Philip At the Orgy

Read by Kurtis Moyer featuring music by Mark Deutsch with a short introduction by the author.

pt. 1


pt. 2

READ ALONG WITH KURTIS!



My old man was a creature of habits, and I don’t mean those hats that nuns wear. Said habits ranged from “bad” to “irritating” and even to, in the case of his frequent attending of crust punk shows, “improbable.” One of the worst of these habits was his strange, unnatural compulsion to always be giving me advice, most of which pertained to gastro-intestinal processes. And when he wasn’t commenting on the trends of my bowel movement habits, he was usually giving me his expert opinion on the Asian currency exchange markets. Of course, all of this worthless advice was accepted exuberantly by me, with the maximum of facetious gratitude. But then, at a rate of high infrequence, my dad would give me some bit of insight concerning what the layperson calls “life,” and what we professionals refer to as “la vida loca.” These rare occurrences were often in the middle of loud discourses between the old man and I, and on a regular basis his advice was accompanied by blunt objects, tossed. It was in such a situation one afternoon, just as a lamp nearly brained me, that my father ennobled me with this gem of advisement: “You always hang out with such bums! They smell terribly! Why can’t you hang out with rich guys?”

But everyone I knew was a bum. Technically, I guess I they would all be considered “squatters.” But there was one guy I knew, who always seemed to have cash. His name was Carey, and he lived under the front porch at the Mermaid Café. After receiving my dad’s advice and considering it, I started to go over a few times every week to crawl under the porch to see how old Carey was doing. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he not only always had money, but that he loved to spend it, and would frequently purchase me sandwiches.

So, despite his several dastardly malevolent personality defects, we became close. One afternoon, suffering hunger pains, I went over to visit him. He appeared to be filling out his taxes, scribbling furiously with a crayon, when I interrupted him. Upon seeing me, he threw his arm around my shoulders and launched into what sounded like a sales pitch for property in Las Vegas.

“It’s a dealerino! A real goodoocho dealeronnie! The condo is riiiiiiiiight on the water,” he explained, making almost no sense, and shoving business cards into the pockets of my jeans. I politely reminded him of my massive lack of money, and he promptly stole my wallet.

“Of course, we’ll need to discusserize a mortgageronic loanish thingie,” he said as he sniffed my credit card and jotted down my driver’s license number. Abruptly, he suffered a moment of lucidity, cheerfully barfed on my left shoe and suggested we leave.

“You puked on my shoe!” I responded with some dismay.

“Let’s burglarimahrize a bunch of douchebaggeronis!” He said jovially, making zero sense. I had no clue why he talked like that and I rarely grasped what he was saying. However, as I already pointed out, he was always buying me sandwiches, and so I framed his nonsensicalness as charming eccentricity. He had been a hedge fund manager in New York City, or at least that’s what I think he told me. But, due to the recent collapse of capitalism, he had become nobly homeless in Berkeley, utterly employed and, by mysterious means, always with money to throw around. He grunted and tried to sit up.

“We’re gonna go somewhere? Okay. You’re not too drunk to drive, are you?”

“Aw, it’s toatsly legallic tah drive drunkified if you’re on a motorsicle,” he garbled as he managed to stand up. “But you’ll haf ta wear a specialized head protectorizer.” He grasped my shoulder and jumped into my arms. “Take mah out to mah bike and I’ll show you.”

So I lugged him out to his motorcycle. He picked up what looked to me to be a normal helmet from where it sat in the cab and he showed it to me.

“That’s not a special head protector-” I politely pointed out, but I was cut off abruptly when he slammed the helmet down on my head backwards. “I believe the helmet may be placed incorrectly,” I protested, blindly waving my arms around as I tried to keep from falling over. Carey must not have heard me, because he blithely helped me into the cab with a sharp kick to my ass. I believe I entered headfirst into the cab. But any safety concerns I might have had, being in such a precarious sitting position, were immediately put to rest. Carey helpfully pulled several bungie cords over my rear end to ensure I didn’t fly out.

“Boosh!” I think I heard him trumpet, “Fraggle rock pizzitza pants!” He revved the motorcycle’s engine, crashed into what sounded like at least four cars and then jumped a curb. I suffered the sensation of spinning wildly out of control for what must have been at least a half hour, and was just about to politely voice my discomfort when we crashed through something that felt distinctly like a garage door.

When Carey released me from the bungie cords and removed me from the cab, I was surprised to discover that we were somewhere in the suburbs, in an area I did not immediately recognize.

“Where are we?” I whispered, extraordinarily nervous at our property destruction and trespassing.

“I’mah gonna steal some jewelahrah,” Carey said commandingly, and I nodded without understanding. “Go distractify these victimizified home ownars,” he hiccupped, pushing me towards the front door of the house.

“What?” I looked around, bewildered. He frowned, grabbed my arm, dragged me over to the door, then pushed it open and shoved me inside. Thrust into a strange place, inside of which I fully expected to find the cast of “Leave it to Beaver” waiting for me, I instinctively did my best ballerina impression and performed in the Vaganova method while squeaking ferociously. All of the lights were off and I could hear loud opera music being played somewhere in the house. Maybe there was a party going on, I thought, and I began to reason that maybe I was not, in fact, trespassing and that maybe Carey had been telling me that we were there for a cool party. Of course, Carey made no sense, so it was conceivable that “jewelahrah” might have meant “cool party.” It certainly seemed like a cool party, from the opera music. Deciding to follow that assumption, I went into the next room.

There, before my eyes were maybe 15 naked, middle-age-y fat people, engaged in what can only be described politely as “porking.” Shocked at the sight, I began to inadvertently yodel, as inconspicuously as possible. One of the women looked up, extracted herself from the complex human knot she had been entangled in, and came bounding over cheerfully.

“Are you the colonics technician we just ordered?” She looked at me appraisingly, “We just called, and you’re already here? I am impressed. What great service! Here, come look at this asshole and tell us what we’re doing wrong,” she grasped me by the neck and began to lug me towards a rather large fat rear end, belonging to an unhappily-groaning man. Said asshole appeared to be eating a plastic tube.

“Jumping Jehosephats! Yoicks!” I protested, confused and suddenly drenched in sweat. “I’m friends with Carey…you know Carey?” I sang in a falsetto.

The woman stopped suddenly and stared at me. “You’re Larry Gary?” Her mouth fell open and her face turned bright red. “Oh my God! Please, excuse my manners, Mr. Gary! I didn’t realize it was you!”

She let go of me and I immediately, instinctively got ready to enact some more ballet. “So,” she said, her gaze now settling on my crotch region, “can I see it?”

“Did you say Larry Gary was here?” A giant bearded man with an accent I’m tentatively labeling “Classics professor” came over and, unfortunately joined in the conversation. He was also alarmingly naked. “My word! So you’re the famous Larry Gary!” He eyed me with large, bad, beady, pointy eyes. He frowned. “Let’s see this so-called ‘miracle,” he said, also gazing at my groin.

Chuckling nasally, I had to slap away the several eager hands that were suddenly encroaching my personal space zone, as I tried in vain to form a complete sentence out of the beeps and gurgles that were emitting from my throat. At that moment, the lights switched off and the music died, throwing the room into confusion and allowing me to cartwheel to safety. I heard Carey revving the motorcycle outside and hurried out the door.

He had rammed the motorcycle into the telephone pole outside, apparently knocking the power lines out of place and thus inadvertently killing the power in the house. He was backing up and looked just about to leave, and so I jumped into the cab.

“It wasn’t me! I’m a hedge fund manager, not a thief!” He shouted frantically, in a very rare incident of completely intelligible speech, and then he punched me in the face.

“Carey! It’s me, Philip! Your speech impediment is cured!” I exclaimed, shaking him violently.

“What the boogie-mankey are youse doing heh-rah?” Carey said, once again reverting to nonsensicality. Then we heard shouting, and the naked group sex participants came pouring out onto the lawn to protest my departure. Without another exhalation of gobbledygook, Carey took off, driving straight through the woods.

“This road is very bumpy,” I commented helpfully, “and full of trees!”

“Oh shit,” Carey responded, using intelligibility again. Apparently he only resorted to using real words in emergencies. “This bicycle is really fast!”

Three hours later, we managed to find our way back to the Mermaid Café. I swore off hanging out with Carey forever, no matter how much I might have appreciated the finer sandwich arts. But then I spent a week eating only cans of beans, which were all I could really afford, and I begrudgingly concluded I was happier with sandwiches than without Carey. And so I went back one afternoon, to the porch of the Mermaid Café, where I found him in his typical prostrate condition, busily fingerpainting a still life of some dead rats. He was wearing a bright pink leather suit.

“Nice suit, Carey,” I said amiably as I crawled over to join him. He looked at me, and I gasped in surprise. “Did you bronze your face?” I asked nervously.

“Yesh,” he gurgled self-contentedly, “and checks oot dis zuit! It’s leather from a horse fetus!” He grinned and began to smoke what looked to be a pure gold cigar. “Burglary is best!”

I chuckled agreeably, still not sure what he was talking about, and he knowingly winked several dozen times before jumping on my back. I carried him inside the café to buy some beautiful sandwiches. He disappeared a few weeks later, and the cops closed up his hovel underneath the porch at the Mermaid Café, declaring it “EVIDENCE” for some reason, leaving behind a mystery for the ages. I guess I’ll never know how he managed to be so rich, but I can’t help but feel a little glimmer of hope, as I open my fourth or fifth can of beans each day, remembering Carey’s meaningless vocal contortions. If that drunken, unintelligible psychopath was able to live like the king of bums, I feel hopeful that someday maybe I’ll be able to afford a sandwich. Maybe even an extra one for an exploitative friend. And then maybe someday, some how, I’ll be able to join him, in whatever undoubtedly wonderful place where he is now.

The Binding of Isaac, '85

For the day's entry in my Presidential journal, I start it out: “Since boyhood, I have prided myself on a deep stubbornness, and I feel it is a crowning achievement of that trait that I am able to stay in bed most mornings until almost 11 o’clock.”

That joke I have probably told hundreds of times, to hundreds of different audiences, and, if I could chose, I would not mind if it were a true statement. I remember when I first was in talks to run for Governor, the man who would later become my campaign manager told me that I could do something terribly obscene in front of voters, tell a few jokes and then give a smile, and then go on to win Sacramento by a landslide. Of course, Sacramento was a long time ago, and Washington is a much bigger town, filled with many, many different agendas for America. That’s where the whimsy comes in, the jokes and the smile. Because there might be a million agendas in Washington, but there’s darn few good salesmen.

Were I could, I would much rather stay in bed until well past breakfast. But the world demands a different President than the whimsical one I play on television. Instead of 11 o’clock, I woke up at dawn this morning, full of that old secret trepidation I so often suffer, but have never shared with anyone, save my darling wife, Tracy. I saw terrible things, and I quaked in fear.

For these are hard and harrowing times that we live in, I know this deeply inside of my soul, and when this great fear grips me it seems as if all of our work, all of our efforts in the White House and all of our attempts to build a better world are not dispersing the Darkness that draws close, but instead we are merely waving our arms at the storm clouds, like the sinners waved at God in doomed despair, to try and fend off the Flood. I left the bed and, still in the grips of this consternation, I began to pace, several times, to the window and then back again to the bed. There was the faintest light in the East, at the very curve of the Earth beyond which I could see no further from this California mountaintop, and I imagined for a moment that the light I saw was the brilliance and the horror of the atomic bombs falling, and that I had been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Conscious then of disturbing Tracy’s sleep with my gloominess, I went out of the room to prepare for the day. There’s no help for it when I find myself in such dark moods, and I have learned that my best option is to push through and get on with life. Fear and worry resolve themselves when a man decides not to pay attention to them. I shaved and washed up, dressed and made ready. As I went out into the living room I could hear the old house settling, and I took comfort in that domestic pleasantness for a moment. I took care of some of the more burdensome issues on my desk: a quick memo to the Surgeon General to treat that HIV issue with caution, keeping in mind the feelings of Middle America about the AIDS virus and its connection to the homosexual community. I authorized the FBI to continue monitoring that environmental movement, for signs of excursion into activity that I could label "dangerous extremism." After that, I had nothing else to sign, which always causes a very important person such as myself great vexation. Joking aside, I was still bothered by those thoughts of War.

I went out the sliding doors in the den and went out into the cold air of the morning. It has been years since I first bought the old ranch, but I have not yet tired of seeing the view from this mountain. Beyond the horse pastures and beyond the dry, waving fields of mountain grass, I can see the little lights of the farms, which sit between my ranch and the sea. Not much of Santa Barbara is visible from the house, and I would have to go all the way out to the ridge in order to see much of the city that lies just southwest of here, where most of our nearest neighbors live. But the view of the ocean is really what I like the best. Who can argue that God isn’t great when looking out at the Pacific? I suppose every man, who has achieved enough in life to have for himself a view, thinks what he gets to look at is best. But I really do believe, with all my stubbornness, nobody’s view can beat mine.

Still, I felt the pangs of that trepidation. I went down to the horse pasture, to see if I could walk off the worry. A few of the horses were out already, including the big, beefy stallion that Frank bought me for a present a few years back. I gazed at, a bit rueful. Frank does so try and please his father, as Tracy would say. But there is a difference between trying and trying too hard. Tracy has a good deal to say about Frank, and I do sometimes sense that there is a distance between the two. Of course, a part of that comes of the boy being adopted, and even more than that, his being adopted by my first wife and myself. But such is the reality of family: it never gets complicated enough. Considering all of the much larger matters that I, as President now and Governor years ago and political warrior always have had to shoulder, family life can be difficult.

Still, Frank’s stallion sticks out like, as my old friend Rock would say, a queer on the beach. I had hoped that my horse-minders would be able to work on the monster, give him that classiness the other of my stock possessed. Unfortunately,it is more than clear that I will have to let the darn animal go.

Currently, I am most excited by the new sleek mares that my horse-buyer handpicked from a Texas breeder. One of the mares started to trot out right then, and then gallop across the pasture right at that moment, as if responding to my disgust with Frank’s horse and my gloominess. She is a stunning sight, moving in a way that is both fluid and solid at the same time, the muscles of her rump and forelegs steel-hard and tight, but still flowing with such ease that her whole body seems weightless, without an ounce of resistance. I suppose it would be considered corny to throw in a metaphor, about the spirit of the American people being like that horse. But then isn't that what they are so fond of saying, on the other side of the aisle? That the President is corny, and that he doesn't know the American people like they do.

The sight of the mare distracts me for a few minutes. By the time I remember the War that I had been so profoundly worried about, I find my spirits lifted. The bombs won’t fall. The Strategic Defense Initiative will succeed, and soon nuclear weapons will be a phantom of a past era. Something that grandparents tell their laughing, uncaring grandchildren about. The War won't come. No sane person would ever attempts to drop the Bomb.

At that very moment I heard a rider approaching, and I turned in surprise to see my Salvadoran guest atop of one of my very best horses. I had to remind myself about what my aides told me was the importance of the man's anti-Communist organization, ARENA. I chided myself to be polite, and to ignore his bizarre affront.

“Now, Mr. D'Aubuisson, I don’t know how things work in your country,” I said pleasantly, “but in the old West you could wind up on the wrong side of a man’s gun, were you to steal his horse.”

“I thought you only played a cowboy in the movies, President Teagan,” D'Aubuisson snapped, and he suffered that odd twitch that I had noticed over the course of his visit. “I've been thinking. I want some horses for my army. If your government will give me a thousand or so horses, I bet that we'll be able to drive out the God damn Communisists from El Salvador within days!”

“Have you met Ollie? He's not really a horse guy,” I said, just as pleasantly as before. “But, I have to say, I am slightly put off by your behavior, sir. Even Menachem Begin asked before touching my horses.”

He turned sharply and rode off, and though I wasn't sure, I think he may have been laughing. I also turned quickly and went back to the house, careful not to look as steamed as I felt. I’ll call Tap, my Secretary of Defense, I decided, and talk about Afghanistan for a while.

…………….

When I can’t sleep it’s no use to try and force myself to sleep, there’s no helping it. I’ve found that out. I get up and put a record on, and brew some coffee and I just figure that I get the chance to see the Manhattan sunrise. I suppose that I’ve gotten a little bit depressed. I say it outloud. “I’ve gotten a little bit depressed lately.” I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot recently. Or I just think it a lot. Father just finished his re-election campaign, and I haven't really gotten out of the habit of not saying much of anything. I think of the statement as a newspaper article:

“Tom Teagan Jr., youngest son of Pres. Thomas Teagan, admits feeling mildly depressed.”

My psychiatrist tells me that what I’m feeling is normal for a young person upon whom heavy expectations have been put. But the thing is, I don’t feel like there are much of any expectations put on me. God, I almost wish there were. Maybe, more specifically than ‘expectation,’ I wish there was some sort of direction that I was told to go in. If Father gave me that, I’d really, probably honestly follow.

I mean, clearly Mother and Father don’t approve of my dancing. God forbid they actually tell me so, or do something even crazier and actually show up to one of my recitals. But maybe I just wish Father would tell me what to do with myself because he doesn’t ever do that, he doesn’t want to ‘interfere’ with my personal freedom and my life decisions, even though ‘interfere’ in this instance can also mean ‘get involved with’ or ‘pay attention to.’ Maybe he was just too old to be a dad, maybe he should have met Mother ten years earlier and never had the first marriage. I would have been 20 or so when he got elected Governor, and I’d be well into my 30’s now that he’s President. My well-adjusted 30’s, I’m sure. Or maybe he's just a God damned crummy father. We've all heard the anti-Communist speech, when he basically says he'd rather see his kids killed than raised by Communists. Anyhow, the shrink has me on anti-depressants, so ‘depression’ means something very different than it did when I was 13 and 14. Now it’s a vague impression, a near but far reminder that always feels on the brink of being forgotten, but never is.

My shrink keeps on talking about when I’ll feel better, but we never talk about how I’m going to get there. Instead, he asks me about my dancing, about whether or not the depression has affected my ability to focus on work. I guess there are some stronger medications that he may put me on. The sun rises up over the buildings and I watch it, feeling nothing at all and pretending I do.

And then, right then, maybe it's because I was thinking about Mother and Father and everything, but I get really depressed. The no-end-in-sight type of depressed. It's terrible, I know, but right then and there, right when I'm feeling everything I'm feeling, I wish I could hit him. My father. I wish I could, more than anything in my life. There was a headline in the paper about his SDI thing yesterday, and, honestly, truly, in my secret madness that I'll never tell anyone about, ever, I wish more than anything that I had a fucking Bomb. That I could just have one God forsaken atomic Bomb. So that I could wipe that God damn smile off of his face, once and for all.

Surf Nicaragua, '84

The bonfire was burning too big cause I was staring out at all those little foamy crests of waves that came surging out of the dark and I was totally mesmerized, cause of the pot maybe and the booze. At first when they’d flash into sight, it was like there was just these weird white streaks, just little slashes of color traveling through the night like some faraway car headlights, or like teeth when a dark-skinned dude is talking, but then you’d hear the crashing and you’d feel this rush of hot, wet air and you could taste the sea and you’d know, just, like, totally comprehend how big and vast that thing was out there that was running towards you, you’d know it was so much bigger than you’d ever otherwise understand because since you couldn’t see it you couldn’t be fooled into thinking that you’d ever be able to, like, contain it in a photograph or a movie or anything. And I was thinking about how small I was, and how I was sitting there staring at it, just like all the humans do, sitting and staring at the sea and thinking about how the sea makes me feel and thinking about my life and the girls I want to fuck and the shit I want to do, and I never even consider how the sea doesn’t have any reason to give a damn about me, doesn’t have any reason to see me looking at it or think about me, cause my whole life is, like, infinitesimal compared to the ocean. If I ever have some bad luck out surfing, I’ll really get to see how fucking small I am compared to that fucking ocean, cause it would just pull me apart like I was paper, and that’s just about as much as all of my hopes and dreams and ideas mean to the fucking ocean, just a bunch of wet paper to rip to shreds forever. I was thinking all this shit and I guess I was totally distracted cause the bonfire totally melted the tarp.

When Lee got back I had tossed the tarp and I was lying on our big wool blanket.

“What the fuck, Ronnie? What’s up with the tarp?”

“Shit got melted,” I told him, pointing at the bonfire. “Totally fucked up.”

“Fuck,” Lee said, and then he fell on the blanket next to me and sat, knees up and his elbows resting on his knees, gazing out at the ocean like he was Confucius or some shit. “What do you know about surfing in Nicaragua?”

“I don’t know anything, dude,” I told. “Why? Is it supposed to be killer, or something?”

“Some old dog at the market gave me a lecture about how freaking tubular Nicaragua is supposed to be.” Lee told me, “An old gringo. Said you surf completimento solo. No hermanos for hundreds of miles.”

“Oh shit, you went to the market!” I sat up and grabbed his bag of groceries. “Dude. I need chips so bad.”

“This old dude says he’s been just walking up and down the coast since like 1976. Just surfing and shit. Can you picture that, dude? Just surfing and eating fucking mangoes for eight years?” Lee grunted. “He says that Costa Rica bites the big one compared with Nicaragua.”

“So we’ll go, dude,” I said, totally gorging on the chips.

“There’s a war going on there,” Lee said and shrugged. “The old dog told me he just walks up there, so he doesn't worry about wars or anything. No one bugs him.”

I laughed. “What war? The people here are totally chill.”

“Not in Nicaragua they're not chill. But the old dog said he just walks. Just walks up the fucking beach. Cause he’s just an old bum.”

“Yeah, so how long does that take him, though?” I frowned. “We couldn’t do that.”

“No, dude. This guys lives out here. He’s a surf bum. It took him like six months to walk all the way down here from Nickarag.” Lee was quiet for a minute and I was too. It was a major bummer that we couldn’t check out the waves in Nickarag. And it was irritating for other reasons too. We had come to Costa Rica because we were sick of surfing the same beaches as everyone else, in the same places, on the same over-surfed waves. Course we were stoked when we first got to Costa Rica, cause it was new and rad. But there was just a bunch of American surf Nazis here, the same as there was up in the states, and even when we found some deserted spot it was really obvious that we were, like, walking in the footsteps of like hundreds before us.

“He said there’s like a civil war,” Lee said, “but it’s pretty much on the Atlantic Ocean side of the country. So you could go hang out on the Pacific side and not give a fuck.”

I thought about this for a while. I thought about war. If a country was at war, I always just figured that the whole country was “in war,” just engulfed in the war, submerged inside of it and that was all you could say about it. “A warzone,” like they said on the news. Explosions, guns, tanks. But it wasn’t like that, according to what Lee was saying. The war was on the other side of the country. And then I started thinking about what those beaches must look like, with a war going on on the other side of the country.

“I bet those are some empty fucking beaches.”

“Virgin territory. Unsurfed. Like surfing Venus.” Lee said immediately.

“No one drives up there?” I asked.

“Sure they do, but there’s no roads along the ocean.” Lee frowned at me. “That’s the one and only question, dude. We gotta go inland if we want to hit that beach.”

We just looked at each other for a long time. Lee rolled us a spliff and we sat there till after midnight talking about people we knew from high school.

The deal we cut with Eduardo was for 800 bucks, he’d drive directly north cross the border, and then cut around Lake Nicaragua and drop us in some desolate stretch of countryside. Eduardo was a courier-for-hire who pretty much made all his money on transportation jobs across the border, mostly things down from Nicaragua. He knew the way to get us there. We’d walk back to Costa Rica from there, doing part of what the old dog suggested, surfing and camping on the beaches, and in three months we’d get back over the border and hitch a ride to the airport. Eduardo was, like, at first totally amused by the idea.

“They will look at you and think that you are see-aye-aie.” Eduardo said in that quick, muddy Central American Spanish. Lee said that we didn't want to risk it, and gave Eduardo fifty bucks for bribe money for the guards. Eduardo shook his head and rolled his eyes. “That will work. They do not take American money, because to use it would give them the reputation of being Contra. But they respect it, and will let us go past. That way no one will think they are completely loyal to the Sandinistas.”

None of that meant much to me, anymore than any of the local traditions meant much of anything to me. I wasn’t on some multi-cultural educational trip, and I thought the Costa Ricans were rad, but I was there to surf. Eduardo was pretty cynical about the Sandinista guys and the Contra guys, and all of that bullshit, and he came off as pretty sarcastic. But I don’t think he thought we were really serious. It was like he kept on trying to duck us at the bar, and we had to practically shove bills in his pockets to start taking us seriously. After the fourth or fifth time we pestered him to take us, he said, “When I transport shit down from Nicaragua, I do not worry about anyone stopping me. When I take shit up there from Costa Rica, I have to worry about the soldiers stopping me and stealing my cargo. But I do not worry that much. I am usually taking food or clothes, sent by Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica to their family. It is too bad if it gets stolen, but I don't get hurt. No one gets hurt. What do I tell the Contras if they find two young Americans in the back of my truck? What do I tell the Sandinistas?”

Well, that’s why the price was so high. It was almost all of our money. Eduardo could buy two trucks if he wanted to with that kind of cash. We hid out in some big barrels in the back of Eduardo’s truck and, like he said, the border patrol took one look at all that American cash and didn’t say another word. The back of the truck stank like rancid, rotten fruit. We drove for about an hour and then Eduardo stopped the truck and we heard the door slam, and then nothing. He had bailed on us.

After a while, I heard Lee in the other barrel mutter, “What the fuck,” but we both sat there in silence, waiting. I got kind of nervous, cause I figured Eduardo probably wouldn't just bail for no reason. But it wasn't like I was too nervous, cause it wasn’t like we were about to bullshit anyone, we just wanted to surf and it wasn’t like anyone, not a soldier or Sandinista or anyone could figure it’d be a good idea to shoot a couple of American kids just trying to surf. There were all kinds of birds, or other kinds of animals making all kinds of noises, and there was the roar of running water somewhere off in the distance. I pushed open the barrel just enough to see the back of the truck and the jungle past it, and everything looked still. I felt like there’d be no noise in the jungle, like, no birds and monkeys, or whatever, if there were people around. Maybe Eduardo had just taken off with our money cause he was an asshole. I pushed the lid off and said Lee’s name. I had to knock the barrel over to pull myself out and it made this crashing sound that just about made me piss myself. Lee must’ve felt the same way cause he hissed, “Oh fuck!”

“It’s just me, dude. Eduardo totally bailed on us.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Lee pushed the lid of his barrel up and grunted. “And it stinks like nast in the back of this truck.”

I got out of the back of the truck to look around while Lee banged around, trying to get outta his barrel. Just like I thought, once Lee and I started making all that noise, the birds and monkeys and whatever stopped chirped and calling. So maybe I could figure we were the only people around. Maybe not, I definitely didn’t know shit about the jungle. As soon as I turned around to check out the road ahead of us, it was pretty obvious what had got Eduardo so freaked. There was a big cement barrier across the middle of the road with a bunch of razor wire across the top. And right in the middle of the barrier someone had painted, in English: “YANKEE ENEMY OF HUMANITY.”

Lee got out and saw it and muttered, “Weird.” I shrugged and said we should go and try and find Eduardo. “Which way did he go, though?” Lee asked, looking around. I said, kind of quickly and trembling: "He might have gone back towards the border, but it was late and I don't think we had passed through any towns, and I figure he probably wouldn’t want to be running around at night if there was a war or whatever."

“You’re babbling, dude,” Lee said. “Relax man, okay? We’re not apart of anyone’s war. We’re just here to go surfing.” He laughed. “We’ll tell the dudes back home about this, how we went surfing in the middle of a war, and we’ll be legends!”

We laughed about that, and after we talked about it, we decided to just go on down the road and see what we found. I guess we might of taken the truck and driven back down to the border, but I don’t know if those guards would’ve let us through, or what. They might take us into custody and called the embassy, or they might rob us. Either way, the adventure would be over. And, like Lee said, we weren’t apart of any Nickarag war. We loaded up our backpacks and got the boards out of the truck, went around the cement barrier and started tromping up the road. Not even a mile later we hit a little town. It was like a little muddy jungle village, totally remote, all these beat up little huts made out of thatched leaves and shit. As we came up on it, all the sound of the birds and monkeys and whatever else got quiet.

I slowed down a little, but Lee kept going and I was like, “wait dude,” but he looked back and said, “we don’t got a choice, dude. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got cash. People like cash, even during a war.” And I chilled myself out with some deep breathing and followed him. The path went straight into the town, where the thatched huts were replaced by a few ancient, crumbly old Spanish-style adobe buildings. There was this big patio in what looked to be the center of town, and there was a big fountain and right there in the middle of the patio were these three carcasses hanging from a wooden rack, these three dead bodies with no eyeballs and big bloody flowers where their cocks or cunts had been and it looked like there was shit shoved in their mouths, mouths that were wide wide open like they were screaming and they had no earlobes and the one that looked like she had been a chick had had her tits sliced off and you could see just so much red, red, red my mouth was hanging open and I couldn’t feel any part of my body, I was just numb all through, I was screaming, or maybe not, I couldn’t hear anything or think anything at all. Absolute zero. Then there were soldiers everywhere pointing all of these guns and shit at us and screaming at us to get down on the ground, get down on the ground, and before I could do anything I was lifted up and tossed into the dirt. They were shouting shit at us but I couldn’t understand anything, and then I heard other voices commanding them, telling them to stop in clean American English and I snapped out of the daze a little bit, hearing that big strong commanding Anglo voice. There was a big blonde guy coming over to us slowly, frowning like he was thinking hard, looking back at me like he wasn’t seeing me looking at him, like he wasn’t seeing me at all but rather looking through me, inside of me, and he helped me to my feet.

“Hi,” he said in this incredibly relaxed, just really pleasant voice. “Can I ask what you boys are doing here?”

“Surfing, man,” Lee said, and I looked over at him and saw that he’d started crying. “We're going to the Pacific Ocean to surf, man.”

“Yes,” the man replied, still gazing at us and it was almost like he wasn’t even blinking. “You’re Americans.”

We showed him our passports and everything, and he asked us all those stupid questions that you’ve got to answer when you go to the airport, like it was just procedure to find two American kids tromping around in Nicaragua. I looked at the bodies again and I was jolted like someone punched me, physically punched me or stabbed me or something, and numbly I absorbed the words that were written on the banner that hung pinned to the bodies, “LA RESISTENCIA! PARA LIBERTAD!” “What happened?” I whispered, my voice raw and hoarse and dead.

“This is a deeply troubled region," he said to me without looking at the bodies. "You have to understand. We're doing all that we can in order to end this terrifying violence. We’re involved in a battle for freedom, young man. The C.I.A. is aiding in the battle against the Socialist Sandinista regime.” The blonde man frowned in a concerned way and then he grasped my shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “That’s why we recommend kids like you two steer clear of the area,” he said gently. He patted my back. “C’mon. I’ll give you guys a ride to the beach. You’ll have to make do with the Atlantic Ocean side of the country, but I bet you’ll have a hell of a time checking it out.”

We went with him and he took us out there like he had promised. It was about a two-hour drive and he talked about sports and asked questions about what was going on in the USA. He had been in Nickarag for almost three years, it turned out, and so he seemed pretty interested in hearing about home. When he dropped us off he gave us a radio and told us that when we were ready to leave we should turn it on and radio for him to come and see us off.

“I just wanna make sure you guys make it home safe,” he said with a grin. Then he shook hands with us both and got in his jeep and went back down the road, waving until he was out of sight.

We just stood there on the beach, Lee holding the radio and me staring at it like it was a human skull. After a little while, Lee giggled and said, “That guy didn’t even tell us his fucking name.”

“Dude his name was G.I. Joe,” I said, starting to giggle, “How much do you wanna bet that, if we don't call him before we get the fuck out of here, he'll fucking kill us? I bet that he’ll hunt us down and fucking kill us.” I barely got the words out, I was already giggling so much and then me and Lee both busted up laughing, going crazy on the sand. The waves were pretty good, we spent like three days there before we called that dude and then one of his G.I. Joe buddies came roaring out of the jungle and picked us up and took us down to Costa Rica and showed us, like, the best way to get to the airport.

We told people back home the story and they were all speechless. Lee had been right. We were legends for like months.