Breaking Good Read online

  Breaking Good

  A Señor Bueno Travel Adventure

  Mike B. Good

  Copyright © 2017 Mike B. Good

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Mike B. Good/Señor Bueno Publishing

  1916 Pike St., Ste. #12

  Seattle, Wa./98101

  www.mikebegood.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of outlandish fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, are a product of the author’s enhanced imagination, so please don’t sue me. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people (even those with, ahem, identical names and equally shady morals), living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is just a bizarre coincidence.

  Book Layout © 2016 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Breaking Good/ Mike B. Good-- 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-0-0000000-0-0

  Dedication

  I’d like to dedicate this book to the authors that brightened my sheltered childhood: Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Zane Grey. They helped me live vicariously and escape (at least mentally) to a better place while perpetually grounded in Dad’s dungeon. Evidently, my mischievous nature and my strict parents were not a good fit.

  I’d also like to dedicate it to the authors that brightened my non-glorious High School years: J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, Harper Lee, Ian Fleming, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. They helped me escape to more interesting places during boring lectures and after-school detention. Evidently, my mischievous nature and my angry teachers were not a good fit.

  Of course, I’d like to dedicate my book to the authors that helped me through college: Ken Kesey, R. Crumb, Gilbert Sheldon, Tim Leary, Carlos Castenada, and Richard Alpert.

  And finally, I’d like to dedicate my book to the likes of: Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Adams, Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, Christopher Moore, and the wacky Tim Dorsey who helped me escape low-end television programming. Turns out, my mischievous nature and network executives did not make for a good fit, either. Same with society in general . . .

  And so, I’d like to thank these fine authors (among so many others) for making otherwise boring hours enjoyable and inspiring me to share my own dubious stories with readers looking for entertainment with a quirky edge to it.

  Who knows? One day my name might be right up there with a bunch of different authors; ones you’ve never heard of

  CONTENTS

  Grannies Gone Ganja

  College Daze

  Career Advice

  Lizardo

  Expert Traveler

  Want A Ride?

  Waikiki

  Volcano

  Agonia

  A Call Home

  Don’t You Remember Me?

  Waianae

  Makimaki Road

  The Farm

  What’s Wrong With Lettuce?

  A Dream Come True

  Chicken Crap Soup

  Compost Jimmy

  No Elton John

  Changes

  Mom

  Magic Muffins

  Is It The Transmogrifier?

  Plastic Fucking Donald

  Harvest

  I Get The Love

  Trimming

  The Turd

  Living The Dream

  Buddy Tests The Waters

  The Elite Eviction Team

  The FBI

  Have You Seen This Man?

  Capitalist Pig

  Philanthropist

  Makua Beach

  A Giant Leap For Mankind

  Reconnaissance

  Venusians

  Spearfishing

  Paramedics

  Instant Karma

  A Vague Warning

  Nothing To Worry About

  Epilogue

  Grab Another Free Story

  Did you enjoy Breaking Good?

  Preview High In The Andes

  Meet The Author

  Chapter 1

  Grannies Gone Ganja

  (Denver, Summer, 2014)

  “Lemme ask you something, Señor Bueno,” said Trip. “Were dinosaurs still around when you started growing pot?”

  “Just till that pesky meteor fell out of the. . .holy shit, do you see that?”

  Outside the big storefront windows of Joys ‘r Us, a forty-foot-long joint (AKA: The Joys ‘r’ Us Party Bus) chased pedestrians down the sidewalk. Worse, it was heading straight at us. The destination box read: A Higher Place! Recently-legalized smoke fumed out the windows, while over loudspeakers Bob Dylan demanded: “Everybody must get stoned.”

  Trip shook his head. “Not cool.”

  With thirty feet to go, the chauffeur swerved back onto the road.

  Trip wiped his brow. “Whew, that’s better.”

  “Better?”

  “You should have seen Pluto drive before rehab. Squishy pedestrians all over the place.”

  The giant joint finally rolled to a stop. On the PA system, Pluto, sounding surprised, announced, “Cool! We actually made it.”

  Wild cheers and coughing fits followed the good news. Inside the joint wheezed forty geriatric stoners—each of them a charter member of Grannies Gone Ganja. (In all respects, Omaha’s oldest “Legalize Marijuana” group.) Bus doors hissed open; two wheelchair ramps eased out. Gathering their gear, the elderly stoners raced for the exits. Grannies armed with canes and walkers knew they’d better hurry before the impatient ones in motorized wheelchairs and sporty Scooters ran them down.

  Inside Joys ‘r Us (the country’s largest marijuana emporium), Farley “Trip” Ouwt, III, told me, “Hang on to that thought.” To his staff, he ordered, “Battle stations, everybody. Here come the Grannies.”

  “Oh, I’m ready, all right,” assured Bud “Bud” Smoker, Trip’s depraved cashier, holding up his video camera. Tired of being mistaken for the famous gay porn star, he’d recently changed his name from Bud Pfister. His dream: hooking up with Cher. Also, getting rich with a series of Grannies Gone Wild videos. He confided, “It’s an untapped market.”

  As the Grannies made their way to the counter, I pondered young Trip’s ageist question about the dinosaurs, wondering: Where was the respect?

  “Do you have any Green Flash?” hollered a spunky Granny. Her nametag read: I’m Granny Irene, and I Live to Party!

  “Sure do,” answered Bud. “The Green Flash is our number one seller.”

  Ah, there it was. I’d created the mind-boggling hybrid years earlier from a mix of MonsterWeed, a freakishly large and virulently potent strain of Kona Gold, and some Maui Wowee nicknamed Mamba Kush, itself a dangerously stony cross of Afghani hash plant and Congolese black mamba. All these years later, and the Green Flash still kicked ass.

  The feisty Irene, intrigued by my swollen head, wiggled her eyebrows and revved up her Scooter. Like an eighty-year-old Fonzie in drag, she asked, “What’s your name, cutie?”.

  “I’m Mike Good. Nice to meet you, Irene.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Sorry for the fib. I’m just trying to be polite.”

  “I was talking about your name.”

  “My name can’t be right?”

  “Never heard of you.”

  My ego shriveled like a raisin.

  “That’s the famous Señor Bueno, Irene,” said Trip.

  “The idiot who dresses like a taco?”

  “No, not that idiot. This here is the Green Flash himself.”

  “The weirdo who
runs around real fast in skin-tight Spandex?”

  “That’s him!”

  Irene turned to me. “Now you I’ve heard of.”

  Thanks to inane anti-marijuana laws, my chosen profession, though philanthropic in nature, had turned me into an outlaw. An anti-hero. Or as Dad said, “A common criminal.” He was wrong. There was nothing common about me. That being the situation, I’d lived my entire career incognito. For many good reasons. Here was a new one.

  “No one calls me the Green Flash.”

  “Trip just did.”

  “I thought he was the Señor Taco guy,” said another Grannie.

  “Then how come he said his name was Mike?” asked a third.

  “Ladies, my name is Mike. Not Señor Taco, not the Green Flash. . .”

  “With so many names, how can we believe you?”

  “Grannies,” explained Trip, “Señor Bueno created the Green Flash.”

  “No kidding?” said Irene, licking her lips.

  I felt like a pork chop.

  “I could just gobble you up.”

  At twice my size, she probably could.

  “He’d make for a great munchie,” suggested Trip, terrific businessman/questionable friend.

  “Don’t give her any ideas, Trip,” I whispered.

  Granny Irene yelled to her fellow Grannies. “Girls, we’ve got a celebrity over here.”

  “Who is it?” yelled a lady with a walker.

  “It’s Señor Bueno.”

  “That taco jerk?”

  “No, this one dresses more like a golfer.”

  “Yuck,” said the walker lady.

  “I know,” agreed Irene, “it’s not a good look.”

  A voice said, “Hey. . .”

  “Well, is it?”

  I shrugged. She had me there.

  Helpful Trip reminded them, “But he grows the Green Flash.”

  That’s all it took. Backed against the counter, I found myself surrounded by Granny-shaped groupies. When Grannie Irene goosed me, I realized fame had its drawbacks.

  I narrowed my eyes at Trip. “Thanks a lot for the publicity.”

  By way of apology, he cracked up.

  “Señor Bueno,” demanded Irene, “let me take a selfie with you.”

  “Uh, sure, Irene, anything to occupy your busy fingers.”

  “Quit hogging that young stud, Irene,” ordered a plus-sized Granny nicknamed Bessie.

  “Back off, Bessie, you cow, I saw him first.”

  Bessie gave her best friend a playful whack across the shins with her cane. “Pass that spinner around.”

  “Try and make me,” challenged my tormentor, leaping out of her Scooter.

  Half a dozen Grannies went down in a pile of denim, flannel, and support hose. I suppose I should have felt flattered, but instead, I just felt old.

  “Behave yourselves, girls,” yelled a group of Grannies munching goodies at the edibles counter.

  “Behave this,” giggled Irene’s mob, pulling down voluminous undies to moon their friends.

  Enforcing their demand, the other team tossed half-eaten pot brownies, cookies, and gummy bears at the combatants. “Food fight!”

  The Grannies Gone Ganja went wild. Bud, elated, got some great footage of Grannies decimating the baked goods and knocking down shelves full of vaporizers, bongs, and hemp clothing. With the Grannies distracted by their gang war, Trip and I escaped to his office, leaving the staff in charge.

  _ _ _

  Trip lit up a doobie and we watched the mayhem through the reinforced window.

  “You get any phone numbers?” asked Trip. “Or are the Grannies too young for you?”

  “Funny. You know, Trip, if it wasn’t for us pioneer home-growers, you wouldn’t be sitting in this office making snide comments.”

  “I gotta admit, making me rich was pretty farsighted of you

  I shook my head. “I’m talking about changing the world, not lining your pockets.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “For starters, I wanted to end the Vietnam War, get my Uncle Dick out of the White House, and raise world consciousness.”

  “You wanted to overthrow the government?”

  “I dreamed of a peaceful revolution. A world without Nixon as President.”

  “You had big dreams.”

  “If you’re gonna dream, Trip, why not dream big?”

  “You were gonna do all that by growing pot?”

  I shrugged. “Not at first. But with John Lennon covering the rock star side of things, and me being tone deaf, I went with Plan B.”

  “You make growing buds sound noble.”

  “Well, yeah. Exciting, too. With every day an adventure, a life apart from the nine-to-five routine is way more fun.”

  “As long you don’t get busted.”

  Trip was right. It took a brave heart and a hard head to ignore the Man wanted to throw you in prison for doing good deeds. Over the years, many philanthropists fell in battle, but others stepped up. And now, our dream to make the world a happier place was finally coming true. Recreational marijuana was legal! Stoners without a good connection could buy it over the counter at jacked-up prices. At least in Colorado. Washington State’s first pot shop would open in a couple weeks. Trip, only twenty-two, had no idea of the sacrifices my peers and I had made so that he could capitalize on them. Nor did he care. A businessman rather than a philanthropist, his only concern was the bottom line. Well, that, and never running out of stock. That’s where I came in.

  Trip grabbed us some Sam Adams from the fridge, flopped into a recliner, and lit a joint. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he grumbled, “I swear to God, this job is killing me.”

  “Really? Well, you’re killing me.”

  “How come?”

  I pointed through the window. Inside, employees were ringing up charges at the speed of light.

  “The Grannies will drop fifty g’s in your store while you sit here getting high and complaining about it.”

  “Wait a second; you think running a store is easy?”

  “Yes, I do. Dealing pot legally? You have no idea what real anxiety is.”

  Incredulous, he blew out a few calming smoke rings. “I bet it’s less stressful for you to grow it than for me to sell it.”

  Non-growers always said crazy stuff like that. I gave him a look and asked, “How much?”

  “It can’t be as traumatic as a busload of returning customers.”

  He wanted traumatic? I’d give him traumatic.

  “Okay, how about imprisonment, rip offs, plagues of rodents, plagues of insects, plagues of fungi, floods, hurricanes. . .”

  My audience, unimpressed by devastating disasters, started fiddling with his cell phone. Having no choice, I got hyperbolic on him.

  “And let’s not forget cross-dressing werewolves, amphibious killer whales, bikini-clad Yetis, and interplanetary Elvis impersonators. Just to name a few.”

  Trip showed no surprise that Yetis and interplanetary Elvis impersonators molested pot crops. He got his news from The National Inquirer.

  Still texting, he murmured, “Yeah, sure, those things could be a problem, but that’s only if you’re a maniac and grow outdoors in the wilderness.”

  “Jesus wandered in the wilderness, for all we know, growing herb. Did that make him a maniac?”

  “Many people thought so.”

  I couldn’t blame them. Pot being legal in those days, Jesus could have grown it right at home. Not to mention, in the Middle East, hashish was everywhere. But I’m not judgmental and I’ll give Jesus a break.

  “I prefer to think of Jesus and myself as fanatical philanthropists, Trip. Not that I have a messianic complex. I’m just a humble botanical genius, insanely dedicated to changing the world.”

  “Insane, yes, but humble?”

  “Humble, deluded. . .whatever. The point is, I’ve dedicated my career to making people feel better, one joint, o
ne pound, or one ton at a time.”

  “So, you’re like the world’s greatest doctor and psychiatrist wrapped in one?”

  I held out my arms like my colleague Jesus would have. “Well, if you insist.”

  “You know, Dr. Freud, if you grew all your stuff indoors, you’d have no problems with Yetis.”

  “Indoor growers have problems, too.”

  “Werewolves?”

  “Only on full moons.”

  “What about killer whales?”

  “Just during high tides. And before you ask, you don’t see that many interplanetary Elvises on indoor grows.”

  “If they’re anything like our Elvis, they probably prefer hard drugs.”

  “Right. But don’t worry, there are lots of other bummers.”

  For a guy who sold a lot of weed, Trip didn’t know much about growing. With dozens of suppliers, he didn’t have to. And so, he asked, “Like what?”

  “For starters, you work in a sealed building where you can’t breathe fresh air or see the sky or appreciate the beauty of nature.”

  “I’m talking about growing problems, Mr. Natural, not aesthetics.”

  “Okay. First of all, you still got the narcs. You’ve got the electric company you’re ripping off. Those guys will turn you over to the narcs in a heartbeat. You’ve got the snoopy neighbors who wanna turn you in, maybe get a little reward. Or else rip your plants off. If they don’t have the huevos, you got the rippers who heard about your grow from your big-mouthed neighbors. And those guys do have the huevos. Guns, too. In fact, the ripoffs could very well be narcs. And those guys would not only bust you, but steal your crop and sell it just for spite. And a bunch of cash. None of which they’d share with you. Trust me, Trip, those greedy bastards are ruthless. And then you got. . .”

  “Whoa there, take it easy, Señor Bueno. . .”

  “Take it easy? I’m just getting warmed up.”

  “Well, don’t. Because it’s legal in Colorado now. The days of the Man killing everyone’s buzz are over.”

  “Even legal growers have more problems than you. They have to deal with crop limits, spider mites, white flies, root rot. . .”