Last Days in the Desert
Where, oh where, could he sit and savor his rigged melon?
The watermelon dude shuffled about the dark smoky yard restlessly vacillating between a seat on an old rusty lawn skimmer next to a rabbit-like man who was nibbling on a tiny withered peyote bud, and the vague outline of something against a farther fence, which, after a great deal of blank staring, he identified as a weather-beaten chaise lounge draped with a towel. He loved sleeping on chaise lounges in the backyards of party houses, and he had fallen asleep on many of them in his time spent as an undergraduate in the desert. He had spent nights studying the moon in its various phases and listening to the creatures that were out in the desert, and, with a well-rigged melon to keep you company, a man could be very happy all night on a chaise lounge in the desert. In fact the watermelon dude thought a chaise lounge in the desert was almost a throne when you woke up in the morning, hearing the calling doves, feeling the desert sun warm your face and knowing you had slept safely out-of-doors in the cool, night air.
He’d only just begun to scuff toward the hazy yellow glow of the private lounge, when the side yard gate grated open again. Hearing that, the watermelon dude swung around and was nearly bowled-over by the effort.
He squinted and saw the figure of the skinny man as he reappeared holding two more pails. “Hey man, more?” shouted the drunk, sending the man with the pails diving into the oleander hedge, “Awesome!”
The watermelon dude wambled away. Heedless of the effect his shouts had had, he meandered toward his seat.
“Chaise lounge, hmmm, nice. Gonna stay there all the fuckin night. Yeah, wonderful out here. Nice yard. Private like. Looking for a place to sit. Nitrous oxide, sweet air, wheeeee. All night out here, maybe. Better with a chick, though.”
“Awesome!” he called to the two men leaning against the rusty shed. They responded by turning their backs so they faced the other direction.
“Awesome,” muttered the watermelon dude quietly to himself. He sucked on the straw again and began nodding his head to the music while stumbling forward.
Once he had reached the chaise lounge, he lifted his prized melon up to the starry heavens, and, executing a wobbly scissors kick, toppled onto the lovely, waiting bed which he had chosen.
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” was the extremely loud thing that he screamed next at the top of his lungs.
What he had failed to realize was that one hot, blowy afternoon, five days earlier, the striped yellow towel had sailed from a neighbor’s clothesline and landed where it now was, atop a dense patch of cholla cacti. Being somewhat lower in some areas under the towel, and higher in others, the patch of cactus with the towel floating on top of it still did not remotely resemble a chaise lounge, unless you have been smoking weed, inhaling laughing gas and sucking on a straw inserted into a watermelon rigged with way too much vodka.
Clutches of dope-smoking dancers stopped and stared open-mouthed at the dark figure of the shrieking man who now squatted atop an enormous bed of cholla cacti.
“Why does he do that?” asked one of the men, who were leaning against the shed, of his companion.
His friend shrugged. “Quien sabe,” he said. “The gym rat doesn't know what he’s doing.”
“Why did you do that? You stupid or something, dude?” asked one of the men who was dancing in the dark yard.
“Shit, oh shit, oh, fuck this!” shouted the agonized watermelon dude meanwhile. He dropped his melon and the beautifully mottled sphere plopped into the cactus patch, breaking open to reveal the vodka-stoked red mush.
“He dropped his rigged melon,” said one of the dancers drowsily, squinting in that direction. “He broke it.”
“Whatdidhe dudethatfor?” someone asked in a slow haze that barely resembled human speech.
“He’s a stupid shit,” said someone nearby, “That's why for he did it. Hmmm?”
“Yeeeaaahh,” added someone.
“Ohhhhh,” the watermelon dude shouted. “Shit! Oh God, help me. Somebody get me outta here. Oh hell, oh. Hell, oh frickin’ fuckin’ shit. I landed in a fuckin’ cactus. Somebody help me. Suck this. Suck it, suck it.” Puffing out his cheeks and blowing, he tried to control his increasing panic as he stepped around in the patch, getting more cactus in him. His painfully perforated bottom was suspended above the trampled joints of yellowish green cacti. Cholla hung everywhere on his legs, arms and torso, the sharp barbs jabbing into his skin. Looks on his face registered stupid shock and disbelieve and a hand, held shakily up, displayed a most unusual sixth digit, a joint of cholla jammed between his thumb and forefinger.
“Ahhhhh,” he screamed again, seeing the joint of cactus stuck on his hand.
“There he goes again,” said one of the guys at the shed. “Hey, why don’t you get out of the cactus bed, huh stupid?”
“Hurts. Hurts. Aaggggggg,” the watermelon dude screamed.
“Then step out of there, man,” said one of the guys standing at the shed as though he were speaking to a three-year-old. “Step yourself out of there. Shit, you gym rats are stupid. Don’t stand there.”
The watermelon dude struggled out of the bed of cactus. Blinking back tears and cursing, the persistent cholla clinging off his tanned and ripped body like odd ornaments, his petrified and bow-legged form hobbled forward in the dark yard.
“Help me,” he yelped. “Somebody?”
Simultaneously, two young ladies recalled the same parochial second-grade color-it-yourself version of the pincushion saint, St. Sebastian, skewered by arrows. They provided aid; one supporting an elbow, the other gently removing his hat and swatting at the joints on his bare back and legs.
“Hey, you are putting that cactus shit all over the place,” pointed out one of the men at the shed.
“Shit, this hurts and I dropped my melon,” the watermelon dude gasped at his nurses.
“Ahhh,” said one of them.
“I don’t get why you did that, baby,” the other solicitous lady asked. “I don’t get why you sat in there.”
“I thought it was a chaise lounge,” he said lamely.
“Chaise lounge? Shit, you’ve had too much of that sweet air,” said the other.
They held onto his arms as best as they could and guided him to the kitchen door of the bungalow. The watermelon dude, whose real name was T.J. Graham, tottered on, making slow progress toward the lighted doorway where a nervous man standing in the threshold with an elaborate Swiss knife happily volunteered the use of his tweezers.
“I’ll help you get them out,” he said.
And in all the excitement no one noticed the man with two more pails when he slipped sneakily out of the oleander hedge and into the back room of the old house. One last time.
Chapter Four