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.
