Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Maybe Marisol tired of the vibration with sparse verbal support and no physical backup,
or she had to work double shifts, or she got grounded or a better offer. Maybe she resented our
tedious whiles by the creek, with its rocky bed and none of the high times the Yankees were
known for. I could only speculate. The only thing worse than making a move too soon was
making no move at all. She stopped coming by.
Cold turkey is tough on young blood. As a draft-dodging campus refugee who could
maintain a C- average by showing up for the first day of class and again for the final exam
I felt qualified to be President of the United States of America—or would feel so qualified in
another forty years.
Short of all things to all people in the 60s, I was just clever enough to survive on re-
creational drugs and crummy jobs, like picking apples or black walnuts, washing dishes and
prepping pizzas, shingling roofs or any manner of minimum wage drudgery to pay the rent
and buy groceries. A draft beer was 25¢. My share of the rent was $35. Reefer came in lids
for $8, though the best Mexican reefer was $15, because it let you laugh for no good reason.
Could I have excelled as an A-student if I'd applied myself? No. I could not. A-students are
satisfied with sedentary pursuits, like studying.
I got a D in Español. I remembered a few nouns and transitive verbs, along with a profile
of rightwing/Catholic propriety in a severely constrained culture preoccupied with chaper-
ones to safeguard its young and presumably virgin beauties. Maybe my dark-eyed chiquita
had murmured about rearranging the furniture in her parents' house once we were married.
Maybe she'd asked for my preference on sexual favors. I told myself to regret nothing, even as
hope faded. Yet I feared the fault was in me. I'd held back.
Next in the stepping-stones to insight came Rianne, who asked for a ride on my motor-
cycle with only four days till the bulls would run. “Okay,” I shrugged, thinking immediately
that a ride would give us a great opportunity to find a bathroom or at least a place to go
peepee or even take a dump in a pinch—I could not think of Rianne in that way, possibly
doubting that she actually took dumps or did anything outside the realm of perfection. At any
rate the campground toilets had clogged and overflowed, illustrating the ultimate case against
anarchy. World population in 1969 was right at half of what it would be forty years later, so
clogged campground toilets also illustrated the ultimate case for family planning—a case that
obviously failed. But nature didn't begin to die in earnest for another decade or two, so the
seeping sewage swelling from a rivulet to a creek to step over was a joke, a bad one worth re-
membering. Should I take a roll of toilet paper? Nah. She'd bring that if she needed too, and at
that point I wondered if she saw me only as a convenient means to a convenient place to take
a dump, which of course she must do, even if I had trouble picturing it.
One toilet still functioned, but it had a waiting line that did not shorten till way after dark,
and the area smelled like shit all the time. Rianne wanted to go to a yonder hill. She poin-
ted just there, where she could see a building. She wanted to check it out. It sounded perfect;
