Pissing in the wind 12

John1

We decided to climb a mountain for Johns world, in fact we wanted to climb mountains for all our, alternate reality visists. We decided to climb Mt. Pedro about thirty miles away and spend as long as it took on that dusty deserted peak. We all packed up some of our gear, flashlights, food for a week, camel packs, bottles of wine, a tarp and three sleeping bags two blankets a bag of peyote an once and a half of mushrooms and a lot of dope for the three of us. Our food consisted of a bag of rice split five ways, a bag of beans split six ways some trail mix and a loaf of bread. Then we set upon our way.2

It was five in the morning when we packed into Amy’s station wagon and took off down interstate 40 and that’s when James started to belt out “Greasy Grimy Gofer Guts” in a way that only James could. I didn’t know the words but was soon singing along with everyone else. “how could you not know that song?” Asked Val “Yeah,” piped up John “ I thought every four year old American boy knew that song.” I was a four year old German boy.” I growled.  “That’s no excuse.” Yelled James over the rushing sound of the wind through the open windows. So they taught me every kids song they knew.  And in turn, being so pain in the ass analytical I tried to pick apart the lyrics. They all just laughed and shook their heads. The car became quiet as John told us about growing up in Illinois and how about how he moved to New Hampshire and what made him come back to Chicago. He was the youngest of three brothers and one sister, she being the oldest by twelve years wasn’t a big part of his life at the beginning. His mother died when he was four and his sister secluded herself from the family for about three years. “she moved out when she was seventeen and went to Berkley to go to college, but she came back. My father picked up drinking as a hobby, which became his desired profession.  The same thing went for mark and Caleb my other bothers. When mom died Brenna was sixteen, Caleb was fifteen Mark was thirteen and Brian was eight. When Brenna came back she took care of me, you know the usual shit, cut the crusts off my sandwiches and bought grape juice even though I was the only one who like it. She’s the one who went out with me to buy a cup when I went out for baseball and I have it on good authority that she kicked Billy Molons ass when he picked on me. I came home with a black eye and my dad laughed at me. My brothers didn’t even notice it. Brenna got it out of me, and when I went back to school on Monday Billy had two black eyes and a broken color bone. He never bothered me again.” We all laughed at that. “My sister did that for me too.” Roared James “only I was seventeen and she was like twenty.” John laughed with us. The mountain had it’s arms around us, welcoming us into a big embrace. “Caleb and mark worked as landscapers and were at work by the time I went to school. They partied a lot and didn’t come home till late. I only saw them on weekends, hung over and miserable. Brian was a dishwasher and my dad was a cop. When Brenna moved to new Hampshire it was only natural that I go with her. She never asked me, I just found all my shit packed one day when I came home from school. I was happy I’d rather go with her than be knocked around by my dad. When my dad died last year in a car crash I cam back for the funeral alone and ended up living in Chicago.”  3

“Drunk driving?” Asked Janet4

“Yeah”    5

“Bummer, my little brother was killed by a drunk, he was the son of a sheriff and got off on probation.” “Asshole,” I muttered “I mean I’m sure your dad had his great moments of clarity and all but I hate a drunk…..I mean Hate.” “Nah he was a dick, used to call me on other peoples birthdays, thinking it was mine, sometimes I got three calls a year.”6

We pulled into the dirt parking lot at the base of the mountain all eight thousand feet of it. The lot was a little dirt clearing next to the road with two other cars parked in it. One the license read Texas wearing some honor roll child bumpersticker on it. The other one was a blue Volvo from Oregon dressed in stickers that ranged from the Vermont teddy bear factory to Phoenix school of liberal arts. You could see where the tree line ended at the top it didn’t look so big. “Damn.” Gulped James. “What a beast.”  7

“You pussy.” Amy grinned, “haven’t you ever climbed a mountain before?” I had never climbed anything this high and said so.8

“This is almost twothousand feet higher than anything in New Hampshire.” 9

“Or Pennsylvania.” Added Val, Amy snorted at us and took out the map. The plan was to take a small deer path that had lain there for over hundred years and had just been occupied by humans fairly recently. It must have been really beat down. Besides it wound itself around the river so we’d have water at all times. And so we walked, I was used to the East coast mountains with it’s huge cornucopia of vegetation, but here you really had to look for it, there were oaks and birch but mostly spruce and pine. The ground was different too, here there were branches everywhere but in Vermont there was underbrush, vines and plants, fallen logs coated in moss and briers are everywhere, here mostly things were clear but it was impossible to walk off of the path because of all the branches crisscrossing everywhere. We had decided to sleep only if we were sure it wasn’t going to rain that night. If it did start to come down we would just tough it out and keep walking. We had no shelters and didn’t want to use any, we would just ride out all the storms. But the news said sun and stars all week so…..whoopee!! So we walked and walked. And walked and walked. Climbing over boulders and crossing the stream over and over again. There wasn’t much talk and we all walked at our own pace. No one hurried and no one dawdled. We were just one big entity walking up a mountain. One big snake meandering about the world. All completely aware of each other. At noon we stripped off our clothes and went swimming. Then we lay on the rocks getting dry. I helped john knot and tangle his hair for the start of dreadlocks his hair was so much thicker than mine, and it made the process that much easier. We all munched on trail mix and marched on again. We  walked along for a few more hours and we got our rhythm we could all feel one another’s heartbeat and hear their breathing sequence. You could feel vibrations everywhere, it was time to step up a bit. We needed a push in the right direction. We all ate four gold caps out of the bag of mushrooms and continued our journey, this time we powerwalked, trying to let our subconscious take over, I saw Val hold her arms out to Amy before she even began to fall. “Well,” muttered James. “we’re on our way and with a little luck we’ll all come out of this a bit enlightened. We all laughed at that. And, even though it was more of a nervous twitter spirits rose. Optimism rose. Then, amy laid it all out for us. “Well, first, John’s lost.” She sighed a deep sigh a scared sigh. “so what we’ve got to do is keep a positive attitude while we’re lost.” John’s eyes were downcast, ashamed. Everyone else avoided my gaze. I threw my head back and laughed slapping john on the back. I grabbed Val and kissed her on the forehead and then hugged Janet close to my chest. They all knew what was coming and were frightened as hell.  “Let’s go trampoozing!!!” I shouted  Jumping up. James grinned at me and threw his arm around my shoulders, “How long have you been waiting to say that to a group of kids on mushrooms?”  “All my life.” I answered Everyone grinned at that and started to rise. We picked up or packs and rummaged our way off the path. Heading north, I think. Soon we had walked so far no one knew where the path lay and that’s when we started tripping. Hard.         Trees began to drip their auas on me and paths began to apperate and dissapperate before me all over the forests floor. Amy began to giggle I looked back at her grinning, her eyes wide and black like a vast universe. She grinned back. Green light vibrated all around us. Soon James began to chuckle, i don'’ know if it was luck or what, but we all ended up in a clearing big enough to hold all of us plus we were able to put down our packs. Janet was the first to break the floodgates. First a little a giggle which she tried to cover with her hands over her mouth but soon, they broke into gales of laughter, uncontrollable surges of glee erupted out of all of us. Tears sprang to the ground from our eyes as the laughter rolled from our lips.  And we started to walk again. “It seems that this trip has been nothing but traveling.” Gasped Val “ I mean we’re either driving or walking. Everywhere we go we explore. I love it.” “Yeah,” said John. “this trip has really opened my eyes I think I’m going to be miserable if I don’t travel for the rest of my life. James turned around and I brushed by him climbing up the boulders. Always go up, to the summit. Once you go all the way up you’ll know how to get home, down. I knew we couldn’t get seriously lost, the world is small. I could hear James faintly behind me. “I never liked traveling before……….love it.’ I heard Amy respond but it was just a mumble. Garbled voices, disjointed phrases mixing with others. My voice was the only one I heard clearly. Distinctly. Tired and weary I hiked on, ducking under branches and climbing over boulders. The others caught up just as I was climbing on my hands and knees over a log that had fallen between two rocks on opposite ends of the stream. “why don’t we walk on the rocks?” asked Janet. I grinned “Hadn’t thought about it.”  Her eyes filled with compassion and wonder smiled up at me. James helped me down and we started to jump from rock to rock following the bank up stream. “How bout you?” asked val. We all stood on our separate rocks watching the water change from silver to blue to whit leaving traces of green swirling about. Rocks melted, squished and twisted through the turrents of water. “Are you kidding? Joel’s always gonna be lost.” Amy laughed “He’s doomed to not belong anywhere, destined to be homeless.” As he’d like you to believe.”  I paused, staring at everyone, they were all smile and I felt a wave of warmth wash over me as though I were doing heroine. “You know when you get to a motel room,” I started “Well you know how you check everything out, open drawers, look under the bed check the closet. Well the world is just one big fuckin rented room. For a limited amount of time. I haven’t even finished checking what channels are on TV hell I haven’t even found the Giddeons bible yet. But when I go to sleep I’ll no every inch of that hotel room.” “That by far the cheesiest metaphor for life I have ever heard.” I looked up at val and grinned back at her slightly embarrassed.  “Yeah you call yourself a good poet and you come up with hotel rooms. I laughed John had a good point. At that point we al started to peak and the visuals came on so strong I couldn’t tell which rocks were dry and which were wet so we all took off our shoes and rolled up our pants and treaded carefully up the stream. All of a sudden, I looked around and I realized I had never been there. Never been on a mountain with these people, never been out this far west, never ate mushrooms and walked through cold streams. This was a new experience and yeah,  I had been having new experiences everyday but I never took it in. I just handled it the best I could as everything was thrown at me. Never stopped to think “wow well, this is new.”   “Wow well, this is new.” We all stopped and stared at James then broke into hysterical giggles. “I guess we did what we came here to do.” Said Amy.  “ Let’s, umm…….”  Janet paused with a little smile on her face, “ let’s enjoy the moment……just for a little while? It’s not everyday we all climb a mountain together.” John was looking at us with wide eyes, wonder trailed behind him like a shadow. We all started walking , one wave we rode the crest in a looped spiral that no one can explain. We all thought the same that day, the same expressions the same movements we all walked to the same rhythm of the earth. Everything vibrated and spoke in the same language. The stream told us which way to move our feet, no one slipped and no one stepped on sharp rocks. When we got to the edge of the bank we wandered through the woods. Randomly. We ended up at the path  a little while later no one said anything about it. No one even spoke until we all lay in or sleeping bags. I was huddled up with Val and john curled himself up with Janet. Amy and James settled themselves near the fire pit and Amy finally broke the silence, asking us how we met. “Well,” Janet began first describing how she was at a show in New Orleans watching panic when I showed up by being thrown at her feet with a bloody nose, and grinning how I took the water she gave me and rinsed my face off on my t-shirt and started dancing. Then Val started talking. Apparently the guy she had come with was an asshole but she needed a ride. They were blowing a lot of coke and he started asking Val to give him head. She refused and he got violent, started to push her around and yell stuff like: “What I give you a ride to this shit and I don’t even get anything out of it?” “Then John stepped up and said he gets to watch the cool show.” She spoke with a shudder. “I knew he was going to hit him, you don’t grow up with a guy and not learn something about him. He’d never take a swing at some guy unless he knew he could take him.”  “ Pussy.” James hadn’t said anything all night but he just grinned and motioned john to tell the story. “Well I was kinda drunk and I was thinking hey this is my first panic show shouldn’t a bunch of hippies be rushing him for acting all violent and scince no one did I thought all the stories I heard were fakes. So I stepped up. Cool it man.” I know it was cheesy but I said it.” He laughed well anyway I said “cool it man you get a good show out of the deal, that’s better than a blowjob. Then Joel shows up barefoot and barechested puts an arm around the guy and says “you willin to get a blowjob from anyone? Cause that’ll get you a venereal disease. I might have aides but I’ll  rock your world.” Or something like that. Anyway, this guy just loses it, he just starts swinging and next thing I know Joel falls over the railing and onto the floor below us. Two seconds later this guy is under a pile of dirty hippies they get him spread eagle and one guy takes out his dick and pisses all over him. When the let him up he starts crying and runs out into the crowd. Everyone just started dancing again. I couldn’t even tell who was who. So we look over the railing and there’s Joel huggin some hippie girl shouting into her ear. She looks up and waves Janet’s there too and she waves at us too. So we run down stairs and see if he’s okay. Damn kid’s havin so much fun he doesn’t even remember it. I looked around in awe10

“I thought we all met in Chicago.” I said dumbly They just stared at me shocked. “You must have been drunk.” Said Val  “No I don’t change my body chemistry at all at shows. No drugs and I don’t get drunk.” Amy looked around. “I know it sounds cheesy but Joel is a different person when hes at shows. He gets a weird high off them, he doesn’t remember how we met either…” “Yes I do it was…..” My mind was blank it seemed as if Amy had always been there. “I uhhh…” 11

“What boy? What? You want a cookie…Amy laughed “You remember the palladium and those little trees, you were climbing them and throwing water balloons at the general direction of people. Only I think they were condoms. I remember your eyes were different colors blue and green but you had that huge yellow ring around them making you look crazy. Then you jumped down and started to talk to me. I remember you kept tugging at your shirt and shuffling your feet. Swaying around like the breeze was gonna knock you over. I know you were drunk then because you said something ridiculous like: “Look I’m kinda drunk and would normally ask this of you but there’s this session over on the other side of the lot, we’re all reading poetry and I’d love it if you joined.” When we got there all I felt were bad vibes, no one liked him and everyone basically ignored what he said, except a few of us. I don’t think you ever got to read your shit, I spent all night with him and we went off and found new kids to hang out with on tour, and the circle just grows bigger every season.” I rolled over and closed my eyes, everyone laughed at me and I heard James say something like “Dude your being a pussy, just because your unnaturally self-centered and egomaniacal doesn’t mean we don’t love you.” I laughed at that and went to sleep, it was a deep sleep and I couldn’t quite remember the dream, just that I was a rock in a wall that kept falling out.12

The Morning After, Without a pill13

The next morning I woke up with Valerie curled around my body, I tried to unwrap myself from her long arms and legs but she just sighed and closed in tighter. She leaned up and kissed my neck and rubbed her fingertips over my chest and down my stomach, when she got to the edge of my pants and her hand slowly slipped in it took all my willpower to not gasp. I heard Amy cough and it made me jump out of my skin and I climbed out of the blankets with morning wood and everything. I rummaged around John’s backpack and grabbed a pot to take to the stream. “You’re an asshole,” I heard Val mutter as she rolled over.14

I splashed the cool crystal water on my arms chest and face and felt refreshed. As I washed my feet and balls I wondered if the others really did care about how self absorbed I really was, especially James, I really though highly of him and valued his friendship. These thoughts soon evaporated as Janet walked up, she stripped off her clothes and walked into the stream. She looked at me and grinned, “You uh gonna turn around guy? Or are you just gonna play teenage fantasies out in your head?” I looked down sheepishly and realized I was still sort of waking up. So I filled my pot and left. Val had already started a fire when I got back, John was setting up for oatmeal and James was cooking up for Amy, me, and himself. Amy was somewhere in the woods, Val didn’t look at me until I sat behind her and put my arms around her. “Good morning sunshine.” I said and kissed her on the cheek. James walked over and planted a big one on the corner of my mouth and said, “hey Beautiful, you want your fix?” I laughed and got well waiting for the water to boil,15

“A watched head never gets eaten by ants.” Said Amy behind me and poured out some water for a cup of Coffee for her and James. The rest of us liked our Starbucks and weren’t big on the whole morning coffee thing. John passed around the pot of oatmeal and everyone took turns eating out of it. I rolled a ciggarette and passed that around to James who took it with a sip of coffee and a moan escaped his lips. Wen he finally rolled out of bed I saw he was just wearing boxer shorts. “Weren’t you cold last night?” asked John 16

It’s better than wearing tightywhiteys.” I laughed at that, James had been ragging on John about that for weeks and wouldn’t let up17

“John, are you a virgin?” I choked on my cigarette but John didn’t notice he just gave James a dirty look. “You ask me like it’s a club or something.” 18

“It is man, the hippest ,coolest club in town, you haven’t lived till you’ve lived the life of a seventeen year old virgin.” Now the dirty look was aimed at me.19

I stood up and started to pack away my blankets. “Well, who are we doing next?”20

“You.” I looked around at everyone and just said they were dicks. “I let you guys into my soul and this is how you repay me? I don’t wanna play anymore. Punk ass motherfuckers.” James laughed and said I had nice Sunday morning language. “If your gonna be a pussy about this personal thing you better think hard and long about what this is all about.”21

I told him to shut up and that I was just using vulgarity as a defense mechanism. By nineo’clock we were all packed up and after a quick look at the map decided to walk until the first observation tower. Then when it got dark we would start the procedure, we tried to sound professionals but no matter what we sounded like a bunch of hippies on a spiritual journey. As we walked I told little anecdotes about my childhood, about how my neighbors older brother got a paintball gun and we dressed him up with a bucket cut with eyeholes and a tarp around his body, then we played a game of hide and seek in the woods. I told them about how the twelve of us kids used to put gasoline in squirtguns and light the ends on fire out in those same woods. “That’s all well and good but it doesn’t help us worth a damn.” Said Janet, so I finally broke down.22