Books of Adam: The Blunder Years

by Adam Ellis

  The next morning I woke bright and early and hoofed it down to the farmer’s market in search of fresh fruit and vegetables. Ladies in sundresses and floppy hats milled about as bearded men struggled to load up their bicycle baskets with produce. I felt entirely accomplished just being there.

  It didn’t take me long to locate and purchase the items on my list, which I’d constructed in my head haphazardly (apples, green stuff, maybe a tomato just for show, et cetera), but as I wandered around the vendors’ tables, it dawned on me what odd places farmer’s markets can be. Apparently anyone can rent a table and sell whatever they want.

  I may or may not have purchased a gourd with googly eyes, and it may or may not be sitting on my bedroom dresser next to a full cat skeleton I purchased at a taxidermy shop in San Francisco. I’ve always been an impulse shopper, and for some reason the more macabre the item is, the more I like it. I blame my grandmother, who let me watch Cannibal Holocaust when I was eight, bless her heart.

  Back at home, I unpacked my juicer, skimmed the directions, then plugged it in and started feeding big chunks of apples into the spout. I was immediately alarmed at how loud the juicer was. It sounded like it was in excruciating pain.

  Despite the juicer’s robotic shrieks of death, it pulverized the apples efficiently. I added kale, some lemons, then ginger and celery, and after a few minutes I had a large cup of what easily could’ve passed as pond scum. Excited, I opened my mouth and took a huge gulp. Sure enough, it tasted like pond scum. Pond scum with lemon and ginger, but pond scum all the same. “This is horrifying,” I said aloud. Still, I decided I was committed to ridding myself of those insidious toxins, so I slurped it down and made some more for later (spoiler alert: It tasted even worse chilled).

  Truth be told, I felt pretty good for the rest of the day. I went about my work with a bounce in my step and a smile on my face. I even thought about cleaning my apartment. I didn’t actually clean it, but the fact that I considered it felt like a winning event. The next day I felt even better. I remember one summer when my mom had our cat shaved because it was getting matted hair, and afterward it pranced around the house feeling nimble and liberated. I felt just like that. Despite the wretched taste of the juice sludge, I discovered it gave me more energy throughout the day, and I no longer saw flaming, cackling skulls when I closed my eyes at night. The first few days, I felt mildly euphoric.

  The honeymoon phase didn’t last long, though. By the third day of my juice fast, I was craving meat. Juicy, unadulterated meat. In fact, that night I actually dreamed about cheeseburgers. Sweet, sexy cheeseburgers.

  Throughout the day the cravings only got worse. I wondered how I would do this for a whole week, and I started to get ornery with people. I stumbled around like some malnourished zombie, muttering about mozzarella sticks and Oreo McFlurries.

  That evening, I passed a food cart serving Mexican food to hungry passersby. A smiling couple in matching polo shirts stood on the sidewalk, feasting on bulging, succulent burritos, struggling to keep all the fresh toppings from falling onto the ground. I stopped in my tracks and stared at them with a mixture of pure jealousy and unbridled disdain. They noticed me glaring and, clearly frightened, walked hastily away. At that moment I realized what a creepy curmudgeon I’d become. I knew this had to stop.

  So on the fourth day, I caved. I found myself at a grocery store, where my feet had unexpectedly taken me. Mouth watering, eyes wide, I stopped to stare longingly at the frozen pizzas. Thankfully, like an angel sent from on high, a spirited employee was serving samples a few aisles over, dishing out mouthwatering Bagel Bites. Their oil glistened under the fluorescent lights.

  Following The Great Bagel Bite Debacle of 1994 (which involved me spilling a plate of piping hot pizza bagels all over my bare chest and giving myself second-degree burns), I’d sworn them off for good. But standing in front of a tray of those cheesy, freshly microwaved little morsels, I couldn’t imagine a more divine treat. I plucked one off the table with my bony, corpse-like fingers, struggling to lift it in my weakened state. I raised it to my lips. It felt like taking communion.

  I’ve found that something peculiar happens when you deprive your body of real food. (I’m not saying Bagel Bites are “real food,” but bear with me for the sake of argument.) I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s like your taste buds begin to hibernate after a few days of choking down repellent green slime, and when you present them with something tasty and savory, they flip the hell out. When I put that first Bagel Bite in my mouth, the insides of my cheeks actually ached, like I was biting a lemon. I salivated like a dog. It tasted glorious.

  Is there a moral to this story? Probably not. I learned I shouldn’t structure my diet around buzzwords like juice fast and toxin, and that walking around like a zombie for a week, snapping at those who are letting themselves eat, is not very productive. And I learned that kale tastes like dirt, no matter what you pair it with. If anything good came out of it all, I suppose being reunited with Bagel Bites is a plus.

  Or maybe that’s a negative. It’s up for debate.

  CALL OF THE WILD

  One afternoon while I was doodling at my desk, my phone vibrated. It was a text from Annie, a girl from college I hadn’t spoken to in nearly a year.

  hey dude! i’ll b in portland next month w/ my sister. we’re gonna go camping, u should come! it’ll b fun!

  I grimaced. I hadn’t gone camping since I was a child and had no burning desire to do so as an adult. I flicked off my phone without texting Annie back and tossed it on the couch cushion next to me. I made a mental note to politely decline her offer later. I wasn’t going camping. No thank you.

  As I cycled through the four local channels my TV received, I thought about the camping trips I took as a kid in Montana. For some reason I had no clear memories of the hiking and swimming that we did, but I did remember one recurring theme—something I’ve spent years attempting to quietly suppress. My typical behavior on those outings was more than a little sinister, and it’s not something I make a habit of sharing with friends. Every time my family would go camping, my mother would send me off into the woods to play while she set up the tents. Before scampering off, I’d secretly grab a box of matches from the car. I generally keep this nugget of personal history a secret because what I’d do with those matches was just plain weird.

  I liked to build things as a child. School recesses were spent creating little villages out of sticks and leaves, tiny hamlets consisting of a few huts or tepees. On camping trips I had the whole forest at my disposal, which meant I could build cities instead of villages, castles instead of huts. I’d disappear into the woods for hours, constructing whole metropolises out of twigs and rocks and mud, laboring over every detail. Then, since my cities needed citizens, I’d search for dead bugs or empty snail shells to populate my towns. Every now and then I’d get lucky and find a partly decomposed mouse. Once I found a frog with its guts hanging out on a rock near a lake. He became the king of my city.

  The forest always had plenty to offer. On one occasion, I found a shoe box in the back of the car filled with plastic cutlery and napkins. I emptied it and I refilled it with whatever I could find in the woods, returning to my makeshift kingdom with a box full of new citizens to inhabit the city.

  My cities were strictly populated with already-dead creatures. In my imagination, they were plenty alive, and that was good enough.

  “None of this sounds all that creepy,” you might remark. “In fact it’s sort of quaint.” Aside from playing with dead things, I suppose it’s a somewhat charming anecdote, were it not for the gruesome fate my cities would succumb to. Inevitably, my creations would be met with ruin, and always by my hand. I’d imagine meteors falling from the sky, or perhaps a rebel in the castle would immolate himself, and the flames would spread, causing the city to fall. This is what I needed matches for: destruction. To be clear, I was always careful to keep the blaze contained to my city, mindfully building in dirt clearings or on
sandy patches near water, though looking back I’m lucky I never burned down the Gallatin National Forest. Still, it doesn’t detract from the fact that I was a nine-year-old with a spiteful god complex.

  They say setting fires is one of the early warning signs of a future serial killer, but only when coupled with other warning signs, notably cruelty to animals and wetting the bed into adolescence. I don’t think I ever wet the bed, and the fact that I colonized my cities exclusively with already-deceased animals leads me to think I’m probably in the clear serial-killer-wise. I haven’t killed anyone yet, so I believe I’m off the hook. Plus I only set fire to my own creations, which is almost noble when you think about it. There’s sort of a Zen quiescence to accepting that your own handiwork must be met with obliteration.

  Still, the whole thing paints me as a relatively disturbed kid, so I tend to keep that one under my hat. I told my friend Chloe about it once, and she didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Eh, kids are fucked up,” she quipped. “One time I found a dead cat on the side of the road, and I roller-skated around my neighborhood with the thing on a shovel, going door to door and asking anyone if they were missing a pet.”

  After that I didn’t feel so bad about my own behavior. Still, I had soured to the idea of camping.

  After a couple of days I forgot about Annie’s text completely, but the following week she contacted me again—this time on Facebook, urging me to join her. I stared at the picture of Annie on my computer screen. I hadn’t seen her in a while and realized it might be really nice to catch up. Suddenly I found myself considering her invitation. I didn’t want to go, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I should go. Besides, I didn’t want to be the only adult without a grown-up camping story. Everybody needs at least one outdoorsy tale they can reference in mixed company. I texted Annie back telling her I’d go.

  With my fate sealed, I made a mental list of things I’d need, since I had no camping gear to speak of. I figured Annie and her sister would have the necessities, whatever those might be. (Flares? Snakebite anti-venom? Machetes?) Most of the gear I found online was superfluous and unnecessary, like solar-powered alarm clocks and hammock/tent hybrids you can hang between trees. I found a little tent on Amazon for cheap, and figured I could forgo a sleeping bag in favor of lots and lots of blankets. As for food, I can barely cook meals in my apartment, and I figured attempting to do so via campfire would be an unmitigated disaster. I went to the grocery store and picked up whatever looked filling while requiring zero preparation.

  A week before the camping trip, I was all equipped. I felt like Survivorman. I congratulated myself on being a wilderness guru and rewarded myself by eating an entire box of Girl Scout cookies, which gave me a stomachache and caused me to have nightmares about a lipless Adele.

  Two days before Annie was scheduled to arrive in Portland, I received another text from her.

  “What the hell, Annie,” I said out loud. I’d invested time and money into preparing for the trip, and despite my own expectations I had been getting excited for it.

  I stood in my living room, sipping a cup of coffee, staring at the little pile of supplies I’d amassed for a camping excursion that would no longer happen. Briefly, I thought about floating the idea past my other friends in town, but I knew none of them would be up for a camping trip. Most of my friends are soft-handed, gentle souls who would wilt in the woods like dying lilies. In my newfound identity as a mountain man, I was on my own.

  Then a thought occurred to me: So what if I’m on my own? I can still go camping by myself, right? I pondered this notion. It’s not like the campground Annie had chosen was in the middle of nowhere. It probably even had cell reception should I find myself being torn apart by wolverines. What was stopping me from going camping solo? The more I mulled it over, the more viable this option seemed. It might even be peaceful to go alone. It would be refreshing. I would exercise my independence and self-reliance. I made up my mind to soldier on with the plans by myself.

  I made another journey to the supermarket to round out my cache of provisions. I bought some Dora the Explorer Band-Aids since they were on sale and picked up a bottle of bug spray. I purchased matches, making a mental note not to set fire to any dead animals. Since it was summer, there was a display next to the register stocked full of s’mores ingredients. I grabbed a box of graham crackers, some candy bars, and a bag of marshmallows.

  A few days later I packed everything into the backseat of the car I’d borrowed from a friend and set out toward the Hood River. The area Annie had selected was small and relatively secluded, and when I arrived I managed to find a place to set up camp that appeared quiet and private. It was a secluded little clearing surrounded by tall oaks, big enough for a single tent and a campfire. I picked a spot under some low-hanging branches to assemble my tent, which only took me an hour and a half to set up. It didn’t come with directions. I had no clue what I was doing and in the end my tent had an odd lean to it, but the results were more or less satisfying. I was thankful I was alone in that moment, as there was nobody to be embarrassed in front of. There was plenty of daylight left, but I knew if I didn’t get a leg up on attempting a campfire, night might fall before I’d succeed, leaving me in darkness. I gathered sticks and some dry brush, and it was another hour before I managed to create a lasting fire. My meager flame kept going out before I could add more wood, but eventually I got lucky and it grew larger. The sun was setting by that time, and I was hungry. I snacked on chips and salsa for dinner, feeling accomplished, then dutifully tore open the bag of marshmallows and unwrapped the chocolate bars. I paused then, an idea forming in my mind. I decided it would be a good idea to make the whole s’more beforehand and then roast the entire thing over the fire, causing the graham crackers to toast and the chocolate to become warm and gooey. Using two long sticks, I awkwardly extended my s’more over the fire.

  The result was a burned, goopy mess. I imagined if I were a contestant on Top Chef, I’d be the first one voted out. It would be a cookout challenge, and Padma Lakshmi wouldn’t even try my dish before sending me home.

  I held the s’more in my hand and stared at it. It did not look appetizing. I ate it anyway because I had created it, which meant I must destroy it as well. It was only camping tradition.

  After that I sat around for a while, wondering what people do in the woods. I peered around my campsite, not sure what I was looking for. I could hear crickets and branches rustling softly in the breeze. I started to feel a little bored, but refused to accept the notion that camping solo was a dumb idea, because I’d committed to it and wouldn’t accept defeat.

  Tomorrow I’ll go hiking or something, I thought. I got up and went about putting my fire out. Or maybe I’ll sharpen a stick and try to spear a fish. My confidence was growing, and I was beginning to think maybe I liked camping after all. With my campfire out, I noticed how dark it was, much darker than it ever got in the city. I looked up and could see the stars clearly. They were pretty. It reminded me of Montana. I crawled into my tent, curled up in my blanket nest, and fell asleep.

  When I woke up, I thought I was in my apartment at first. From my bedroom, I can sometimes hear people’s footsteps scraping the ground and causing the floorboards of the hallway to creak, and I mistook the rustling sound outside my tent as just that. When I realized where I was, and that the sound I was hearing was something different, I sat bolt upright, eyes wide with sudden alarm. There is something outside my tent making noise, I thought. I froze, listening as it meandered around the side of my tent toward the front, where it then stopped. It sounded bigger than a fox or coyote, but thankfully not large enough to be a bear. Still, that left plenty of dangerous animals as likely possibilities.

  Because my tent had a camo pattern and since I’d set it up under some branches, I figured that whatever the thing was, it didn’t know I was there. I remained motionless and listened, waiting for the intruder to continue on and leave my campsite, but it didn’t. Curious, I reached for
my tent flap and, as silently as possible, unzipped it. I stared out into the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

  At first I only saw the last smoldering embers of my campfire. I fixed my vision into the abyss and faintly saw something crouching in front of my tent about twenty feet away. I couldn’t quite make it out. I squinted. The thing shifted slightly, and I suddenly realized what it was. My eyes grew wide and my jaw slackened in surprise. It was a girl. Her pants were down around her ankles and she was squatting. I heard a small strained grunt emerge from her. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  I could only stare. I was paralyzed. From my few short years in Cub Scouts, I knew how to escape a moose attack and how to make a splint, but nothing in the handbook had prepared me for this. Had I been able to form words, I don’t know what I would have said. “Excuse me, miss, would you mind defecating elsewhere?” I was too terrified to move in case she noticed me, so I just watched, horrified.

  I sat there, praying it would end soon. I didn’t want to be witnessing this, but I couldn’t make any movement without giving my position away. I knew if she saw me, I would be caught looking like a Peeping Tom. What is taking her so long? I thought. This girl needs to eat more vegetables. She inadvertently turned her head in my direction but didn’t notice my camouflaged tent right away, nor did she make out my baffled face peering back at her from the void. For a moment she stared right at me. Then her eyes bulged in realization.