"A Trip to Tibet"

 

Soon enough, we were lifting off, in another plane, this one to Lhasa. Flying into Tibet, soaring over the Himalayas, a shudder plaited down my spine as I peered down from the plane, gawking at those mountains. The Himalayas were mountains like I’d never seen before. They had this unique shape, twisting sharp tips and spooky gray, white and black colors. They looked more like a leviathan, a strange dark living organism, than a chain of mountains. Thinking how they’d risen, erupted from the Earth, they were, in a way, the Earth’s adult teeth, wisdom teeth, fangs from the ground.

Stepping off the plane, the air was sucked dry from my lungs, as if a vacuum tube had been shoved down my throat. Frigid winds whipped at my face, causing my eyes to wet up and my nose to coldly congeal and drip icy snot.

It was tough to adjust. I felt breathless and lead boned as we lurched through the airport, respirating in rapid, shallow sprints. All of us were feeling rough, light-headed, dizzy due to the sudden shock of the altitude sickness. And we all were slightly aphasiac at the magnificence of the place’s scenery, the ruggedly exotic, breathtaking landscape.

(I’d been to Denver, so I’d been “mile high,” but this place was something else. It was 14,370 feet in the air. It really was the “rooftop of the world,” like walking through the clouds. If you stepped too quickly, especially when ascending stairs, you’d be gasping, literally. We found out fast, that in Lhasa, slow movements were preferrable…) 

The vibe in the place was weird, man. I don’t think I could ever have adjusted to it. Tibet, Lhasa, was just heavy with tension, and the minute we met our tour guide, by the baggage carousel, I felt a cold-dripping premonition...

We piled into a minivan with our tour guide, who drove us from the airport to downtown Lhasa, and he started telling us about the city, its ancient history. His English was excellent, only slightly accented, which was certainly advantageous for us, since none of us spoke any Tibetan...

Peering out the van’s tinted windows, we saw red flags everywhere. And I mean real red flags, the Chinese national flag. Chinese flags plastered on billboards, Chinese flags hanging from lampposts, Chinese flags attached to traffic lights, Chinese flags hanging over seemingly every business or home.

There were gigantic billboards lining every road with what looked to be propaganda. It was hammer and sickle, commie stuff, Chinese characters with lots of exclamation points and brave, happy peasants working under or saluting the omnipresent red flag.

Looking at the Chinese flag, the Welshman whispered into my ear that the flag was Mao’s bedsheet dipped into a pool of blood, and that Mao had run, like a cricket bowler, and launched himself into the sky, snatched five evil dwarf stars from space and then crashed back to Earth, slapped the evil stars onto his blood-soaked flag. Welshman said he’d read something about that in a book by a Chinese dissident.

“Ma Jian is my favorite Chinese writer,” Welshman whispered, panning his snarling mug back toward the passing scenery of wintery plains and spiraling swaths of snow-capped mountains. 

The Welshman was a bit of a bookworm, read a lot, unlike me, who’d read some, but was more into nonfiction and thrillers, the page-turner, Tom Clancy stuff. The Welshman read fucking Russian, French, and Indian novels and shit… However, you probably wouldn’t pin him as a reader, if you saw him walking down the street. Given his perpetually scowling Sid Vicious face, you’d think of him, likely, as a ruffian. And you’d also be right. The Welshman was really a case study of interesting dichotomies... 

The Welshman pointed out that every street sign was tri-lingual, with the Chinese characters atop, in the largest type, then the Tibetan script underneath, roughly half its size, and English, smooshed to the bottom, even smaller. “The irony is didactic,” mumbled the Welshman, as he angled his handheld digital camera, pressed it to the van’s windows, snapping pics like a seasoned traveler.

Arriving in downtown Lhasa, I found the city itself to be a dichotomy, a curious amalgamation of modern and ancient. Modern, glassy boxes of buildings were situated next to slanted roof, chalk white structures; knots of Buddhist monks in saffron robes played on cell phones in front of golden, triangular temples, constructions that appeared over 1000 years old; elderly street hawkers, with faces worn as an old leather glove, wrapped almost like mummies in countless layers of clothes, the hawkers squatting on tiny plastic stools, curbside, the hawkers with colorful blankets unfurled and piled with vegetables or fruits or handicrafts to sell to passersby, the hawkers adroitly operating smartphones, accepting mobile phone, digital payments… It was quite a scene…

Driving by a temple, we passed a group of lumpy elderly women, their bodies wrapped in heavy orange shawls. They were facedown, prostrating on the street, outside the temple. I’d never seen anyone prostrate. One of the other Brits exploded in laughter, upon witnessing the women throwing themselves, crawling on their bellies through the icy muck of the street.

“What is that shite?” he asked himself, through gasps of cackling, high-pitched laughs... The Brit had a narrow, ruddy face and a frohawk style haircut that made him look sort of like a chicken…

“They’re prostrating,” spat back the Welshman, sounding annoyed.

“Prostrating? What’s that?” the laugher queried, speaking in one of those London accents that omitted every hard “T”. “Prostra..ing,” he chirped, but after realizing his ignorance, the Londoner’s laughter quieted and slowly died.  

“It’s a religious thing,” returned the Welshman, sneering and pointing his camera at the prostrating women.

I’d half-expected the Welshman to crack a dark joke about it. But he didn’t.

 

We then arrived at our hostel. The place was a total dump. It had graffiti written on the walls and stank like a pungent mixture of cigarettes and unwashed ass.

After we checked in, our tour guide, a local Tibetan, a chunky, 30ish, sad-faced man, pulled the Welshman aside and whispered something, the guide speaking with a somber expression.

The Welshman stepped back over to us, with a pained face. He said something about how we needed to keep quiet about political matters. That the tour guide had done 3 years in jail because he got ratted out for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, saying something he claims he never said, and it had taken 3 years in jail for it to be cleared up, so we needed to be careful how we spoke during our trip.

(Yeah, like, I’d noticed immediately something was off about the tour guide, man. He had the thousand-yard stare and spoke mechanically. He never smiled. His lips weirdly twitched. His dark brown face, especially his eyes, looked droopy, like an invisible weight were pulling them downward. He had unevenly buzzcut hair, color-clashing clothes, tattered sneakers, and his yellow jacket was zipped up to his chin. His head seemed to be bloated, like the size of a pumpkin, really unnaturally large, even for his heavy-set body... He just didn’t look right, not at all… Man, I bet the poor fuck was tortured like a bastard for years in that Chinese prison. We all really pitied him after learning his past, laying our eyes on him as if he’d been a holocaust survivor or some shit…)

“A fucking cultural genocide,” mumbled the Welshman, as we hauled our heavy backpacks, wheezing as we trudged up three flights of twisting, narrow stairs, to settle into our dingy rooms.

 

Shortly after getting situated in the hostel, our guide took us out on a short drive around downtown Lhasa.

Man, it was amazing. It was sort of like I’d have imagined India to be, except colder and less populated. It was more modern than I’d envisioned, too, full of shiny new cars, vans, buses, trucks, and motorbikes. And there were no animal-pulled carts or rickshaws, either, like I pictured. Except for the bicycle driven rickshaws, though, which, like, at that altitude, those dudes pushing and pedaling those bicycle rickshaws had to be stronger, more jacked than even the most roided-up Lance Armstrong…

The traditional Tibetan buildings around the city were similar to other Asian buildings I’d seen, with the triangular, sloping roofs. But they were slightly different, had a chalkier white exterior, smaller windows, and loads of bright orange prayer flags hanging from their upcurved eaves.

Lhasa was turning out to be a bustling, lively little place, with tons of restaurants, tiny shops, street vendors, people in brightly colored garb, puffy sheep fur jackets, turban type head wraps and various colorful ethnic clothes.

(With their explosions of radiant colors, the woven patterns on their loose, long-sleeved robes, their wide-brimmed hats, plaited hair, beads, precious stones, glimmering jewels and finery, the Tibetans, reminded me, in a way, of Native Americans… And I spotted one Tibetan woman, in a purplish red robe, who was wearing a headdress that was similar to a Jamaican beanie, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was a fortuneteller of some sort, maybe the Tibetan reincarnation or sister spirit of Miss Cleo…)

All of Lhasa’s winding streets and curving alleys seemed to be leading to the Jokhang Temple, which was the heart of the city, both spiritually and economically.

The temple was where our short driving excursion ended. We parked across the street from it, got out, set out on foot and perused the rows and rows of stalls outside the temple’s gates. The stalls were selling items to the masses of tourists (who were mostly Tibetans), hawking stuff like Buddha-themed souvenirs, Tibetan knickknacks, prayer wheels, and local food, largely consisting of dumplings stuffed with yak meat.  

As we walked through the rows of souvenir stalls, toward the imposingly tall, golden temple gates, which were glowing effulgently in the cold sun, we encountered more folks out front, Tibetan pilgrims, predominantly elderly, in black robes, who were prostrating, chanting and crawling on their bellies, through the streets beside the temple entrance… None of us said a word as we walked by, shifting our paths to avoid them, their bodies undulating and sliding as if submerged in water…

Our guide then brought us inside, took us on a tour of the Jokhang Temple, shepherded us around. It was astounding. Beyond words, really. There were bald-headed monks in saffron robes chanting Buddhist mantras as we walked in. I got goosebumps, stepping in there, for real. It was like a scene from a movie, like Indiana Jones or something. To a man, in our group, we were all pretty speechless, in awe of it…

The Jokhang Temple has an impressively long history. Our guide said it has stood in various forms since 652, and the Welshman whispered something to me about how it was a miracle the place survived the Cultural Revolution, when mobs of angry young communists were running amok, all over China, smashing up every temple in sight…

The temple was jam-packed with people, largely Tibetan pilgrims, Buddhists, who were there to pray. Long lines of worshippers were streaming in and out of the temple gates, crowding and moving in masses through the halls, rooms, and spaces. Practically every inch of the place was peopled.  

We carried forward, amongst the knots, like passengers in a packed train station. The temple was like a maze. It was disorienting, overwhelming, and incredible, with twisting, turning halls and corridors that were brimming with statues, paintings, writings in Sanskrit. The halls and corridors were somehow narrow yet vast, infinite yet still somehow small...  

Throughout the temple, there were Tibetans on their knees, chanting, bowing to Buddha statues, bowing and praying to and with the monks. The Tibetans were really into their prayers too. Their bodies electrified as they knelt. The monks sitting there all cross-legged and Buddha-like, too, were the epitome of Zen. It was quite a sight. The monks’ and pilgrims’ chanting reminded me somewhat of preachers speaking in tongues. But, really, it was nothing like you’d ever see in America…

The temple was simply magnificent. Man, like, I’d seen gorgeous churches in Europe, but I’d never witnessed anything that could compare to this temple, certainly not in terms of exoticness. It had these intricate frescos of scenes from Buddhism, and immaculate, brightly painted red, gold and green wooden beams, and various Buddha sculptures sat everywhere.

We trudged up a steep stairway to a rooftop deck, took a look at the peaks of the Himalayas that ringed around the temple. I noticed that the temple’s roof was gilded, and part of it looked to be made from pure gold. I couldn’t imagine how they’d constructed it, with that much gold. It looked like more gold than I’d seen in every gangsta rap video ever made. I think Trinidad James would die from a euphoric heart attack if he ever saw it…  

I wanted to ask the guide more about the temple’s construction, but he’d stopped to pray with a monk. He was on his knees, his eyes shut, and was chanting, rocking back and forth, and so I didn’t think it was the ideal time to disturb him.

A feeling surfaced in me, like, how peaceful this was, the temple, how chill. Unlike Christian churches, with the bloody Jesuses hanging overhead, the Buddhist imagery seemed so… serene. It seemed to be about life rather than death and purgatory. That was the vibe I got from it, anyway, and I appreciated it…

Not only was visiting the temple incredible, but the smell inside, oh man, it was unforgettable. The monks were burning incense, “joss sticks,” everywhere, plus some other sort of stuff that I couldn’t identify. As we made our exit, clumped amongst another surging mass that pushed toward the gate, I asked the tour guide about the unique scent, and he said it was yak butter.

Like, wow, the stuff had the most pungent smell to it. The smell crawled and nestled itself in my nostrils, clung to my clothes. It was stronger than any cigarette smoke, as if the scent were a power of its own. Everywhere in Lhasa, I noticed it, that same smell, that cloying, heavy scent of yak butter. At first sniff, it repulsed me, but pretty soon I got used to it, and even started to like it...

Walking out of that temple, our group was dead quiet. I think we were all experiencing a touch of sensory overload. It blew me away, really, that something so beautiful, intricate, and incredible could actually exist.

 

"The Welshman"

 

So my mom’s been spazzing… Man, she’s petrified about moving into the new house. Claims it’s haunted. It’s certainly haunted by bad vibes. There’s no doubt about that.

Everyone heard of what happened there. That kid going nuts and blasting his family, then attacking his school. Oh, and his trial, what a spectacle. They’d actually tried “demonic possession” as a defense. His lawyers even hired some quack to testify on his behalf. This quack was a famous ghost hunter, and he testified about his “examination” of the house and played, in the courtroom, these hissing and popping noises he’d recorded, claiming they were “voices of the dead.” The whole fucking shitshow was on TLC.

If you ask me, the “ghost hunter,” the quack, was just a clout chaser. He was trying to cash in on the tragedy. Look, he sold a book about it, went on TV shows afterward. He was an asshole, as far as I’m concerned, a bullshit artist, same as those psychics and mediums, those parasites who exploit misfortune, target the naïve, rake in blood money… Fuck him and fuck every one of his ilk…

I’m not sure if I believe ghosts are sentient beings. I imagine them more as forces and energy, but indifferent, not malevolent or benevolent. They’re basically the same as a gust of wind or the pull of gravity. They’re a part of nature.  

Ghosts make for fun flicks, though. I’ve watched a lot of horror movies. When I was younger, I’d be scared by that stuff, too. Carrie freaked me out. The frothing, fucking demonic bitch. I could have seen some lame chick I pumped and dumped going batshit like that. I could see her covered, head to toe, in blood, chasing me down a school hallway, shooting fireballs from her ass…

Nowadays, there are tons of Carries, right? Aren’t a lot of these kids, shooting up schools, a Carrie? It’s the revenge of the nerds out there. Nerds going homicidal. You know, like the middle school kid with dental headgear who got his face splashed in the toilet a couple years ago and then opened fire in the school cafeteria. Or that kid at a high school a few towns over, who got a banana shoved up his ass, at a houseparty, by jocks, and later went out and shot up a football game.

Carries, nerds. Man, don’t fuck with the nerds anymore…

But people still do. I bet they always will. It’s human nature, to fuck with people. And like nowadays, with the cyberbullying, it’s even worse. Like, remember the retarded kid with a lightsaber? That video went viral. Millions of people saw that. Millions of people saw and laughed at an 11-year-old retarded kid’s worst moment. It’s terrible. Really, it is. That kid will grow up to be a mass shooter or a serial killer or some shit.

Not that I’m innocent. We pranked lots of kids. We gave kids atomic wedgies. We did that shit. And the older kids did it to us. It’s a cycle. An ecosystem of abuse. But I never thought of anyone shooting up my school. We were fortunate that no one in our class was the type. But shit, if I’d been living in Colby Oswald’s neighborhood, right?

Yeah, dude, I was scared more of ghosts, as a kid, than school shooters. I believed in ghost stories, I believed in Slenderman and urban legends. I believed, at one point, for real, that if I said “Candyman” three times, into a mirror, Candyman would show up and kill me. And while I don’t believe in Slenderman or Candyman, anymore, I still sort of do believe in ghosts. But in a different way.

Look… my views changed. My outlook changed. I changed after I traveled the world…

That’s one thing I’m most proud of doing. Traveling the world. It’s one thing no one can ever take from you, your travels.

I remember hearing an interview with the rapper Lloyd Banks. He was once famous, on top of the charts. These days, he’s not, and an interviewer asked him about it, asking him euphemistically how he felt now that his time in the spotlight was over.

Banks, being cool as fuck, like he is, replied by saying something about how the money, fame, that comes and goes, but the experiences he had, especially traveling the world, that’s something no one can ever take from him.

And I feel that, man. I feel the same way.

Lloyd Banks, in that interview, was reminiscing, talking about visiting beaches made of volcanic sands, these black sand beaches, in the Canary Islands. Yo, I saw that too. I went there too, man. I actually saw that. I walked, barefoot, on volcanic sands. It was absurd...

Man, I floated in the Dead Sea. I strolled through areas of the Middle East that have been inhabited for over 10,000 years. I trekked through Aztec, Incan, and Mayan ruins in Central and South America. I chased after an alpaca that ran up and stole my phone with its mouth. I rode a donkey in the Andes Mountains. I hiked in the Amazon, went scuba diving in the Philippines, spearfishing in Tahiti. I visited the Roman Coliseum and the Eiffel Tower.   

As cool as all that is, the most spectacular place I’ve ever visited, and the most unforgettable, most transformative experience I ever had, without a doubt, has to be… Tibet.  

 

My perception of the world, of life, of virtually everything, changed, drastically, after I visited Tibet.

I’m lucky to have ever gotten in. Mere entry is strictly controlled. If you want to enter the country, and you’re not a Chinese citizen, you have to be part of a Chinese government-approved tour group, be part of a Chinese government-approved tour.  

I was fortunate enough to have joined such a tour group, along with a handful of travel buddies I’d made while staying in a hostel in Hong Kong. The idea was instigated by my bunkmate at the hostel, an older British “bloke,” this former S.A.S., heavy-drinking Welshman. Dude was fucking nuts. And cool as shit.

I mean like here we were, in this pub in Kowloon, and out of nowhere, his eyes bulge and he blurts out, “I want to climb Mount Everest naked…”

I thought it was a joke, that it was the beers talking. We really were shooting the shit, slamming pint after pint in that pub...

That pub. It was an authentically British place. The Brits seem to have a system, a network of British pubs, in every city in the world. I’m sure you’ve seen one. A place with pictures of soccer players and cricketers on the walls and Union Jack flags hanging from the rafters. This was one of those places… A place that served bangers and mash and pork pies and eggs and baked beans and black pudding and haggis and all the other weird shit the Brits eat.

Yo, I tell you, man, like I’d always heard British food was disgusting, but when I tried it, it was delectable. Traditional British food is far better than advertised… Just don’t ask what haggis or black pudding is made with…

Anyway, this crazy Welsh motherfucker was slugging down pints of Guinness. Using the side of his forearm to wipe away the froth from his thin lips, he starts getting serious, his face tightening, and he’s going on, writing an itinerary, plotting a voyage to the Himalayas. He proclaimed to have been to 82 countries, but said he never saw the Himalayas, never went to Tibet.

He was 43, he said, but looked 35 or so, and had a head full of scraggly blond hair. As with most Brits, he was shockingly pale, looking like he’d taken a bath in bleach.

Although he didn’t have any scars or wrinkles, aside from a couple light forehead creases, he did appear as the sort who’d been in his share of fights, had his share of drama, but, given his disposition, it was easy to picture his opponents faring far worse than him in any dispute. Dude was pretty jacked, I gotta say, looked like he pumped iron or did hundreds of push-ups every day. He had that natural, tensile type, corded musculature…

Yo, for real, how is it that so many of these army dudes stay ripped, even after they’re discharged? My Grandpa was like that. There’s something about what being in the army does to those guys…

But yeah, dude was bemoaning his traveling days coming to an end, confessing that he missed Wales. During his lamentations, with his face crinkling, and the way the neon light trickling in from the pub’s front window flashed off his face, I remember starting to think that he looked older and that I could see him being in his 40s.

At least I was able to understand him. His accent was clean. Unlike some of the other Brits I’d met, most notably the Scots.

Some guys from Glasgow, I could barely understand. Coolest people, funnest people in the world, the Scots, but I couldn’t comprehend what they were saying, half the time. I’m not even convinced what those Scots were saying was even really English. Maybe it was a kilt and bagpipes, fucking Gaelic language or something. Part of it was English, I’m sure. It sounded like English, anyway. I’d seen the film Trainspotting, so that helped. Too bad the real live Scottish people didn’t come with subtitles, though…

Oh, and I remember asking a couple Scots if they’d seen the Loch Ness Monster, and most of them just looked at me funny, shook their heads, though one responded that “I don’t think anyone’s ever seen it...”

Oh, man, fucking British people, they’re great. They say funny shit! Like, even if they’re mad and yelling, it still sounds funny, just because of how they talk. I’d always thought of the Brits as only being these tea-drinking, “posh,” jolly fucking Prince Harry, Lady Diana Jane Austen type of assholes. But nah, they get rowdy!

Especially around soccer, which I can understand, since it’s so boring. Those soccer hooligans, they gotta beat the shit out of somebody to make a game that stupid and boring into something more exciting. I can understand it.

Part of that must be related to the drinking. Those Brits get wild when they drink. You feed the Brits a few pints and all that stiff upper lip shit vanishes. And man, seriously, they drink hard. Like, having been in a frat, I saw heavy drinking, but the Brits, they were fucking animals. They took it to another level.

Oh man, they’re great. I loved those British guys. They were the best…

Tough bastards too. Lotsa shaven heads. Missing teeth. Ready to brawl in a minute. A real warrior culture over there. Like, that island, how fucking cold and rainy it is, you gotta be tough to live there.

I visited Britain, too, and loved it. It was so green, like even greener than the Irish Spring commercials, all the rolling hills, fucking Leprechauns hiding out there with pots of gold and shit. Oh, man, it was bucolic, truly beautiful, but those people are wild. They’re fucking animals.

Why don’t we get those sorts, the wild Brits in America? The “yobs” as they call them there... We don’t get those in America. We only get the goofy fucking Monty Python, Benny Hill, and John Oliver types or the classy types, like the Royals, and rich businesspeople, the “Excuse me, sir, might you have some Grey Poopah” riding in a Jaguar Brits, or the rock stars, or the Harry Potter magic wand waving Brits, or handsome Harry Styles or David Beckham soccer ball kicking motherfucker Brit.

The rest, they don’t get passports, probably. They do a good job keeping their animals hidden, caged up in that cold crazy island.

The UK doesn’t let its maniacs out. But America does. Any American abroad is likely either in the army or a criminal or evil businessman or all three. Or an escaped child molester. Or worse- a missionary. If you ever see an American abroad, run away! Nah, I’m only kidding. Sort of.

Some of the maniacs do escape Britain, though. I met a few maniacs, like the Welshman, traveling in Asia. And I have to say, they were pretty fucking cool.

 

Back to the Welshman, first time I met him, in my hostel. He was lying on the bunk above me, reading a book about the Korean War, and was wearing a t-shirt, a fucking t-shirt, and blue jeans, in the middle of winter. Dude had some big biceps, too, a pair of guns on him…

It was so cold then, too, in Hong Kong. This shit cold. This thickly humid cold. This damp cold. The cold was almost like a living force, a sinister, malignant being. It was everywhere and touching everything. I never experienced such nasty cold. It was miserable. And it was made much worse with the rainy, misty weather.

And then here was this Welsh dude, with this tattoo of a green dragon on his muscular arm, and he invites me out for pints and starts talking jokingly, then seriously about hitting Tibet. His sweet beer breath fogging over us, he was getting hyped up, his blue eyes bulging as he started talking about really going there, not to hike Mount Everest naked, but going on a legit tour.

Damn skippy, I’m with it. Tibet? The rooftop of the world? To me, it was the most exotic place imaginable. It was the farthest end of the Earth. I’d come to Asia without much of a plan, was just gonna bum around, check out different countries, and I was stoked to check out the wildest one possible…

We booked the ticket, tour from a travel agent nearby our hostel in Kowloon and left a few days later. It wasn’t the most opportune time to go, being winter, and colder than a witch’s cunt, but Tibet was open and way cheaper, at that time of year, so we seized the chance.

(Welshman said China would frequently close Tibet off around “sensitive” times of the year, like an anniversary of an uprising or holiday…)

 

Man, just flying into the place was a thrill. We flew first from Hong Kong to Chongqing.

Chongqing, somewhere in southwest China, was so foggy that, as we descended and approached the city, I could barely see anything from our plane’s windows until the black tongue of the airport runway appeared, almost magically, and mere seconds later we touched down with a hard bump.  

At the airport in Chongqing, we had a short layover, part of which I spent hitting on a cute young Chinese chick working at a souvenir stand. She was petite, with sky high cheekbones, big brown eyes, and straight shiny black hair reaching to her flat belly. She was wearing a tight red sweater and hugging blue jeans that complimented the curves of her flawlessly trim figure, and looking her over, I was starting to grasp the concept of “yellow fever.”

She spoke about 20 words of English, and I couldn’t speak a word of Chinese, but anything I said was making her laugh like I was a standup comedian. I asked for her number too, but she just kept laughing and giggling. I did the phone hand signals and everything. I don’t know if she didn’t understand or just didn’t want me calling her. Eventually I gave up and rejoined my travel crew, sat by them on a metal bench facing the gate.  

The Welshman swung his gaze at me as I sat down, and he snarled. With his snarling, his thin upper lip curling, his face reminded me a little of Sid Vicious. But like a blonder, older Sid Vicious. A wiser Sid Vicious. An in an airport in China middle-aged Sid Vicious. A Sid Vicious who hadn’t murdered his girlfriend and overdosed on smack. A Sid Vicious if he’d joined the S.A.S. instead of the Sex Pistols.  

I couldn’t really imagine Welshman doing smack, but I could see him murdering people. I could see him murdering lots of people. Shit, he was in the army, the S.A.S., so who knows how many bodies he had… I could see him in gully suits, running loose in jungles, jumping down from trees, his face slathered in green camo paint, all that Rambo sorta shit. Yeah, man, I probably didn’t even want to know the crazy military shit he’d done… Accordingly, I made a mental note to stay on his good side…

Welshman was sipping on a can of Coke, and he declared that Chinese chicks were hot; “fit” was the term he used. (“Fit” means “sexy” in spoken British.)

Though he warned me about Tibetan girls, proclaiming that Tibetan girls have hairy armpits and bad teeth, stinky breath. He was one to talk, really, considering his teeth were a train wreck, but his breath never stank, except of alcohol. His generalizations would have triggered people on Twitter, I bet. I sure hope he never took to tweeting.

He was tendentious, a skosh borderline racist to everyone, though; an equal offender of sorts, so I didn’t care, and again, he did frighten me a bit, so I kept quiet about his occasional inflammatory remarks…

"Mr. Wilson"

 

Mr. Wilson:

 

I tell you what, I’ve been in this neighborhood my whole life, and that house has always been an eyesore. It’s completely out of place. Who wants a big kooky gothic building like that in a residential area?

Its history is something else too…

The house was built by a tobacco baron, about 220 years back. But the very day he was to have moved in, him, his wife, and their two kids perished in a ghastly accident.

The family was en route to the house, riding in a horse-drawn carriage, when the carriage suddenly caught fire, and the four burned to death inside. A lantern had spilled, lit the carriage ablaze, apparently. But this was a while back, before forensics, CSI, and science like that, so it’s impossible to say what exactly happened. Whatever it was, it must have been a terrifying experience.

Worse yet, the driver of the carriage and the family’s butler had tried to pry the stagecoach doors open, but the horse got spooked and galloped away and that dang runaway horse then dragged the flaming carriage all through the town. The townsfolk, their pants scared off, were hollering and pointing and running every which way…

A policeman on horseback finally rode in, chased after the flaming wreck, and shot the runaway horse dead. Tragically, however, none of the family survived. 

I tell you, it must have been a nightmarish scene.

Allegedly the house was built on the spot of a battle, or a massacre, depending on who you ask, involving Pilgrims and Indians. Exactly who massacred who is hotly debated among historians. But it is for sure that many died and were buried on those grounds. The Pilgrims’ bodies were dug up and moved later, given proper burials. Rumor has it that the Indians, though, are still buried there…

For years it was considered cursed, hallowed ground. No one wanted to build anything there. One merchant tried to build a general store, but accidents kept happening during the construction, and he gave up. A couple workers died too during the construction of the house. Both fell from tall ladders, in the same spot, weirdly enough, I read.

After the tobacco guy and his family died in that freak fire, the house and the land sat empty for years. Until it was bought by the funeral folks.

Yessir, I remember back when it was a funeral home. When we were kids, we’d ride our bikes by the house, rubberneck and gawk at it. The funeral home only took in bodies, embalmed or cremated them, at that time, from what I can recall.

It’d creep the heck out of us, watching columns of gray smoke billow up from the chimney, knowing where the smoke was from… There’d be a noticeable metallic odor around the house too, kind of like a roast lamb or the smell of a cooking grill after cleaning it…

No one wanted anything to do with the place, other than gawk at it out of morbid curiosity. No one I knew had ever gone in there, no one I knew had stepped foot inside that creepy gothic monstrosity…

It was a family business for years, the funeral home. Then the family moved on, passed on. I never read about or heard of any accidents or gruesome stories involving the funeral home family, though, the Barkers. The patriarch was said to be a fine man. He was well-respected in the community and donated generously to the local church.  

One of the sons eventually became the undertaker and ran the place. But he didn’t live there and wasn’t active in the community. I remember seeing him. He was a freakishly tall, thin, and pale fellow. The man was pale as a vampire. He and his assistant, another pale, tall fellow, lived on the other side of town.

The two seemed to always be together and no one knew much about them. Given their work and unsettling appearances, no one wanted to have much to do with them. They were an embodiment of death. They looked like ghosts themselves, and there were rumors that they might actually be ghosts.

The two scared the bejeebus out of everyone. I got the heebie-jeebies just at the mere sight of them.

The pair worked there for years until they closed the business after the last Barker died.

You know, it’s off-topic, but I wonder what happens when an undertaker dies? Who buries the undertaker? Must be strange for an undertaker to bury another undertaker. I don’t know. I wonder about stuff like that. My wife says I talk too dang much. Anyway…

Anyway, they sold the property. We thought it’d be torn down and rebuilt, but a young family bought it and moved in not long after the funeral business shut down. It surprised everyone in the neighborhood. We couldn’t quite wrap our heads around why they’d want to live there, of all… You know, the stories of that place…

Everyone had a ghost story about it, about the house. Everyone in the neighborhood would talk about how they’d see strange phenomena, ‘round there. The most popular was the story of a ghost lady in an old-style white dress, and her stomach was ripped open and bloody, as if she’d been attacked, stabbed and murdered in a gory way.

The lady allegedly looked like someone from colonial times; she had a bonnet of some sort, and she’d walk around in circles, on the front lawn of the house, looking confused, like she was searching for something. At least that’s what everyone said. I never caught a glimpse of her.  

Maybe because I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in that ghost hooey. I never cared for scary movies or any of that jazz. I never even believed in God, to tell you the truth. But I never told anyone about that because there’s nothing worse than an atheist. An atheist is one step up from a communist. Or are atheists worse than communists? I don’t know.

I used to hate going to church. I hated pretending to pray. I’d daydream during the sermons. The priests up there in their robes. They were only grown men in pajamas to me. You know, one of them touched the altar boys, and I’d heard about it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t believe in God, because I heard the rumors about the priests. I heard it long before it became a national news story…

I hated the church. I hated it for most of my life.

But after the shootings, I’ll admit that I came to appreciate the community aspect of our church. I must admit the prayer services, candlelit vigils helped me through those dark days, just being with others, at that time, you know?

Still, the ghosts and that jazz, it’s hooey! I think it’s people’s imaginations. I can’t stand those silly horror movies. I really can’t! My wife watches them, but I think it’s nonsense.

And I can’t stand those “ghosthunter” shows on TV, either. I tell you, it’s a bunch of shysters, if you ask me. Hoaxes and hoaxers. All that. All those mediums and exorcists. Those “demonic possessions.” For shame! Those possessions back in medieval times were probably just some poor, mentally retarded kids, kids with speech impediments or folks with mental illnesses. Demons and ghosts, hah! It’s hogwash. It’s sad. It’s gosh-darn sad. Plain sad.

Everyone in the neighborhood figured they’d tear the place down. Not that I believe in ghosts, but still, who wants to live in a former funeral parlor? It’s yucky. It makes me want to throw up, thinking of those bodies in there, rotting and being embalmed and burned. The blood and guts running up and down the pipes in there. Who wants to shower in that? I gotta wonder if they flushed the blood and guts down the same pipes as our sewage. And then… does the treated water go to the same place as our drinking water comes from? The same pipes our house water comes from? I could google it, but it’s probably one thing you don’t want to know… Ick!

But, anyway, they remodeled the house and converted it into a residential property. I’m thinking they removed the funeral equipment before the family moved in, although I can’t say for sure.

Rumor has it the place still has its original furniture, the antique furniture, from the tobacco family, from 1800. Now that must be a sight, I tell you what…

Heck, they seemed alright, that family, the Oswalds. I remember them. They weren’t kin to the, you know, the infamous Oswald, but it must have been strange to share his name. It must have toughened them up, I’d think.

They came to a few neighborhood cookouts. But, tell you the truth, it was always uncomfortable being in their presence. Because they lived in that house. It was like the death clung to them. The spirit, idea of death had wrapped itself around them. Anytime you’d see them, you’d think of the bodies, the corpses being drained of blood or burned or whatever.

Again, I don’t believe in that junk about ghosts. But how could they live in that house? Why would they? Just look at it. Its gothic spires, its Victorian architecture. It looks like something from Edward Scissorhands.

They’d only lived there a couple months before… that happened… and all of them had been looking haggardly and sickly, more so than ever in the days prior...

A couple of the neighbors had caught a whiff of a burning smell coming from the house, similar to when the crematorium was running. Another neighbor said she’d been smelling a puke-like stink wafting out of there, another said it was like burning garbage. But me, no sir, I never noticed anything of the sort. Aside from the folks looking sickly, I never noticed anything strange ahead of that.. that day. That nightmare.  

It was such a nightmare too, when it happened. When the kid snapped. The kid had seemed normal enough, originally. Before he became a recluse. He’d been running around the neighborhood, same as any other kid. I heard other kids teased him, and his siblings, over their house, called them the “Adams Family” and stuff like that. You know how cruel kids can be.

But I don’t know if that was enough to make him snap. I don’t know if there’s ever really one reason. If there’s ever really one sign or there’s many signs. I don’t know.

I blame the parents, to be honest. How do you let your kid not leave his room? How do you let your kid sit around 24/7, playing violent video games and posting gory pics of plane crashes and gruesome murders online? The kid taped black garbage bags over his bedroom windows. He washed himself compulsively. He had no friends. He was pale as a ghost and only wore black. The kid looked like a monster, like a vampire. It was scary. Like sometimes you hear that a neighbor or coworker snapped, and you think, “How could he?” But him? It was like, “Of course he did…” The kid was a freak. He had serious issues.

So why did the parents buy that little freak a gun? A machine gun? It’s not like he’s going deer hunting with an M-16. I can’t wrap my head around it. Really, I just can’t.

I didn’t hear the gunshots. But I was home. I was getting ready for work. I saw the little freak, too, driving his mom’s minivan, on the way to shoot up his school. It was the first time I’d seen him in months. He looked a lot older than I remembered and was wearing a dang wedding dress. His face was blanched, looked made of marble. I couldn’t spot a trace of emotion.

Of course, I didn’t know he’d just shot his whole family and was on the way to shoot up his school. When the police interviewed me, I told them this. I wish, I so wish I would have known. I wish I had a clue. I would have called the cops. Then maybe I could have stopped the little freak from killing those poor kids at the school.

That’s the regret I live with. That’s what I think about. I flashback to that muggy morning. How hot and sticky it already was. How high the sun hung in the clear blue sky, the sun this huge shimmering orange ball. That might have been the hottest morning I can ever remember.

My dang car was like an oven; it was plain scorching inside. The steering wheel in my car felt like it was on fire. I was standing in the driveway waiting for the car to cool down when I saw that little psycho, driving along in his death van.

I think about that, about seeing that kid, that freak. He didn’t look at me. But I looked at him. I almost waved at him, like I do every neighbor, but I didn’t. Because he scared me. I think of that too. What if I’d waved at him and he’d rolled down the window, of that brown death van, and shot me dead in the street, like an animal?

What if that stopped it, though? What if he’d shot me, then the cops came and stopped him from going into that school? I’d rather he took me out than those kids. Maybe I’d have survived, and it’d be me in that wheelchair instead of that kid a few doors down, who’ll never walk again. I’ve lived for 52 years. That kid is only a kid. That kid is only 15, and he’s got to be in a stinking chair for the rest of his days!

I live with that. I live with those thoughts.

In the days following the shootings, I wanted the house torn down. Everyone in the neighborhood did. There’d be gawkers, idiots driving by, snapping photos of it. As if that’s what we needed, after the press, media was hounding us, with all their press vehicles, photographers, slick-talking journalists poking mics in our faces, their news tents pitched everywhere up and down the block.

We wanted to have that ugly house bulldozed once the cops were done with the crime scene. Heck, I’d have driven the bulldozer myself, taken it down. Everyone around here wanted that house gone. 

But not the relatives of the family, some cousin who inherited the house. No sir. He insisted on keeping it and renting it for now. He’s holding out to sell it later, apparently. Maybe he’s thinking the infamy will wear down and he can command a better price.

We, and I mean me and the other folks on the neighborhood council, lobbied the bank to buy the property so it could be torn down. We wanted to build a playground on the site, or start a small farm, a garden, do something to put life there, bring life to that place of unspeakable death.

But we didn’t get our wish. That ugly old horrible house is still standing, high and creepy as ever. And weirdos still are driving by to take photos of the dang thing. It’s a travesty. It absolutely is.   

Now a former NFL player is moving in, renting the place. I remember him playing. The guy was a terrific lineman.

But when I saw him driving up, walking into the house, he didn’t look good. He was limping and his face was sullen. I think he’s fallen on hard times. That must be why he’s living in an old murder house. Poor fella…

I wonder, would a guy like that be afraid of “ghosts?” I mean, he played against the fastest, strongest, most ferocious athletes in the world. What’s scarier than an NFL linebacker? No one is tougher, nothing is scarier than an NFL linebacker flying at you. A dang pumped up, 6’2, 240-pound hot mess of muscle. A meathead with a neck as thick as a tree trunk. A mohawked-maniac stabbed full of steroids, all screaming and flying at you like a bat out of hell. I tell you what, nothing is scarier than that...

Speaking of linebackers, Junior Seau was that fella’s teammate for a couple seasons. Junior Seau! I want to ask him about Junior, the “Tasmanian Devil.” I loved that guy! He was a favorite player of mine, probably my second favorite linebacker ever, after Derrick Thomas.

I’m not sure I could work up the nerve to ask about Junior, though. Not after what happened... I guess it’s one of those things you shouldn’t mention…

"Super Bowl Loser"

 

“Super Bowl Loser”

 

I was so frigging scared I thought I might die. Anyone who tells you they weren’t scared or nervous, anxious before playing the Super Bowl, they’re full of crap. Everyone on the team was amped up. Our mouths were dry. Our hearts were pumping. I must have pissed 5 times before we hit the field. It was the biggest game of my damn life, everything I’d dreamed of since I was a little kid.

I didn’t sleep a wink the night before. I was running on fumes. It was pure adrenaline and passion. I was just so amped up…

But once I hit the field, it became another game. However, the hits were harder. A lot harder. The intensity was certainly higher, super-charged, really, but the game was no longer an idea, no longer a fear; it was a game. It was the game I knew well, every movement, every formation, everything was inside me, in a physical, damn near spiritual language. I was a cog in the team machine. And we were in motion. We were grinding, and I was pushing and moving as my body had for years.

Until the final drive. That was something else. I’d never been so excited in my life. The rush returned. My mouth was filled with salt. My mouth was like a damn desert, it was so dry.

And I felt alive, so goddamn alive! There was a divine power running through me, a feeling like some sort of superhuman strength, like when a mother can lift a 10,000-pound car to save her baby. This is how I felt. I think I could have picked up a semitruck and thrown it across an ocean. That was the energy I had. That was the voltage thumping and surging through me. A force of God was pumping through my veins.

I remember trotting onto the field after that long Super Bowl commercial timeout. I remember my eyes were squeezed to slits. In the huddle, I was shaking, I was so fricking amped! The crowd noise was deafening. I can still hear its hiss, like an airplane engine, I can hear it; it’s blurry, but I hear it. Goddammit, when I have the flashbacks, when I have the dreams, I hear… I hear the hiss...

We were playing in the Georgia Dome, and usually, for Falcons games, that place was quiet as a library, aside from when they pump in fake crowd noise, but for this game, this noise was real, and running like a power saw in my ears. This was the damn Super Bowl, and on that final drive, my ears were in pain. Dammit, I’m not lying, I think my eardrums were ready to bleed.

We were fighting, pushing and scrapping, charging our way down the field. I wasn’t letting their sack specialist DE have any piece of my QB. I was pancaking his bitch ass like nobody’s business. They talk about the NFL being a “family game,” but, let me tell you, the stuff that’s said on that field would make a nun faint.

And, dammit, you should have heard the trash talk in that game. Their superstar DE, goddamn, he was cussing, talking the worst trash talk I think I’d ever heard. He was talking about my mother. He was talking about my ugly horse face. He was calling me a fag and a bitch and a honky chickenshit motherfucker and everything under the sun.

He was one to talk. He was one ugly sumbitch. A teen wolf looking motherfucker, looking exactly like Michael J. Fox in that shitty 80s movie. The dude looked like a fucking werewolf, with his big buckteeth. I think he really was a goddamn werewolf. He was one mean man, a tenacious competitor. Hell, I hated the shit-talker but respected his game. He was fierce.

But I kept him in check. I pushed him off on every play. I was a wall, I was a man of steel, I was a barbed wire fence, I was standing taller than a wall surrounding a prison or an army base, dammit. I was Fort Knox.

Dammit, fucking dammit, I felt invincible that whole game. I didn’t allow a single sack. We scored 28 points. 28 points. It should have been enough. It should have been...

My senses were so heightened that game, that day. I’d played football my whole life, but I never really noticed the stink of the game. I’d never noticed the smell of piss, shit, vomit, sweat, farts, blood, any of those, probably because I’d be so super-focused on the game. But in that game, especially that final drive, my nostrils were flaring, burning with smells…

We were neck and neck the whole contest. Then they kicked a 52-yard field goal, right after the two-minute warning, and seized the lead.

Then… that last drive. It was magical, like it was in slow motion. We clawed down the field. Our QB was throwing bullets. He was throwing daggers. Precision passes. It was surgical. He was Tom Brady. He was Joe Montana. He was cold-blooded, sweating buckets of ice water. He was stoic. Methodical. Moving us like soldiers. Inching us forward, inching us forward, yard after hard-earned yard.

I was feeling it. I was tasting the champagne. It was that storybook ending. We were going to Disneyland. We were fucking going to Disneyland, I kept ensuring myself. It was my mantra… 

Then the last play, from the 15-yard line. Shotgun formation. Then the snap. Then the throw. The catch and the dive. The receiver wrestled down, the receiver reaching out his long wiry arm, touching the ball toward the goal line. From my vantage point, I thought he made it, I jumped up and roared. I thought we were going to goddamn Disneyland. I was there. I was on a float in a parade. I was in fucking Disneyland!

But when the refs waved it off... But when the refs shook their heads, when they shook their heads and slashed their arms, when the confetti fell and THEIR side ran hooting and jumping and dancing onto the field. I stood in disbelief for a couple minutes. I was thinking there had to be more time, one more play, just one play, just one more play, dammit, that’s all we needed.

I was frozen in shock for a couple minutes. My body seized up. Then the humiliation hit me, crashing over me like a wave of shit, like somebody had scooped out shit-water from a toilet and dumped it over my head.

Goddammit, we lost the Super Bowl. We lost the fucking Super Bowl. We’re the biggest losers in America. We’re the biggest losers in the world. Everyone, even people who don’t watch football, saw us lose. Everyone was at their Super Bowl parties, sitting on their couches, eating potato chips, drinking beers and pointing at us. Everyone was laughing at us.

We lost. We were fucking losers. We disappointed everyone. We’d have to go back to our city as losers. There would be no parade for us, only an empty, cold airport. There would be no afterparty, just a depressing hotel room. There’d be no champagne, no chummy interviews with the press. No fucking trip to Disneyland...

Dammit, the way the media guys in the locker room were speaking to us, sad faced and solemn, really, it was… as if we were at a funeral...  

The locker room after the game, it was dismal. You could hear a pin drop. Barely anyone said a word. A couple guys cried. The whole world saw us lose the Super Bowl. We were losers and we all knew it. Every dream I’d had as a kid, growing up, playing football, it was to win the Super Bowl, to hoist that shiny silver Lombardi Trophy, to kiss that trophy. And here we were, in the game, fighting and scraping until the last minute, but we just couldn’t get it done.

We were losers.

I can’t imagine how horrible and soul-crushing it must have been to be on those Buffalo Bills teams that lost 4 straight Super Bowls. I don’t know how those guys were able to show their faces in public again after that. Honestly, just losing one had me thinking of checking into the witness protection program or disappearing to a deserted island in the Pacific. I was so ashamed.  

My old man told me there is no second place. Only a first to lose. He’d never played in the NFL, but he played D1 college ball at Army. When I made the NFL, I thought, “at least I’ve done something HE never did.” I felt so proud. When we made it to the Super Bowl, I thought I’d wear my sparkly Super Bowl ring to every Christmas party, and then… maybe then… then... he’d be proud of me.

Just once, I’d like to have seen him smile. The man never smiled. Never. Not even on holidays. Weddings. Nothing. He’d never once congratulated me. Not when I played D1 ball, not when I got drafted, nothing. It pushed me to be better, and I won’t whine or anything and I love him all the same… But it’s just… that I looked up to him, playing ball. I looked up to him, when I was a kid. I mean, dammit, he was a colonel in the US Army. My dad was a bona fide hero. He was my hero.  

And I’d thought of him patting me on the back, hugging me during our victory party. It’d have made him proud… It’d have made him smile… He could’ve bragged about it to his buddies at the VFW, shown them my Super Bowl ring…

But no. I lost the game. I was a loser.

I couldn’t look my old man in the eyes afterward. And I never got a second chance at a Super Bowl. I never got back to the big game.

Not that I could really face my Pops, even before that game. But after that, dammit, I never could really talk to him, not even when he was on his deathbed.

Dammit, I made millions. I was an all-pro. I played 16 years in the NFL. But the only time I got to the big game, I lost. Losing that Super Bowl, being the biggest loser, having to face my old man, my family, after that game, having to explain to my children that we lost, that was the worst moment of my life. That was far worse than losing my money.

Goddammit, we let everyone down. And I have to live with that. I lost my pride with that Super Bowl. I will never have a second chance. That game, that drive will haunt me forever.

That game… The noise, the crowd hiss… That sea of camera lights flashing… Me, shoving forward, beads of hot sweat burning my eyes as I was looking up over the rows of helmets and knots of padded bodies… Me, seeing our guy twisting on the turf, stretching his arm to the white chalk of the goal line, and then… the whistles, the fireworks, the reckoning, knowing our guy came up just inches, dammit, just inches short, that… that wakes me up in the middle of the night... It fucking haunts me.

I only watched that game tape once, during the offseason following the Super Bowl. Otherwise, I don’t ever want to see video of it. Not like I need to, anyway, since it often creeps back, runs on a loop, in my mind.

When I flashback to that Super Bowl, that’s pretty much the only time, really, these days, I think much about football. I don’t even watch the Super Bowl anymore, unless I go to a party…  

My wife’s been talking about this haunting crap. I don’t believe in it. I believe in real ghosts. The past. Traumatic memories and lost opportunities… The ghost of Super Bowl past. The ghost of lingering disappointment and lost pride. Those, dammit. Those are my ghosts.

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“The Ultimate Fuck Trudeau Selfie” by Kim Cancer

 

“The Ultimate Fuck Trudeau Selfie”

 

Careening toward the Canadian border, we are snow-blind, forcing forward, following fat clouds.

Finally, we arrive. Join the juxtaposition and encounter a lengthy line of snowmobiles, hockey players and Bigfoot. Peering up at the checkpoint, we see motorists collared and searched, probed, and the rectal exams begin, asses hanging from car windows, border-crossers stood spreadeagle, Canuck Grim Reaper Bots extending robotic arms, latex gloves snapping back in coruscating flashes of light.

My Adam’s apple bobs up and down as I dart a glance at a Bigfoot bending over, propped against a plastic palm tree, a gloved Canuck Bot’s hand halfway up Bigfoot’s butt. Then a gust of wind splashes a sheet of snow at our windshield, coloring everything milky, blurry white…

“We should have just snuck in through the woods or taken a hot-air balloon,” Melvin affirms as he’s probing his nose with pliers and plucking nose-hairs meticulously in the rearview mirror.

But what if the Canuck Bots caught you? I ponder…

The Canuck Bots nor the Canucks are usually violent. But they could be, right? All that politeness. All those niceties. I’ll bet inside every Canadian, there’s a raging monster, an anger, a pressure cooker, a bomb waiting to explode. Any Canadian could be a merciless killer given the temptation and opportunity. 

An aggrieved Canadian, that could be the world’s most dangerous animal. Aside from playing hockey, the world doesn’t know what the Canadians are plotting, what they’re doing up there. I envisage dark, insidious actors, underground ice-bunkers, and cutting-edge weapons in the hands of polite and helpful neighbors.  

“Jeffery Dahmer was a Canadian,” mentions Melvin, who’s slapping rhythmically on the dashboard, along to the drumbeat of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.”

Shaking my head, I proclaim that “no, he was a Wisconsinite… Similar accent, though.”

Melvin curls his upper lip in disgust, mentioning that that explains everything, and there are “no worse people than the Wisconsinites.”

Oh no, the Canadians are way worse, I insist. Their Mounties are monsters. The Mounties created like Frankenstein, monsters made from assembled body parts, the evil beings born sniffing for blood. Officers of Satan, the Mounties. The Mounties, militaristic, riding on battle moose, moose themselves perfected in laboratories, moose decked out in body armor, moose fitted with jet engines and wings, moose on clandestine flying moose missions; the flying moose fitted with machine guns, missiles, and laser beams blasting from moose asses and antlers.

It’s like I tell Melvin, moose run incredibly fast, too, for an animal that size, moose reaching a peak running speed of 35 MPH…

“Even if they don’t fly the moose, just imagine those Mounties on moose back, those moose hoofs clattering and the Mounties making morbid battle cries, sounds worse than Celine Dion’s most dreadful multi-octave wails.

“Imagine Frankenstein riding a rodeo bull like a racehorse.”

“Or a war elephant,” Melvin opines, and I nod my head tacitly, and I continue, “It’s sinister… Far worse than the Wisconsinites’ black bear trampoline terror campaigns and rattlesnake catapult attacks,” I assert, plainly, and not even Melvin will argue this…

 

 

Our car inches closer. Melvin is practically licking the windshield. The snow slips wet, clearing the screen, leaving us with only the fuzzy outlines of oncoming Canadians.   

Melvin has been stirring in his seat. Says the last time he attempted to enter Canada, the immigration officer refused his entry, without explanation, aside from hinting that Melvin looked too poor to be able to fund his stay in Canada.

It’s like I tell Melvin, you can’t wear dirty basketball shorts in winter and turtleneck trench coats in summer without repercussions… At least today he’s in a pink tutu, glasses/nose/mustache disguise and a wrinkly old Wizards Jordan jersey…

 

The line speeds up, fast. We unbuckle our belts, prepare to be fingered.

“Heck, I might even enjoy it…” I mention, reaching down to unzip my fly.

The stink-hungry border guards are 30ish; they are red-faced men, troglodytes, with slow-moving eyes and potbellies. They only peer at our passports, and one of the border guards pops his head into the car, scans around, then grunts and nods. These Canadians are far gruffer than I’d pictured. They speak in a trembling tone that sounds forced, and one of them only speaks French to us.

But they let us pass, unmolested, and I feel a sense of release ease over me, a burden lifted.

Not Melvin, though. Heading through the Canadian immigration checkpoint has reanimated his PTSD.  

Melvin reiterates his negative experience, relives it, and reminds me there are indeed Canadian cunts, that they exist.

“Cunts exist everywhere,” I affirm, scratching my eyebrows; after crossing into Canada, my right eyebrow begins to itch incessantly.

Melvin cocks back his bald head. His scruffy red lumberjack beard looks itchy too. He scratches at it again but paws at his face in a way that appears contemplative.

I wonder if the border guards threw itching powder at us or something. I could see the French-speaking one being shifty like that. I didn’t like his man-bun. I don’t trust a man with a man-bun.

Melvin shares my disdain for the man-bun. Says he hopes to witness a mullet resurgence and rambles about the repercussions of hiding in some bushes, or up in a tree, then jumping out, like a ninja, and snipping off the policeman’s man-bun, with a pair of garden shears…

 

The sun starts to set, the bloody orange ball sinking into the panorama of the purplish-blue horizon. The sky here is heavier than home. The air up here is way cleaner. Everything is cleaner. The streets are so sanitary that they are aglow, gleaming like ice rinks.  

 

Melvin is apoplectic, angrily scratching his face, and still ruminating on the stubborn border guard from two years ago, saying he wanted to go find him and…

We nose into the parking lot at the mouth of the Niagara Falls. The old box Chevy had died so I’d been behind the car, pushing it like a loaded shopping cart for the last three blocks.

Melvin yanks the parking brake, hops out and hurls invective, then spits at the car, kicks the tires, and screams something in Spanish.

 

The Falls are raging. A violent hiss, a vibration, a smell of powering water wafts and swirls about in the air, and I forget my itch.

Melvin and I pop the trunk. Inside are the squirrel suits. We zip into them.

Melvin laments that America never conquered Canada. That we tried in the War of 1812 and failed miserably. He says we should have annexed Canada and Greenland, a long time ago, for the oil, wood, and maple syrup.

“And the Tim Hortons,” Melvin asserts, convincing me that he’s a true expansionist, a proud imperialist, the last of a dying breed. “Teddy Roosevelt was America’s greatest president!” cries Melvin, climbing the protective fencing.  

“I’m partial to Martin Van Buren,” I retort, and I climb up next to Melvin, flanking him. A crowd forms, encircles us. Fingers point, phones aloft. When the police race over, one riding aggressively on a Segway, shouting polite Canadian police things, it is then… it is then that we know… We know the moment has arrived.

“And we’re keeping William Shatner!” hollers Melvin, his head tossed back, his eyes toward the purpling heavens. His nostrils flaring, the veins on his neck popping like cables, he then swivels his gaze toward me, snorts and sneers.

Together, on the count of three…

One…

Two…

Three…

And we dive, face first. FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH… Our plunge propelled by the Lazar engines in our suits. Our dive is like an inverted parabola, first plummeting down, then straightening out, then arcing up and angling to a perfectly parallel, horizontal approach, flying full force forward toward the Falls.

Foooooooooooosh… And we’re zooming like fighter jets over the animosity and immensity and indifference of the pooling water below. Zooming over its frothy white bubbling, its supernatural strength and uninvited violence.

Zooming in a straight soar, we then angle and twist, slip under, bend behind the Falls, the curtain of water, the mammoth of motion, and we glide the tunnel, snap the ultimate Fuck Trudeau selfie and then shoot out the other end, ascending, and we’re over, backflipping a guardrail, touching down to a battered path, paved with blood and broken teeth.

Then we peel off our squirrel suits, disrobe, and run, naked, screaming names of recent Stanley Cup winners. Our naked, hairy man bodies, our shaven chests and backs painted in anti-Trudeau, Banksy-style artworks.

Naked at last, the itch returns, intensifies, overtaking us, as if we’d been bitten by a thousand mosquitoes, and as we run, we stop every few feet to flail, grunt, and scratch. Yet we somehow sustain our suicide sprint in the direction of the border, doing our damnedest to achieve the dash and to meet the simplicity of selection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"COLT"

 

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“Colt”

 

Dude! I love that our house was bought by Jack Thee Jackal! I sent him a DM, congratulating him on buying the house, offering to show him around, party with him, but he didn’t reply. No probs! He either didn’t read it or didn’t believe it. He gets thousands of DMs, I’m sure. 

I tried making a YouTube channel like Jack’s. I’d grab my bros and we’d go out, do stupid shit, copycat Jackass stuff. We did one where we dressed up in girls’ lingerie and played golf in a graveyard.

And we made another series, where we preyed on victims at school, or around the mall, or the neighborhood. Our goal: to find them, and fart on them. We’d stalk, hunt, hide, and then jump out of bushes, burst out from behind closed doors, or jump up from the backseat of a car or leap down from a tree or fire escape, either naked, wearing only a pair of assless chaps, or in just a pair of briefs, and then we’d unleash ass, point and fire unfiltered farts at friends and classmates.

Sometimes a classmate might open a door to a classroom and find one of us, pants pooled around our ankles, bent over in their direction, ready to launch a stinky ass attack.

Possibly the worst of the videos was the “Fart Alarm Clock,” where a buddhi bandit would patrol the library, sneak up on a sleeping classmate, drop trou, bend over, lean his ass in, and just let out a booming burrito fart, ass mere inches from the sleeper’s face…

“Bare booty fart ATTACKS! The most vicious, NO FILTRATION!” was the title and theme. But no one watched. Except a couple people, who told us that we suck. That we “suck RAW!” I think those were the exact words.

Then I tried making music, rapping. I wasn’t good at that either. I got even worse feedback on that when I uploaded my tunes to the interwebs. In my mind, though, I sounded dope. I sounded like Eminem. I was going to BE the next Eminem. But then I saw the comments I was getting. In fact, one song went sort of viral- but for the wrong reasons. Thousands of people watched my video, cracked jokes about it, called me all sorts of shit, a “wigger,” mostly, “wack AF” and I even received death threats and a couple guys challenging me to fistfights.

All over a free video, a basement rap I slapped together on my computer. A song about smoking weed in my school’s handicapped bathroom!

(Handicapped people were the most pissed about it. One even asked, “Dude, where am I supposed to smoke weed?” Looking back on it, he had a point. It was pretty fucking wack...)

Posting stuff online, I guess it’s pretty easy to discover your limitations when you get that amount of instant feedback. Man, reading hundreds of people telling me that I sucked, I can’t say it was good for my psyche. 

Oh… Well.. Fuck them! I was still living in a house big enough to have its own zip code. I was always aware of that. Particularly since my earliest memories, from when I was a tiny kid, were of being in a cramped apartment, with my parents, back when my dad had first started playing pro football. But once he signed that big contract, ah man, life was pretty easy.

My life has always been easy. Maybe too easy… I’ve spent countless hours just watching and rewatching gangsta rap videos, smoking weed… I’ve never been too motivated… My sister, a few years younger than me, was always a nerd. She was always hitting the books...

Not me, though. I’ve never found a calling. I never took to football, like my old man. I got more of my mom’s DNA. I’m not that tall, only 5’11, and am thin, like her. I’m not super coordinated, either. I’m just not great at sports, which kinda always made me feel like I was a disappointment to my father.

Not that I didn’t try. When I was little, I joined Pop Warner. Dad didn’t force me into it or anything. But I thought he’d want me to be a jock like him. When I sucked at football and quit, however, he never mentioned anything about it. I didn’t know quite what to make of that then. I still don’t.

He was always a bit distant, my Pops, off in his football world. But I respected him, I must say. I looked up to him. He was big and powerful. He gave us a great life. He was gone most of the time, and was aloof, but that’s just his temperament. He’s a quiet man. He lets his deeds do the talking. And I respect that. My dad is cool. He was good to us. I mean, like sure, he’d spaz out, break stuff around the house and scream after games. It’d scare the shit out of me and my sis, but it was never directed at us and he never got violent. He was never abusive.

Him, nor my mom, never really disciplined us, ever, that I can recall. There were a few babysitters and maids who’d get in our faces, from time to time. Usually they’d be on my case for my shitty grades and a couple Jackass stunts the school got upset about.

But other than that, I never got in too much trouble. As a kid, I was pretty mellow. I still am. I think I’ve been in one or two fistfights in my entire life. I’m just laidback. So much so that people might think I’m on Xanax or something. But nah, I don’t take drugs too often these days, aside from an occasional bump or two of the nose candy and, of course, smoking weed, but that’s a plant, not a drug, in my opinion…  

Nah, man, my biggest problem has been, and continues to be, my lack of direction.

I mean, like, at first I’d wanted to be on Jackass. Then I’d wanted to be Eminem. But since none of that transpired, I don’t know what to do. I didn’t have a Plan B or C.

Lately I’ve been working odd jobs. My degree sucks. Like, I went to a party college, got drunk, and copied all my papers from the internet, paid nerds to do homework for me. Even with cheating, though, I still barely graduated college. I failed English. WTF? I speak English! How the hell did I fail English? Damn…

I guess part of the problem was that I was never interested in learning the stuff they taught in school. In math class, I’d be thinking about learning to fix my engine, buying parts for my car. In English classes, I hated Shakespeare, but I liked reading other stuff, like Tucker Max, and thrillers. I love thrillers! My friend in high school got me into Bukowski. His poetry kicks ass. Reading it, I couldn’t believe anyone would actually write shit like that. It’s the only poetry I could ever enjoy.  

But the stuff they assigned me to read in class was terrible. It was always so fucking boring. The only assigned reading I ever liked from English class was Mark Twain. That dude was fucking cool. Emily Dickinson? Beowulf? Nah, not for me. Jane Austin? Yuck. Fuck off!

To me, that’s the problem with school. You’re forced to learn this or that. It’s something about being forced into it that turns me off. If I’m into something, if I want to learn it, I can’t pry myself away from it. I’ll spend hours on Wikipedia sometimes. I’ll dive down intellectual rabbit holes, reading all sorts of shit. I fuck with knowledge; it’s not that I don’t enjoy learning. 

I could just never find that spark in school. Maybe I just wasn’t lucky enough to have a Dead Poets Society jump up on the desk “OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN” type of teacher. You know, a teacher from one of those 1980s movies…

My degree was in Business Administration. But I had no idea what business I wanted to do. I still have no idea what business I want to do. In fact, I don’t even like business. I don’t like the corporate world.

What do I like, aside from pranks and jokes? Women. Oh, man, I LOVE women. They love me back too. I’m not that tall or muscled-up, but I’m sinewy, and have been told I resemble the actor Robert Pattinson… I’ve never had a problem meeting chicks…

Women, yeah, dude, I’m really a fan of their organization… Every time I hook up with a new girl, take off her clothes, I feel like a little kid opening a Christmas present… I love their soft skin, their hair, their scents, their makeup, stockings, high heels; the way they walk, talk, the way they dress, their shapes, curves. Seriously, if there were a job where I could just stare at women all day, that’s what I’d do.

My dream job would be that, or maybe a photographer, snapping photos of models all day. Nude models. Or a pornographer. But I’m not too into the hardcore stuff. I prefer the more tasteful, Playboy stuff, or nude paintings. I’m not into chicks spreading their snatch and doing gangbangs, anal, or weird Japanese stuff... 

To be frank, I’m not sure what I’ll do for work. Before, I never worried about money. But that was before my parents went broke. Now that I can’t count on inheriting millions, I’ve suddenly got to make my own way.

Since I like women, nude women, in particular, I’ve been working as a DJ at an upscale strip club. I got the gig through a friend who bought into the club. I should have bought in with him, scored a loan from my old man, back when he had more cash. Same as my Pops, I guess, I’m not a good businessman.

But, thems is the breaks, as the old-timers say. And I’m doing okay, DJing, rocking trap tunes, looking at fine babes every night, fine NAKED babes.

I’m even allowed to audition “talent,” watch aspiring exotic dancers shake it for me and the manager, other staff. I’ve dated like three of our strippers, but can’t say it’s my favorite thing to do, dating our dancers.

Man, I caught feelings for one, this petite Latin honey. She was chill, funny, and freaky in the sack. A damn dimepiece. The chick had a cobra tramp stamp and killer curves and the most gorgeous face ever. She was stunningly pretty, with that intricate, exotically sumptuous type face that only Latin babes have. She was just stunning, with or without make-up, that hot of a chick. 

We only dated a few weeks, but I fell for her, I admit. And it fucked me up, watching her from the DJ booth, her down on the stage, her doing splits, prancing around naked, wiggling her ass in dudes’ faces, seeing dudes ogle her bare body. The worst was watching her do lapdances, bumping and grinding on middle-aged creeps or fratboy asswipes. The wolf-faced fucks. Dudes running their hands on her body. It fucked me up. I felt like a cuckold.

I mean, man, I dated this Instagram model chick. A butt model. That was all she did, all she did was take pics of her butt, post it on the ‘Gram. Every day, a different butt shot. Bending over, walking up stairs, leaning against a wall, lying on her stomach... She was creative with it, too, like an artist, a Picasso of ass, coming up with all sorts of different contortions, angles, lightings, all sorts of truly ingenious ways to present her butt to the camera. She did things with her ass that I couldn’t imagine possible, for real...  

And look, I didn’t care. I didn’t care that she showed her butt, in thongs, lingerie, and bikinis on Instagram every day. I didn’t care that she cashed in on her looks. I know there were like millions of dudes across the globe jerking off to her. But I didn’t care.

Like, for real, more power to her. She’s a clever and enterprising chick. I could see her one day having a reality show like the Kardashians. I mean, everyone thinks those Kardashian chicks are stupid floozies, but they’re not. They’re smart businesspeople and are raking in billions. I respect that. I respected my butt model chick too. She was fucking cool…

But there was something different, man, seeing my girl on stage, seeing the dudes in person. It was different, seeing their pervy faces, seeing their hungry eyes. It kinda fucked me up, man… It was a kick in the balls…

She didn’t stay long anyway, the Latina. She moved to another city once she’d saved a bit of cash. She told me she was only doing the job to help pay for her dad’s heart surgery... I lost touch with her after she moved, and she deleted me from her Snapchat... 

Thems is the breaks. Better to have loved and lost, right? I’m not sure if it was love, really. But it fucked me up. It fucked me up for a good minute…

After her, I stopped dating our dancers. These days, I’m back on Tinder more, hooking up. To be honest, I’ve never had a serious relationship, only hookups, short term things. If I’m with a girl too long, I start losing interest in her, start seeing her like a sister or something, I don’t know, why. It’s weird. 

But, like, yeah, man, my life isn’t too bad, altogether. The future… I guess that’s what bugs me. I don’t know, for sure, what I’ll do. The more I think about it, the more I feel lost. I just want to have fun, really.

I mean, seriously, man, why is it that we have to do something? Why can’t I just be? The world is so full of demands, complications. It’s never as easy as it is on TV...  

I mean, like, dude, when are the robots coming? Aren’t the robots supposed to come and take our jobs? Do the shitty stuff people don’t want to do? And then Amazon or the government can give us money, and we can all chill, let fucking Alexa, Siri, and R2D2 do shit. Then we humans can just chill, eat and fuck, just live like the French. Yeah, man, I think the future will be awesome. Yo, I can’t wait…

But at least for now, at least until Larry David or Andrew Yang becomes President, like, I don’t know, I don’t know, man. I don’t know what I’ll do.

I spent a couple years traveling the world after college. That was for sure the best time of my young life. I traveled Europe, Asia, South America. I backpacked. I worked bar gigs out there. I taught English. I thought my travels would help me “find myself.” But they didn’t. I didn’t exactly find myself, but I found something else in Tibet. Man, I found something far greater and far more important.

And it’s helped me. Helped me a lot. It really has... 

 

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