What I Did On My Summer Vacation

My lubricated thoughts take me back to the summer of 1994. I was living in a tent and riding my bike everywhere. I was attempting to be free, searching for the ineffable formula for existence. I lived like an amateur naturalist, seeing insects and plants as they really were, finally. I studied the dark little worlds under rocks and rotted logs. Salamanders and baby snakes. Creepy, trilobite-looking bugs. I hated those scurrying little motherfuckers. I would sit and stare at trembling leaves until multi-dimensional portals opened before my crying eyes. I read Lovecraft and Castaneda and believed them both.

I could walk to a small dairy farm on the outskirts of the woods and collect the psilocybe mushrooms that sprouted from the cow shit after a rain. I had to sneak over an electric fence and slither into the pasture like a jewel thief. I practically lived on those fucking mushrooms, man, for true. I had a Sterno stove and made all kinds of mushroom dishes. Whatever I could heat up in my lone pan. The secret ingredient in everything I cooked was always mushrooms. I relied on them but grew to hate them as they mutated my brain. It was like constantly moving through a miasma of gently twisting images. I had to learn to navigate through the hallucinations and dismiss the visions after I’d learned from them. I honestly believed I was entering a new phase of human evolution. I tripped myself silly for five shining psychoactive months.

There was this old drifter named Dan who would visit my camp to mooch food once in a while. He had a big white beard and lived in the woods too. He looked like John Muir. I told him that once and he nearly slapped me to death. Dan slept in a lean-to and was preoccupied with drinking himself to death. I offered him shrooms and he offered me vodka and we both said, “No.” We held to our personal poisons. Sometimes he drank so much he stopped making sense. He’d begin babbling incoherently. I didn’t mind because I was always tripping and he made perfect sense to my grasping, breathing, outer-space brain. He once told me he’d murdered his wife in 1958 and I had no reason to doubt him. Dan was scary. Being seen as a fugitive was an important part of his persona. He was a man running from a murderous past, drinking to damage the horrors of his memory.

When the frost fell in the fall I scurried back home to my family in New Orleans and then returned to the woods after the spring thaw. The first thing I did was look for old Dan. He had been bent on remaining through the winter. I found his lean-to had collapsed into a loose pile of logs. Dan wasn’t around. I never saw him again or learned what became of him.

I pitched my tent behind a stream and returned to fishing and foraging. I’d worked through the winter so I had a small sum of money for store-bought food and sundries. I also purchased a backpack. Things were working out well, especially after the season got hot and I started plucking mushrooms from manure again. I felt content, getting closer to the very Eye of the Universe.

And then it all came crashing down when I got arrested for trespassing, vagrancy and possession of a class-A drug. The first two charges were vague and arbitrary but they had me dead-to-rights on the possession charge. Damn mushrooms.

***

From: Everything Dissolves

Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day

Bear slid into the booth opposite Ed—known far and wide as Ed the Head for his waist-length brown hair, tinged with gray, and his proclivity for drug dealing—and arranged a steaming mug of coffee and a gigantic cinnamon bun with white icing in front of him.

“They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Bear said, unfolding a paper napkin.

Ed had no reply. He contemplated his cup of green tea and watched Bear dig into the plate-sized bun, warmed in the microwave behind the coffee shop’s front counter.

It was their morning ritual—and Ed was sick of it. Bear always with the coronary-inducing pastry, the inane comment about breakfast blah blah, the way he dug into the bun with a knife and fork.

Real men eat pastry with their hands.

“Do you have any idea how much fat is in that thing?”

Bear put down the utensils. “Thank you. Thank you very much,” he said. “I’m just trying to enjoy the one fucking meal of the day–”

“Heart surgeons are probably the ones pushing the myth that breakfast is so goddam important,” Ed said. “I can hear your arteries clogging from over here.”

Bear resumed eating. “Hear about Tommy Ford?”

“Tommy who?”

“Ford, like Chevy.”

“Don’t know him,” Ed said, and sipped his tea.

“Yes you do. Becca’s brother, skinny kid with a skin thing. His face.”

“Becca has a brother?”

“At the beach, he’d go in the water and you’d pilfer his wallet.”

“That asshole,” Ed said. “Did he drown?”

Bear made a face. “Cops beat the shit out of him. Traffic stop. Claimed he ran a red light. Tommy started to argue.”

“There you go.”

“What the fuck, ‘There you go,’” Bear said. “All he said was he didn’t run–”

“Where?”

“Merritt Boulevard, Dundalk, heading towards the steel mill,” Bear said. “Three in the fucking afternoon, broad daylight. Fucking cop pulled him out of the car and pistol whipped him. He’s in the hospital.”

“He’s not black, right?”

Bear rolled his eyes. “How the fuck could he be black if he’s Becca’s brother? Don’t tell me”—fork waving in the air—“coulda been adopted. You got an answer for everything.”

Ed leaned forward, hands in front, fingertips touching. “That dipshit Tommy Ford could piss off Mother Teresa. And he’s stupid enough to lip a cop, so I’m not feeling particularly sympathetic.”

“Just trying to make conversation,” Bear said.

Ed pulled his wallet out and looked. “Got any money?”

Bear stopped chewing. “It’s your turn. I’m broke.”

Ed put his wallet away and slid out of the booth. “Right back.”

Bear didn’t look up when a tray of dishes hit the floor, followed by a loud thump. From around the corner, near the counter.

Ed slid back in the booth and pulled out a wad of green. “How much tip?”

“I thought you were broke.”

Ed counted out six ones and shoved the wad in his pocket. “That enough?”

Bear slammed his fork and knife on the table. “You stickup our regular coffee shop and you’re gonna leave a tip?”

“Fuck you and the boat you came in on,” Ed snarled, scooping up the money. “I figured you’re on the side of the working stiff. Guess I figured wrong.”

“This probably a good time to leave,” Bear said.

“I think I hear a siren.”

Trash

All Dave could think about was trashy women.

He knew it was wrong on so many levels. He knew to refer to anyone as “trash,” much less women, was wrong. He knew judging women on how they looked or dressed, or how many visible tattoos or teeth they had, what he called the tooth-to-tattoo ratio, was wrong. He knew that categorizing women as “cheap” or “easy” was part of a phallocracy that he genuinely thought was rotten at its core.

Still, all Dave could think about was trashy women.

He couldn’t go to dive bars where he might meet trashy women. Dave knew that no good could come of him entering a dive bar. It wasn’t his world, and the people who frequented dive bars would know that just by looking at him or hearing the way he spoke. At best, he would be tolerated. At worst, he’d get rolled. Trying to pick up a trashy woman in a bar was out of the question.

Another complication was that Dave was married. Very married. The relationship was solid, even if they hadn’t had sex in years. Dave compared it to living with a really cool roommate. There was also a child who needed both of his parents to be around full-time. If Dave got caught fucking a trashy woman, it would be the end of his marriage, and he didn’t want that. He could look, surreptitiously, but he couldn’t touch.

The only alternative Dave had was to go to other places where trashy women congregated: supermarkets in town that bordered marginal areas. There he would find what he was looking for – underdressed, over-tattooed women without the benefit of modern orthodontics in their youths. Frankly, without the benefits of just about everything in their youths like good parenting or economic advantages or a decent education. Dave didn’t want to fix them, though. He just wanted to fuck them.

When his wife announced that she was going with their son on the eighth-grade trip to New York City and that he was staying home with the dogs, he knew it was his one-and-only opportunity to pick up a trashy woman. He might never be left alone for two consecutive nights again for the rest of his life.

Dave began preparing for picking up a trashy woman a month in advance, accumulating cash slowly with his debit card when he went to the supermarket or the post office. He had a feeling he’d need cash if it came down to it. If the trashy woman turned out to be a hooker, well, then, he’d pay. He had no idea what the going rate was, so he embezzled three hundred from the joint checking account, even though he doubted it would cost that much. He was afraid to Google the going rate.

The buses to New York left at the insane hour of one-thirty at night for reasons no one but the teacher in charge could really fathom. When one of the busses didn’t show, Dave was forced to wait with his family until the second bus arrived because no one was sure if the trip would actually take place as scheduled. It was three in the morning before the second bus showed up, and Dave was able to drive home.

The quickest route to school from Dave’s house was through a seedy neighborhood. Not only was Dave not afraid to drive through the seedy neighborhood, but he actually looked forward to it. There were plenty of trashy women there for him to look at as he drove through it four times a day to take his son to and from school.

Dave didn’t expect to see a trashy woman right off the bat at three in the morning, but there she was on the sidewalk waiting to cross the street. In the dark, Dave couldn’t pin down her exact age, but she looked fairly young but legal. Even though the night was cool, she was wearing only a halter top and short shorts and flip-flops. As Dave drove by, they made eye contact, and he felt a wave of sexual desire pass through him so profound that he almost stopped the car. She was just what he was looking for. He was not, however, prepared for her. His money was stashed in his sock drawer. He hadn’t gotten a motel room because there was no way he was bringing a trashy woman to his house. He didn’t have any condoms.

And he was scared.

So Dave kept on driving and had to settle for jerking off before he fell asleep.

* * *

Dave spent the next day, a Saturday, doing the chores he thought necessary for picking up a trashy woman. He bought a box of condoms. He paid for a cheap motel room. All of this was done with cash, of course, and in places he never went so he wouldn’t be recognized. It gave him a sexual thrill to be doing these things, and he spent most of the afternoon with a tremendous boner. Then, as the late spring day languished into evening, he got in his car and began trolling for trashy women.

The first place he went was where he’d seen the woman in the halter top early in the morning. Of course, she wasn’t there. He knew that there was no reason she should be, but it was as good a place as any to begin his search. In a way, he was relieved. If she had been there, he had no idea if he would have had the courage to approach her. How were these things done?

He went to one of the supermarkets on the fringes of a bad neighborhood and sat in the parking lot, watching people come in and out of the store. There were lots of trashy women, but all of them were accompanied by equally trashy men or parades of children so close in age that they might only be ten months apart. He began to get nervous. He began to be afraid that the cops would pull up next to him, look through the window, see his tremendous boner, and cart him off to jail for being a pervert.

Dave was about to drive away when he saw a trashy woman walking away from the supermarket with bags clutched in her hands. She was walking around the edge of the parking lot, clearly not headed for any of the jalopies parked there. Wherever she was going, she was going on foot. Dave saw his chance. He started his car and pulled up alongside her. He rolled down the passenger side window.

“Need a ride?” he asked.

The woman stopped and looked him over.

“Maybe,” she said. Her accent, unlike Dave’s, was heavily Southern.

“Hop in,” Dave said, his voice shaky. “I’ll take you wherever you’re going.”

“How do I know you ain’t some creep or weirdo?” she asked. “How do I know you ain’t gonna kidnap me?”

Dave knew it was a fair point.

“Do I look like a creep or weirdo?” he asked her.

He could see on her face that she was considering it.

“Creeps and weirdos never look like creeps and weirdos,” she said.

Dave hadn’t been expecting an answer like that. She was smarter than he’d given her credit for.

“I’m a nice person,” Dave said. “I just hate to see you have to carry those groceries all the way home on foot.”

“Okay,” she said. She opened the door and slid inside, putting her bags on the floorboard in front of her. She sat and turned to face her.

“I got me a knife,” she said. “Don’t you try nothin’ or I’ll stick you.”

“Fair enough,” Dave said. “Where am I going?”

“Pull out and go right,” the woman said.

Dave followed the direction.

“I’m Louis,” he said by way of introduction with the first fake name that came into his head.

“Amber,” the woman said.

Perfect, Dave thought.

“Turn right at the stoplight,” Amber directed.

Dave did as he was told.

“Where are we going?” Dave asked.

“Foggy Bottom,” Amber said. It was a notorious slum. “Where do you live?”

“Mount Pleasant,” Dave lied again.

“Are you rich?” Amber asked.

Dave chuckled. “No, I’m not rich.”

“Keep going over the railroad tracks,” Amber said.

The realization hit Dave that he was going into the wrong side of town. There is still time to abort this, he thought. I could let her off here and get the hell out. Instead, he kept driving.

“What are you doing being out here all alone at night?” Dave asked. He realized he shouldn’t have said it just after the words popped out of his mouth.

“I know it ain’t Mount Pleasant,” Amber said pointedly. “But my car’s busted and I didn’t have nothin’ to eat.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I just meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Amber said. “Turn right here and keep going.”

As Dave drove, he watched the neighborhood degrade, and it hadn’t been very good to begin with. It excited him and filled him with dread at the same time. He glanced over at Amber. She had been pretty, once upon a time, before her life caught up with her and before she got the home tattoos that adorned her arm and leg.

“Are you married?” Amber asked.

“No,” Dave lied. “How about you?”

“I ain’t married neither,” Amber said. Dave found that to be very encouraging. Boy, was he horny. Horny-like-a-teenager horny.

“It’s the house on the corner,” Amber said. Dave pulled up to the curb and stopped. The house on the corner was a little bungalow that had been subdivided. Dave thought the inside of the apartment must be the size of a postage stamp.

“Well, thanks for the ride, Louis,” Amber said. She opened the door. When the dome light came on, Dave felt exposed.

“Want me to help you carry those up?” Dave stammered. Amber turned and squinted at him, then looked him up and down.

“Okay,” she said, sounding reluctant. She handed him a bag full of cans. “C’mon.”

Dave exited the vehicle awkwardly because of the heavy bag of cans. He followed Amber up the short walkway, eyes glued to her ass the entire time. He watched as she opened three locks on the door with two different keys.

“I suppose you want to come in,” Amber said.

“Yes,” replied Dave simply.

They crossed the threshold. The inside of the apartment was chaos, with clothes and garbage strewn everywhere, including uneaten food. Dave didn’t have to guess at whether or not she had roaches. He just hoped that he wouldn’t bring any home with him.

“Home sweet home,” Amber said. “This is my living room-bedroom. Over yonder is my kitchen-bathroom.”

“Kitchen-bathroom?” Dave asked.

“You ain’t never heard of no kitchen-bathroom?”

“No, honestly, I haven’t.”

“I guess they ain’t got those in Mount Pleasant,” Amber said. Dave wished he had told a different lie. “Put them cans on the table.”

Dave put the bag on the table. He almost missed the fact that the table was actually a piece of particle board sitting on top of a bathtub. Amber began putting the groceries away. Dave scrutinized her as she reached up and bent down, catching a flash of tits in the process. When she was done, they stood in the kitchen-bathroom and looked at each other. It was very awkward, and it was all Dave could do not to squirm.

“I’d ask y’all if ya want somethin’, but I think I know what it is ya want,” Amber said.

Dave nodded, unable to speak. He could feel his heart beating in his ears.

“You got a hunnerd dollars, Louis?” Amber asked.

Dave fumbled for his wallet and counted out five twenties. He handed it over to Amber. She took it and put it in a coffee tin in the cabinet.

“I ain’t no whore,” Amber said. “That’s a present you just gave me.”

“Uh huh,” Dave said, the non-verbal “uh huh” being the boundary of his ability to articulate.

“Now I’ll give y’all a present,” Amber said. She knelt down in front of him and took his pants and underwear down. Dave was so hard he could scarcely believe it. She took him into her mouth, and in a few seconds, it was over. She got up and spat in the sink and rinsed her mouth out from the tap.

“That was awful quick,” Amber said.

“I’m sorry,” Dave said lamely.

“But you still hard,” Amber said. “Come over to the bed.”

Amber went to the bed and hopped out of her shorts. Dave began to join her, but he almost tripped on the pants that were down around his ankle. In different circumstances, it would have been funny. He reached down and pulled them up enough to be able to walk. While he was doing that, Amber spread herself out on the edge of the bed. He bent down and fumbled in his pockets for a condom.

“You don’t need that,” Amber said. “I’m clean.”

Dave plunged himself into her, knowing he was risking a social disease and not caring.

Not too long after they started, Dave heard loud music coming from a car outside, so loud that it was shaking the windows.

“That’s my boyfriend,” Amber said nervously. “He ain’t supposed to be here.”

Unadulterated fear hit Dave like a baseball bat. His erection deflated instantly. He reached for his pants and pulled them up clumsily.

“Get out the back!” Amber hissed while putting on her shorts.

The music stopped.

Dave hurried to the back door. It took him a few seconds to work the lock, but he made it outside before the boyfriend made it inside. He stood against the wall next to the door and tried to control his breathing.

Just let me out of this, and I’ll never do it again, Dave prayed to a God in whom he did not believe.

“Who parked out there?” said a voice from inside the apartment.

“How the hell should I know?” Amber said.

“I don’t like nobody parked in my spot,” the boyfriend said.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Amber asked defiantly.

“Watch your mouth, bitch,” said the boyfriend.

Shaking with fear, Dave quietly worked his way around the side of the building until he could see his car. He felt for his keys in his pocket and thanked God that they were there. He rushed to the car, opened the door, and started it. He was about to drive off to safety when he heard the boyfriend shout, “Hey, hold up!” He must have come outside and down the walk, as Dave had gotten into his car.

For some reason, Dave could not fathom, he didn’t drive away. Instead, he rolled down the passenger side window.

“What you doin’ here?” the boyfriend asked, leaning into the car.

“I was just leaving,” Dave said. He realized he couldn’t drive away now with the boyfriend halfway through the window.

“I didn’t ask you what you was doin’,” the boyfriend said. “I asked why you was here.”

“Just let me go,” Dave pleaded.

“Did you fuck my bitch?” the boyfriend asked.

“What?” Dave asked incredulously.

“You deaf?” the boyfriend asked.

“I’m not deaf,” Dave said.

“Did? You? Fuck? My? Bitch?” the boyfriend asked again.

“N-no,” Dave said, his voice shaking. Why the hell hadn’t he just driven away.

“I don’t believe you,” the boyfriend said. He took his right arm out of the car window and reached behind him. Dave didn’t have to use his imagination to figure out what the boyfriend was reaching for.

Amber came up behind the boyfriend. Dave couldn’t see what she was doing, but it looked like she was grabbing his arm. The boyfriend spun around and smacked her, hard. Dave took advantage of the distraction, put the car in gear, and floored it.

Dave heard a series of pops as he drove away. He realized the boyfriend was shooting at him. He skidded around the next corner and didn’t stop until he was in his own driveway.

As Dave waited for his legs to stop shaking so he could get out of the car, he wondered what Amber’s boyfriend was doing to her right now. That trashy woman could be taking the beating of her life, getting killed for all he knew.

Catching himself in the rear-view mirror, he saw who the real trash was.