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.
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.
