We smoke with Hector and get so high. Finally he has sold us some good shit. We smoke out of his mini dragon bong, out in the lightless corner of the Foothill parking lot. It’s a pretty great spot—you just walk up the hill a little ways, and it’s under some weeping willows, and there is a small stream, and brick buildings, and a faux altar constructed out of stones.
We smoke more and we cough every time. I think about the little dragon that the bong is and I so wish that dragons were real, because it would mean that none of this shit was the end of everything, because this world sucks, and even if you are high it only lets you escape a little bit, it lets you escape enough that you know there could be something better, but it won’t let you into that place; like standing on the cloudy threshold of heaven and seeing something so bright and tantalizing and warmy-womby feeling but not being able to enter, just feeling the heat a little on your face, and you want to cry and smile, but instead you just stare and you can’t do anything.
“Hector,” I say. I am lying on the altar thing and staring up through one of the willows, whose drooping, arcing branches are like jagged fissures in the sky. Hector is sitting against the base of the willow’s trunk. “Would you rather be the pope or Pablo Escobar?”
Hector doesn’t think long.
“Escobar, bitch, he gets to have all the fun.”
“Pope gets to live in the Vatican, see Michelangelo all the time,” I say.
“Escobar,” says Joe. He is superhigh. He hogged more of the weed than Hector and me and he is hunched like a pile of trash against the base of the altar. His head hangs forward like a sleeping mule’s.
“Shut up, Joe,” I say. “We know what you want. You want the knife.”
“What knife?” says Hector.
“This puta wanted to cut out your heart with this knife,” I say, and hold up the knife for Hector to see. It reflects a little in the dark.
“If you try, I will fucking kill you, homes,” Hector says to Joe. It seems like he’s angry, but he’s too tired and high to get really angry.
“I didn’t say I wanted to… ,” says Joe, but he doesn’t finish.
“Fuck you, lard-ass,” says Hector, and Hector and I laugh, and Joe shifts a little because he is angry, but he is too lazy to get up, so he just shifts around.
He’s still looking at the ground, but he says, “No, Hector, this fucker is always asking me stupid questions and trying to kill me. He wanted to cut out your heart, homes. That’s how I lost my tooth.”
“No,” says Hector. “You lost that because you are Jack-O’ the jackoff.”
Me and Hector laugh.
Then we all sit for a while not saying anything. I can feel their mind-killing slime thought rubbing on me and corroding me, and killing me.
“Hector,” I say.
“Yes,” he says without looking up.
“Would you rather be gay or be a girl?”
He chuckles a little. Hector can be cool sometimes. Sometimes he is wise.
“Neither,” he says.
“Just saying,” I say. “If you had to choose because a genie said so, what would you choose?”
Joe, still looking at the dark dirt, says, “Both of ’em still have to suck dick.”
“Exactly,” says Hector. And Joe laughs a little. A chuckling pile of trash below me.
“Would that be so bad?” I say. “Don’t you ever get jealous of those girls in pornos that get to be on their knees in the middle of all those dicks?”
“Are you fucking serious?” says Hector.
“Don’t,” says Joe. “This faggot is always asking stupid questions and giving stupid answers; he don’t mean it.”
“No,” says Hector. “This faggot is serious.” He’s looking at me now, I can tell.
“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t you like the idea of an around-the-world blowbang?”
“I like to have a girl suck my dick, but I don’t want to do it,” says Hector.
“Me neither,” says Joe, but he is mumbling.
“Why not?” I say. “What’s the difference?”
“What’s the difference?” says Hector. “Because I am going in, and she is being got inside of.”
“And why is one better? Why does going inside make you better? Aren’t you, like, on her turf inside her, isn’t she in control of you? Like a mommy with her little baby making him feel good?”
“Because,” says Hector. But he doesn’t say anything else.
* * *
On the way home Joe and I are driving down the empty freeway. It’s like two thirty in the morning and we’re still pretty high, and if I look up, directly at the road lights above us, I can see kaleidoscopic rainbows building and turning on top of each other in the core of the bulbs.
And I feel like I’m remembering all this from somewhere, but I’m not sure where, and everything is a little hazy, and I remember that there is an angel named Michael, and he had a flaming sword, and…
And I say to Joe, “Let’s drive the wrong way down the other side of the freeway.”
Joe is almost asleep, but he says, “Wha?” and I can see the black gap just to the left of the center of his mouth.
“I’m going over to that side,” I say.
And I think of the olden times, when knights would aim huge lances at each other and you would feel that when it hit you, feel that force of the momentum of the horses’ pumping, channeled into the lance, and for a second you might know that you were really alive. And a little ways down the freeway there is a gap in the center barrier, and I turn the wheel and cross over.
Yosemite
The drive up to Yosemite was long. My father played Bach the whole first half. We drove through Milpitas, Pleasanton, Dublin, Manteca, Escalon, and Oakdale. We had been to Yosemite before with my mom, but that was when it was snowing. There wasn’t going to be snow this time and it was just me and my dad and my brother.
At the turnoff for the Old Yosemite Road, the sun turned tangerine and my dad took out the Bach and put in a tape of his meditation lady. My brother and I chanted with her using funny voices, but that lasted only a few minutes, then we were quiet again. My dad drove and hummed quietly to himself. My brother and I would trade the front seat at every rest stop. I was two years older, but I got carsick more easily, so I got the front longer. I had been in the front since East Oakdale. The Old Yosemite Road was crooked and my dad drove slower. Soon the sky was getting gray, but there was purple above the mountains. My brother was asleep in the back. He was slanted over with his face in all the puffy jackets.
“Dad, can I turn the heat up?”
“Yup.” I did and cupped my hand over the grate until it was too hot and I pulled it away. I wasn’t tired even though it was dark outside and we’d been driving for hours. I leaned forward but my seat belt held me, so I undid it and leaned again and picked up my father’s old, thick Bible with pages falling out and a rubber band around it.
“Put your belt back on,” he said.
“I know,” I said. I clicked it in place. “I was just picking this up.”
“My Bible.”
“I know,” I said. “Why are the lines colored?” There was yellow, and pink, and green highlighter, all faded, all over the pages.
“Those are passages I like.”
I asked him why.