and Carbo asks me what I'm doing.  I shrugged.  He said, you get down here, I want to show you what these fucks are doing. He was so excited, I couldn't say no. Where are you? I asked.  So I go down to Market Street.  The place is on fire, weirdos galore, and there's a long line for a rock concert.  Right away I notice somebody wearing a sandwich board, which looks like an I-phone.  Very elaborate costume.  And the person in the sandwich has a doll in his hands and he's sticking the doll the way people do when they're texting. But he's doing it with pins so it's actually more like voodoo.  I get closer and who is it but Carbo. He's walking up and down while the people in line are texting and he's doing his own texting. He stands next to this group of boys and starts 'vexting' — that's the term he told me later.  'Yea, I vext 'em. After you text and sext and do any fuckin' thing, you vext. Put the curse on 'em. I hate those people.'

Meanwhile, the kids didn't really notice him; occasionally they would just turn and watch him and maybe laugh and they have no idea he's ridiculing them. He's just another weirdo.  I told him, let's go get a drink. Fuck that, he said, I want to piss some people off.  When he's like that, there's nothing you can do, so I just left him there, vexting, and went to a dive I know around the corner.

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