CARTER CITY FREE PRESS
HAROLD DEVONSHIRE JR. III - Columnist
May 15, 2009
Ironic.
That's the word that comes to mind when a police sergeant gets their feet cut off by an errant lawnmower.
I looked it up.
Webster's dictionary.
Oh yes.
Irony is the contrast between what actually happens and what we expect to happen.
Nobody would expect a man who spent most of career stepping on others with his Nazi-issued jackboots to lose the very feet which made the wearing of those instruments of oppression possible.
But he did, and in bloody fashion too.
And that's ironic.
All the more so because that lawnmower was being operated at the time by perennial police harassment target Igor Kaminov, that Azerbaijan-born documentary-maker and crusader for human rights, who has made Carter City his home now for some twenty years.
I spoke with Mr. Kaminov at his Plessis St. address.
He lives in a house made from old mattresses.
The mattresses smell like stale urine.
That, he says, reminds him of the kind of urine-soaked justice he received back in the old country.
Kaminov emigrated from his homeland because he was tired of his films being confiscated by the police.
"Every time I tried to make film a couple making love through the windows of their home, you know, the police would like come and, ah, just beat me up and taking my f***ing video away. I wanted to explore the animal kingdom, the passionate sexy animal kingdom, because man is just an animal. I have the teeth marks to prove it."
He shows me where the police bit him, next to the heroin needle tracks on his inner arm.
Taking a massive hit from the crack pipe Kaminov offers me, I find myself sympathizing with him.
Who hasn't been bitten by the police?
Figuratively bitten.
That's some imagery to think about.
I ask him about his life in Carter City.
"At first it was f***ing awesome, man. I could make all the movies I wanted. I got this telephoto lens that lets me watch people f***king from two miles away. I think I've even got a tape of you and your intern here."
He begins rummaging through his bindle-sack.
I tell him there's no need for me to watch myself disappointing yet another woman.
I can see that any time I want.
Just ask my wife.
That whore.
I guide him back to his current predicament, plucking the necessary words from out of the fog of crack smoke through which my mind is wandering.
He points to one of his mattresses, which is flying flat on the ground, and which has a tarp covering most of it.
He lifts the tarp and shows me the huge crop of hallucinogenic mushrooms growing underneath.
"Right, well, there I was mowing my lawn when this f***ing cop comes up and says 'There've been some complaints about you dealing drugs on this corner.' And I'm like, well f*** you man, I won this corner in the '83 Carter City Auction, and I'm not about to give it up. And this guy is always harassing me, telling me I can't s*** where I please and how I can't shoot up in the schoolyard during recess. It's bulls***. Anyway, I start chasing him with my lawnmower, and then he falls down and I f***ing cut his feet off. They didn't come round this way no more after that."
He explained that the man's feet "literally exploded in a shower of blood."
Seems more like a shower of justice to me.
I can still see the stain of justice on the grass where the would-be tyrant fell.
I was going to interview the police sergeant in question, but I felt like I had gotten the full story from this noble crack-smoking Azerbaijani pornographer.
I think the Mayor owes Mr. Kaminov an apology.
I think "my bad" would be a good start.
Isn't that ironic?
Yes it is.
Are rhetorical questions a great stylistic device?
They are indeed.
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