Furry February and the Party for Molly

As all budding gentlemen know, a man's true worth is symbolically (if not economically) defined by his ability to grow a beard and subsequently groom it into and maintain a mustache during the month of March.  Being in our final year of undergraduate education, we wanted to do it right.  So we started a month before with the lesser known tradition of Furry February.  All of the men at King Street and I had our last shave the week before February 1st, each trying to get the biggest head start he could.  It was to be one of those wild, crazy months, defining in nature.

The month started off manly enough.  Grant, Taylor, Mike, and I had convinced ourselves that we were going to bike from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles for spring break.  So of course we had to get in shape.  That first Thursday in February, Grant and Taylor weren't working so we decided to bike to Davenport that afternoon for our first day of training.  Now, I never worked.  It was because I was in school I told myself.  So I do believe i may have smoked a spliff with Boom that morning before he biked up to campus for his drawing class.  Still, I wasn't so high when we left King Street, but I was bringing up the rear.  We all had light road bikes so we hustled through town, and before long we found ourselves pedaling up Highway 1 with green hills and growing harvests on either side.  Davenport was ten miles away, a stone's throw on these thin-tired, carbon-framed rockets.  But a hilly stone's throw.  It just so happens that one of those meandering uphill grades got the best of me. 

The moments before are always so clear in hindsight.  It was about 4 miles outside town, a soft grade, and the 1 yawned to the right.  As is so often done though, the curve was banked higher on the outside than on the inside.  So there was a side grade as well.  Daunting, I know.  To be sure, I was zoned out.  Short-sighted.  Ever so focused on following Taylor's back tire, and trying not to be so aware of the highway traffic zooming by on the other side of the white shoulder-line.  I didn't see obstacles before us until Taylor passed them.  And I dodged most of them,  but I couldn't be so fast every time could I?  Oh, no.

I didn't remember seeing anything peculiar.  I just remembered a sharp wobble and a catch of the breath that jolted me, and down I went, face first into the asphalt.  I don't think my hands ever let go of the handlebars, just trying to compensate until it was too late.  It was one of those hits that you feel through your skull, that only stop after you've slid three feet.  Lovely.  I rolled over and just laid there, breathing dazed chuckles.  It would definitely have been funnier if it didn't hurt so much.  Grant and Taylor had stopped and came pedaling back with inquisical looks and stifled laughter on their faces.  I smiled.  I'd posted a strong opening performance on our first day of training.  When they got closer, the looks were more concerned, but still comical.  "What the hell happened?!" they inquired.

Taylor took a picture of my face, looked at it, laughed, and showed me. "Dude you're missing some tooth!"  Then I laughed and instinctively tongued my two front teeth.  The right one was fine, but there was something terribly wrong with the other; a corner of it wasn't there.  It had chipped off at a small angle, not exposing the root, but still tender.  My lip was also cut and bleeding, as were other spots on the left side of my face where my chin and my cheekbone had made contact and torn the skin clean off.  To put it quaintly, my face felt fucked.  And it looked fucked, especially with a week's worth of facial hair.  Grant called Matty to come pick me up.  I don't know how long it took for him to get there.  Everything was a little fuzzy for a while, but I was slowly regaining my bearings.  I looked over at my bike, my baby.  She was fine.

Then I see it.  A flattened, plastic fountain drink cup, you know, the kind you get for $1.29 at Valero.  It's about ten feet away, right where I began to speed wobble.  I laugh, ha.  Oh, man.  Fuck that cup.

Before I knew it, Matty arrived, Minh with him, and I piled into his old rugged Ford Ranger.  Matty gunned it back to Western, and Minh dressed my wounds, and BB whipped up a batch of special tea for the pain.  It was supposed to be morphine I think, but whatever it was, it didn't work and my head was splitting when I fell asleep.   Grant and Taylor had continued on to Davenport and back, but that was to be the last training day.  The first and only.

[stop]

It was to be an unseemly month for me.  The scars and the beard and the chipped tooth meshed well though.  Well enough, I suppose, as Taylor's sister showed to be quite the flirtatious young flower when she came up to visit.  She was still in high school, a senior and graduating soon.  Young, I know, but that didn't stop her from whispering sparky dark and dirty secrets in my ear after a few beers.  She was a telling one, and she wasn't the only.  The female flock laid it on heavy that month, and one of them ran away with my heart.

She was the blonde pixie Indian from Halloween.  Someone out of my league.  She had thin princess hands and long skinny fingers and sharp come-hither sapphire eyes and a cute, turned up button nose and lips that went thin when she smiled.  When she smiled there was never anything so pretty, and out of the blue mid-February she started texting me and wanting to hang out with marked regularity.  I intrigued her, I suppose.  And she... well, I thought she had a boyfriend.  She'd always had one.  So I was just her friend.  She'd come over with pot brownies, and she smiled when I smiled.  Some nights she'd roll us spliffs and we'd drive to Marianne's for ice cream, heaven flavored (because that's actually one of the flavors).  Waiting in line, we'd whisper it to each other with sunken stoned eyes, "Heaven," and we'd try not to laugh out loud before we ordered.

"Stop it."  She said it sultrily, the way you say it when you really mean the opposite, with her chin down and her thin lips curled, and her sharp blues burned holes in my retinas that went right through.  She had me and she knew it, before I did even.

"You know she's single, right?" BB asked me one day.

"Umm, what?  Since when?  What happened to that other guy?"  That other guy was her boyfriend, or had been anyways, but he went to Berkeley.  He was friends with our friends and handsome and wealthy and worked out all the time, and tried to fight mother fuckers on occasion.  And all that can be intimidating to a chipped-tooth idiot like me.

"They're done.  They've been done," she said.  "For a while now."

"Hmm.  Really?  Well, that's interesting," I said stroking my young beard.  I squinted my eyes sarcastically,  "That's very interesting indeed."  My lip had healed, and so had my chin, but the spot below the corner of my left eye was still shiny where my cheekbone had slid across the asphalt, and there were two streaking scars where a pair of tiny rocks had cut deep.

[stop]

I met her for hot coco at Lulu's downtown that night.  Maybe I had her notebook that she needed back, or maybe it was only a bit chilly outside, I forget.  We just flirted with each other over a small table for much too much time to just finish a cup of of hot coco.  It was piping hot to begin with, and she was easily the most pretty and alluring girl I'd met in Santa Cruz.  She lit a fire inside me that I was certain wasn't from the steamed milk and chocolate.  Something kindled from her thin-lipped, devilish smile and her dainty princess hands and her talk of kittens and charcoal drawings and volunteering in Africa.  When I walked her to her car I didn't kiss her though.  I've always been to shy and nervous with pretty girls for anything like that.  Besides, I'd see her again.  And a little dark part of me was afraid of falling for her and what that might entail.  But whatever.  "Oh, and Molly party this weekend, tehe," I told her.

Excitement flushed her face, "I can't wait."

It was Western's turn.  The King Street kids had thrown a wild one, and it was our turn now, so on Saturday we pushed all the couches up against the walls for some dancing space, and cleared all the shit off the living room table for beer pong, and we even had tinsel, though not a lot.  Just enough to string a line of it through the middle of everything, and that sufficed.  D-buns had our Molly and we split it up in the master bedroom upstairs, and Team Western took to dabbling in it around ten Saturday night.  By eleven the place was packed, brimming with the dozens of faces that had become familiar in this small-town college party scene.  All the houses, all the friends, and if we didn't know someone, someone we knew did so it was chill.  And yeah, not everyone was rolling, but everyone was definitely raging and most of us were dancing, and that old Western house kept the sound in like a padded, rotting insane asylum in the woods.

She came a little after eleven with our friend Jessica, but when she finally did, there wasn't wasting any time.  She'd already slipped herself some, and the moment she walked in she pressed a full capsule softly to my lips, and I took it in and swallowed it.  "Hi."

"Hey... sorry I'm late. We were at some other party for a little bit.  It was eh, but we're here meow!"  She was wearing a tiny tee and a long-haired fur vest with a hood.

"Oh, reary meow?" I retorted with pondering sarcasm, petting her fur.

She smiled, "Yes, reary.  And maybe we're already caught up."

"Ha! You think so?  How do you feel?"

"Mmm, I feel light as a feather."  As she said it, she stepped closer and closer, and I stepped back and back until my back was against my bedroom door, and she turned the handle and closed the door behind her.  "It's going to be a good night."

The lights were off in my room, but the window shades were pulled up so it wasn't pitch black.  Just dark enough to to barely see one another so I pulled her in close and her hands slipped underneath my shirt.  Our lips kissed quick and my skin tingled with the ecstatic pleasure of her cold fingers skipping up my torso until I fell back into my bed, and she had me.  We took turns trying to steal each other's breath in a fit of passion that stopped suddenly.  She was over me and on me and she pulled her head back, "Hi."

"Hi."  We were both breathing deeply.  The night was still young though.

"Let's go dance."

Oh, I liked the sound of that, "Mmm, yes, let's."  That's Molly for you.  Everything always sounds so good, especially raging.

[stop]

The cops came around one in the morning and we booted everyone out.  Well, not everyone.  Of course she stayed, and so did Jessica and some girls from the Harbor Cafe.

"All right, kids.  Who wants one last dip?"  Dylan was holding up the remnants of our MDMA havoc in a tiny palm-sized baggie, and grinning like an idiot.  But then again, so were we.  Boom scoffed at the idea and went to bed.

So did BB and Monster.  "You guys are retarded."

"You're retarded."  The rest of us put our sneaky faces on and tip-toed into Dylan's room with Lizzie and shut the door.  We dipped and licked that baggie clean and laid down on the carpet floor with some blankets as Dylan serenaded us sweetly on the guitar.  A little Rocket Man in slow time, and I whispered along.  And then another song.  And another.  She put her hand in mine while we laid there next to each other, looking up at the line of light-up petri dishes that barely illuminated the room in the early morning.  For hours, it seemed.  For it was hours before our eye-lids finally took weight.  One of the Harbor girls stayed with Dylan, and one with Cam, and one on the couch.  And Jessica passed out in my bed.

"Ruh, roh."

"It's ok, let her sleep," I said.  "I don't think anyone's sleeping in the closet upstairs."

"Ooo, the closet?" she laughed and squeezed my hand.

"Oh, you'll love it.  It's cozy."  So we flew up the stairs and into the master bedroom to the closet with bed that Matt the Richard usually slept in.  Except Matt was at his girlfriend's in Santa Barbara, and we were alone now.  I fell for her in a skinny walk-in closet in the early morning.  What it was was beautiful in the state we were in, and we took our time finding sleep.  She slept in nothing but my flannel, and we woke up all dreamy-eyed and smoked spliffs on her porch swing, and laid on each other because we were just so comfortable.

It didn't last though.

I'll Believe in Anything: Napa

Seattle beacons as the taste for long distance driving sours.  A premonition; Taylor has obligations to the real world, and like that, visions of Interstate, Vodoo Donuts, the Needle... They become nothing more than hopeless pipe dreams, slipping through our hands like Spring sand through a sieve.

Two days left.  The constraints of academia and the weight on the mind are brooding, a storm cloud's looming overhead.  Let's get out of here.

Spring break was almost over and we hadn't done diddly-squat except surf and romp around Santa Cruz all week.  Not a total waste, but something of a hoe-hum time when everyone else was getting trashed and naked in Cancun or sacrificing body and soul to South Beach.  We had to do something.

Alone in the upstairs room, spliff in hand, BB and I devised with devilish smiles and maniacal laughter a solution to these spring break blues.  Earlier in the week we talked of driving to Eureka to proclaim, "Eureka!"  But the more we thought about it, the more it sounded stupid, and Eureka was way too far away, way up on the northern coast.  And then it dawned on us.  There was a valley.  A magical valley of slow living and healthy drinking where the wine sprung from the ground like oil in Texas and the sun set over rolling golden hills to the west.  It was less than a three hour drive away.  Napa.

And we did Napa right.

The first step is always the most important.  We step with class.  With tucked in button-downs and shoes that speak leather sophistication.  This isn't Santa Cruz anymore, Dorthy.  

Even Bernice was in a dress, and I can't say I remember any day since that I've seen her so, but by God, it happened.  All squished in that little pig-bull of an Explorer Sport, pressed tight with three in the back seat and some old familiar mix CD blowing tunes.

Driving east with the sun already sinking low behind us.  The city turns to country, sharp grey skyscrapers give way to warm rolling hills as traffic fades.  We leave any predispositions and concerns at the county line.

We passed the warm Welcome To Napa sign around six in the afternoon and found a cozy little ditch to park in over the bridge, on the outskirts of downtown.  Half the wine-tasting spots were closed or hosting some private party, and the rest were open until eight.  So we went down to a fun lookin' red brick bar called the Bounty Hunter on the other side of the bridge that we'd seen coming in.  Fun lookin' in the sense that there was a couple seated outside enjoying a whole grilled chicken with a beer can up its ass.  It garnered our interest, to say the very least. As we took it all in, we seemed to be missing something.  A familiar element whose particular absence was seeming to linger.

There's a curious lacking in our demographic, and like a social exhibit, we walk by child-filled moonbounces.  By private wine tasting parties.  By early evening dinners.  There's no one else our age. No one.  No twenty-year-olds.  No teenagers.  Just little kids, and old grown-ups, which is odd to me.  But what are you going to do, right?  Either got to dummy down, or live it up.  A moment's pause at a cigar shop then to purchase a few stogies.  

Sophistication?  Sophistication to a tee, mon frère. Ten bottles to go.

Walking over the bridge, it was discussed and agreed upon that we would each buy two bottles of wine tonight.  Why?  Why, because "It's fuckin' Napa," that's why.  It the catch-line of the evening.  Mike and Grant each bought bottles at the Bounty Hunter, a classy joint with an old stained-wood bar that wasn't so smooth, and when you put your hand to it you felt all the grooves and age and beer-spilled, fist-pounding moons it'd seen.  Bottles of wine adorned the walls like trophies in some Ivy League hall.

Bottle 1 is a voluptuous Cab purchased at our new favorite bar, where the chickens have beer cans shoved up their asses.   A Mexican beer of course, only the finest.  A brew worthy of a chickens rear end; Tecate.  Delectable.

Bottle 2 is a tart white purchased and consumed at that same Bounty Hunting bar.  We leave aglow with the inklings of intoxication.  The sun's long gone now as we navigate the embalming Napa night by clear star and street light.  

Next stop,

Bottle 3 is a bottle with Jenifree.  Wineologist by day, her tasting gallery typifies class.  She gives a Merlot, obviously, if only for diversification's sake.  Paul Giamatti's Sideways criticisms flash at the purchase, but by now we're past that.

Bottle 4 is greeted with a cordial invitation to all present company, Jenifree included.  We wait for her to close the shop, and she brings a few gems out from behind the bar.  I can now say with questioned certainty that the drink of the gods tastes better behind locked doors.  Thank you, Jenifree.

Doors still locked,

Bottle 5 is enjoyed with new friends.  Any hint of social discomfort is assuaged by the volume of fermented grapes in our system.  Life stories come pouring out as we discuss our options for the remainder of the night across the stained wood dining table now littered with bottles and gradually emptier glasses.  Jenifree tells us of a place that would be perfect for dinner, where the wine flows like the Euphrates, and good times and good food are sure to be had.

And back into the night.

Bottle 6 is purchased at El Rose, the restaurant of Jenifree's choosing.  She does not disappoint.  Never mind chickens with cans shoved up their behinds.  This was real food, so of course I get the ribs sandwich and another bottle.  

Bottle 7 is a nice white wine, I believe.  Or a red.  I don't know.  What I do know is that the taste is appetizing and the memory is continually growing fuzzy.  But spirits remain high and the laughter and conversation is at a fever pitch, so much so that the purchase of the next bottles slides by and into awaiting glasses.  

Bottle 8 is... ah yes, another dessert wine.  A rosé at El Rose as it were, and we stumble back onto Main Street, positively glowing from the night's events.  

We went back to the Bounty Hunter, but by that time they'd all but closed.  They did, however, sell us two bottles of wine for our efforts, and tell us that Joe's was still open around the corner.  We could drink our wine there.  But Jenifree was tired, and that was where she took her leave and smiled, "Goodnight!"

Bottle 9 is at Joe's with a pitcher of beer for good measure.  Everyone's already super drunk there anyways.  It's just about last call.  We flirt with the older ladies on the prowl, just for a spell before they're closing.  Maybe we're too drunk...

It was time to light those stogies. I'd never smoked cigars before, and no one told me not to inhale.  Suffice to say I was wrecked, so much more so than everybody else.  We were all lit, and stumbling back over the bridge and to the car.  Everybody leaned hard on the Explorer as I fumbled with the keys.

"No one's driving tonight," said Grant, and I agreed.  It was cold.  And we were tired. So I laid down over the center console in front, and the other four piled into the back and pulled the door down.  Five sweet, smiling sardines cradled away to a sway and a laugh that reeked red wine and still didn't feel the bite of spring nights in the North. We had one bottle left.

Bottle 10 is who the hell knows what. Who cares really?  It was enjoyed amongst old friends in close quarters.  The bottle's passing hands slower and slower, and some slow-tune mash of a mix CD rocked us soft to sleep.  We drift through the millions of far-off stars out the window in that the warm blackout.  

The morning wasn't so poetic.  The sun crept over the low hills early.  Sharp and straight into the car, and it was freezing.  My eyes opened and it wasn't even 7:00 yet.  The first thought to my mind wasn't a pretty one.  It was a head-splitting agony of one, and I opened the driver-side door to vom.  Blood red wine vomit with what looked familiarly like last night's dinner.  And if that one didn't, the second one sure as hell did.  What a waste.  Then I was so hungry, and it was driving time.  As in, we had to start driving pronto; but could we?  No one in the back was going to do it, so it was up to me.  


My legs were stiff.  My whole body, really.  And if it wasn't stiff, it hurt something god-awful, and my head still split like someone'd put an ax to it.  But hey, I was fresh off the vom, so we got some gas, I got a Gatorade, and we hit the road.  It wasn't ten minutes until everyone passed out again, and driving west towards the ocean had never been so rough.  Or so early or so hungover either.  In shotgun, BB would slip back into consciousness every now and again and keep me company for a few minutes before she dozed off once more.  We were in Santa Cruz at 10:00, dropping off the King Street kids first before sprinting home, so ready to fall asleep.  I made it to the living room where the sun hits the soft carpet, and you can smell the yard from the open back doors.  Lizzie pranced up through the long grass for a kiss before my eyes closed.

Halloween and Eggy-wegs

It was the end of October.  That time when the sun starts setting sooner and the days slip away much earlier than they should.  The trees sense this change more than most and utterly give up on life, and there's an abundance of leaves once green, now littering the ground and cracked and brown and dry like old paper snow in autumn.  To the old Christians, it was a day before a celebration of saints, a hallowed eve, a somber night when ghosts and spirits and demons flew free.

But now, presently, to us collegiate folk of the coastal woods, it was to be a day and night of make-up and costumes and debauchery.

[stop]

The day was tinted with a mild, sleepy excitement that grew through the morning.  After a Team Western breakfast of toasty-toast and scrambled eggy-wegs, we mixed up a batch of mimosas.  And then it was time to get into that ole' ultra-violence.  We threw a Clockwork Orange DVD in and were all smiles and English croons and champagne flutes up and down through the house finding our white pants and white shirts and suspenders and top hats and bowler hats.  And chains and canes and butt-beads and BB was doing the make-up.  She did us up proper.

To the bicycles then, and we flew in V-formation down Western hill; canes raised, laughing Kubrick laughs, all with our droog-ish attire clapping in the wind.  And licking my sides.  The sun hit just so that the skin wasn't cold and the air, crisp in the lungs.  Autumn are perfect there.  It was a wonderful feeling,  that perfect autumn day by bicycle, poised for all the mayhem and n'ere do-ery to be offered by such a hallowed eve.

They were ready for us at King St.  Our arrival was met with the house spewing out Pan and Hook and Tink and Wendy and Rufio and a band of Lost Boys.  Conor was already there as curious bottle of Siracha.  They were ready for us and the clash was epic and riotous and beautiful, full of pirate 'yarr's and droog terror.  Then those wicked, lost boys got to brewwin'.  The concoction was deplorable and altogether brilliant.  Pink Panty Droppers they were called, and they consisted of (by the tub-full): a 30-pack of beer (cheap beer), a liter of vodka (Vodka Of The Gods), a cyclinder full of Welch's Pink Lemonade concentrate, and three pink Crystal Lite packets.  That was it, but it was candy to the lips.  Sweet and tangy and like drinking long island iced teas by the red college-party-cupful.  The sun hadn't even peaked in the sky yet.  Grant Hook and Matty Pan were sword-fighting in the backyard as Cricket looked on, and Minh Tink fluttered about telling them to stop.  Mike as Rufio and Lost Boy Max were playing PPD-pong in the garage with two droogs as the rest of our lash-eyed deviant ensemble cheered and boozed and cried curses in English accents.

There was pizza in the fridge from Pizza My Heart (Matt delievered pizzas for them).  There was a tub of pink drunk liquid in the living room, and there were cases of beer scattered throughout the property.  With our two houses and company, we were thirty people, maybe more, and sunset snuck up on our booze-faced eyes of laughter.  It was the best of times.  And in the night the girls' house came, then everyone came. And that house at 310 King Street turned into a right-wretched vessel of depravity as the PPD tub was filled for a fourth time, and every nature of villain and hero and contemporary misfit flowed in and out of those doors.  The tub was filled a fifth time before I lost count and the memory went hazy.  I do remember this; there was an Indian squaw with red lipstick, and a colored leather band with a feather held down her soft blonde hair. But what boded most clearly in that mist for me were her eyes.  Pretty eyes that she closed slowly when she blinked to make them look prettier as she smiled at me.  The rest was a dream.  The kind of dream that's slipped away, but one never stops trying to remember.

Laura Lingers

It's a whisper.  A vague recollection of that time when her face swept by with each passing street sign and there wasn't a day gone by that I didn't think of her.

It's a feeling like running out of gas on one of those straight basin highways past the mountains.  Nothing but flat land and distant snow-capped backdrops in every direction.  And the check gauge light is on and the gas needle's resting in the red.  The end of this bittersweet ride's coming.  Of that I'm logically certain.  But that doesn't stop me from patting her on the dashboard and whispering, "Oh, we'll make it old gal."

It's just a whisper.  A hope.  A wishful thought of endurance.  But a car needs fuel to run, and soon enough the time comes, and although my foot's still pushed to the floor, the speedometer begins to decelerate, and the old gal's slipping despite wistful thoughts and whispers and hopes.  A cold bead of dread comes through my pores now.  And another and another.

70... 65... 55... 40...

"We've been sippin' on fumes too long my love."  But there's no answer.  There never has been, has there.

20... 15... 10...

Reality flickers.  I see the dime on the road that we're to stop on, where this ride goes no further, and I wish the sensation wasn't so numbing.  Do I sit and wait?  No.  Life's too fleeting for such follies.  She's let me go, and I'll leave her behind.  How it's off towards that peaky horizon, and I don't know what to do.

Shoulda filled her up when I had the chance.  It's just those five-year tanks are always so hard to gauge.  Yeah, the light was on, but who knows for how long.  I always think we're gonna make it to the next station. But now I squint and bring my hand above my eyes against the sun's glare.  There's not a station in sight to be seen.  Not even the miraging heat offers any glint.  There's nothing.  It's over.  It's been through for a hundred years now, a hundred miles, and I've just been dreaming I guess.

Quote of the Day: Redheads Rule The World

"Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people."


~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Amsterdam: Versgeperst

And the juice!  On, that heavenly nectar.  It came in rather thick glass bottles, kind of like something off a 1950's American milk truck, only in Holland.  There were still seeds in the strawberry and the kiwi, still hairs in the pineapples and mango.  There was a certain sweetness though, so tangy and rich that your lips would pucker at every sip trying to suck more flavor out.  It was agricultural ecstasy of the purest form.  Tulips be damned.  Holland's true magic lay in this humble elixir, opaque and bright with berries and fruit too fresh to be anything but Dutch.  We loved it so much we carried our water in the bottles for the rest of the trip, and it was a sad, sad day when those subtle fruit scents no longer baited the sense with every open.