would’ve walked in the house, what is that funky smell and all that racket upstairs? Is the girl crazy? Smells like shit in here. Some devil’s shit at that. He walk in the room. Bitch what’s wrong with you? Get up out of bed and wipe your ass girl, stinking up the whole mother fucking house. And get that cross out your pussy. And get downstairs help your mother straighten up, we havin company.
We are in the tall pines of the Sierras. Lilly is the least sick. She is driving hard. They want to get across the border, get to a doctor and find out what is killing them. I’m fine except the smell makes me want to puke. I chain smoke.
Lark is getting bad, his fever is spiking and he is delirious. He alternates screaming and whispered pleas. He needs help. Now.
El Salto is a mud track village high in the mountains. Pigs run free in the street. They have a clinic, one room, dirt floor. The doctor takes one look at Lark and says what we think is Spanish for typhoid. For ten bucks American he will give Lark a shot. I watch as he pulls a needle out of a bowl of disinfectant. Apparently the town has only one needle. It is not as sharp as it once was. Lark bends over and drops his skid-marked jeans. The doctor stabs his ass. Lark cries as it goes in. And on the way out it puckers up the flesh around it, like it has tiny barbs. Lilly and Michael decline the shot. They will take their chances with typhoid.
We drive straight through for thirty-five hours. Lilly, in a delirious moment, tells me she wants to die in America.
Outside of Mazatlan we hit the toad crossing. It’s night. I’m rolling with a bunch feverish moaning, stinky, sickies. I’m smoking like a chimney to keep the smell at bay. Dry lightning spider webs the sky. Then I see them. The road is covered with toads stretching out a hundred feet or more. The car slides as if on ice. Swerving back and forth, hydroplaning on toad soup. A minute later we’re back on dry asphalt, rolling on as if it never happened. Sometimes life is stranger than drugs.
Before we hit the border everyone cleans up in a Pemex restroom. It is agreed there will be no talk of typhoid, no talk of puking guts and running asses. The last thing we want is to be quarantined south of the border.
The border guard takes one look and waves us on. It is a scene he has seen a million times. Teenage gringos trashed and beat hard, stumbling home with their tails tucked.
Turns out none of them had typhoid, it was food poisoning. The shot they gave Lark in El Salto only made him sicker. Best we can figure it out it was the BLT’s in Durango. After all the drugs and booze and airplane glue and pens in butts, after all that it was a sandwich in a Hilton hotel that took them down. I guess I was glad I was non-glue sniffing vegetarian.
There will be many more drugs before I stop. There will be Quaaludes with Ingrid. There will be amyl nitrite poppers in the gay discos we dance in with bad fake I.D.'s. There will be amyl nitrite spilled on the floor of Lilly’s Baja bug as we follow my mother and her boyfriend down in Mexico causing a laughing jag that nearly kills us. There will be acid with Tomas. There will be mushrooms with my father. There will be an ocean of whiskey. And at the end of it all, none of it will be enough to stop the pain in my gut. None of it will quiet the fire in my head.
SEX
Babette, a good friend from the program, told me that her grandmother, when confronted with a husband leaving his wife for a stripper or a wife falling in love with the woman at the U-Tote-Em, or their small southern town discovering the school teacher ran an S&M dungeon in her spare time, Gram would say, Oh darlin' that’s just people doin', people things.
I am 11 and bored to tears. We are living back up the hill. Mom
We are in the tall pines of the Sierras. Lilly is the least sick. She is driving hard. They want to get across the border, get to a doctor and find out what is killing them. I’m fine except the smell makes me want to puke. I chain smoke.
Lark is getting bad, his fever is spiking and he is delirious. He alternates screaming and whispered pleas. He needs help. Now.
El Salto is a mud track village high in the mountains. Pigs run free in the street. They have a clinic, one room, dirt floor. The doctor takes one look at Lark and says what we think is Spanish for typhoid. For ten bucks American he will give Lark a shot. I watch as he pulls a needle out of a bowl of disinfectant. Apparently the town has only one needle. It is not as sharp as it once was. Lark bends over and drops his skid-marked jeans. The doctor stabs his ass. Lark cries as it goes in. And on the way out it puckers up the flesh around it, like it has tiny barbs. Lilly and Michael decline the shot. They will take their chances with typhoid.
We drive straight through for thirty-five hours. Lilly, in a delirious moment, tells me she wants to die in America.
Outside of Mazatlan we hit the toad crossing. It’s night. I’m rolling with a bunch feverish moaning, stinky, sickies. I’m smoking like a chimney to keep the smell at bay. Dry lightning spider webs the sky. Then I see them. The road is covered with toads stretching out a hundred feet or more. The car slides as if on ice. Swerving back and forth, hydroplaning on toad soup. A minute later we’re back on dry asphalt, rolling on as if it never happened. Sometimes life is stranger than drugs.
Before we hit the border everyone cleans up in a Pemex restroom. It is agreed there will be no talk of typhoid, no talk of puking guts and running asses. The last thing we want is to be quarantined south of the border.
The border guard takes one look and waves us on. It is a scene he has seen a million times. Teenage gringos trashed and beat hard, stumbling home with their tails tucked.
Turns out none of them had typhoid, it was food poisoning. The shot they gave Lark in El Salto only made him sicker. Best we can figure it out it was the BLT’s in Durango. After all the drugs and booze and airplane glue and pens in butts, after all that it was a sandwich in a Hilton hotel that took them down. I guess I was glad I was non-glue sniffing vegetarian.
There will be many more drugs before I stop. There will be Quaaludes with Ingrid. There will be amyl nitrite poppers in the gay discos we dance in with bad fake I.D.'s. There will be amyl nitrite spilled on the floor of Lilly’s Baja bug as we follow my mother and her boyfriend down in Mexico causing a laughing jag that nearly kills us. There will be acid with Tomas. There will be mushrooms with my father. There will be an ocean of whiskey. And at the end of it all, none of it will be enough to stop the pain in my gut. None of it will quiet the fire in my head.
SEX
Babette, a good friend from the program, told me that her grandmother, when confronted with a husband leaving his wife for a stripper or a wife falling in love with the woman at the U-Tote-Em, or their small southern town discovering the school teacher ran an S&M dungeon in her spare time, Gram would say, Oh darlin' that’s just people doin', people things.
I am 11 and bored to tears. We are living back up the hill. Mom
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