TCBs

Did I ever tell you that I used to know these two alcoholics that lived in Redding? Back when I was doing temp jobs in California. These two guys loved bagels. Bagels and alcohol. I’d call them homeless, because that’s essentially what they were, but they had some kind of arrangement where they pooled their money and most weeks they stayed at a Motel 6 by the highway. Don’t ask me where they got the money. I only ever saw them on their morning bagel runs.

There was a bakery at the bottom of the hill not far from where I worked. I was on a smoke break one morning when I see these two grown men on a shitty little moped. They were so cramped together that I thought at first it was one dude giving the other a piggyback ride, but they were hauling ass downhill. The guy driving is a little shaky, but he keeps it on the sidewalk the whole way. I watched them turn into a parking lot and I thought that would be the end of it. Couple of cool dudes riding a shitty moped around on a Monday morning, you know, the usual.

This was in the middle of summer. I barely wanted to be outside, except the smoke break was an excuse to get away from my awful job for a few minutes. As I begrudgingly put out my cigarette, I notice that the guys are making their way back up the hill. The both of them are too heavy for the little motor. I can hear it straining from a hundred feet away. Probably would have made better time just getting off and walking, but they stuck with it, slowly crawling up Hilltop Drive while traffic was pelting past them in the other direction.

Then I notice they’ve got these big black trash bags with them. They look sort of heavy, and at this point I’ve been standing there for twenty minutes watching these bozos do their thing, so I figured I’d ask them what was in the bags when they got closer. But god did it take forever for them to make it there. They were smiling and talking like it was the most normal thing in the world. I felt like I was back in New York City for a minute, it was so bizarre.

I crossed over to their side of the street and I realize that both of them are hammered. They were on something, or else they were off something they needed to get back on. The guy driving has a full beard and he’s wearing a parka in the middle of summer. His friend is in shorts and he’s swinging his legs around like that’ll make the moped go faster. One of his flip-flops is missing, but he’s got that trash bag in a death grip.

“Trash can bagels!” they tell me. “TCB’s! TCB’s!”

It becomes a chant as they make it up the hill and the moped breaks two miles per hour. The guy on the back fishes around in the bag and pulls one out for me. I told him I didn’t want his trash bagel and they had a big laugh about it. He high-fived me instead and they continued on their adventure.

Every Monday and Wednesday I watched them ride down to that bakery at the bottom of the hill and then slowly come back up. I would take my break after I saw them pass by so I could catch them on the return trip. Yes, that is exactly how boring my job was. Two drunk fools were better company than anyone else in the building.

Thing is, they were both pretty nice guys. The dude with the beard, Bryan, he came from a family of alcoholics and he said it was his destiny. He made his living by being a piece of shit human being. You know those assholes who try to wash your car in traffic with a cup of water and a piece of newspaper? Apparently he made six figures a year doing that. I’m joking, but he honestly made enough to keep himself pretty wasted every time I saw him.

The other guy had dropped out of Berkley and somehow ended up dumpster diving for his meals. I figure that maybe that was his year off, you know? That’s the new version of taking a break from school to see the world. You panhandle for beer money and the highlight of your week is trash bagel day.

And you know what? The bagels were fine. I tried one. They were day-olds the bakery couldn’t sell and I guess these guys survived on nothing but carbs and liquor. Not altogether a bad plan, but sometimes I wonder if they’re still doing that shit, or if they got their act together. There’s a kind of low-level brilliance to the plan. And it’s responsible; they were recycling. Like, if you had a spectrum between eating dirt and having five-course meals every day, trash can bagels are the thinking man’s food.

Or something like that.