The Trip

by Aaron Niz

  She grins. “Be boring. I like it. Very catchy and simple.”

  “Well, my theory is this,” I tell her, moving closer to her on the railing so that our arms are practically touching. “People get wrapped up in relationships because they’re exciting. And what make things exciting is the fantasy of it. This guy—whoever he is—

  imagines you to be intelligent and beautiful, the perfect woman.”

  “Are you saying I’m not really all those things?”

  “Of course you’re all of those things. But you can’t let him know that. Which is why you have to learn how to be boring.”

  “And this actually works?”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “Well don’t most guys just want sex? Even if you’re boring, the guy still wants to have sex with you.”

  “Shit. You’ve got a point. Maybe it only worked for me because girls aren’t all about sex.”

  She looks at me and I look at her. She licks her lips. “You’re a player, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Definitely. Player.” She holds up her hand as if to push me away and I grab it, teasingly.

  “I’m not a player.”

  “Yes you are. I can spot a player from a mile away.”

  “And what do you do once you spot a player?”

  “Usually I end up dating him,” she laughs. “Because I’m an idiot.” We’re still holding hands. “You’re not an idiot,” I tell her. And then I bend down and kiss her warm, full lips. She kisses me in return and I’m honestly surprised by the intensity of her response.

  I pull her body close to me, feeling her warmth as she presses into me.

  When we break from the kiss, I look around. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

  “We are somewhere quiet.”

  “I mean, somewhere a little more private.”

  “Okay.”

  I take her by the hand and we climb down the steps leading off the deck to the back yard. It’s dark and I can see the cars sitting in the driveway; unmoving, hulking shapes.

  We move underneath the deck where it’s even darker and begin kissing again.

  Suddenly her hands are moving under my shirt, touching my stomach, feeling my chest as our tongues intertwine. Then her hands are sliding down to my pants, snaking into my boxers. One hand grabs my penis and begins stroking me.

  “I want it in my mouth,” she whispers.

  I’m surprised. She didn’t strike me as that kind of girl, but you don’t have to ask me twice. So I quickly unbutton my pants and then she’s pulling my boxers down and going to work on me.

  My belt buckle jingles in the silence and then she’s sucking me off like a professional. He mouth is arm and wet and my legs are shuddering. The only sounds are the rhythmic sucking sounds and my hurried breathing.

  “Jesus Christ, that feels amazing.”

  Natasha responds by going at it with even more enthusiasm.

  A few minutes later it’s over.

  I pull up my pants and she stands up, grabbing my hand in the darkness. “I really like you,” she says.

  “I really like you too,” I say, feeling suddenly regretful. Hadn’t I only just determined not to have any more drunken one-night stands? Where is my self-discipline?

  It’s been less than twenty-four hours and I’ve done it again.

  “You’re just saying that.” It’s as if she can read my emotions. The mood has abruptly shifted. And why not? We hardly know one another.

  “No, seriously, I like you too,” I say, desperate to come off as genuine. “It would be cool to hang out again sometime.”

  “When? You’re just here on some stupid frat boy vacation and I’m the little skank who blew you. I’m sure it will make a great story to tell your buddies.”

  “Hey, are you being serious right now? I said I like you.”

  “I’m sure you like having your dick sucked.” The tone of this accusation is flat and angry.

  In the darkness beneath the deck I can’t even see her expression. Her face is a mask of shadows.

  “Why are you mad at me?” I ask. “I mean, you wanted to do that, right—“

  “I don’t know.” She sighs and it sounds like she’s beginning to cry. “It all happened so fast.”

  “Yeah, but you said you wanted—“

  “Just shut up, okay?” she cries, and the volume of it frightens me a little.

  What the hell is going on here?

  It’s gotten very quiet and she’s just a shape near me now, not even someone I feel like I can touch. In the space of a few seconds everything’s changed and I don’t understand why, what I did to cause it. There’s a pit in my stomach and I have an awful feeling about this. I need to somehow fix the situation, get her to calm down.

  “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Natasha.”

  My apologies sound lame and false in my own ears but it’s the best I can do at the moment.

  She doesn’t answer. She’s shaking and crying. “I want to go. I need to leave now. Get Marissa and Gia. Tell them I want to leave.”

  “Get them? I don’t know where they are. Listen, can we just talk for a second?”

  “No. Get them or I’m going to call the cops.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Just shut up and go!” she screams.

  And I do so, quickly walking away from her and entering the basement of the house through the sliding glass door. It’s completely dark inside, but I can hear some kind of noise.

  Someone is moaning. I hear slapping sounds.

  As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out two people in the center of the room by the couch. The moonlight filters in through the windows and sliding glass door, just enough for me to see two pale bodies intertwined in the center of the room. As my eyes further adjust, I see that the guy is Hetridge and he’s got one of the Big Ass Twins bent over the couch. He’s fucking her doggy style.

  He glances over at me and I can see the whites of his eyes. He suddenly reaches out and grabs a handful of her hair as he thrusts with his hips. She moans loudly.

  “You want in on this action, Gabe?”

  “Ah…no thanks man.”

  “Dude, she’s tight as shit. You should throw it in her ass. You’d like that, wouldn’t you bitch?”

  She moans and gasps but doesn’t answer.

  “I think the girls have to leave. Natasha told me to come get her.” Hetridge laughs. “I aint done here just yet though. Right, you little slut? You little cum guzzling whore?”

  “Take it easy, dude,” I say, feeling even more uncomfortable. What happens if Natasha and her friends talk afterwards and decide they’ve all been taken advantage of—

  even raped? Oldest story in the book. A few helpless girls at a drunken frat house, people would convict us on that detail alone.

  “Don’t you ever talk dirty Gabe?” Hetridge chuckles. “I like the dirty talk and so does my little friend here. Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she gasps.

  “Say you love it.”

  “I love it.”

  “Damn right you do, little whore.” He pumps away even more enthusiastically.

  I leave the room and start down the hallway. From behind me I hear Hetridge laughing.

  ***

  “Sorry, they were both hanging out with brothers and didn’t really want to leave,” I tell Natasha after failing to retrieve her friends. She’s standing in the driveway smoking a cigarette.

  I didn’t think she seemed like the smoking type. Then again, I’ve known her for all of half an hour and I’m clearly not a great judge of character.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she replies eventually, blowing a cloud of smoke in my general direction. “I already called my boyfriend to come get me.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “I told you--it’s complicated.”

  “But you drove here.”

  “It’s Gina’s car so I guess she can
drive it home herself.” I sigh. “Listen, Natasha. Can we just—“

  She shakes her head. “Leave me alone, Gabe. You got your dick wet, wasn’t that the whole point?” Her gaze suddenly locks on mine. In the shadowy darkness of the driveway, her pupils are absolutely black.

  “No, that wasn’t the whole point. I didn’t plan for that to happen.”

  “I feel like I got raped. I feel dirty. Like a prostitute.” A visible shiver runs through her body, and she clutches herself. “I…I just want to go.” She starts crying again.

  I look around as if hoping someone sane will try and mediate the situation. But it’s just us out here. Everyone inside is either sleeping, having sex, or too drunk to give a shit.

  And I’m drained. After unsuccessfully trying to round up her friends, and dealing with Natasha’s bizarre personality shift, I’m at the very end of my rope.

  How did this whole thing get so fucked up? I wonder, watching her shake and cry in the driveway. I can’t believe she mentioned rape. What happened between us was about as far from rape as you could possibly get.

  But nobody knows that. There were no witnesses, just her and I outside in the darkness under the stairs.

  And now her “boyfriend” is coming to pick her up. That will go really well, I’m sure. I wonder how she was able to call him. Nobody’s cell phone has been getting reception out here.

  “I really am sorry,” I tell her again, sounding about as lame as humanly possible.

  “You know, someday you’re going to regret treating girls like shit,” she sobs.

  “I didn’t mean to treat you like shit Natasha.”

  “And karma’s a bitch,” she says, and then laughs a little bit amidst her crying.

  “What does that mean?”

  “My boyfriend has a mean streak.” She laughs. “He’s been in jail for assault, too.”

  “Are you threatening me now?”

  She doesn’t respond, turns her back to me.

  “Whatever.” That’s the most I can muster at this point. She doesn’t look at me and I turn on my heel and walk back inside the cabin.

  I go in my room and carefully maneuver myself past the unconscious brothers lying on the floor. Someone’s snoring loudly. It feels like I’m in the belly of some ship bound for a foreign land. The heat and smell of slumbering male bodies creates a strange sauna effect in here. And yet it’s also comforting that at least if trouble arrives, got some backup. The brothers won’t let some townie asshole come in here and punch me in the face.

  When I finally crawl into bed, I realize I’m more exhausted than I thought.

  I drift almost instantly to sleep. I’m completely out cold. It’s one of those nights where there are no dreams at all, more like a medically induced coma than anything else.

  Next thing I know, I’m being shaken. I startle awake, feeling the heaviness of coming to after a long night of partying. There’s a dull pounding behind my eyes and a gurgling, queasy sensation in my belly.

  Neil is sitting on the edge of my bed, grinning. His bottom lip has a dark brown scab on it. “Wake up motherfucker!” he brays.

  The room is empty and sleeping bags, pillows and blankets are strewn across the carpeted floor.

  “Jesus, dude.” I sit up and grimace. The gurgling stomach and pounding behind my eyes only increases. For a split second it seems as though I might upchuck all over this grubby little twin bed.

  “You don’t want to miss the fun. Mushrooms and mushrooms, oh my, oh my!” he sings crazily.

  I sigh as the queasiness fades. “What time is it?”

  “Almost ten o’clock.”

  “Shit. What happened to the girls from last night?” Neil’s grin widens, which seems impossible. And then he makes what appears to be a pre-planned announcement. “Hetridge fucked one girl and then he let me fuck her when he was done.” The wide grin becomes a gaping smile, followed by a loud peal of laughter.

  “Really.” I stare at him, wondering if he could truly be that sick and degenerate.

  Neil just smiles. “I walked in on them and he stepped aside, so I went to town.”

  “That’s fucking disgusting.”

  I think about Natasha going down on me, and the resulting fallout from that blunder. She was already talking rape, what’s going to happen when it comes out that the brothers pulled a train on one of the other girls that stayed here last night?

  It’s enough to make me wish I’d never heard of the brotherhood.

  “Dude, it was totally fine. She loved it,” he assures me.

  “I’m sure she did. I’m sure she did.” I swing my legs over the bed and my feet hit the floor. “And the girls left?”

  “Yup. That one girl…the one you were talking to…”

  “Natasha? What about her?”

  He grins. “Vinnie woke up and went outside to piss off the balcony.”

  “Why didn’t he just use the fucking bathroom like a normal person?”

  “The balcony was closer.” He snorts.

  “Okay, get to the point, dude.”

  “So he gets outside and starts pissing and he nearly peed on that girl!” I run my hand through my hair nervously. “Great. Then what happened?”

  “And then some pickup truck pulled into the driveway and there were like three or four weird guys sitting inside. Natasha got in the truck and they sat there for like ten minutes. Vinnie was watching them, he said they were just sitting there looking at him.”

  “Nobody got out of the truck and said anything to him?”

  “Nope.” Neil laughs. “But imagine if he’d pissed on her when she was standing outside. Like, actually pissed on her head.”

  I don’t even bother responding. Sometimes Neil just says stuff to get a reaction.

  Neil stands up and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Come upstairs. They’re starting to pick already.”

  “I told you I’m not doing mushrooms.”

  “Suit yourself.” He gets up and ambles out of the room.

  A few minutes later I’ve gone to the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth.

  When I finally get upstairs, everyone is in the kitchen talking and laughing. The room’s so crowded that I can barely even see the table where Randall has laid out an enormous pile of psilocybin mushrooms. It resembles a large mound of gnarled roots dipped in dog shit.

  A handful of brothers have already picked their individual servings from the mass of mushrooms and are now in process of eating them. Eating ‘shrooms is no easy feat.

  People say that they taste absolutely horrible. In fact, roots dipped in dog shit might taste better than psilocybin mushrooms do.

  Tyler sees me and gives a nod. “You want some?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Still a lot of good piles left to choose from.” Hetridge claps his hands. “Did you get a good look last night, Gabe? That’s how a real man fucks. You should have taken notes like your buddy Neil did.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Real classy.”

  “Sorry to have offended Miss Manners.” He pretends to jerk off and mimes cum spraying everywhere.

  “I’m just glad you had fun,” I say.

  “Bet your ass I did. And now I’m going to get loaded.” Hetridge tosses a mushroom cap in his mouth like it’s a tic-tac, chews and swallows it with ease.

  A few other brothers have stepped in and chosen their mushrooms now. I squeeze in closer just to get a better look at the table. The mushrooms are separated into distinct little groupings. Some are slightly bigger than others. There are twisted and misshapen stems, sporting a rainbow of colors and textures that don’t look like anything you should touch let alone ingest. A few of them appear to have an almost metallic sheen to them.

  But there is something about the mushrooms. Something that calls to me.

  Just knowing that by choking a few of these down, I could be transported to a different reality…it’s definitely tempting. Especially when all the brothers are doing it.

&
nbsp; Who wants to be the one sober idiot? Being sober now would almost make me in charge of the group by default.

  I find myself inching closer and closer to the table.

  The stacks are dwindling and dwindling.

  And then there are only two piles left.

  Neil is finally allowed to pick. He should have gone a while ago, but Tyler made sure Neil didn’t have his turn until the very last. Finding new ways to demean Neil is something Tyler seems to relish more and more lately.

  Neil thinks for a long moment and then finally grabs the bigger pile of the two.

  Then he glances at me. “You know you want to do it.”

  “I’m just browsing, dude.”

  “Huh?” He glances at me quizzically.

  “I’m just saying, I don’t want that whole pile.”

  “You can give me that big cap and the weird stem.” Without stopping to overthink it, I reach down and sweep up the last remaining pile on the table. Around me, the others are all busily chewing and muttering about the disgusting taste. Some of them have spread peanut butter on the dirty brown, crumbly

  ‘shrooms and tried to mix the nasty mess with crackers I stare at the fungi sitting in my palm.

  Do I really want to be hallucinating and tripping out of my mind for five hours?

  Neil’s watching me. “Just give me the big pieces.” He holds out his other hand.

  “Fine. Grab the ones you want.”

  Quickly, as if he’s afraid I’m going to rescind the offer, he snatches three giant mushrooms from my pile. Now all that remains are two tiny little caps, a small, twisted brown stem, and some crumbly bits.

  These probably won’t even be enough to get me high.

  With that comforting thought in my head, I proceed to stuff it all in my mouth and chew, swallowing as quickly as I can, but even so the taste is unmistakable.

  My stomach gives me a scare. I think briefly about running to the bathroom and puking into the toilet. But the nausea fades and I manage to keep the mushrooms down.

  A bunch of brothers start getting their coats on and heading outside.

  “Where are you going?” I ask Randall.

  He zips up his jacket. “The woods. It’s no fun tripping inside.” But I don’t want to be outside right now. It feels safer in here. I walk into the living room and sit down on one of the beaten up recliners. There’s no TV or anything, so I find myself staring at a deer’s head that’s been mounted on the far wall.