The Excess Road

Chapter Twenty-seven: Never grounded.

  I walked across the wind blown tarmac to the tiny airport built on the top of a leveled off mountain and I vowed to never set foot on an airplane again. The warm wind almost stole the bags from my hands. I entered the airport and went to the information desk, there was only one, and I asked about a cab service.

  They called.

  A silver station wagon with a thin yellow box on top that read Taxi pulled around the crescent pick up lane and was helmed by a grizzled man wearing a CAT cap. We zipped down the rolling hills lined with stilt houses.

  I dared not speak.

  The sun was low in the sky as I drew my Student ID at the security gate at the campus entrance. Some vandal had white washed the sign for the school in front of the rent a cop booth.

  “Sex College. That’s funny,” the cabbie said.

  We careened up the access road and stop in front of my dorm. George was unpacking from an unfamiliar car. He waved as I got out and paid the driver.

  “Thanks, that’s generous of you,” the driver said and shook my hand. It was only four bucks.

  The side door was open and I twisted and fought my bags all the way up the stairs. A rank cloud funneled out of my room as I opened the door. A pizza box under the window was the culprit. Inside half an apple grew gray fuzz, two slices of mold covered pizza leaked goo and some cigarette butts spit-glued to the cardboard added that special tobacco stain.

  There in the cubbyhole sat Less Than Zero

  “I really should read that.”

  I held my breath and turned my head to the side as I tossed it in the communal trash near the bathroom. My door remained open to air out the stiff odors and I went to George’s room to see what tales he had to share. He was putting clothes away as I knocked on the open door.

  “How are you brother? How was your trip back?” I asked.

  “Faster than going up. Tim drives like a mad German on the highway,” he said as he put a white shirt on a hanger.

  “Tim drove? How did he get a permit for parking?” I asked.

  My intestines felt as if red hot hooks were ripping them apart.

  “I don’t know how he got a permit but he called and said he was driving down, so I came with him instead of Babs,” he answered.

  “Oh, do anything interesting?” I asked as I put my hands on my lower back and leaned back to stretch.

  “No, just ate too much and slept. How was the train?” he asked.

  “The train was like I remembered it. I am glad to be back. Have you heard about anything going on later?” I asked and my stomach felt like saw blades were spinning in every direction slicing it to ribbons.

  “No, but something will come up. Tim and I are going to get some food at Yellow Sub. Want to come?” he asked.

  “Sure. Where is Tim?” I asked and he pointed towards his room.

  I made my way past a group of girls bundled up in winter layers rolling their suitcases down our hall.

  Tim was lying on his back in the middle of his room and yelled, “Joaquin, come on in you smooth bastard. George told me about the drive.”

  He proceeded to lift his knees to his chin and held them. I blushed thinking of Cindy.

  “So, you did. Impressive kid,” he said, put his hand to his face, made V with two fingers and flicked his tongue.

  “Gross dude. you have any smokes?” I asked as I plopped down into his couch.

  Dust flew up around me.

  “Sure, they’re on the desk. Oh bye the way, hello,” he said and rolled to his side, got up and went to sit on his bed.

  “I aszume you saw George, und dit he finish undpacking?” he asked in an improved German accent.

  “He is not done yet, but he told me you guys are getting grub at Yellow Sub,” I said.

  “Yeah, you coming?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Tim bounced off his bed and closed the door.

  “You want to smoke before eats?” he asked.

  I looked at the ceiling and said, “No, I am burned to a crisp.”

  He prepared the room and burned.

  He blew through the blow tube and the smoke began to slink towards me so I waved it away.

  “Tim ever since I tripped, things have been fucked up. I do not think I can smoke pot anymore. Had an attack, like the one at the Three Girls house, on the plane,” I said.

  He held in his second toke and exhaled very little smoke through the cardboard tube. The room smelled of fabric softener and campfires.

  “El Cid, my man that’s what you got. That sucks. Heard it goes away in time, sometimes,” he said.

  He grabbed the shell and knocked out the weed ash into the pile of cigarette ash. He melted into the couch.

  “What the hell is El Cid?” I asked.

  “El Cid was a man who never lost a battle, a Spanish lord, and Cid for Acid. El Cid actually died and his troops propped him up on his trained horse and had a posthumous victory, a corpse led the charge. What I mean is that the Acid should have died off but it didn’t, and it’s still hanging around. Don’t tell a psychiatrist or they’ll lock you up and Thorazine your ass. It will go way just don’t smoke pot and don’t take any hallucinogens. Just to make sure, do you see any trails after I move my hand?” he asked and his eyes drooped.

  The corners of his mouth curled.

  “Not really, but the problem is these annoying red dots. They keep appearing. The attacks feel like dying. The only thing that kills them is fucking booze.”

  “Well you’re in luck because there are four parties tonight and dinner and drinks are on me. So let me finish and we will be off,” he said.

  We went to get George, stuffed in Tim’s beaten up sedan and went to the Yellow Submarine.

  On the drive, a migraine infiltrated my temples. I hoped eating would clear it away. We pulled in and there was a space right next to the main entrance. We got out in unison. There were a few people there but otherwise the place was ours. I ordered a triple-club and fries. The drinks were provided by a pitcher of frosty lager. Like always, we ate without words and consumed like poor starving children from the hills. The pitcher drained before we finished.

  We toked up old cigarettes and I puffed a thin blue cloud out over the center of the room. A draft smeared it across George’s face.

  “Man, blow that way,” George said.

  Tim coughed and said, “I was just thinking of something I read before Thanksgiving. It was about drug use from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Man, people think drugs abuse started in the sixties but they’ve been around since forever. After the Civil War there were more morphine addicts than heroin addicts now. Fuck they used heroin to stop alcoholism and laudanum, which is mostly opium. You know they banned the Chinese from emigrating because white women were puffing away in opium dens.”

  “Yeah man, the most popular soda on the planet had real cocaine in it and was used like aspirin before the twenties,” George said.

  “Health tonics. Alcohol and opium. It didn’t cure you, but you felt fucking great. Then some guy poisoned a bunch of people and so government regulation. But the Temperance Movement had a hand in the government pocket and was stroking away too. Did you know bud wasn’t illegal until there were problems with Mexican workers in the border states? Hell, they called it Marijuana because it sounded Mexican and made it scary. There was Harrison Act, where to have weed, it had to be taxed but if you went to get it taxed you were in possession so it was a catch fuck you. But people ain’t gonna stop using, the lotus eaters are alive in us all,” Tim said and lit another smoke.

  “The Odyssey, right?” I asked.

  Tim smiled and George put his forearms on the table and said, “Same shit different time.”

  “It would be better if shit were legal though. Less people in jail and a nice taxable revenue for the government but they would squander anyway,” I said.

  “Fucking two hundred dollar hammers,” George said as he looked up at
the ceiling and continued, “But at least we have religious freedom and it’s a young nation.” George then coughed himself bright red.

  “God bless you George, and thank the Native Americans for that smoker’s cough. You know they can still use peyote in their religious services,” Tim said.

  We paid the check and as we walked out Tim said, “Let’s start numbing our concerns and go out now. I’m sure we can find something.” George and I looked at each other and George said, “Sure.”

  I hadn’t finished with my room so I made an excuse.

  “I have not showered yet and smell most foul. So you guys go on and I will find you later.”

  Tim raised his hands and said, “We can wait. George and I will burn a few and when you are done we will search for adventure.”

  We went back to the dorm in Tim’s rickety sedan.

  I showered, threw on a wrinkled button down and covered it with a black v-neck sweater and dark green corduroys, brushed my teeth on the move and before I could spit we were out the door and back in the car. The early night concealed the flaws.

  “Joaquin, did you use that fake I got you?” Tim asked.

  “It worked. No questions asked,” I lied.

  “Cool, then you can go buy some beer for us at that ah, small store down the street,” George said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because we’re going to be driving around and I don’t want to stop the flow,” Tim said.

  I didn’t want to accept the task but said, “Fine, but they better not look to close, I do not have it memorized.”

  “It’s run by a blind old women. Don’t worry,” George said.

  We pulled up to the run down convenience store with a sign that read ‘Mom and Pop’ a few miles away from the highway ramp. I stepped up and opened the door. There was no old woman in sight, but there was a guy wearing an Alice Cooper t-shirt sitting behind the register reading “The Plague” on top of a porno magazine.

  The cooler snapped open and I grabbed a cheap case of domestic swill and strutted to the counter with a blank look. I slid it over to him. He didn’t look at me and rung it up. As I paid he asked, “So, you college guys going to a frat party or one of those come-one-come-all things?”

  I coughed and lowered my voice and said, “Just going back to my house. Do you go to school around here?”

  “Sure, I go to some classes part-time up at Wessex, but I gotta work mostly, not like you fellas,” he said without moving his teeth.

  “Later,” I said as the door chimed shut and I threw the case in the trunk.

  As we rolled up to the first gathering, we surveyed the scene for familiar faces. The front porch was erupting. I left the beer in the trunk and we walked up the thin stone pathway. No guards stood at the front door asking for money so we bobbed our way through the rifts that open up before us. It was mostly a mix of frat rats, frat brothers and seniors I had never seen before. Tim found out the kegs were in the backyard.

  It was the largest yard I had seen at a college house. The perimeter was lined with long hedges and extended back to the next road about one hundred yards away over a slight hump. There was a semi-circular brick patio off the back of the house. The brick patio matched the red clay of the soil. This was where the underclassmen were banished.

  Tim and George noticed a cute girl looking over at us, who I didn’t know, and they went over to her. Didn’t matter, I was on a mission to stop the red dots from showing up. The “kiddie keg”, as I heard it called from a guy inside, was surrounded like a siege and I had no offensive corridor to enter and started bucking for position.

  It was a war of attrition.

  Then a girl with long blonde hair shifted to the side and gave me an opening. She turned around and it was Elyssa with three cups.

  My heart collapsed.

  Her head jerked back, stunned, as her eyes widened. I said nothing as she came towards me. I stepped back and lost my spot.

  “Hi, long time no see. How’ve ya been?” she asked and I replied, “Fine and how are you?”

  She looked down, sighed and responded, “It was a long trip back here and I almost didn’t make it back in time, but otherwise normal family bullshit, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Let me get a beer and we will talk,” I said.

  “Let’s talk later. I have to get these to Justin and Carol, okay,” she said and went up the cement stairs to the back door.

  Tim bounded up to me and asked, “Where are the brews bud?”

  “I ran into a diversion so I have not really tried yet.”

  “I saw Elyssa walk by. That’s no excuse. Well let’s double team this mob and whoever gets there first doesn’t have to get beers until the next pad, agreed?” he proposed and I complied.

  While I pushed and jockeyed my way through, he somehow slithered through the seams of the undulating mass of eager students and annexed the tap. Finally I got in and he handed the tap off to me with a laugh like President Clinton.

  I remained in control of the tap until a burly chunky guy with a week old red beard broke the crowd up and called for a “House Beer” and snatched the tap right out of my hand. I went over to George and asked, “Does that guy live here?”

  He looked at me and said, “No, that’s Kevin. He’s a second year senior. He does that all the time. It happened to me last year. He can be kind of an asshole and get in your face if you confront him, just ask Tim.” I turned to Tim and shrugged.

  “Yeah he tried that shit on me but I saw him do it the night before at a different house, so I called his bluff and he got pissed off. He started saying shit but backed off when I stepped up to him. That fat shit isn’t worth the effort. Dude if you hit him and he fell on you, you’d be squished. It’s better to let that red rotund idiot roll away from the trough.”

  “You’re right but he’s a fairly decent guy when he’s not drinking. He was in one of my classes. I think he’s just compensating for his obesity.”

  “Well aren’t you mister psychology today, who cares about that asshole. I don’t care if he’s nice when he’s sober. He’s a prick when he’s drunk. Fuck this place. I heard there’s another party down the street. Shall we?” Tim asked.

  We finished our cups and ventured to the next front.

  It was only ten houses down but it was over a bulge in the road, and it could not be seen well from where we had parked. The scene wasn’t crowded and we had to pay the girls at the door. The scent of citrus hung like a beaded curtain in the sterile white house.

  The keg was in the laundry room at the back of the kitchen next to the door to the screened in porch. There was only enough room for one to stand next to the keg and get a beer. For the first time I witnessed a straight line to the silvery buoy. I got in line when a tap on my shoulder startled me.

  It was Dawn.

  “What’s up Joaquin? I didn’t think I would see you here tonight,” she said.

  “Nothing, neither did I,” I said and faced forward.

  “What’s wrong? You don’t seem happy like the last time I saw you,” she said.

  Did I do something?

  Did I say something?

  Blackouts suck.

  “What do you mean happy? I am always like this.”

  She looked like she was pondering the riddle of the sphinx and then said, “You were just really happy the last time I saw you. It’s nothing. So how was everything in between my party and now?”

  “Nothing, I just waited to leave and flew back. What is going down with you?” I asked so she would ramble until I got my beer.

  “I had people over. It was a blast, but I hoped you would come back up but oh well. I had so much fun jamming with you. I knew you were good but I had no idea,” she said.

  I couldn’t have been that good since I can’t play when I’m drunk.

  “I’m glad you apologized to Reggie. That was nice of you, and my friends really liked you after that.”

  I was angry as a guy who stood in the wrong lin
e at the DMV for hours. I twisted to look at her.

  “I do not remember apologizing to that tool but I blackout a lot and you cannot take what I say seriously. I have a tendency to adapt. That is why I was nice,” I said with a scowl.

  She flushed.

  She took a step back.

  She looked down and looked back up and asked, “What’s fucking wrong with you?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  My turn came and I grabbed the tap. She left without a beer and I was numb.

  The party filled and I found the guys in a small side room littered with boxes. They went off to smoke buds a few times as the space we claimed constricted. Chugging along, I drank and observed. Tim and George discussed their economic professor. Then Tim tapped my chest and asked me in a Dickensian orphan’s voice, “Do you want to go with me to the car to get some beers and bring them back since the line is ever so increasing?”

  “Sure, why the fuck not,” I said.

  We maneuvered out the back and went around the side.

  We began to walk at a brisk gait because it was getting cold and the wind was picking up. The atmosphere had an unfamiliar density about it. It was thick air.

  “Walk, you want to do a line when we get back?” Tim asked.

  We cleared the bump in the road and we saw the police cars at the first house we had gone to. They were breaking it up. Someone was in the back of a police cruiser, but from that distance I couldn’t tell who. We both turned on a pivot and headed back.

  “No, I am still figuring out what messes with my head like pot,” I said.

  “Pot can coerce a flashback, but blow won’t,” Tim said.

  “I am not willing to try right now,” I said.

  “Fine. But worrying about a flashback brings them on,” he said.

  We squeezed our way back into the house and found George where we left him.