Why I Committed Suicide (11 page)

Looking back, I think maybe I was soul searching a little when I decided to take this trip, but it turned out to be far more enlightening than I ever expected it could be. Ever since coming to college I’ve been aware that there is so much more to life than just dreary old Texas towns. This is a knowledge that has motivated lots of different road trips and mini-adventures, each of which has helped to expand my consciousness and make me a much more well-rounded person. Being poor and willing to travel unaccompanied by the comforts of home (that’s a laugh) has helped me to avoid the Teddy Roosevelt method of exploration where everything becomes sanitized. I’m a firm believer in total immersion and this trip has been exemplary. I’ve done and seen so many cool new things and I finally got the chance to let go and fall truly and deeply in love with reciprocation. So while I’m sad my vacation is nearly over, I’m tired and looking forward to being wrapped in Jenifer’s loving embraces again. It’s a good feeling to know that somebody is waiting for you at the end of a long hard road. Like a soothing shower after a long day of manual labor, a small slice of heaven. (Cue the Crue here) “I’m on my wayyyyyy…”

The last show for the season in California was excellent but I’m beginning to think too much of a good thing might spoil me. I didn’t want my tired body hardening my brain against everything I should be appreciating and enjoying so I feel we’re heading back to Texas at the perfect opportunity. Besides the summer shows are all over now, so there’s really nowhere left to go. I wonder what happens to the caravans in the off-season?

John S’s girlfriend is heading to Austin to see the Phish shows and she did her best to talk us into going too. I can tell my three traveling companions wanted to go and I felt like a dick for having to be the voice of reason and explain how we are all out of money and energy and there’s no guarantee we’ll even get to see the shows. I could have probably been talked into attending also (those wily hippie chicks!) if I didn’t have the sense that Jenifer is waiting at home for me in anticipation. Besides I’m afraid my experience seeing the Dead will dilute any experience I have seeing Phish and I’ve heard they are worth appreciating.

Winding home has been very, very strange. Police are always a problem for a van full of long-haired people but I’ve been especially nervous because not only are we still stoned silly, but now I’m transporting the leftover ten or fifteen hits of acid from the shows with me. Instant felony, just add police.

Nobody paid much attention to the gas gauge because we were all so fucked up on the last of the kind bud and hash we smoked in New Mexico, so we ran out of gas and came to an awkward stop on the highway in the middle of butt-fuck Egypt. Everybody just kind of looked at each other in disbelief and things were looking kind of bleak because there wasn’t anything even remotely like a man made construct as far as we could see and nobody was stopping to help four smelly hippes. Then a cop car pulled up and started fucking with us. Pushing us around, the officer was asking what we were doing (ran out of gas, duh!) and the kinds of the questions that usually preclude wanting to search the car. Things were getting way serious when all of a sudden, this crazy Christian man, wearing overalls and driving a beat up blue pinto, swerves around the highway and zooms onto the scene. He gets out and immediately takes over the situation, thanking the officer for stopping to help us even though it was quite obvious to everyone that’s exactly what he was NOT doing. Then from some magic Pinto place in his car he pulls out an extra can of gasoline that he just happens to have with him to help us get down the road to a gas station. While we’re putting the petrol in our tank the bible beater actually gets the pig to leave by intimidating him with Bible verses and that psychotic faithful intensity only a true believer can posses. If the guy weren’t so obviously loony tunes I would swear it was divine intervention. God is good and he surely works in mysterious ways. If I hadn’t been so loopy, the situation would have been a lot scarier and John B was so grateful that we didn’t have to go to jail he gave the guy his last $20 for helping us out.

As bad as that was, I was put in an even worse situation the next day. We were all tripping during the final day of driving towards home and I got elected to drive because I had been on acid the most during our whole adventure and stupid logic dictated I likely had the most immunity. Actually, I volunteered to drive after everybody smoked a fat joint and it looked like we were either going to sit on the side of the road laughing our asses off all day if I didn’t drive. Everything went fine during the day while I was peaking but after dark, wouldn’t you know, I got pulled over by a State Trooper for having only one headlight. One of the big halogens in the van burnt out at some point and nobody even noticed. I was scared shitless because I just knew the officer would see my eyes were dilated and then everything would get seriously fucked up, but God must have seen fit to bestow another blessing on me. I gave the officer my driver’s license and John’s insurance, which was thankfully all in order, and then he made me get out of the car and walk around with him and then sit in the passenger side of his Camaro crotch rocket State Highway Patrol car. I thought I was going to freak out and die right there because my acid started kicking in again really strong thanks to all the nervous adrenaline coursing through my body. I’ve never had a ticket where the cop made me sit in the front seat of the police car while he wrote it and I did my best to present the polite vacation innocent college kid image to him, but I was so tweaked that I couldn’t help but ask about all the magical glowing computers, radar detectors and other futuristic cop gadgets that were blinking and flashing their hypnotic lights from the dashboard in front of me. If I hadn’t been so nervous it would have been really fucking cool but I had to really focus in order to myself to keep from wigging out. Everything turned out okay though I got a ticket and we stopped at an auto parts store to change the light bulb. Viking Mike accidentally dropped the old bulb in the parking lot of the auto store and we had to burn out of there when the manager threatened to call the cops. Everyone was officially weirded out by that point so John B. used his credit card to spring for a motel room so we could stop driving for the night. I should get home fairly early tomorrow, showered and refreshed. I’m anxious to sleep in my own house in my own bed and recover from my vacation.

I get to see Jenifer tomorrow!!!

I’m in a state of Buddha-like bliss. The adventure I just completed has served to remind me of the little things I take for granted in my ordinary drudgery. Got home. Felt good. I immediately called Jenifer and she came right over with the most bouncing schoolgirl cheerleader enthusiasm I’ve ever seen in her. I swelled up with so much pride and love, all I could do was just hold her and kiss her for the longest time.

Oh God, when I finally held her in my arms and inhaled the scent of her skin, after what seemed like an eternity of separation, I wanted to pull her body into mine. Feeling the muscles in her back and tasting her lips makes me know for sure I’m with the girl of my fantasies. I have a woman every young boy would promise his soul to the devil for a chance at, and she wants me as much as I want her. It’s as if the excitement and danger of finding my old man’s ancient Playboy collection is suddenly real life. We couldn’t control ourselves after the weeklong chastity belt was suddenly released. Need took over, a need for each other accompanied by a mutual relief we both felt, knowing that when the Earth moved for us we were both aware and we were still reveling in playing with our gift of each other. Intense. Intense. Intense.

When I finally entered her, it felt as if I was parting the oceans of the world.

When time finally slowed down again and other awarenesses intruded into our dimension we talked for a long time about what we had both been doing during our time apart. Jenifer told me how she had been telling everyone with giggly (that’s my word, not hers) enthusiasm “Sam gets home today,” which made me glad I made the effort to get back to Denton so quickly. I know that from this moment on we will be together but instead of feeling penned in and constricted, I feel free. My soul mate, my lover, my companion, my partner in crime and extension of me. I’ve never felt this strongly attached to a girlfriend, truthfully I didn’t think it would be possible to find a woman that I respect as an equal. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take care of somebody else, not being fully able to even take care of myself, but I want to give it a try and help her take care of me. Sorry I’m rambling. I’m spinning in a post-coital bliss, dizzy with love I guess, but it is soooooo right.

Jim got the acid I mailed and he agreed that it was really good shit. Kirk and Jim went on a tripping binge and Jim must have done about 20 hits in the week or so I’ve been missing. I think I went through about forty myself so there are plenty of extras for later use. I’m a little burned out, but my mission of getting killer LSD has been a decided success. I returned home from my sex-capades to an outcry of enthusiasm and thanks from the house.

Tonight will be a night of rest. A full menu of watching rented movies on the VCR, lounging in the La-Z-Boys with the lights off and smoking massive bong hits out of “Skeletor.” It’s good to use the bong again, even if I’m back to regular schwag weed for a while. It’s good to be back.

Sorry to myself for taking so long to write (yet) again. I’m still having a great summer. Jenifer and I are falling into a comfortable routine of work and discovering each other in new ways during our leisure time. Both Dan and Jim have Hi8 camcorders, which I’ve been fucking around with a lot, but not as much as I would like to. I am officially an RTVF major now so playtime has purpose and thus isn’t playtime any longer.

The other day, we all went skating in this great sewer pipe one of Dan’s friends told us about. We set up the cameras and videotaped the whole session. It was fun but watching the tape at home later I realized how much I suck at skating. Well I don’t really
suck
suck since I am out there doing it but halfpipes are a fairly new genre for me. I feel like a poser street skater most of the time. Later on, sitting in the lazy boy, smoking pot and watching us cruise back and forth in slow motion with our arms waving ungracefully around in the air for balance made Jenifer and I laugh a lot. She’s working at the Flying Tomato with me now but she hasn’t been there long enough to get on the cool shifts yet. And NO I do not feel threatened having a workplace relationship. We’re now both sick of eating pizza for every meal except for the occasional late night binges on roofies.

I bought a half pipe skate ramp from some kid in the pizza shop for $50. I’m not sure yet how I’ll be able to move it across town and into our massive backyard but when I do it’ll be totally bitching.
Do people still say that?
I think if I can cut the ramp into three pieces, lay each piece over the bed of our friend Sweeny’s half-ton pickup, manage to find about 12 people to help lift it one piece at a time on and off the truck and maybe if I pray hard enough to the gods of architecture, we should be able to get the whole damn thing back together. Hopefully it will be all good. I watched some guy fall on his arm wrong the other day and listened to the sickening snap and look of disbelief as he stood up and his arm just dangled by his side in a deformed manner. Some girl with a car hauled him off the hospital but I don’t think he’ll be skating for a long time. That first glimmer of mortality in relation to a fun pastime kills a lot of the enthusiasm in real skaters. My first glimmer of mortality happened when I thought I was only play fighting with a kid named Joel Hopkins on the playground in Elementary school. He got genuinely pissed and put me in a headlock with his thumb in my eye. I remember being pretty shook up and thinking about how creepy it would be to lose an eye in some stupid playground skirmish. After that I only got into one fight in school and that was much later in high school because I made fun of a Mexican girl in my P.E. class and I pretty much deserved a sock in the eye from her boyfriend for that I suppose. No harm, no foul. Since the original eye thing there have been a progression of confrontations with my mortality, but fortunately nothing associated with skateboarding yet.

Dan has started working at the Tomato with Jenifer and I, so it will be a family thing soon. The only thing is, I hate having the inside track to getting my friends such a
shitty
job. They might eventually all blame me for the hot labors at low wages, get a mob together and storm up the hillside to burn down my castle. It’s just so damn hard to find a job up here that makes any money. I’ve been here over a year at least and still make under $4 an hour!

In addition to the boring problems in real life it’s gotten so that sometimes I’m so sexually charged around Jenifer it’s unbearable. Maybe I just hit puberty late and my hormones are kicking in after age 20. Deep down I know it’s all her though. If somebody could figure out a way to harness the energy we expend having sex, the world’s power shortages would soon be nonexistent. The electric company could just pay us to stay at home and hump. Do it for your country! For the record, it isn’t just me pushing her to “do” it all the time either. We just naturally rut around like monkeys mostly in the afternoon or evening. I love having sex in the morning and I’m sure that she just gets sick of me gently caressing her special no-no places until I get her all randy and she wakes up, but that’s because I wake up a lot earlier and I am still so thrilled to find her in my arms. I only have the tiny twin-sized bed so we sleep entwined around each other like boa constrictors. I love sleeping with my arms around Jenifer’s sexy waist or having her head in the crook of my arm and feeling her breath on my chest. A lot of mornings when the sun is shining onto our bodies through my grimy windows, I’ll just lie there and watch her sleep or listen to her breathing and feel her heartbeat pulsing just underneath the surface of skin on her lean body.