All Mad Roads Lead to...
Friday, April 28, 2006 by Ben Myers
Posted by Steve Bagley
A warmer-than-usual winter night brought rain and tremendous cloud fogs that thickly curled off the previous layers of snow. Cursing theatrically to myself as I tried to cut through the rain and milk-fog in my jeep—I pulled up to my house. Brainstem fried like calamari by dealing with mountain town mindless bosses of their own eccentric alcoholic empire—all day long; only escape to hop in my car and smoke bowls during breaks with my buddy Eric, or escape to the tool bench to meditatively work on broken skis—which I found to be rather enjoyable. Get stoned, blast some Hendrix, fix some skis…avoid eye contact with authority figures. All I want to do is ski and it is fucking raining in this snakehole of a town. All the good-souled ski bums are hiding somewhere too…probably stoned. And fixing skis. I pulled up to my place with the car running, door open, and jogged into my house. Moments later I was back on the windshield-wiper personal hell-road aiming for somewhere in northern Vermont. Glaring through headlights and raindrops.
The mission was clear. Escape for a few days. I had a stash in my backpack (for zoning out and tuning into the road, and the Allman Brothers—late night escape road-music if I ever heard any) which also held clothes, a toothbrush, a map of New Hampshire and Vermont, a buck knife for fighting off ninjas and murderers and also a few water bottles and snacks. Oh, and some beers. I turned onto 112 west heading out of White Mountain territory and over into Green Mountain territory; all the same Indian-howl moon mountains but just cleaned up and separated with imaginary names and boundaries that made white men feel better about a terrifyingly expansive and swooping wilderness. The first leg of the journey took me up a steep gradient of a mountain—and I saw the altitude increase in the darkness with the thickness of the fog—jeep engine laboring and whirring and me behind the wheel, mad-eyed paranoid traveler.
I finally made it over the mountain and found no more rain, and so pleased I was with this discovery that my first beer was cracked…Ka-chhhaah. And slurp and ahh. Nothing in front of me now but thick fogs in the tallest pines I had ever seen. Still in NH I believe. Every now and again at higher-elevation passes I would catch a glimpse of blue moonlight beaming in through the pines. Tall pines, man. Like the tallest I’ve ever seen. Slurrrp. Beer taste, mmm. But how about this fog? The road swooped back into the valley like a blue piece of tape over plaster mountains and toy valleys—but to my astonishment, upon following the road into the valley, the pines seemed to double and triple in size, and I began to nervously giggle at myself hoping to see that blue moonlight once more, but the trees were tall. This corridor of massive pines had me just where it wanted me. I was at its mercy. This was no longer a game. The fog by this point was blinding and I was confident I had missed road signs. Fuckin’ sure of it. Slurrrrp. Beer. Mmmm. Gotta piss but…NO. The lost river valley and her protective legions of skeletal armored soldiers would surely corner me as I pissed nervously on the side of this dream-road next to my jeep. Pulling over and peeing now would surely be suicide. Suicide! Was I lost? Just like that girl I knew from school that drove up here to the mountains in a suicidal panic, and just when the forest breeze calmed her jigsaw brain some gnarled and shadowy backcountry figure picked her up and…I have this map here, and hmmm. I’ll just have to keep chugging along until I see a road sign. But damn. These trees are like four times the size of what I ever remembered them to be.
About an hour later I came to an unmarked fork in the road. I slowed to a stop and let the car idle as I suspiciously tried to anticipate which way the forest wanted me to go. I’d figure out the plans of the forest and just simply choose the other way. Perfect. I sat and hoped that left would take me to Woodsville, the last town before crossing the river over into Vermont—one beer down. Another? Don’t mind if I do. And wouldn’t it be testicle-shattering if I suddenly heard a tap on the window and when I looked there was no one there, and I’d tell myself it was nothing, Steve, nothing at all—but just when I calmed down enough and looked back at the window there would be this hideous mangled face like a bloody torn flesh beast of a nightmare jiggling the handle of my car door.
I’ll just pull the buck knife out of my pack and place it right here next to me. Just like so…
I threw the car back into drive and went left down the fork. The trees are huge man, huge! The road almost dropped away as it hurried frantically further and further to the valley floor, bumping and rising and rolling over a road that seemed to be paved by a crew of guys, one of which said, “Hey, Sal, whadaya think about throwin’ some pavement there, and there, but not there. And there, but not there. The road would just seem to flow better.”—and Sal listened to the guy. The fog had cleared out a little just enough to make me realize I was driving alongside a river or brook. Down here on Old-Bone Shaker Road, hidden for eternity amongst the most massive pine trees I had ever seen. I passed under two railroad trusses seemingly rising out of a foggy black nowhere on the other side of the river, cannoning madly off up into the steep pine tree cliffs to my left. On the second bridge I passed under, I recognized a road name painted on in white. TUNNEL BROOK—now that’s funny. I’ve heard that name before. We were sucking on whiskey at Craig’s place one night, and he had this strange cat there, Bob or something, and he was talking about how…how…how he is never going back to Tunnel Brook Road again. Ever.
So Bob was all the way out here—and let me say Bob is a nice fella, real nice. He’s got this mind that had been soaked with acid relentlessly for years, and you can tell, cuz the guy keeps asking you your name although you’ve told him seven times already—and Bob was up on Tunnel Brook road, sniffing morphine with some grungy hippies that time forgot, and they were at this guy’s place. A real eccentric. With all kinds of trash sculptures on his lawn, broken down vehicles and reassembled bird skeletons hanging from trees, and little tiny bones from chickens and shit, mixed in with pieces of metal and old rusted machine parts, perfectly assembled to make fantastically terrifying arraignments of bone and scrap metal and tin pans and pots hanging in the trees too—trash everywhere but all used in some ritualistic art to soothe a decidedly twisted human mind…
So this night at Craig’s, Bob goes on… “Sam”
“It’s Steve”
“Ya ya ya right! Steeeeeve.” All dragged out like my name was utterly fascinating. “So this guy, in this mondo twisted nightmare of a house kept feeding us morphine, and he kept hiding his hand which had this huge nasty gash on it. And he kept saying how the cops kept hassling him and how he was just saddened by the whole thing. He was so sad, he said, that he would cry himself to sleep in the arms of moon-babies almost every night. Weird, dude. I don’t even know what moon-babies are.”
And clearly Bob was no fool although his thoughts kept melting into one another—but that is neither hear nor there. Bob came to find out that this mad-artist morphine addict had been questioned by the police up to ten times in the past year. And on top of that when the police first came to talk to him all the hair on his body had been shaved off. Completely. And his truck was missing. And his furniture—all his furniture—was out on his lawn. And yes, he was suspected of the kidnapping and disappearance of the same girl I knew from school. And damn. Her car was found on this road. This. Road. Fuck.
So I cracked beer numero tres and gunned my jeep over each and every bump and rise and tight turn along this river here…here in this nowhere forest of lost railroads and lost children and gullies and tunnels and lost drainpipes of rusted murder and huge tall nightmare trees and reassembled skeletons and rusted parts of hay-bailers and gears and trinkets and bells and pots and pans—I was focused and determined not to stop at any cost. Whatsoever.
The road tangled along and I followed with my foot pressing hard on the gas, turning the wheel with precision, slowing a bit before the curves—gunning it hard when I felt the jeep would take to the turns, slingshotting to the next one. By this point the pines were unimaginably huge, bigger than redwoods. And I began to pass by humble shacks built into the steep sides of the hills along this brook—this TUNNEL BROOK—and the light emitted from these shacks all seemed to be an eerie luminescent red. What are they doing in there? Mad men! Surely I have found the valley of the maddest mad men. Experiments on human patients, combining body parts with old tractor parts, and arms and legs with animal bones.
Vermont where are you!? This place is making my mind melt! Who lives in this place? Gullies and drainpipes and pissing brooks and skeletons hanging from the tresses. Maybe even camouflaged spaceships hiding in the dense forest just outside of here. Where. The fuck. Am I? There was a rather steep rise that I rolled up and just as it pinnacled, I saw the twisted murder metal skeleton house. Right there up on a little ledge overlooking the road and river. As plain as this dark panicked night. So dark, and I saw this house, with lanterns lit on the porch. Truly evil sculptures on the lawn. Just like Bob said. Twisted horrifying flesh-mare penetrating my cerebral cortex—calling all adrenal glands! Calling all adrenals glands! This is not a test! Open flood gates—and I whipped beer can number three out the window and gripped white knuckles on the wheel, and I pushed the gas to the floor—my head snapped back and I hurdled past the most surreal nightmarish reality dream-yard I had ever seen, and I could smell the evil and fear coming off of it like a mist of slaughter houses and burning tires. My black jeep, with me inside, hurdling down tangled roads being chased by the wolves and flap-wing dragons of my most wild childhood fears spilling out onto this hidden pine road—and after a first great rush that lasted who-knows-how-long I came to Woodsville. Houses, and a gas station. Thank God! That was close.
I pulled into the gas station where all trucker-eyes seemed to be on me. So I didn’t stay long. Naturally. But I bought a package of gummy worms and hopped back on the road. These people creep me out, man.
I crossed a huge metal bridge over the Connecticut River and turned happily onto 91 South. I was being pulled down 91 like a magnet and my mission began to unfold before me. Once again the rains blasted down and the fog thickened and all the trucks on the road were like giant rolling caterpillars with huge bright eyes. Despite the visibility being low and rain heavy, I pushed the jeep with all my might, trying desperately to hold it on the road despite my careening speed on wet highways with monstrous trucks trying to block my passage.
Ka-chaaah. Sluurrrrp. Beer number four and damn does it taste good. My nerves were jangled up and my brain was swirling with skulls and bird skeletons and dangerous rusted moving parts. I looked back in my rearview. Thought I saw those wolves for a second but it was nothing. The trees on the Vermont side seemed to shrink back to normal size. And I was relieved.
I followed 91 South along the Connecticut River in the densest fog at no less than 75 mph. Allman Brothers on the stereo. Barreling around giant rolling caterpillars with huge bright eyes. The midnight rider in his midnight jeep, narrowly escaping certain doom somewhere back up north in the massive pines and swooping mountains. Being chased by skeleton armies and monsters and murderers and wolves and maybe even a dragon. But that was all behind me now. It was late by this point. I was close, however, to the Massachusetts border. My path unfurled further. I was no more than thirty minutes from Amherst. I got people there. Those guys are good guys. Sane guys. Rugby guys. They will surely be awake, and we will finish off the rest of these beers and unwind.
I pulled into Amherst and I felt like my brain had been running on overdrive for God-knows how long. I had been on the road for at least three hours. At least. I could almost smell the smoke from my brain by this point. At least I was far far away from that snakehole of a mountain town.
I stepped out of my car and staggered for a moment. Damn beers. I clumsily closed the jeep door and checked under and on top of the roof for dragons and other generally bloodthirsty creatures. Coast clear. I walked up to my buddies’ place and opened the door with sleepy eyes and—“Dude, what the fuck are you doing here!? Holy shit…great to see you dude! I thought you were in the mountains! You look like Hell! Come sit down!”
There was Hershey complete with mad-man mohawk, Bobo complete with forever stoned-eyed Buddhist smirk, Paulie complete with tough little guinea disposition and Johnny Football complete with forever tough-guy self-embattled inner fight between good and evil. They were all sitting around the coffee table and they were divvying up an overabundance of mushrooms from a bowl in the middle. How did I know? Was this the magnet that pulled me away from the sad rains of the north? Perhaps.
Paulie handed me a fistful of mushrooms and I ate them without deliberation. There was no use in fighting it. I handed out the rest of my beers and Johnny Football was talking about his most recent sexual escapade and how it ended in none of the housemates ever wanting to use the upstairs bathroom ever again—except for Johnny of course, because according to Hershey the aforementioned bathroom had been “sodomized beyond recognition.”
We rolled a joint, put on some cartoons and waited for the first rushes of the mushrooms. We blew some smoke around and I began to tell my story, but I kind of trailed off, becoming more interested in the light the TV was throwing. It felt like two Vikings were having an axe fight in my stomach, a tell tale sign that you’re ticking up and up and up the roller coaster, and you’re just about at the top, and you can see you’re about to go over the edge and there is nothing you can do but just fall deep and fast and into your own skull—and drop
The hanging canoe and two bicycles on the ceiling, the paper army of scantily clad females from various magazines strewn randomly about the walls, the dirty UMass Rugby jerseys hanging here and there dripping mud and slop—were all beginning to take on the stinky celebratory hue of a carnival. Rambo posters, an elephant graveyard of empty beer cans and liquor bottles in the corner, an arsenal of BB guns, mismatched couches, a rickety staircase up to the loft, a kitchen full of dishes covered in random foodstuffs, a fridge with nothing but milk and a pizza box with a BB gun inside it…was all smudging together popping right out front like a pop-up book—wham, here I am…in the eternal upstairs staircase that winds and spirals far throughout the attic and beyond to a purple place where there is lightning and lollipops—something clear conscious here yet, wow, do my veins slosh with such angry young red-blooded American fertile existence, yet calm—and I think all of us here agree, Gentlemen, that we feel like we are being shit out through a cosmic worm hole faster than a homeless man who accidentally ate some coffee grounds in the trash and…yup. These are some good shrooms…
And Bobo seemed to be looking over a book closely, examining the very letters that were most likely beginning to crawl off the page and up his arm—Bobo I need your attention! Please retire the habitual studying of figures and factoids and facts and contact me, so I, me, myself, I may very well make the Norse-like journey to your side of this cavernous dungeon of American beasts and rejoice in the peace pipe and bring our minds back to the source for just a slice of time—slice of pizza, but no! There is no pizza in that box Paulie, what are you doing but brandishing a firearm! And here is Bobo getting lost in a world of symbols, and Paulie is loading up his handgun for target practice, and mohawked Hershey is digging through an eternity of CD cases looking for his TOOL collection, and self-embattled Johnny Football is espousing yet another fiendish story about his magnetized attraction to a certain girl who surely has a “body built for sin” and it is so unfair how society is making him believe he can love only one woman. He can love many things. His friends and family and rugby and playing guitar and drinking and camping and fishing and why the fuck not can he love many women?
Hershey finds the TOOL and turns the radio louder than it ever has been. Paulie, shirtless in camouflaged pants, tough little fuckin guinea, is aiming his handgun carefully with a squinted eye, picking off beer cans from clear across the room with dead aim. Ping-drop. Ping-drop. Ping-drop. Ping-drop. Reload. Ping-drop…
Hershey has lit up a cigar-sized joint and I look at this magnificent rebel-bastard and I decide that he should have horns coming out of his head. He is whipping and banging his head to the penetrating mystically-mechanically droning sounds of TOOL—and I am lost in the ether here in this weird carnival of carnivores and we are five beasts—not sure if we’re monkeys or lions, but surely a thuggish tribe of alphas—and I know this is going to spill out onto the streets of Amherst tonight and…
The fog is heavy in the Pioneer Valley tonight, boys. Mission: Drive to the convenient store. Objective: Get Snacks. Level of Risk: Extremely Dangerous.
We’re walking out to Hershey’s bronco here on this foggy mad-night midnight and its like we’re not even walking, but its just five heads all floating down the sidewalk and this is the kind of thing you see in Amherst on a regular basis, you know? Just a few heads floating without comment down the sidewalk. Nothing strange here officer. Just floating along.
In the bronco…and we are driving at least 700 miles an hour down the farm road of 116. The fog is ridiculously thick and the windows are down and it smells like wet meadows and chimney fires. Whatever music Hershey is playing is literally crawling all over me, and instead of trying to shake it off I just let it crawl and wriggle. The convenient store appears ahead in the lonely distance like a strange beacon of light—we pull in. OK. Get serious. Try to hold it together. Don’t break down in delirious laughter. Seriously. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. No, wait. I got it. Breathe.
So it ends up being Paulie and myself, grinning like bastards, about to enter alien territory…Paulie goes in first. Then me. And oh my sweet lord… it is. It is, um, BEAUTIFUL—the first thing I notice is this hauntingly beautiful Hindi music, and I can swear the dark skinned Indian girls in the song are dancing with smooth bellies and colorful saris with pierced noses and soul-crushing seductiveness just in the other aisle. Paulie and I glance at each other in approval. The bags of chips and jerky and candy bars are glowing with saintliness—and sweet lord. Look at the Gatorades. And all the drinks…the mountain dews and cokes and plethora of colorful sugar-infused drinks are glowing with the backlight of pure Nirvana itself—the purest truest emptiest beautiful truth of the universe, appearing to us humble apes here in Bodhi-Tree of Knowledge Convenient Store of Time. Everything shiny and glowing and even the old Indian man mopping the floor seems to be completely absorbed in the very present, and not an ounce of fear is detectable in his placid calm face despite the surely thuggish appearance of two monkeys tromping around in his store. This was it. This is what dragged me hours and hours through hell—and now how convenient and beautiful it is, I had come all this way unknowingly, just to drink from the Slurpee of Truth.
A warmer-than-usual winter night brought rain and tremendous cloud fogs that thickly curled off the previous layers of snow. Cursing theatrically to myself as I tried to cut through the rain and milk-fog in my jeep—I pulled up to my house. Brainstem fried like calamari by dealing with mountain town mindless bosses of their own eccentric alcoholic empire—all day long; only escape to hop in my car and smoke bowls during breaks with my buddy Eric, or escape to the tool bench to meditatively work on broken skis—which I found to be rather enjoyable. Get stoned, blast some Hendrix, fix some skis…avoid eye contact with authority figures. All I want to do is ski and it is fucking raining in this snakehole of a town. All the good-souled ski bums are hiding somewhere too…probably stoned. And fixing skis. I pulled up to my place with the car running, door open, and jogged into my house. Moments later I was back on the windshield-wiper personal hell-road aiming for somewhere in northern Vermont. Glaring through headlights and raindrops.
The mission was clear. Escape for a few days. I had a stash in my backpack (for zoning out and tuning into the road, and the Allman Brothers—late night escape road-music if I ever heard any) which also held clothes, a toothbrush, a map of New Hampshire and Vermont, a buck knife for fighting off ninjas and murderers and also a few water bottles and snacks. Oh, and some beers. I turned onto 112 west heading out of White Mountain territory and over into Green Mountain territory; all the same Indian-howl moon mountains but just cleaned up and separated with imaginary names and boundaries that made white men feel better about a terrifyingly expansive and swooping wilderness. The first leg of the journey took me up a steep gradient of a mountain—and I saw the altitude increase in the darkness with the thickness of the fog—jeep engine laboring and whirring and me behind the wheel, mad-eyed paranoid traveler.
I finally made it over the mountain and found no more rain, and so pleased I was with this discovery that my first beer was cracked…Ka-chhhaah. And slurp and ahh. Nothing in front of me now but thick fogs in the tallest pines I had ever seen. Still in NH I believe. Every now and again at higher-elevation passes I would catch a glimpse of blue moonlight beaming in through the pines. Tall pines, man. Like the tallest I’ve ever seen. Slurrrp. Beer taste, mmm. But how about this fog? The road swooped back into the valley like a blue piece of tape over plaster mountains and toy valleys—but to my astonishment, upon following the road into the valley, the pines seemed to double and triple in size, and I began to nervously giggle at myself hoping to see that blue moonlight once more, but the trees were tall. This corridor of massive pines had me just where it wanted me. I was at its mercy. This was no longer a game. The fog by this point was blinding and I was confident I had missed road signs. Fuckin’ sure of it. Slurrrrp. Beer. Mmmm. Gotta piss but…NO. The lost river valley and her protective legions of skeletal armored soldiers would surely corner me as I pissed nervously on the side of this dream-road next to my jeep. Pulling over and peeing now would surely be suicide. Suicide! Was I lost? Just like that girl I knew from school that drove up here to the mountains in a suicidal panic, and just when the forest breeze calmed her jigsaw brain some gnarled and shadowy backcountry figure picked her up and…I have this map here, and hmmm. I’ll just have to keep chugging along until I see a road sign. But damn. These trees are like four times the size of what I ever remembered them to be.
About an hour later I came to an unmarked fork in the road. I slowed to a stop and let the car idle as I suspiciously tried to anticipate which way the forest wanted me to go. I’d figure out the plans of the forest and just simply choose the other way. Perfect. I sat and hoped that left would take me to Woodsville, the last town before crossing the river over into Vermont—one beer down. Another? Don’t mind if I do. And wouldn’t it be testicle-shattering if I suddenly heard a tap on the window and when I looked there was no one there, and I’d tell myself it was nothing, Steve, nothing at all—but just when I calmed down enough and looked back at the window there would be this hideous mangled face like a bloody torn flesh beast of a nightmare jiggling the handle of my car door.
I’ll just pull the buck knife out of my pack and place it right here next to me. Just like so…
I threw the car back into drive and went left down the fork. The trees are huge man, huge! The road almost dropped away as it hurried frantically further and further to the valley floor, bumping and rising and rolling over a road that seemed to be paved by a crew of guys, one of which said, “Hey, Sal, whadaya think about throwin’ some pavement there, and there, but not there. And there, but not there. The road would just seem to flow better.”—and Sal listened to the guy. The fog had cleared out a little just enough to make me realize I was driving alongside a river or brook. Down here on Old-Bone Shaker Road, hidden for eternity amongst the most massive pine trees I had ever seen. I passed under two railroad trusses seemingly rising out of a foggy black nowhere on the other side of the river, cannoning madly off up into the steep pine tree cliffs to my left. On the second bridge I passed under, I recognized a road name painted on in white. TUNNEL BROOK—now that’s funny. I’ve heard that name before. We were sucking on whiskey at Craig’s place one night, and he had this strange cat there, Bob or something, and he was talking about how…how…how he is never going back to Tunnel Brook Road again. Ever.
So Bob was all the way out here—and let me say Bob is a nice fella, real nice. He’s got this mind that had been soaked with acid relentlessly for years, and you can tell, cuz the guy keeps asking you your name although you’ve told him seven times already—and Bob was up on Tunnel Brook road, sniffing morphine with some grungy hippies that time forgot, and they were at this guy’s place. A real eccentric. With all kinds of trash sculptures on his lawn, broken down vehicles and reassembled bird skeletons hanging from trees, and little tiny bones from chickens and shit, mixed in with pieces of metal and old rusted machine parts, perfectly assembled to make fantastically terrifying arraignments of bone and scrap metal and tin pans and pots hanging in the trees too—trash everywhere but all used in some ritualistic art to soothe a decidedly twisted human mind…
So this night at Craig’s, Bob goes on… “Sam”
“It’s Steve”
“Ya ya ya right! Steeeeeve.” All dragged out like my name was utterly fascinating. “So this guy, in this mondo twisted nightmare of a house kept feeding us morphine, and he kept hiding his hand which had this huge nasty gash on it. And he kept saying how the cops kept hassling him and how he was just saddened by the whole thing. He was so sad, he said, that he would cry himself to sleep in the arms of moon-babies almost every night. Weird, dude. I don’t even know what moon-babies are.”
And clearly Bob was no fool although his thoughts kept melting into one another—but that is neither hear nor there. Bob came to find out that this mad-artist morphine addict had been questioned by the police up to ten times in the past year. And on top of that when the police first came to talk to him all the hair on his body had been shaved off. Completely. And his truck was missing. And his furniture—all his furniture—was out on his lawn. And yes, he was suspected of the kidnapping and disappearance of the same girl I knew from school. And damn. Her car was found on this road. This. Road. Fuck.
So I cracked beer numero tres and gunned my jeep over each and every bump and rise and tight turn along this river here…here in this nowhere forest of lost railroads and lost children and gullies and tunnels and lost drainpipes of rusted murder and huge tall nightmare trees and reassembled skeletons and rusted parts of hay-bailers and gears and trinkets and bells and pots and pans—I was focused and determined not to stop at any cost. Whatsoever.
The road tangled along and I followed with my foot pressing hard on the gas, turning the wheel with precision, slowing a bit before the curves—gunning it hard when I felt the jeep would take to the turns, slingshotting to the next one. By this point the pines were unimaginably huge, bigger than redwoods. And I began to pass by humble shacks built into the steep sides of the hills along this brook—this TUNNEL BROOK—and the light emitted from these shacks all seemed to be an eerie luminescent red. What are they doing in there? Mad men! Surely I have found the valley of the maddest mad men. Experiments on human patients, combining body parts with old tractor parts, and arms and legs with animal bones.
Vermont where are you!? This place is making my mind melt! Who lives in this place? Gullies and drainpipes and pissing brooks and skeletons hanging from the tresses. Maybe even camouflaged spaceships hiding in the dense forest just outside of here. Where. The fuck. Am I? There was a rather steep rise that I rolled up and just as it pinnacled, I saw the twisted murder metal skeleton house. Right there up on a little ledge overlooking the road and river. As plain as this dark panicked night. So dark, and I saw this house, with lanterns lit on the porch. Truly evil sculptures on the lawn. Just like Bob said. Twisted horrifying flesh-mare penetrating my cerebral cortex—calling all adrenal glands! Calling all adrenals glands! This is not a test! Open flood gates—and I whipped beer can number three out the window and gripped white knuckles on the wheel, and I pushed the gas to the floor—my head snapped back and I hurdled past the most surreal nightmarish reality dream-yard I had ever seen, and I could smell the evil and fear coming off of it like a mist of slaughter houses and burning tires. My black jeep, with me inside, hurdling down tangled roads being chased by the wolves and flap-wing dragons of my most wild childhood fears spilling out onto this hidden pine road—and after a first great rush that lasted who-knows-how-long I came to Woodsville. Houses, and a gas station. Thank God! That was close.
I pulled into the gas station where all trucker-eyes seemed to be on me. So I didn’t stay long. Naturally. But I bought a package of gummy worms and hopped back on the road. These people creep me out, man.
I crossed a huge metal bridge over the Connecticut River and turned happily onto 91 South. I was being pulled down 91 like a magnet and my mission began to unfold before me. Once again the rains blasted down and the fog thickened and all the trucks on the road were like giant rolling caterpillars with huge bright eyes. Despite the visibility being low and rain heavy, I pushed the jeep with all my might, trying desperately to hold it on the road despite my careening speed on wet highways with monstrous trucks trying to block my passage.
Ka-chaaah. Sluurrrrp. Beer number four and damn does it taste good. My nerves were jangled up and my brain was swirling with skulls and bird skeletons and dangerous rusted moving parts. I looked back in my rearview. Thought I saw those wolves for a second but it was nothing. The trees on the Vermont side seemed to shrink back to normal size. And I was relieved.
I followed 91 South along the Connecticut River in the densest fog at no less than 75 mph. Allman Brothers on the stereo. Barreling around giant rolling caterpillars with huge bright eyes. The midnight rider in his midnight jeep, narrowly escaping certain doom somewhere back up north in the massive pines and swooping mountains. Being chased by skeleton armies and monsters and murderers and wolves and maybe even a dragon. But that was all behind me now. It was late by this point. I was close, however, to the Massachusetts border. My path unfurled further. I was no more than thirty minutes from Amherst. I got people there. Those guys are good guys. Sane guys. Rugby guys. They will surely be awake, and we will finish off the rest of these beers and unwind.
I pulled into Amherst and I felt like my brain had been running on overdrive for God-knows how long. I had been on the road for at least three hours. At least. I could almost smell the smoke from my brain by this point. At least I was far far away from that snakehole of a mountain town.
I stepped out of my car and staggered for a moment. Damn beers. I clumsily closed the jeep door and checked under and on top of the roof for dragons and other generally bloodthirsty creatures. Coast clear. I walked up to my buddies’ place and opened the door with sleepy eyes and—“Dude, what the fuck are you doing here!? Holy shit…great to see you dude! I thought you were in the mountains! You look like Hell! Come sit down!”
There was Hershey complete with mad-man mohawk, Bobo complete with forever stoned-eyed Buddhist smirk, Paulie complete with tough little guinea disposition and Johnny Football complete with forever tough-guy self-embattled inner fight between good and evil. They were all sitting around the coffee table and they were divvying up an overabundance of mushrooms from a bowl in the middle. How did I know? Was this the magnet that pulled me away from the sad rains of the north? Perhaps.
Paulie handed me a fistful of mushrooms and I ate them without deliberation. There was no use in fighting it. I handed out the rest of my beers and Johnny Football was talking about his most recent sexual escapade and how it ended in none of the housemates ever wanting to use the upstairs bathroom ever again—except for Johnny of course, because according to Hershey the aforementioned bathroom had been “sodomized beyond recognition.”
We rolled a joint, put on some cartoons and waited for the first rushes of the mushrooms. We blew some smoke around and I began to tell my story, but I kind of trailed off, becoming more interested in the light the TV was throwing. It felt like two Vikings were having an axe fight in my stomach, a tell tale sign that you’re ticking up and up and up the roller coaster, and you’re just about at the top, and you can see you’re about to go over the edge and there is nothing you can do but just fall deep and fast and into your own skull—and drop
The hanging canoe and two bicycles on the ceiling, the paper army of scantily clad females from various magazines strewn randomly about the walls, the dirty UMass Rugby jerseys hanging here and there dripping mud and slop—were all beginning to take on the stinky celebratory hue of a carnival. Rambo posters, an elephant graveyard of empty beer cans and liquor bottles in the corner, an arsenal of BB guns, mismatched couches, a rickety staircase up to the loft, a kitchen full of dishes covered in random foodstuffs, a fridge with nothing but milk and a pizza box with a BB gun inside it…was all smudging together popping right out front like a pop-up book—wham, here I am…in the eternal upstairs staircase that winds and spirals far throughout the attic and beyond to a purple place where there is lightning and lollipops—something clear conscious here yet, wow, do my veins slosh with such angry young red-blooded American fertile existence, yet calm—and I think all of us here agree, Gentlemen, that we feel like we are being shit out through a cosmic worm hole faster than a homeless man who accidentally ate some coffee grounds in the trash and…yup. These are some good shrooms…
And Bobo seemed to be looking over a book closely, examining the very letters that were most likely beginning to crawl off the page and up his arm—Bobo I need your attention! Please retire the habitual studying of figures and factoids and facts and contact me, so I, me, myself, I may very well make the Norse-like journey to your side of this cavernous dungeon of American beasts and rejoice in the peace pipe and bring our minds back to the source for just a slice of time—slice of pizza, but no! There is no pizza in that box Paulie, what are you doing but brandishing a firearm! And here is Bobo getting lost in a world of symbols, and Paulie is loading up his handgun for target practice, and mohawked Hershey is digging through an eternity of CD cases looking for his TOOL collection, and self-embattled Johnny Football is espousing yet another fiendish story about his magnetized attraction to a certain girl who surely has a “body built for sin” and it is so unfair how society is making him believe he can love only one woman. He can love many things. His friends and family and rugby and playing guitar and drinking and camping and fishing and why the fuck not can he love many women?
Hershey finds the TOOL and turns the radio louder than it ever has been. Paulie, shirtless in camouflaged pants, tough little fuckin guinea, is aiming his handgun carefully with a squinted eye, picking off beer cans from clear across the room with dead aim. Ping-drop. Ping-drop. Ping-drop. Ping-drop. Reload. Ping-drop…
Hershey has lit up a cigar-sized joint and I look at this magnificent rebel-bastard and I decide that he should have horns coming out of his head. He is whipping and banging his head to the penetrating mystically-mechanically droning sounds of TOOL—and I am lost in the ether here in this weird carnival of carnivores and we are five beasts—not sure if we’re monkeys or lions, but surely a thuggish tribe of alphas—and I know this is going to spill out onto the streets of Amherst tonight and…
The fog is heavy in the Pioneer Valley tonight, boys. Mission: Drive to the convenient store. Objective: Get Snacks. Level of Risk: Extremely Dangerous.
We’re walking out to Hershey’s bronco here on this foggy mad-night midnight and its like we’re not even walking, but its just five heads all floating down the sidewalk and this is the kind of thing you see in Amherst on a regular basis, you know? Just a few heads floating without comment down the sidewalk. Nothing strange here officer. Just floating along.
In the bronco…and we are driving at least 700 miles an hour down the farm road of 116. The fog is ridiculously thick and the windows are down and it smells like wet meadows and chimney fires. Whatever music Hershey is playing is literally crawling all over me, and instead of trying to shake it off I just let it crawl and wriggle. The convenient store appears ahead in the lonely distance like a strange beacon of light—we pull in. OK. Get serious. Try to hold it together. Don’t break down in delirious laughter. Seriously. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. No, wait. I got it. Breathe.
So it ends up being Paulie and myself, grinning like bastards, about to enter alien territory…Paulie goes in first. Then me. And oh my sweet lord… it is. It is, um, BEAUTIFUL—the first thing I notice is this hauntingly beautiful Hindi music, and I can swear the dark skinned Indian girls in the song are dancing with smooth bellies and colorful saris with pierced noses and soul-crushing seductiveness just in the other aisle. Paulie and I glance at each other in approval. The bags of chips and jerky and candy bars are glowing with saintliness—and sweet lord. Look at the Gatorades. And all the drinks…the mountain dews and cokes and plethora of colorful sugar-infused drinks are glowing with the backlight of pure Nirvana itself—the purest truest emptiest beautiful truth of the universe, appearing to us humble apes here in Bodhi-Tree of Knowledge Convenient Store of Time. Everything shiny and glowing and even the old Indian man mopping the floor seems to be completely absorbed in the very present, and not an ounce of fear is detectable in his placid calm face despite the surely thuggish appearance of two monkeys tromping around in his store. This was it. This is what dragged me hours and hours through hell—and now how convenient and beautiful it is, I had come all this way unknowingly, just to drink from the Slurpee of Truth.
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