Alter Boys

by Chuck Stepanek

  “Hey de-man, you takin' the world’s longest piss or did you have to take a shit too? I hope not because the only ass-wipe I’ve got is last week’s pay stub from the prospect-hole.”

  Demon felt immediately conspicuous. He had been spacing off, standing with his dick in his hand, not peeing, just standing, and then there had been that sudden, strange scary thought and odd pain in his behind. He buckled his pants, not having the need to pee in the first place, more just participating in the social function, and moved back to the car.

  “Doing a little spacing out?” It was more statement than question. His response came easy.

  “Woooohhh…”

  “Ha ha, I told you man!” The Bird was delighted and repeated for about the 20th time. “That gold is some kick-ass shit!”

  He fired up the Falcon and, rather than revisit the hills, continued east on 6. “The hills just ain’t the same going back, plus 34 is one bumpy piece of shit. 91is just a few miles up; it’s smooth and angles back toward town.”

  The Bird lit a grit and offered the pack to Demon. This time he declined. Not because he didn’t want one, but because he didn’t think he could control that herky-jerky robot in a strobe light sensation while guiding a smoke to his lips.

  “I got me the new Kansas De-man.” He held up the 8 track proudly. “I been listening to it a lot but can’t help myself.” He grinned at his passenger as if the forbidden practice of overplaying a new album was common knowledge. “You dig Kansas De-man?”

  “Don’t know…” Honest and infantile.

  “Oh man, then we got to, we just go to!”

  Pink Floyd had been extracted while Demon had been outside peeing. Or not peeing if you want to be completely accurate about it. And now “Leftoverture” was inserted into the gap.

  The cacophony was instantaneous. Organs, drums, violins and guitars were waging a frantic battle for supremacy. “Whoa, sorry. Didn’t have that one cued up.” The Bird mercifully cut the volume by half and then clicked to the middle of the next track where wistful “Cheyenne Anthem” was rolling easily. He enhanced the volume by two clicks of the attenuators and for the next 90 seconds they listened to the final chords of the serene ballad of our red-skinned brothers.

  As Cheyenne anthem faded, the Bird disengaged the tape from the console. “I want to wait for the turn.”

  Demon understood. Just like the Bird had timed out the ‘Lloyd?’ ‘Pink Moon?’ music to match the road ahead, he was doing the same with this one. The awareness that he understood another person’s intent without having to have it explained to him was inwardly gratifying.

  As they drove quietly toward the turnoff Demon worried his fuzzy brain into prompting his gummy tongue. The three syllables formed, he turned toward the Bird. “I like it.”

  The Bird chided: “you ain’t heard nothing yet, wait 'til we get to the turn.”

  “No” Demon restarted. “I like it...” But could not finish.

  “What? Pink Floyd? 14 hills road? Shoving your cucumber into Rosie's prospect-hole?”

  “Pot! It flew out of him like a cork from a champagne bottle. “I like pot. Mother A Fucking love pot!”

  Serendipitously, the road widened for the approaching intersection with 91 and was vacant in all directions. Had this not been the case, they would have been perilously close to barrel rolling into the south ditch or smashing head-on or T-boning some fellow stoner en route to ‘the hills.’

  The Bird went into hysterics. Some for the misspoken “mother A fuckin,” but mostly for De-mans most sincere disclosure. He convulsively yanked the wheel left, filling half of the opposite lane. He over corrected, flying past the original, and widening the intended girth of the deceleration/turning lane. Awkwardly he re-corrected, found the brakes, and finally regained control of the runaway Falcon.

  “The De-man loves his pot!” The Bird was oblivious to the near brush with death; to the contrary, he was stoked! “What a ride De-man! You got me good, you got me reeeaaal good!” The Bird stopped the Falcon at the illuminated intersection of east 6 and 91 and had himself a party. He laughed at the innocent humor of his passenger, he laughed for the awesome brush with death, mostly he laughed because he was stoned out of his gourd.

  “De-man loves his pot!” he repeated, and then with a slightly serious tone. “But you gotta be careful, you can’t be calling it pot. It’s called Bob.”

  Demon was confused but tried the name. “Bob.” He looked at the Bird. “Bob?”

  “That’s so people won’t know. If you’re not sure if someone smokes, you just ask ‘do you know Bob?’ If you wanna buy some weed you can ask, ‘have you seen Bob around?’ Is Bob gonna be at the party? Wanna hook up with Bob before work? That kind of thing.”

  He expanded: There are different kinds of Bob. There’s Bobbie, that’s kids stuff, ditchweed.” He stuck a finger in his throat and crossed his eyes. “Bob is like your regular Mexican, Robert is Columbian,” he tumbled the word off his tongue with a south of the border accent. ‘Kohl-um-bee-un’ “Then there’s Roberto (the Bird rolled his eyes to the top of his head and swayed back and forth) Roberto is fucking Hawaiian Maui-Wowie, and at the top is Mr. Roberts all-day amusement park ride.”

  “Mostly what you’ll find around here is plain old Mexican bob. Lately though there’s been some Kohl-um-bee-un Robert floating around. That’s what I’ve got right now. But you’re always safe just callin’ it Bob.”

  A set of headlights appeared on the left, southbound on 91. “That’s our cue” the Bird reseated himself into the business of driving. “I’m glad we stopped. If we had turned onto the highway sooner, that piece of shit would have been on our ass shining his goddamn headlights in our mirrors all the way to Elmwood. Fuck that! Now we get to follow him!” The car whizzed through the intersection. The Bird laughed maniacally, shifted from P to D, popped Kansas into the deck, and turned right to chase the taillights.

  6

  “Carry on my wayward son

  There’ll be peace when you are done

  Lay your weary head to rest

  Don’t you cry no more.”

  Bird accelerated to the acapella lyrics and on the word “more” tromped hard on the gas.

  A pair of guitars, one for each ear, punched notes up and down the outer walls of the Falcon. Demon imagined colorful guitar icons, lighting up randomly like the side panels of a carnival game. Notes jittered up and down the scale; brilliant colored guitars scampered up and down the board. A synthesizer found a foothold in a lower corner. It bullied the twin guitars aside and raced in a giant arch across the top of the car and brazenly back again. Smaller versions of the moog staked their claim independently on each ear before relenting to the guitars.

  The Falcon found 70 and the Bird also relented, easing back to a safer ‘cigar box full of 6 months probation tucked under the front seat’ 63 mph.

  Kansas ignored the speed limit.

  They drove. The road smooth as promised. The landscape a slow motion fantasy show. The music, frenetic, measured, orchestrated, delicate and sewn together in a mastery of instrumentation.

  The beauty of “Us and them” had been the rise and fall of its gentle flotation pace. It was a free floating adventure into the infinite vastness of space. Leftoverture was an element of surprise around every corner, a calliope of impish musical instruments whisking you through a carnival of sounds and mental imagery.

  And with each change in pace from Kerry Livgrin and the Kansas crew, the passing scenery matched the audio. Sagging Burr Oaks cried silently during the muted piano sections, then raised their aging branches and scowled fiercely as all of the instruments thundered in unison.

  Demon could barely take it all in. He looked at the Bird and silently mouthed his go-to word. “Wooooohhh.”

  The Bird acknowledged him right back with his trademark shit-eating grin, then re-displayed his hand palm side up. A moments registration, then recognition. Demon swung his arm languidly and, save for one and a half fingers, would h
ave missed the target entirely.

  “No sweat De-man!” The Bird shouted over the music. “Just blame it on Bob. Anything like that ever happens, you just blame it on good old Bob!” He nodded twice and resumed his double grip on the wheel.

  Their sub speed limit pace never allowed them to catch the taillights of the preceding car. It mattered not, there were smooth miles to be traveled, music to be revealed and fantastic animated scenery to absorb.

  “Carry on Wayward Son” finished rather unceremoniously, a disappointment only because Demon felt he could go on listening to it forever. The Bird clicked the track button twice and opened a new door, this one the size of a fortress barricade. It revealed a thousand new lands, each with 1,000 castles and each castle with a thousand rooms to explore.

  The “Magnum Opus.”

  A cacophony of audio visions characterized the next 10 miles to Elmwood. Demon was lifted away to foreign lands of blossoming depth and endless mystique. The music elevated his mind and his eyes 500 feet above the car. He floated along as a spectator as the travelers in the Falcon below him forged though desert dunes, jungles swarming with insects and vast industrial tracts with ominous rusting machines.

  In the near distance, lights. The lights of Nirvana the THC enhanced music whispered. The lights of Elmwood his sensibility corrected.

  As the billboards and city ordinance signs became more common, he floated down from his perch and resettled into the passenger seat. The buzz was wearing off. The real world was re-staking its claim.

  But for Demon, it would never be the same real world as he had known before. Now he knew that there was a promised land of sensations. A place where he could see, feel, hear, touch…

  “Ohhh, man, I got the munchies.”

  And soon learn that he could taste them too.

  7

  It was a section of town of which he was only vaguely acquainted, at a time of night that he was completely unfamiliar.

  The Falcon however, was well acquainted. They rolled through empty streets, past darkened shops and darker homes, before pulling into the florescent light drenched lot of Elmwood’s 7-11.

  “Those fuckers knew what they were doing when they opened this place last year.” The Bird opined. “They’re open all effin’ night and they make a killing.”

  No other cars were in the lot, but if the Bird said it, it had to be true. They wheeled up facing the front door. The Bird killed first the engine, then the lights. “I’ve gotta get me some honey glazed peanuts, I just gotta! What you gettin’ De-man?”

  “I don’t know.” He answered truthfully. In fact he hadn’t planned on getting anything. He saw himself waiting in the car while the Bird got his munchies. Just the thought of leaving the sanctuary of the Falcon and accompanying the Bird into the store was oddly frightening. Making a purchase? Impossible.

  “Come on man, let’s check it out.”

  And so he had been ordered.

  The Bird was already well into the heart of the convenience store by the time Demon extracted himself from the car and muscled open the heavy 7-11 door. He was immediately met with sensory overload.

  Where to start? He could spend days trying to find his way through the six aisles tightly packed with items of convenience. He stood in the entry, spacing out on the kaleidoscope of product colors, shapes and sizes.

  “Hep ya fine sumptin?” The overnight clerk had no intention of helping, he merely delivered the compulsory line to inform any of his teenage patrons with that ‘I’m on a shop-lifting dare look’ that they were being watched. Then he realized that the kid was falling down stoned. “The munchies are over there” he pointed knowingly and returned to his copy of “Field and Stream.”

  Demon followed the gesture and was relieved by the sight of the Bird in the candy aisle. He held up a tin of Planters glazed nuts that he shook victoriously. “What choo getting’ man?” he asked again.

  “dunno” the mumbled reply.

  Even narrowed down to a single aisle, the scope was far too vast for his cognitive state. There were things he recognized (mostly from TV) but only a couple that he had even tried (M & M’s for one) still the decision was monstrous. And it was suddenly compounded by an unwelcome interruption. (It’ll rot your teeth out!) The voice of his mother; chastising him for even considering such sinfulness. Strangely, when the Bird had offered him a cigarette, there had been no voice. When he took hits from the fairy pipe, no echo of admonishment.

  But this? Now? Because he was looking at candy? His parents had never talked to him about the dangers of smoking cigarettes or embarked on the discussion that pot would make him go insane. They had never seen the need. But for those sinful items that had found their way home, a bag of valentine candy in second grade, a clutch of goodies from a junior high ‘all class’ birthday party, they (his mother) had driven the lesson home with manic fury.

  He wrestled with the moment. The voice of his lineage was strong and demanded compliance. The prospect of displeasing the Bird and ruining the magical night, frightening. The decision was complicated by the vast array of options. He stood and looked, and looked, and looked…

  “Come on man, let’s go.” The Bird’s patience was wearing. “Yes, I think that would be a good idea.” The clerk, suddenly much more alive, had two more cars pulling into the lot and a third crawling up to the pumps. He would have a store full of people in a few minutes and didn’t need to be babysitting these stoners.

  Demon took the harsh prompt and randomly grabbed a bag of peanut M & M’s. They paid (wasting perfectly good money on such crap!) his mother’s voice screamed in his brain, the clerk not bothering to count back their change, and exited the store.

  The Bird was already seated in the car while Demon puzzled over the momentous task of juggling his change, the M & M’s and freeing a hand to open the door. Eventually he got control of coins and candy in one hand, door handle in the other, and made his entrance.

  “effin A man.” The Bird was crunching through a mouthful of Planters Honey glazed. “You gotta try these.” He held out the canister and shook half a dozen hard candy-shelled nuts into Demon’s open palm. Demon parked his M & M’s carefully in his lap, realized he still had a fistful of coins to contend with, and then tumbled them uncharacteristically into his shirt pocket.

  He gingerly plucked one glazed nugget, placed in his mouth, and bit down. Crunching slowly he first felt the texture. Two distinct levels, the brittle hard shell and the slightly softer natural peanut. Small chunks and smaller crumbs disbursed through his mouth and unleashed the flavor, distinct salty peanut followed by exquisite sweetness from the shell.

  His jaws worked slowly. Before tonight, eating had always been a natural function that didn’t require thinking. It was nothing more than putting a little fuel into your system when your stomach was hovering on empty. But now he could sense every little flavorful granule; floating above and below his tongue, settled in the gap between his gum line and lower lip, tucked in at that hard to reach place where the jawbones connected. He worked his tongue deliberately, collecting pebbles and sand grains, and deposited them on his molars for final processing and savoring.

  “Wooooh” he breathed to the Bird appreciably. And then popped two of the nuggets into his mouth.

  “That’s the thing about Bob, he gives you the munchies.” The Bird was attacking Mr. Peanut by the fistful and had already made a significant dent in his supply.

  They sat and ate, watching the night owl customers patronize the convenience, and inflated prices, of the 7-11.

  Demon graduated to the M & M’s, the chocolate; ambrosia to his mouth, and then was struck with inspiration. All night, it had been the Bird sharing things with him. A ride, smokes, bob, music, the candied nuts. Boldly he extended the small yellow bag across the seat and said: “want some?”

  “Thanks man.” The Bird accepted, plainly, without fanfare, as if it were the most common of gestures.

  To Demon, it was a milestone, a first. (Don’t be gi
ving it away! You paid good money for it!)He brushed away the admonishment of his mother’s voice and lavished in his new found ability; his ability to give, to receive, to share.

  “We better roll before that asshole clerk calls us in for loitering.” The Bird blindly tossed his empty planters can into the back seat where it clattered noisily on Demon’s bike. “Oops!” He hunkered down sheepishly and countered it with a shit eating expression that decorated his face. “Sorry man. I just killed your ride.”

  It deserved less, but Demon found this to be uproariously funny. Blame it on bob. Had there been anything more than a few remnants in his mouth he might have aspirated and choked. Instead he lurched forward and brayed out particles of peanut and blots of chocolate saliva on his work pants.

  “See man, just like I told you. That’s why I always carry an extra pair. Better wash those good or the next time he sees you the bone man is gonna be on his knees licking your crotch!”