Baby Geisha

by Trinie Dalton

  Zane always exerted this false sense of authority. He had zero sexual grip on me, since he reminded me of a scraggly Irish Setter. There was only life and death for Zane, though, and I liked this. He ignored everything in between. I knew what was running through Zane’s head: Beets wasn’t going to die, therefore he didn’t care about the remaining plan. Appendages were inconsequential to Zane. He was nonplussed at parties unless people were diving off decks or having cardiac arrests in bathtubs.

  I craved near-death adventure, until I got my fill with Zane. He was so gentle with me, weeks prior to this, the night we sat on his dorm room mattress for twelve-hours talking about how messed up life was. Gazing up at rock posters, Zane and I plotted against our healthy selves, destroying our bodies with real camaraderie. Zane almost died one night, and I got to watch his eyeballs pop out of his head while he laughed hyperactively. But recently, every time death neared, Zane denied its possibility, which made me suspect that he’d lost his edge.

  I woke up in the reeds, far from camp. Sand was in my mouth, my hair, my eyes, and my ears. I never wanted to see those guys again. I was seven hundred miles from home with sixteen dollars in my pocket. I wandered to other campsites asking people for a lift, and found someone who was going back to California. I needed to gather my stuff, and slipped into camp to rummage through the disgusting pile of canvas that was once our tent. Hopefully Beets was still alive.

  He was, but he was limply slouched in the tent mess, sitting cross-legged on the floor. I walked by without talking to him and leafed through our supplies, scattered in a fifty-foot radius. I found my wallet and searched it for a hairpin to hold my sandy bangs back. I grabbed my bag, feeling around for pins at the bottom. I got a warning pinch. Throwing the bag, that scorpion flew out, happy to have camped in its newfound tent, more stable than ours, happy to have weathered the storm. Lucky thing, I thought. I watched the scorpion curl its chive-stinger up to sting, as would my acerbic tongue should anyone speak to me. Go ahead, Zane, try to feed me drugs one more time. I hitchhiked home and never saw Zane again.

  THE PERVERTED HOBO

  Slidey was as slimy with green algae as ever. Bob, the husky, wished it were blue-green algae, the kind he once slurped off the rocky shores of an Alaskan glacial lake. Blue-green algae reminded him of wet rocks: slippery but spiritually clean. Nevertheless, Bob decided that Slidey was a sweet waterfall slide. Huskies aren’t known to dwell on the past. This afternoon, Bob wasn’t going to ruin it by getting wistful. He reared his head and gave a mighty howl.

  Slidey was naturally worn-down granite. Bob loved hiking up to Slidey because he could frolic off-leash and there were no biting flies. He liked the blueberries and salmon that came in the Alaskan blue-green algae package, but again, for today he’d have to settle for a less pristine landscape. Mainland dogs don’t get to travel to Alaska on a daily basis, Bob realized. He was lucky he’d been born and raised in Alaska before being shipped down to the desert, and that he’d had the opportunity to sire a sled-team’s worth of pups that now rule the Iditarod. He’d heard about the sled race domination through the Husky Howl grapevine.

  Bob met Slidey six years ago thanks to Bob’s owner, Eugene Slidey, brother of the graffiti artist, Dougie Slidey, who had spent his teenage years tagging this stretch of creek back in the Sharpie Days. Slidey, smooth granite boulders + stream = waterfall, was named by Dougie who had written in wonky all-caps at the top of it, S.L.I.D.E.Y. The word was slanted down to the left, as if Dougie had passed out and slid down Slidey as he left his mark. The whole place, as a result, had a blasé slurred-speech feel.

  Sometimes, interlopers slung ladies’ panties on the branches lining Slidey’s shore. Eugene didn’t know if this implied that the mystery panty-slingers had conquered ladies there or if men had been wearing the ladies’ underwear because some guys think they’re more comfortable than tightey whiteys. He suspected men were at the bottom of it, as he couldn’t picture women littering this scenic river. Granted, Eugene didn’t have experience with women or their undergarments. Slidey verged on being washed up from the female lingerie situation.

  The pink-orange sun hung low over Slidey as sunset commenced. Its white-yellow rays backlit the cottonwoods, while bees hummed soothingly in the tree canopy. This golden hour is so ruff ruff, Bob thought, meaning copasetic, panting as he trotted along the Slidey Trail behind Eugene, who had an aromatic sage bundle burning in one hand and a jug of water in the other. Eugene never went far without sage.

  During their gentle upstream meandering, Bob noticed that, as usual, Eugene began to puff that mysterious, smelly white tube that meant his master probably forgot dog treats. It would be astounding, Bob sighed resentfully, if Eugene would think to bring me some chicken strips on occasion. Bob liked to dip these strips in the stream to let the poultry rehydrate. Dusk made Bob want to lick everything, chicken or not, including the speckled boulders they hopped. He paused to nibble dirt.

  Eugene stopped and turned around. “Don’t eat dirt, man.”

  Bob switched off, his nose now combing slimy granite for edible, second-rate algae. Bob wondered why Eugene called him a man. Bob huffed, licked the slime off of his long black clownish lips, winked at his owner coquettishly with his elegant eyelashes, and moved three feet over to lick more. Eugene gave up and continued hiking while his loyal white-gray husky hatched a plan. Bob would wait for Eugene to strip down to his cut-off denim swimming shorts at the top of the waterslide. Then he would fake-bark as if to run down to the bottom pool to greet Eugene, buying time at the top of the falls to mack pond scum. It wasn’t Bob’s fault he was starving because Eugene neglected to pack treats.

  Thus unfolded another titillating afternoon. Once these two nonchalant fellows reached their destination, Eugene finished puffing his joint and tossed the roach into his favorite pool, a meditative but polluted portion of shore where foamy water ebbed in rings, dubbed by Eugene and Dougie the Watery Ashtray. Eugene thought the water was brown from high THC content, not from tannin leaching out of tree roots, common knowledge amongst non-stoned local riparian habitat naturalists. But Eugene wasn’t about to whip out a science book.

  “That water is so high!” he said, laughing to himself while his dog huffed the shore. Eugene had convinced himself over the years that the mystique of the unknown is best, having cultivated in his mind a homespun magic in which the web of life provided occult clues and signs to interpret mystically. Eugene measured his intelligence against how many nature clues he comprehended, but his friends and brother mocked this pseudo-shamanism. Who are we to rate another’s enlightenment? Eugene wondered. He was one of many taggers who grew up in the Southwest, a place famous for its New Age tendencies. But equally famous there was Suicidal Tendencies, a lousy band that grown men still listen to when reminiscing over cases of beer about dropping acid in high school. Eugene straddled both worlds. He still sported bushy brown hair. It was unclear whether he was a total loser or if he was slated to be a priest. He suspected both; since he was one of the six gay men he knew in his small Arizona town, he practiced equanimity and had as much pride as he could.

  While Eugene chugged water to squelch a coughing fit after his final intense inhale, a plush fifteen-foot-tall dog came walking on two legs from around the stream bend. What the? Eugene wondered. Bob barked and charged it immediately. The barks were idle warnings, though, nothing that scared the tall hairy beast. Upon this creature’s approach, Eugene realized what was happening and loosened up. “It’s cool, Bobby. He’s human.”

  Bob stopped barking and wagged his tail.

  “Hola!” Eugene hollered as the man neared. He only looked tall because he had several walking sticks tied to his back, laced with shredded leather and what appeared to be ladies’ underwear.

  Eugene noticed that dangling off this forest man’s poles alongside myriad lacy panties were acorns, pinecones, and tiny green bows tied into clover-forms. Maybe this guy was a St. Patrick wannabe or an eccentric tree-lover, like Johnny Apple
seed.

  The man jingled a pole as if calling elves, proclaiming jovially, “Excellent sunset.” He gazed up to behold its magnificence.

  A real dipstick, thought Eugene.

  “You’re standing on Slidey,” he said, smirking. He explained that Slidey was private with a locals-only tone. The dingleberry acorn man looked down at his decimated hiking boots planted right next to the cherished spot and chortled a hearty Ho ho just like Santa Claus. Could it be? Eugene wondered. That would kind of make sense, because it was only April, but Eugene had already wished for many things, well, mostly one thing repeatedly—a pair of chaps.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Slidey and I have had good times together.”

  “You know Slidey?” Eugene asked.

  Bob, sensing Eugene’s diminishing suspicion, started barking viciously in imitation of a Rottweiler he had seen on police reality T.V. Eugene grabbed his nose to subdue him.

  “Slidey’s family to me,” the man said, tapping his pole to the ground like a rainstick.

  “My brother made Slidey,” Eugene said.

  “No shit,” said the man, extending a filthy hand to shake. “I’m Eugene.”

  “I’m Eugene too!” said Eugene. Doppelganger? He looked at the panties strewn over the other Eugene’s poles and asked, “Are you behind the underwear deal?”

  Old Eugene nodded. He reached back as if to unsheathe a sword, pulled a couple pairs of underwear off his sticks, and chucked them into a cattail patch. It was a confrontational slapstick move, too advanced for Eugene or Bob to comprehend. Part yahoo and part bliss. Who was this perverted hobo?

  On the spot, Eugene was forced to remember, through his medicated pot haze, the day his mom came home fifteen years ago and announced his dad, Eugene Sr.’s, death. The conversation with his mom had faded over time but his rage remained. Eugene’s hooligan boy life with his awesome renegade father had been prematurely terminated. His mom claimed that his dad had died in a river rafting accident, when the inflatable raft that he and five others rode the rapids in wrapped a rock and drowned them.

  “Rocks don’t kill people,” Eugene told his mom in denial.

  “Those damn rafts do,” his mom said. Her coldness set reality up as something airy that could be popped at any moment.

  He had trusted his mom in the past but when his dad died he began to see her as the family interloper. Eugene had always felt suspicious about losing his dad. There was never a wake, for example, just a jar of ashes, which could have been from any joe schmoe.

  The day their dad’s vase appeared on the dining room table, Eugene’s little brother sat beside him in silence, early in the war between mom and son, waiting to see what Eugene would pull. Eugene chose retreat, so the boys retired to their bedroom stocked with two twin beds, Playboys, and candy. Eugene laid Dark Side of the Moon down on his turntable, put the headphones on, and dropped out. Dougie sat there on the edge of his skinny bed adorned with outer space bed sheets, slumped beneath a black light poster featuring the evil dwarves that haunt mushroom overdose victims, and waited for his brother to finish listening so he could mastermind their dual survival from here on out. Eugene stared at the sheets and wished he could transport to that corner of the universe they depicted. He had always preferred the company of men or space aliens to women, including his mother.

  Who would teach them how to elk hunt or how to rescue trucks from the quicksand rampant in the nearby red rock river valley? They’d had big plans to become cowboys, albeit Eugene’s vision, he’d assumed all along, was probably a variant on his dad’s. Deep down, Eugene’s cowboy vision included playing lasso with a buff cowboy who would hogtie and manhandle him. Now that those hopes were dashed, the boys vowed over pinpricked fingertips to be river haters.

  “Rivers are lame,” Eugene told Dougie, when the Pink Floyd record was over.

  Eugene felt betrayed by Slidey, who had allowed another human to visit and bestow upon his shores gaudy accoutrements. Panty slinging was a cowboy move, Eugene decided, thinking back to the years he struggled to substitute his macho, muscle-obsessed homoerotic fantasies with a more benevolent, sage-smudging kind. This alleged other Eugene, as he set those panties free like a dandelion releases its downy seeds, conjured so many despicable emotions in Eugene that had gelled over the years into something like an allergy to cowboys. All that attraction and repulsion, including his old, supposedly cured hate for rivers and their murderous ways were packed into his reaction to the panties. Eugene was so offended by what he decided was a cowboy panty-slinging move that he was almost turned on by it. He pictured this very cowboy bending him over a river branch and…

  Eugene stood facing Eugene. Bobby algae-grazed while Eugene’s emotions went haywire. Eugene’s face felt hot; he didn’t know what would happen if he called the man on his fake cowboy-hippie attitude and dipstick-like qualities. He was a hater, in part, but not a fighter.

  “I’m trying to feel peaceful right now, man, but it’s really hard with your intrusive vibes,” Eugene said to the white-dreaded wizard bejeweled with green bows and seedpods. Eugene himself had lustrous curly brown locks tamed by a bandana and was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and threadbare cargo shorts, but didn’t want to admit that they shared a certain hobo style.

  “What vibes, my son?” Eugene asked in a pious voice.

  My son. Eugene had suspected for a few years following the tragedy that his dad had merely escaped. Gone away someplace real but intangibly distant, like Eugene’s dreams. He couldn’t send mail or call, but suspected his dad was doing all right somewhere far away. His dad never felt dead to him. He talked to his dad in dreams at least once a week. Hey dad, why don’t we have a smoke sometime? Do you date girls? Did you know I’m queer? There was so much he yearned to tell his dad, not in his dreams or in a marijuana-induced hallucination, which is what this was if he was even allowing himself for one second to wonder if this was his father, his father’s ghost, or Santa. But what the hell.

  “Dad?” Eugene asked bluntly.

  Eugene Sr. winked and tossed some more panties into Slidey’s pool like a true forest faerie. Eugene’s father wasn’t dating girls either, it appeared, and Eugene gagged at the thought that he’d been aroused by… Bob wagged his tail and went up to Eugene Sr. for a grandpa chin scratch. The sun was setting now, and the trees turned black in silhouette against a periwinkle sky. They could see the Big Dipper. Outer space made its way into Eugene’s life once again.

  When you see a person who isn’t definitely flesh, it’s hard to end the moment because ending it means risking goodbye. Eugene was so moved that he didn’t care if his dad was a ghost or if the Eugene-Sr.-rafting-death story was a farce. Eugene’s mind roamed as the men sat still together on Slidey, letting night come. There were many ancestral appearances amongst the region’s Native Americans, and supposedly lots of apparitions in general. He had always wished ancestors would visit him—thus the sage obsession—but this was the first time. His dad was the kind of person who would’ve disappeared because he had always been an undeniable recluse. Eugene wanted to embrace his father but was too scared that if he were a ghost, Eugene would hug air and their visit would end in a cloud poof.

  Bob, unhindered by such lofty thoughts, sauntered up to Eugene Sr. and nudged him to let the men know that it was getting too dark to see and that they should all go back home for a celebratory chicken dinner. Eugene Sr. did not evaporate, and his son realized that indeed, his father had left him for a solitary life in the woodlands. Instead of feeling resentment or abandonment, Eugene couldn’t believe his good luck at having a live dad again.

  “Do you eat chicken?” Eugene asked his dad.

  “Does Slidey have algae?” his dad answered, meaning obviously yes, to which Bob licked his chops, and the men headed home.

  But chicken dinners don’t last forever. The men and their dog roasted and devoured two chickens, savoring each rosemary-infused bite and gazing at each other fondly as though the meat represented their bodies and
by finishing the meal they’d lose contact. Eugene had never understood the notion of transmogrification—that by eating a symbolic food one is actually consuming the worshipped one—but now he did. The chicken tasted as good as having his dad back.

  Eugene Sr. said, “You look good, son. I like your hairdo.”

  Eugene looked at his dad’s white, tangled mop and couldn’t say the same. “You look like a hobo. So, where have you been?” he asked.

  “Hoboes are cleaner cut,” Eugene Sr. said. “And they don’t toss panties. More on that later. Call Mother and Dougie to tell them I’m alive. I’ll tell you all the story at the same time.”

  Eugene entered the living room and pretended to call, but secretly talked to dial tone. Dougie was off who knows where with his trailer trash girlfriend and Eugene hadn’t talked to his mom in ages. He didn’t want to have to explain everything. She wouldn’t be able to just get in the car and come; she’d have to hear the whole story first, have a close-call heart attack, and then call a friend to gossip. Spontaneity was not in her vocabulary. She’d been anti-adventure since her husband’s presumed death. Eugene wasn’t ready to share his dad, anyway. This was the manly attention he’d craved for over a decade, and had never found in boyfriends. It was so much better than sex. Why am I thinking of sex? Who is the real pervert? Eugene was jolted by this mental disturbance, but wedged it carefully in the back of his brain so he could dwell on adoration.

  “They’re on their way,” Eugene lied, returning to the dining room. Bob, picking chicken bones clean under the dining room table, knew a lie when he heard one and nudged Eugene’s leg in alliance. He wasn’t thrilled when he had to leave his sweet litter of husky pups in Alaska, but he wasn’t into revenge and had no plans to spoil Eugene’s father-son reunion.