Cherries Rushing

Other Shit I Was Thinking About When I Was High (Doesn't Fit anywhere)

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 03:21:02 GMT

Note: This might fall right at the end of Part 1 when Mooney goes to prison.

By the end of the night when the sun is coming up and the shiny bouncing curls in your hair are matted and bird’s-nest-y, and the pleats in your skirt are all sat on and wrecked and as you walk toward your bed your legs want to give out with pure complete satisfied exhaustion – by that time, you will remember how much you love your friends.

And I’ll say this, that never in life did I feel as close as those early-morning times when we’d stumble in with the first hints of the sun. My windows with red curtains and Mooney would stand there and stretch – every time he would do this – and then fall into bed and deep sleep. Only enough light to see the tip of Mooney’s nose, the curve of his belly, the tiny light-blooms reflected in his eyes which were silver in the dark pre-morning bedroom. Silver tips on everything; eyelashes tipped silver, shoulders, the ends of his hair...Mooney standing by the red window naked, stretching. Me lying in bed thinking how warm that feeling is of falling into bed together so tired you can’t speak really, but it’s okay cause you each already know what the other is thinking. And wondering if Cat was seeing Rio in early-morning light facing the windows in his bedroom down the street from my mother in the old neighborhood. Or Miami, who lived near Mooney's house, I'd wonder if he had those quiet moments with his girlfriend, who was a beautiful stripper with sad eyes and silent mouth.

And mostly, I wondered if it was possible for things to be this close forever (but then, of course, nothing is forever.)

Stuff for Part 2 that I thought about high the other night...

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 03:16:39 GMT

So I walked the circle of the street I lived on, the one that runs down to the little park on the river with ALLIGATOR WARNING signs and then curves back around with trees and fences, back up to downtown’s main drag but ducking shy behind it, and then around a last curve, where you come around and see my little house again.

That was a lot of description to get to the point, sure, but I just want to make sure it comes across like it was, because everything was so fucking beautiful and perfect and I felt one with everything, once again. That old-time feeling reminding me of Mooney and me. And of course, Rio and Cat were in the car...

...Anyway, I walked the circle and I put my feet in everyone’s grass to get the different touches. Because sometimes, those times, you forget that there are people around you that watch and judge and you let it all hang out like nobody can touch you. And they can’t! And because it was my birthday, and I was rolling like I did back then. And Mooney was in prison, yeah, but for that one night? He was there.

Chapter 5 (unfinished)

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 23:10:50 GMT

So summer came, and all of a sudden it was the end of the road. All of a sudden, all the buildup and the waiting and waiting - suddenly, it was all leading to something. Head Blum had called, son of the Onslow County District Attorney, to inform Mooney that the hunt was on. Mooney was now a wanted man. His mother wanted him to turn himself in, but he had other ideas, mostly because it had been a particularly coked-up couple of days and paranoia was at a maximum. Paranoia radiated from Mooney like actal tangible static electricity. It was catching.

The best thing about the country, I guess, is that nobody's really watching you. We were all too spread out back there, in the miles and miles that went on seemingly forever, in the maze of roads and of farmlands and trailer parks. I always felt anonymous out there, and I could drive those endless roads and smoke. I could yell at the top of my lungs and run through cornfields like in the movies. Release everything. It was calmer somehow. Mooney felt that way too, I suppose, which is why he was out there so much.

But it's like they say - you can't stop the tide. And you can't stop time from rushing forward into the future, no matter how unappealing that future might be. Summer was rushing in, and the proverbial 'end of the line' was in sight by the first week of June.

We knew what was going to happen as soon as Head called, because Head didn’t call me ever – we weren’t really friends like that, and he already had his own old-school money drug connects. But he’d called one day and told Mooney to get out of town. Get the hell out this motherfucker is what he actually said. I could hear it over the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey August, what up? This is Head." They called him Head because, well, he had a very large head.

"You fucking Jew. What's up?"

"Not too fucking much, but I'm in a hurry - lemme talk to Khamani," is what he said, cause that was Mooney's last name and Head always called the guys by their last names.

"Fine then. Kike." Head was also known for making racial slurs in everybody's direction. He was fond of calling us 'mutts', the half-white-half-something-or-others like me and Mooney and Cat. Mooney's dad was from India, so Head called him 'half-a-dot-head' and I was the 'halfrican.' Cat, who was half-Korean was a 'half jap.' Head ran with Don Colletta and those types, Jacksonville's sons of privelege. He called the Don a 'wop' or a 'guinea.' As for us, we called him every name in the book that was derrogatory to Jews. None of us was politically correct anyway, which was funny since the whole world had gone horribly PC around us. But whatever - we weren't really part of the world anyway.

I put Mooney on the phone with Head.

"Head. What up."

"Khamani. You said to call when shit officially hits the fan, right?"

"Yeah. Why, what's up?"

"Well, I guess you could say that shit has officially hit the fan. Two people - and I don't even know who - have given up your name. My dad told me; he said you were cool with him, so you deserved a little bit of a head's up. Don't put his name in it, though, okay?" Mr. Blum was a middle-aged party man with enough money to finance a never-ending Ecstacy party for all the other well-to-do oldtime partiers around. He knew Mooney well enough from transactions past.

"What people?"

"I said I don't even know, man."

"What did they say?"

"Well, at least one of them has you as the top guy bringing beans in here. Maybe the other one, too, man I don't know. My dad said there's enough evidence of that for them to charge you. They don't know you're staying with August, though, but they got undercovers watching your house. Miami's place, too, and Rio's. They're going to find you sooner or later."

"Shit," said Mooney. I could almost hear his heart beating in my own ears, and it reminded me of times he'd let me fall asleep with my head on his chest, lulled into dreams by the rhythms of his chest thumping and tapping and rising and falling. The sweetest dreams came from sleep induced by hearing Mooney's body work. If you listened hard enough, you could kind of hear his soul. But this wasn't one of those times, and the quick of his heart that I could feel as a pulse in the air wasn't anything that would lull me. It was more a drumbeat call to alarm. A techno song that made you want to flee.

"Basically, you should just get the hell out this motherfucker," Head said. "That's what I would do. It's about to come down hard like rain, baby."

*

"I'm leaving," Mooney said. "I'm getting out of here, yo." I knew he was serious, even though he was known for his plans to just 'dip off,' plans that he never followed through with.

"Can I come?" I asked and Mooney paused, like this was a crossroads sort of question. And hell, maybe it was. Then he answered me, but first he drained his eyes of telling emotions like precise surgery. And began to speak.

"It's whatever. I got money and everything, so if you want to come, I don't care." I think - and even though it doesn't sound like it - that Mooney really wanted me to go. Besides, I knew he wouldn't say it right out. It wasn't his style.

So we packed bags, though not much stuff in them except bottled water, drugs, and lots of cigarettes. Mooney said we'd get new stuff anyway, and just go. Figure out where later. He was panicking - this wasn't his idea of fun. But it was mine.

We turned onto Highway 17 going north out of town, and headed out. I made my head stiff and still, picturing Lot's wife, and wondering in my over-dramatic way if I'd ever see Jacksonville again. Wondering if I cared either way, but I cared enough not to chance the pillar-of-salt future. I didn't need closure or anything. Onward! and all that.

Once we were high on the road, it felt a lot like old times. Because there's nothing like marijuana to make you forget. And to bring up those buried nostalgia feelings that you swear you don't have because looking back is so inherently pathetic. Almost like you're saying that your life is over. That all we have left are best-of clips specials all cheesy with recycled laughtrack laughter. But we got high - so very high! - and pretended we were each a year younger and less wise with nothing ahead but endless days of fun.

"He's bound to be gay. His name is Nightflower!"

"He is not gay."

"He has long ass hair, he looks like he has makeup on, and his name is Nightflower."

"He's an Indian, genius! I mean like an American one, not like...a dothead."

"Fuck you!" We laughed. I couldn't remember anything before that car, that blunt. That stretch of highway that looked much too small to travel so far north and south as it did. You could see Savannah on that road. You could see Chesapeake. Probably even New York City, if you wanted to bad enough.

Mooney wasn't totally lost in the moment - he still had a hurried air about him. He was alert enough to remember that we were on the run, now. Because Mooney was a fugitive, somehow, that boy so recently eighteen years old. So recently sprouted up so tall and big, cause if you think about it, he would have been just a child five years ago. It made me wonder how his mother felt. Did she still see the boy, or did she see that controlled, dark man who had singlehandedly started a drug explosion in a town of 70,000?

He said we'd stick to 17. That it wound its way up into Virginia, and stayed mostly away from cities. It was all tiny beach towns and then rural towns with nothing but old people and memories of kids that had gone off to big towns everywhere. He said we'd just ride and cheef and dig all the country folks that reminded us of the ones back home who surrounded us in my little trailer. That country people minded their own business.

And so we did. Drove all day and I sang with the radio, and Mooney said he liked how I sang and we should buy a guitar and I'd play for him in the mountains. We stopped at little country smoke shops and hippie shops few and far between and gas stations with tourist t-shirts dusty that nobody ever bought or wore. We bought gas-station sunglasses and stopped in Elizabeth City to buy some clothes. Then 17 curved away from the coast and headed up into the country, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is where things are notorious for getting interesting.

The best part was the nighttime. In nighttime under streetlights or oncoming headlights, Mooney’s eyes were clear and silvery like the devil, and it always made me feel like we were cloaked under heavy secrets. Inside his car looking out – and somehow looking out into the night from Mooney’s car was different from anyone else’s, even mine – and watching people go by. And knowing somehow what they were all about, even though I really couldn’t have known, and lord knows they didn’t know anything about us. Smoking cigarettes and watching them explode on the ground like a firework you left behind to go tear up the road. It sprays around in orange sparks and then goes quiet and you never see it again...

Nighttime on the road was a perfect end to things (though I wish it had instead been a beginning!) Well, maybe it was a beginning of sorts, too. Maybe everything that ends is beginning again somewhere else and new things sprout up from the ashes always anyway, right? Maybe I don’t know much, but that much is probably true.

living situation stuff post-trial

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:43:35 GMT

Somewhere in there, I guess it was around October or so, I got behind on everything and went back home to my mother's house. Legal fees were adding up. My car was beginning a long descent into retirement like old people with broken hips and forgetful minds and the rest...

...so I left my little trailer in the country. Noelle had left in August during the trial. She moved in with her boyfriend, said she was in love and all. I still wonder, though, if all the heat and the commotion of things was finally just too much. She just wanted a quiet country home to raise kittens and smoke weed. And with me, it was always too hectic. We were still close, but we didn't keep in touch much that fall.

I went home, then. In the fall, when I always seemed to go home, after decadent summers I couldn't afford. This time was different, though. I suppose I'm a very different August than the one who joined Spirit Club in school and had starry eyes and big plans for the future. I guess I'm a whole different ball of wax now. It didn't work, living there. My mother hated my lifestyle. She hated having me back in the neighborhood, where everyone in a five-mile radius knew my name and my business and knew where to find me. People always slowed down driving by the house. Looking. People gossiped. I hated the neighborhood then, and I haven't felt welcome there since - to this day I feel that way.

I gathered my stuff, which becomes less and less the more I wander, and went downtown. A little house with a hole in the roof, but the owner was a hippie from way back and let me paint the walls. He even offered to help. He knew me from the news, sure, but he said it was "one of those things", shrugged, and waived the deposit.

"I'm sure you've got more pressing things to spend your money on right now, sweetheart," is what he said. "Just slip $350 or so under my door on the 1st of every month, and we're good to go." Then he said he knew where to get some fabulous mountain dank, and to give him a call if I ever needed anything.

And then I was home.

Dear Mooney,

The whole time I was moving in this place, I pretended we were doing it together. I picked out all shit that I knew you'd like, which maybe will be cool for when you come back (to me?) Everything's all clear glass in red, blue, and green, cause I know those are your favorites. And I put HBO on the cable cause you watch it even if I don't. I know that's stupid cause I could just add it when you come around later, but I like pretending you're just at work or the store or something. That you'll be home soon.

You think things will be different when you come back? You think maybe you'll be in love? I don't even know if you ever loved anyone or ever will, but if you do I hope it's me! You think maybe you'll stay here with me and keep a toothbrush here and I'll make you steak and do your laundry? Maybe we could get a kitten...