To tell you the truth, I didn’t know the first thing about building a jetpack, but the traffic in this city of angels was getting to be a little much for me; not to mention the price of gas. Shit, I’d calculated that the money I’d save on gas with a jetpack alone would not only pay for the jetpack but give me the financial cushion to justify taking those tae kwan do classes I’d been thinking about since I was ten. All that would still be nothing more than fanciful thinking if I hadn’t known a fellow with the technical know-how to build a jetpack, though. It’s not like I have any mind for science. Obscure comic book and movie knowledge, sure, that I got -- but that wasn’t going to help me in the building of a jetpack, not by a damn sight.

Luckily, I’d found a guy. His name’s Bosheek, and I met him in line at the local Global Sanchez’s Knockout Burrito shop down on 8th and Holt. He’s a weird little fella with the flattest flat top you’ve ever seen and a cartoonishly high voice. He stood firm on not letting the burrito chef skimp on the cheese, though, so he was all right in my book. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him there, but maybe the second or third in the same week. (Bosheek likes his burritos almost as much as I do.) We struck up some conversation I didn’t initiate, as that’s just not how I roll, but I found him to be a friendly little dude. We both agreed burritos were the perfect food for any occasion; that, given the right ingredients, a burrito could be eaten for every meal. The fact that I’d found someone with such an important thing in common with me was kind of neat. In another kind of neat happening, he also told me I reminded him of his “big bubby’ and that we went by the same initials, but his “D” and “J” stood for names that didn’t seem like real names to me, and apparently he hadn’t “given up” yet… whatever that means.

Turns out Bosheek might be the smartest boy in the world. Certainly in North America. He said he had a plaque to prove it, but I didn’t need to see it. A quick flip through the schematics for non-invasive bionic surgery for the lazy wanting to be strong without working for it was enough to convince me. Boy had brains to spare, as well as an insatiable hunger for burritos. We struck up a deal.

I agreed to supply Bosheek a daily burrito containing cilantro’d rice, pinto beans, carnitas, sour cream, pico de gallo salsa, and extra chee during the duration of the design and construction process. (Note the lack of lettuce. Mad respect for Bosheek on that alone.) In return, he’d build me my very own personal, fully functional, state of the art JETPACK. It was oh so very exciting!

What we lacked in money, Bosheek made up for in ingenuity. No vacuum cleaner, blender, Nintendo, wire, or Lasertag spare parts left in his basement from other experiments were unused. I wasn’t much help except for the fact that that I could help the little fella reach high things. (Momma always told I was tall for a reason. What reason, she didn't know. But she did know it wasn't for basketball or anything fun that would also potentially help make me popular in high school.)

After months of wallet breaking burrito buying, Bosheek said the jetpack was ready for testing. He wanted to strap it to a mannequin first, for the sake of safety, but I haughtily scoffed at that -- I wanted to fly with my new jetpack toot sweet. Bosheek tried to put up a fight, but weeks of daily carnitas burritos had taken its toll on his digestive and circulatory systems, and he was capable of little more than mumbling and occasionally clutching his chest.

Donning my newly purchased, custom made Bon Jovi helmet (replicating the all of the band’s album covers from their self-titled debut through Keep the Faith in a magnificent collage on its subtly sparkly surface), I squatted down so a now constantly sweating Bosheek could help me heft the sixty pound bacon grease fueled jetpack onto my back. He’d constructed an ass shield, but due to our daily burrito meetings, I could no longer fit in the mold he’d made of mine several weeks earlier. He suggested we postpone the test flight, but I argued my pleather pants would bear the brunt of the jet flames. He groaned and rubbed his tummy as we carried on, sans ass shield.

Not wanting to pretend like I was a fearless test pilot, I’ll admit I had not butterflies in my stomach but dinosaurs stomping around in there. Several times, as Bosheek was flipping switches and turning knobs to power the jetpack up, I had to stifle a yelp begging him to stop. In addition to the whole fear of taking flight in an experimental jetpack banged together out of spare parts by some odd little guy I met in a local Mexican food eatery, I’d suppressed my fear of heights in my desire to soar over the driving fools deadlocked on the freeway. Why would a guy afraid of heights want a jetpack? It’s a bit of a conundrum, but I learned long ago that I make no sense. My crotch got warm with piss as Bosheek started counting down from “10.” Yeah, it was embarrassing, but my faux-leather pants prevented unsightly soak-thru.

When that little guy, full of carnitas, yelped “…1!” I pushed the former stereo “on” button he’d attached to my makeshift hand control, and my ass lit on fire, the smell of bacon filling the air. I maybe got fifteen feet up before I lost all feeling in my now permanently hairless rump and started spiraling haphazardly throughout the heavens. The heavens!

It was a glorious full minute and twelve seconds flying before I ran into a three-story apartment, crashing into some old lady’s kitchen. I heard her shout, “That ain’t mine!” before I blacked out.

Bosheek apologized profusely when he visited me in the hospital (where I was threatening to become a regular), but I told him not to sweat it. He claimed the sweat was actually from his body rejecting the obscene amount of salted pork meat he’d ingested from his burrito heavy diet and that he was in quite a lot of pain. I nodded understandingly and had security escort him out. He was getting on my nerves.

Still, it was worth it. I’d gone where angels fear to tread and lived to almost coherently write the tale.