Thanksgiving on Easter

It was Easter in Santa Cruz.  What to do?  Well, we had a plan.

A dinner of epic proportions.  A Thanksgiving feast.  That's right, Thanksgiving.  Because who doesn't absolutely love Thanksgiving dinner?  It's definitely the best one.  The stuffing.  Oh, the stuffing!  If I could have stuffing for dinner every night I would.  But alas, it's only served on Thanksgiving, and I don't know why, and I don't know the first thing about cooking it.  Luckily, we lived with BB and Monster, two cooking machines when the occasion arises.  And arise it had.  It was to be Thanksgiving on Easter, and it was to be an ugly sweater dinner-party.  This was a caveat we were all remarkably ready for with a number of ugly sweaters already on hand.

[stop]

"Error.  I don't have an ugly sweater," I said.  "I only have handsome ones."

"Oh, I have the perfect sweater for you," said BB giggling. "It's perfect, trust me."

"Whew! Crisis averted!"  I always trusted BB when it came to clothes because her dark, drafty attic of a closet, with it's stolen store sale racks on wheels, was littered with them.  And the racks were packed.   And out of that cave of vintage fashion counter-culture she pulled me out a gem.  Something from the Salvation Army downtown I think she'd told me.  It was a white knitted sweater with little knitted ice cream cones on it.  Awesomely ugly, almost to the point of coming full circle and being the most epic sweater ever.  "Haha, yes!  BB, your an ugly sweater life-saver!"

"And don't I know it," she said.  And like that she was busy in the kitchen, again, with Monster making all sorts of Thanksgiving favorites and baking pies.  And me and Boom just got high.  Spliff high, so that the manly task of moving couches and tables around to fit our two huge houses was a bit more of an adventure than a chore, and more manlier still with some thuggish-ruggish Gang Starr and Andre Nikatina beating and rhyming in the background.  The nice thing (not really nice, per se, but at the very least convenient) about living in a big house with a bunch of people was that there was a silly excess of certain furnitures.  Boom and I put our two dining tables together end-to-end in the living room parallel to the one old love-seat we still kept in the house, which was handy because the one thing we were short on was chairs.  Chairs one could actually sit in without breaking anyways; we only had about four.  So we also swung around the lower stadium-seating couch to face the love-seat across the table.  We did the same with Lizzie's favorite lazy boy that always swallowed you whole and a random ottoman as well, so that the seating arrangements were quite eclectic to say the least.  But it looked super comfortable.

"That ought-a do it right?"

"Buhh... I think," said Boom.  He had on a not-quite-white, thick knitted pull-over with a set of big, off-centered buttons on the collar.  Super ugly.  "Hey BB!  Get your lady-boy ass out here and tell us if you think we'll all fit at this table!  You too, Monst!"  So they dropped their mixers and their mashers and came out to see our delve into the world of college interior design.

"Ooo... cozy," said Monster.  She was wearing a glittery American flag sweater.  It was a little short and certainly tacky enough to work for the occasion.

"Hmm, it might be a little tight, but we'll probably all be able to squeeze in," BB told us after looking it over seriously, having counted the spaces to herself.  Her sweater looked maybe twenty years old and was black and velvety with leafy gold and definitely ugly.

"Awesome!  That's good enough for me," concluded Boom.  "Hazzah!"

"Hazzah!" I said and we all cracked beers, and Boom packed himself a bowl of hearty sorcery in the ole' bong-a-roo for his efforts.

[stop]

Both the D's, Dillon and Dylan, had gone with Kam to Trader Joe's for some cheap wine, but when they came back they were also toting some Glenlivet.  "We made a stop by U-Sav, nickaa," Dylan said, holding it high.  Wicked.

"Put on your sweaters, idiots!"

"Yeah!  What Boom said!"  That was BB.  "And D-hole come here.  We're straightening your hair."

"What?! No! Fuck that."

"Please?"

Dillion sighed heavy, but agreed.  His hair was definitely over a foot long from the bet he had going with Matty Campbell over at King Street.  It was a simple bet: first person to cut their hair gets dangly nipple piercings.  "Ok, FINE. Just let me get my sweater first."  His sweater was actually a black turtleneck.  Nothing flashy.  He might've looked a little smart in it if he didn't look so much like a transvestite hooker after Monster and BB were done straightening his hair.  Maybe because Monster also curled it.  Definitely ugly.

The other Dylan, D-buns, was rockin' a poo-colored striped one, and Kam had a deep-V black, red, and white houndstooth one.  More of a sweater-vest than than a true sweater over turtleneck with stripes of black and aquamarine.  Ugly to a tee.  Dinner was pretty much ready, so we set the table.  It was all paper plates and plastic silverware.  And dixie cups for the wine.  Classy.  Then we were just waiting for King Street, those lackadaisical bastards.  They showed up with a surprise.

"You sluts! Where are your sweaters?!"  BB was beer-drunk livid, but not really.

"Whoa easy lady-boy," Mike held his hands up innocently, then spotted Dillion.  "Wait.  Scratch that.  Dillion is definitely the king of all the lady-boys tonight.  Or is it queen..."

"Flannels?  Really?"  It was Monster's disapproving Mom face.  She wore it well, even at eighteen.  What a baby.

"At least we all have flannels on.  And also we couldn't find any sweaters, much less ugly ones.  And we also didn't really look for any.  But hey, flannels work right?  So we can tell who's from each house easier," said Grant.  BB was giving him the disapproving Mom face as well.

"I got a sweater!" shouted Sasha awkwardly, another freshman baby.  Taylor's girlfriend.

"Woo! Team sweater! Good job, Sash," said Boom.  "The rest of you are a bunch of friggin' idiots!"  Even Lizzy had a little San Diego Chargers puppy sweater.

"Yeah, what the hell, Sasha.  No flannel?" Taylor said it trying to be serious.

"But I thought..."  But none of that mattered really because none of us really cared.  We were about to chomp on an awesome Thanksgiving feast on Easter Sunday, and we all looked hilarious sprawled out around the two tables, drinking wine like water.

The food hadn't been served yet and Dillion said, "Before we eat, guys, I've got a little song I wrote that I'm gonna play for you right meow," and he picked up his guitar and sat on a high stool at the head of the table.

"You look like a trannie kook, brah." It was Matty.

"I heard that," said Dillion.  "Somebody straighten hippy-fagboy's hair over there."

"Haha! Yay!" BB and Monster jumped to their feet and grabbed the straightener and the curling iron.

"Huh?  Ah, fack," said Matty.

Dillon interjected. "Wait.  After I play this song."

"After dinner?" suggested Matty.  And so it was.  We were all hungry anyways, and turned our feasting eyes towards Dillon as he shifted on his stool.

"Dude, Dillon, don't be nervous.  You look so pretty." said other Dylan.

"It's gotta be the hair-cut," I said.

So Dillon played his song, and it was a sweet, silly one about all the folks living under that roof on Western.  Quite poignantly, to the tune of "The House of the Rising Sun".

There was a house in Santa Cruz, and they called it 440 Western
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God, I know I've won


Count Boom he was a great sorcerer, he smoked up all of the green
And he's been the culprit of married misery, but that don't stop his sorcery 
And then there's that little lady-body, she don't shower during finals week
And don't let her fool you because she's a skanky bogen, and quite the Asian sneak


Dylan O'Carroll with two r's and two l's, thank you for teaching me the guitar
Your dog is a whore, and your car, a hoopdy, but you're a freakin' cool redhead so "har"
Nickse you are one hairy fuck, you fucking idiot
The first and only one to go 9-5, glad I am not


But we can't forget about the little redheaded freshman, she pissed in our lady boy's bed
She says she lives rather simply, in the house called 440
He lazier than that whore Lizzy, fairer than the fairest fair-weather surfer
He's always smoking and COD to play, because that shit's his forte



There was a house in Santa Cruz, and they called it 440 Western
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God, I know I've won


[stop]

The applause was joyous and the song riddled with laughter.  Then we feasted.  We stuffed our gullets full of stuffing and gravied mashed potatoes and cranberry pudding and some tasty cheese-covered veggies and wine wine wine.  And beer.  And in the end, of course, Glenlivet.  With vanilla ice cream and pumpkin pie.

"Now close your eyes and open your mouth," Taylor said to Max.

"What?  Uh, no."

"C'mon just do it.  Don't be a bitch."  Taylor had a can of whipped cream in one hand and gave it a good shake.

"Really, man??  Ok, fine.  This one's for all the ladies."  He winked and tilted back his head and Taylor shot down and creamed him with some whip until his mouth was full and everyone was laughing.  It took a couple seconds for him to suck it all down, choking more than once on the aerated sugar.  "All right.  Matt's turn."

"What?"

"And wasn't someone supposed to straighten your hair?"

"What?! Oh, gah damnit."  Matt was in for it now.  He got creamed and BB and Monster straightened his hair out proper and braided it for good measure while Minh rolled a spliff.  Two times so we all got high before the family portraits in front of the fireplace.  First the Western sweaters, then the King Street flannels.

Amsterdam: Our Friend Minh

"Minh's here!"

"Yes!"  Minh's been coming for weeks now, and now she's finally here, in the city we should of course be destined to rendezvous in.  Lovely Amsterdam on a summer afternoon.  By the canals.  Minh's with her cousins, and we all come prepared.  Prepared to sit in the grass and smoke, that is, with fresh tall cans and snacks as well.  We lock our red rental bikes to some fancy cast-iron fencing on a bridge when we run into them.

It's a collision of stoned, high love friends.  She's been to Switzerland and she's been to London, and we'd been to everywhere too and now she's here with us again and we're here with her.  It's a day back in Santa Cruz.  Back at the King Street house, lounging around in the grass.  We talk and laugh, as always, travail-telling, and it's always funny and smiling's the routine and the happiest disposition, so we smile. We're all prettier when we smile, even when one's pretty to begin with.  And pretty girls are just the prettiest things when their smiles are pretty.  Minh's is the prettiest.  With her cute bowl-cut bangs cut long and her straight black hair, and her striped, Dutch sailor shirt.  She went with black stripes.  Not because she's evil, but because she values inner beauty.  She believes in the smile inside.  She's so bubbly and refreshing, but sometimes you'd never know it with her straight-lipped pensive expressions.  They're poetic though, like a Robert Frost slew of words about the cold winter.  She's loves everybody and everybody loves her.  She's our favorite little Asian stoner, and the prettiest one too.  She know all our secrets.  "So how's it been?!" she asks us. "You know, the whole thing.  You guys've been out here for two months now!  That's nuts!"

"Tell me about it," I say.  "It's been a bumpy fuckin' ride."

"Yeah, in the best way though," says Grant.  "It's been crazy and awesome. Crazy awesome."

"Yes, yes it has.  In varying degrees of both."  We tell her all about it.  And she sits and listens and the weed's kicking in now so our hands and our faces become more animated and the whole thing, in my head, sounds like a knight's quest for that holy unattainable.  Whether we've actually attained anything is up to question sure, but Minh's being here now, her presence and that reminder of the coast we left back in July, it's comforting.  But also, it gives the feeling to me that we've done something over here.  Or maybe that's wishful thinking and I'm just really high.  It's not necessarily a bad thing.  We all are.

The clouds hang low and gray for the most part, but occasionally, every so often, sunshine finds that part in the clouds and punches on through for those precious moments sprawling, Santa Cruz high by the Dutch canals of Amsterdam.  It's all coming together, I feel like.  We've made it full circle.  Back in the Dam, plus two.  And the place seems so familiar now.  We all grab bikes and coast towards the harbor, musing at the parade.  There's hundreds of little skiffs of all fashions clugging down the way, and tall stately ones too, clogging the wide canals.  It's the boat festival today.  It comes around only every five years and we've skipped and silly-ed our ways right into it.  On a serene Saturday.  A something special.  Minh fits right in.

Graduation

It was the middle of June and the end of an era, and as I put my pencil down and creased my blue book shut and shuffled past and between knees to the aisle to turn it in, a part of me felt it, that giddy sense, although I didn't know exactly what it was yet.  In the moment it felt good.    Like crossing the finish line, in whatever place, just happy to be finished with it.  It tasted like a warm change of the seasons, and I smiled because I was happy.  I felt accomplished, even if the last of it wasn't my best work.  But it was enough, and that was good enough for me, and crossing the threshold of the door to the lecture hall I yelled a rebel "Woo!" as loud as my lungs dared.

It was my first step past formal education, and the strange gravity of the moment hadn't quite caught me.  I just walked to my bike where it always was, but at a tad faster pace than usual.  Light on the toes so my heels didn't touch.  The joy was bubbling, rising like the head of beer from a freshly tapped keg pint.  That end marked the beginning of a celebration.  The last day of finals; it was a Friday and by the afternoon everyone was done and racing to get drunk.  Party at the girls' house.  Beer pong.  Spliffs.  Burgers on the grill.  Friends by the dozen.  Oh, and pot brownies.  The usual.  Just another sun-soaked Santa Cruz day that took forever to fade to twilight, and when it finally did, we were all too drunk to care and baked out of our gourds from those dang brown-highs.  Mike passed out in the house.  "The brownies... they've won," he slurred just before the lights went out.  They always do because I don't remember much after that either.  Something was different, but it all felt the same.  Like the end to every other quarter, the start to every other summer.  Except there'd be no returning back for classes in the fall.  I'd always seen life as a set of steps, I think.  After one comes the other, and with each step that thing I was stepping towards got a little bit closer. But when there's no more steps, and the landing's under my feet, the open door before me, I walk through, sure, but what the hell's inside?  Adult life?  Maybe, but what's that?

"Your an adult now," my father said to me before the ceremony.  "You better start acting like one."

"Okay."  Whatever that means.  And I rushed down the steps from the parking lot to the Cowell quad to join the rest of my graduating class.  If it wasn't for the silly hats, we'd have looked like a giant horde of extras for a Harry Potter sequel in those stupid robes.  It was the middle of summer in California, sunny and seventy-three degrees, and they had us all in black ankle-length robes.  "Probably some adult's idea," I thought to myself as we walked down in line to take our seats in the middle of the East Field.  Even with nothing but shorts and a tank-top on underneath, my balls were sweating bullets while we sat waiting there.  It was from the heat, and not of the moment, as there wasn't much gravity to the situation.  At least not to me anyways.  There were a few speeches grasping at significance and we all clapped politely, just wanting it to be over already.  I could see Monster and BB, both wasted already, biting at the bit to bang the pots and pans they'd brought, and when the time finally came and I handed the slip of paper with my name on it to the lady at the foot of the stage, I blacked out.  I just remember hearing "George Brian Absher the Third" and chuckling quickly at "the Third" before I walked up there and apparently shook someone's hand and he handed me a roll of paper.  But I didn't remember it.  It was "the third" then a tut to myself and flash, I was back in my seat, somehow next to Callan.  I didn't even hear the pots for me.  But those two girls were both beaming from the crowd, and I was giddy inside.  So much so that I threw my hat prematurely before the final words.  And well, sometimes that happens.  With the ceremony done, it was to be another rager at the King Street house, one more blow-out, with everyone's parents this time and catered food.  To drink, Pink Panty Droppers of course, and my mind didn't clear 'til the morning.  I rolled over and the sun was beating from the window.  The day felt new, and it felt like mine so I opened my laptop and wrote her a letter:


My Dearest Laura,


I woke up today and thought to myself, "Brian, you just finished college. You know who would appreciate that, and who you coincidentally haven't talk to in a coon's age? Forrest Whitaker." And then I chuckled giddily and rolled around my bunk for a moment thinking of all the people who might find my graduation noteworthy. In the whirlwind of names that ensued, I managed to hold onto yours and an inkling remembrance of our moments past. And so it is in that mindset, that I decided to cordially inquire, 


"Hey, what's up? Tell me about your life, and descriptively so. I don't care the method, be it by post or by phone call. And you can call whenever as I haven't the slightest idea of what to do all day except bask in the ephemeral sunlight of my success, and maybe laugh a bit more. Evil laughs: MUHAHAHAHAHA. Waterfall laughs: AHHhahahaha... AHHHHHHhahahaha... And of course pirate laughs: har har har."


Then maybe someday - albeit it will probably be a someday not in the near future - we can meet up again, perhaps in Paris, take a seat outside at some corner cafe on la rue de such-and-such and talk about the good old days and our marked randomness at which point this letter and just maybe the ensuing conversation will come up. And then we might smoke a spliff, might take a chance. Who knows.


Sincerely yours,
Brian

Send.

Amsterdam: Two Stages One Night

"Ok, guys.  We're going out tonight," Katinka tells us.  "Paradisio."

"Yeah!"  

"ParadisiO!"

"How much?!"

"It's only eight euros," she says.

"Eight euros!? That's a deal, that's a steal!"

"We're in.  Right?"

"Yup."

"Duh."

Fuck it, why not.  Just one more spliff before we hit the road, so we show up fashionably in the middle of things.  Tickets, then it's to the stage that Billy Idol'd performed on.  Except now there's no Billy and the lights are cool and rhythmic and the DJ's playing something dance-y.  Something minimalist-y, and edgy and dirty at the same time.  And it's not old farts nodding heads to an old legend tonight.  It's all hot-skinned, wasted youths, grinding and grabbing, holding and drunkenly having of everything and one another.  It's daring.  And it's what we think of  when we think of a dance club.  It's the dance club.  In the middle of Amsterdam in the middle of Holland, the land of house DJs.  And we dance.  We dance like it's what we've been doing for the past two months because it is, and our bodies don't tire through the night.  They just keep moving.  

In the middle of the floor there's a tiny little mini stage with girls dancing all sexy-like on it.  It's not so much a stage as it is a square,  four-table-sized box, painted and made of wood, but the girls are dancing on it all the same.  About three of them (it's dark, and I think one might be a dude), but I guess there's room for many more because Katinka jumps up onto it and pulls us up too, each one of us, by the hand.  And so we're there floating up above the crowd, dance battling the DJ, or at least think we were at times.  He's got better things to do apparently, which sits (or dances) well with me, I must say.  He is killing it, and we dance so it looks like the stage is our own, hands in motion, touching our faces and bodies, and shooting from the hip, and raining down from above and snorkeling and sprinkler-ing all over the damned place.  Either up on the mini stage or jumping down to the floor, but always jumping back up for a little last twist and snap.  One last shake before jumping off.  "There's still another stage!"  yells Katinka over the slippery electro.  

"Oh, shet! Let's go!"

"Where we goin'?!"

"The other stage!"  We're dance-talking.  It's when you talk (or yell) when your dancing because you just can't stop.

"There's another stage!?"

"Yeah, silly!"

"Follow me!" yells Katinka, and she grabs our hands and our faces and dances us out.  To the lobby, just between stages.  But the place is deafening, so quiet in comparison that I instinctively yawn to try to pop my ears.  "Are you tired!?" she yells, but she yells it loud and it's ripe for laughter.  

I smile, yelling "No!" before whispering, "Just deaf."  And we all laugh because we just don't care as we storm the other stage.  It's just as dirty, just smaller so the bodies dance closer, and introductions were with fierce eyes.  Fierce eyes, then sultry eyes, then a questioning finger down my chest to my belt.  Her finger follows and she pulls me in.  Dutch girls, I love them.  She turns to face away and holds my hands running down her body, and arcs back to kiss my cheek with the little tip of her tongue, so I'll find it.  Of course I find it, why, she make's it so easy. And, well you know, I fucking love making out with girls on the dance flow.  Who doesn't?

But alas, there's always that tap on the shoulder, at least in Europe.  "Hey, we're going to the other stage!  More space to dance!"

"But..." Fuck, ok.  "I'm coming!"  So I squeeze her hips and kiss her neck good-bye and then her lips.  There's always more girls to dance with, I know it.  And I'm not one to split the herd.  Mostly because I'd loose myself too easily, like that little elephant in the African dust-storms before the flood.  Be wise, I always tell myself, you have no phone.  I turn to go, "Good-bye, love."

"Hey let's go dance on that mini stage again!"

"Yeah!"  It's a night of dancing, the last night we dance before going back, hopping over to London and back over to the States and reality.  So we dance dances to exhaustion, until we can't dance anymore.  And Katinka's right there with us.  I'm going to miss this place.

They Need Their Winter Jazz

I'm a son of LA, born and raised.  This city hasn't taught me everything.  Hardly.  Just all the difference-makers, all the game changers.  The important things, you know?  Like playing jazz to your plants if they're looking sad.  It's such small circumstances sometimes that carry the weight of depth that we've been looking for.  They plant me so that these short roots of mine have something to hold onto.

Then that's were suddenly I find myself.  Amidst concrete assumptions in the winter's warm LA sun, set sprawled on Sacha's cozy porch on the beach.  Spliffed and sipping on Pabst's.  Surfed out and lounging with my shades on, old jazzy tunes crooning to the garden of potted plants, to the cacti and the ferns and the herbs, the dozens of them.  A leaf here and a leaf there is browning or has been chomped on. 

"Maybe it's the caterpillars," I say.

"Maybe..."  Sacha's doubtful.  "Oh! You know what it might be?  They need their jazz!"

"What?"

"Their jazz! I play them jazz music once a week," she says, and in a flash there's a boombox and Sacha's jazzPod and after a minute or so I think she's right.  That jazz soothes the soul.  It makes the present worth noticing, and I fear it's a thing not noticed enough.  Spanks, Sacha. 

Thanks.  You make LA home to me.

[closing time]

Cinco de Molly

It was two weeks after Coachella.  We were all walking down from the East Field - me, BB, Monster and the King street kids - after a softball game.  Max said it, but we were all thinking it.  I know I was at least.  "Dude, when are we gonna get down on some molly again?"

"Right?" I said.

"Coachella was two weeks ago guys, geez," BB laughed in retort.

"What's your point."

Mike stepped in, "Yeah, I'd like to know where you're going with this, Beebs."

"Yeah!  What're you getting at?" I said.

"Haven't you guys done enough drugs yet?" she pried.

"Psh, no.  Not nearly enough."

"Not yet, anyways."

"And it's not like we're doing molly every weekend," I said (except, of course, when we did for that little stretch in February).

"Oh, okay.  Whatever you say."  She wasn't buying it, but that wasn't important.  What was important was figuring out some excuse to go wild on molly.  And soonish.

"Are there any holidays coming up?" asked Max.

"Cinco de Mayo's a week or two away," chimed Monster.

And like that a little light bulb went "ding" above my head.  "You mean Cinco de Molly?" I said.

Mike and Max loved it.  "Epic," Mike laughed.

"You guys are ridiculous."  But BB was smiling when she said it.  Smiling and shaking her head.

"You love it."  So it was settled, and the thought of what Cinco de Molly might entail tickled the rest of the way to the car.  Over the next week, word of the festivities spread like a forest wildfire and I remember never being more excited for the fifth of May to come.  It came with a warm wind of desirous pleasure that blew all sorts in through the doors of the girls' house on Bay and California.  Turns out, people really like parties that imply prolific drug use, because holy fuck, it was a wild one.  It was a night in the red with the pedal down to the floorboards on that racetrack towards graduation, to that finish line we never wanted to cross, but approached all the faster.  Time sprints by when you're in the now.  On May 5th, 2010 nothing else existed, Coachella was a great dream in the mind's eye, the one that came to with Tiesto booming on the house speakers, when the mind's was the only eye open.  And the future was that misty moor we all turned our backs to when we danced.  To soft touching and reckless abandon, we danced, like driving with your eyes closed.  For the simple, awesome, skin-tingling pleasure, we danced.  And the house, filled with dreamers, danced with us, whether we knew them or not.  It was a packed stable that night and all had the same taste on their tongues.  That bitter tang on the fifth of May, that Cinco de Molly.  Something of an acquired taste it was that we all now fantasized about.  A love amongst friends that few really have.  That's where one finds the most comfort, and when the open, free love is most fun.  And dirty.

"Do you have any Molly?"

"Why, yes.  Yes, I do in fact."

She bit her lip on que, "Come to the bathroom with me then."  She looked like sex in bleached hair and leopard print as she turned and I followed.  "I don't have any money to give you for it, but I just need a little more, I think."

"Oh, no..."  I was so high I didn't care.  Didn't even bother to ask her name.  She was just the girl that knew how to whisper in my ear.  She pulled me in and I turned to lock the door shut.  When I turned back she was standing ever so upright, so it looked like she was on tippy-toes, there, staring at me with both hands leaning back on the sink behind her.  Sexy.  Not pretty; hot.  And so dirty.

And as I fiddled in my pocket for the little baggie of capsules, she came slowly towards me, never looking away.  Eyeing me, it felt, like a piece of meat.  Like USDA choice.  Sure, there was a certain depravity to it, but under that warm blanket of molly, it was the sort of depravity that felt deliciously good.

There were only four left, and when I held one out, her hands didn't go for it, but for me, and she wrapped her mouth around my two fingers outstretched, thumb and pointer, and tongued it down her throat.  Then she was kissing me without a second's pause.  Beautifully seductive.  Kissing for is one of those few things that can slap me in the face and engage the senses like cranking he volume knob so high the speakers blast out.  And she was a good kisser, which is to say she put her whole self into it and didn't hold anything back.  Still, she kissed silky smooth, in one smooth motion.  A motion that pushed me back into the light switches so that the room went dark, but only for a moment for I shifted a little and another switch flicked on.

"Whoa."  It wasn't the ceiling light this time, it was the ones above the mirror and the sink.  They stayed for a second, but then began to strobe like there was a short in the circuit that was skipping.  Madame Sexfox pulled away, startled, then laughed, smiling at me with her hands on my chest.  They slid up and ran hard through my hair, pulling slightly.  Such a sensational feeling it was.

"Whoa," she whispered close and kissed me.  "I feel like I owe you a lap dance," she said and before I knew it, I was sitting on the toilet.  She was dancing between my legs in the broken strobing bathroom light while Tiesto was thumping through the thin walls from the living room outside.  I'd all but forgotten about the party out there though.  She'd whipped off her shirt mid-dancing, and undid her bra right in my face slow and grinding-like.  She was a grinder.  A straddling grinder, and I was her Chief Crazy Horse.  And I don't know how long that went on for because, frankly, time wasn't something worth noting in the moment.  It was an eternity in the dark as the strobe turned dancing to still-frame robot.  Sex robot with my shirt off.

[stop]

T'was then, in that wonderful dirty forever of electro fervor that she pulled me up again and into her by my hips and then into the door hard.  The synapses in my mind must've been exploding, the lights still strobing and her touch still strong on my skin.  Like a chain of volcanic atolls on the Pacific Rim all shooting off at once and to that magnitude.  A shift, plates breaking away tectonically, and she broke away and opened the door.  "Thanks for the Molly," she said with a devilish smile and she kissed me once more, sucking the breath out.

"Thank you." I said.

And like that, she disappeared into the romping crowd in the living room and I'd have followed her, but she was so fast and I, dazed by this new reality outside the bathroom, just stood there for a few seconds too long with my shirt off before I slipped back into the strobe to grab it and turn the lights off.  Did I just hallucinate that?  What the fuck just happened in there?  It's strange to me how quickly questioning queries take a forgotten back seat in my thoughts when the present living's so damned exciting.  So fulfilling in the sense that it fills the void where something's always been missing for me, for however long.  And yeah, the molly was definitely crutching me into it.  So was the Justice pushing its Cross against the walls and against my chest and tickling the hairs on my arms through the heavy house speakers.  Wild.  I had a firm hold, but this horse was a runner.

I'm no fucking Clydesdale, is what I mean.  It's a mustang spirit in me.  An untamed, impassioned stallion that's not in the manner of being tied down and saddled.  I feel lucky sometimes that I'm always riding then, even if it's bareback.  See, bareback's rough on the body.  It hurts after a while, but it makes you strong, I guess.  Or maybe I'll just keep telling myself that.  And why not.  I'm in the habit of doing everything I can until I can't anymore.

And that "can't" hadn't come yet.  It wasn't even close, so I danced at a gallop and when I locked eyes with another girl I gave her a growl and a clawed hand like a kitten paw.  She kitten pawed back and we made some fun for ourselves in the garage while no one was looking.  It was a short-lived love, a puppy-dog kitten sort of thing and for some reason it was so easy.  It was an attraction in her eyes when I looked at her close.  So I put it in my eyes as well even if it wasn't inside me.  She was pretty too, and sex-bodied and wore just under her skin that soft-spoken nervousness that I find so precious.  But someone else was on my mind, and I've always hated that trite, conflicting set of circumstances.  Especially since she was there with her new boyfriend.  She was in the backyard, I'd seen her.  And she'd seen me and smiled and parted her lips as if she'd had something special to say, but she'd lost it.  "Hey, meow."

"Oh hey, meow," I'd smiled back, not looking at her, but over her shoulder or down at my shoes, for I feared those steel blue eyes then, more than the short, stocky bro-dude beside her.  They'd have taken me if I looked.  I'd known it.  Just a sideways glance would've been enough.  And now I felt bad for those yearning brown eyes before me.  They were big brown doe eyes above light freckles, and I didn't want to hurt them in that garage, but I had to go.

Amsterdam: The Starters

No money, just weed.  It's a hell of a way to live in Amsterdam.  Especially on a Saturday night.  On this, our last night, for tomorrow we're ferrying back to England.  Let's live it up and to the fullest, and it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish because I don't have any euro in my pocket or to my name.  And according to the owe-board, I still owe Grant some money, and so does Max.  Regardless, the Red Light District explodes as soon as the sky begins to darken, which is pretty late actually, but we're on Nordic time now.  We're used to it, it's like riding a bike.  A bike with no hands into a canal-water reflected, red-lit mature wonderland.  And we're high as kites, or the tops of the main masts from the festival.  What a lovely strange place to wander.

[stop]

"Dude, this is way better than last time," says Max.

"Yeah, dude."  I say it without thinking because my stoned head is on a swivel as we walk the main stretch by the canal.  The windows are all bordered in neon-red and the bodies dancing in the lines are all under black-light as well so the lingerie they have on, mostly white, glows with an unnatural fluorescent that attracts the male eye like flies to a bug zapper, and they don't stop moving.  Everyone slows their pace for each window and if the girl grabs your glance and looks you square and you look her back she points to you and beckons and grinds on her little window stage even harder.  It's not the Red Light District we'd chanced upon that Sunday before the World Cup.  No, sir.  It's Saturday night and the starters are out.  A few of the windows look like they're housing Victoria's Secret models.  And it's been a while since that Roman stairwell so my loins are restless.  Fuck.  Let's just do this.  Oh, wait.  That's right, I'm broke.  Well... Fuck.

"It wasn't like this last time?" asks Mike.

"Ha. Oh, not even close mang," says Grant.  "Last time we were here was Sunday morning and it was all haggard old ladies sittin' on chairs smoking cigarettes.  Ugh."  He throws a whole body shiver in for good measure.

"Ew."

"Yeah, not cool."

"And did you see that last one?  She was a ten, easy.  Hell, an eleven even."  Max is walking open-mouthed and I'm not sure if he realizes it.

"I know right?"  And I clench my jaw instinctively to make sure I'm not drooling.  It's the first time I can ever remember in my mind that paying a woman to have sex with me sounded remarkably appealing.  I guess there's a certain inevitable intrigue that comes natural with this caliber of prostitute.  "How much do you think she is?"

Mike interjects, "Boom said when he was here they bargained a girl down to fifty bucks, but then no one went for it and she charged the next guy - some old man - two hundred."

"Hmm... Fifty buck, huh?"  That's fifty more dollars than I have to my name right now.  Actually, including the debt to Grant, it's more like a hundred fifty more.

"I don't know guys," says Grant.  "I would never."

"Well, duh.  You have a girlfriend.  And so do you Max.  But not ever?" asks Mike.

"Psh, no.  I don't need to pay a girl to have sex with me."

"Yeah, neither do I," I say.  "But that's not the point."

"What is the point?"

"The point is - well first off, if you think you're not paying for sex when you're dating someone then you need to open your eyes."

"What!?"  Max is a little taken aback.

"Dude, please.  How many times have you paid for dinner.  Or for a movie.  Or for presents or little special somethings."

Max cocks his head thinking, "Eh.  Yeah, ok."

"But it's not the same man," says Grant.  "I like doing those things.  I want to."

We all lean back on one of the bridges crossing the canal, one of the main ones in the middle with red lights tracing the railings.  And from the middle, the top of the arc, we can see the whole scene.  "You're telling me they don't want to?"  I say with a wave of my hand towards the nearest cluster of bug-eyed guys mind-fucking one of the most physically beautiful women, let alone prostitutes I've ever seen.  She can't be much older than us.  "They want to so bad."

"Ok, but it's different," Grant says.

"Ok, but I totally would though," I say.  "If for nothing else than the experience of it.  Think about it man.  That girl's sex skills are out of this world, without a doubt.  She's better at sex than anyone we know, anyone we'll ever date - well, unless one of ends up dating a hooker, I suppose.  Just from sheer experience though."

"I bet she's got a couple tricks up her sleeve too," says Max in a far off distant way.  He's lit another spliff, the last one in fact, and he passes it round saying, "Make it count, boys.  There ain't no more weed left."

"Ok, scatter-brain Jane," says Mike taking a hit in deep.

"Who you calling Jane?!"

"Dude, I bet whenever she wants, when she's over it, she can just twist it a certain way and bang, game over and you're out the door."

"Wow.  That's insane."

"Dude.  Imagine that," says Mike acting it out.  "Bangin' bangin' bangin'.  'Oh, this guys gross.'  Click."  He twists his hips.  "Spluge.  'That'll be two hundred dollars.'"  And we all laugh, and for a while we can't stop because the weed's so good.

"Oh, man..." I'm catching my breath.  We all are.  "I'd get blitzed on whiskey first then.  Make her work for it, so it's not just a bang-and-out."

"Now that's a plan," says Max.  But it's all just hypothetical.  A what-if.  Because none of us are going to shell out cash for hookers at this point.  Hell, we can't even afford to go to a sex show.  They're just twenty euros, and I hear those are ridiculous.  We just watch the ebb and flow from the bridge for a while, running English, stoned commentary, and after the last spliff's done we just stroll around, eye-flirting with the pretty ones, the beautiful ones.  We walk down the skinny streets and see a couple get dragged into a room for a three-way.  The couple's hesitant asking all sorts of technical questions.  "Well, are we doing this or not," says the whore. "Are you going to keep asking questions or am I going to fuck you both."   And she shuts the door behind them.  Cha-ching.

What a scene.  What a last Holland night.  Katinka's watching a Queens of the Stone Age concert on the TV when we get back (they're ah-mazing), and we sit and watch for a spell before passing out.  I'm only dreaming when my eyes close.

Barcelona: At Night, Rambla e Marina, Tunnel Vision

"We're all in agreeance then?"

"Well, yeah.  Obviously."

"Whew.  That's good." It's to Mitsuwa then!  Once more, to all-you-can-eat Mediterranean seafood and raging out in the city.  The best ten euros I could possibly ever spend, those crab legs, the clams, the oysters, the lobster tails, the ocean snails, the fried things, the raw things, and water by the jarra.  Crustaceans by the plateful(s).  Our stomachs are bottomless garbage disposals sure, but they still know the grace of it.  Remembering all too painfully the days of the south of France, and those nights outside living for just the simple things.  For the dancing and the booze and the high of it all or the trying to get there.  And then the food, and in that order.  Floating around seventy kilograms on the scale at Elsabeth's place.  I'll eat my face off now while I have the chance, and treasure every moment of it.  We all do.  We take our time with it though, and after two hours of the slow grind, euphoric at times, that now satiable feeling of stomach stretching's creeping up, and it's time for a few desserts.  There's always time for desserts, especially when the night is so young and the everything is so compris.  Fresh fruit slices and ice creams scoops.  And then cigarettes in the front lounge and we walk a familiar fast traveler-walk down to La Rambla in the warm twelve o'clock night and the orange street glow.  Beer's cheap at the liquor store, so is the carton-ed wine, and we all drink tall cans on the go.  The fast walk feels like a lazy jog, something short of a skip, from the darting across streets past every block without stopping, only slowing for small Spanish cars that fly by.  The cramping's worth it, I think.  My sides don't think so though, and when we get to the top of La Rambla, to the cool stone Plaza Catalonia by the metro, they pinch hard.  Looking down it's length to the marina, my breaths are sharp and short, and I smile at the give and take of our feasting rampage.  After this long, we've maybe turned to wild, traveling pack animals, always on the move, and the feeling's short-lived. And the cross-town jaunts are nothing for these sets of paws worn to pay.

The nights are always perfect in summer Barcelona.  The kind that almost feel too hot in the one nice button down I have with me.  Almost.  Almost because it's perfect, which is lucky because we were looking to have one of those crazy, wild, nice button down nights tonight.  And we really don't clean up half bad, which is to mean we look good.  Bueno.  Muy bueno.  And we're strolling down La Rambla, still not stumbling.  Our tolerance is sailorly, so there's always another beer to be had, or bottle or carton of wine to be cracked, and before we know it we're at the other end, legs dangling off the edge over the marina, drinking with a bunch of East Coast Americans, relaxing in the assumed English.  We get smashed by the docks as Christopher Columbus looks on, pointing us back to our country disapprovingly.  But who cares?  No one else surely does, the whole place is bustling and comfortably spread out so you just see people from afar mostly.

Shoot the shit with these other Americans, do it.  "Where you guys from?" they ask.

"California." Again.  It's starting to roll off the tongue even before the question's finished.  "What about you guys?"

"We'll I'm from Boston, but they're all from Jersey," one of them said.  "We all met at the hostel.  Which one you guys staying at?"

"Fuck hostels, bro," Max.  "We're stayin' in the suburbs.  San Cugat, mang." He ends on a high note and we all laugh and tell them about couch-surfing and all the places we've been and the thangs we've seen.  On the breeze for a month, and shootin' it with the best of them.  We talk college and traveling, and both coasts (but we both know what's the best coast), and then all the booze is gone and they head out to the bars on the beach.

"We'll meet you there," says Grant.

"We got a few things to pick up first," says Max. Muahaha. He says it with a sly grin, and Mike and I grin too.  Maybe Grant's a little hesitant.

"Okay, well!  We'll be at Opium!" One of them yells as we split and slide back up La Rambla until we see a little nothing alley to the right that's overflowing, choked thick and spilling out with like-minded individuals, dressed sleekish and party-faced.  Max puts his needy, far-off scanning look on and we don't even make it off the main drag.

"Hey.  Hey, where you from, bro?" It's a slick-looking, smiley Spanish guy and his slick, smiley friend.

"California."

"Ah. Yes, California," he says with an understanding nod.  "You are looking for something, yes?"

"Well look at that, how'd you know, my man?"

"I just had a feeling you'd might." Drug deals are the best when they're between the good-hearted and the smiling, and it all goes so smoothly.  He's got a line on what we want, and he's actually got it right now.  It's our old friend Molly.

Max gets weary though with memories of south France and the being had by shadowy, scheming bastards in French projects, "I don't know guys... Should we do it?  We can get thirty grams for thirty euros and just dip it all night."

"Right. Sounds good."

"But first we need to try it," it's business Max, his money had come in.  "You gotta understand," he says to them, "we got fucked last time.  Let me and my friend Mike just try it first."  With business Max it's usually a proposition in the works.

They're a little put off by the proposal, understandably I think, but still surprisingly cool and Max and Mike get a little bump, and it's brown stuff.  A good sign, but it somehow ends up going sour over the question of payment.  Grant's not having none, and hell, I'm still broke so I can't really say anything.  The purchase power's on Max and Mike, and there's a fumble and we almost end up loosing the drugs and the money.  They walk away in disgust refusing to sell us anything, and Max and Mike jog after them in cautious desperation down another alley way, this one empty.  They come back with the money; safe, but drug-less.  So we get some more booze before the liquor stores close and head back to the marina's edge to drink by the Rambla del Mar.  It's not opening periodically for boats like it was earlier, sitting still with it's concrete waves floating silently.  All the mass of people's thinned a bit as well, it's more strictly night owls now.  The wide-eyed Spanish underground, the youthful club crowd and the street vagabonds playing fast acoustic guitar and bongo drums and dancing and clapping on the boardwalk as all the night strolls excitedly north towards the beach or's already started stumbling back.

It's a shame too, because Max and Mike are finally feeling the bump of the stash they were previously so suspicious about.  Not sure of the taste maybe.  Thought we'd been duped yet again, but now they're only slightly tickled in the balls, and Grant and I are running out of things to drink so we take north, chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.  The boardwalks much longer than it looks from either end though, and at the other one we're winded and starting to tire from the day, and we pause for a spell on the grass sloping up towards the old wooden submarine.  Maybe it was all that living, or the eating and the drinking, or the cigarettes, or just everything, but the spell's turned to siesta, and the cool grass makes a light snooze too soft and pleasant to resist.  I make sure my I've got everything deep in my pockets, the ones on the ground when I lay down, and I close my eyes with my head resting on my hands above the grass.  A distant guitar and far-off bongo cradle me through the dark.  I can't even hear the clapping, and as the sea breathes salty, I remember oyster.  And crab legs.

[stop]

I wake up groggy to a panging in my stomach, a hungry grumble, and a dry feeling at the back of my throat that slakes for water.  There's a tingly piss feeling in my loins that brings the breaths coming deep, and my vision's clear after quick blinks.  Maybe the mind's a little slow though as I scan the early morning marina because for a minute or so I feel the pee ready and waiting, but I can't figure out where to go.  There's no bathrooms so I piss by the old submarine, pretending I'm just really interested in it.  It's superfluous really.  There's hardly anyone about at all.  The boardwalk's deserted, save for some other snoozers in the grass and a lone, drunk alley cat still strummin' Spanish drunk alley songs on the guitar.  His tempo's slowed a bit from the feverish dancing beat of the night, and the dark starred sky's turned bright now to that early soft blue of a sun's light before that sun's even risen yet.  Mike and Max and Grant are up before long, and peeing too, and then we play the waiting game.  The metros don't start up until 5:30 and hell, I don't know what time it is exactly but we've got a little ways until 5:30 so we sit down at the edge of the docks again with our feets dangling off the edge over the water, my mind slowly beginning to see only the end, the part where we all stumble into Irene's kitchen and make a big bowl of cereal with chocolate whatevers in it.

[stop]

The sun comes up from the east, to the left over the hotel in the distance and the field of sail masts, but before it does, it paints the whole sky and the all the bottoms of the clouds a bright, warm pink and orange-y hue that reflects off the still marina water.  The fire's above us and below us now, but it's all so beautiful and silent and the short quick breaths go slower now, and I smile through my sagging eyes, past my rusted throat and think of our dear friend Drew and hope he's doing all right, hope the man upstairs gave him some stellar day and had a good laugh at the shitter of a one we'd went through.  And thinking back, I've got a good feeling suddenly and we stroll off down an empty La Rambla, past seagulls sleeping on lonely old statues and the tired morning riff-raff.  To the metro and San Cugat.  We sleep the whole way and miss our stop by one station.