We're Your Friends Tonight: Third Night

DAY 3

I woke up alone.  Spread-eagle in the back of the Explorer.  The side-vanes were cracked and the trunk window popped like every other night, but today no one was beside me.  My first deep breath tasted sweet to the lungs and the night before seemed like some fantasy hallucination because my head didn't hurt, not in the slightest.  There was no hangover feeling, no grogginess, nothing.  Just a strange empty sense, but in that grand, aloof, adventurous way that didn't feel sad.  It was curious.  And curiously I opened the trunk to find Monster sleeping little spoon to Max's big spoon in the shade on the dry grass by the car, and I smiled.  Silly kids.  BB and Grant were asleep in similar fashion, but not for long.  For soon enough, the sun had crept up high in the sky and the shade was no more and we all rambled about for muffins and Gatorade and sliced bread and peanut butter to put in our bellies for breakfast.  Rambling because it's the only way to pass through life really.  The only fulfilling one for me anyways.  And we were dipping into Abby's spliff stash too, which made rambling a must.  Rambling with squirt guns and sunglasses and shirts off in the desert sun.  Rambling to what end?  Who knows.  It was fun though, and it felt good to fill the mind with everything in the moment like you do when you ramble.

But that trip was a rollercoaster, like every trip is.  And every rollercoaster has that shitty turn or the bump in the rail that throws your back for a spin.  For us, it came in the form of two fat fucks rolling through the campground in one of those golf-cart-sized little John Deere's that polo fields use for maintenance work.  Did I mention they were fat?  Because they were.  Bouncer fat.  Fat assholes with an ugly way of looking at things.  And they took our day and shit on it kind of.  I mean, they definitely made an effort to.  I didn't even notice them 'til they'd stopped and one had penguin-marched in between the cars to the clearing where we were all lounging.  BB was rolling a blunt.

"Hey, what is that."  His chin jiggled when he said it and for a split second after like bad dubbing in an old karate movie.

"Huh?"  BB stopped, and we all turned eyes to greet our new guest.  He had on a black windbreaker (you know, because it was so cold and windy that day) and a yellow shirt and a black hat on that said Golden Voice on it.  He also had a little paper badge pinned to his jiggly man-boob with a number on it.  He walked up to her and picked my trusty lunch box right up off her lap.

"I'm gonna have to confiscate this," he said.  I'm pretty sure he couldn't spell confiscate, but still, things got remarkably sober-ish real quick.

"Whoa there, partner. One, that's my favorite lunchbox you got there.  And two... who exactly are you?" I tried to act calm and intelligent, and not pissed off and high like I was.

He pointed to his badge and sort of puffed his chest out, if you can call it that.  It just inflated like a balloon a little, and he somehow got bigger and douchier.  "I'm with Golden Voice.  We own the property you're on right now, and it looks here like you lot are in possession of illegal narcotics on the premises," he said fingering the bag of weed in my box before taking it out and putting it in his pocket.

"I don't get it.  Are you guys security guards or something?"

"I represent Golden Voice."

[stop]

"I don't know what that means," I said.  "Are you cops?"

"Do you want me to call them?  Because I can."

Fuck people who answer questions with questions, especially when they're confiscating my weed.  "No, that's not necessary," I said with a sigh.  "Can at least have my lunch box back?"

"Nope, I'm confiscating that too."

"Uh... what?  Why?"

"There's marijuana in it still," he said in that security guard voice that always strikes a nerve because it's so dickish.

"Well, then just pour it out.  I promise we won't go scrounging in the dirt for it."

"Nope."  That son-of-a-bitch.  Callan tried talking to him pretty in her netted white sundress and flower halo, but that's didn't work either.  He'd taken my lunchbox and my weed and he started to walk back to the grass lane where his fat accomplice sat waiting in their maintenance kart.

I didn't know what else to say, so I smiled sarcastically.  "All right.  Well hey, thanks asshole."

He stopped and turned and waddle-walked back to where I was standing, right in front of me, not two feet away, and at the feet, which is much farther than the belly in this case.  "What was that?"

"Oh, nothing," I said biting my lip, trying not to laugh.

But he was mean-mugging me, and squinting to look hard.  "You just call me an asshole?"

I panicked and looked at him matter-of-factly, but all that came out was, "You're honestly trying to tell me you're not being an asshole right now?"

He just stared at me for a second, and turned around and got in the kart.  "All right, see ya assholes!"  said I politely, and they drove off.  Well, that sucked.

"At least we did all the molly and acid already," Callan shrugged, smiling at me.  "And we still have the brownies."

"And I still have my spliffs," said Abby.

Then BB chimed in, "Oh! I almost forgot!"  And from her shorts' pockets she procured the blunt she'd been rolling.  "I guessed I'd better hold onto this when he snatched up the lunchbox," she said.  "But, ohh... that lunchbox."

She was smiling through a frown, and I was too.  It was hard to be mad in such a happy place as this really.  So we all had a little farewell brown-high in memory of the box.  "Aww. Bye, lunchbox."  And we 'cheers'ed canned beers.  Warm Keystone Lights, lovingly like Keith Stone.  Then we frolicked with some Santa Cruz friends at another camp site, with more squirt-gun fights until 2:00 when the bands starting playing.  On the way to the main gate we stumbled on some mushrooms, and sold them to a man for fifteen dollars.  And in line, we helped a bunch of rookie teens polish off an eighteen-pack of Tecate they foolishly thought they'd be able to bring in.  In the words of Boom, "fucking idiots."  How silly and convenient.  We chugged the beers in a circle.  Chugging, then passing.  Chugging, then passing.  Never stopping, in a random sort of dream-catcher pattern.  Or something like that.  I was getting wasted, and the brownies hadn't even kicked in yet.  They did so at Julian Casablancas.

[stop]

Like a mother-fucker they kicked in, and like always my safety-goggles were on, making the tented stage darker unless my chin slid up.  The fade would get lighter then, but goddamn, I was high. Too high to talk, but hell, who needs to.  And thank you for that.  Loud music.

Julian was a droner and every once in a while a shouter, always soothing though.  Standing up, sitting Indian style in the grass, or leaning back on my hands and stretching my legs out.  There were no words, just emotions.  I greeted friends with waves and smiles, and an open-mouthed aloofness that I hoped sufficed.  It was that fading feeling, that drooly-loose feeling when my knees swung and my hips swayed, slowly ever shifting weight from side to side off the two-step because my body didn't really know how to do anything else at that point.  I was a closed loop.  Stuck in the clouds of the Mojave Tent.  And this beauty of a blond girl kept staring back over her shoulder, standing right in front of me.  And she'd smile.  The way that made me look over both shoulders and back again, still unsure if it was I that held her interest.  I was pretty sure, but also way too high to do anything more than dance in one place.  And my breath wouldn't stop catching short.  But she danced ever closer, slowly stepping back as the set carried on, and when a guy came up to talk to her and try to dance, she looked over his shoulder at me.  I was smiling like an idiot, and she was too.  She told the guy she was from Sweden.  Stupid pot brownies!  But hey, what're you gonna do.  Laugh it off, cowboy.

We came for the Julian, but didn't stay for the Snow.  Miike Snow.  After all, Mike wasn't even there, and it didn't feel right.  And I was ready for some real open air.  None of that tent nonsense.  At least for a little while.  We could come back, but I wanted to see Spoon at the Main Stage first, where there wasn't any tent and the fresh breeze would try to play with my hair but not be strong enough.  So we all went and danced and sprawled in the grass in the back, past the sound stage.  And we headed back only after the last song and caught the last song of Miike Snow.  It was something about animals, and it was wild to dance to.  Then we didn't know what to do so we rambled over to Phoenix at the Outdoor Stage.  It had been three days now, and everything almost seemed normal.  Things looked familiar as we passed, and we took another shower at the Do Lab.  With everyone, because some had split off earlier.  But we were all together there, dancing ourselves clean under the misty spray coming from the stage.  Dancing in the mud and drying in the open grass as the sun hit horizon and turned the sky all pink and orange and beautiful, and the dancers of the Do Lab spun, hanging from the canopy in the sky like spinning chandeliers that moved and twisted in the changing twilight.  We saw everyone, every friend that went strolling by would come and dance a jig and a jive with us with our sunglasses on.  Someone plopped a homemade Deadmau5 helmet on Monster's head too.  And as the sky cooled we filed in line and pranced and gazelle-leaped to the front at the Outdoor Stage to see Thom York perform with Flea.  We were semi-close.  So close so that when we huddled, standing, a heat rose up, and when I'd sit down it was like that hot, glow-stick and body forest once again.  Like it had been before.  But the place was still magical, and my head opened-up like a trap door and floated away as Thom looped his voice on two mikes and blew minds and rocked to a contorting melody while Flea war-horsed away on the bass.  Then they played Everything In It's Right Place, and it was everything.  It was powerful and memorable. It was skin-tingling and breath-snatching.  And it was all together so pleasing in the red and cool-blue stage light.

Gorillaz played next, the closing act at the Main Stage, and it was eh.  It was the people, not the cartoons. Not holographic, the way I, in my highness, had expected and anticipated.  They were just musicians on a stage then.  And yeah, the songs were good, but I think the bass was soft and lacking, and not so bumpy to dance to.  Or maybe it was I that was soft.  My ears from all the three long days had been pummeled.  Maybe.  Sure, why not.  But I left with a quiet, half-hearted appreciation that night.  Not with jaw-dropping awe, and drunk on molly like the night before.  I was tired.  And I yawned on the walk back.  It was a day of spliffs and pot brownies after all, so I wasn't too surprised.

Taylor was driving home early the next morning with girlfriend Sasha, and I had class that day so I gave my keys to Grant and hopped in the car with Tay and Sash.  And Sasha's friend whose folks had a place nearby, and the four of us all squeezed onto a king-sized bed.  In the morning I woke up on the edge, facing the  nightstand with her arm around me, and it was so adorable.  When I gave a drowsy moan and mini stretch, she woke and realized her hand with a start and lifted it back lightly.  I smiled and pretended to sleep until Taylor tapped me to go.  What a fucking weekend.  And I had class in the afternoon.

Mushrooms

It was late springtime in Santa Cruz, and Max was excited.  "Ok, guys.  I know it's your first time and all, so are you sure you want the whole eighth?"

"I think there's something, after all this time, that you've failed to realize about me, Max.  I ain't no bitch," said Mike.

And I interjected, "Yeah!  And I didn't ride my bike all the way over here to pussy-foot around and half-ass this mushroom gravy-train."

"What?  You ride your bike over here every day pretty much.  And it's fucking perfect outside." said Max.

"Exactly.  Shut up.  Just be a good sherpa."  And with that, I emptied my plastic bag into my mouth, caps and stems and all, and Mike and Max did the same.  When I chomped down, it tasted like dried dirt and old cardboard.  Yum.  We all washed it down with old Miller High Life.  "Ok, now what?"

"Well, I figured we go up through Pogonip and romp around, and if anything gets too gnarly just uh, you know, tug on my sleeve or something."  Pogonip is a plot of nature up on the hill, adjacent to the university campus, and apparently it's a mystical forest wonderland.  "BB said she'd drop us off at the bottom.  Where is she?"

"Probably humping Grant," said Mike turning around the corner to yell up the stairs.  "BB!"

We all yelled.  "BB!"

"Mom!  We wanna go now!"

She came down flustered and sarcastically annoyed.  "Goddammit okay, I'm here," she said prancing down the stairs.  "Where am I taking you silly idiots?"  Then eyeing the empty bags, "Did you eat them already?"

"Duh."

"Take us to Pogonip!"

"Can you drop us off at the bottom by Costco?" asked Max, batting his eyes and handing her his car-keys.  "Pretty please?  It's their first time."

"First time!? Oh, boy."

"Yup.  We're virgins," I said. "Hehe."

"Well, you two are in for a treat.  Give me the damned keys."

"Yay!"  So BB drove us up to where the edge of town pushed up against the wilderness around the back and at the base of the hill.  By the Costco and the Little League field, between the forks of Highway 1 and Highway 9.  I still didn't feel anything when we got there.  "Dude, I don't think it's working."

"Ha.  Give it a little more time," said Max.

"Yeah, just you wait," BB said as we got out.  "Have fun!"

"Thanks mom!"  She drove off and we began our trek up the hill towards Pogonip.  The first part was a little steep, but the woods by the trail weren't too thick and here and there they would open out onto a quiet green meadow with the grass around waist high.  Halfway up, as we strolled by one of the meadows, they hit, and I stopped in my tracks.  "Whoa, guys."

"What's up?"  asked Max.  They both both turned to look at me.  "Haha!  Are you feeling it?"

"I... think... so..."  It was a question, and there was the strangest feeling of vertigo that came rushing with the first few steps forward, and my heart, it raced.  "It didn't hit you guys yet?"

"Psh, no," said Mike.  "But hell! I'm excited now!  You look like your trippin' balls a little bit!"

"That's because I am a little bit!"  And we continued on, me tip-toeing because it awesomely felt like the best way to tackle it.  And I chuckled to myself because everything was slowly becoming more beautiful, and it wasn't just the white-framed, fading, blue-lensed sunnies I had on.  A switch had flipped.

[stop]

It was another world.  I had never been to Pogonip, through it's meadows between the tree lines.  And so that place was made special in my mind the way places do when the first time is so significant.  So significant it was to learn how to grab the reins.  To realize the mind's eye, and the view from another's.  And dialogue with yourself like no one hears, because no one's listening to me talk in my head.  It was a narrative, just me and me, and what looked like a wild fucking ride we'd already been strapped in for.  The stagecoach was already way out of town, and the horses were beginning to get wily.  So what then?  I guess just grab those reins tight and pull 'em tighter.  And set 'em straight for god's sake.  And holler and "Ha!" and giddy-up.  It was an easy fight to hold onto waking consciousness, but a fight nonetheless, and sometimes it slipped.  "Just keep marching," I'd whisper in my ear.  "Stay aware.  It's so much better."

We finally hit the road on campus that swings out and around the back to Merrill and Stevenson.  A thin layer of sweat filmed my skin.  There was a bench on the trail, a little off the road, right before the soft edge where the hill began to slope down and towards town.  It was one of those crystal clear days with clouds, when one could see Monterey easily across the bay, and the smoke stacks at Moss Landing were crisp.  Clouds loomed over the mountains to the north, rolling slowly over and burning off in the hot day, never quite making it to the ocean.  I set myself down and threw my arms over the back of the bench and my head back to breath in as many great gulps as I thought I was warranted.  Slow and deep.  Breathing in until I couldn't, breathing out until I couldn't.  And the muscles relaxed and weren't afraid anymore

"We're close," said Max.  "Just gotta get up into the trees and it's going to be so nice."

"Yeah! Do you guys still not feel it?" I asked.

Mike thought about for a second, and his eyes sparked as if he'd found something.  "Oh...!  I'm starting to, I think!"

"Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!"

"Haha!  AH, you fuckin' guys," said Max.  Then he took a strange step and a tilt, and giggled quickly with a dumb smile before turning up north towards the trees. "This way all! Whoa... Haha!"

We laughed together while we walked, marching into the trees and down a maintenance-road-looking trail of dark dirt and white stone.  Everything was moss soft, and everything changed so beautifully so as the tree canopies danced and splashed golden drops of sun through the forest.  Out in the open and in the shade became two different worlds init of themselves, with different atmospheres and feelings and moods and questions and challenges.  We all quickly found walking sticks; big, tall obnoxious ones.  And then Max took us down to the coy ponds.  They were these shallow, about three feet deep traps of water in between the roots of the forest trees.  Giant redwood roots that hugged and clung to the mountainside.  We walked over them like step stadium benching that's always too high to step down normally.  It was always a little stretch, but it was worth it.  We put our noses right up to the still pond water and watched the fish swim lazily and sometimes dart into a rooted nook of the pond, away from us, the mysterious forest invaders.  All the senses felt a little different and my vision swirled when I wasn't concentrating.  It was other worldly.  Like that moon Endor at times, but without the adorable ewoks.  It still was fantastic though.  And we, the three of us, were all fantastically high.  Balls-to-the-walls high.

Then we jumped back on the trail with our ridiculous walking sticks, and our sandals and boardshorts and hats.  If mushrooms are anything, they're most definitely a rollercoaster, like everything else.  An old wooden rickety one at that.  The trail we were on was not an empty path.  Students jogged on it regularly, and it was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon so there were certainly other patrons we passed on our trek.  They weren't exactly few and far between either, these joggers on their daily lap through the woods on the back of campus.  Hikers too.  You know, the usual mountain trail traffic.  Their faces always contorted when they got close, squished in like cookie dough, or they looked worn out and sweaty.  Then there was us.  The sharp-featured mushroom adventurers, blindly in awe of the mystic, wild elegance that resided everywhere in that place.  With sunglasses and tall twisted walking sticks.  Giddy with bubbling laughter and open-mouthed because my lower jaw seemed to swing loose from the hinges.  We must've looked as silly to them as they did to us, but that's nothing to care too much about.  It didn't stop us from going quiet and rigid when those other patrons passed though, and we'd hold on, but not for too long before we'd burst into laughter again.  Just another drop on the coaster.  "Just remember where I am, and don't get lost." Who was that?  "It's me, silly.  Yourself.  Well, myself, I guess."  Did I say that out loud?  Hmm, I don't know.

Apparently the amount of laughing we were doing was rather strenuous because we found ourselves stopping to rest plenty of times.  Not that I was opposed to it or anything.  In truth, I was probably the most out of shape of the three of us.  We'd stop and Max would go tight-rope across a fallen tree, and Mike would balance smooth stones in a tower, and I would just watch, constantly aware of the reality slipping away.  At the limestone kilns, we all laid down on the roof looking up through the hole in the canopy that the kilns had cut.  The clouds were light and smokey and swirled and meshed and moved in a way that clouds don't know how to move.  It was grainy but wet, that sky.  Still like sand in a bowl of water, always at a slow spin.  And someone put on Cat Power on an iPhone with the speakers on loud and our minds went rambling with the dreary, hollow jazz that soaked quickly into the loud woods around us.  The chirps, the breeze sliding through the trees.  The leaves rustling, the branches squeaking.  The nothing else, the absence of everyday life.  All in time with that smooth-rasped Southern belle and her salty band, never in any rush.  There was no need to rush things.  Mushrooms are an endurance drug.

We took our time through the forest, going everywhere before coming back, and we found ourselves on a trail in a another meadow just past peaking, standing by a curious sounding sign.  I read it aloud, "Danger.  Mountain lion habitat.  Hmm..."

"Say what now?" said Mike.

"I say it's says that this all here's a mountain lion habitat," I said.  "I don't think I can fight a mountain lion right now."

"Woo!  Me neither," said Max, eyeing the tall meadow grass off the trail.  It was golden dry and about head-high, and it swayed slowly before us in the wind.  We all gripped our walking sticks instinctively.

Mike was undaunted though.  "Psh, whatever.  I'd beat the shit out of a mountain lion right now," he said swinging his stick like a bat.  "What do you think'd be better?  A swing or a stab?"

"Probably a jabbing stab," said Max thoughtfully.  "If you miss with the swing you're fucked."

Mike stopped swinging.  "Good point."  And he started jabbing at the high grass with the sharp top of his walking stick.  Then there was a branch crack out in the meadow and Mike stopped again and we all held our breath.

Then Max yelled out, "Not into the high grass!" and got up from the Indian pretzel he was in and started jogging back towards the road and I bolted up too, and Mike and I hurried to catch up, and we crossed to the other side of the road.  The campus side.  We hiked up between the road and the fenced-in cow pastures, past the East Field, to the bottom of Stevenson.

"Fuck, there's a lot of people at the field right now," said Mike from the cover of an alcove of ferns.  "And everywhere really."  There were.  I felt like old, rich white folks on an African safari, and I'd forgot until then that we were on a college campus.  It was positively bustling on that warm spring afternoon.

"Maybe we just post up here for a little while," I suggested.  We laid down in the grass by the path, against the slope and under the ferns, and relaxed and laughed fiendishly for hours, even more so when the occasional sweaty jogger panted by.  We rattled off lines from random movies at each other with dramatic style and gasping breaths.  We were an outdoor nuthouse.  Max's Jurassic Park impressions were fantastic.  He kept a serious face just long enough to get through them.  "They're attacking the fences systematically looking for weakness...  They remember."

"Not into the high grass!" we'd yell in high-pitched voices as the joggers passed.  They would start for a second before continuing on.  They all looked downtrodden in varying degrees.  Glaze-minded, waiting for things to be better.  Looking far off to the future.  To things past college.  To some distant achievement to come.  Barely noticing anything, and it was sad to me.  And at the same time, so hilarious.  When was the last time they realized how pretty the clouds were on a given day?  Because today they were miraculous.  And after all, they're always different.  But that's never really a high priority for some, even if it is so simple.  And the thing they miss is that it can make all the difference in the world to notice the pretty cloud days and be grateful.  Eh, maybe it was a mushroom thing.

But anyways, the sun set soon enough, and we crossed the field as the sky darkened.  The hours had passed like weeks in my mind, and we were all sort of delirious.  Max called BB, and she said she'd pick us up from the bus-stop by the East Field lot so that's where we waited.  Still chronically smiling.  Still with our sunglasses on.  Some girl I'd met at a bar off my growl and paw-claw maneuver was waiting for a bus across the street She saw me and shot me a quirky look, then crossed over to greet us.  She lived in the Village, and I'd dined her a few times.  "Hi!" she said.

"Yes we are."

"What's that?"

"We all ate a bunch of mushrooms a while back," I smiled, leaning back into the wooden bench.

"Oh, really," she said smiling back.  "Let me see your eyes."

So I stood up and took off my sunglasses and stared her hard with rapt focus.  Trying to look serious, but failing miserably.  My eyes darted when hers did, and she laughed a little.  "You're ridiculous."

"I know," I said.  Just then BB and Monster came roaring up the hill in Max's old Mercedes and it screeched to a stop in the road next to us.  I jumped back and stood there surprise-faced.  "Well, I this is our ride.  I'll call you later though, yeah?  Saki bombs at I Love?"

"Do it."  The way she smiled dimpled her rosy cheeks, and there was a fired torched in her green eyes.

I winked at her before jumping in the back of the sedan with Mike and Max, but I'd put my sunnies back on so I don't think she noticed.

BB pushed the pedal down and we vroomed off.  Monster, in shotgun, turned excitedly and asked, "Was that the Village?"

"Ha! Maybe."

"You guys are ridiculous," she said and she squeezed Max's knee.

"Yeah, tell me about it," I said.

A Little Place on Western

It was to be my second and last year at UC Santa Cruz.  Since our university was on the quarter schedule, classes didn't start until late in September.  As far as housing was concerned, Mike got in on a house on King Street with Max and Grant and some buddies, and he found me a room at his summer neighbor's house on Western Drive.  A few of his summer roommates were moving into the house as well.  The residence at 440 Western was an absolute beat-up, old jalopy of a house.  The property owner was this middle-aged hippy that invested a majority of his monthly take from rent on riding the somewhat dull-drum rollercoaster of medium- to low-risk stocks and equity groups.  It wouldn't be over-presumptuous in the slightest to think that he gave little more than a damn about that place, or it's general up-keep.  As I was moving my bed into my tiny, den-sized room under the staircase, an immediate awe of my new home soaked over me.  Not at all like the old home, and not likely to ever resemble any house I would inhabit ever again.  A pinnacle.  Even from the street, the place looked more like a used-up and worn-out crack house than a center for adolescent education.  The gutters over the two-door garage were full of old, moldy leaves and rotting through in some places.  The paint was chipped, and the wood siding was warped and moldy here and there and over there and around that corner and everywhere.  Everything you could see from the street, the house, the driveway, the concrete, that miserable bush, the muddy pathetic patch of grass with cars parked on it, everything seemed to be covered with a perpetual grime that soaked deep into the property's pores and refused to be scrubbed out.  The inside was much of the same in that sense.  You'd be hard pressed to find a corner in that house that wasn't housing cob-webs, a light sprinkle of mold, and a few long-legged spiders.  The entire place was carpeted, save for the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the front door's landing, all of which donned dirty, gritty, sticky linoleum.  My room was maybe six feet by ten feet on a good day, with a short deep cupboard for a closet.  A decent sized window looked out onto an eight foot high weathered-looking wood fence four feet away and the shrubby, dirt side-yard in between.  Beautiful.  The window's sill and shutters were covered in a thick layer of damp dust.  Since the stairs were directly above, a part of the already small ceiling came down to meet the wall at an acute angle, and when I first stepped through the door-frame the smallest finger of sickly claustrophobia tickled my soul.  I closed my eyes and breathed it in.  But not too deep, mind you, because of all the mold and that strange smell.  I barely knew any of these people.

In the fall, in all, there were eight of us.  I think.  There were those of us that actually lived there; Dylan, Conor, Matt, Kameron, Dillion, Alex, BB, and me; but the ranks of boy-souled, eager-eyed 20-something-year-olds that came, and stayed, and passed through those hallowed halls week to week, passed out on those two stadium-seat situated couches in the living room (the back couch was set atop an old bed frame, and when you sat in it you sank and it gobbled you up like a cushion-y, pillowed Jabba the Hutt), taking showers in those rotten, cesspool bathrooms; there were almost too many to count.  It was like some hippy hostel up the 1 just before San Fran.  Old friends of anyone in the house made it a habitual rest stop.  Dylan, Kam, Conor, and Matt were the patriarchs; the oldest, the knowing, weathered willow trees, and I got to know their vagabonding friends quite dearly.  Dylan and Kam had graduated two years prior with degrees in molecular biology and computer programming, respectively; the same freshman class as Conor and Matt, but the latter two had taken their time with it.  They were both still students, but not for much longer.  Conor was to graduate after fall quarter with a degree in literature, and Matt after winter with some science degree, who knows.  They'd all lived at 440 the year before.  And the year before that.  And the year before that too, I think.

Then there was BB, Boom, and another Dillon; Mike's old roommates from his summer living at 426 Western.  They were all a year older than I and finishing up their last year as well.  All smart cookies.  And then there was me and the dog Lizzie, and we all called home that excuse of a two-story, two bedroom, two bath, two-car garage family house up on the hill at the northern edge of the suburban westside of Santa Cruz. It'd been ages since it had housed any actual family though. Since those wonder years, the two-car garage had been converted into a two bedroom commune suite inhabited by Dylan O'Carroll aka D-Buns and Kameron Niksefat aka Nikse.  Attic storage-space upstairs had been converted into rafter-exposed closets, and traditional closets had been converted into more bedrooms.  The master bedroom was a triple, with Matt sleeping in the closet, which was just big enough to hold a twin-sized mattress.  Conor slept above BB, literally, on a huge home-made loft bunk that turned BB's bed into a cave of sorts.  Still, it was a cozy room with old, gritty carpet, a high, sloping ceiling, a tiny balcony, and a record player sitting on top of two big ole' 80's wood speakers that were super bass-y and stood up to my waist.

The balcony looked out over the overgrown lawn, a lush jungle of knee-high grass that Lizzie loved to romp  and systematically poop through in a grid pattern.  Lizzie was a golden retriever with a long, flowing golden locks, and when the fall was still ripe and the sun kept our cushy little coastal town in the high 60's and low 70's, why we all got drunk in the afternoon and shaved her hair into that of a lion's, leaving it long around her face and shoulders and with a little puff at the end of her tail so she looked like Aslan.  BB even teased her mane to give it more volume.  Lizzie looked incredible, and oh, so pretty.  Whorishly pretty and slender from always having someone to play with, and always running away, and running her face off whenever we took her up the 1 to go surfing.

We all surfed in that house, except Alex Boom, who played lacrosse and grew up in Cleveland where they didn't have beaches.  And BB, who was a girl.  The surf in Santa Cruz is some of the best and funnest on the west coast, especially if you don't mind wearing booties and 4/3's all year, or dealing with crazy, methed-out locals that surf way better than you.  Part of the appeal of surfing up the coast a little bit instead of in town was the comparative lack of said meth-heads.  Fuck meth-heads.  They're usually assholes.  They could turn a beautiful day out at Steamer's Lane into an hour-long, tweak-twitching diatribe about how they're going to punch everyone in the face, especially if you look at them, or even look at their wave.  Or if you're at the peak and they don't know you, or for any other number of reasons that would make a small-town tweak surfer tick.  And so we'd always stray north, away from the crowds and into the wilderness of empty beaches and lazy point-breaks.  Peaks that generally broke to the right, but every here and there a left would be hiding and if it was peeling at the perfect stride like it sometimes did, it would give a young goofy-footer like me the ride of his life.  Something to pump down the line on before stretching into long turns.  And it was always good and usually held up in big swells, nothing like the quick, dumpy horseshit I grew up on in LA.  It was immaculate, and if a session carried on past sunset, so be it because the waves don't turn off when it's dark, they just get sharkier.  The water would turn pitch black and sparkle under the still bright sky of twilight, and every kelp-head and playful baby seal seemed ominous.

Mike and Matty loved afternoon seshies though, so it happened a lot.  Not Matt from my house mind you, but Matty from the house on King Street who lived with Mike and those other rapscallion bastards; Grant and Max, and Minh and Chloe.  Minh and Mike were my age, the babies of the house.  Everyone else was a year older, except Chloe who was two.  Their house wasn't unlike mine really.  It was still gritty and grungy, just less so.  Maybe because they had hardwood instead of carpet, or because they had an old kitty named Cricket instead of a dog, or maybe they were cleaner, or maybe they cared more.  Regardless, we were all the best of friends, both houses.  It's just that their's was the clean house so that's the one we always raged at.