The Legend of Ol' Ricky (excerpts)

[HOMER, LA]

Our adventure begins in the sleepy Southern town of Homer, Louisiana, truly off the beaten path, a town trapped in a bygone era where racism and redneckedness thrives like kudzu, enveloping and ultimately choking the life out of any poor plant who makes the mistake of attempting to set root here. At the city limits is a sign proudly proclaiming that you are now entering Karl Malone Country, though the basketball legend conspicuously distances himself from such assertions, and I can't say I blame him. Interred in the Arlington Cemetery off Highway 146 is the infamous and influential state legislator William M. Rainach, who led the Massive Resistance movement which opposed desegregation, and who is still revered by many of the more cretinous Caucasian inhabitants of the area.

In local politics, Mayor David Newell (who was barefoot the first time I met him) is an impotent figurehead with no executive power to speak of, and the town council is an utterly useless band of brown-nosers and old fuddy-duddies. In effect, they are nothing more than a puppet government pandering to the fickle will of their supreme spiritual leader, the unabashedly racist Chief of Police Russell Mills, who rules over his subjects with an iron fist and once proudly proclaimed to the Chicago Tribune: "If I see three or four young black men walking down the street I have to stop them and check their names." When questioned why, he responded in a decidedly despotic manner: "I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might be arrested." Under Mr. Mills' command, the Constitution of the United States has been reduced to tatters, and people do not dare jaywalk for fear of having their clock cleaned and an ounce of white widow inserted up their pant leg, to then be whisked away to a Louisiana state correctional facility where they will end up bunking with disgraced rapper Mystikal.

A week ago, an elderly African-American named Bernard Monroe was gunned down by the Homer Police Department while attempting to operate his artificial larynx to address an officer's accusations, and the town is now in turmoil. Al Sharpton and an army of card-carrying NAACP members have descended upon the area to conduct a series of candlelit vigils and marches down Main Street - No justice, no peace! - and though their intentions are good, they push the population precariously close to an all-out race riot. Our landlord lends us his shotgun, just in case.

It is April 14th and we're not even sure if we're leaving today, though with what's been going on around here we feel as though we can't split quickly enough, so Gerry and I have already emptied our apartment and loaded our luggage into the van. Mikey is milling about the premises, inspecting the bushes and what not, ever-ready to embark upon an adventure. At his family's ranch Trey is busy packing his bags. A hundred and seventy miles south, Ben is clearing out his backwoods bayou abode, getting ready to hit the road as well.

Nobody knows for sure if Cody and Daniel (whose names over the course of this summer will transmogrify into Bucky and Rocky respectively) actually intend on coming along, and it disappoints me that nobody but me seems to care. I feel a degree of responsibility for those boys since I am the one who invited them in the first place, and I take into consideration the massive leap of faith they are making, hitching their wagon to our star, two seventeen-year-old Southern punks who have never even exited the ArkLaTex before, suddenly bound for Alaska under the influence of a rag-tag band of much older miscreants that they've only known for about a month. I give Daniel a call and to my surprise the boys are ready to roll and wondering where we are.

This seems to fire up the competitive spirit inside Gerry and I, and we're determined to not allow any member of our party to be more eager to hit the road than the two of us. The time for procrastination has ended. There is nothing tethering us to this point. It's time to go.

We find Mikey outside, who is standing inside a big bush for no easily explainable reason, and we all run to the van like we have just committed a bank robbery and King Carlo is our getaway car, idling in an alleyway. We climb in, Gerry behind the wheel, and we speed away at about seven miles an hour.

Gerry is known to drive like an old lady, though I have already seen several old ladies pass us up so I'm not sure how accurate that analogy really is. To say he drives slowly is an understatement. It's almost as though he is unaware that an accelerator pedal exists beside the brake. We inch our way down the road, primarily powered by the wind, until I yell "Step on it, old timer!" and then he really puts the pedal to the metal.

So we're flying down the highway at about fifteen miles an hour, and conversation of course turns to all the wacky hijinx we intend on getting ourselves into as we amble up to Alaska. We list all the roadside attractions that we want to visit - the Oregon Vortex, the Bottomless Pit, the World's Largest Spud - and all the fast food joints we intend on dining in, and we try to determine which towns will have the loosest women along the way. I have a good feeling about Albuquerque but end up being entirely off the mark, though they do have a gigantic Adult Superstore that is worth checking out.

On our way to Trey's, we smoke the last of our Mexican dirt weed and when we are done I fling our screw-together metal pipe out of the window, as we have heard horrible things about being busted with pot paraphernalia in Texas, and in the rear-view mirror I watch it dance across the asphalt, unscrew and scatter into several pieces.

At the Callender family compound, Trey is bringing along more luggage than Gerry, Mikey, and I combined, and legroom in the van is promptly halved. Later when I get a good look inside his bags, I learn that Trey has packed an impressive array of strange and useless knick-knacks, including a large glass dolphin statuette. At no point in the trip does this item come in handy.

We then travel to Daniel's trailer in Athens, where we are welcomed by a three-legged dog who attacks King Carlo's tires as we roll into the driveway, which probably sheds some light on what has happened to his fourth leg. We smoke two joints courtesy of Trey while Cody and Daniel load their luggage into Daniel's mother's Ford Escort, which she will never see in the same pristine condition again.

When we're all ready to roll, we offer the two young guns a solemn warning: "You better keep up with us, because we're not going to be watching for you in our rear-view, and if you lose us, we're not going to wait around."

They look slightly disconcerted, probably wondering what they're getting themselves into.

"Alaska, bitches!" I cry, coming in for a titty-twister on Cody.

And with that, we're off.

[SAN ANTONIO, TX]

We are in the home of the late, great Joseph Gottschalk, America's favorite g-stringed cyclist, sunny San Antonio, Texas. We make our first stop at a Whole Foods, an occurrence that becomes increasingly frequent as we approach the West coast with two vegetarians in tow.

The Whole Foods is situated in what must be the epicenter of all yuppie activity in San Antonio, Alamo Quarry Market, a sprawling stucco strip mall anchored by the wholesome health-food chain as well as both a Bed, Bath & Beyond and a Bath & Body Works. Bucky and Rocky act as though they've never seen such an upscale area in all their lives and gambol excitedly about the premises like horny gazelle while I shake my head in disgust that such an outrageously metrosexual, Southern California-style place can exist here on the doorstep of that great symbol of foolhardy American heroism, the Alamo (which according to Ozzy Osbourne also serves as a great urinal), deep in the heart of Texas, what many regard as America's last bastion of unadulterated manliness.

John Wayne would never have shopped here.

I take a cursory glance around the aisles of the Whole Foods, find nothing the least bit appetizing and walk out empty-handed while Mikey and Trey fill up shopping carts with Kombucha tea and baba ghanoush and extract of Echinacea and whatever other foul-tasting life-lengthening rubbish they can get their hands on, paying for it all with Louisiana food stamps, which we are all delighted to learn are state-transferable.

As we are preparing to leave, Bucky spots a beautiful, mousey little girl crocheting alone at a table in the deli section. He confidently declares that he will get her number and we all respond skeptically but then he marches back into the Whole Foods, waltzes right up to her, and without asking sits down at her table.

That shuts us up.

We cluster around the window and watch Bucky work his magic. We bashfully turn away, pretending that we weren't spying on them, when he says something to her and points directly at us and she looks our way and laughs. Several minutes later, Bucky exits the Whole Foods with a scrap of paper in his hand and triumph in his eyes.

Mikey, Gerry, Trey, Ben, and I pile back into the van, Bucky and Daniel into the Escort, and we head out, all of us van guys offering Bucky our middle fingers as he grins and does a little dance in the other car, waving the scrap of paper like a tiny flag.

As we exit the parking lot and pull onto the road, we notice a sharp decrease in speed just as we are approaching the 35 mile per hour speed limit and the van suddenly slows to a crawl. A spandex-clad power-walker zips by us on the sidewalk, trekking poles clacking on the concrete. Trey, who is driving, informs us that the engine doesn't seem to be responding to his pressing down on the accelerator. The cars ahead of us quickly disappear from sight and the cars behind us begin to honk. We continue to creep along at a testudinal five miles per hour when something suddenly catches and we are propelled forward like a rocket and soon cruising at a comfortable forty-five. Everyone exchanges nervous glances over what has just transpired, then shrugs it off.

Little do we know that this is simply the beginning of some severe engine troubles that will plunge our entire trip - and even some of our friendships - into peril in the very near future.

[LAS VEGAS, NV]

We track down Trey and Mikey at the Sahara and by the smell of things out in the hallway as we approach their room, they've already dipped into that big bag of incredible pot that Joey procured for us in Henderson, the bastards.

We pile into their room, which is much nicer than the ones the rest of us got at the Wild Wild West. I find myself standing at windows which look out onto the pool area, and the place is absolutely teeming with bodacious babes. I remain there with my face pressed against the glass for the duration of our smoke session.

Higher than kites, we all leave the room and head downstairs. In the elevator, it's all of us and a lone Asian man who gets extremely nervous about our inability to stop giggling. He misinterprets our inebriation for something more sinister and flees the moment the elevator opens.

We find ourselves in the casino, the intricate patterns on the endless expanse of paisley carpeting playing tricks on our eyes, the blinking lights and cacophonous clanging of the slot machines discombobulating us. We head for the first exit we see, wanting to take a walk along the legendary Las Vegas Strip, and end up in a valet parking area. We head back into the Sahara and exit out of the opposite end of the casino, where we appear to be in yet another valet parking zone, red-vested men everywhere and still no Strip in sight. Once again we go back inside the Sahara, and this time we walk the entire length of the gaming floor, through the lobby of the hotel, and we use that exit and...

We're back in the same valet parking lot as the first time.

Unwilling to accept that the minds of seven men put together can't find a way out of here, someone says "Fuck it!" and we simply start walking. Across the lot and around the parking garage, we finally find the famed Las Vegas Strip in all it's glimmering glory, though in all fairness we seem to be on the opposite end of where all the action is.

As we walk south through a vast construction zone, the future site of the Fontainebleau, a police officer on a mountain bike honks a plastic squeaky horn at us as he passes by in the opposite direction, and we're not sure how to interpret it. I double over, cackling with laughter, but everyone else was raised in Louisiana and looks like they're ready to run.

We begin to dip in and out of casinos, playing the occasional slot machine, but every time Rocky and Bucky stop walking for a split-second to watch what we're doing, security guards swoop in and usher them away. Everyone of age plays something just long enough to receive a complimentary beverage, and then we all meet up outside where The Young Punks are waiting for us.

Back on the Strip, Mikey experiences a flip-flop blowout somewhere around Sands Avenue. He tries several ways of fixing the snapped strap, at one point using the frond of a fern in a futile attempt to tie the busted flip-flop to his foot, but it's totaled. However, Mikey's a survivor and he slips off his other flip-flop, stuffs the pair in his back pocket, and just keeps on keepin' on.

We walk through the Palazzo and the adjoining Venetian, two of the ritziest places in Vegas, and admire a Lamborghini showroom and the painted ceilings and canals of a replica of Venice, Mikey's bare feet slapping loudly along the marble halls and quaint cobblestone walkways. I follow him into a Kenneth Cole in search of new flip-flops but the salesman takes a glance down at Mikey's shoeless feet and promptly shows us the door.

We catch the waterworks at the Bellagio and the pyrotechnics at Treasure Island, and this is all fine and dandy, but it is at this point that Mikey, Ben, and I decide to stop dilly-dallying and start doing some serious gambling.

I find myself seated at a roulette table in O’Shea’s with Ben, while Mikey tries his luck at craps. This being my first time playing the game, I shamelessly mimic everything Ben does at the table except for his dogged harassment of the croupier, a mild-mannered Asian man with Buddy Holly glasses named Orly.

"God damn it, Orly! I said red!"

I shadow all of Ben’s bets and before I know it we’re both up a hundred bucks and talk turns to celebrating at a strip club. I tell him his wife won't mind, reasoning that since I was unable to attend their shotgun wedding I still owe Ben one bachelor party. None of the other guys are having any of it; everyone else has either lost all their money, is too broke to gamble in the first place, or simply underage, and they're going back to their hotel rooms. But the ecstasy of gold has given Ben and I a second wind and we vow not to let this night end quite yet. We bid our friends adieu and step out onto the curb in search of a taxi.

“You fellas lookin’ for a strip club?” a seemingly clairvoyant cab driver lurking in shadows asks us.

“Hell yeah!” Ben and I answer in unison, and are tossed into the back of a taxi. He informs us that he is involved in a competition where the driver who brings the most customers to Rick’s Cabaret over the course of the evening wins a big-screen plasma television. He says that he is in the lead with only an hour to go and just needs to ice the victory, so he ends up not only giving us the ride to Rick’s for free but also hands us each $30 to cover the door fee as well. Only in Vegas would someone pay me to observe naked ladies.

Ben is the type of guy that I love going to a strip club with. Whereas I am quiet and polite in such settings, he is loud, rowdy, and maddeningly misogynistic, so the ladies naturally take a liking to me since I stand in such stark contrast to the average customer, the Ben-type. I also learn that it pays to wear a smart-looking hat to strip clubs, as almost every woman who takes the stage ends up strolling over to me, beating me upside the head with her breasts, and taking my fedora to wear for the duration of her performance, which of course causes her to seek me out once her stage show is done, guaranteeing me the first lap dance.

Ben and I make quick work of our roulette winnings, stuffing G-strings with General Washingtons and drinking Jack-and-Cokes and Heinekens with the voraciousness of two men who have just come wandering out of the desert. We begin buying each other lap dances, engaging in a friendly competition over who can endure dances from the nastiest-looking broads. Ben selects for me a buxom blonde-haired Russian with a weary, weather-beaten face, and I am astonished by how far she allows me to go within the span of one lap dance. I am accustomed to the hand-off-the-girls policy that strip clubs in other cities strictly enforce. I grope maniacally at her breasts and crotch and cottage-cheese thighs, doing everything I can to push the boundaries, and discover that there seem to be no boundaries whatsoever.

So freaky is she that I hand her off to Ben, who next selects for me a platinum blonde Barbie doll who I find less than satisfying and dismiss before the song even ends. On stage is a bushy-haired Amazonian redhead with some truly remarkable F-cup breasts, doubtlessly silicone but delicious nonetheless, and I find her enchanting. She, like many others, dons my fedora during her stage show and finds me afterwards. Ben seizes the opportunity and hands her an Andrew Jackson while snapping his fingers and pointing at my groin.

She swings her legs onto me like I am a prize pony and buries my lengthy proboscis between her breasts, which have a slight sheen of sweat on them that I find irresistible. As it turns out, she and I share an excellent rapport with one another and engage in a surprisingly satisfying conversation whispered and gasped sexily into each other’s ear, in which she confesses to me that the name she introduced herself as, ‘Candy’, is not her actual name (gasp! You don't say!), and that she is in fact named Hannah and is from Montana. I struggle to resist making the obvious joke, so she makes it for me and we both chuckle as I slide my fingers down the crack of her ass and grind my stiff wang against her crotch like a true gentleman. Hannah doesn't even attempt to ignore my erection, even grips it tightly through my trousers for a brief moment. She then turns around and begins to slide her thonged posterior back and forth across the pitched tent of my pants vigorously while we discuss our various dreams and aspirations, what we want out of our lives. She tells me she wants to be a country music singer and though I can't see the expression on her face - she's still backin' dat azz up, to put it in the immortal words of Terius Gray, the poet laureate of Louisiana - there is a noticeable clenching of her buttocks around my blind butler as I inform her that I have a degree in audio engineering, and I interpret this as indicative of her approval. She asks me about my studio experience and as I rattle off a more or less completely fabricated list of projects I have been involved in, she kneels before me, places her mouth on my crotch, and exhales warmly through the thin fabric of my Dockers onto my penis, something I never would have imagined a stripper doing at any of the other establishments I've ever been to.

By now I'm practically prepared to propose to Hannah from Montana, and though I don't entirely forget that her interest in me is most likely exaggerated to extract more money from my wallet, she does seem to like me too. At the very least, she's happy to have me as her customer as opposed to the vile imbeciles she must usually get groped by. I happily pay her for a second lap dance just to continue our conversation, and she ends up throwing me a third dance for free as we discuss our favorite European travel destinations and dry-hump so enthusiastically that I teeter precariously upon the brink of orgasm, causing me to stutter "C-C-C-Copenhagen is b-b-b-beautiful in the s-s-s-summer."

I am so absorbed in the lovely Hannah  that I forget all about Ben, and when I finally pull my head out from between her breasts to check on him, I see that he is being brutally beaten about the temples with a sizeable set of fake tits, so severely that it will result in some slight bruising in the morning.

Hannah begins to insist that we head up to one of the discrete VIP rooms - "So I can give you a better dance" (nudge nudge wink wink) - and my raging erection and the splitting seams of my trousers second that notion, but alas I am nearly out of money and am forced to decline her kind offer, which causes her level of interest in me to suddenly plummet and she vanishes like so many other ladies I meet along the road to Alaska.

Ben and I finish our drinks and stagger out of the establishment, cursing the early-morning sun that blinds us as though we are vampires. We catch a cab back to the Wild Wild West and Ben leaves me with what could be interpreted as both a simple request and a stern warning: "Don't tell my wife about this."

[LAS VEGAS, NV]

I seat myself at a low-roller's roulette table in the Hooters Casino on Tropicana, disappointed that it is the only table on the entire gaming floor without a scantily-clad female croupier. Instead, it's a man that bears a striking resemblance to Steven Segal who accepts my eighty dollars and hands me a stack of purple chips. I say good-bye to Mikey and Trey, who are heading to the MGM Grand to see Xzibit, of ‘Pimp My Ride’ fame, give a half-assed performance at Studio 54, serving more as the party MC than the headlining act.

The gods of gambling smile upon me this evening, and I am suddenly on quite a streak playing the simplistic strategy Ben taught me the other night, equal amounts on the first and middle twelve, and before I know it I’m up fifty bucks. I immediately fall in love with the cocktail waitress, a perky freckle-faced redhead who sneaks me fresh Crown-and-Cokes when I haven’t even finished the last one yet, a flagrant violation of policy. I tip her handsomely and she pretends to care about me, an act I am more than willing to go along with.

Aware of the tear I am on, I keep a running count of the consecutive rolls I’ve won. Triumphing over probability, I eventually hit 48 straight wins, giving me a tidy profit of $165. A small crowd of about five people are milling around and watching me. By this point, I've been here for two hours and I am drunk as a boiled owl and twice as good-looking. Just as I am working up the courage to ask for the cocktail waitress’ hand in holy matrimony, midnight strikes and Hooters undergoes a shift change and she vanishes from my life forever, along with the croupier and my good luck.

A cruel, cold-hearted Filipino woman named Gloria steps in as croupier, and I am once again disappointed. She is wearing modest clothing that affords me no view of her breasts or buttocks. I look over at the blackjack table enviously, the dealer's magnificent ass cheeks spilling out of her fluorescent orange hotpants, and consider changing games.

Gloria immediately ends my improbable streak, rapidly relieving me of half of my winnings, so I sit back and only play every other spin of the wheel, seize the opportunity to get to know my neighbors. To my left are two obese Australian women in their forties who are as drunk as I am and who I find very easy to get along with, and to my right is an attractive young lady from Missouri whose boyfriend hovers over her shoulder and feeds faulty advice into her ear like a defective hearing aid. After a while I finally start winning again and a minute later Ms. Missouri begins mimicking my every move, placing identical wagers to mine, much to her man’s chagrin, though he holds his tongue when she suddenly becomes profitable.

At some point Trey appears beside me, begging to borrow my pinstriped suit because he was turned away at the door of the club for being too scruffy-looking and has been wandering the Strip ever since. I ask where Mikey is, to which Trey replies “He’s getting crunk!” and I wonder aloud how Mikey got into the club when he looks just as unsavory as Trey if not even more so, but he offers no further explanation. I make no effort to hide my reluctance but eventually relent and give Trey the go-ahead to don my threads, a decision I come to regret the next morning when I step outside my hotel room and see a pinstriped leg jutting out of a back window of the van, Trey sleeping soundly in my Sunday best, wrinkling it irreparably.

The drinks keep coming and a few hours later there is another shift change which at first doesn’t register with me, by now all cocktail waitresses look the same and I have the urge to impregnate each and every one of them equally. The gluttonous Aussie to my immediate left seems to be having similar thoughts, but about me; her hand rests on my inner thigh for the better part of an hour. I must admit that as inebriated as I am, I give a fleeting thought to the possibility of a romp with two hippopotami before coming to my senses and dismissing the idea.

Suddenly someone taps on my shoulders and I spin around to see young Rocky Box, appearing as if from nowhere, swaying like a tree in a stiff breeze, his eyes dilated and looking like the undersides of 8-balls. I inform him that he appears to be intoxicated, to which he responds that he just had some Xanax for the first time, two bars bought from a black man at the Bellagio, a man Mikey and I will meet the following day.

Trey suddenly shows up, looking sharp in my suit. At first I don’t notice anything out of the ordinary about him and it is only when he starts galloping around the roulette table like an injured ibex that I realize he is drunk, and not just a little bit. Trey is an infrequent drinker, so a glass of champagne goes right to his head, and tonight it appears as though he has been brained by an entire bottle. His eyes seem to roll around in their sockets entirely independent of one another. The quintessential shit-eating grin twists the corners of his mouth upward; I consider submitting a photograph of it to Encyclopedia Britannica for inclusion in a future edition.

Trey and Rocky try holding on to each other’s shoulder for support but this turns out to only multiply their troubles and they drift around in a lopsided circle behind me as though they are slow dancing, one with two left feet and the other a peg leg. I ask Trey where Mikey is and receive the same response I got hours ago: “He’s getting crunk!” This statement must be true because nobody sees Mikey for the rest of the night. Under the neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip, mild-mannered Mikey Smeltzer transforms into an insatiable party animal.

I vacate my seat at the roulette table and the moist-crotched Australian behemoth clawing at my leg is despondent, but I escape with both my life and dignity. We go for a stroll around the gaming floor, to stretch my legs and try to get Rocky and Trey's heads on straight before we attempt to head home, but they both quickly become mesmerized by a miniaturized Hummer parked near the entrance and climb all over it like kids on those coin-operated fire trucks and helicopters you find in front of a Walgreens.

Outside in the parking lot, standing beside the van, we are faced with quite a predicament. Although I am three-sheets-to-the-wind, I am still easily the least impaired of the three of us. However, I have no driver’s license. Rocky, on the other hand, has a valid driver’s license but is struggling to cope with the effects of the Xanax he has take. His clammy hands tremble uncontrollably, his legs are longer than he remembers them ever being, his neck feels like a well-used Slinky. Eschewing all logic, we select the most severely inebriated of all three prospective drivers - Trey - to get us home safely. He hoots and does the Funky Chicken (clucks included) when I hand him the keys to the van.

At the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Blvd., Trey locks up the wheels at the stop light and we come to a screeching halt that sends a rush of paranoia pulsing through me. I scan the scene for police officers and see none, but I am prepared to abandon the van and my fellow passengers and flee in the event that any appear. When the light turns green, Trey tries to shift into gear and we lurch forward but the engine dies smack dab in the center of one of the busiest intersections in all of America, and a deafening chorus of infuriated horn-honking envelops King Carlo. Some impatient drivers maneuver their vehicles around us, making sure to give us the finger before they go. In the midst of all this, Rocky leans forward from the back seat, gazing glassy-eyed out of the windshield, and mutters “Fuck New York”, to which I emphatically agree with a hoot and a high-five, forgetting the situation we are currently in and not actually realizing he means the New York New York casino that he was kicked out of earlier that evening, not the city. Trey finally brings the van back to life and we crawl across the intersection with all the speed of a heroine-addled tortoise and slowly sputter our way back to the Wild Wild West.

[SEATTLE, WA]

We awake in the van, parked amongst the lush gardens of a Washington Department of Transportation Safety Rest Area somewhere between Seattle and the 49th parallel, where we laid our weary heads to rest the previous evening with every intention of taking full advantage of their Free Coffee Program in the morning. Today’s brew is served piping hot by members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, two grim-looking geezers wearing stars-and-stripes shirts and flat-billed baseball caps adorned with indecipherable insignia. I choke down a slightly stale Danish and a cup of their finest mud-water while smoking a cigarette to quicken the percolation taking place within my colon, and I speak briefly with one of the men behind the counter who looks and sounds not unlike R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket. He tells me that his friend Rocky (not to be confused with Daniel Smith) would like to introduce himself, a statement that perplexes and sort of frightens me until I look down and see a congenial Washington ground squirrel standing at my feet, a little arm reaching up at me, offering me his tiny paw in friendship. Actually, it turns out that Rocky is more interested in a piece of my pastry than my camaraderie. Nevertheless, I am charmed by his anthropomorphous mannerisms.

As I gulp down the last of my coffee and a retired Rambo refills my little Styrofoam cup, I feel a sudden violent churning within my rectal ampulla, reminding me that forceful defecation is imminent. However, our morning Wake-N-Bake is about to take place back at the van, and in this particular posse marijuana waits for no man, so I put off pooping for now.

Since we are bound for the Canadian border today, Trey and Mikey have rolled up every last bit of weed we have. It comes out to a half-dozen doobies and Mikey distributes one to each of us to start things off. We begin to puff merrily away and the van fills with thick, skunky smoke and the sound of incessant giggling a la Beavis and Butt-head. Beads of sweat begin to collect along the crack of my ass as my impending bowel movement causes my colon to announce an increase in the current threat level. We are at code red, Mr. President, and you really don't want to see what code brown is like!

The guys and I attempt to conduct casual conversation but our constant coughing inhibits it, this weed is simply too potent, so instead I analyze the subtle nuances of our individual whoops and hacks. Neither Trey nor Mikey smokes cigarettes, so their coughs sound considerably healthier than my mine, which sound like a plastic bag being whipped along a gravel path by a stiff southerly breeze. Trey coughs with a lilting downward intonation, a blend between a cough and a sigh, and Mikey’s no-holds-barred hold-it-in-as-long-as-I-can approach to smoking weed results in a series of staccato snorts and a rush of blood to the face and ears. When we each finish our individual chickenbones, we spark another joint to be shared communally even though we are already tomato-eyed and barely able to breathe.

At this point, visibility in the van is limited to approximately one foot in any given direction and we clutch clumsily at empty air when we try to hand the joint around. My left leg trembles uncontrollably, my belly bulging and quavering with the previous evening’s fast food hammering on the walls like unruly prisoners demanding to be released. A war is being waged within my digestive tract, and armies of crap are amassing at the border of my buttocks, the ever-present threat of the 43rd Fecal Brigade, ready to release a relentless volley of mortar shells onto some poor unsuspecting piece of porcelain.

The joint expires, yet we still have a remainder of two. We each exchange nervous glances and it becomes clear that nobody is going to try to be a hero. "I am mit ze Irie!" I declare in The German Accent, and everyone else feels the same way, so we know what we have to do.

We are going to have to do the unthinkable. A vile, despicable, utterly unspeakable act of cowardice. We’re going to have to throw in the towel and jettison the last of our pot.

Mikey takes one of the joints and heads toward a wooded area on the outskirts of the rest stop, determined to bury it in case he ever finds himself at this particular rest stop again, a premonition which proves to be prophetic. I accept the other joint absentmindedly, sprinting for the restroom with it in my hand as though it were the baton of a relay race.

I burst into the bathroom, already lowering my trousers before I even reach the stall, my colon quaking. I kick open the door to the first vacant crapper I encounter and feel as though I have been punched in the face by the putrid aroma that floods my nostrils. It's like solid hunks of fecal matter have been stuffed into each of my nostrils. Whoever was in here before me sure gave it some hell. Like all American public restrooms, it appears as though urine has been splashed everywhere except within the bowl of the toilet, and the graffiti on the walls of the stall form an intricate tapestry of psychotic ramblings and anonymous sexual solicitations.

I turn and bend, distributing the payload into the toilet bowl from a great elevation like a B-2 Bomber, and only by the grace of God am I spared from any backsplash. I heave a great sigh as relief washes over me, and then I suddenly realize I’m still clutching the joint in my hand. Not having the heart to flush it, I place it on the only surface that appears not to be soaked in urine, atop the toilet paper dispenser. (Which is strange because that's ordinarily one of the most piss-splattered areas of a public restroom. Washingtonians do things differently.)

I wipe thoroughly and painfully, cursing the inventor of recycled T.P., unlock the door, and before I'm even halfway out the stall a man brushes past me with the same urgent expression on his face as I must have had a few minutes ago. For a brief moment panic sweeps over me as I remember the joint I left in there. I go to wash my hands at a piss-soaked sink while listening to the gruesome farting and plopping sounds emanating from the crapper cubicle. He certainly doesn’t look like the type to light up, I think to myself, and what with my long hair and baggy trousers I certainly do look like the type to light up, so I'm worried that when he discovers the doobie atop the dispenser while reaching for that sandpapery single-ply, he will easily put two-and-two together. Nevertheless, I feel obligated to observe and document his reaction in the name of science.

I prolong the hand-washing procedure for as long as I can bear, but the man appears to have loosed a large fecal compaction and judging from the sound, there is no end in sight for this particular bowel movement. I retreat to the van and notify the guys about what is going down, and we decide to stake out the entrance to the restroom.

Approximately five minutes later, the man finally emerges. I didn't get a good look at him inside the restroom, but now I can confirm that my initial assessment was correct: This guy does not look like the type to smoke pot. His facial features are an unfortunate mixture of diastema and strabismus, his thick Coke-bottle glasses only amplifying the unsettling effect of his slightly lazy left eye, and his turquoise Izod polo shirt and pleated pants tell us a tale of nerdiness. He scampers out to a teal Subaru with an aluminum ichthys mounted to the bumper, throws open the door and addresses a frumpy-looking woman in the passenger seat who we assume is his wife. We can not hear what he says, but the woman’s eyes widen to the size of two stark-white Titleists and she cups her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream, as though she has just been informed that there is a bishop on PCP molesting children in the restrooms. The man puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, assures her that everything will be okay, but she continues to look distraught and fearful, as though the entire world has come crashing down around her. Before he closes the door, he glances fleetingly over his shoulder, perhaps at us, then triumphantly declares to his wife in a voice loud enough for us to hear, “It's okay, honey. I destroyed it."

[BLAINE, WA]

Trey, Mikey, and I pass through Peace Arch Park in Blaine and arrive at the Canadian border with all the confidence of three men anticipating a royal reception, and we are genuinely surprised when the border guard instructs us to park our vehicle and step into the large, intimidating building to our left, the office of the Canada Border Services Agency.

In hindsight, we shouldn't have been so shocked by this, since we were all stoned out of our minds and the van smelled as though someone had placed a skunk in a pillowcase, beat it to death with a hammer, and left it to rot under one of the seats. Our pungent aroma could have almost certainly been detected by any owner of a nose within one mile of us, but at that time, we still considered ourselves invincible.

Inside the CBSA building, our passports are collected and we are told to take a seat in the waiting area alongside a dozen or so unsavory characters. But we can't just take any old seat. We're instructed to sit apart in separate rows so that we can't speak or make eye contact with one another. They then begin calling our names one by one, and - just my luck - I'm first up.

Standing across a marble countertop from two severe-looking customs agents, I begin to sweat profusely. They take turns interrogating me while the other closely inspects my body language for any physical tells that might indicate I am lying. My heart begins thumping wildly, and I notice one of the guards staring directly at my neck and I begin to fear that my pulse is pounding so hard that it's actually visible on the surface of my skin, a thought which only serves to hasten the hammering of my heart, which I worry has become so forceful that it may even be audible.

"So... do you have any narcotics?" one of them asks me while the other's eyes remain fixed upon my jugular.

"No, sir... I mean sirs."

"Have you ever taken any narcotics?"

I chuckle softly and make a little snorting sound, then answer confidently.

"Nope. Never. "

The agents exchange looks of skepticism.

"Do you have any firearms with you?"

I disregard the question and, for reasons unknown (I was still high), blurt out a query of my own. "Hey, wait a second. Is marijuana considered a narcotic?"

Both guards raise their eyebrows.

Stupid, stupid, STUPID! I shout at myself inside my head.

"Yes, of course it is," one of them informs me, as though I am an idiot, which in this instance I most certainly am. As intelligent as I may be, it honestly never occurred to me that marijuana might be placed in the same category as, say, PCP or heroine, and I blame this on my Dutch upbringing.

"Oh..." I mumble, my mind racing, trying to find a way to backtrack. "Well, I don't have any of that either."

Of course they don't believe me.

"So you consume cannabis, eh?" the one says slyly.

"I have lived in the Netherlands for the past decade," I tell him, yet another idiotic decision on my part. Mikey would tell me to never voluntarily release accurate information to an officer of the law unless you absolutely must. "So yeah, of course I have smoked weed in the past."

"When was the last time you smoked weed?" they ask, using my own terminology against me.

I hesitate for a minute, try to come up with something plausible. "Well, we were in California two days ago, so I must admit that we smoked just a little teeny-tiny bit while we were down there in Oakland. It's decriminalized there, you know."

They chuckle a bit - Ha ha ha, 'decriminalized', yes - and instruct me to return to my seat in the waiting area. Trey is up next, and he has decided to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help him God. When faced with the same line of questioning, he admits that we smoked the last of our pot mere moments before attempting to cross the border. The agents seem satisfied with his confession, which contradicts everything I've just told them.

And then they call Mikey to the stand.

More than any other person I have ever known, Mikey hates authority figures. Police officers and politicians, CEOs and school principals, you name it, if they are in any position of power whatsoever, Mikey regards them with intense and unfaltering disdain. To him, lying to law enforcement is like a second language and the only conceivable way of communicating with them, so when he is asked about the last time he consumed cannabis, Mikey defiantly declares it was "nine years ago, in Brooklyn."

You just gotta love Mikey.

Of course the customs officials don't buy a damn thing Mikey says, but they let him go back to the waiting area without any further hassle, probably pegging Mikey for exactly what he is, someone who hates dealing with cops. Unbeknownst to us, by this time the officers outside have already finished searching our van and have come up completely and utterly empty-handed, so it really doesn't matter anymore what we say to them, even if we tell them how high we all are at this very moment. They have nothing on us.

But this would be underestimating the CBSA. They are determined not to let us into Canada today, no matter what. And as Mikey would most likely agree, the government always gets the last laugh.

We're all sitting in the waiting area again, wondering how much longer this can possibly take, when a female officer comes in the front door with a uniformed dog and marches directly toward us. At first I am charmed by the Border Patrol vest the Belgian Malinois is wearing, mesmerized by this real-life Rin Tin Tin, but then I notice that the lady is charging directly for me, showing no sign of changing course, as though she intends to walk her dog and herself directly up my chest and over me. Only when she is within inches and I brace myself for impact does she sharply snap her fingers and suddenly strafe to her left, and the dog lowers his nose and gets a good whiff of everyone as he is lead through each row of seats. As nervous as I am, I find this procedure fascinating and secretly hope that someone in this room has some drugs down their britches so I can see how the dog reacts, but alas, everyone appears to be clean.

Five minutes later, still waiting, a burly, barrel-chested border guard of what I suspect to be Samoan descent lumbers into the room and barks a name.

"TERRENCE BATES!"

The name reverberates throughout the building, caroming across the marble corridors, lingering in the air long after the Samoan is done saying it. And I pity the poor bastard whose name it is.

The man directly next to me stands up.

"COME HERE, SIR," the Samoan demands.

The man slowly, sadly, shuffles his feet and makes his way over.

"SIR, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR ATTEMPTING TO SMUGGLE NARCOTICS INTO CANADA. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" The Samoan shouts though they are now only about a foot apart. "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RETAIN AND INSTRUCT COUNSEL WITHOUT DELAY. WE WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH A TOLL-FREE LAWYER REFERRAL SERVICE, IF YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR OWN LAWYER. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT. ANYTHING YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE USED IN COURT AS EVIDENCE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO A LAWYER?"

Whereas I could envision Mikey committing a felony if placed in this position, Terrence Bates just nods silently, crosses his wrists behind his back, and turns around to offer them to the Samoan, who wasn't even reaching for his handcuffs yet. Old Terry must have gone through this at least once before, because he seems familiar with the procedure and is cuffed and led away to some mysterious back room that I envision as a black-walled box with a wooden chair and a single bare light bulb dangling at the end of a frayed cord from the ceiling.

In the waiting area, you can cut the tension with a knife. Everyone is wondering who is going to be next. And then one of the agents calls for the three of us.

My heart sinks and I begin to see dreadful visions of being someone's bitch in prison, some MS13 member with a tattooed face thrusting away at my fragile little buttocks, and I consider fleeing but realize there is no way I can make it, I'll be gunned down, I'm in no-man's-land. I look around for the Samoan but he's still busy in the back room, presumably placing electrodes on Terrence Bates' testicles. I listen for screams but hear none, and determine that Terry must already be dead. They're just disinfecting the electrodes now in anticipation of us. This is it. We're doomed.

"Mr. Hundt," the customs agent says, handing me my passport. I receive it silently, in stunned disbelief.

"Mr. Smeltzer." Mikey greedily snatches his passport from the agent's hands, and glares at him with a look that says It's about time, Asshole.

"You guys are good to go," he tells Mikey and I and we instinctively turn to face each other for a high-five, realize what we're doing and hold it in, not wanting to appear overly enthusiastic.

"Mr. Callender," the officer says in a distinctly different tone of voice. He does not hand Trey his passport, instead taps his finger on a computer screen somewhere behind the countertop, which none of us can see. "It says here that you have some prior convictions."

And so he does. Granted, it's from almost a decade ago and from what I understand the crime in question was actually a drunken fistfight with his own brother, hardly anything out of the ordinary for a person from Northern Louisiana. But they want to see some specific court document regarding this incident, a document that Trey does not have.

The customs agent gives Trey basic instructions on how to go about obtaining this particular piece of paper, this magic key to the kingdom of Canada, and for a moment there is a glimmer of hope. But then a devastating, demoralizing reality imposes itself upon us.

It is Saturday.

The office of the court clerk, way back in Karl Malone Country, is closed until Monday. Furthermore, the document will need to be notarized, and a fax of the document is unacceptable to the CBSA, it has to be the real deal through snail mail. So at best, we are looking at another four days before we can even attempt to cross the border again. And we're already several days late for our arrival in Alaska.

Another four days in fucking Seattle.

Our only options are to either wait on those papers or put Trey on a plane. It quickly becomes apparent that no matter what happens we'll need to get back to Seattle, so we start making our way south again. Of course we take a detour to the rest stop where Mikey buried the joint, but it turns out he has already forgotten where it is after only a few hours, and after some perfunctory excavation of the general area he throws his hands up in frustration and we give up and get back on the road.

In Everett we stop at a coffee shop to regroup, but morale is low and tempers flare. After a heated debate we all come to the agreement that Trey must be placed on a plane, we absolutely can not wait around for those court documents. We're almost broke and badly behind schedule, and every day spent in Washington we lose a chunk of our already dwindling supply of gas money, which according to my calculations will only just barely get us through Canada as it is.

I excuse myself to smoke a cigarette outside while they use the coffee shop's free WiFi and by the time I return it is already set in stone that Trey will be boarding a plane tomorrow, and to my surprise and consternation, that plane is bound for Maui, not Alaska. I don't even try to argue over the logic of this decision. Whatever.

When we go out to the van, we find that the keys have been locked inside and we come perilously close to biting each other's heads off, but Mikey miraculously gets us in with the help of a six-foot stick which, up until this very moment, I've been questioning why we are carrying in our cargo. But Mikey has the right tool in the right place at the right time, like MacGyver, so I've got to tip my hat to the master. I often wonder whether Mikey has premonitions of these sort of incidents, if he foresees the future and prepares accordingly. Whatever the case may be, Mikey had left the stick within an arm's reach, tucked inside the small sliding rear window I had accidentally shattered somewhere around Tucumcari. He reaches in, pulls out this branch of a small tree, and words can't even describe what happens next, all I can say is we are soon on our way again.

[MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, WA]

On our way back to Seattle to place Trey on a plane to Maui, he ends up getting a hold of a friend of his who happens to live nearby, and his friend extends and invitation to us that includes the promise of cannabis consumption so we make a beeline for his place, King Carlo chugging and sloshing down muddy rural roads through proverbial cats and canines of precipitation.

When we arrive, his friend greets us barefooted at the door with warm hugs all around. He introduces himself as Bryan, and he appears to me to be a bit of a spacecase, a hunch that is confirmed when we head upstairs.

All across the beige carpet are dozens and dozens of orbs and geodes and huge hunks of magnificent minerals and crystals, and we sit in a circle beside them. Bryan tells us this collection corresponds to a particular pack of fairy-themed Tarot cards, which I find absolutely absurd, but my more spiritual and esoteric companions seem genuinely impressed so I hold my tongue. Besides, Bryan keeps loading tremendous bong rips for each of us and we quickly burn through a quarter ounce, so I can put up with it whatever weirdness he throws my way.

High off my ass, I lay down on the carpet and tune out their conversation as they discuss the finer side of magical rocks, astrology, vegetarianism, and djembes. When we leave an hour later, Bryan gives us several grams of potent pot and a jar full of a strange fluorescent green liquid.

"Flubber?" I ask.

He tells us it's ganja caramel, his own secret recipe. Waggling his eyebrows, he guarantees we will love it. While this is true, by the time we reach Seattle we are all sticky-fingered zombies with green ooze dripping down our chins.

[SEA-TAC, WA]

We decide to spend the night in Sea-Tac instead of Seattle, "because the hotels are cheaper" I tell the group, though in truth I'm just trying to trick them into taking me on a history tour of the Green River Killer, Gary Leon Ridgway. I see some prostitutes standing on a corner huddled under a street lamp, a soft drizzle swirling around them, and I imagine one of them stepping into a pick-up truck driven by a nondescript, mustachioed man, never to be seen again. The tour to me is a success, though I make no mention of it to Mikey and Trey, both of whom would find this an affront to their pacifistic sensibilities.

We stop at a seedy motel that promises free WiFi and cable on the billboard out front but reneges on those pledges the moment you check in and your credit card has been billed. Too tired to argue, we retire to Room 48 and smoke ourselves silly while licking from our lips in a lizard-like manner the neon ganja caramel Bryan was kind enough to supply us with.

The next morning, a suspicious-looking crackhead lurks outside of our door. We take turns standing watch over our in-room assets while the other two organize things in the van. Later as we're checking out, we're told that the crackhead jimmied the window of Room 47, climbed in, and stayed the entire night. I can only assume he was sorely disappointed when he learned the cable was out and he couldn't order any adult films, though I'm sure he had a blast anyway. Early that morning he was discovered by a petite Pakistani housekeeper who forcibly ejected him from the room, but has been haunting the premises ever since. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that calling the police might be an option.

On our way to the airport we stop at a Wal-Mart where I buy some slippers and Mikey finally purchases some badly-needed new kicks, a hilarious-looking pair of grey-and-white running shoes with velcro straps, real old fogey footwear. I'm impressed by the way Mikey peels the rotting Etnies from his feet and tosses them into a trash can without a second thought, strapping on his new Air Geezers like a man prepared to kick some septuagenarian ass at bocce.

We're all ready to head to the airport, but we have a farewell ritual to perform first. We park at the edge of the lot to smoke our last joint with Trey, the last burn with the three of us all together, but paranoia ends up overcoming us, for the lot is far too busy, this being noon on a Sunday, the church crowds recently released from sermons and ready to return to sinning and spending. Trey likes the spot, but Mikey and I are spooked so we drive across the road and park between a Wells Fargo and a McDonald's, but this spot is no better, we've pulled up alongside the drive-thru lane and a steady stream of cars can gaze upon us at their leisure. Mikey thinks it's alright, Trey hates it, and I cast my vote as an ambiguous "Fuck it".

I don't understand how it happens, how everything spins so wildly out of hand so rapidly, but a bitter argument ensues, essentially Mikey and I against Trey, which I later feel a bit badly about, although I can't deny he was the only thing holding us up at the Canadian border and the sole source of all our frustrations at this point in the trip. Insults are tossed at each other gratuitously, accusations are made, every little thing that has been driving us crazy about one another comes flying from our mouths. I bitch about the many non-essential stops we've made at various Whole Foods locations across the United States, Trey complains about my constant cigarette smoking and its effects on both his lungs and the atmosphere, and Mikey accuses Trey of emitting an unpleasant aura since Las Vegas. In the end, the argument just sort of fizzles out as it dawns on each of us what is really causing this: the madness of the road. We've traveled so much and slept so little, spent so much time in such close quarters, of course we're frazzled, of course we're a little sick of each other. In the end, we all pull together again in a heartwarming display of brotherhood, say our apologies and pass the last joint around peacefully. A half hour later, Mikey and I say good-bye to Trey at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

And then there were two.

[ISKUT, BRITISH COLUMBIA]

Mikey and I wake up in front of a grimy gas station and general store called the Kluachon Center, which seems to serve as the nucleus of the sad little settlement scattered around it. We are in the land of the Iskut First Nation, a tribe of Tahltan people who have been fighting Royal Dutch Shell tooth-and-nail over plans to produce coalbed methane at the confluence of the nearby Nass, Skeena, and Stikine Rivers, an area the natives refer to as the Sacred Headwaters due to their integral importance to local fishing. Though the Tahltans seem to be a peaceful people, I carefully conceal all signs of my own Dutchness, tuck my wooden shoes and tulips under the seat, just in case.

The only reason we stayed here last night is because a sign informed us that there will be no fuel for the next 115 kilometers, and it also occurred to neither of us that in this remote region the gas stations close at eight in the evening. If only they had stayed open until nine, we would be in Alaska right now.

Although their sign says they open at eight, nobody arrives until nine, and even then it takes another ten minutes for the Kluachon Center's doors to open. We pay an exorbitant rate for gas and dreadful coffee, and take turns chit-chatting with the affable indigenous lady at the register while the other uses the restroom, which has one of the largest wicker baskets full of condoms I have ever seen in my life, and I've seen more prophylactic baskets than the average man. Before leaving we also note the remarkable amount of pornography they have for purchase, considering the sparseness of the population in these parts. I estimate that there is approximately one Penthouse per capita.

Hitting the road again, we quickly learn that the sign informing us that there would be no gas for quite some time was an outright, damnable lie. Not twenty miles down the road is a much larger and nicer gas station and grocery store than the one we've just given our business to. I suspect the owners of the last establishment have purposely placed the fraudulent piece of roadside advice, but can I prove it in a court of law? We stop for more coffee and seeing the much fairer rates for gas, top off the tank.

It saddens me to say that this gas station reinforces every bad stereotype applied to Native Americans. They have what seems to be a limitless supply of cheap firewater in plastic bottles, vastly outnumbering any other beverage they have on hand, even bottled water, and like the last place the assortment of adult reading material is astonishing. This time, I decide to purchase a nudey mag - "to boost morale" I tell Mikey - and spend a long time considering my options. As I scratch my chin and struggle with this critical decision, an old-fashioned yellow school bus arrives and the store is suddenly overrun with no less than fifty teenage Tahltans, a flash flood of adolescence. They all seem genuinely amused to see me standing at the magazine rack holding a copy of Barely Legal in my right hand and Butt Sluts in my left.

Perhaps it is just the delirium of the road taking hold, but I decide to not allow myself to be embarrassed. Social norms be damned! I wave a copy of Cum Guzzlers at a keenly interested kid, ask him if he’s read this edition yet, and he turns and scampers away like a pimply-faced Snowshoe hare. A young girl yells “Gross!” and I tell her not to knock it before she’s tried it while making a squirting, spattering sort of gesture with my fingertips, something that would get me arrested in any ordinary town.

Finally I decide upon a magazine called Fox, based almost entirely on the cover photo which is by far the most explicit of any on the rack. It is a woman calling herself Jackie Daniels with her legs spread wide, using both hands to pull apart the lips of her labia majora, the head of a winking cartoon fox futilely photoshopped over the opening of her vagina, leaving extremely little to the imagination. Above her is the caption: “80 Proof Poon: Get Crunk on Cooze!” and floating all around her are dirty phrases like “Another Round of Cocked Tails!” and “Wild Fucks! Screaming Orgasms! Slippery Nipples!” Something about the way her toes are curled arouses me.

Standing in the long line of high school students at the cash register, I am treated as a pariah. It doesn’t exactly help matters that I go out of my way to hold the magazine in a manner which leaves Jackie Daniels' neatly-manicured pussy in full view for all to observe, and their teacher regards me with distaste. She wordlessly communicates to her students through eye contact and a series of sharp jerks of the head to take several steps away from me, as though I have leprosy, and they comply.

Finally at the register, the cashier rings up a bottle of Dr. Pepper and Jackie Daniels’ juicy cooch, seemingly unfazed by my naughty purchase, but suddenly she shoots me a look of resentment and scorn when I plop my credit card down on the counter.

“I’ll have to ring you up in the liquor section,” she says, sighing and rolling her eyes.

Instead of assisting me immediately, she insists on clearing out the other customers first, so I stand aside and make sure every child on their way back to the bus has had an opportunity to gaze between Jackie Daniels’ legs.

Driving down the road again, I spark a cigarette and begin leafing through the magazine immediately. We alternately ride the center line like a monorail and buzz the rumblestrip on the shoulder as Mikey struggles to keep King Carlo rolling in a straight line, his eyes bouncing back and forth between the road and the porn in my lap.

An hour or so later, we stop at the edge of a frozen lake to stretch our legs, eat some lunch, smoke a joint, and inspect the copy of Fox more closely. To our dismay, the primary centerfold is not of the delicious Ms. Daniels, whom I am at this point thoroughly in love with, but rather of a flat-chested brunette named Stephanie Sage who has a stomach-turning hemorrhoid dangling from her anus, which the photographer has chosen as the focal point of the spread. "Mein Gott in Himmel!" I cry when I first lay my eyes on the contemptible protuberance, and Mikey reacts similarly but in English. As I slowly flip through the pages of Stephanie Sage's segment, we take turns groaning in revulsion, cackling with laughter, and suppressing the urge to vomit.

Somehow the conversation turns toward the topic of serious, legitimate romance and our experiences in relationships with women, a field in which both Mikey and I sadly have little luck. I’m not entirely sure if this discussion arises in spite of the fact that we are looking at photographs of a man pressing his penis against a some foul hussy’s hemorrhoids, or because we are looking at such things. As it turns out, Mikey and I have nearly identical views on matters of love and the fairer sex, on the unfairness of it all for nice guys like us. We agree wholeheartedly with each other that companionship is more important than intercourse, and the irony is not lost on me that we do so while gazing upon images of barefaced fornication.

There probably isn’t a woman alive who believes we actually had an intelligent and thoughtful discussion about romance and relationships while gazing upon pictures of hemorrhoidal whores, but I swear we did, and if any woman could have heard what we said, they surely would have been impressed by our profundity.