Meet the Staph

Posted on by Steve Levandoski

fin blue

In order to win “most unusual collection” at the annual elementary school intergrade show-and-tell, little Stevie Levandoski collected toothpaste caps for a year, without first checking to see if there indeed was a most unusual collection category. It was not his most wasted year.

The Oddville Press published “Chatter Box” in their Fall 2020 issue, The Antihumanist released “Period” in their 3rd edition and The Writing Disorder published “The Adverb Factory” in their summer 2022 edition.

Steve plays drums in Recording Club. He’s also the Steven in his musical solo project Steven Stereo.

He lives in Philly with his wife Lisa and pug Phil Collins.

Contact

Do you want someone to Beta Read your writing? Look no further. Check out his Fivver.

Want to tell him what he’s doing wrong? Drop a line: nextinlinemagazine@gmail.com.

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Philly Transit Chronicles 4: 2nd Time Getting Mugged.

Posted on by Steve Levandoski

When I moved onto Dauphin Street back in the early 2000’s, Fishtown was still Fishtown. Tucked in between the up and coming Northern Liberties and opiate infested Kensington neighborhoods, the 19125 postal code used to be a pocket of old white trash so removed from the rest of the city some of them spoke a Gaelic dialect long forgotten in Ireland. In the ‘80s self-appointed racist sentries stood guard at the Fishtown elevated train stops brandishing hockey sticks to make sure anyone darker than them kept moving onto the next stop. Eventually developers bought the locals out. They all probably moved to Florida. Nowadays, you can see Fishtownians walking around with yoga mats, traveling from microbrew to artisan bike repair shop in flip-flops, the official footwear of people who hate the ability to run away.

I moved there for the same reason I moved anywhere. Cheap rent. I was friends with bouncers from Tattooed Mom’s bar on South Street who helped me move. They were all big guys, so moving didn’t take long.

 I also knew the bartender at the bar down the street. I met Alex at Dirty Franks where he was a door guy and he had just started bartending at Atlantis, conveniently located less than three blocks away from my new abode. Alex had invited me over for a couple drinks after I was done moving in. The bar boasted a giant aquarium and served Yard’s beer on tap. I couldn’t wait to finish moving and head over for a cold one, while my roommate and our friends chilled at the ranch.

Forever sporting a Peaky Blinder’s hat, Alex had a tattoo on his forearm that read, “Go Get Your Dad.” He looked like the bully from the Simpsons all grown up. He had a reputation for sneaking up behind drunks about to brawl and then grabbing the inside of the instigator’s elbow after they cocked back to punch. He’d utter the word “Nope” as he dragged the bewildered patron outside for further explanation.

. When I got there, Alex told me a story about a weird Christian cult that he nicknamed the Church of the Fixed Gear, a reference to the popular hipster bicycles they rode. The members were notorious for drinking fifty-cent drafts during Monday night specials and tipping zilch. One day, Alex fashioned a collection basket out of a fry basket, a pool cue, and duct tape. Extending it toward them he asked, “Is this more familiar?” To his puckish delight, they never returned.

I don’t know how many free shots he gave me that night, but it was more than a couple. I ran out of cash and Alex’s charity, which meant back then that it was time to go home. After draining my glass, I threw whatever singles were left in my wallet on the bar and went on my merry way.

It was still light out, close to dusk. My friends should still be over. I stumbled home like Igor, on the edge of blackout drunk, my homeostasis back then. That was back before I got off the sauce for good after reading Quit Drinking Without Willpower by Allen Carr decades later.

A  block from my new home, I heard someone from behind me say “yo” in a calm, collected voice, like Bob Ross ordering a pizza. I turned and found myself on the ground, holding my jaw, wondering how the fuck I got down there. I like to think I got hit by brass knuckles or pistol whipped, or maybe that guy just had one hell of a haymaker. Five sets of Timberlands surrounded me. I don’t know if it was the booze or shock that numbed my pain. I was more confused than anything else.

One of them snapped his fingers like an expectant maitre d’. “Gimme all your shit. Now.”

Using my tongue, I felt that one of my back teeth was cracked. “Goddamn it! Fine. Here you go.“

I thought cursing made me sound tough. It didn’t, not even a little bit. I handed over a wallet containing a guitar pic, a Septa bus token, my ID, and a debit card. They kept their word and stopped hitting me, before they went on their way.

It took me a while to remember which apartment was mine. I just moved in and the trauma to my head didn’t help.

The first person I ran into in the hall was the landlord and I told him what happened. After checking my pupils for a concussion with a Maglite, he opened a bottle of vodka and handed it to me, which dulled my aching tooth. While he rallied the troops, I called my bank and canceled my card. For the first time in my life I had a posse.

 Time to find out who just fucked up my tooth. 

My landlord said,” What did they look like, Steve?”

 I said, “They looked like white trash. They all had on white wife beaters, baggy jeans, and bushy beards.”

He looked disappointed, “Steve, you just described half of Fishtown. There is no point  going out and looking for those guys. It could have been any of them.”

It took three trips to three dentists over the span of five years to finally fix my tooth for good. During the year and a half I lived there, I didn’t really venture out into that hood much, and mostly rode my bicycle to work, so I’d only catch half the shit talking. 

Anytime I’m Fishtown, I still get a slight adrenaline rush, as I walk past folks in Patagonia jackets walking their labradoodles while carrying Gucci poop bags. Now, anyday without being punched in the face is a good one.

Philly Transit Chronicles Three: The Drive By

Posted on by Steve Levandoski

The stories we tell during our precious downtime at work are as important as the jobs we do. Most HR Representatives would beg to differ. The watercooler serves as the cheapest of amphitheaters, a little stage for the working class to blow off steam. On stage was Ron, the guy in charge of setting up the tables and chairs.

Ron’s Norse saga detailed the time he threatened to knock the teeth out of the guy who stepped to him at the bus stop. I forget what the guy said, but he had it coming. Not the largest fellow, Ron was one of those squirrely white kids who grew up in the city, so I believed he could smack at least one of the guy’s teeth loose. Maybe not on the first punch. The antagonists must have believed Ron’s threat as well, because that guy fucked off without daring to open his mouth again, teeth intact. Following Ron’s tale was going to be as intimidating as opening for Slayer. I took the spotlight and played it safe with an old go-to.

I said, “This happened around 2001-2002, when I was in my early twenties. I had just met up with my girlfriend at the time, escorting her home from her subway stop, like a true gentleman. Berkeley had just accepted her, and she still thought I was moving to San Francisco with her like we had discussed. At that point, so did I. 

Walking past the Philadelphia Community College with her could have been my last memory. My last reality before walking towards the light, wondering for eternity what our life together on the West Coast would have been like. It didn’t happen.

I heard it before it hit me. The shot sounded like a gun with a silencer on it, followed by tires squealing away. There was only a twinge of pain on the back of my neck, like I got bit by a  mosquito on steroids. Maybe I was just in shock.

My first words: “Oh my God, I’ve been shot!”

My second: “Oh my God, I bleed yellow.”

I pantomimed feeling the back of my neck, and then discovering my yellow blood on my palm, mouth agape.  I described the gooey feeling of the gluten shell of an exploded yellow paintball between my fingers.

 Fists balled up in rage, I pretended to scream, “Some goddamn kids shot me with a fucking paintball gun!”

Ron doubled over with laughter, as if someone had punched him in the gut.

“It’s not that funny,” I said.

He gathered himself before speaking. “Yeah, it is. There is a good chance that I’m the one that shot your ass! Me and my boys used to do that shit all the time. Spring Garden Street was our hotspot. And if you were walking with a girl then you were definitely getting got.”

You never know when you’re a character in someone else’s play. I brought Ron so much joy with the memory I couldn’t even be mad at him or plot revenge. I liked Ron, and enjoyed hearing him play the piano in the rec lounge on his break after the bosses went home. He transformed from a forty-something-year-old dude with three kids into a hell-raising, malt liquor guzzling teenager with a paintball gun in each of his idle hands.

I ended my story there, cutting short my usual denouement. I didn’t share this aftermath with my coworkers. Jump shot to me, standing in my apartment, talking to the fuzz on my green landline, twirling the curly cord in my fingers, choking on adrenaline. I used white people’s language, the stuffy words of my people, like “unacceptable” and “inappropriate” while my girlfriend wiped the yellow paint off the back of my head and nodded along to my words like a hype man. I snitched and squealed louder than a senator caught with his pants down. In my best “Well, I never” tone, I let the officer know that good citizens such as myself didn’t deserve such abuse. 

Instead of telling this version, the rest of my stage time was squandered pontificating on the size of my head, the second largest in my graduating class, a natural target that has attracted ballistic sidewalk assaults featuring everything from eggs to forty ounce bottles of malt liquor, a blonde meteorite drawing in projectiles with its gravity. The general consensus among my coworkers was that the size of my noggin should shoulder half the blame. The typical small mindedness of the small headed is my cranial cross to bear.

I also forgot to mention the muffled laughter I heard on the other end of the line when I gave my report to the cops. Ron didn’t deserve that much happiness. 

Philly Transit Chronicles Two: The Snowball Incident

Posted on by Steve Levandoski

I got off the Broad Street Line to do a corporate sound gig at a nameless, litigious four-star hotel in Center City. My happy ass needed to be there by six-thirty AM and the subway dropped me off on time, despite the snowy January weather. One would think that snow wouldn’t disrupt an underground line, but the drivers still need to make it to work. 

Only a total moron would be out in that lonely mess that early in the morning. A lawless, isolated, vibe prevailed, the moment right before gunslingers say “draw!” in the Westerns. 

My Payless dress shoes slid on the patches of icy sidewalk. This was in the early 2000’s before the proliferation of security cameras, cell phones, and Orwellian Big Brotherly love. So if I fell, it wouldn’t make it to America’s Funniest Home Videos. My thoughts concentrated on two things: coffee and where to obtain it.

 As I waited for the light to turn, my eyes wandered across the street and focused onto a big dude carrying a gym bag large enough to carry at least two bodies. Unless the steroid convention was in town, I think he was on his way to Bally’s Total Fitness down the way to either lift weights or install even heavier ones. I looked away and minded my own business, like a good citizen. Soon after, I heard a powdery thunk.

The thunk originated from the impact of snow falling from the rooftop of a building directly onto the back of my man’s beanied head. His hand slid to the back of his head and confirmed the snow on his fingers. His eyes narrowed and trained on me like a rifle scope. 

Oh no. He thinks I just pegged him with a snowball! 

He changed course and his tan colored steel-tipped Timbs stomped in my direction. 

Like Robin Williams on crack, I manically pointed to the roof, reenacting through pantomime the series of events that had brought our lives together that windy morning. 

He paused and reflected, but then deemed further inquiry necessary. I was thinking of how I could explain that I don’t set my alarm and put on a suit to throw snowballs at the biggest dude I could find at the ass-crack of dawn. I looked at the icy patches on the sidewalk, preparing to book it. I remembered the crack I heard when I saw a guy get knocked out at Lucky Thirteen for sticking his tongue out at the wrong girlfriend, and didn’t want to hear it again. I’m a runner not a fighter. Feets, don’t fail me now!

One key delineation between journalism and fiction, since truth is stranger than fiction, is the allowance of the forbidden Deus ex machina ending. Considered lazy writing, the god in the machine ending is when either the capital G God or some other god swoops in out of nowhere at the last minute and saves our hero. Like He did that day when His holy breath blew another snow drift off the building, proving my innocence to the advancing behemoth.

When the guy saw the snow land in the same spot, he seemed a bit disappointed at the missed opportunity to stuff me into a trash can, but then went along his merry way while I pretended everything was cool, legs wobbling like Elvis. I expressed gratitude that I had already eliminated before I left my house.

I didn’t need coffee that morning.