June was in love with K, and K liked June. Both of them thought I was alright, but I got the impression that was just because they had no clue where I was coming from, what I was thinking, what I wanted. They didn’t know if I was for real or just some weirdo that would dissipate when the wind normalized.
I took whatever opportunity presented itself to show them the depth of my oddness and the way I belonged nowhere and everywhere at the same time. They took the hint and removed all posturing, although a nervous tension throbbed beneath like a nest of baby rabbits under a patch of lawn. These two girls were squirming, pulsing with the possibility of conflict, collision: self-destruction as means of re-envisioning.
They liked to drink. I remember that. They’d drink anything you put in the vicinity of their full, wet, welcoming lips. They both preferred straws, thinking it was cute (for some reason) to drink everything through a straw … even beer. I took great joy in feeding them both drinks. June sucked back Gin Gimlets. K Neon liked straight vodka.
K had become a tad quieter and more restrained with the appearance of June off the bus. June seemed excited to see the boardwalk and showed me joy and warmth and politeness. Each time I brought her a drink she said, “Thank you kindly.”
“It’s nothing. You’re visiting. I’m just trying to make sure you have fun. Don’t want yet another person to have something bad to say about me or New Jersey.”
“You’re off to a good start then.”
She wouldn’t look me in the eye. There was a distance between us. I didn’t make her blush, not even once. K smiled, looking at her girl.
“You look best when you’re all pink.”
Neither one of them had seen and been doused in the true filth of the boardwalk, although they both seemed eager for an introduction. The line of bars in a strip flashed neon. Stuffed animals more outsized than even the most runaway bloated dream, hung suspended, waiting.
“One Win Choice,” the barker yelled as we passed. “Step up! Play whatever game you want. No-one loses.”
I took them to a stand called Frog Bog. Five bucks for a bucket of rubber frogs. Players put the frogs, one at a time, on a catapult and smashed the catapult with a mallet to send the frogs soaring into the air. The object was to land the frogs on a lily pad that rotated mechanically in swirling water.
I thought about my cock. Wasn’t it just like the rubber frog, soaring into the unknown? Weren’t these girls lily pads, rotating around me?
My frogs splashed into the water, vanished. June was luckier. She won a massive Rastafarian banana with a Jamaican flag bandana wrapped around its neck, sunglasses, and a joint hanging out of its mouth.
“Your first banana,” K exclaimed. “Congratulations!”
At the arcade, we played Mr. and Ms. Pacman and could not decide which was better.
I said, “My friend says Ms. Pacman is better, of course.”
“Why?”
“More cherries.”
K looked at me knowingly. “He’s right,” she said.
Then they watched, hanging off of each other for support, while I chased ghosts around the electric maze, carefully rationing my power pills and disappearing off screen to hide and reappear as if reborn on the other side. Duck and weave and live forever.
When I was finished, caught in a corner by the pink-sheeted digital undead, I dumped a new quarter into the slot, slid away from the machine, and guided June up to the joystick by placing my hand on the small of her back. It was our first touch. The colorful carpet, with its Arabian Night design, caused static electricity to pop. Both of us jumped.
June gave me the side eye, her long, braided hair swaying.
K pushed me playfully into June.
“You two are getting along as well as I’d hoped.”
“Enough with that, please,” June said.
K backed off. It was only time I’d ever seen her do that. Things were headed in a particular direction. Two of us knew it, and one was unsure.
I treated the girls to fifty-cent drafts at the Sawmill and pointed at the bouncer, Boyd.
“See that tiger-tank-sized human over there?”
“Yeah,” K said.
“He broke my nose last summer.”
“Still looks pretty good,” June said, playfully tapping the tip.
And just like whenever there are fifty-cent drafts being served anywhere, a fight broke out. A little man with spiked hair lunged at a meathead, a block of human muscle. The stool flipped over, and both of them rolled on the floor. Spit, shouts … the bar erupted in havoc and horrible voices.
There was a secret weapon though: Boyd — two hundred and seventy five pounds of sheer doomsday. He rumbled through the crowd in his canary yellow SECURITY shirt. Getting in there somehow, Boyd split the red-faced, veiny-necked men.
“You’ll have to leave. The both of you. NOW,” Boyd shouted.
I thought about the time I’d seen Charlie at the bar after the whole incident with Natalie. I was drunk. Charlie was drunk. The standard. We got into some shit. Boyd grabbed me by the nape of my neck and pulled me out onto the boardwalk, telling me, “Be cool.”
At the time, I wasn’t so easily receptive to instruction. I charged back into the bar. Boyd reeled me in by my shirt — broke my left hand and my nose too. Ahhh, the days.
You get what you deserve though. You can’t blame anyone else for the things you do. Desire makes us wild, opening up sacred wildflowers sopping wet with dew. Even if you’re intentions are to rip off the petals one by one and swallow them, you can’t hope to resist for very long. It’s in your nature.
The fighters were removed from the barroom. The particles and ions settled. The air compressor kicked on. Much needed cool air flooded through the ducts. I looked at K, she was sweating, glistening. June Doom was bone dry. Georgia is a different world. She chewed her lower lip, as if it was gum.
No-one questioned what that fight had been about. It was about war.
K smoked an American Spirit Light on the bench outside some shop with black light mushroom posters, concert t-shirts, and incense. It had some stupid name, Rockin’ Robin’s or something. Locals called it something stupider: Bong Depot. June wanted to go to another little booth to have their fortune read by Madame Woo-the Dead.
“I don’t think so,” K said coldly. She turned her face and exhaled smoke, the wind tugging it a thousand miles out over the unknown ocean.
“Why not?” June was hurt.
“Not my thing. I don’t believe in it.”
To me, K looked frightened. Not her thing? More like terrified.
June, impatient and giddy, took my hand and brought me instead.
Madame Woo-the Dead’s boardwalk booth was decorated to resemble the inside of a gypsy tent. Mystical. Bones and stars on strings. Chants playing from a tape deck hidden behind a curtain. Sage burned. The smoke drifted up into the air propelled by a small, battery-powered fan.
Madame Woo-the Dead, herself, was dressed in a loose satin robe. Violet. Her eyes were painted green, the color of the unknown ocean. She was not Chinese. She was not some sort of gypsy. She seemed French Canadian by the way she spoke.
Still, we hung on every syllable she uttered. We were seated on unpadded steel folding chairs across from the mystic. Madame Woo-the Dead took both of our right hands and scrutinized them, the palms especially.
“There’s someone else,” she said. “But, the two of you will one day get married.”
June started to laugh. “Married?”
A memory consumed me. K Neon and I lay in bed, still panting, our hearts fluttering from exertion. She said, “I don’t think June has ever been with a boy. I think she might still be a virgin … in that way.”