At least Barney isn’t a child molester or something like that. Mom was corresponding with one of his friends named Gabe. She says that those people are lonely and need contact with the outside world. This guy was in there for performing medical services without a license. He was a deputy with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and told his colleagues that he was training to be a registered nurse. He also told them that he had to perform so many hernia examinations to qualify for his certification. Gabe offered different men within his department $50.00 to be the subjects of his “examinations.” Gabe would have a coworker meet him at a hotel, and then he would fondle his bare, droopy, balls, and say things like: “hmmm,” “uh-huh,” and “okay.” Some of his “patients” also volunteered for the prostate exam for an extra $10.00. During the prostate exam Gabe would probe the rectum with a gloved and lubricated finger or two, wiggling his digits around a little while uttering concerned phrases like: “Oh! Very interesting!” “Eureka!” “ah-ha,” and “um-hm.” Eventually, after repeated “tests” on the subjects, it was discovered that Gabe was in fact not in training to become a registered nurse, he was not even in school, he just liked touching guys’ balls and butt holes. Gabe is currently doing time for performing unlicensed medical exams and sexual battery. When it comes down to it, I guess I’ll take Barney over Gabe for my new stepdaddy.
• • •
Mom told me that when I make it to I-95 I should stop off to rest at a town called Dillon in North Carolina. Buddy Hinton, an old neighborhood kid, lives in Dillon and is the assistant night manager at a hotel just off of the interstate. Buddy could probably get me a good rate on a room for the night, according to Mom. She says she’ll try to call ahead for me and set something up with Buddy.
The serpentine mountainous roads have a soothing, hypnotic effect on me. Denny’s Mormon Tea is still in the truck so I drink some more of it, hoping to keep myself awake. As darkness craps away another day, my head involuntarily nods, my heavy eyelids droop, I am on auto-pilot, not really paying attention to my driving but managing to keep the truck on the road. Without Denny to talk to, it’s hard to keep myself awake. If I weren’t on the run from Major Pickles, I would probably pull over on the side of the road and sleep for a while.
In order to stay awake I pick up a hitchhiker. His name is Rudy Erikson. Rudy has a backpack, a face full of bushy black beard, and the aroma of something like a cross between B.O. and moose piss. His intense eyes burn passionately. He doesn’t blink. Rudy rants about stem cell research causing the destruction of innocent lives. He rails about abortionists being the instruments of Satan. I play devil’s advocate and suggest that perhaps there are people who should be killed. I tell Rudy that maybe we have too many people on the planet who just use up air and space and contribute nothing but excrement, foul fluids, and a burden for the rest of us. Rudy shouts, he weeps about the beauty of human life and taking all necessary steps to preserve it, including killing others who disagree with him. I don’t know what I believe. I just know that Rudy’s fanaticism scares me to the point of making me very aware and alert. I’m so fucking spooked by him that I’m not tired anymore and don’t need to worry about drifting off while driving.
I drive through the night with Rudy. As I find myself getting tired again, I tell Rudy that I’m thinking about making a financial contribution to Planned Parenthood. Rudy explodes. He tells me that organization is a bunch of whores and whoremongers. I don’t exactly know what a whoremonger is, but it sounds bad, and, I suppose, has something to do with whores. Rudy tells me that there is a bomb in his backpack and that he will blow us both up if I really am going to contribute money to their murderous cause. He scares the shit out of me and, in the process, wakes me up. I tell Rudy that he has changed my mind and I see his way of thinking.
“Promise me you won’t make any such donation to those godless heathens,” Rudy orders. He tells me that if I disagree with him again about the sanctity of human life, I will regret it. Rudy has big plans for the bomb in his backpack. However, he is willing to use it to obliterate the both of us unless I renounce my evil ways and acknowledge the sanctity of human life. I concede that Rudy is right, human life is beautiful and should be protected at all costs. I don’t know if he really has a bomb but I do know that the machete-like buck knife hanging from his belt could probably take one of my arms off in one powerful swipe from Rudy. I have a mental vision of wild-eyed, fur-faced Rudy jamming the knife into my ear and twisting it; the vision is all too real and I realize that I don’t like Rudy so much. We pull over on the side of the road to take a piss. I finish quickly and jump in the truck. In the moonlight I see the bush branches moving around the area where Rudy is. He takes forever. I lock the door of my truck and decide I’ve had enough of him. He has kept me awake. He has served his purpose. I am afraid that he will hurt me eventually and it is time for us to part ways. In my side view mirror as I pull away I see Rudy running from the bushes, pulling up his pants and jumping up and down. He screams something that I can’t hear with my healthy, unpunctured eardrums.
I drive on through the night, stopping once at an all-night convenience store to get something to eat. I crave deviled eggs. The closest thing they have is massive a jar of pickled pheasant eggs near the register. I ask the cashier to get one for me. She tells me, “Just reach in and grab a couple, honey. We ain’t shy around here.”
On the road again, I head east, I think, toward Interstate 95. I eat the salty eggs, wishing I had bought something to wash them down with. They taste slightly rotten. I drink more Mormon Tea and manage to stay awake the rest of the drive to the interstate. At I-95 I take a right and head south as the sky to my left takes on the faint glow of dawn.
The signs for the South of the Border tourist trap clutter the roadside. Billboards with Pedro, the sombrero and poncho-clad Mexican, pop up every half-mile with a crazy saying. PEDRO’S WEATHER FORECAST: CHILI TODAY, HOT TAMALE. In my short time driving the highway I have become fascinated by the extreme billboarding the tourist trap has managed. What is this place? I wonder, wishing I had more time to check it out. But I need to get down to Florida so that I can drop off the truck and head back up to Ohio to look for Idjit.
PEDRO’S FIREWORKS! DOES YOURS?
The morning sun stains the sky pale magenta. After having been awake since yesterday morning, I am weary and ready for rest. I hope to make it to Dillon, South Carolina, soon so that Buddy can hook me up with a room.
Pedro tells me that South of the Border has SOMETHEENG DEEFERENT FOR EVERY JUAN. He counts down the miles to his attraction. According to Pedro, I am only miles away from a spectacular extravaganza of cheesiness. A billboard with a giant, 3-dimensional pink hotdog exclaims: YOU NEVER SAUSAGE A PLACE! YOU’RE ALWAYS A WEINER AT PEDROS. And then I realize that Dillon, South Carolina, is South of the Border. And just before the Dillon exit: KEEP YELLING KIDS! (THEY’LL STOP). To my left I see what looks like a water tower but it is capped with a gargantuan sombrero. The bright lights of South of the Border are like a Mexican mock up of the Las Vegas strip. I drive my truck between the legs of an enormous neon-lit statue of Pedro that straddles the road leading into the grounds. Scanning from side to side as I drive in, I am in awe of the unabashed tackiness. Almost every square inch of the facility is covered with the gaudy, the garish, loud and lewd, and the outright bizarre. A 25-foot tall Gorilla wearing an orange t-shirt beats its chest at me outside of a t-shirt shop. A large green fiberglass brontosaurus wearing a sombrero seems to watch me as I pass. Ceramic lawn ornaments have overrun the grounds. A loudspeaker somewhere blares out a distorted Wooly Bully.
The truck slows and I ease it into the parking lot of the hotel, Pedro’s Pleasure Dome. Christ, I think, it sounds like the name of a Mexican brothel. It’s still early in the morning so I figure that Buddy will still be working.
A cute young Asian girl greets me at the front desk. Her nametag says Pedro. “Hi, uhh . . . Pedro . . . is Buddy Hinton around?” I ask Asian Female Pedro.
Asian Female Pedro hits some buttons on her computer keyboard and says: “We don’t have any guests by that name staying with us.”
“No, he’s supposed to be the assistant night manager here. Is he around?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, “that would be Pedro. Let me get him for you.”
She picks up the phone, covers her mouth and mumbles something into the receiver. I can’t tell what she’s saying but it sounds to me like: “Mmmm-gurble-gurble-gurble . . . Uh-huh . . . Gurble-mamble-momblay . . . Uh-uh . . . Umphlatmombism flatmo . . . Uh-huh . . . Okay.” Asian Female Pedro sets down the phone and tells me: “Pedro will be right with you.”
Almost immediately Buddy parts the green and red strings of beads that block the doorway into the manager’s office and homes in on me with his glad-hand. He looks ridiculous with his big goofy grin and multicolored vest. I remember Buddy being the cool guy in the neighborhood. He had a way about him as a kid that seemed to scare the parents and draw the girls. He was a tall kid at six-foot-two and had a full beard by the time he was fourteen. He was a cool guy to be friends with because he looked like he was thirty and could buy beer without ever getting carded. He was very popular around the neighborhood. The last time I saw Buddy was just before he was sent away to juvenile detention or something. People said that he went crazy and started attacking his house with a baseball bat. Others said he beat up a teacher. I even heard he tried to eat his own foot.
“Welcome to S.O.B., ya big S.O.B.?” Buddy greets me. “It’s been forever. How are ya, buddy?” Buddy looks different, like life has beaten him down. His beard is gone, replaced by a five o’clock shadow that stops near the top of his cheeks like a facial hair timberline; there is a clear demarcation just before the bags under his eyes. Without the facial hair it looks as if somebody has pushed his chin back into his neck. His hairline has receded to a pointy, black, widow’s peak and his S.O.B. vest (complete with Pedro name-tag) rides up noticeably on his bulbous paunch. Buddy is bent over, shoulders hunching up as if he is trying to avoid being hit, his posture making him look like a giant question mark.
“Hey, Buddy. Or is it Pedro?” I joke. “It’s good to see you. You look good.”
“No I don’t. I look like shit. And so do you. We look like a couple of before pictures for some weight loss product. But it’s good to see a familiar face down here anyway.” Without even looking back, Buddy grabs me by the arm and leads me out the front door. “I’m out of here, Pedro. You’re in charge,” he tells Asian Female Pedro. “Adios.”
We walk over the main strip on a pedestrian overpass and get breakfast at Pedro’s Casateria. “Hey, man, this shit’s free for us. Those is the perks of being an assistant manager. Get whatever you want,” Buddy tells me. I grab a bowl of red gelatin with fruit cubes suspended in it, a plate of some sort of brown meat covered with gravy, three deviled-eggs, and a cup of coffee. Buddy fills his tray up with a mound of glazed donuts and a plate of biscuits and gravy. A blond teenaged white boy with his hat on sideways mans the register. He waves us on by without asking for payment. “Thanks Eminem Pedro.”
“No problem, Pedro,” Eminem Pedro says.
The deviled eggs are excellent. Buddy catches me up on his life, nonstop-talking with his mouth full of chewed up donuts. It’s been decades, but we still feel like friends. Buddy tells me about his disappearance as a teenager. He didn’t beat up a teacher, he didn’t attack his house with a baseball bat, he didn’t eat his own foot. Buddy just liked to get high, a lot. When his parents found his stash of weed and prescription pills, they freaked out and sent him to a drug rehab called Straight, Inc., in Milford, Ohio. Buddy was in the rehab for three years until he turned eighteen and could legally sign himself out. During that time, though, he ran away three or four times, just taking off and hitchhiking around the country until he would get caught and shipped back. One time he was sticking his thumb up on the side of I-75 in Sidney, Ohio, and his mom drove by the other way on the highway. Buddy skedaddled into the woods, was picked up by the sheriff later that day, and was shipped back to the rehab. After he turned 18, Buddy started hitching around the country, working day labor or some dead-end job until he had enough money to hit the road again. He liked being on the move. He really liked it. Then he met Gypsy and settled down.
“Settled down,” he chuckles half-heartedly. “Bullshit. She broke me. I ain’t got no fight or fire left in me. You know what we do for fun now? She makes me do Tai Chi with her right out in front of the giant sombrero. She says I’m getting fat and unhealthy and need to balance out my ying and my yang. We put on matching jumpsuits and waive our fucking arms around while all of the tourists point and laugh. It’s fucking emasculating, Bro. I’m the only man out there. At least it’s better than the country line dancing class we were taking last year.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I tell him. “Shit, I wish I had a wife. I would love to have someone to share my time with. I mean, I’ve got my dog and all but it ain’t the same. You guys must have some fun together or you wouldn’t stick around, huh?”
“Yeah, on weekends we go shopping for antiques that I can’t afford. And for a really hot time, I help her with clipping pictures and shit for her scrapbooking.” Buddy has polished off the mound of glazed donuts now and pulls out a pair of SOB souvenir nail clippers. Sproing, a thick yellowed crescent from his thumb springs from the clippers and lands on my side of the table. I cover my coffee cup with both hands to keep the high-flying keratin slivers from landing in my cup of Joe.
“Yeah, it sounds like you’ve got it pretty bad. Maybe I’m kind of lucky not to have to deal with that whole trip. Scrapbooking, huh?” He just nods slowly. “Man, I’m sorry dude.”
• • •
Buddy set me up with the best room in Pedro’s Pleasure Dome, the Honeymoon Suite. “It’s heir conditioned,” he tells me. That’s supposed to be a joke, I guess. After letting myself into my room, I immediately throw myself down on the king-sized waterbed with the sombrero canopy headboard and I’m out.
Idjit Galoot comes to me again in my dreams. I’m on the beach. The ocean breeze blows the salty smell of the Atlantic. Gulls circle overhead and the sandpipers run in and out with the waves, looking for tiny shrimp in the wet sand as the water recedes. Down the beach I see Idjit running to me. Giddy with the excitement of seeing my best buddy again, I run to him with my arms out. We jog toward each other in slow motion. Idjit bounds toward me with his floppy dog lips turned up into a goofy smile, his long velvety ears trailing behind him. The string-quartet playing the soundtrack to my dream crescendos. At last we reach each other. I embrace Idjit and we roll in the sand, me hugging the Galoot while he affectionately nuzzles me with his muzzle. The waves wash over us.
“Get up out of the water, you damn fool!” It’s Daddy, sitting in his easy chair, just above where the sand meets the water. He’s wearing a Speedo and an enormous black velvet sombrero. “You’re not Dudley Moore or Burt Lancaster, and that stanky dog sure as hell is not Bo Derrick or Deborah Kerr. You’ve got business to tend to; you can hump your lumpy old hound dog later. Now get a move on.”
“He’s right,” Idjit tells me, without a trace of the Scottish brogue he had in my last dream. “You need to hit the road again and soon, and take that big fella Pedro with you. You need each other.”
“What happened to your Scottish accent?” I ask.
“I was just trying that out. It’s not me,” Idjit explains and shrugs his dog shoulders. “Hey, I’ve never really spoken before just recently, I’ve got to figure out what works for me, ya know? Maybe I chould try Chicano. You know, like that leettle taco eating chee-wa-wa. Hand over thee gor-dee-da. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s time to wake up . . . It’s time to wake up . . . It’s time to wake up . . .
• • •
. . . It’s time to wake up . . . It’s time to wake up . . . It’s time to wake up . . .
“ . . . Come on dude . . . It’s time to wake up,” Buddy is pushing down on
the foot of the water bed and making waves that gradually rouse me. “God damn. You’ve slept for like thirty hours now. You’ve gotta get up. I mean, I don’t mind setting you up with a place for the night, but listen up Rumple Foreskin[13], I have a newlywed couple who is going to need this room tonight. Get out of bed, get yourself cleaned up, and then get the fuck outta this room, alright. And then we’re gonna party South of the Border.”
“Man. I can’t fuck around here partying all night,” I tell Buddy. “I’ve already slept way too long. I gotta get moving. Mom boarded my dog. He’s gotta be freaking out without me. I gotta hit the road again.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re not just gonna come in here, eat my food, crash in my best room for free, and then skip out again without at least having a couple of drinks with me.” During the time that I slept, Buddy’s face already sprouted a dark, short stubble of a beard and his posture seems to have perked up somewhat. It may just be the facial hair returning, but it seems as if Buddy’s chin is trying to work its way away from his neck. “My old lady’s gone to her cousin’s house in Asheville for the next couple of days. I’m going stag tonight. We are going to party. Think fast . . . ”
Buddy throws a can of beer at me on the bed. Still groggy from the slumber and lacking my usual ninja-like reflexes, I can only watch and try to fumble my hands out from underneath the covers as the ice cold beverage container hurtles through the air toward my face. Fwap. Twelve ounces of cheap beer and metal unsuccessfully (and painfully) attempt to share the exact same space as my right eyeball. “Owwwww, my fucking eye! You stupid fucktard,” I shout at Buddy but am unable to focus my anger because I seem to have gone blind in my right eye and can only see bright bursts of pain floating before me.
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