Random Acts Of Crazy (2 page)

Well,
drugs
, actually. Peyote. ’Shrooms. Some pot. Coke galore. A little K2, which I wouldn’t touch. Why use synthetics when the natural stuff was smooth and fun? And a little acid.

Someone even brought a Costco-sized bottle of NyQuil.
Ooo,
we were slumming.

Bored out of my fucking mind, even on a few hits of acid and a half a bowl, I realized I was bored
not
because there was nothing to do, and
not
because there was no one to do (Judy was an unofficial guy, and had banged everyone else, so I was holding out for Except That Guy status, a fact I weirdly prided myself on… but that made me wonder why I was
proud of not getting laid
). I was bored because my entire life was one big string of boring events chained together to make a necklace of boredom.

A garland of ennui. A rope of grindingly painful nothingness with which to hang myself.

God, even the word “ennui” sounded
boring
.

I realized I live in a world of full-of-shit people who don’t know they’re full of shit and they just perpetuate the shit by making…more shit. And once I take my final exams in the next two weeks I’ll graduate with my bachelor’s degree, head off to Chicago for three years of masochism re-branded as law school, and the transition to pod person will be complete.

Instead of keeping that cycle going, I’d grabbed this guitar, stripped naked, and eaten the entire bag of mushrooms Joe had stolen from the evidence room when on a tour at a precinct in Boston, part of a criminal law class. A stroke of genius, really – what better way to subvert the dominant paradigm than to shed designer labels, bespoke suits, and get high as a fucking kite to escape it all?

What a rebel.

And now I was wedged on the floor of someone’s shitbox, that someone being a frizzed out, juicy young woman with breasts like a porn star’s, a voice like a redneck combined with Katie Couric, and what the fuck was on my neck?

And why was my dick covered in splinters?

Blink.
The glow from a streetlight was shining in the car in that surreal way highways can lend, stripped of buildings and trees and anything resembling civilization or nature, its own little category of space. This woman’s face stared at me from above, expectant, as if she’d just said something to me and needed an answer.

MENSA me said, “Huh?” My hands were a bit numb, but when one brushed against my rock-hard boner, that got my attention. What was I doing on the floor with my ass scratchy and cold, peppered with splinters and my best appendage standing straight up at attention (
ten HUT!
) pointing at this woman?

She wasn’t just any chick, either. As my eyes came into focus and my feet decided to stop being nineteen yards long and covered in marshmallows, I got a better idea of whose car I was in, and why my ass felt like it was colder than it should be, pressed against the floor. Shit. Was that a
hole
in the actual bottom of the car?

The light made her hair glow. Glow, I tell you. Or was that the ’shrooms? Not sure. Either way, after I impressed her with my erudite, “Huh?” I followed it up with, “Wanna fuck?”

She grinned. “Well, ain’t you suave? I don’t fuck anything that wears a collar. That really helps to maintain standards ’round here. It’s a shame other folks in my family don’t have the same rule, because Uncle Jack’s permanently disabled from that goat he…” She winced. “Oh, nevermind. You don’t know me well enough to hear that story.”

“I’d like to know you,” I said, the words oozing out like slime. Sexy slime. Like sensual slime designed to cover her and draw her into my world of primordial arousal ooze. The exact idea wasn’t really clear. My hands reached up and unclasped the collar. She was right. I was actually wearing a collar, which I pitched into the field by the side of the road, because if that was an obstacle to getting sex right now, off it went. Ta ta! Buh-bye.

Then I noticed the cotton balls in my mouth, and how her hair was actually – literally – on fire at the edges. With tiny snakes flicking flint to make the fire.

Laughter. “OK, there, Trevor.” She knew my name? “But first, how ’bout we get your ass off the ground. You’re no more than three inches away from road rash.”

I wasn’t imagining it; as she reached out to help me up, my buttock peeled off the floor and I saw it – a rusted-out spot about five inches around. Little grey rocks and tar mocked me.

“You have the strangest accent. Am I in western Mass, in some pocket of the Berkshires where people talk like this?” Or, worse – stuck in Hampshire College at some linguistics experiential conference?

What the fuck?
her face said, but her words were a bit more measured. “Trevor, you’re in Ohio right now.”

“Ohio?”

“Right.”

“Corn fields?”

“Yep.”

“First state with the caucuses that piss off New Hampshire every election cycle?”

“No, that’s Iowa. Ohio is the state that pissed off the Democrats in 2004 and Karl Rove in 2012. We’re fair and balanced that way.”

“
Ohhh.
That one,” I answered. Got it. “How far from Mass am I?”

“You’re Catholic?”

Either I had just found the stupidest, hot and voluptuous woman with burning hair in the state of Ohio, or I was stuck in an endless loop of Groundhog Day, as written by Douglas Adams.

“Mass, as in Massachusetts.”

Peals of laughter from her, a sweet set of notes that made my already hard erection reach out just a bit more, stretching tall, as if seeking her. “You’re about as far from Massachusetts as I am from financial solvency.”

“That close, huh?” Rubbing my head, I realized it hurt on two levels. A bump from the car’s sudden stop, and a deeper ache. The pain of being massively hungover. Another quick memory of the last time I could remember: ’shrooms. Peyote. Red Bull and espresso with local raw cream (ah, Mom and her insistence on organic purity) and Chilean pisco. It all coursed through my veins, pounding through my eye sockets.

And my cock.

“How did I get here?” Staring down at my body, I realized I really was completely, and utterly nude, my body floating through air without any encumbrances. Not even a condom. I was never nude like this unless I was in the middle of having sex with someone. Even then, the girls at BU were a quick-n-dirty bunch, so the actual span from being in a state of complete undress to wearing a dick sock was measured in nanoseconds.

To be fair to them, sometimes so was the intercourse.

But I made up for it with the next round. And the next.

On good nights, a fourth. My voice might be well-known, but my refractory period was legendary.

Not that I’m bragging.

But I am.

“I have no idea how you got here, Trevor,” she said, trying very obviously not to stare at my package. I liked her for that. Then I was offended, because what’s wrong with my manhood? It deserved to be ogled. A glorious contribution to the world of erections, it definitely stood out from the crowd.

And stood up right now, pointed at her. A lucid whisper in my brain told my hands they should cover it anyway, despite its glory, and I gave it a quick attempt. Then I looked like I was just jacking off, and that wasn’t the impression I was trying to give. So I gave up, my head clearing by the second and not liking what I was realizing.

Except for her.

“What’s your name?” I asked, now really getting a look at her.

“Chippy Pete.” She deadpanned, as if there were some inside joke I was supposed to understand. Ohio had some really strange naming conventions for women.

“Uh, OK…?” I asked, my voice rising. Her face fell, though, as if I’d disappointed her. Some deep sorrow came out of her skin, as if it were a dementor, seeping into my heart and making me feel like an ass. I didn’t know what I’d done, but I felt really awful suddenly, and wanted to make it up to her. But we were sitting in a cheap rustbox on the side of some interstate in Ohio and I was naked.

My only option? To reach over and kiss Chippy Pete. Because when you’re coming down off ’shrooms and NyQuil and find yourself naked in a car older than you, 600 miles from home, a kiss is about the only thing that can make it all better.

We needed to fix that.

No central Ohio man flared this kind of intensity in me within seconds, Trevor’s mouth so soft and hard at once, his essence in his breath, a sensuality that was complete and inviting, imploring me to go to places of the flesh with him, to enter a new world where all that mattered were touches and licks and sighs and moans and friction. Ah, friction.

I
needed
friction.

He leaned the passenger seat back and pulled on my leg, his face spreading into a grin that told me so much, a smile of absolute delight. In my fantasies men looked at me like this. In real life, they barely kissed me. What were the odds that I’d be driving along I-76 one night and find a naked man who wanted me? The look on his face was more arousing than any touch, which perplexed me. If he could make me – Darla Jo Jennings, just a small-town (fat) girl from central Ohio, daughter of a lush and college wanna-be – feel this special with one deep, excited expression, then what else did the world hold that was waiting for me?

And then there was that joystick of his. Slinging one leg over the stick shift, I straddled him, leaning back against the dashboard. His erect shaft stood between us like a very erotic chaperone making sure we didn’t dance too close. That ship had sailed about thirty seconds ago, though, and whatever Miss Manners had to say about how to remain proper when you have a naked dude in your car covered with guitar splinters and the increasingly cloying scent of dead raccoon filling your car through the hole in the floor, I didn’t much care.

He reached up and took my breasts in his hands, a soft, smooth touch that stretched into something yearning, my face curling down to kiss him, mouths happy and luxuriating in the pure joy of this, his mouth warm and wet as his tongue explored me, my breasts swelling under his fingers, strumming me like I was a replacement for his destroyed guitar.

Play me, man. Play me all night long.

That raccoon scent, though, was starting to make this decidedly less appealing. Trevor seemed to notice it, too, and pulled back.

“That’s the raccoon. Not me,” he announced, brushing the hair away from my face with one hand and raising his eyebrows, pretending to be serious.

I burst out laughing, the sound filling my tiny car, the windows fogged already. My eyes caught some old shadow of finger-writing on the window from the last guy I fucked in my car. OK, the one and only. It read, “I luv Durlu.”

Trevor did a double-take and started giggling when he saw it. “The gene pool a bit shallow here in Io – , er, Ohio?”

“My mama spelled it that way on my birth certificate,” I deadpanned. His face faltered a bit, that smooth brow uncertain, his body tighter now as I stared him down.

“Oh. Uh – ” I couldn’t make him squirm anymore, largely because he was making me squirm. Fucking him here by the side of the road, with
eau de roadkill
permeating the air through my floorboards wasn’t exactly a Harlequin novel setting, either. Swinging my leg back over to the driver’s seat, I started the engine and got back on the highway. If we didn’t move soon, a state trooper would find us, and I did not want to have to explain why I had an expired registration and a naked man in my car. One would be hard enough.

The other was just
hard
.

“Wait a minute,” he said, sitting up. With as much dignity as a naked man with an aching boner I wanted to ride like a pogo stick could ever manage, Trevor repositioned himself on my torn vinyl seat and gave me his full attention. Those blue eyes had pupils that were normal now, the effects of whatever he’d eaten back in Massachusetts fading out.

“I can’t. I’m merging.”

“No, I mean – you’re joking, right? No one would really spell it…” his voice faded out. Polite enough to realize he’d really bungled if my mama really had spelled it that way, he was stuck in a Catch-22.

“No, she really did. You should see how she spells my twin sisters’ names. Lemonjello and Orangejello.”

A sputtering sound filled the car, and it wasn’t from my muffler. He was gasping for air, laughter making him wheeze. It wasn’t
that
funny, but apparently he still had just enough of whatever made him trip to keep him laughing for the next two mile markers.

I hoped it stayed in his bloodstream just long enough to touch more of him, to have him explore me, because there was a sliver of a chance that whatever he’d taken was what made him kiss me. Part of me deeply hoped it wasn’t true, that he found me innately attractive, but I’m a realist.

I’ll take what I can get. And if ’shrooms or K2 or Swiffer solution made him kiss me like
that
, then I would let him huff a tube of Vicks to have one wild night out here in Hoopieville.

“Where are we going?” he asked, his hand sliding up my knee, headed toward my hoo-haw.

“Where you want to go?” I asked.
Please say somewhere private.

A look around outside made his face fall. Not many options. We were in flat country and our options were…well…our
option
was singular.

A rest area.

Rubbing his eye with his other hand, he sniffed and shook his head. “I just realized that I need to at least start the process for getting back to Massachusetts, you know. And,” he gestured to his nude chest, my eyes a magnet and his dick a series of iron shards. God, it was gorgeous. Really. Like the winner of the Miss America pageant of dicks.