Chapter Ten

Beatnik writing crap: Hold me I’m slipping, dream me I’m sleeping, wake me up, body, mind, soul, make me glow, I’m writhing, I want to know what that’s like, lick up our neon exposures, devour our closures, going faster and slower, wanting more. Come explore. I’m wanting I’m willing, slide with me into something thrilling, I want to taste, lick my face I’ll lick your face, be in this place, never more alive, nothing more to hide, wide-eyed wanting, I’m willing to be saved, come explode my day murder my night, with all our might, mind, body, soul, I want to know what it’s like to glow, I no longer want to just watch, I want to be in the show, driving, no more hiding, just what are fears for, but to die. Rock me, sway me, bleed me, believe me, no more mystery, I want to know it all. Shake me awake make me quake; catch me mid air in the fall.

My head was feeling scared but my heart was feeling free he sings. Something like that. He sings it in this relaxed trance hypnotic way, in the second half of the song, after he rhythmically scream-bark-sings about Area 51 and aliens in this released tension paranoia way. The song is called ‘The Happening’ by the Pixies. Paris Jackson likes the Pixies because she’s so cool. I didn’t mind that the Michael Jackson Vegas show cost so much, partly because it was worth it, I mean, hologram Michael, no way, and partly because maybe Paris will use the money I spent for the ticket, using my dad’s debit card, to buy herself some new earrings that match her gorgeous green eyes and she won’t try to kill herself anymore. It’s a weird wonderful song; a climax bursts out first and then it just floats.

“I know the prefect song for this,” Seth-Rem had said while we were driving through the Nevada desert. A bit earlier we had been talking about good make out songs. Like ‘Stairway to heaven,’: songs that slow build to a climax and then go fast and crazy and scream and then release; trance songs work well too; songs that just make you float out your own body, take you away from time and place, the way really good make out sessions should do.

“The Happening,” played once and then Seth-Rem asked if he could test out whether that song is a good make out song on me. Just for learning purposes. I shrugged a shoulder and said sure and then my heart jack hammered and I wondered ‘what is happening to me’ and ‘what is going to happen to me’ and ‘is this really going to happen,’ then, ‘this is really happening.’ He placed his hand over my hand and slid his thumb over my knuckles then he turned my hand over and rubbed his thumb over the dip in the center of my palm, the exposed soft meat of the underside of the hand, and his mouth sucked on my neck and I closed my eyes and leaned back and he leaned over me and his hand cusped my breast and pushed up on it and his mouth moved up towards my ear then on my mouth and I was gone.

My head is feeling scared but my heart is feeling free the lyric spoke over the speakers.

I had always wondered why scratching an itch is sometimes associated with sex. It doesn’t sound pleasant, and I don’t get the pleasure from pain masochist thing. But I was made to understand; not pain but the urge to scratch, dig in, hold on, get feisty and retaliate, in this opposite of a fight physical interaction; how in the ways it resembles a fight, with the endorphins and beating heart; in that same way people say the emotions of love and hate are so closely related. A sleeping power within you is awakened and it expands and it overtakes and is insatiable and is bigger than your body and the clutching, the toe curling, the potential to scratch is a manifest of this power reaching out and expanding beyond the body in this insatiable monstrous thirst and quenching happening. It’s a messy bliss thing. Lust.

After “The Happening” the next Pixies song that plays on the “Bossanova” album of theirs is this hazy dazed surf-rock trance song that sounds like an extension of ‘The Happening’. ‘She’s my babe, undressing in the sun….. return to me.’ Something like that. Seth-Rem and I kissed, touched, thrust and squirmed with each other through that song too and I didn’t want it to end. But it ended and Leena said ‘okay, experiment ended; cool off you too, there’ll be no baby making back there, besides Seth, that’d be statutory rape.” She turned off the music and Seth-Rem cooled off seemingly quick and hopped up to the seat in front of me and the sun hit my face and I wanted to put my lips on the window and touch myself to finish it off but I couldn’t because I wasn’t alone, and we all rode in awkward silence for awhile. Everybody was remembering to forget they had the chills goes a lyric in “The Happening.”

Seth-Rem turned around and whispered to me ‘I really loved your sister.’ That made me think, he was thinking of her, of Jan, while kissing me, pretending to be kissing Jan, because we have the same shaped mouth and similar looking eyes. Everyone knows if you can’t have the hot girl her younger sister will do; sometimes will do even better; that’s a guy code thing, I’m guessing. A sick guy code thing; use the younger sisters naivety against her, when she’s still in that dumb stage of thinking all older guys are cooler than boys her own age, so sick-o perv losers get to be cool in someone else’s eyes, if they play the manipulation the right way. I don’t know.

Leena started the music again. Katy Perry songs, her “waking up in Las Vegas” song, which is pretty pop-y and great, although a bit too cheesy and on the nose of Vegas fantasy when you’re actually in the Vegas vicinity, then her great ‘wide awake’ song, about falling from cloud nine

Verdict: ‘The Happening’ is a raw lust-y song about a mysterious mystical spiritual spine-tingling literal encounter with aliens and going back to see them play a show on the Vegas strip (but apply your own metaphors) that works amazing well as a make out song, especially when paired with the Pixies “Ana” and “Is she weird,” and “All over the world”: All I am are my thoughts is the hypnotic refrain ending that song. That’s a great album, front to back, especially, for some reason, while riding through a desert.

“You know what my dad said?” Kang said. “He said, ‘I pretend every Monday is the first day of my two week notice. That’s how I’m able to keep going.”

“He hates his job that much?” Seth-Rem asked.

“I guess so. Or, in that moment he did.”

“That’s so sad,” Leena said.

“Did you kiss my sister?” I asked Seth-Rem once.

“I did,” he said.

“Was I better?”

“That’s kind of a morbid question,” he said.

First night in Anaheim, we saw and heard the Disneyland fireworks out the hotel window. I thought this would be a great setting for sex. In a hotel bed in a cool room on a hot night while Disneyland fireworks boom and glow out the window. A vacation and the anticipation of something new and exciting yet familiar in a nostalgic way (we had all been to Disneyland before as children) to come in the morning. Not as exciting, perhaps, in a genuine way, as when a child in anticipation, but that type of giddy excitement from anticipation can only be achieved and felt as a child, like with Christmas Eve, but still there, and still nice. And besides, if done right, not over used or abused, done in healthy mutual sharing ways, sex, I imagine, is better than even childhood glee from anticipation, Christmas Eve or the night before going to Disneyland; or if not better, simply a type of replacement.

You make your own fun; generate your own pleasure, responsible for your own satisfaction, even in a place, maybe especially in a place, like Disneyland. It really is mostly for kids, and parents who get enjoyment in seeing their kids happy and excited. But it’s meant to be fun for adults too. But if you’re a teen, at Disneyland, if you act like a goof, act like a kid, sort of exaggerate the inner kid in part hipster-ironic detachment act style, part total sincerity and surrender to the ‘magic’ of it, it can be a blast.

Splash mountain at night, in the log on the water ride, turning a corner and there’s the park all lit up below, is a nice magical moment. Faking the terror when the automated Yeti grabs at you on the Matterhorn ride. The glowing red eyes. Taking your picture with the pretty lady paid to dress up and pretend to be Marry Poplins, or Alice, or one of the princesses. Just getting nostalgic while on the iconic rides. ‘Pirates,’ ‘Mr. Toad,’ ‘The Haunted Mansion,’ even if the nostalgia may be better than the actual rides; I’m not sure. We remember things more fondly then they actually are, but returning to them, we return to this forced illusion of things; but they’re still good, still fun. Made more fun with the people you’re with, if you like those people. Pretending your friends are your family. Bonding experiences with them; creating stories to talk about later with them, from shared experience, even just the experience of waiting in line or nothing really going on. The horticulture is great. They do a good job of setting up things just to look at, in Disneyland and California Adventure. The new kiddy ‘Cars’ land, again, mostly for kids, but that one new ride isn’t bad. It’s nice to see kids happy and laughing. Makes you believe, even if just momentarily, maybe if just an illusion, that the world is good, if those kids can be as happy as they seem to be.

I saw a 1950’s era video of Disneyland on YouTube and all the boys had the stereotypical 1950’s mandatory conservative buzz cuts and flat tops, and all the girls wore dresses, and there were Mickey Mouse shaped balloons back then, and the aesthetic all looked amazingly similar to today, which is one of the great things about Disneyland, but no kid in the video smiled or laughed. All were stone faced. It was bizarre, and kind of creepy. I have no explanation for it. Anyways, for some, if you’re an adult and enjoy Disneyland, you’re some weirdo. You’re supposed to be aware of the torture of long lines and the high cost of food and trinkets there, and all the walking required. Maybe I’ll feel that way when I’m older with kids and return; feel the chore of providing fun for the kids or whatever. But I had a good time there. I don’t really want to write too much more about it. In the Animal Kingdom lodge in Disneyworld there are giraffes out your window, I’ve heard. That’d be cool. That’d be a good setting for sex; in a jungle safari themed fancy hotel with real giraffes out your window, I imagine. I hear Disneyland and Disneyworld are popular honeymoon destinations for some, although they mostly stay in the hotel rooms. Maybe I’m wrong about that.

Seth-Rem and Leena had sex in the shower one night. They’re not even a couple. Just ‘friends with benefits’ situation. Both are good looking with good bodies and are friends, or at least don’t hate each other, and people have these natural urges, made stronger with some mutual attraction going on, and relative youth, and forced close encounters, so, why not, I guess, was their attitude. He couldn’t have sex with me, he decided, but he felt he needed to have sex, and Leena was willing, and of course better than I would have been anyways; I don’t know.

No complications or drama, sure, some emotions, I guess, emotions make the sex better, and that’s all they want, good sex, for fun, to feel good, have fun, all that. I felt a little bit jealous and weird about it, but… not enough to cause any drama over it or anything; I decided to have a mature attitude about it. I guess I wasn’t even completely sure I wanted to lose my virginity to him, during this trip. I guess maybe I would have. I guess maybe I did want it, or wouldn’t have minded it, but not enough to take any initiatives. Seth and Leena tried to be secretive about it. We all pretended that it was a secret, sort of. I mean, the three other of us, and between the two of them as well, even. Sort of. Everyone knew but pretended not to know, and it sort of felt like a sitcom-ish joke we were all in, in a weird way. It would have made for a better story, a better journal entry, if I had had sex at some point during the road trip; during camping at Yellowstone perhaps, and I could have used, or over used, the geyser metaphors to describe stuff… whatever stuff I have no idea.

They also did it in Vegas. She did a striptease showcase for all of us while she was half drunk, I think. And she did amazingly well, I have to admit. I’m straight yet even I was turned on. There was no music but some music was playing in her head during her performance, and she moved, or danced, in a way which made us feel we could all hear the music she heard. It was awkward and a bit uncomfortable for me. She didn’t show everything, take it all off, but she was an expert teaser, like, turning her back and taking off her bra with her back turned and then turning around, covering her breasts with her hands, then covering it with this pillow, without exposing her nipples; that kind of stuff; pulling on her panties, up and down, without fully taking them off, while smiling and giggling a lot, while the rest of us watched her stiffly, especially the boys, clearly aroused.

Anyways, I’m not sure how we all knew when she was done; kind of with those things, I’ve sort of learned, the only way to definitively know when it’s done is when someone sexually climaxes, otherwise it just sort of slow burn simmers out, but at one point she said, ‘did you like that?’ which I think was her way of saying she was done. I’m not sure how long her performance lasted; maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Anyways, I said I had to go for a walk, just to walk off the awkwardness kind of, regain myself and wonder if what happened really just happened, afraid to think what else could happen (a group orgy? Naw, not really, but… I don’t know). Candice said she’d walk with me. Kang and Seth-Rem stayed, and I don’t know what they did, but I suspect Seth-Rem and Leena had sex then; not sure if Kang left or watched or joined in (no, that definitely didn’t happen; he’s not weird like that and guys don’t have three-ways with two dudes and a girl, unless they’re bi-sexual or gay I guess, and those boys aren’t; Seth isn’t gross enough to participate in some three way orgy; actually, I’m sure Kang excused himself to go gamble or go on his own walk). Maybe they flipped a coin or something to decide who’d get to be Leena’s sex buddy for the hour. Or more likely Kang was just sort of forced to leave, and then he had to do his awkward stroll around Vegas gathering his thoughts and being uncomfortable in his own solitary way, maybe wondering why Leena didn’t like him as much as Seth-Rem and guessing it’s partly due to him being Asian, or part Asian, and all the untrue negative stereotypes that involves, about penis sizes and what not; I don’t know. The fountain shows at the Bellagio are great.

It’s strange, you don’t notice how many glassy eyed wanderers there are around Vegas until you become a glassy eyed wanderer yourself. ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’. A great marketing headline. Strange too, how you don’t really feel any less safe wandering in Vegas no matter what time of night it is. It’s all the same. Time is lost there. The neon lights blaze all night until morning. People are out all night. Buffets are open all night. An open street car chase and shooting on the strip happened recently before we got there, in the afternoon. Most cities that would only happen at night, but in Vegas it really doesn’t matter. The pornography peddlers are pretty gross. They’re out on the strip all night. Thankfully there’s a new law implemented since I’d last been, where they can’t bother you unless you ask them too. There’s all these weird people in weird fuzzy costumes of pop culture celebrities walking the strip. . It’s bizarre. It’s a bizarre place. ‘The adult Disneyland’ is another slogan given it.