“Well, I guess shit for you is going to be pretty fucked for a while,” Eric pauses to scoop up another handful of bone-dry wood, and spits out a cluster of sand before continuing, “and I know this will sound like bullshit, and it’s the kind of thing no one wants to hear when it’s dismal, but maybe this is some sort of blessing in disguise.”
I ignore Eric’s attempt at comfort or wisdom and distance myself from his musing to drop another pile of wood near our tent. I lean inside the canvas flap, and burn a light scar on the side of a still green bowl that, like everything else in the tent, has been frosted with a fine mist of sand. The distance between myself and my problems makes a difference for an instant, and I’m removed from my concern for a fraction of a moment and I relax.
I snap back as I am exhaling blue wisps that are sucked out the flap to dissipate in the sand dunes when I am startled by the gravelly scrape of my smallest finger; habitually excavating sand deposits from my ear.
Back in the moment, I remember that tonight Eric and I will feast on Smack Brand ramen noodles to warm our corroded bellies, and our skin will be exfoliated like spa treatment as we squirm around in discomfort within our beddings. There is much to look forward to, but for now we must keep gathering wood.
Eric is just returning with another bundle for the pyre, as my feet squish back outside into our environment. I produce a treasured can of smoked oysters from my back pocket and pop the tab. My friendship offering is waved away, however, as Eric excitedly reveals the contents of his cupped hands.
“I found something wicked awesome.” I was not aware that Eric used the modifier word “wicked”, so this must be special.
His tone of voice is an archaeologist finding the preserved skull of an undiscovered australopithecine, “Mummified lizards.”
Sure enough, the crispy tortilla chip cadavers he hands me are near-perfected preserved reptilian-type creatures, with their limbs curled and frozen like Pompeii victims in presumably final movement. We arrange them on a flat-faced rock to look like they might be holding hands, before returning to our gathering. In the process of amassing enough wood to burn cartfuls of heathens, we find two more sand-mummies and acquire a respectable stack of bones from mysterious origin.
We light our fire as the sun begins its descent behind our own little patch of tree line that shields us from the winds gliding off the Pacific. We feed the flames, and we’re as hungry as they are, so we prepare our banquet of Smack Chicken. As the fire gets exponentially hotter, we shed layers down to our underwear.
“Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, I’m really sorry I asked if you could find me some mushrooms.” Eric says this with pursed lips as he paints his face with sooty charcoal fingertips. He is referring to yesterday, when I was caught in my car in the high school parking lot with a plastic bag of cubensis mushrooms in my hand. It was pretty stupid of me really. Eric and I had plans to drive a thousand mile round trip to the remote and desolate slopes of the Umpqua Dunes.
In the halls between class, a senior drug acquaintance of mine had asked if I was interested in mushrooms. I wasn’t, but Eric had mentioned his interest, so I thought I might surprise him. A transaction was made in the bathroom under stall doors; I wrote “Dolphinsex.org” on the divider, and a hallucinogenic substance was acquired. My last class of the day had ended early when I got bored and decided to walk out of it, and the first thing I did when I got inside my car was to pull out a ridiculously suspicious looking baggy and examine, like an idiot.
Three sharp knocks on my driver side window, my neck snapped, and the door opened. Under burning serpent eyes, the scaly limb of Mrs. Turner, the “campus cop”, reached to snatch the contraband from my hand. I tried to explain that I had picked them, that they weren’t hallucinogenic, that plastic sandwich bags let them marinate in their own flavor, and so on but she was uninterested in my meandering bullshit. Shit was going to get fucked. I was in a state of panic. Mrs. Turner evaluated my reaction as under the influence and potentially dangerous and radioed for sniper backup. She could see me almost Hulking out at this point, so she played it cool and asked me to leave the premises. She already knew my name.
I drove home in a mess of baby snot and wimpiness and was hysterical as I blabbed the scenario shamefully to my mother who was gardening or perhaps burying evidence, drugs or diamonds, where no one would find them. She was disappointed to have raised such a careless fuck, but per usual was calm, optimistic, comforting. “This might end up being a pretty hard road, but you are strong and brilliant and you’re going to be fine.”
I ignored her, preferring to wallow calf-deep in a kiddie pool of my own tears. When the high school called, my mother handled the communication. Verdict: Expelled. After twenty days, I was able to meet with the principle and discuss my potential return to school and the chances of getting back on track to graduate. A police officer (the real kind) showed up at my house and intimidated me into going down to the station to write a statement. I don’t know if I actually had to do this, but I did, and I sealed the deal. My parents decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to go on my planned adventure with Eric, but came to their senses after imagining what a weekend with a frantic brat who’d just gotten his wrists slapped would be like. So they let me loose.
“Don’t feel sorry. There’s nothing to feel sorry about. I mean, think about all the different shit that I didn’t get caught with. I should just look at it like, all those times I got away smoking weed just added up. So in reality, I deserve this.” I start smearing charcoal from my feet up my legs. Eric continues; his face is completely painted by this point.
“Well, yes and no. I am not sure even if you added up the grand total of potential misdemeanors that it ever really translates to a Class C Felony. It’s sort of an apple and oranges situation. I think you are going to have to deal with the punishments associated with oranges.”
Oranges are beginning to not sound so sweet. “So what’s the difference?”
Eric’s teeth glow in contrast with his face. The tip of his tongue is pinched between teeth as he focuses on tying a piece of twine around the necks of two of the mummified lizards, like a cherry stem. “It’s a tier up or two in repercussions. Loss of driver’s license, hefty community service requirements, and potentially a permanent burn on your record…”
I sigh deeply and start to weave pieces of bones in my hair. When my hair reaches a certain length, it doesn’t splash down looking rouge-ish or suave; it’s impossible to “style”, I just look like a sandy Q-Tip. The bones stay where I place them, trapped in tangles of blonde puff. Eric dangles his dead jewelry over his ear and fashions another pendant for me. Unspoken and unplanned, we become tribal in costume, pre-historic in our behavior.
We hold burning tree limbs in both hands and twirl around scattering fiery snowflakes in our footprints. We somersault from the crest of the ridge like moths back to the fire in our valley, howl because no one can hear us, chase, tackle, and wrestle each other to the ground. We throw punches that hurt but aren’t hurtful, wince through the cracks between our smiles, and interrupt our laughs with gasps until we are exhausted. We lay on our backs and meditate introspectively for a long minute, before Eric breaches the pause with a smooth transition into deeply meaningful conversation.
“I read somewhere recently that the average male ejaculates at a speed of 28 miles per hour. This is interesting to me on many levels.”
I am incredulous. People are starving and dying of disease all over the world, and we are researching this. “What kind of eccentric fucker wanted to study this phenomena? Someone funded this? Did we fund this?”
“Well, he was probably American because otherwise the speed of jizz would be metric, right?” Eric’s reasoning is sound.
“Definitely American. Maybe Japanese. You know, this could potentially become a new unit of measurement. We could cruise the highways at two or three jizz per hour. JPH.”
Eric does a quick calculation. “If you could pull 3 jizz on the freeway, you’d be upping the speed limit to over 80 miles an hour. That’s quite a bit faster.”
I sigh, “Eric, it’s pretty much the future right now, and everything is faster. Technology, downloads, teenage sexuality, glaciers, or whatever. Everything. We should be moving faster.”
“Faster than 28 miles per hour? I hear that is about how fast I ejaculate, according to cutting edge research.”
“You are a good friend, if not the best, Eric. I’d personally like to think that you could cum much faster than that, if you wanted to.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that.”
In the morning we drag our supplies the mile or so back to the car (approximately .035714 Jizz) and take final portraits of each other in our haggard states. We borrowed Benji’s fly new digital camera and took crisp high-resolution black-and-white shots of us looking weary and solemn as coal miners. We let The Grey Ghost warm up a bit and reflect on our time for mere seconds, before excitedly changing topic to what has been on our minds for days; the oasis providing three hotdogs for one dollar a mere five minute drive from the trail head parking lot.
Our mouths bubble with the anticipated need of saliva, as I lurch the Ghost left bearing north on Highway 101. The elephantine purr of acceleration is almost immediately interrupted by a brief scrape, punctuated by a plasticy backbone snap behind us. I see a small black object bounce three or four times in my rearview mirror.
“I left Benji’s camera on top of the car, didn’t I?”
A truck swerves slightly and runs over the camera blasting shards of technology all over the road.
“Yep.” We backtrack and pick up the pieces off the road. When we reach the petrol oasis, the mechanically separated chicken doesn’t taste as delightful as it should, but I can’t deny that it’s still a very reasonable value. We both inhale three and pack another three for the road. The ride home is decorated with very little conversation. Approximately 17.425 Jizz later, we meet the respective ends of our roads. We hug, trade understanding looks, and part ways.
I call Benji and I ask him if he’d like to meet up and maybe get high at Whistle Lake so we could get caught up with the recent haps. He agrees to meet me there, and I prepare to deliver some awful news and propose a payment plan. I catch a glimpse of my face as I near the gravel road to the lake. I am still decorated with random sooty patches of grey-scale and my lips are lined like topographical maps. The sun and sand evaporate all the moisture out, and my lips are robbed of their usual sultry bounce. I fumble around the floor on the passenger side for some chapstick.
Instead of finding this however, I find myself finding myself at fault for smashing into the side door of a woman’s car who happens to belong to the same Book Club as my mother. Turns out this woman’s mother is also in the car, and she looks considerably upset and inconvenienced. They seem to be composing themselves well, considering that I look like a burn victim stranded on a desert island. I feel bad for these innocent people who have to deal with such a haggard looking fool who forgot to turn when it was the only available option. I start feeling bad for me, but I realize that I got myself into all this shit, it’s probably time to hang my head before I buck up and deal.
I still have everything I need, and no one likes a white American male who has everything he needs who complains about how bad he’s got it. When Benji arrives in the parking lot, he sees that I’ve got tears running down my sand encrusted face—never actually touching my skin—and he says, “Well, this doesn’t look good. Something happened, huh?”
When I open my mouth to respond, I can only imagine that it is full of sand, and like sand, it pours. It pours each letter a granule, each syllable a tiny stone, as I again, cry. My tears mix with the sand as I tell Benji everything that’s happened lately. My car becomes the beach, and we bathe in the dark watching smoke drift out the windows to swirl in the shards of headlights stabbing into the trees.
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