Welcome to the life and times of everyone's favorite Phoenixian!

...and let's say, it's because you're turning 33 on Tuesday.  Just remember this:

On Wednesday you begin your 34th year.

WARNING: Some material may be considered controversial and/or crass in nature.

Chapter 5 - Kissing Miss Pierce

We're in the back of Poker Face's dad's truck.  It's me, Camilla, Bret, Terrence, Nina, Jill, Dana, Tara and Poker Face's girlfriend is squished up front with Summer's enemy/friend from high school, Becca Lariat, and Summer and her boyfriend, Rob Tabler, and some British guy named Euan Bennett and his girl, Darcy, who's from Vegas, and, of course, Sven Anderson.

Tara says she's cold, and as the other girls shiver, Bret takes off his jacket and puts it around Tara (who thought to wear a tank top) and she smiles at him and I see her mouth a 'thank you' back at him and I see Bret blush a little and he looks down at his lap and I hope it's only me and him that sees his enormous woody poking out of his slacks.

Terrence turns to me and I hear something of a grunt come from his mouth and I think maybe Terrence noticed it, too, or maybe he was trying to make fun of the niceness of the situation, but I'll never know because Terrence grunts as much as Bret mumbles.

Camilla snuggles her head deeply into my chest and then she raises up her lips to my ear and she says, "I think Bret's penis likes my roommate."

I smirk and say to myself, 'Unreal' and place my hand over Camilla's eyes and then I kiss her forehead, but not before I say, "I know who's penis likes Tara's roommate", and her hand goes down my pants.

I'm glad I wrapped us up in the extra blanket we brought.

I can't help but look up at the stars as she plays with me.

We reach the river and set up our temporary camp and get the bonfire going, but Camilla wants to go for a walk because she misses New Mexico and this is the first time she's been outside the city since she moved here, so we go.

-----

All I hear is the river and I'm still carrying the one blanket we planned to picnic on and the basket with the grub and swigs we planned to engulf out here in the wild.  They're starting to get heavy but I don't say so but I stop anyway and Camilla's asks what's going on and I say we should sit for awhile and listen for anyone nearby, but then Camilla starts to whisper funny things in my ear.  And then the funny turns to slower sentences and I sense her breathing has become slightly heavy, too.  

I listen and I smile.  

Her voice is soothing and it's then I realize that Lin Sue Shepherd has moved down to number two on my "list".  I never thought the local newscaster's voice could ever be replaced, but Camilla's voice has her beat and I turn all my attention back to her.

Her voice has also made a heartbeat in my shorts.

Actually, it isn’t until then that I turn all my attention back to her.

We kiss like the predestined lovers we feel we are and after I pain-stakingly unfold the extra blanket we brought and carefully press every crease out of it as I set it over the cool desert floor I turn to her to tell her I'm ready and she's already naked.

Beautiful.

She sees the serenity in my eyes as I stare at her in all her moonlit glory and she smiles back a comparable serene smile and walks up and against me and our tongues make their own kind of love.

Then we make our own special kind, taking turns mooning the moon.

I love making love with Camilla Dorsthe Pierce.

I'm not sure how long we spent in our affections and private displays of caring but I eventually find myself lying back with Camilla on my chest asking me if I ever wanted to be a teacher.

I tell her I already tried and she asks when and how.

Then, I explain:

"Of the coolest kids, who were Junior's at Mountain View during my Senior year there, Doug Oleynik was the third coolest.

Nobody would argue about me being the hypercoolest of all, of course, and especially my own grade, all of whom I'd known since Kindergarten, so looking down on the masses: the paupers, dukes, heroes, dogs, jesters, and viceroys, I had sort of taken Doug under my wing, since I saw his potential the summer before my own Junior year, when he tried to pick a fight, with me and my buddies, on Mill Avenue, and he with his gaggle of Junior-High-Schoolers, I think one seventh-grader included.

He was impressive.

I had only tried to run over his bike and he on it just 'cos it was camped on the parking spots I wanted at Tempe Town Lake Park.

The fire in his eyes, as he said, "Hey, you fuck!  Them's fighting outrageously horrible double-parking skills!" (complete with a drawl, even though he wasn't a cowboy) reminded me of a younger, Italian (or maybe he was Mexican) version of me, and he pretended to roll up his sleeves (because he had no shirt on) and he dashed his lean, tanned body over to my window and gave me a black eye.

That's the only wound any of the five of us got because we pounded those lunch-bench-pimp-life-dreamers into a bloody, pulp-like ghoulash, that didn't match any of the snazzy art or decor in the park.

Then, later that summer, his family stayed at a beachhouse near ours outside of San Diego and now we're pals.

He had some damn potential and I was gonna mold him.

I knew he'd never pass the Junior Class' Official Number One: "Handsome Himself", Keller Campagna.  (Lindsay Warmuth actually made him a gods-awful shirt that said that on the front.  He loved it and made it look good.)  Kelly was a captain of the football team, the Junior Class President, on Honor Roll, and Terry Giles had mentioned he had a really long dick.

And then she said it was really thick and that she wanted to ride it again sometime soon, but that she'd settle for mine at the time being because I was a Senior and her Homecoming date was making out with that fag, Jason, in the locker cage at present, which is wierd, because I never thought Bob was a homo.

Then, at #2, Doug had to contend with the Wagstaff twins, Kurt and Court, who, for Juniors, could pass for NFL seasoned veterans; they never seemed to shave, which seemed to drive the girls crazy, and one of the girls tennis coaches.  They had pubic hair in third grade, was the rumor.  Who could ever top that?  (Well, yeah, Kelly; who, I guess, was the true Wagstaff.)

My mission was to get Doug Oleynik to 3rd position of cool and to keep him there, which wasn't really too difficult to manage, but at one point we had to deal with the guy we called Nairobi; he was a foreign exchange student from somewhere in Africa.  And he was only cool because he always said, "It piss me off!", even about the smallest things, and we always got a kick out of that: "It piss me off!" but he smelled like rotting, larvae-infested fruit, and I know first-hand 'cos my nose smashed into his armpit once in P.E. when he fouled me playing basketball, but I didn't have to have that experience to know what his pits smelled like, he was so tall anyway, everyone knew.

We all talked about it.  We'd say, "Gods!  Nairobi stinks!  It piss me off!" or "It piss me off I have to wear two brands of cologne just to be around Nairobi!"  Africa needs to invent deodorant or Axe body spray.

Or Lever 2000.

Anyway, Doug and I had a great time his Junior year, so it really bummed me out when his dad cut off his little sister's head, while they were camping out in New Mexico, 'cos he didn't take his meds and also he thought she was the devil.  (I guess cutting off the devil's head would kill the devil.)

He was never the same after having to watch that from the bushes, right off the side of the road, because his dad had just pulled over and his sister had told him to run.

I never saw his stab wound.  They said it pierced his lung in the back.  He must have been wheezing in those bushes.  Wheezing blood.

Gross.

I heard he got heavily into drugs and periodically signs in and out of mental institutions.

His sister was deformed.

And mildly retarded.

I felt like a failure.  All my plans for him.  I didn't have to help him get laid, but I introduced him to all the important people and to dealers.  He could have been cooler.  Too bad he had a sucky family.

To me, Doug and I, we're still pals.

I think his dad was Islam.  That didn't help him in prison when the towers fiasco went down.

A skinhead ate his eye.  I don't know which one."

I yawn like Chewbacca.

"I'm tired", I say.

Camilla's asleep.  She'll never know how much of a loser I was.

I'm not a loser.  Loser's don't wrap the retro red and white checkered picnic blanket around the most beautiful sleeping girl in the wilderness right now.

I can't believe I got us lost.

I can't believe then it rained.
-----



---Stoke-on-Trent

I just woke up and was looking out my truck window when I saw it headed toward the front of the back tire near my door, rattling it's sinister rattle, all the while. I freaked! My dogs were under there. They always sleep under there. I had to react fast so I started yelling to my dogs. I needed to get out of my truck but the snake was coiled just under my door so I would have to climb out the window and onto the truck. Before I could get up, my dogs awoke and came around to my door, in a circular arc, staring at the snake. I kept screaming for them to get back and away from the snake and into the camper shell. Thorne wanted to get closer to it and I screamed and him like I'd never screamed at my dogs. They knew this thing was dangerous and stayed away. They were very obedient at that point.

I climbed out the window remembering that rattlers can strike the full distance of it's own body and although this one didn't seem overly huge it could still reach my leg as I climbed out of my truck and up onto the hood. I walked to the roof of my truck and my dogs had gone around to the right side of my truck and Ander was about to crawl under to where the rattlesnake was and I screamed at him to stay back and I called both of them to follow me as I walked to the end of the truck and into the camper. They both followed obediently and did not fight and I latched each of them inside the camper, closed it up and walked back up the back of my truck and to my window and on into it.

I was gonna run this thing over. This was a great camping spot and I wasn't about to lose it over a stupid poisonous snake. It was just under to back left tire and I turned my truck on quickly and sped forward. Then I sped backwards and forward again and back, crushing a water bowl that had been under the right tire. I could hear the rattler but he was now in the cacti to the right of the truck.

I drove around the loop of the campsite and faced the area my truck was at and saw no guts or any sign of damaged rattlesnake anywhere. This bummed me out. The little fucker got out from under my truck at lightning speed, I suppose.

I found a few rocks within safe distance from the snake and threw them at the snake from atop my hood. I saw it ease forward and stare at me, smiling a forked-tongue smile that only a rattlesnake could. He was unharmed. I hadn't done anything. I yelled at it saying that he knew I had to do what I had to do (kill him) to protect my wolves and myself and then at the top of my lungs I yelled at him to stay away from my dogs. He just rattled away some rant about misinformation on the internet throughout the centuries concerning rattlesnakes and that my actions would truly be unjust and possibly send me to Tartarus deep within Aedes and not the Hesperides, that golden island where I had planned to spend eternity.

I snapped back: "The internet has only been around since the 1800s!, you dolt! When Al Gore and Xenu (of Scientology fame) combined forces to invent it, you fuck! I'm not stupid, stupid rattlesnake!"

He wasn't listening and he eased his whole body within my view so I could see more undamage that had not been done to his body. (If you could call it a body)

I found more rocks, all the while listening for any change in where the rattle sound might be going. He stayed stagnant, probably coiling himself into such a tight coil that he could possibly fly into the air at me and bite me just about anywhere on this body of mine.

I hopped back up onto my truck and threw more rocks, totally hitting cactus and dirt and branches nowhere near my target, some of them ten feet away. I remembered I am left handed when it comes to throwing, but I could not find any more rocks that would hurt this crafty creeping creature of chthon. The rattling started to dissipate and I moved or coughed and it would motor up again at full thrust.

I decided I would just pack up camp as I was out of ideas and out of energy. When all was done I never heard the rattle sound again. I grabbed a few more rocks, the tiny ones that were left, threw them at the cactus he had been under and heard nothing. I climbed back in my window and we left.

I think it might have climbed inside my engine and it's going to slither into my cab from the holes where the peddles are.

Sometimes I can still hear a faint rattling. This is my nightmare.

All in all, I thank the gods my dogs were not recalcitrant. It would have been their end, had they been.

The Moral to this Story?: Screaming beyond mortal capability causes animals to obey you. Probably out of fear.

...and...

...recalcitrant is the true opposite of the word obedient.

The echorange are quite easy to find if you have the right tracking skills, which usually include: two parts best friend, five parts investigative courage, and one part keen eye for detail (anal retentivitis), which can also be mistaken for tweaking (which is an urban term for drug use).

In my research I've discovered that the echorange come in many diverse colors ranging from brown, ecru, and shady grey; blond, white, burnt sienna, and dun; to even a blue black and dark mint or avocado peel green.  Remember: hair samples must be measured against fur samples of the fauna from that environment.

The footprints of the echorange can also vary.  Smaller echorang have a shorter stride than the much larger and more common echorang prints that are often the frontline story on the local tabloid.  Often skunks follow along the young echorang as their pets and protectors when journeying at night to offer The Presentable Branch (Phoradendron macrophyllum i.e. big leaf mistletoe or colorado desert mistletoe), the dark yellow gift given to visiting campers, especially ones who bring animals along with them into the desert or forest.

In daytime tracking, field researchers warn against disturbing the earthbeds of the echorange as a slumbering echorang might not be too polite to say "Good Morning" when he or she would rather be saying "Good Dusk Awakening" as they should and are accustomed to.  When you hear a grunt in coming across a freshly covered bed of mulch and twigs and leaves and needles, just continue on your trail.  A whooping goodbye means you are safe against harm and to continue on with ease, as these gentle echorange wave you on a good journey of discovery into their woodland world.

Remember to have fun and bring a spirit of cheer and love as sylvan echorang and barrensyn echorang alike will enjoy your company in your study of them: the great North American ape.

The Echorange.

---Stoke-on-Trent

Chapter Six - Nothing Hallow (This is about the middle of the chapter)

 

"It's Samhain."

It's Camilla. She sounds distressed.

"So ween?", I wondered aloud.

"Today is Samhain! And it's almost over! The day's almost over!"

She wasn't making any sense.

"So what?" I tried to close the subject, but before I could say another word:

"So-o-o, what time do cemeteries close, Hauer? Dusk! They always close at dark!" She turned to me and grabbed my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes with those pretty blues and said, "We gotta book it."

I felt a kinda-smile on the corner of my mouth.

"O? K?" was all I could reply.

Those pretty blues.

The cemetery, however, was pretty damn gray and dismal, if you ask me, but she kept saying how beautiful it was. I just never suspected conservative Camilla to be wiccan.

"So, you follow Hecate?" I tried to remember the Greek Titaness' name that the witches had since incorporated into their mythology. "You know, Sully from Godsmack is wiccan."

I had heard that on MTV or maybe it was VH1 and hearing how stupid I sounded right now trying to relate to a way of life I know nothing about forced me to turn around and start hitting my head like a Chris Farley sketch.

She wasn't paying attention. She was too busy searching for something. Or so it looked when I turned around. I had to ask.

"What are you doing again? I thought you were from New Mexico. Did some of your family live -er, die? ...here? ...uh, live here and pass on here? Move on to the Elysian fields?"

"I'm not wiccan, Hauer." She finally was acknowledging me. "Hecate. That's funny. You and your gods, again." She actually giggled.

Like a girl.

"No. I have no family in this cemetery. But, I will soon enough."

What did she mean by that?

"I need to find a plot I can honor," she said, clasping her hands up against her chest and smiling in the fresh dead people's air.

They bounced. Her magic handclasp made them bounce.

Love that bounce.

She was still talking, "A plot with no flowers."

I wasn't gonna look around for that. I wanted a flower and it had Camilla panties covering it. And I knew exactly where that was.

"Someone here needs us to remember them," she continued.

"So, so ween is a holiday", I wasn't really asking, but they always need to know you're listening sometimes.

"Hauer! It's All Saint's Day!" She was bouncing again. "All Hallow's Day, hence, where we get All Hallow's Evening. All Hallow's Eve or Hollow E'en, for short. You may have heard of it, it's the night you get to wear a coconut bra."

"Funny." I wasn't laughing. "So, you do this every November 1^st?"

"Every November 1^st," she says.

"I don't get it, Camilla."

"What don't you get? Every time this year you get a chance to remember your family and friends who have passed on. They must miss us so much and on this day the living and the dead can gather together at these places and visit and reminisce and see each other again."

I just looked at her. And her joy.

"I've never had anyone in my family die."

My words seemed like a revelation to her or maybe her eyes were far away thinking of the ones she missed and I mistook sadness for reverent awe with those lids at half-mast.

"There!", she pointed behind me, her eyes brightening. "A plot without flowers! That's the one who needs us!"

She started walking toward a barren headstone and I turned and followed.

I rolled my eyes. I had hoped maybe I'd get lucky here and it just dawned on me that I wasn't.

"Quit rolling your eyes, Hauer, and come here," she said smiling.

How'd she see me roll my eyes, I thought to myself.

Definitely wiccan.

"This is the plot," Camilla was saying. She looked around. "I realize there are several plots that are empty around here, but we're gonna visit and honor Robert here."

She was reading the tombstone as she said the dead dude's name. I didn't want to know any more. In fact, I never wanted to know anything about him. I sat down and only because Camilla had just done the same and I realized I was sitting on a headstone and I jumped up and swatted grass and dead person uck from my ass. Camilla just laughed.

"Ha! Ha!" I said. "Very funny that I sat on this--" I looked down to see the stone and realized that the person's headstone I sat on was a girl. She was 14 when she died. Her face was on the headstone and she wasn't bad looking, but the thing that made me stop talking was the fact that she shared her middle name with my girlfriend.

"Camilla." I read. "Camilla." I turned to Camilla. "Look at this." I pointed at the headstone.

She took the two steps forward after standing up and smiled when she read her name.

"This is Robert's daughter," she said, "We're visiting them both." She smiled at me.

I was kinda freaked out myself and again I rolled my eyes. These people were dead. They don't care and they definitely don't care about us.

"Why do you do that?" Camilla asked with a stern (I mean, I'm talking about a STERN) face.

"What'd I do?" I asked.

"Unreal," Camilla replied, shaking her head. "Unreal," she repeated, still shaking her head, but she was slowing down.

I spit out almost four words: "I don't know wha--."

She again kept me from speaking. Twice in one day. That's a girlfriend record. No girl had ever been able to shut me up twice. In less than an hour, no less.

"I came here out of respect, Hauer, and you have the audacity to roll your eyes at things I care deeply about, showing me you might not really care about me as much as you say. How am I supposed to react to that? With a faux smile and a shrug, pretending I didn't notice?" She was really going strong but then she stopped. This time I didn't say anything just because I wanted to know where this was going, but she surprised me. "You know what? I am gonna smile. And I am gonna shrug it off because I'm not here for you or for this. I'm here for Robert and his daughter with the beautiful middle name." At that she smiled, content with what she said and we spent the rest of sundown imagining who these two people were.

Sex was so far from my mind the rest of the night.

Doctor's should warn us that cemeteries cause impotence.

-----

 

---Stoke-on-Trent