Homecoming

 

Chicago 

Gala

Tobacco Leaf

Strangers in tuxedos and prom gowns flooded the beach.  I could hear LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” being played in the distance where there was a man with headphones standing atop a stage and dancing in front of two turntables.  I sat silently and watched these people pass by me still a little freaked by my zombie dream, which seemed all too real at that moment.  Though not thirsty for blood and possessing a much darker pigment of skin, the crowd of people did not seem much different from the zombies I hacked away just moments before opening my eyes.

Excitement was in the air and I was choking on it.  Was I at a high school prom?  I looked at the faces that passed me and realized that this was an old person’s prom.  I was at some kind of prom reunion of some sort.  What they were doing on this deserted island is beyond me but the fear of being the guy without a date or proper clothes rose quickly inside my loins and tried to cover my face as I fled the scene, embarrassed.  

I could see in the distance, what appeared to be a large city with skyscrapers reaching far into the sky.  I couldn’t believe these island folk had developed such an advanced civilization on a deserted island.   I wondered how they could have come this far without being discovered.   It seemed as the “more civilized” nations would have come in by now and forced their ways on the islanders while inseminating the local women with their seed.   Around the time that I reached the traffic light and realized that I was in Chicago and it was not a deserted island at all.  I think the heat had affected my perception of things.  Oh no wait… how could I forget?  It was probably the acid I dropped before going to sleep the night before.  Now that I was coming down the reality was starting to set in.

My boat wasn’t in the ocean the day before it was Lake Michigan.  I wasn’t even too far off shore, and I’m not sure it was an actual “boat” although it did feel like I swam thousands of miles and I was floating on something.  I wasn’t sure at that time whether the four divers were really divers or if the harpoon or the hot dogs were as they seemed but it all seemed accurate… although a little unlikely and I had no other explanation for the events.   I was standing and looking up at the sky when I noticed a familiar face nearby.  Henry was sitting on a bench dressed in a tuxedo like the rest of the people that ran past moments before. 

“John, John Leprechaun, what the fuck is up man?”

“Uh, hey man, what’s up?” I replied.  I was still disoriented and still piecing things together but tried to keep my statements brief to not alarm him.

“What happened to you last night?  You kept saying you were a leprechaun and then you ran off.  We were all waiting for you to come back but you just… Haha, dude, what the fuck are you wearing?  Where is your tux?”

“My tux?”

“Dude you alright?  Have you slept yet?”  Henry looked at me with a big smile on his face and then bent over a little, raised a closed hand to his mouth, laughed and stumbled backwards a little like he was falling over while he said, “You slept in the park didn’t you?  Fucking crazy-ass John”, he jumped up and stomped the concrete with both of his feet,  “nothing’s changed!  Go to your hotel room and get ready dude”, he said and gave a light slap to the back of my head.

I was a little concerned at my complete loss of memory and situational awareness but the details were starting to come back to me.  There was a gala that I was in town for.  I couldn’t remember what the gala was for or where I was staying but I was pretty sure I did have a tuxedo and everything I needed for the gala back in my room.

“Henry, I’m not gonna lie”, I said, “I have no fucking clue where my room key is.  I’m pretty sure I lost it during my swim."

“Your swim?”  Henry could see the seriousness in my face, gave me a quick rundown of the situation.  “Room 1112, and hurry up.  You’re running this thing.  You’ve got about 30 minutes before people start talking”.  He shoved a blunt into my hand and said, “Get your head together.  It’ll all be okay.  Crazy-ass John”, he chuckled and nudged me in the direction of my hotel.

I couldn’t help but feel a little like “the Dude” walking through the city in boxers and a tee with a mostly open robe.  My boots were leaking water through the shoestring holes.  When I arrived at the entrance to the hotel, I sat Indian-style in the hallway and emptied the water out of them.  There were pieces of hot dog that I forgot I shoved into my boots before pulling them on while my boat was sinking but they were difficult for the bellman to identify because my toes smashed them into pieces of mush.  I knew appropriate behavior but it gave me a good chuckle and distracted them a little from the pot smoke trailing me as I entered the elevator.

There were two little kids with their father in the elevator that got out when I walked in.  I shrugged and pressed the button for the 11^th floor.  I couldn’t believe that I slept in the park last night when my hotel was a hundred yards down the road.  I don’t know if that was even sleep either.  I felt very paranoid the entire time I lay there.   Those face-eating-zombies were ferocious.  I blew one of their faces off with the last grenade I had and said yippee ky ay afterwards.  I’m so badass in my dreams, not anything like this lazy mess of a thing I was being at the moment.

I hadn’t smoked pot since I was in high school and I hadn’t remembered why until the paranoia started to kick in.  I felt transfixed in that elevator.  The doors opened and the people outside of it were whispering about my attire and staring at me like I was a reptile.  I tried to avoid their gaze but their eyes seemed to follow me as stepped out and walked briskly towards my room.  I looked back and the man with the crew cut and the birth control glasses was standing there right in the middle of the hallway with his arms at his side like SGT Slaughter.  “The jig is up”, I thought.  He would follow me to my room with guards in tow and they would proceed to sift through my room full of drugs and arrest me.  I was going to jail.  I just felt it.

My room key, I forgot to get my damn room key.  Those hot dogs felt so disgusting squishing in between my toes, I could not stand to walk in those boots any longer and I just had to empty them in the lobby of the hotel I am staying in.  I felt like crying as I stood in front of that door and thought of the prospect of going back to the main lobby and asking for a key.    I pressed my face against the door and closed my eyes for a moment.   I could hear voices inside.  I knocked and the door opened.   My wife, Elaine and my secretary Jennifer were standing in front of me. 

“There you are John.  We were worried about… What is that in your mouth John?  Is that tobacco?”

I shook my head no and smiled a little.  My wife would take care of everything.  There would be no more troubles.  Everything was under control.

“John!  That is not tobacco is it?”

“No no, it’s pot.”

She took what was left of the blunt into her hand and crushed it between her fingers.  She smelled what was left and that’s when it triggered.  Not only did I get paranoid when I smoked but I kept getting sick off of it.  I was allergic to tobacco leaf and even though there are countless other ways to smoke pot, I was a sucker for a blunt.  My wife pulled me into the room and started to bark orders at my secretary.

“Hey, that’s my secretary.  I tell her what to do!”

“John, shut up, get in the shower quick and throw this on.  Maybe we can get you dressed and out of here before the hives break out.  In the meantime work on the Benadryl Jennifer.”

I hated when my wife emasculated me like that in front of my secretary.  It undermines my authority and makes me look childish.  To get back at her I decided to sit down in the shower and take my sweet ass time.  She was very upset about this and started screaming through the door for me to hurry up.

“I’m going as fast as I can go Elaaaaaaine.  You don’t want me smelling like burnt hot dog foot funguses do you?”

She sounded a little flustered by this comment and I let out a little laugh… which was a mistake, because she surely heard the chuckle and when I finally did emerge from the bathroom I was greeted with a belt buckle across my buttocks.

“Godammit Elaine!”

“Everything is a big joke to you John.  We’ll see how funny you think it is when the hives and paranoia hit you at the same time when you’re on stage explaining the massive losses we’ve taken to the shareholders.”

“Thaaaaaaaat’s right.  I knew it had something to do with pie charts”.

She didn’t laugh.  As I dressed I remembered the details of the event.  I never liked to leave things on a bad note so we spent most of the company’s rainy day reserves on this gala we were throwing them to soften the blow the news of the massive losses was bound to do to their mind.  Hopefully by the end of the night they will have drank away the bad news and replaced it with awesome gala stories.  I apologized to Elaine for acting like an idiot and tried to make out with her but she wasn’t in the mood.  She used to always be in the mood.  What happened to us?  Everything was so perfect, it seemed, but things went downhill quick around the same time she found out I never once stopped whoring around all over town the entire time we had been together.  We had a huge argument about it.  I was really hurt that she couldn’t accept me for who I was and started to make a fuss about the amount of money I spent on condoms and the nights she spent alone.  She just couldn’t see the care that went into my actions.  If I had my choice I wouldn’t wear condoms.  I did that for her.  She HATED when I came home smelling like another woman, so I didn’t.  Some of those nights, I spent sleeping in my car.  I would have loved to go to sleep in my own bed.  She’s so inconsiderate about my emotions sometimes.  I felt much rejected.  So we lived this life of me pretending to be something else so that I was acceptable in her eyes.  It takes a major toll on a man’s confidence.

The first itching came as I held up the actual pie that I split into cherry, apple, chocolate and coconut cream to show the amount of money being spent, the amount of money being made, the profit (loss) and the money that no one could really account for.  The pie was too small for many in the audience to comprehend the gravity of the situation and I guarantee that this was not an error of planning on my part.  I also made certain to talk away from the microphone as much as possible so that they couldn’t hear me well either.  The point was not to inform the share holders but to display the informing of the shareholders.  The less they heard or understood, the better.  I spoke fast and soft but not fast or soft enough.  The spectacled demon-woman in the front row understood every word and began whispering to her friends.  Each whisper, or imagined whisper, it was hard to tell the difference seemed to tickle every crevice of my face.  I tried to explain my way out of it but by face felt as though it had been injected with Botox.  The crowd gasped as I scratched and scratched and then began shrieking in pain (for more effect).  My wife pulled her hat down in embarrassment and scurried away as the paramedics loaded me on the gurney.  The last sight I could make out through my swelling face as the doors of the ambulance closed was Jennifer’s smiling face winking as she performed a quiet clap.  It seemed like overload, like an image out of a coke commercial and I wondered how much of it was real and how much was my mind playing tricks on me.  The Veronica’s “Untouched” was playing on the ride to the hospital.  It made me want sex.

Book Games

For all 5 readers of this blog

I probably should have explained how Holy Ship! had come about but I didn't intend on continuing it when I first posted.  Then I had the idea of going as far as I can using this technique.  That first chapter was created using three random criteria chosen by someone else.  In this case it was:

Place: Water
Item: Fridge
Theme: Music

For the next chapter I had another friend give me three different criteria to continue the tale:

Place: Chicago
Item: Tobacco Leaf
Theme:  Gala

I want more suggestions to keep this thing going.  The less specific on place, the better.  Chicago made me have to change the whole story from being a deserted island tale to being a drug tale where John was so high he couldn't remember what was going on.

I will take the first suggestion I see that spawns ideas that seem interesting to me and I will include them at the top of the chapter the way the other two chapters are now shown.

Holy Ship!

 

Water

Music

Fridge

I was deep in a dream about the beach and starfish and this magical turtle that could speak Arabic when my mind alerted me that the water was real and I was actually choking on water that was ricocheting off the wall and into my mouth.  I really need to set an alarm so that I wake up before the first water spout but my alarm clock’s adapter stopped working so the only option would be to wake up to beeps instead of music and I am under strict doctor (meaning me) orders to wake up to more peaceful sounds than annoying beeps.  Yeah salt water in the mouth isn’t an ideal method, but it beats the alternative.

I slipped on my new slippers and slid into my newish robe to walk over to the new fridge where I was fully stocked with burnt and then frozen hot dogs.  I realized after a few tries that just burnt, or just frozen was not a winning formula of petrifaction to clog the hole.  Either of the options alone lasted an hour, at the longest but the two combined could last an entire morning.

I grabbed one of the dogs from the freezer and held the wiener angled a little towards me so that the water would shoot away from me as it came in contact with the stream of water bursting from the  bottom of the ship.  I’ve also learned the hard way that the idea is to find the correct ratio of wiener inside and wiener outside of the hole.  I’m not sure if it was a fish or something gnawing at the dog or if the imbalance just made parts of the wiener drop off but when I leave it dangling mostly in the ocean it tended to disappear really fast.  When I left too much wiener inside the pressure of the water kept shooting it out and I would have to replug the hole.  If the distribution of wiener inside the hole and wiener outside of the hole, was about equal it prevented the fast disappearance of the wiener and the premature ejaculation of the wiener.  I knew this wasn’t an ideal or a permanent option but it worked.  When I could save up some cash and get to shore, I would fix the hole up proper.  For now the burnt and frozen franks would have to do.

“What’s for breakfast Jeeves?”

Jeeves looked at me and then looked down at the cupboard below the coffee machine.

“Pancakes again?  It’s always pancakes with you Jeeves.  You’re the weirdest Iguana I know.”

I reached in for the cookie jar beside the box of pancake mix and grabbed one of the critters inside for Jeeves.  For some reason Jeeves loved crickets.  He looked a little unhealthy because he wasn’t eating his greens as much as he should but who am I to deprive him of what he likes?  If he wanted some greens he would have looked at the fridge instead.  Sometimes I drink beer for breakfast.  That isn’t healthy but fuck if I’m going to let someone else make my breakfast decisions.  I grabbed the box of pancake mix and started the pancake creation process.

I like listening to music when I cook.  Out there where the TV stations are non-existent and your only social interaction is with a reptile, music is about the only thing to keep you sane.   Boy and Bear was a popular choice for the morning routine.  Mumford and Sons filled that role for a little.  Anything folksy was good for the morning on a boat.  Somewhere around the middle of the day I usually made a switch to something like Washed Out or Toro Y Moi.  I was on a big Chill Wave kick over the summer but the main music requirement at the time was that it be new.  I didn’t want to listen to any of the music that was in and around my previous world.  This boat trip was about leaving that former life behind and reconnecting with the inner me.

I jammed out to Blood Gold, dancing around in circles a little while I mixed the batter with a wooden spoon and that was when the water started spurting again.  I was a little surprised that I would have to use a second frank before I even finished cooking breakfast but it was not unheard of.  I clogged the hole and took a shower before I found that the hole was AGAIN spurting water.  It was turning into a strange morning and I knew immediately that I would probably have to burn and freeze some more dogs if this continued.

I dressed, finished building my pancakes and slathered them with hazelnut syrup.  There were few extravagances that I brought with me on this journey but this newly- discovered, wondrous liquid?  was high on my priority list.  The hole spurted water before I was done with my pancakes and I clogged it once again.  The wieners were disappearing so fast I found it necessary to start burning some new dogs immediately.  I headed up to the main deck, where I kept a small grill with an armful of hot dogs.  I cooked one dog normal and wrapped it in one of the leftover pancakes before starting to burn the rest and this is where things got really out of control.

When I headed back down, the cabin was full of water.  Somehow, I did not notice the ship sinking.    The original hole was unclogged but that was not the main source of water leakage.  There was a harpoon lodged in the ceiling that left a gaping hole behind it.  I took my slippers off and grabbed Jeeves and my dry boots out of my closet for some reason, like they would keep my feet any dryer in this amount of water.  Before I headed back up the stairs I noticed, what looked like tentacles sticking out of the original hole.

“No way”, I thought, “a burnt-hot dog-eating octopus and his hunter have just sunk my ship?”

I searched the water for an octopus but didn’t see anything.  So I thought I probably just needed some more bait.  I burned another round of hot dogs and tossed them into the water.  If I was going to get on the reserve boat I wanted this monster to be preoccupied with something other than me.  To my surprise a team of divers popped their heads out of the water.

“Thanks mate.”

“Thanks?”, I screamed, “Thanks!  You’ve sunk my ship assholes.”

“Yeah…  Sorry ‘bout that mate.  These dogs are ace.  We thought you’d use a couple more if you had a bigger hole to fill… I guess we didn’t think things through.”

“No, you surely didn’t.  How the… what the… seriously?”

One of the other divers spoke up, “Ya’ brassed?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you could use a burned wiener”, and then he tossed it up to the ship.”

“What I could use is a new ship.”

“Sorry mate.  Our ship went down too, Tyler there was hunting a fly.”

“With a harpoon?”

“No, of course not”, they all laughed like this was a ridiculous notion and then he returned seriously with, “a shotgun.”

This didn’t seem real to me.  I really thought that maybe this was some kind of prank show.

“ A shotgun huh?  Yeah I could see that.  That makes sense.  Why wouldn’t you hunt a fly with a shotgun?”

“Could you burn another round of dogs mate?  Then we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Why not?”, I replied.  The more I went along with the joke, the less I would be ridiculed when people see the video.  Instead they’d think, "damn that brotha’ handled that shit with class.  He even made them some more franks.”

The water in my cabin was now to my waist and the hole seemed to be growing.  I burned them another round of dogs and then commented on their appeared fatigue.

“Take my raft”, I said, “I’ve got it all under control.”

“Are you sure?  That would be a real life saver.  We’ve been swimming around since the middle of last night.  Trevor cut our lifeboat trying to open our last bit of food rations in the middle of the night while the rest of us were sleeping.  You sure you don’t want to hop on with us? “

There wasn’t any room on the boat so I said, “no.”

It wasn’t long before I regretted that.  The boat continued to sink and my level of worry increased.  I began to realize this was no joke.  My ship was actually sinking and Jeeves and I would have to figure out a way to survive.  Who were these guys that put a hole in my ship and took my reserve boat?  I’d find out later that they were escape criminals and I had just aided and abetted but that’s a whole other story I will get to later.

There was a moment where I had no thoughts about a future.  I thought, “This is it.  I am going to die on this boat”.  I had positioned myself at the highest point of the ship with my headphones and Jeeves.  Jeeves was always so cool about shit.  The world was sinking around us and he just sat there all cool, wasn’t shivering or anything.  He was the coolest person I knew.  I pictured Jeeves to be a person with dreadlocks and sunglasses if he were human.  He’d be all chill and he would never freak out about shit.  He’d probably smoke pot too and be lazy.  He’d just smoke and just lay around all day, not talking or working and he’d always be asking me for money.  Come to think of it, Jeeves was kind of an asshole.  He knew I was sick of eating pancakes and yet he chose them for me every day.  I bet he doesn’t even like crickets.  What kind of iguana eats crickets as their main source of food anyway?

This was not the time to be getting mad about Jeeves’ selfish ways.  I had to remind myself that as I clutched the suitcase that floated to the surface.  Jeeves clutched my hair a little to keep from sliding off as the suitcase wobbled a little and I cursed him deep down but smiled to his face.  It was imperative to keep my music up and out of the water.  As I floated along those days towards one shore or another I needed some sanity.  Float on seemed appropriate and I listened to that on repeat for a few hours. 

I fell asleep in the hot sun and when I awoke, Jeeves had disappeared.  It was sad but not anything like Tom Hanks and that volleyball of his, which is weird because at least Jeeves was a living thing.  He was my pal.  I guess maybe it helped that I didn’t see him die.  I pictured him getting fed up with me going slow and just deciding to swim to shore.  I pictured him on an island with a bunch of hot chameleon ho’s servicing him and he is just waiting for me to show up.  He’d have some crickets saved up that he would share (he’d be a good host and he loves them so he probably thinks I would too).  I’d probably pretend to eat one just to be polite but secretly spit it out when he wasn’t looking.  Then we’d have a little party of sorts and I would drink fermented nectar out of fallen coconuts and the aborigine tribe that has been worshipping him, would also worship me and I would be awarded with a harem of women to massage and dance for me.  Life was so great in my imagination while I slowly slipped off of a dilapidated suitcase.  I needed to find another vessel.

The fridge floated along near me when I went to Lulu land but it was slowly beginning to increase the distance between us.  I placed my headphones down on the suitcase and climbed on like it was a boogie board so that my limbs were free to swim.  It felt a little like I was moving into a large house climbing onto the fridge.  I could fit my entire body on top and so I did after splashing it with water.

The sun was beginning make me wary at this point.  I was hungry and had to make a decision that was difficult.  I knew there were more hot dogs in the fridge but I also knew that if I opened it that my floating apparatus would begin to take in water and would join my ship at the bottom of the ocean.  My headphones were also beginning to run out of juice so I decided I would run it out before taking that plunge.  For a minute I forgot that I was dying in the middle of the ocean and I just soaked in beats from First Rate People, Sea Pinks, G-Side, Wild Nothing, Pixies and then half of a Matt and Kim song.  Then it was time.

The skin on my face was feeling tight and my stomach felt like it was being stuck with a knife.  I opened the freezer and ate the rest of the burnt hot dogs.  There must have been eight in there.  They weren’t frozen any longer and I felt full after two but I didn’t know when I would get another chance to eat so I just powered through.  Unlike running, that first mile of swimming was not the hardest.  I ran out of energy quickly and the next 30 miles (or however long it was, it felt like 1,000) seemed almost impossible.  When I think back on it now I don’t know how I garnered the strength.  Something in my head just said to keep going.  I replayed Matt and Kim’s 5K over and over in my head.  When that song lost driving power I would switch to WWPJ’s Ships with Holes Will Sink or, oddly enough, Island in the Sun by Weezer.  

By the time I reached the island my arms felt like spongy and the burn on my face was making the skin feel as though it were dripping off.  I crawled to a shade and had a nightmare about zombies eating my burnt face like it was a burnt wiener and then eating my wiener like… lets just say it was disgusting and embarrassing.  If it weren’t for the unrealistic events in that nightmare, I would think what I awoke to was fiction.