Carpet Rash and White Trashed
9/7/2002

Abandoned by Rochester
Wherein Our Stoic Movette Represses Her Inner Jane Eyre

I'm not sure what possessed me to be an unsolicited volunteer in assisting my co-worker, Diane, in her hasty move from her North Sacto flat. I didn't put much thought into it, just like I never put forth much thought before volunteering to help countless other friends and acquaintances move from place to farflung place over the years. My basic move-slut-boy deal was forged. Provide ample coffee, food, and water, and I'll help move whatever the hell you want for as long as it takes.

However, after some thought on the matter, I think sympathy unconsciously played no small part in my spontaneous involuntary reflex to volunteer. See, Diane, was being "dumped" by her roommate, Craig. Now Craig and Diane were not John Cougar Mellancamp-type (or John Cougar Menstrualcramp as some of my more creative friends have dubbed him) lovers making tracks across the Northern California Valley in a beat-up pickup truck in their desperate dance to free themselves from the trap of their lower-middle-class redneck existence. They weren't a couple at all. "We're just roommates," Diane always insisted when teased by her wiser, elder coworkers like me. However, if you ever heard Diane talk of Craig or saw the twinkle in her hazel eyes when her "roommate" called her at work, one experienced in such matters could sense longing desire roiling beneath the skin of the plucky typist from Olivehurst. It was a one sided Charlotte Bronte in the Trailer Park melodrama, an ageless epic of unrequited love. Diane more than admired the hell out of Craig. She yearned for him as if he were Rochester in Red Wing work boots and a gimme cap.

But just like Rochester, our Craig had a dirty little secret which unfortunately was not so secret- Ruth. Now Ruth was not a madwoman in the clinical sense to be hidden away in the attic, but from the descriptions rendered by our poor little Jane Eyre of the Sierra foothills, she should have been. Ruth was evil on a stick. From Diane's descriptions, Ruth may as well as had pointed teeth, blood red eyes and horns growing from her ears. Ruth was not only taking up space in Diane's apartment for months on end and hogging the attention of the not-so-obscure-object of her heart's desire. Ruth was now doing the almost unspeakable. She had convinced dear Craig to move to another city. Not just any other city, but Fresno, a city whose only only virtue is a mockup country band named after a cancer victim western movie hero that seems to understand Texas better than most Texans. Beyond that, all it has to offer is 15% unemployment,a 1 in 7 chance of getting a minimum wage job at a privately-run prison, and eternal, utter, abject boredom. In comparison, Sacto is a bustling metropolis of cosmopolitan chicdom.

So Craig was off to Fresno, and Diane had a two bedroom apartment she couldn't afford. She had to move. To add insult to injury Craig and Ruth left the place looking like Sid Vicious' and Nancy Spungeon's last night at the Chelsea. You could feel Diane deflate upon entering the apartment on Saturday morning. The bitch and bastard had even abandoned the two cats who had naturally pissed and shat all over the fucking place since they couldn't get to the litter box that had managed to make its way from the bathroom to the back balcony and behind a locked sliding glass door. The majority of the excrement was by the sliding glass door. Poor things had tried to get to their feline facilities, but just didn't have the mechanical skills much less the theoretical and logical resources to overcome the situation. Pity overwhelmed Diane's anger. "Looks like Fat Fred and Fanny Fudge are coming with me," she said.

I started with the boxes, carrying as many as I could down the stairs and piling them upon the little red dolly I'd brought along. That dolly has moved a lot of stuff. Diane started on cleaning the bathroom, then the kitchen. It took about 30 minutes to fill Diane's car with boxes. I don't think she stopped cursing Craig and Ruth during that whole time. On the second load, they lost their names completely, becoming only known as "those fucking bastards." From all Diane's venom, you'd think she'd just gotten a divorce and the new wifey/homebreaker was whisking her man away for endless nights at Hotel Ibiza. I refrained from reminding her that Fresno could be construed as its own punishment.

Rio Fucking Linda

Now Diane's new studio apartment in Carmichael, much more affordable at less than half the price of the two-bedroom flat, wasn't going to be ready for at least two more weeks. So the problem becomes, "where the hell do we put all her stuff?" Well, I wish I didn't have to answer that, but the answer is "Rio Linda." Rio Fucking Linda. And not just anywhere in Rio Fucking Linda, but at the goddamn motherfucking Calvary bleeding Baptist Church and demonshit Christian School at the corner of Elkhorn and Raley Road in Rio Fucking Linda. You see, despite the fact that our dearest Diane is a funloving party girl whose favorite place in the whole world is a little shopping center dive of a bar in Orangvale called the Cheddar Lounge, Diane's Pop is a hardcore tightass conservative Baptist preacher who seems to be a nice enough guy, but the thought of driving this guy through the Tenderloin conjures images of a man who would be reduced to a cinder. I would not go bowling with him nor take him to poetry readings. Scary.

Rio Linda on its own is frightening enough. It is flat, dry, and leaves a little too much space between the trailer parks and prefab cracker-ass palaces. Double-Damn-Wide Hell. There's just a little too much room for ditching bodies in those desolate weeds. The place is rural. The streets are country roads sans sidewalks and the street signs are obscure if not completely rotted to nothing. Yes, the street sign are wood! It's a string of hillbilly cliches, but in the flatlands- rusting trucks on blocks in the front yard, skinny dogs wondering aimlessly, sunbaked women walking on the side of the road wearing nothing but a halter top, shorts, and big cowboy boots. These are women I don't want to see wearing such. The luckier ones are riding horses in the sunbleached fields. Lucky for me too since they move away from me much faster. It's Deliverance in the Northern Valley. I am astounded that this is the middle of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area. I'm from Texas, and I've never in my entire life been more weirded out by the sheer redneckness of it all.

I dutifully move everything from Diane's car to the storage shed behind the parsonage as quickly as possible, minimizing contact with Diane's family and the rather crusty Christian School teacher who is filling Penatas with candy for some church/school oriented event scheduled for that afternoon. Did I mention that the church also had its own private school, grades 1-12? Indoctrination must start early.

I'd initially tried to be friendly toward the teacher, and gave her a chirpy "good morning." She just stopped her Penata-stuffing and stared at me like I'd just sodomized a goat in front of her. "May I help you?" she responded. Diane walked up from behind me and chimed in,"this is Joe, he's helping me move out of my apartment." Diane tried to introduce us, but the teacher just went "Oh," put her head down and continued with her Penata duties. Such high standards of social grace is quite typical among Sacramentans.

The load was stacked in the shed in record time, less than 15 minutes. I don't think I've moved faster in my life. Of course, I don't think I've ever had more incentive to move faster in my life. It was time to return for the next load, but not before a quick tour of the Christian School classroom. Every desk had a miniature American flag in a neat little round stand, crossed with another odd flag I'd never seen before. At first, it looked like a "T" on a blue background in the upper-right corner over a white field taking up upper half of the flag over a blue field in the lower half. I got a fright. "Is this 'T' for Teutonic? Are these guys Aryan nations bloodthirsty freaks?" Visions of Christian Identity movement goose-stepped through my head. I looked closer. It was a cross and not a "T." Still, I was a little spooked until we went outside and the school children were arriving for that afternoon's event. 3 white kids, 2 hispanic, 4 african-american, and 2 asian. Man I was relieved. Despite the overwhelming redneck factor, I was reminded that Sacramento is the most diverse city in the union's most diverse state.

The Cheddar Lounge
and Spot-on Fortune Cookies

After the second load, Diane wanted a break, especially for food. We'd gotten some cheap breakfast that morning at a Jack in the Box in North Sac. I had fish and chips and a diet coke, shades of yobbishness shining through the early morn. Diane got some kind of sausagey thing and hash browns and a coke or something sweet like that. However, when we got to her apartment, she discovered an excess of mayo on the top bread layer of the sausagey thing. This totally weirded her out. She ditched the sani and ate only the hash browns. So around 1:30pm, she was starving.

"Chinese," Diane said. "I want Chinese."

She asked what I thought, and I said, "Cool, I'm totally type B dude today."

Diane didn't laugh at any of my off-the-cuff jokes like "I'm totally type B dude," or "You've got a point and not just the one on your head."

No. Diane always just went, "Okay," and smiled at me with one of those fearful little "you're a freakish one" kind of smiles that indicated that she would tolerate me for the duration of whatever project was at hand and that was it.

Our typing Ms. Eyre did have a conservative streak to rival her Pa's. It just wasn't as menacing. My tales of adventures in LA and SF always drew a kind of blank disgust from Diane as though she were thinking, "Only an amoral freak of a devil worshipper would dare even go to LA or SF." Oh well. She was a good kid nonetheless, especially since she was about to buy me Chinese food.

But this wasn't just any Chinese food. This was Orangevale's famed Happy Gourmet, a food spot so famed that it was frequented not only by the starting lineup of the Sacramento Kings, the mayor, and half the state legislature, but rumor has it that San Fran Mayor Willie Brown makes a monthly pilgrimage to the place. Yep, food better the SF's Chinatown. No fucking shit.

But the fact that the Happy Gourmet was NorCal renowned had nothing to do with why we chose it as our lunchtime laughter spot. No, we were there because the Happy Gourmet was conveniently next door to the Cheddar Lounge.

We made our presence known at the Cheddar. Herb the bartender greeted Diane by name.

"We'll be back. Gettin' some Big Gay Gourmet to go," she told Herb.

"The usual?" Herb shot back.

"Yeah, wait five minutes, though. I don't want all the fucking ice to water it down."

"What would you like?" Herb directed at me.

I raised a finger and opened my mouth, but Diane beat me to the punch.

"Better giv'em a Diet Coke, Herb," she laughed. "Don't want'em to miss another two days at work again."

Herb smiled. "Five minutes," he said.

In regards to the two days of missed work, that's a long story. Your dearest hackmeister went on a bit of a Toxic Yoga Destructo Boy tear through the Haight and the Mission while in the city the previous weekend whilst catching up with some old friends, or that's what everyone in Sacto that he knows thinks. The only Sacramentan who knows the truth is the ever-cute ever-trustworthy Dr. O'Leary. Anyway, that's another story for another time.

Over at Happy Gourmet, Florida State was ripping some poor small school like South Florida Institute of Reptilology and Forensic Parapsychology to shreds. It was ugly, hardly a game. The score in the second quarter was so grossly obscene that I've since forgotten it, putting it out of my mind for the shear horror it was.

Diane ordered Sesame Chicken. I got Sweet and Sour Chicken.

We returned to our roosts mid-bar at the Cheddar, our drinks waiting. My diet coke was as fresh as a daisy. And from the bursting sigh to the gods emitting from Diane, I could say her Chevis on the rocks was in the same premier league.

According to Diane, most women who frequented the Cheddar thought Herb to be ultimately toasty. I didn't find anything remarkable about the Herbster. But I will admit that there is always something especially sexy about those who enable your vices. My vice is coffee. I've never met a female barista who wasn't the sexiest woman alive. Coffee is so important to me that even a few male baristas have started looking good. Yet in the case of at least 90% of the baristas over whom I've fawned, it is doubtful that I would have found them attractive outside such context. "The power of the bean" as they say. So one would assume not a distant stretch to "the power of the brew and spirits." I understood completely the attractiveness of Herb.

To our right, at the end of the bar were a few members of the Geratol set. I'm not sure specifically what the fuss was about. They were a little overly attentive to the television above them which featured some golf tournament. Their animation toward this event was quite incongruous. Their howls and laughs and playful indignation at the progress of the match was obviously fueled by an excess of time and tasting at the bar.

To my left were two guys that looked to be in their late forties or early fifties. They too were fueled and animated about god knows or cares what. They were getting low on the dough, so Herb fronted them each a White Russian. They praised him to highest heaven as if he'd descended from it and bestowed the drinks upon them.

"Hey, what's that say?" asked one of the guys to my left pointing to my cap which I'd placed upside down on the bar and in which I'd placed my shades.

One chair separated me from the two guys to the left. The guy asking the question wasn't the guy next to me, but the guy two chairs over, so his arm was practically in his friend's nose as he pointed to my cap.

I revealed the logo on the cap to the Inquisitor.

"Ah! Kings!" said the guy next to me, and he high-fived me.

The Inquisitor just shook his head.

"Never mind him," said High-Fiver, "He's a Lakers fan."

"They got lucky this year," I said, playfully pointing at the Inquisitor,"The Kings choked and gave it to 'em."

High Fiver shook his head.

High Fiver revealed that he worked for the Kings Broadcast Network. He was a replay tape operator. He went on and on about how he loved his job and that during the off-season he got lots of work from people he knew and how when he couldn't do a job, he'd pass it on to someone who'd helped him before.

"TV, Movies, showbiz in general," High Fiver told me, "Is about favors, connections, and creating good Karma."

I shook my head in agreement for about fifteen minutes. Diane placed my Sweet and Sour Chicken under me along with a pair of Chopsticks and a plastic fork. I chose the plastic fork.

I ate and listened. High Fiver slammed down his White Russian and Herb fronted him another one.

"It's about the love," went High Fiver,"It's all love. I can't believe how many people are out there everyday not only doing jobs that they don't love, but that they actually hate. I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky. I can't do anything that I don't love. It's that love that creates more love and more work."

I smiled.

"See how that works," he said, lightly popping my left arm with the back of his hand to reinforce his point.

"It's all about the love. The more love you have, the more things come your way. The less you love, or the more you hate, the more things move away from you. You isolate yourself. You get stuck in something you hate and it's a downward spiral. I can't believe people let themselves get bogged down like that."

This theme played for about an hour. High Fiver went on about how his sons were now in their early 20's and were actually working together with him on some projects and how that made him so happy to actually be able to work with his kids and teach them a trade and watch them learn and grow and mature.

"It's love," he said. "See, my love for the job has brought my love for my boys together. It's great. Love and good things happen."

He was glowing.

I finished off the chicken and felt that kind of contentment you can only feel on a full stomach and with a pleasant aftertaste in the back of the throat.

Diane nodded toward the door. Herb took the empty Chinese food containers from the bar to throw them out.

"Don't forget your fortune cookie," he said, dropping it in my hand. "Everybody needs good fortune."

"Uh-huh," I thought, the eternal cynic.

I shook hands with High Fiver and Inquisitor.

"You're alright for a Lakers fan," I told Inquisitor.

High Fiver laughed loud enough to be heard in Chico.

I settled into the passenger seat of Diane's Dodge Stratus, rolled down the window, and took a deep breath of warm dry air.

"Nice place," I said.

"Yeah," she replied. "That's what I like about the place. Strangers just start talking to you."

I opened my fortune cookie and read it.

A stranger will tell you what you need to hear.

Trailer Parking for Blue Sparking

While Diane's stuff was parked back at the Christian Coral awaiting the opening of the Carmichael apartment, Diane herself was going to be parked at her sister Dianna's (Don't ask. But no, they aren't twins. Diane is three years older than Dianna. Parents just ran out of imagination I guess.) in a Trailer Park called the Vista Linda (yeah, ambitious to say the least) at the three corners where Rio Linda, El Verde, and North Highlands meet, an unholy trinity of white trashdom.

We pulled into the Trailer Park off of Roseville Road. Though there were several streets, they were all called Vista Linda Lane. The trailers were numbered, 1 through 402. About 50 feet inside the entrance, we came to a dead stop and face to face with a corpulent kid in the middle of the road who had a belly the size of a medicine ball, wearing a white "FREE STONE COLD" t-shirt that Diane at 5'10" could've worn as a very comfortable dress. He just sort of stared at us as if he were a cow.

"What the..." Diane muttered.

The kid finally scooted out of the way with leaden feet after a few seconds. He followed us with wide zombie eyes as we passed. Nothing registered on the blank face.

"Geesh," went Diane.

Dianna lived in trailer 187. "That's the police code for murder," Diane pointed out.

"Bodes well for you," I said.

Diane just gave me the "you're a freak" look.

The double-damn-wide was filled with stuffed animals, not unusual for young women in their early twenties who still retained a clitoral-centric sexuality and had not yet reached a vaginal-centric one as a Freudian might say. Geez, can't the vagina and clitoris live together as one big happy fun zone? I hadn't even met the two occupants of the trailer and I was already damning them through the lens of a somewhat twisted, often disproved German shrink whose fame had done nothing for the world but make it overanalyze the most simple human instincts and given us a name for certain slips of the tongue.

The other occupant of the trailer was Diane and Dianna's cousin, Faith Hope. Yes, everyone called her by those two names- her first and middle. To make matters worse, her last name was Gleason. Such a name made me wonder about the parents of this 20-year-old young woman who was spending her last weekend in Sacto before heading back for year two at Chico State. They were either very poetic, very optimistic, or really, really desperate. From the pictures of Faith Hope's parents, I think they were the latter.

Despite the fact that Faith Hope was going back to Chico for the semester, she was going to keep the room in Sacto. Diane was going to get the couch, at least on weekends when Faith Hope was back.

We dumped a few boxes of clothes in the living room floor and headed back out for the last loads of boxes and furniture. We still didn't have a truck to move the furniture in.

As we stepped out the door, a green Mazda Truck pulled in the driveway. Dianna and Faith Hope jumped out. Dianna looked like Diane, only a wee bit shorter and with strawberry blonde hair rather than straight blonde.

Faith Hope was maybe 5'4". She had a small upturned nose like Bob Hope's and shoulder length black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her skin was brown. Most striking were her magnetic brown eyes. They pierced you, then sucked you in.

"What the hell is this doing in the middle of the floor?" screamed Dianna from inside the trailer.

"I'll move it when I get back," Diane yelled back.

"Move it now!" came the response.

We went back in.

I laid on the carpet floor sprawled like a cowboy crucifix in my steel toes, shades, and Kings hat while Diane moved her stuff and argued with her sister. Faith Hope sat on the couch and we laughed at the them.

I was already beat. I wanted to go to sleep right there, but Faith Hope jolted me. I turned on some charm, made some jokes, made her laugh.

Diane got her stuff squared away and the sister act died down.

Faith Hope said she'd cook us dinner when we were done.

I was glad. Diane and I headed back out to finish off the furniture. While driving back to the old North Sac apartment, I kept thinking, "I'm gonna sleep with Faith Hope."

Moved

Everything was suddenly soft, warm and dreamlike. The pink, purple, and burnt-orange sunset was a saturated tableau that absorbed every molecule of body and soul. I was transformed into the universal baby of Kubrick 2001 floating over the much-maligned Valley, this city of Sacramental, Sacratomato, Sackatomatoes. Suddenly, I understood the place and why I was here as a faint tinge of poetry resonated right through me and pulsed through my veins like so much Morphine, rendering contentment and welcomed relief from the pain. It all came together at that moment and life seemed to make sense again. If for no other reason, despite the debacles and the heartaches, the crushes and the abandonment, I came to the Northern Valley for this moment. No matter if I never saw Faith Hope again or was killed the next moment in a fiery car crash, I'd connected with someone on such a subliminal, dare I say, subatomic, level that it didn't even hit me until she was out of sight. It was one of the purest, most primeval things I'd ever felt, and damn it felt good to be human and alive again. Six years of toil and labor and acting the stern part of the working professional flushed away in minutes. Pinnochio was a boy again.

Diane yammered on about mainly how pissed she was at Craig and Ruth. I feigned interest the best I could as my mind drifted further and further away, Faith Hope's eyes still piercing me. I imagined them floating out in the space in the sky above the strip centers and shopping malls along Watt Avenue.

We borrowed preacher dad's van that he used for his side vending machine gig. It was huge. We got all the furniture in two loads. We left all of it on the back deck at the parsonage, so all of Diane's furniture is going to be outdoors for two weeks. I sleepwalked through the whole thing. Diane said things, lots of things, as did preacher dad and her brother, Bob, who was a big redneck kind of guy. I didn't hear any of it. I only remember snatches of images, like Bob getting onto a riding lawn mower, and trying for about ten minutes to start it, and thinking that he was just way too big to be on the thing, and that it would probably topple over if he took a corner too sharply. It was like a Shriner parade, Bob on that mower. I could see the blades whirring as Bob and mower laid on their sides. It got funnier the more I imagined it. I laughed out loud at the image, and didn't realize it until Diane went, "What?"

"What's so funny?"

"Huh.." I said.

"You were laughing."

"Oh, I was?"

I got yet another "you're a freak" look.

I started to calculate. This was something that I had not done in years. How was I gonna hook-up with Faith Hope?

The odds were against me. The plan was this: 1) get all furniture moved to Pa's; 2) Go to Wally World to get Fred and Fanny supplies; 3) dinner at Vista Linda Trailer 187; 4) take Joe and his love seat home. Oh yeah, I was getting a love seat out of the deal, too. It was the only thing that would fit in my apartment. I was offered a couch, but it was about 20 feet long, and there's no way I could've gotten it into my apartment and maintained even the merest shred of feng shui. The damn thing would've taken over, and I would've spent more time going around the thing than actually sitting on it. Besides, when I did use it, I probably just would've have fallen asleep on it, and that's hardly productive. No. Thanks for the offer on the couch, but no thanks. I'll take the Love Seat for free, Phil. It fits nicely in my little kitchen nook right under a big light so I can sit and read Pauline Kael, Siggie Freud, Jung, Octavio Paz, Gabe Garcia-Marquez, Salinger, and other malfeasant malingerers to my heart's content with a cushy booty to boot. Besides, I liked the way it sounded. Free Love Seat. A seat for free love. Bade (bodes? whatever, as you can tell oh gentle and generous reader, your hackmeister tries not to be too tense about his tenses) well, methinks.

So the best tactic was going to be a delay tactic, sort of like Italian soccer's catanaccio or padlock. Score a goal, and then hold on to that one-nil lead with all you've got. But instead of holding on to a one goal lead, I wanted to hold on to my place on the floor, couch, bed, or whatever next to Faith Hope. But knocking that goal home was far from a lock. But the opportunity certainly felt like it was presenting itself. Moreover, while traipsing through the Wally World pet aisles, it was plain to see that Diane was clearly exhausted. Dinner would most likely do her in. I was betting on it. Perhaps we could put off step 4 until tomorrow.

I was wide awake again, despite the fact that every muscle I had hurt like hell. My calves were mincemeat from walking up and down stairways again and again with an armload of boxes, or the front or back end of a piece of furniture. My knees felt like giant hands were squeezing them to the point of pain. They were stiff and inflexible. It was like walking on stilts. I could feel this walking through Wally World, but it didn't bother me too much. My brain was somewhat on the juiced side.

"Gosh, I can't believe I'm spending $40 on the cats," Diane muttered.

A young couple passed by, and hearing Diane, the woman commented, "It's always that way."

I turned to them, sneaking my arm around Diane's shoulders, "And she only spent five bucks on me!"

The couple burst out laughing.

"I know where her priorities are," I said.

The remark only coaxed a very droopy "you are weird" smirk from an about-to-drop Diane.

What's My Tribe?

Back at 187 Vista Linda Lane, Diane and I stumbled through door to the sound of some godawful Nashville pop yodel fuck. Faith Hope was curled in the middle of the huge couch (It was huge, one of those right angle "L" jobs that would have been 30 feet long if it were in a straight line. Sections of it even reclined. This was bubba comfort at its finest. Guess no trailer is without one of these.) listening intently, obviously moved by this crap.

"What the hell is this," I tossed at Faith Hope trying to battle back those deep brown eyes.

I'm not sure what her response was. Travis Trout McGillicutty or something like that. Obviously some lowest common denominator Nashville industry slut.

"The best country comes from Texas and sounds a helluva lot better than this," I snorted, plopping down on one end of the megacouch that was already in "recline" position, emitting a huge "aaaahhh."

"Robert Earl Keene, Lyle Lovett, Jimmy LaFave, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore," she blurted.

I was stunned, and in friggin' love. If she'd included Kinky Friedman in the list, I would have coronaried right there. Holy shit. The girl was a Real Country fan. Hope for the Trailer Park crowd. Faith Hope.

"Nanci Griffith..." I said.

"Hate her voice," she said.

"And you like Jimmie Dale Gilmore's?" I shot back.

"He's a guy, and a sexy Indian guy to boot."

"I'm a fraction Cherokee/Chickasaw and half a dozen other Trail of Tears tribes."

"Uh-huh, what's Trail of Tears, a band?."

"What, don't you...."

"I'm kidding," she said. "My grandparents are Okies. Where do you think all the Trailer Trash in California comes from, Saskatchewan?"

Oh my god! Smart and a raging smartass.

"Looking at your reddish brown complexion, my dear, what's your tribe?"

She didn't miss a beat, "Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee. There's more, but my grandparents won't talk about indian stuff anymore." She looks at the stereo, and points the remote at it. Jimmie Dale Gilmore gives of us You're Just the Wave and Not the Water.

"You're for real," she says.

"Huh?"

Diane plops down on the other end of the megacouch, reclines, puts her head back and closes her eyes.

"You're the first person I've ever met who says "Chickasaw" right," she explains. "Most people say it as it looks- Chick - a - saw. It's Chick - a - shay. You an Okie?"

"Hell no," I blurted. "Yo soy Tejano!"

"Huh," she said. "I took French, not Spanish."

"Je Vien du Texas," I said.

"Oh. That explains it," she says.

"Explains what?"

"Your knowledge of good country, your vibe."

"My vibe? Didn't know I had one. Hope it's not offensive."

Faith Hope gets a far away kind of grimacing smile. She looks off in the distance, away from me, searching for an explanation.

Diane looks up, bleary-eyed. "His vibe?"

"Shut up," Faith Hope snorts and backhands her playfully on the upper arm.

"Oww!"

Diane falls back into sleep mode. In a few minutes, she is snoring. The whole place is filled with the smell of noodles, and what smells like beef.

"I don't know," she says turning toward me, "You just seem different."

She looks all embarrassed and glassy eyed.

I get a little boy grin, and kind of blush. "What does that have to do with being from Texas?" I ask.

"I don't know," she says, "I think it has a lot to do with it."

We both look at each other with embarrassed smiles.

"It's not a bad thing," she says. "It's really kinda...uh....cool, in a way, ya know."

I just smile. There's tension in the air, wonderful tension. In the back of my mind, I hear, "one-nil."

Diane snores.

Chicken and Noodles, The New Guy, Say It Isn't So, A Teenage Shrew, and the Odd, but Joyous Taste of Metal Mouth

"What do you mean, you don't eat beef. Oh my god. I didn't know. What about chicken? I have chicken. Want chicken?"

Before I'd even responded, I heard a freezer door open, and the "beep beep" of microwave controls. Thaw mode.

"I am so sorry," Faith Hope went on. "Why didn't you tell me," she said to Diane.

"Gee, I had no idea what you were cooking," Diane replied, I little pissed at all the blame being put on her.

I just smiled.

Diane, Dianna, and Faith Hope sat on one leg of the "L", why I had the recliner on the other leg.

They sat eating their ground beef and noodles, all sitting cross-legged, eyes intent upon the television, and Keanu Reeves in Devil's Advocate. I kicked back with a Diet Pepsi, casting quick glances at Faith Hope. I caught her returning a couple.

Faith Hope returned from the kitchen with a plate of noodles and chicken breast on the side that she had baked to perfection in basalmic vinegar and chunks of garlic. Simple and tasty, she took the Diet Pepsi from my hand, placed it on the floor, and replaced it with the plate. She sat down and curled up next to me.

"Keanu Reeves is such a dumbshit," she whispered in my ear. "Look at them," she said casting a glance toward Diane and Dianna, "I'll bet their both wet right now."

I repressed an immense urge to drop my plate of scrumptious chicken and plant a big kiss on Faith Hope. I just giggled instead and glanced at her. She was looking right at me.

"We'll watch The New Guy after this," she said. "The lead actor is hot."

"Why?" I asked.

"He's a dork. Dorks are sexy."

"You must think I'm raging, then," I said.

"Maybe," she said. putting her hand on my thigh. It just sat there, and I sizzled.

The New Guy DVD was sort of a gift left behind by Craig. He'd rented it and left it behind. I figured Diane was gonna keep it for good to spite him until I found out he'd rented it on her card. Hopeless.

Dianna cashed it in. Diane, Faith Hope, and I stayed for The New Guy. Faith Hope got up, put in the DVD and returned to the mega couch. I thought for certain she would take a more neutral position upon her return. But she practically sat upon me. She was pushed right up against me. The warmth was electrifying. It made the mediocre morass of a movie quite a pleasant experience. The sight of Eliza Dushku and Zooey Deschanel didn't hurt either.

She returned her hand to my thigh. I put my hand on the inside of hers. As I found out a little later, Faith Hope was wearing nothing but a pair of sweat pants, and a Fed Ex hooded sweatshirt she'd stolen from an ex.

The lead kid in the film was a dork. A huge dork. In the final scene at the Broken Spoke, I felt a wetness dragging from the bottom of my ear to the top. But something got caught in the creases, scratching my ear. Our girl had a tongue piercing.

Diane cashed it in, and went to Faith Hope's room. We had this huge couch, the telly, and a big living room to ourselves.

Faith Hope put in Say It Isn't So. When Heather Graham cut off Chris Klein's ear, we both cringed, putting our foreheads together. I don't remember much about the movie except the taste of a metal tongue ring. Disturbing at first. But I grew used to it. Liked it, in fact.

Ten Things I Hate About You is a teen version of Taming of the Shrew. I didn't realize it at first. The school was called Padua, Julia Stiles was Katerina, and her begrudging man-to-be was Patrick Verona.

"What's with all the Italian names?" I blurted.

"It's Shakespeare, silly," Faith Hope responded. "Taming of the Shrew, duh!"

"Oh yeah, long time, no Bill," I said, "Well, except for that Beach Blanket Comedy of Errors I saw a couple of weeks ago in Hell A."

She punched me.

In a party scene, Julia Stiles gets all drunk, then she gets all jiggy with it on a dining room table to some low thumping, low diving hip hop song. She's actually on all fours on the table wiggling her ass like a dog on ecstasy. She stands up on the table to rip some more moves, but whacks her head on the chandelier. She falls, and pretty boy catches her, and drags her outside for some fresh air. Stiles and pretty boy sit on a swing set out in the front lawn of this house where the party is a-ragin', and get all doey-eyed on each other.

"Your eyes have a little green in them," Julia says, then ralphs all over pretty boy's shoes. Riveting, poetic stuff.

Totally inspired, obviously, Faith Hope grabs my head and lays a big one on me. She then grabs my right hand and shoves it down her sweatpants.

Shaven.

Rain

Thirty-nine months. Thirty nine fucking long months and the drought was finally over. Thank you Chico State.

Morning

Two naked bodies entwined on the carpet beneath the telly under a blue sheet that came from I have no idea. Faith Hope must have put it over us in the middle of the night. Or late in the morning. I don't think we cashed in the gig until maybe five, if not later.

Patsy Cline sang "I Fall to Pieces" on CMT. Sunlight poured in the window to our left. Faith Hope opened her eyes for a second, closed them again, and mouthed the words. Diane walked-in looked at us with disgust, plopped down on the couch, picked-up the remote and changed the channel.

You could feel a surge through Faith Hope. She unwrapped herself from around me, and shot straight up from the floor.

"Goddamnit! Don't you ever interrupt Patsy Cline again! Ingrate! Heathen! Philistine!!!!"

Diane just looked at her, a naked Faith Hope standing before her ready to jump from her skin.

"Change it back to Patsy, damnit!"

"Okay, Okay," Diane whined as she clicked it back and left the room. "I didn't know that you were watching it," as she departed.

"Sacrilege!" Faith Hope said and wrapped herself back around me.

"My kind of girl!" I thought.

My shoulder blades were burning, as were my lower back, tailbone, and the middle of my butt. "That's what you get for letting her on top", I thought, "Worth it. Worth it in every way."

It was 8:30am.

Faith Hope let me hang around while she and the two others went to church.

"It's my uncle's church," she explained. "I have to go at least once before I head back to Chico."

"But you'll be back most weekends," I retorted.

"Yeah, but I haven't been all summer. I'll be cursed to hell if I don't go."

I watched Ten Things all the way through without a foreign, metallic tongue in my mouth. It made me want to go to Seattle.

Ciao Bella

I scribbled my phone number and email address on an envelope, found some Scotch Tape, and plastered it to the computer monitor in Faith Hope's room before she returned.

When the three ladies did return, Faith Hope bounded back to her bedroom where I was half asleep. She jumped on me and planted multiple smoochies. I pointed to the envelope on the monitor and said, "Don't forget me."

"How can I?"

"I don't know," I responded, "Coming to your senses...Bottle of Vicodin...Severe blow to the head...Getting to know me better and seeing me for the directionless piece of shit I am..."

She raised her head from mine and those deep brown eyes shot stinging daggers into mine.

"Okay self-esteem boy," she said, "Don't make me start analyzing this coupling and start thinking, 'Oh, this cool,Cowboy dude from Texas almost the age of my dad only slept with me because he hates himself.' Don't do that to me Mr. Issues. Don't fucking do that to me."

I laid on my back and looked at the ceiling fan whirring above.

Faith Hope grabbed me by the mouth and turned my face toward her.

"When you fuck me," she said, "You'd better fucking mean it."

A week later, those words still echo in my head.

Diane was ready to roll. I kissed Faith Hope one last time.

"Ciao Bella. Have a nice college."

She just laughed and tweaked my nose.

"Get some counseling," she whispered in my ear.

"Maybe from you," I whispered back.

"Not my job," she whispered again, putting her finger over my lips, and kissing me on the cheek.

"Go away now," she said with a gentle tone, index finger still on my lips, patting me on the butt, and sending me toward the door.

Diane, observing this exchange from a distance, just rolled her eyes at me when I walked up to her. I saw her looking back at Faith Hope, giving her the rolling eyes, too.

Heading back to Midtown in Pop's van, love seat in the back, Rio Fucking Linda never looked so fucking good.

BJR