Here’s some non-fiction. It’s just the beginning.

Best City in Town

 

 

The music woke Luke up. Or maybe it was that woman’s chaotic laugh. Either way, he was conscious again, but not entirely certain what was happening, let alone who these people were. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim, amber light that lit this strange little apartment. The light came from a street lamp outside. It revealed fat, lazy snowflakes in the night air. Luke turned his head and focused on a styrofoam reindeer, no bigger than a beagle. Then, a deep voice took his attention.

“So, I killed my squad in Vietnam. I told them at my court-martial that I aint no coward. I thought it was an enemy patrol so I tripped the claymore. I didn’t know it was my squad. I aint no coward or nothin.”

The voice came from a burly man with a thick beard and a baseball cap with the unit patch from the 101^st Airborne Division. Between the reindeer and the Vietnam veteran, who apparently had been talking to him for quite some time, Luke was very puzzled. He raced through his brain to recall something, anything that would help him to remember who these people were, where he was and how he got there. But nothing came. The woman responsible for the chaotic laugh did appear, however. She landed in the talkative Vietnam veteran’s lap.

“Do you want another Otter Pop?” she asked, presenting a fist full of the frozen treats. Her A-Line dress still had the sales tag attached. It dangled like a medal from her sleeve.

“You look good in that thing, darling,” said the veteran. She laughed and put an Otter Pop in his shirt packet and then leaned suddenly forward, bracing her fall with a hand on Luke’s leg.

“Got it!” called a voice from the other side of the room, and Luke looked up to see a younger guy hunched over a computer screen. Everyone got up to see what they had “gotten,” so Luke followed.

“101^st Airborne, Vietnam,” said the younger guy. On the screen was a photograph of a guard tower, clearly form the Vietnam war, with a giant plastic snoopy attached to its front.

“That’s it!” shouted the veteran. “I got high in that guard tower!”

What in the hell was going on, Luke wondered. Next, he heard a voice behind him.

“Luke, check it out!” called the voice, vaguely Midwestern. He turned to see a young woman, holding the Styrofoam reindeer.

“Follow me!” she shouted, running into the tiny kitchen. He followed her. The two of them stood at an open window, looking out at an alley, three stories down. The bitter cold hit Luke as they poked their heads outside. The young woman held the reindeer out over the alley and let go. They watched the thing fall gracefully through the air until it hit the ground, exploding in the packed snow.

“What the hell time is it?” asked the young woman. Luke scanned the wall for a clock. 2:13 a.m.

“Good morning,” said the young woman. “You sure can sleep through anything. And for so long, too. Must be from the boat.”

Luke had no level clue what the young woman was talking about. He’d been sleeping? What boat? Before he could ask some key questions, the music got incredibly loud, and he found himself shouting just under the noise as the young woman opened a beer and bounded back to the front room. Confused and a little concerned form his sanity, Luke retreated to a bedroom.

“Good night, Luke!” he heard form the group, and in the relative quiet, he found a mirror and noticed he was wearing a sweatshirt with the logo of a fishing boat—the Pacific Explorer. This shook a thought loose, and Luke finally felt just a little bit safe. He recognized the shirt, and had a general hint now of where he’d been. He laid down to think, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up again. This time, the sun was out, and the world outside was full of everything cold. Car exhaust hung like fog around idling vehicles. The sky was void of anything but light gray. Even the sunlight seemed cold. A range of mountains, covered in snow, stood beyond the buildings. A group of ravens milled around a pizza box in the alley, next to the exploded reindeer. The apartment, however, was decidedly warm. Leafy houseplants shared space with empty beer cans, and the young woman and the young man sat smoking and waking up, in that order. The woman had the first words.

“I can’t believe we spent an entire evening with Aunt Bunny and Uncle Fucking ‘Nam,” she said. The young man laughed and offered Luke some coffee.

“Do you want some, Nova?” he said to the young woman, who now had a name. One more useless clue in a soup of confusion.

“Look who’s up again,” said the young man. Before Luke could speak, Nova did.

“Aaron, can I borrow your camera today?” she said.

Good. Now at least Luke had some names.

“Oh yeah, Luke, your camera is still in my bag,” said Nova, pulling out a digital model and handing it to Luke. “I’d use it, but Aaron’s has the bigger card.”

Luke held the camera nervously. It was like and electronic Rosetta Stone. He knew it held more strange clues. Nova grabbed her coat and left, and soon Aaron was off to work, leaving Luke alone in an apartment he now knew was in Anchorage, Alaska. Little facts like this were coming to life for him. And the activation of the camera brought more. It had a video function, and in keeping with the mystery, that’s all it contained: four very short video clips involving explosions, nudity and drunken rants that left more questions than answers. Luke decided to take it one clip at a time, to use the clips as coordinates with which to piece together the path that led him to this odd ice island. He put on a coat, lit a smoke and started for the door, camera in hand.

Here’s another:

The Dead Guy Road Trip Church

Neil Zawicki

                Desert peaks decorated the funeral hall. No one mentioned it, but everyone noticed. As the people shuffled in, the stepmother of the guest of honor stood in a high-dollar business suit, emphatically thanking everyone for coming.

                His real mother sat quietly in the front row, staring. There was no casket. Instead, there was a  stout, wooden altar. Draped across it was a white cloth, on top of which sat a basketball, a pair of diving fins, and a chessboard. John Looked over at Luke and asked, “what are we doing here?”

1

                The Lusty Lady is in downtown Seattle, on Pike Street.  It’s a series of booths along a narrow corridor made of painted plywood. The floor is dull and scuffed, and each booth has a little window that, after feeding it quarters, opens to reveal a room full of naked women lazily dancing to Bon Jovi music. The window only stays open for around 13 seconds, so, naturally, many quarters are required. The Lusty Lady is frequented by bums, drifters, and fish-ripe sailors. Ryan Juke was a good-looking kid from Arizona who spent his college days blasting Doors music and smoking hoot. Tonight, he was a patron of The Lusty Lady. This was due to the fact that he had willingly joined the ranks of the bums, drifters, and fish-ripe sailors. He did this just to say he had done it. He and his companion Luke Schuter were reporting for work on a fishing boat the next morning—the first for Ryan and the second for Luke-and so thought they would hit The Lusty Lady, for no more than the novelty of it. At the moment, Luke was in the same booth as Ryan, which caused one of the women to stop dancing and address the pair.

“Okay guys,” she stated, leaning into the tiny window, naked. Her accent was unmistakably southern.

 “There can only be one of ya’ll in there, so one of ya’ll has to leave.”

Ryan Juke, being an avid supporter of hedonism, was both unaware and unconcerned with any violations of the stringent rules of conduct at The Lusty Lady. Luke grabbed him, yelling over the din of the music.

“Ryan, we have to leave!” he declared.

“Why?” Ryan shouted, laughing, sifting through a handful of change. Over Ryan’s shoulder, Luke spotted a bouncer approaching the two with a determined glare.

“How many quarters do you have left?” Luke asked.

“None!” Ryan yelled. They left before the bouncer could stop them. On the way out, they witnessed a confrontation in the lobby. A patron was angry about having been thrown out, and he was yelling at the indifferent cashier, who’s arms were covered in tattoos.

“I’m gonna write to my congressman,” the man shouted, “..and tell him that I was abused by your facility!”

Ryan Juke and Luke Schuter shuffled past this and out the door, howling with laughter as they rushed across Pike Street.

“We have to get to 4^th avenue to catch the last bus,” Schuter said through hilarious tears.

“Why?” Juke asked, rushing along, leaning forward, his arms in the air.

“Because that’s where the bus stop is,” Luke shouted. “Trust me, I remember from last time.”

“Okay, so long as you’re hip!” Juke shouted, sending the two into fits of laughter.

“I’m hip!” Luke yelled. They were both yelling this as they zipped through the deserted 3 a.m. streets of Seattle, the scene of a previous trip by Luke Schuter. Schuter met Juke a few months earlier through John Burg at a party near Arizona State University. It was a Latin dance party, pitched by Puerto Rican students. Juke was rattling around shirtless, holding a bong in one hand, and beer and a cigarette in the other. He was dancing, pumping both fists forward in an alternating fashion, occasionally letting loose with a “Whoooo!”

“Is your friend okay? I think he’s a little drunk.” Said the hostess. She was Puerto Rican, with canary yellow capri pants and stiletto heels. Her hair was big and curly, and she smoked long, skinny cigarettes. She talked so rapidly, sentences would become singular words.
“IsyourfriendokayIthinkhesalittledrunk,” became a common joke among the group, who regarded Ryan Juke with the utmost esteem for his ability to have fun anywhere. John Burg is the fullest embodiment of eccentric charm in all of Tempe, Arizona. If ever there was a white shaman, it’s John Burg. He has a laugh that is universally described as “infectious.” He’s climbed on the Matterhorn, after living in the climber’s graveyard near the mountain, eating stolen potatoes from the hotel. All the characters in this story met through John Burg, who studied religions at ASU. And if there was more purpose for it, I might write about the time he drank an entire bottle of Saki, and then built shelves and coat racks all over the house. Quality items, for that matter. He has an entire workshop at the house, shared at the time by himself and Luke Schuter. On any given night, John Burg could be found in a pair of boxers and a shop apron, greasy, drunk, blasting James Brown while building bikes out of spare parts, or re-finishing an old oak desk. His infectious laugh was a warm waft through the house. In those days, TV’s The Simpson’s was as sacred to the household as communion is to mass. Each night at 6:00, the phone would not be answered, and from Burg’s room, loud, whooping shrieks would erupt with every hysterical turn of the show. He was a consumate activist as well. Having traveled to Haiti to introduce bicycles to the indigenous people as transportation in a country where such a thing makes the difference between starvation and subsistence. He went there with a group out of New York. He came back with three boxes of Cuban cigars. One night, Luke came home at 3 a.m. to the sounds of Leon Redbone. His nasal, ragtime vocal stylings were blaring through the house. Walking into Burg’s room, Luke found him all alone, with a pair of shorts and a tool belt on, doing an impassioned lipsync to the music.

That may be all that is needed to understand the value of John Burg. Once, he threw up in Luke’s boat, and then cracked another beer.  To the group, he was like the removed groundskeeper, showing up only long enough for introductions, leaving the rest to their grandiose adventures. Ryan Juke had plenty of fun with John Burg. But for now he was having fun in Seattle with Luke Schuter.

 Luke Schuter describes himself as an adventure journalist. This means that he spends lots of time arranging to go somewhere and have an experience that he can write about. It also means he’s broke-a hapless thug who’s been here and there, and has seen more than a few strange things. Sometimes it’s a terrible mistake. Other times it’s fantastic. But it’s always noteworthy. His most recent jaunt finds him on the balcony of Coyote Cal’s hostel in Erendira, Mexico, in the company of three of his closest friends. How did they converge on this bleach-white veranda, buffeted by the wind, overlooking the vast blue ocean, as dirt buggies roar by? Boo Wiles once said, “…every moment is only the update of the story so far.” Boo likes that sort of thing. If you told him he had to get to Panama and all he had to do it in was a kayak, he’d hop in and go. Most of them are like that, which is why they get into such fixes. But if you’re going to seek adventure, you’d better be prepared for adventure to do you on all fronts.

To hear Luke Schuter talk is to listen to a continuous monologue about a place he’s been and the “outlandish circumstances” under which the adventure took place. I met with him at a bar near ASU called Long Wongs. He sits and sips his pint, leaning on the chair like a hammock. He wears an oil skin cap-deep rich brown-with a patch sewn to the front advertising the high end gun scope manufacturer, Leupold. Luke Schuter writes the way he talks-with no apologies or pretenses.

2

The Accidental Wonderland(Jaunt Magazine, Sept 2000)

By Luke Schuter

                We had been out at sea for a month, churning and rolling on vicious mountains of liquid that mobbed and pounded the hull of the trawler, Pacific Explorer, causing her to pitch and shudder as other boats loomed in the fog in the form of dim rows of yellow light. Clouds of gulls hovered low around the waterline, feeding on the fish parts that spewed from the overflow shoot, and into the water. Small sharks were loitering as well. They would turn up in the trawl net.

                Plenty had already happened since we left Seattle for Dutch Harbor, there was the unplanned rescue of the two stranded Canadian duck hunters and their dog, seasickness and hellish nights spent on twelve-foot seas, the boat bobbing like a cork in the black, foggy night. Already, two crab boats had gone 

down, having iced over and tipped, their crew dying in the icy water. No doubt they spent their last moments whacking at the ice with aluminum baseball bats, a common order given by the Captains of these stricken crafts. We saw crewmembers being brutalized, thrown up against lockers by the cock-strong Norwegian sailors that ran the boat. We worshiped Audrey, one of three women on the boat, as a goddess, but joked that as soon as we hit land, she’d be ugly. 

We also had time to laugh. Sliding across the galley in our chairs because the boat was rocking like a seesaw. Spending hours in the factory, among conveyors and hoses that poured out seawater, which would occasionally douse an unlucky crewmember, we were busy, wet, tired, goofy, beset by gadgets and fish, talking like The Three Stooges.  Emulating the mopish leader, Moe, with his cranked, “knock it off you knuckleheads, roll me a cigarette!”  And Curly with his piercing, halting laugh. We kept each other and the rest in stitches. The Three Stooges were alive and well, there in the factory.

We laughed at Tsong, our surly crewmate from Thailand, hopelessly addicted to inhalers, with his hounds-tooth print do-rag on his head that made him look like a mean little Asian pirate. He woke up one morning to find the lamp in our stateroom, once a simple brass fixture on the wall, had been oddly decorated. We had cut up our crewmember manuals, which were orange, and embellished the lamp with torch flames, a smiley face, and had scrawled the greeting, “Shalom” across the front of it. We did it out of boredom, and as a monument to our newfound maritime insanity. When Tsong laid eyes on this thing these two Americans had assembled, he looked at us with a puzzled, thoughtful expression. We looked at him, waiting for his inevitable comment. The silence was broken when he looked back at the lamp and exclaimed, “Happy Halloween!” It was January. We were nearly paralyzed from laughter.

Crewmembers lived in tiny six-person quarters, called staterooms, with bunk beds, and a single, brass-lined porthole. The porthole became our TV, and on our porthole TV we had a selection of three commercial-free channels: “The fog channel,” “The placid ocean channel,” and our favorite, and most watched,  “The big waves, crashing into the side of the boat channel.” Of all the staterooms on board, ours

was the only one given a name.  Borrowing from Brando in the final seconds of Apocalypse Now, when he whispered, “The Horror, The Horror.” In the galley, crewmembers would plan to “meet later, down in The Horror.” It was a commonly known hotspot on the boat. The Horror. We even had a guest list, if you believe it. Considering where we were, we were having an ironically great time.

                Every ten days, the boat would make port and unload its catch. It is known as an offload. This was the end of our second one. Twelve hours spent piling four hundred and fifty tons of frozen fish filet boxes on the dock. I spent the first one catching crane pallets from the deck, in a moderate snowstorm. It was one of the most pure and fantastically brutal things I had ever done. There, in Dutch harbor of all places, working on the dock, in a snow storm, my home a two hundred and fifty foot boat called “The Pacific Explorer,” on the legendary sea charted and named by Vitus Bering, with Alaska on one side, and the Kamchatka Peninsula on the other. It was as tough as I had ever felt. I remember thinking, “this is unreal. Look where I am.” This was as bold as I had been. But the bar was about to be raised.

                Sitting in the galley, my hat on the back of my head, freezer suit unzipped, I quietly smoked a camel non-seatbelt, or non filter, and enjoyed the inertia of my short break. There was a new guy sitting next to me, typical of the type found out here in liquid land: overalls, proper boots, longhaired and bearded. He was only on board while he waited for his boat, our sister ship, “The Scout” to come in for an offload. It is possible that he was only there to point me in another direction, and be on his way. We talked a bit about Seattle, about the two lost crab boats, and about what boat caught more fish, and about the steely-eyed Norwegians who call The Bering Sea their home. Then, out of nowhere, he placed a mystery item on the seat next to me. I focused on the object, and identified it as a cute little bud of hash. I looked up at my new friend. He grinned and nodded, and then he got up and left.

                Well, now, this puts a whole new spin on things. To begin, I was no longer a fan of hash. I was not interested in hash anymore. To continue, it is the strict policy of The Pacific Explorer and American Seafoods, to forbid any form of drug to be taken out to sea. For good reason, too. I mean, sweet Joseph, its freaky enough out here, there’s no need to complicate matters with psychotropic substances. Finally, I could not, in good conscience, reject this gift so kindly given to me. Besides, Delcan needed to be consulted before I just flippantly tossed this detour away.

                Delcan Montgomery was a disgruntled accountant from Chicago. Aspiring artist and avid wanderer. Wool capped, horn-rim spectacled. He was a complete and lucid lunatic. He had come to sea the same as I. Broke, free, happy. To date, we had both earned an untouched $4,000 from working on the Explorer. We had also earned each other’s solid friendship. So, when I told him that I had weed, we lit up in short order.

                By the time we were both good and high, babbling about our two Norwegian bosses, and  laughing like fruit-hatted cowboys, we had been steaming out to sea for an hour. It was 11:30 p.m. when we got word that we were to report to work in 30 minutes to process more fish.

Wow. We were going to be working in the factory with a severe head change. This was going to be a bright new experience. The factory is a loud, cold, cramped juggernaught of conveyorbelts and skinning machines that rolls and rocks with the raging sea outside. The floor is covered in four inches of seawater, and fish heads float around in it. The smell of cold metal and fish corpses fills every square inch. On the swift conveyors travel fish filets, fish guts, mince pans and egg sacks. Danger is immediate, the air is frozen, and Angry Norwegians shout and curse over the din of piston pops and gear screeches. This had become our environment. We were used to it. At times, we would show up for our shift wearing only jeans, a T-shirt, and rubber boots, in defiance of the cold harsh conditions. The work was so monotonous and mercilessly cold and loud that I would sometimes completely check out, and for a while I would be somewhere else, like in my room as a child, or playing baseball, until I would come back into the present, and become aware that I had been automatically working for better than an hour without ever hearing, seeing or feeling it. It was a strange effect, to be sure. But now our minds were altered. This was altogether different. And in times of portent such as these, only one course of action is logical. We decided that we would just take a shift off. They’ll understand, after all, we were model sailors, always turning to, always in the muck, pulling our weight. We’ve earned it. What we were proposing was nothing short of mutiny, and deep down we knew it. The truth is that we were young, bored, and only out for a good solid adventure, and we wanted to see what was next.  

                It was quiet. The muffled, ebbing rush of the ocean was the only sound when Wayne, our bunkmate from San Francisco, and one of our immediate group, woke up. He asked what was going on, and we told him. “ We’re taking a shift off.” Delcan explained, in his Chicago slant. “ We’ll come back in six hours.” Here now was my attempt to bring Wayne into the fold, to come in for the big win. “Are you with us?” I asked. His inclusion was confirmed with his resigned and amused, “sure.” This idea was gaining momentum. It was becoming a movement, an insurrection. We needed another dissenter, and we were about to get one. One of the more specific crew members on board was Andy, a thin, pony tailed mural artist from Los Angeles. He was on board with his girlfriend, Kira, who was a professional welder. He wandered in to say hello, completely unaware of the caustic plans being set in motion. I immediately began the recruiting process. “Andy, we’re all not going to work. Just for one shift. Are you with us?”

Andy responded in his whiny voice, “Whoa! Kira just dumped me. Yeah, I’m in.”

                Now we had done it. We had managed to develop a humorous notion into an irreversible test of solidarity. The four of us sat on the top bunks, telling horror stories of brutality at sea, just to keep the group focused on the resolution. We laughed, got angry, sang songs, while we waited for our absence to be noticed. No doubt they would come looking for us, and then we would proclaim our mutinous decision. The time was drawing near, and Wayne and Andy started to get nervous. “Are we really going to do this?” Andy asked, sitting up and looking at the door. Before answering, I looked at Delcan, who was already looking at me. We waited a second, and then said, at the same time, “Yeah. We really are.” Then we launched back into our justification rhetoric; stories of the people we all knew, like the guy who suffered a hernia while on board, and was made to scrub stairs until we made port. Stories of legs getting caught in conveyors, and becoming stretched until they were bloody and useless. These were stories of real brutality. This was our evidence of apathy from the sailors in charge. This was our cause. We were crusading. No we weren’t. But it made a great platform from which to rebel. Our rebellion was possibly going to get us beaten senseless, thrown in shackles, kicked off the boat, or killed. We knew this. We also knew that the two of us were now locked in a game of chicken. It was necessary to see it through, not to back down. It was about our faith in each other. 

                When they started banging on the door, telling us that we were late for our shift, the energy in the room had become critical. We calmly told Ally, our supervisor, that we weren’t going to work. When she heard this, she offered a threat. “Well, then, why don’t I just go and get Inga, and you can tell him.” Our brevity was blazing at this point, and so we replied, “Good, go get Inga.” She did.

                This made Wayne and Andy a bit more edgy. Wayne began to reason with us, but we were well beyond that. The door flung open, and there stood Inga, in his factory gear, with the puggish, mustachioed Arve right behind him. Inga bellowed, “What’s this, you’re not going to your shift?” With that, Wayne and Andy were up and off to work quicker than you could say, “drawn and quartered.” But Delcan and I did not have that luxury. We had to answer to our selves. And ourselves were goading us to rock the boat. We were now staring down the visage of complete chaos, total uncertainty for our fate.

“You make me laugh!” Inga said. And then he laughed. “ If you do not go to your shift, then you are a quit!”  Delcan stood up, “How am I A Quit, Inga? I’m not quitting, I’m taking a shift off.”

Inga continued, “ If you don’t go to work, you are a quit. You both have five minutes to get your shit together and get up to the wheelhouse, and anything you leave behind, I will personally burn myself.”

                Delcan continued to argue until the Captain came down to deal with us. The Captain was accompanied by another brutish Norwegian named Hellsburg. Hellsburg was six-foot-three, with a head of dark curly hair. He wore a pair of orange coveralls.

While I was out in the hallway, still a bit high, dealing with the Captain, Delcan was in the room, waging a battle with Hellsburg, who kept turning out the lights as Delcan, under protest, gathered his things. The Captain gave Delcan the choice of getting off the boat, or being put in shackles. This threat was real. We weren’t in the United States. We weren’t in ANY country, for that matter. The only law out here was the Captain. He even said it: “ Under My Law. I’m the law out here.”

                The next place we found ourselves was the wheelhouse, the drivers seat, nerve center of the boat.  It was past midnight, the seas were around six-foot, and it was twenty below outside as they made preparations to send us, via the skiff, to the Scout, which was visible as a row of lights in the blackness outside. The lights would vanish, and then reappear in the swells. In the dim light of the wheelhouse, our faces were glowing green from the instruments as radio cross talk burst out in the form of curt, almost unintelligible directives. Plans were being made for the midnight delivery of the both of us, on to the Scout, and back to Dutch Harbor. Outside, we were thrown into a small boat and summarily soaked in ice-cold seawater. Next, we rolled over five-foot swells toward the Scout, flipping the bird and singing at the top of our voices. Beatle’s songs, for that matter.”

“The skiff ride nearly killed us, although we didn’t know it at the time. These mean-eyed Norwegians had no reason not to shove us overboard, but when you’re young and adventurous, the reality of a situation never sets in. This is good for later reference, but not every kid survives these stunts.

 

3

That was 8 years ago. And by now, Melco Shank and Luke Schuter were well along in forming the magazine. The idea came after a sailing trip, on which the two became great friends. Melco Shank looks like a combat helicopter pilot, or John Lennon, both of which are Quixotic images, common among our generation. Shank comes from an upscale family and holds two degrees: one in religious studies and one in international management. These qualify him to start a religion, and for a while he did.

“I’ve formed the church of Look Up,” he declared one day in Tucson. At meetings of the Church of Look Up, they would all lie on their backs and…look up. It worked wonders for meeting women, or so they thought.

“The first time I ever saw Ryan Juke was on a ski trip in Jr. High,” Melco tells us. “He was being sent home for stealing a pack of cigarettes.”

The Church of Look Up didn’t go far, but the real church was all around. They didn’t know it yet,

but Ryan Juke was its unwitting avatar. Instead of a religion, Melco Shank and Luke Schuter formed Jaunt Magazine, which took much preparation to launch. The two had never published anything before, and had to learn it all as they went. It involved late nights with software, writing, editing, meeting with printers, and trial and error. The idea alone attracted curious potential backers. Luke had done a story for a local paper on the yachting scene in Arizona, which introduced him to Rick Johnson. Rick and his father had invented insulated building blocks, and when they finally sold the company, they found themselves wealthy.

Rick spent his time with gin and tonics, racing high-end sailboats in California. He had a house on a lake in suburban Arizona. The dock was crowded with sailboats.

He liked Luke, and always invited him to crew aboard his boat. When he invited Luke the first time, he placed a brandy snifter in his hand. it was embossed with the the name of the boat, “Team Gravity.”

“Look here, ” Rick instructed, thurning the glass to reveal the other side. It read, “To the Campaign.”

It was truly swank practice to have matching brandy snifters and a serious racing boat on the coast–a giant leap from Luke and the boys’ grassroots jaunting. This was big league, and they dug the magazine even before it was printed. So, when Rick invited the boys over for dinner to discuss funding, they were thrilled. Melco came up from Tucson for the liason.

                Naturally, Luke and Melco had a meeting before dinner. They held the meeting in the swimming pool. It was actually a pool at an apartment complex near the Tempe neighborhood, with which it was standard practice to hop the fence for an evening of poolside planning. They were shoestring tycoons.

                The two stood chest-deep in the water, sipping rum and coke.

                “We’ll show him the business plan, but make sure we retain creative control,” Melco said, staring up at the sky, slowly rotating.

                “I think an investment would be better than a business loan, “Luke replied, blowing bubbles on the surface of the water.

                “Right,” said Melco. “He can underwrite the finances.”

                As they were talking, a young blond woman appeared. She was wearing a bikini, and as she waded into the shallow end, she introduced herself.

                “Boys,” she said, “it’s after five o’clock. It’s too late to be discussing business.”

                “You’re right,” Luke said. “But we’re meeting in half an hour with the millionaire.”

                “Really, who’s the millionaire?” she aked, settling into the water with a refreshed shiver.

                “He’s our dinner host tonight,” Melco offered, keeping the enigma alive. Luke continued:

                “What do you think sounds better,” he asked, “jaunt, the adventure journal, or jaunt, the journal of the crackerjack adventurer?”

                “I like the second one,” she replied. “My name’s Andrea.”

                Since they were on their way to dinner at the millionaire’s house, the pair thought it neighborly to invite Andrea along. She accepted the invitation, and dashed off to change for the occasion. She returned wearing a sun dress. Only a sun dress.

                Rick was duly surprised when they arrived.

                “Rick, this is Andrea,” Luke declared. “she’ll be joining us for dinner.” Rick welcomed the trio in with a wide grin. Tis was merger time; deals were going to be made, and Andrea was a perfect witness to the momentous proceedings.

                Following dinner, the activities moved onto the patio, where numbers were discussed over gin and tonic. rick sat smoking his cigarette, bathed in sunset light, the breeze moving his permanently mussed hair.

                “Well, we’ll need to find ouot how we can hit the market running,” he said, using business speak which further excited Luke and Melco. It was winning the lottery. It was Christmas. This beer-fueled pipe dream of magazine publishing had caught the ear of a no-lie, face-out genuine financial heavy. And he was drinking. He was having a good ol’ with the whole thing.

                “Ill bet you get $10,000 out of Rick,”said his wife, Dorthea, who sat happily as her husband played with his toys and paid for all the best food, etc. They sat and watched as rick took Andrea for a spin on his sunfish, a two-person sailboat. Luke and Melco hopped in the canoe and rowed out.

                “Ten thousand,” melco said, rowing casually.

                “I think he’s in,” Luke said.

                “We’re in,” replied Melco. Their excitement couldn’t be contained, and they broke into song.

                They sang The Beatle’s, “When I’m sixty-four,”and before long, while belting out the song, ,they had stopped rowing in favor of holding the oars level and rocking with the tune. The realization that they were no longer rowing was hysterical, and for three minutes, they lay there, laughing that kind of teary-eyed laugh that causes worry about one’s safety for lack of oxygen.

                The euphoria was unprecedented, and not even the cleverest of chemists could ever re-produce it.

                The prize was in sight, they would get their magazine.

                Later, Andrea joined them in the canoe, and in an attempt to prove that a canoe could not be sunk, they managed to sink the canoe. a bad roll filled it with water, sending all three swimming. They dragged the stricken craft ashore and stood, soaking wet.

                Andrea spent the rest of the evening doing dives into the pool, as Rick, Luke and Melco performed a round of “when I’m sixty-four.” It was pure dreamland harmony.

                andrea continued to be a random presence in Melco’s life. He has a knack for picking the wierd ones, with no hope for a future. Still, he pursues them with over-born optimism, and endless speculation. It’s fun for him. This would prove a distraction later as well.

                Rick was their best PR man, but they never saw a penny. In the end, it was up to them.

                Later in the year, Delcan Montgomery flew out from Chicago to participate in the pre-magazine era, and to meet this new Melco character, which brought ht etrio to the Hotel Congress in Downtown Tucson.

               

                4

Under The Fake star of the Empire(Jaunt Magazine, November, 2001)

By Luke Schuter

                This is the hotel where John Dillinger was finally apprehended. He set fire to the building in order to prolong his capture. There are photographs. With this, perhaps we might think the tone of our trip had been set. And in the end, there was a kind of relationship, because in the end, we took pictures too.

But the real tone of our trip was to be set for us by a common street lunatic, who said to us as we passed, “Hey! You know that guy in there with that picture in the church of Scientology? And they killed six hundred million queer nigger COPS!

His forehead was covered in a Moorish tattoo pattern, and he was sitting on a bench, yelling these things as we made our way past. What was he trying to tell us? From his perspective, and in the calm still of crazy, he could very well have been simply asking us for the time.

                Melco led us to a tight little box of local culture that serves Mexican food and Lattes. Disturbing artwork was positioned on each wall. Outside, a road crew was cutting through the street with a giant circular saw. The sound was deafening.

                We had lunch, and were on our way to Sierra Vista to meet with Johanna, a local business woman from whom we were to gather information on the finer points of the magazine business. We had with us a car-to-car radio system, and as we passed through the southern Arizona chaparral, a region that Melco relentlessly used the radio system to refer to as “Steinbeck Country,” the weather was turning cold, stormy. Soon we were under low and unstable clouds, digging for warmer clothing. The walk to the physicians doorstep was quick and shivery.

                The physician was our host in Sierra Vista. He and his wife enjoy the color and culture of southern Arizona. This is a region that still creaks with the newness of the now old west. The physician loves it. Get some booze in him, and he’ll proclaim his candidacy for mayor of Tombstone, the town too tough to die. His wife, a local artist and poet, prepared for us an ample country dinner, complete with plenty of wine and mixed drinks.

Windows, providing a panoramic view of the lights of Sierra Vista, surround the dinning room. The physician sat at the head of the table, portly with pride and bearded. He quietly sipped his wine as the guests took their positions at the large, stout wood table. I sat near the physician, and Melco sat across from me. Delcan, our accountant and photographer from Chicago, sat next to Melco. He sat like an eager gremlin on his best behavior.

 Opposite the long table was the physicians’ wife. She was poised, gracious, and straightforward, offering everyone more food and drink. Between her and myself was Johanna. She was Dutch. Straight from Holland. Here in the old west, at dinner with the physician, his wife, Melco Shank, our orange-coated, horn-rimmed accountant/photographer, and myself. Johanna was grand, loud and domineering. She tried to control every conversation. In her attempt to curry favor with the three of us, she betrayed her desperation for acceptance, her zeal for the almighty dollar.

                Dinner was well lit, well provisioned, and perfectly arranged for all of us to listen to Johanna, who thought of herself as some sort of Midas Touch guru that the three of us could not live without. At one point she turned to Delcan and said, “ Do you know what Chicago needs? More baseball fields.” And here was Delcan, dressed more for hunting with Sonic Youth than for dealing with an over-fed money hungry Dutchy with gold blinders strapped to her horse head. Delcan, being from Chicago, tried to respond with politeness and decorum, but just could not. “Well, actually, no…ah…what are you talking about?” he said, bristling with indignation.

                The game was up; we had her dead to rights. She was in the big tank now. We don’t know what prompted her to make such a self-defeating proclamation as “Chicago needs baseball fields,” but we now knew she was packed with pure corned beef. The smell wafted from her hands and boots. We also knew she was trying to exact three thousand dollars from us. And she might well have if A: we had three thousand dollars. And B: we were as dumb as paint.

                We didn’t and we weren’t. What was certain was that all of us, including the physician, had managed to kill three bottles of wine and several mixed drinks. It was time to send our wayward Johanna on her way and get down to brass tacks. We managed to put together a business plan that night, while occupying the “drinking veranda” while in the shadow of the local “drug blimp,” a device used to photograph the influx of illegal substances into the empire. We were safe; we were among the blimps, north of suspicion, in the center of the empire.

                In the morning, barely able to focus, we resumed. The car ride to Bisbee was short and quiet.  We traveled through sprawling prairie land, dotted with small cacti, under post snowstorm skies. Delcan was snapping pictures out the window along the way, as Melco and myself settled in to enjoy the ride. This is the land where Wyatt Earp once rode. This was once part of Mexico, until the empire purchased it.

                After arriving in Bisbee, a town rich with subculture economics and early century architecture that clings to the very rock, Melco and I both had a shot of whiskey, and were back on track.       Delcan breezed into the bar and began to take pictures of everything. Even in the freak land of Bisbee, Delcan stood out. In a crowd, he took on a sort of aura that removed him from any other motion. He was his own kinetic system. He was the force that was happening to the surroundings. He was the exception.

                We hit the street, jarred to action by the whiskey, and started up a very steep, very long staircase. This led us to an isolated hilltop, which accommodated a garage made of corrugated tin. Gangland graffiti blazed from every inch of the structure, back dropped by the giant west, with its sky and cliffs. The odd silence lent itself to the surreal B-movie quality of the scene. The three of us cast long shadows on the dirt.             It was here we met Alexandra, our guide to bigger business. Alexandra had thick, shiny, curly hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and two dogs, Zoe and Neb. She was all road. Faded this and worn-in that. Delcan fell in love. After all, she was an angel.

                When we told her about our plans to produce a magazine that would chronicle the raw, true side of travel and adventure, and she listened carefully. She had the type of head that just digs anything worth trying. But angels like Alexandra are not easily reached; they are only breezing through.

 Later, down on the main street, she made a donation to our cause.  Melco and myself witnessed this as we looked up from the narrow Bisbee street. There, framed by old brick buildings and antique awnings, Alexandra discreetly handed Delcan a rolled up paper bag as he prattled on about how easy it is to “do your thing in the center of the empire.”

Once we were back on the road, we opened the bag she had given us. There they were. A little dried out, still intact, and unmistakably orange. Our evening was planned.

After a little preparation back at the physicians’ estate, we made our way into the Huachuca Mountains, an Apache word for Thunder. We made camp in a small valley. The area was thick with knee high yellow grass and juniper trees. The nearby ridges gave our location a sort of amphitheater quality.

We divided up our gift, and each of us enjoyed an ample handful of psilicyben. Remember John Dillinger? Remember how he set fire to the hotel and how pictures were taken? This is where our pictures were taken in our hour of desperate and hilarious madness.

The mushrooms came on gradually, during a short walk up the trail. At first it was a little light. Some laughter, babbling, unnecessary focus on rocks and leaves. But when the full ride took effect, the sights and sounds were not of this world.

The tip off came in the form of a lone mountain biker, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. He startled Delcan right off the trail, and prompted Melco to wave and shout, “Hey there!” as he rode by. I stood and watched him pass in silence, studying his head for signs of affiliation with the nearby army base. He in turn watched me with a look of tense apprehension on his face. He was out of sight as quickly as he came.

He was completely oblivious to the fact that he was our ambient messenger from reality. A final reminder that there is a planet, and there is a society, and soon all three of us would return to it. But for now, there was an incredibly fascinating cloud in the sky. It was lower than the other, darker clouds, and seemed to exist just to entertain us. The wind stretched and twisted the thin little clump of water vapor. It couldn’t have been more than sixty-three feet above our heads, and began to turn colors like teal green and maybe purple, but not quite. It was sort of becoming every shape and color at once.

Next, a herd of fleeing white-tailed deer startled us. Melco wanted photos, and so turned to Delcan and shouted, “Shoot ‘em!” This threw Delcan into a stunned fear, until he connected with the message, realizing Melco was talking of cameras, not rifles. Too late now.

By now, the heaviest part of our trip was approaching with the ferocity of a steamship. We sat right down on the trail, howling through a world that was colorful, liquid and scary. From my perspective, Melco Shank’s head was perfectly defined against a backdrop that was cartoon in nature, and sliding in all directions. Delcans’ laughter took on an elastic quality that seemed to start where it finished, and finish where it started. I remember moving down the trail, shouting, “We’ve got to get a fire going before the rams get to us!” I looked over my shoulder to see Melco and Delcan interacting with the cartoon landscape. Their voices were blending and re-arranging to create a sort of delay flanging effect. It looked from my point of view that I was leaving the scene of some terrible event, which meant no good to anyone or anything.

Soon we were back in camp. I was lying on my back, looking up at the clouds as they were forming into swirling shapes and crystalline clumps. Stray noises and wind-related sounds were following their motion. Delcan appeared standing over me. His bright orange jacket and bald head were stark against the vivid purple-blue sky as he starred at me through his horn-rimmed glasses. I remember saying, “Look at your head! I wish I had a camera!”

“You do!” he shouted, and then vanished and reappeared with a Nikon sm 4000. I snapped a few photos of him from the ground up, and he in return.

We were all settled in and things got quiet. The wind stopped twisting itself; the clouds spiraled silently above me. Delcan was standing up, looking over his shoulder. Melco rolled over and began investigating the trunk of a small bush.  Just when everything was as quiet as it could possibly get, Melco broke it up with one statement.

“We’re trippin,” he declared.

The three of us, not regulars in these parts, had settled in for the introspection segment of our experience.

I was having episodes of fear, apprehension. What did I expect to find out? Are there really queer-nigger cops? Of course not. Were the mushrooms laced?

I sat up.

Instantly I was in a world enveloped by the repeating whoosh of my having sat up. I blurted out, “These are mushrooms!” To which Delcan replied, “Where!?”

“No, no.” I said. “ What we’ve eaten. Mushrooms?”

Melco rolled over, “Yes, these are mushrooms, and they last for four hours.”

I was satisfied with that. Of course they’re mushrooms. But Melco and I were ready to wrap it up.

Delcan had become madder than mad. He was purple. His jacket was orange. He was squatting over the fire and flapping his arms while he shrieked and whooped. He was the lunatic muse stoking the engine fires. And he was hard to miss as the sun was setting, creating a feel of impending end.

It was later that the effects of the mushrooms took a welcome exit. I remember looking over my shoulder at the sunset. I felt a light breeze on my face. It was a real breeze. I looked at Melco Shank. He was a real person. The hills beyond him looked real also, no longer that vivid-quick version of screaming yellow. We smiled.

The trip was over and we were okay. We had come out the other side and were, as Melco put it, “at a place now.”

I was happy to be able to notice things like the sky, the fire, all looking normally. By now, the drug blimp was rising into the air to monitor the fringes of the empire, and our camp had taken on the placid atmosphere of a cowboy trail song, cool and dusty, beneath a massive night sky. Delcan looked up to notice a star above us. The star was moving. He deduced that it was not a star, but a satellite. To this, he made a proclamation:

“Man, we don’t even have stars anymore, what the fuck are we doing? We have Fake stars!”

5

                Boo Wiles showed up after the first issue of the magazine, which had on the cover a photo of Schuter’s grandfather, at age 16 in 1937, doing a handstand on a motorcycle while wearing a dress. This got the attention of Boo Wiles, and the two met shortly thereafter. There was a party on the night Boo arrived. He showed up just in time to meet Ryan, who had put on his roommate’s red, A-line dress. He had a pack of GPC cigarettes in the small pocket located right on the front of the dress, and he was casually waving goodbye as he turned to walk home. Because of this, to Boo Wiles, Ryan Juke is a legend. And Boo Wiles isn’t wrong. Boo has the head of an engineer and the heart of a poet. He’ll tell you exaclty what he thinks and you’ll buy it, every time. He’s tall, lanky, and soft spoken, and there is nothing on earth that he wouldn’t love to try. His main focus is off-road racing, which is a bad read of his true persona. He’s a thinking man’s gear head, and his sense of grandure only offsets his stunning technical abilities. Luke and Boo hit it off immediately.

                In the headiest days, Jaunt magazine was a high-speed, out-there reportage of authentically ill-planned hops. Melco threw parties at his Tempe home – built int he late 1920’s – each one with its own brand of amped-up clownery. The centerpiece was always the magazine, and everyone made plans for the next cover while newcomers pitched story ideas that ranged from riding the Trans-Siberian railway to replacing bottle of rare wine, which could only be purchased in Budapest. Every one had copped on; they were ready to be deployed.

                Meetings were held at bars, which is always a sign of hubris. But the beauty of the thing is that hubris was celebrated with the jaunt society. The entire idea was intended as a charicature, meant to lampoon the classic, pith-helmeted swagger masters of old. And if there is any kinship to those leather coated blow-hards, it can be found in the braggardly thump of today’s young travelers.

                Heated debates would erupt between Luke and Melco, most of which were filled with excited laughter –each one animatedly beseeching one another. Bit once in a while, the two would get mean, their egos swelling up, nearly coming to blows.

                Luke and Melco were discussing the nature of the next issue at Long Wong’s. They shared pitchers with Boo Wiles, who looked on with amusement as the two raised and lowered their voices, gulping their beers.

                “We should star sending people abroad to get stories,” Luke suggested. “We can charge their round trip ticket, and the beer and ramen is up to them.” Melco countered.

                “Why can’t we just write essays?,” he said. “I think it should be more like Atlantic Monthly.”

                “We’re not Atlantic Monthly,” Boo muttered.

                “That’s not what we’re doing,” Luke replied. “If we’re gonna be ‘Jaunty,’ we need to send people into the field.”

                “Where would they go?” Melco asked.

                “Into the great big world,” Luke said, becoming riled.

                “I think a jaunt can be taken within a person’s head,” Melco countered, smugly.

                Luke was becoming impatient, as he is known to do under these circumstances. Boo looked on.

                “Besides, “ Melco continued,  I don’t think we should run so many adventure stories.”

                This was odd, because Jaunt –as the name implies –is an adventure magazine. Luke retorted.

                “Well, we should get people into the field, or we’re bullshit.” Boo sat up, and made a suggestion.

                “You should send me to South America,” he said. “I’ll fly in to Lima, Peru, and take busses and boats down to brazil, and I’ll end up at an overgrown American city in the middle of the jungle, called Fordlandia.”

                When he pitched the idea, his tickets were as good as bought, and even Melco had to nod approval. He knew he needed to pitch it before they sobered up. But the tension between Luke and Melco had not subsided. Melco decided to pursue the debate with Luke, saying, “It’s not such a good thing to act so grandly. We should be more serious.”

                Luke suggested that readers would see right through any attempt at false importance, and that they were best off taking a tounge-in-cheek tone.

                “You know Melco, “ Luke said, “a point can be made without directly addressing the point.”

“Really,” Melco replied.

                “Readers are smarter than you think,” Luke said. Melco shot back.

                “Well, I disagree, and you’re wrong anyway.”

Luke stood up, lifted his beer mug, and whipped it at the wall. It shattered with a bang behind Melco’s head. Luke turned and walked home, out of general principle.

                Melco and Boo sat stunned. Then they laughed. Then they howled and exalted the stunt as “fine form.” And it was. It was the most honest response Luke was capable of at the moment. And it had a slapstick quality to it, which may have given way to the theme of the Boo Wiles going away party two weeks later.

                It was like a transformation. A complete lapse into big-headed delerium. It was perfect. They threw the party at Melco’s and each member of the jaunt Group dressed as 1920s adventurers. They had khaki pants and black sweaters. They smoked out of briar wood pipes. But the most important part of the evening was the artificial mustache requirement.

                At Boo’s suggestion, the main event of the evening was to be a machete wielding contest.  They laid out a course, hanging grapefruit in the trees with zip-ties. The object was to sprint through the back yard – lit by tiki torches – and hack at the fruit for time. Each guest participated. Some were disqualified for not wearing their mustache (a stringent regulation while on the course).

                When Boo ran the course in under 23 seconds, it set the precedent. And it was fitting that the official attorney of Jaunt Magazine was the one disqualified for lack of mustache. He’d actually clocked in at 21.5 seconds, trumping Boo, but it was a legal loophole that did him in.

                Next, Luke Schuter stood on the line, machete quivering eagerly.

                START!

                He ran like a fiend, hacking fruit like the wind, using back hand and up and under moves not seen since Errol Flynn swung from the yardarms, slicing the Spaniards with his cutlass. It was impressive. He cocked in at 21 seconds. Had Boo been deposed?

                The judges returned from the course, conferring furtively. They walked up to a panting, grinning Luke, and presented him with an unscathed fruit. In his zeal, he’d missed an entire target. He was out. Boo was the champeen.

                Luke was not finished. He lobbied wildly for a re-run of the course. And after little response from the crowd, ,he won his plea.

                The crowd watched as he ran it again. Some cheered. Boo leaned against a post, enjoying a cleanly sliced grapefruit, with a casual look of security on his face. Luke clocked in at 23.7 seconds. The match was over, and Boo had won the day.

                The event was dreamlike. It was a true read of the spirit if the magazine, and Boo’s departure for Peru the next day lent it credence.

                As a climax, John Burg showed up late, clothed in a flowered dress and cowboy hat, on a low-rider bicycle. He jingled the handlebar bell, and the entire crowd cheered.

                “Now then,” he said, leaping off the bike, which coasted to a crash. He was speaking in a loud, zany British Nobleman accent. “See here, we all know…” (He bent over, and broke wind for punctuation) “that old Boo wiles will soon DEPART!” (He looked quickly over his shoulder, and then back again, goose stepping toward the porch) “for FordlaaanDIA!”

                The crowd whooped, and stray giggles burst from the women. He continued.

                “And furthermore!” (He bent over, leaping finally to a hands-on-hips stance) “we should all regard this expedition with the utmost of pip and cheer WHAT!”

                There was a round of applause from the crowd, and Boo Wiles took a golf club and began to dance like Fred Astair. John whipped around, and back again.

                “We all knowwww……..that Boo is a goody good old chap!”

                at this moment, some strangers wandered into the back yard, having heard there was a party. It was a pack of frat kids, each with a six-pack of honey brown in their hands. When they were presented with the image of Burg in his dress and Boo in his fake mustache, doing somersaults while Burg prattled on – the crowd giggling – they stopped. Then one of them spoke.

                “Hmm, crazy people,” he said. They departed immediately.

                Luke later presented Boo with a gift. It was a pelican case filled with emergency adventure gear. Burg named it “The go box.” They stenciled JAUNT across the front. Luke treated it like an awards ceremony, listing the contents, which included:

                One lensatic compass

                One signaling mirror

                One small knife

                20 feet of chord

                Choptsticks

                one profalactic

                23 tablets of high-yield pain medication

                three pieces of hard candy

                One penlight

                13 pesos

etc, etc.

It was the peak of the Jaunt Magazine era. Everyone came in for the big win. People they’d never met showed up and gulped wine, donning mustaches and wielding machetes. Even Melco Shank rounded out the evening by changing into a speedo and some cowboy boots with striped knee socks. In the following weeks, emails arrived from South America. it’s the modern equivalent of the telegram, and with each new message, Boo’s oddysey took shape as an epic adventure, filled with peril, froth and grandiose questing. The mission seemed to change almost daily, and his dispatches suggested a descent into madness. They started out normally:

 

JAUNT FIELD REPORT: Lima, Peru, 1/12/2001

13:37: Arrived Lima Peru at 5:43 a.m. Procured taxi to clubhouse of the South American Explorers club. Taxi driver rang bell, woke caretaker. Clubhouse hours are as follows: 9:30-17:00. Caretaker notably perturbed. Offered no assistance. Walked one block over, rented small room at Hostel. Boogers on wall by bed. Otherwise nice. Have made decision to pursue Fordlandia story..believe there is much to be had there. Ivestigating Brazillian visa problems. Expect to be in Lima until 1?14. Will communicate again tommorow.

 

Later, however, the tone changed.

 

JAUNT FIELD REPORT: LIMA, PERU 1/16/2001

Seriously hung over in Lima. Last night, I went to the corner café for dinner and ended up drinking several rounds with three Peruvian police officers. They were out of uniform, but showed me their badges and the .38 pistols tucked into their wastebands. Very nice: kept wanting me to speak English so they could learn it. I was supposed to meet them this morning for a soccer match, but that never materialized.

 

       Other dispatches arrived,  most only updates of travel arrangements: barges, aircraft with corpses in the cargo hold. Toward the end of the trip, each email was it’s own special gem, with little or no foothold in reality.

               

                JAUNT FIELD REPORT: TORQUEJUNTA, BRAZIL, 2/14/2001

Tell the boys back at Hondo that after eating a barge load of beans, I am 100% back on track, and ready to deliver the grand slam…tell them that. I would scare you by divulging more of the parameters of the story, but that would be mean-spirited. Just one question..why have you sent that infernal Boo Wiles to follow me? Are you planning on letting him tell the tale of my misadventures? If so you are a deceitful gypsy. And to think they let you run a magazine.

Tell them that,

Boo Wiles

P.S. Fuck the double nickle.

 

                Meanwhile, as Boo was wading hip-deep through mud-filled jungle situations, sending madhouse communiques from outposts, Luke and Melco were relegated to domestic duties. The magazine needed promotion, as well as revenue. In the spirit of the thing itself, they hopped a Greyhound bus on a convention tour, with the intent of gathering sponsors and putting Jaunt on the map. It was a far separation from the jungle, but they managed to make it count none the less. And in the end, as usual, it made a good story.

 

                Sideshow Utah: a short story (Jaunt Magazine, Spring 2001)

 

By Luke Schuter

 

                “They all talk real slick! They all get together and they talk real slick!”

It is 6 a.m. in Salt Lake City, and a black man in an expensive coat is shouting to an empty Temple Square.

                “And they came down with all those niggers from Ohio!”

                The word Ohio was exaggerated.

                Melco Shank and I are here to take part in the Outdoor Retailers trade show at the Salt Palace. We avoided the $200 fee by signing up as journalists, and then pushing Jaunt Magazine on the unsuspecting glad-handers inside. Six hours earlier, we were in Las Vegas,  trying unsuccessfully to become drunk. This fits. Las Vegas is the most pure presentation of the low end of America. Come on in. Do what you like. More, more, more.

                Everyone in Las Vegas feels important just for being there, ,including us, which we acknowledge and deplore in the same sentence. We spent five hours on the strip, ,mucking through this glitter-glue dimension of fake money, cheap sex and mixed drinks.

                It seems odd that Las Vegas has made an attempt at more of a family image in recent years, which is illustrated by the Baskin-Robbins next to the topless bar. It’s like a tacky, drug-addled relative, who no matter how hard she tries, just can’t seem to wear the right thing, or cover up her tattoos.

                So, it was odd to roll into salt lake – a town noted for its veiled, rather than obvious wierdness, and be greeted by a traditionally crazy man shouting about slick-talkers from Ohio. A black man, for that matter,  not half a block from  the Temple, with its Angel Moroni shining brighter than the lady Luck Hotel and Casino.

                The show went as planned. Seven hours of shaking hands and passing out business cards and media kits. The problem with trade shows is that everyone there is drunk on love, thrilled to talk to anybody. Calling the people you talked to a few days later is a little like “the morning after.”

                Next, it was on to the taverns. Bars in Utah are not “walk ins.” One has to be a member to drink, and this requires a fee. Members may bring “guests,’ however.

                Once we were made “guests” at Murphy’s bar in Temple Square, we were allowed to order. Before long, more trade show warriors wandered in. We all sat in this dark den, sharing drinks and jokes, carefully fielding questions from  a mean-eyed local who looked like he might start throwing knuckles at any moment.

                Later, we all spilled over to the Marriot Hotel Lounge, where we bought more rounds of limp Utah liquor and prattled on to a trio from Alabama, in town for the show as well. The leader’s name was Lee, and he looked it. All that was missing was a dusty gray coat, and a sword.

                I remember buying him a Bailey’s and coke, and then saying, “Now listen here, Lee, let’s not slap each other’s asses. We’re publishers of adventure journalism and you sell adventure products. We’ll send you our magazine, and then we’ll talk.”

                In my heightened state, I was attempting to relate to Lee, to speak good ol’ boy.  He responded by flashing a cheese-ball tin star, which I told him had no jurisdiction in Utah, and that it was probably fake anyway.

                “I’m gunna go git my gun and shoot you in the neck, ,you don’t be quiet,” Lee announced calmly. I ordered three more Heinekins and waited. Lee was a gentleman, properly representing the Southern law enforcement community by threatening to shoot me in the neck. What would make him want to flash that jack-ass badge and then suggest such a thing? Perhaps the answer could be found in Brooke, his assistant.

                When I leaned over to Brooke, Melco was shouting into her ear, spilling his White Russian down her sleeve. Dispite his condition, I knew he could only fare better than I was with Lee. When I got closer, I heard the tail end of what Melco was saying to Brooke.

                “…And for that, maybe YOU should give US a gratuity!” he explained. Brooke responded by saying she wanted to shoot Melco in the nuts – a thing she was prepared to do, I’m sure of it.

                We were holding court with the surly members of The South, a defeated nation. It didn’t help matters that we were pushing their buttons.

                Before things escalated, a law student who called himself Tony, whom we’d met earlier at Murphy’s, showed up and invited us to a brewpub up the block. The southern trio had vanished, most likely to get their squirrel guns. We took the cue and sauntered outside with Tony. And went to have beers at a college-geared flop bar. It was the kind made up to resemble a garage. Good formula: get an old brick warehouse, throw some neon lights in there, and have horny sorority chicks serve pitchers. Cash cow. We were back at the bus station by nine.

                It was 5 a.m. Superbowl Sunday when we pulled into Las Vegas. Outside, a cop had pulled onto the sidewalk, and with lights blaring, was locked in a shouting  match with two pimps about who would win the big game. As if the city knew what had happened in Salt Lake, it delivered weirdness upon us, seemingly meant to trump the previous events. At the bus station, Melco and I stood in line next to a seven-foot-tall transvestite, who kept shouting, “I’m leaving this town, goin’ back to Florida. I’m a sunshine swamp angel honey!”

                At the counter, an old Mexican was standing with a stiff, bundled up blanket that was as tall as he was. I overheard the ticket clerk ask him, “Is that a body? Do you have a body in there?” He said nothing.  She continued, getting the attention of her co-clerk – a  large  black man with six-foot shoulders.

                “Leon, get up to the counter and check what he has in there.” Leon  put down his doughnut, and  still chewing, sent a thunderous bolt across the station.

                “Boseman! Come up to the counter!”

                It was time to board, and not a minute too soon. The rest of the trip was calm – just a quiet re-entry. Our work was done. We had hit the impenetrable forces of the grand empire, and left our mark. We came away with enough business cards to build a desk, but there was one lingering effect.

                Our clothes smelled of bad cologne. This is because Melco had found a bottle on the bus on our way up, marked “Avatar.” We decided the name of the cologne must be a sign, that this bottle must be spiritual guide, so we kept it. But somewhere between the trade show and the southern trio, Melco had decided to spray us with it, abusing our avatar. Realizing our mistake, I tossed the bottle into the snow. Our avatar was abandoned, and we were marked for at least three washings.

               

6

                Back in Tempe, Boo returned on schedule, with a deep tan and an impressive collection of slide photography. The story made the cover as planned – its lead being, “Fordlandia, for all I care, can go straight to hell.”

                Later in the year, Boo Wiles talked Luke into coming up to Moab, Utah, to help produce a documentary about off-roading.

 

 

Three Months on Planet Moab(Jaunt Magazine, April, 2001)

By Luke Schuter

 

“Listen, we need enough plaid material to make nine skirts, between size 3 and 4.”

The pear-shaped women in the fabric store looked awkwardly at the two of us.

“H-how well do you need to sew them?” one of them asked.

“That’s not important,” said Boo, inspecting the texture of the fabric with his fingers. “We’ll only need them for a couple of hours this afternoon.”

There was a tense silence. Then the other one spoke:

“Are these size 4 for ‘girls’ or for women?”

“They’re all women,” I said. “We’re shooting a movie about off-roading.”

Given our appearance, the two seamstresses might have been dramatically suspicious of our intentions with the women and the skirts-Boo stands six-foot-four with rally stripes on his head, and I was standing silently, next to a shelf  full of thread, with a green over coat and baseball jersey with the words, “Trees Lounge” emblazoned on the front. The light pastel antiseptic nature of the fabric store served to exaggerate our exotic appeal, or criminal countenance. But this is Moab. This is Utah.

“Well, you’ll need to make sure you get the shape right. Let me show you how to cut them,” the other one said. The entire event rivaled, for tension, any liaison between Angela Landsbury and Iggy Pop. Or better yet, the Pope and the little rascals.

After the transaction, we were back at the home of motorcycle stunt rider Jacko Parriot, who was on the phone, rounding up the girls for the shoot.

“Yeah, bring your sister too. It’ll be a good time,” he explained to the voice on the other end. “We’ve got all the skirts. Bring a white shirt.”

The Dead Milkmen blared from the CD player as Boo Wiles’s partner, Anton Rash, quietly played pool next to a wall covered with ammo cases and hand grenades.

“We’ll need blanks for the shotgun,” Jacko announced, lighting his third smoke.

The trick in a town like Moab is not to end up a tourist. There is no value in showing up in a remote place and then strolling around with an ice-cream cone; you’ll stick out like a rube and learn nothing. So, when Boo Wiles tried to talk me in to coming up to help him wrap the movie, I told him we’d need to find work while we were there.”

“It’s all been taken care of,” he declared. “Jacko got us jobs shooting pictures for the tourists.”

We were working as “action photographers” for an outfit that deploys cameras to the remote trails, and anyone who wants to can buy the shots later that night. Normally the mountain bikers are the subject, rolling around the slickrock trail like delusional neon superheroes. But this is jeep week, and over 1,400 off-road enthusiasts had clogged Moab, a town of only 6,000, with their machines.

On one afternoon, the snow blew sideways. Ten minutes ago, it was relatively warm and a little sunny. But the red sand planet of Moab, a pinpoint in the Utah nebula, was subject to dramatic shifts. Two days ago, the sky was red with the Aurora Borealis. It was the rare effect of solar flares that sent the glow this far south, something that only happens once every thirty years or so.

The snow continued, which was especially noticeable because I was working, and my job required me to perch on the side of a 40-foot boulder called “The Dome.” I shot frame after frame of 4×4s, all red or green or yellow, as they made their way, one at a time, up this almost vertical rock. Not all of them make it: some slide back down or roll over. Others bomb around like madmen, their wives cooking lunch on the manifold.

Moab’s “jeep week” is a 30-year-old affair that, in certain circles, is as important as Bastille Day. Every hack jeeper from across the country shows up to spend the week paying the local 4-wheel drive club for the chance to follow them around on the dozens of trails that ring this boom-bust-boom hamlet. And as a photographer, you’ve got to ride along with them-ten hours a day of rumbling along, listening to stories from guys who all their life have been earning little trophies for driving around in cars and trucks. When you’re not in the jeeps, you’re staking out a steep cliff, or “obstacle,” watching a group of  blank-headed tourists in tree-bark camouflage pile up rocks and tree trunks at the base, just so “Jimbo” can gun his way up and receive a round of applause.

There are two camps on planet Moab: If you’re not an exhaust-huffing jeeper, you’re a pot-smoking naturalist. The naturalists want the jeepers to go away, and the jeepers want the naturalists to shut the hell up. When you hear the naturalists describe the “chain-reactionary” damage caused by oil and gas fumes and broken parts, and trampling of the landscape, you wonder if the jeepers are all that guilty, until you ride along with a jeeper who tells you about how he used to drive up the natural bridges in Arches National Park, and then you notice a tree that has been driven over and up-rooted.

So, days were spent dumbing it up with the jeepers and nights were spent in Moab’s pocket of weirdness: the retro-sheik apartment of Bill Musto, with his bowling shirt-Chuck Taylor-close-cut beard-transplant freak from Ohio persona. We’d met him at a bar called the Rio, while a drunk local was staggering about with his pants down, and his cowboy buddies were attempting to corral him. Musto was there with a black-clad socialite named Susie Strong. She belonged in Manhattan, but grew up in Moab. She was the one who announced we were coming back to their place. When things start getting curious like this, it is common to examine all of the options. Maybe it’s not too wise to get twisted up in the swank underbelly of Moab. “Maybe it was true what people say about “becoming stranded” here,” I thought to myself. This led me to my jacket pocket; before we left for the bar that evening, we had checked the rural mailbox at the end of Jacko’s driveway. There were two pieces of mail waiting there. One was from Melco: it seems we needed to be at the San Diego Yacht Club in three days in order to hop some high-end racing boats and sail for Catalina. This was an option. It was a reason to flee Moab. Besides, our newfound companions had all the earmarks of no-good business.

The second piece of mail was from good old Delcan Montgomery. It had a picture of two natives squatting in the dirt, one with a pipe up his nose, and the other looking down the pipe. They were both brightly colored. I didn’t get around to reading it, but rather handed it off to Boo, who stuffed it in his pocket. I would later learn that I should have read that postcard.

 Back at Musto’s apartment, up the rickety steps and across from the courthouse, Boo and I found ourselves in a heated debate with Susie Strong, who had revealed herself as a man-hating lesbian. A pretty one, for that matter. Which is a rare gem in the strain of man-hating lesbians.

We all went in circles on the subject, defending our man-ness, and unraveling her mean-eyed lesbian rhetoric, until finally she announced that she wasn’t a lesbian at all, and was in fact Bill Musto’s live-in girlfriend. This was of course met with hearty laughter and relief all around, but when Musto put on a pair of white furry pants and a Mister Rogers album, the scene turned stranger. Susie began to dance.

“I love this place,” she sang, twirling toward the kitchen. She was dressed all in black, with a choker necklace and short hair, like a kid in basic training. But despite the buzz-cut, her high cheekbones and expressive, bright eyes made sure we knew she was a woman, or a girl, anyway. She was back-dropped by a giant painting of the ocean-the type you might find at a garage sale- her full breasted figure framed by the tacky piece of wall art. Musto looked on, hunched over on the red couch, peering maniacally at Susie, who continued to dance methodically as Mr. Rogers sang, “…when ever I do something, like putting on my shoes, I like to take my time and do it right.” Susie continued,

“We should all go camping. I love camping! Oh, Bill, go get those orange glasses you have!”

“Sure thing,” Musto replied, leaping from the couch.

What had happened? Was this a vacuum? A wicked vortex of pop culture hedonism spiked in the center of redneck land? This was too surreal. It was too far removed from the night before, at The Crazy Horse Saloon, where cowboys beat up the doorman, someone was dragging an upside-down Cadillac around behind their truck, and a rifle was being auctioned off behind the bar. I longed for that straight, predictable scene.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe no one escapes from Moab. It would certainly explain these two opposing forms of weirdness in such close proximity.  I made a decision that night: it was time to meet Melco at the yacht club. Boo Wiles would understand. He would encourage it. And anyway, it was official magazine business.

The next day, I bid Jacko, Musto, Susie, Boo Wiles and Anton Rash goodbye, and flew for the coast.

7

 

                The world of sailboats is a familiar one to Luke Schuter. Melco Shank as well. Once, years ago, they were out sailing with Ryan Juke. There wasn’t much wind, and Juke was more interested in swimming than sailing. But Shank and Schuter were schooled in the subtleties of wind. Ryan, of course, was unconcerned.

“Ryan, get back in, we have to jibe,” Luke called to Juke, who was languishing with a beer in the waters of Arizona’s Canyon Lake. “But there’s no wind,” Juke reasoned.

Shank and Schuter responed in chorus:

“Yes there is,” they retorted.

“Oh, hey,” Ryan said. “I forgot you guy’s are a couple of briny fuckin’ sea pros!”

                Sailboat racing is a high dollar game, if you’re talking about any real competition.

If you want to be high speed and get noticed,  you’ve got to get yourself a high speed, state of the art racing boat. These crafts employ the most efficient sailing technology available. Increased waterlines, super lightweight construction, obsessive ergonomic layout, and Kevlar or carbon sails are the rule. The boats retain the gear for harnessing wind and water; that much remains. But they begin looking more like spacecraft with each new design. The type of sportsman that chooses to sail is the type with a heavy bent for adventure, escape, mystique, and booze. They want to win, and they make sure they live like kings while trying. This is easy at the yacht clubs. All of them are brass lined, hardwood hideouts with walls covered with dramatic paintings of ships at sea, rows of trophies dating back to the 1920’s, and photos of past commodores, with hands on a ships wheel or a martini.

Most of the heavies in the sport are either asset or self made millionaires, or both. Dennis Connor, who rose to fame in the America’s Cup Series, made his fortune selling carpeting, which he cashed in for a hot rod sailboat and some matching jackets, and preceded to conquer the yachting world. This was back when the boats were lined with teakwood, and crisp blue blazers were the norm. Ted Turner, who owns CNN, raced yachts as well. He wore a Greek fisherman’s cap and sang songs as he pummeled his competitors in the early and mid seventies. He tells reporters that he hated the nonsense of professional yacht racing. What he truly loved was the idea of racing a sailboat.

                The common denominator among skippers is this: they all, at one point, hit the mint and bought a boat, and then gave it a name like “ Old Yeller,” “Zephyrus”, or “War Bride.” And for each guy that hit the mint and bought a boat, there are at least twelve sailors with a ticket to ride. That is the age-old arrangement: there are captains and there are crew. When the big time captains show up at a race, or only at the club, sailors drop their cocktails and scoot around like horny twelve-year-olds, falling over themselves to have a word or two. There are plenty of stories lately of Dennis Connor sightings. Racers display photos of themselves with an arm around Connor, or tell stories of bumping into Dennis after a regatta. A lot of them will thrust a business card at Connor and blurt out some excited, juvenile jabber like, “If you ever need any rail meat, give me a call.” The thing about it is that all of them, from the biggest noise to the weekend beer can racer, love to sail. This, even above the pompous one-upsmanship and mind-game rabble at the dock, unifies them as zealots.

                 Melco and Luke would crew aboard Rigel, skippered by Gilchrist, a grizzled and mild mannered sailing lunatic. Evan Talbot, rock star sailor, skippered the second boat, Wild Thing. He recently crewed aboard the boat that won the Lipton Cup, which puts him in the upper third of pro sailors in California. Aboard the third boat, Center of Gravity, was the owner and skipper, Rick Johnson. He was the Grand Pooh-Bah of the trip, in his over-alls and leather deck shoes, and his mad scientist hair, he set the tone, stoked the fires.  The mild passage took us 70 nautical miles to Avalon, on Catalina Island. Avalon is a living postcard. The hills sport $300,000 homes, half shrouded in sea fog. The entire economy is made up of souvenir shops, bars and restaurants. It’s a high dollar waypoint for vacationers, true-grit sailors, and fat, over paid socialites. A group of drunk kids was screaming and diving from a motor yacht in the harbor as our crew-all nine of us- walked up the long pier, misrouted occasionally by packs of well dressed, half smashed cruise ship passengers with cigarettes and too much eye make-up.

 Rick turned around and looked out at the foggy harbor, grinning a ginny grin. There, he stood as a curiosity. A group of high school girls came up and began to video tape him. He took the cue, and as they giggled, he dramatically chewed on an imagined something or another, and then proclaimed the formless and surreal, “dog bone.” This is the type of event that a person only witnesses part of, and can only speculate on the meaning. But in a quirky little seaport like Avalon, freaked out boat skippers with nothing but sport on their minds are only part of the landscape.

             While this was taking place, the group noticed a lone figure among the crowd. It was a short man in a crash helmet and a one piece white jump suit with red and green vertical stripes running down the legs and arms, and automotive logos across the front and back. Obviously a professional racecar driver, the man was sprinting madly through the milling crowd. The projected idea was that he was late for an event, or running for his life. It was later that we discovered he was completely out of his mind from cheap booze and vivarin. He actually had no business being on Catalina Island, but had mistakenly boarded a ferry bound for Avalon, rather than getting on the bus that would take him to the racetrack.

                They learned all of this when he lunged up to the table at the cantina, and picked a fight with rock star sailor Evan Talbot, calling him a “shit-assed, big-headed wind whore.”

 “ You would never last in Formula one, Talbot!” he muttered. “ If I wasn’t so lit up I’d knock a hole in your head, you arrogant  suckfish.”

    Talbot sat quietly, smugly relishing the attention. This was a clash of egos. Two big time racers with an agenda. Talbot never questioned what this man, whom we learned was really five-time formula one driving champion Juan Manuel Fanjio, was doing in his racing gear in Avalon on a Tuesday afternoon, but instead retorted with this:

 “Are you drunk Fanjio?  That might fly back in your little country (Argentina), but it won’t here in the free world. So get the hell out before I have you deported.”

                This was classic blow-hard conceit, common to the yacht racing world. But five-time formula one driving champion Juan Manuel Fanjio would not be put down. A violent brawl ensued, in which three people were left unconscious, two were arrested, and Evan Talbot was air lifted back to San Diego where he was treated for concussion and multiple bite wounds.

                In the chaos, the crew, minus Talbot, managed to find a rowboat and get back out to the war boats before the heat laid the hammer down. Gilchrist managed to get all of them, some bloodied and some too drunk to swim, back onto our respective boats in order to sail for Marina del Rey in the morning. After all, we had an obligation to deliver these boats to the Cal Yacht club in time for the race. There was a complication in the planning. Due to the removal from action of rock star sailor Evan Talbot, Gilchrist’s arithmetic was a bit off. He managed to deposit Rick Johnson and his two crewmembers safely aboard their boat, he got a total of two crewmembers aboard the second boat. But in the dark of the harbor, he unwittingly deposited Melco and Luke aboard their proper vessel, along with a partially conscious five-time formula one driving champion Juan Manuel Fanjio. It does seem odd that Gilchrist would not have noticed the crash helmet, but chaos breeds the same, and now they were two hours out to sea, with a completely incapacitated, and for all intents and purposes, kidnapped Juan Fanjio.

                The situation was made apparent when Melco emerged from the companionway and said, “We’ve got Fanjio aboard, and he’s out cold.” The worst type of feeling came over Luke as he clambered down to the cabin, thrown off a bit by the roll of the boat, knowing the worst had happened. It was proper that Johnny Cash was blaring from the tape player as they crouched, staring at this man in racing garb, with the crash helmet still in place, as he lay like a dead fish on a pile of sail bags. What would Ryan Juke do at a time like this?

                They sat quietly, made mute by the developments. What could they possibly tell the authorities?

“Well, officer, sure he’s out cold and on our vessel against his will, and we understand that he is a five-time-formula one driving champion, but we really had no control over the situation.”

                No control. That is the worst thing to tell a law enforcement officer. They will feed upon it. Prey upon you like a wounded Zebra. The racing community wields a heavy hand out here, and they were sure to unleash the most vicious of prosecutors when they got wind that we had Juan Manuel Fanjio in our clutches. The stakes were high, and we couldn’t afford to make a loose move. Luke wondered aloud to Melco if Fanjio’s family lived in the Los Angeles area. If so, we could call them and pray that he is a hopeless drunk, and that they would come straight away save face and pick him up upon making port. As this was being discussed, Fanjio began to stir. To make it worse, Gilchrist poked his head down below and shouted, “Hey, is that Fanjio from the fight last night? Holy mother of”

By now, the wind had piped up to 35 knots, and we were howling along under reefed sails. We had come abeam of a cruising boat, and were matching them knot for knot in the ferocious wind. Our neighbor boat was loaded with jerry cans and fishing floats, and three women were on the bow, wearing nothing but yellow foully jackets. Howls of laughter were rising from their vessel, aptly named “Disraeli.” We just sat and waved, trying not to reveal that we had a hostage on board. Then the cruising boat hailed the pair:

“ Hey guys, need any beer?” one of the women called out. As she was saying this, and before we could answer, one of the other women hurled a bucket full of Tecate cans at our boat. The cans exited the bucket and became airborne, some whipped away by the wind, others bouncing off the hull and mast. It was all brought to a head when, in perfect coordination with the flying beer cans, Juan Fanjio emerged from the companion way in an attempt to discover just where he was. A can ricocheted off of his helmet, sending him swiftly back down below.

                Gilchrist began to laugh uncontrollably as Latin swear words sounded from the hatch, and now the situation became nightmarish, horrifying. We pulled away from Disraeli and headed north. Through the screaming wind and rapid-fire flap of strained sails, we heard the women’s fading, laughing voices shouting, “Who’s your friend with the helmet? Who’s your friend? Where ya going?”

                Soon, the sirens vessel was just a speck on the horizon. Fanjio was down below, politely asking what was happening, and Gilchrist just steered the boat and shook his head. We were seen by the women. Dead to rights. Now there were witnesses. It was in our favor that these women did not seem like race fans, and so would not recognize five-time formula one driving champion Juan Manuel Fanjio, thereby not turning us in. But what if they knew him? What if they were cranking up the VHF right now to alert the storm troopers? What if they were spies for the racing community, posing as half-naked cruising sailors, in order to discover the whereabouts of Juan Fanjio and incriminate the perpetrators?  That would explain the Tecate, for certain.

                The acute paranoiac episode subsided with the weather, and they began to think as rationally as possible. “The best thing to do is to just explain the situation to the authorities when we make port.” Gilchrist offered. “Just tell them it was all a big misunderstanding.” But they knew this would never wash with the racing community. They would never buy a story that one of their own was so completely out of sorts that he got himself mixed up in such a fiasco. Racers like to keep up appearances, and this was nothing less than bad press. No, they wouldn’t buy it. They would all line up on the dock with their trophies in hand and proclaim us guilty of pre-meditated kidnapping with intent to defame the racing community, and we would be strung up by our toes.

                In the midst of our whispered discussion, we began to hear fanjio down below, softly and desperately repeating to himself, “I’ll lose my sponsorship. I’ll lose my sponsorship. I’ll lose my spons..”

                “And the poor guy will lose his sponsorship!” Melco declared. “We can’t let this get out, because we’ll be hung, and Fanjio will lose his sponsorship.”

                They had a moral obligation now to preserve the reputation of a celebrated formula one driving champion. None of this could get out. The hard reality was settling in. We all understood that we were on a direct course for an angry dock, where there would be accusations and jeers and terrible gossip. “ We should land in Redondo beach.” Melco reasoned. “We can’t go straight into the yacht club, they’re waiting for us. And why doesn’t he take that damned helmet off!”

“Please,” Fanjio pleaded, “let me keep my dignity.”

By now, Melco was growing tense.

“Oh, alright, keep the helmet on. But you’re not takin’ us down with you.”

Gilchrist sat up and straightened his North Sails canvas cap: “ There you go Melco, now you’re talkin’. Just throw him overboard.” Melco was highly suggestible due to the circumstances, and even leapt up onto the foredeck in an attempt to rally support for making Fanjio walk the plank. Luckily, cooler heads would prevail. Fanjio asked to use the phone. “Can I just call my Nephew, Javier? He’s down in Ensenada for the 500 and he should”

Gilchrist interrupted Fanjio: “Wait, he’s in Ensenada for the what?”

“The Baja 500.”

                This was the break, it was complete logic. If they could get down to Ensenada, which was only a day and a half away, all they would have to do would be to turn Fanjio loose among the race fans and he would blend right in. It would be much easier to understand that five time formula one driving champion Juan Manuel Fanjio, fully suited up, went to the wrong race, albeit the legendary Baja 500, a bit of a stretch from formula one. But it was much less incriminating than this beer-fueled, high seas shanghai catastrophe that they all found themselves in.

                To make the plan go, Luke knew they had to overcome some crucial obstacles. First, they would need to

get neatly tucked into a Cal Yacht Club slip. Next would be the treacherous navigation of the yacht club itself, a gauntlet they would have to run.

                Getting passed the blow-hards and strutting asses would normally take no more than a polite laugh at a clichéd joke and the tip of a glass, but they had Fanjio in tow, and he would not remove his helmet. The task was daunting.

                Finally, they would need to locate a cruising boat bound for Ensenada, Mexico, and leaving that night. This, of course, was the least of their worries.

                It was at the yacht club cookout that the situation reached critical mass. There in line, among the yachtsmen, they stood, with a nonchalant lean and casual banter about super light turnbuckles and the latest triple carbon mesh matt sails. They were trying to blend in. So far, it was working. Mexican immigrants, who had been dressed up in zinc white chefs coats, complete with matching hats, served  hamburgers straight from the expired meat isle at Ralf’s, while two men with khaki slacks and zippy hair began to quip about our friend in the racing gear. This could be it. If they pressed hard enough, they would surely discover the terrible secret. They were now well within the jaws of condemnation. A crowd was gathering. People were beginning to wonder about the helmet. We stood still and held our breath as swells of waspy speculation and white-bread murmurs swarmed all around us. Luke thought they would be shot when the whitest of them all, a tanned duke of some kind with a Rolex and a yellow sports shirt piped up with this: “Don’t you race formula one?”

                Terror.

                This was the end for certain. Where was Ryan Juke, now that they needed him.

                Before they could answer, the cavalry arrived. Luke had forgotten that Gilchrist had taken on the task of finding a boat bound for Mexico. He came running up and ran right in to the Nordic inquisitioner, sending him smartly into the servants table before he could get an answer for his formula one question. Then Gilchrist turned around, shouted a hearty, “ Sorry for that!” as he spilled red wine on a crowd of club members. As the scene turned angry, and shouts were directed at Gilchrist, damning his oafish behavior, he managed to get close enough to us to wisper a directive:

“ Slip 414, by the park.” Is what he said. They grabbed Fanjio and bolted. At slip 414 lay our escape pod. We knew this. To get there meant skipping country and melting in with the Baja 500. They were nearly free.

This would mark our official divestiture from the racing world, and a violent baptism into cruising. We understood that the cruisers would understand our plight, and be happy to smuggle us out of the clutches of the speed-happy racing community.

                The escape route required the group to pass through the meeting hall of the club before hitting daylight again. Just as we thought we were out, we found ourselves in the middle of an awards ceremony. The room was wall to wall with yachties and onlookers; they made a great attempt at weaving through them, but their ranks were just too thick. They had to stop, and ride out the ceremony. As discreetly as they could, the group stood back by the bar as boat names and placings in the race were called out by a woman who looked like Joan Crawford in a bad fishing movie, which would star Peter lawford as the dashing captain and John Voight as the brash young first mate. Strings of burgees lined the room, framing the crowd, as they hurrahed and sipped their white Russians, while Joan stood and called out the results. The entire event seemed like a pompous version of bingo: five glad handing skippers in a row, and you win.

                But Luke and Melco did not want to win. They wanted to escape. They sat and waited for the right moment, but Fanjio was feeling a bit generous, and he bought all three of them a round of whiskey shots. “This might look better,” Luke thought. “It would help our cause to appear as just three good old sailors having a friendly drink at the bar. One, of course, with a racing suit and crash helmet, but why not?”

                This was where the tense conversation took place. As we were sitting, having had our shots, a man in his mid ‘50s, with a club blazer and the calm and careful demeanor of a yacht club officer, came up and sat down with us. “What boat are you three with?” he said, with a friendly smile. Luke almost jumped at the sound of his voice, and did not know what to tell him. If they mentioned the boat they actually came in on, he might call the authorities, knowing they had Fanjio. Even if that didn’t happen, he might discover Fanjio and ruin his career. And if he were to invent a boat name, he might become suspicious and look in to their credentials. Every road leads to complete criminalisation. They could not muster any words. Fanjio, to make it worse, had ordered a Heineken, a gin and tonic, and a brandy, all for himself, and had already consumed the brandy.

                Now, any one who knows a yacht club guy knows that they are never interested in listening to anyone. They only want to talk at people. Because of this condition, we were spared any explanations as he piped right back up before letting us utter a sound (god bless him). And if the awards ceremony was a strange form of bingo, then this guy was the champion of another yacht club game. Apparently the object is to drop as many names in one sentence as possible. The winner gets to have people pay attention to him for the rest of the evening.  Here he went:

                “Last year, I sailed with Roy Disney and Michael Geffen. He knows Dennis Connor and his people, and so we got to meet Ted Turner and have drinks with Jason Alexander and Kelsey Gramer, who owns that Farr 40 across the harbor.”

                Wow. How could we top that? How could we possibly keep our cool in the face of such noted personalities in the yachting world?  This is where I came to love our companion, Fanjio. He shoved his drunken face at the yacht guy and blurted out, “ Richie Valenz, Willie Nelson, Jack Nicholson, Burt Reynolds and Nipsey Russell.”

                The yachtsman  was dumbfounded. Not only was this a steady stream of celebrity names, they weren’t even connected by a sentence. Our opponent had a look of awe on his face that seemed to declare, “ I didn’t even know those guys sailed.”  We had effectively trumped him, as he sat and smiled. “Can I buy you gentlemen a drink?” he said, straightening his blazer and settling in to the stool. “No, no. We’ve got to get going.” Melco said. “ We’ve got sails to fold down at the boat and..”

                “Well, which one’s your boat?” He asked, standing up to follow.

Perhaps it had backfired. Maybe now he would want to be seen with the trio and brag to his friends about it. What if we could not shake this yacht club tag along? What if he knew it was Fanjio and was a lot more clever than he looked?

                Fanjio answered him, as we hurried away from the bar, “It’s the boat next to Robert Goulet.” He was pushing it now. Ridiculing for ridicule’s sake.

                Once on the dock, walking briskly but casually for slip 414, they noticed our friend from the bar was trailing us. I believe he innocently wanted to glimpse our race boat, and maybe meet Robert Goulet, which of course could not happen, but Melco was more suspicious of him. “My god, man, he knows what we’re up to. He’s a private dick for the racing crowd, and he’s going to jump us any second. We’ve got to lose him now or we’ll be eaten alive!” In a lot of ways, Melco was right. If the name-dropping tag along witnessed us boarding the aforementioned boat in slip 414, they could be tracked. Hunted down like criminals. It became starkly apparent that they were not out of the woods yet. And Fanjio was so drunk that he began to sing as he sloppily meandered down the dock. We turned left, and so did our shadow. Turned right, so did he. We could not shake him. And they were nearing slip 414. Melco knew we had to use his name-dropping weakness against him. “Which one was Roberts’ boat?” he asked Fanjio, now openly giggling. “ Number 210, slip 210 is where Robert Goulet is.” The ruse worked, apparently. The shadow had gone. They saw him high stepping toward what we assumed to be slip 210, and his imagined liaison with Robert Goulet. The real liason would likely be with a half-stoned attorney, or some mean-spirited restaurant owner. Either way, he was out of the picture.

               

 

8

While the race crowd is busy making sure they don’t have any fun while having fun, and rushing around to pat themselves on the back, the cruising crowd is occupied with cheap, quick beer and bananas, straw hats and seat cushions. Melco Shank describes it as “purely Jukanian.” Ryan never knew his spirit had an application. Anything reckless, unconcerned or excessive became known as “Jukanian.” Cruising country certainly qualifies.

 

The trio stood on the dock, eyeing the boat that would take them to Ensenada. An Olson 36. Big furniture boat, as they are called. It’s nothing in the way of speed, but it takes a ferocious sea to shake it up. These boats are built for the open ocean. They plow through the roughest waves, rolling and bouncing like a rollercoaster, while hammocks full of cookies and booze rock silently down below. These people have it all figured out.

                Like all cruising boats, the name of this one was understated, and not even mentioned, but a boat name can tell a lot about the skipper and crew. Most cruisers are noted for their affinity for playing on words when naming their boat. The skipper of  “Witch Way” was no exception.

                “Well, who knows how to whip a line?” called a laughing, deep voice from behind us. We all three turned and were confronted with the most unkempt, shaggy, gut-having sailor we’d seen.

                “I’m Denny Kirk, but you can call me Beano,” he said. “It’ll all be cool if you don’t mind Ted Nugent. We’re leavin’ in half an hour.”

 That was fine. In fact, the cruising set paid no attention to Fanjio and his racing costume. They were now in the hands of slack-shirted wind angels, and their deliverance from swank was at hand.

One hour out, everything was straight. A fresh 20-knot breeze held the stiff-rigged boat on a pounding course west. Beano stood at the wheel, looking only straight ahead, and occasionally up at the mast. The first mate was a 35-year-old ex Navy Seal who had grown a goatee and built a steady career as a Mexico sail bum. He had a tattoo on his chest of an anchor, crossed with an assault rifle, with the words, “Pray for War.” scrolled on a banner below it. A strange, and even un settling image, when coupled with the massive joint stuck between his lips like a cigar. He sat on the bulkhead and pulled in the main halyard with short tugs, and when he talked, the joint wagged up and down in his teeth.

“Gettin’ a little saucy out there, skip,” he said. “Bet we get hit before nightfall.”

This sentence became the only thing our first mate uttered for the next 17 hours, but it proved to predict a villainous set of events, from both the ocean, and the boat itself.

                Luke woke up around three a.m. when a hard roll to port threw him out of the bunk. This was followed by the shouted command, “all hands get up! Get out here quick!” from the cockpit.

The weird thing about putting on rain gear and a life vest while barely awake and then climbing out into the icy wind in total darkness on a boat that is bucking like a bull is not the idea of being in danger, but the sensation of being on a space craft. It is very apparent that you are not near safety; you can’t just get off the boat, you’re nowhere near land. It might as well be outer space. On a sailboat at night, the only thing illuminated is the cockpit, which is an open-air platform with a railing. Beyond that is pitch darkness. The wind, coupled with the rolling, lunging motion of the boat, adds a new facet to the half-awake mind. He started to feel like he was in the cockpit of some turn of the century airship. Worse, he had to start pulling sheets, and cranking winches. It’s always very strange at night in the wind on a boat. So, when the first mate started firing a Chinese made assault rifle into the ocean, Luke just rolled along. The Loud crack, coupled with the almost imperceptible metal clank of the bolt, pierced the cold violent night. The bright, strobe-like muzzle flash gave way to stop-motion waves and sailors. They had also blown out the storm jib in the 40-knot gale. Running forward to pull in the torn sail, Luke was thrown down and cracked his shoulder on the bulkhead. After an hour of riding the wind like an angry hornet, he was looked after by the first mate.

“Here, take these and get a nap,” he said, handing me three large pills. Lortab. Pain killer, brain blunter. By the time we made port in Ensenada, Luke Schuter was as capable as a pile of broccoli.

There has never been a better-developed system of social control than in modern Mexico. Ensenada, in particular, is a port city that has been converted into a full-blown “all bets are off” gringo party wonderland. The city is designed for pure debauchery. Sailors come into town and whoop it up like fat, mad pans with too much time and money. Off-road racers swarm the streets twice a year with high-end trucks and buggies. Prostitution is legal, and drugs are in endless supply. The white folk think of it as paradise. Anything goes. No rules. This is partially true. But the Mexican government is in fine form with its policy of deploying platoons of combat troops and half-lit, trigger-happy federales in force on the streets and in the hills. The effect is complete balance. All the drunk, ripped, loud, half-naked subjects of the northern empire stroll about on their best behavior under the careful eye of armed troops. The message is simple: party up, but keep it in the hotels. If a bold faced tourist wants to start a scene, or even only get a little violent with his own group, you can bet he’ll wind up with a bayonet through his neck. It’s a lot like marshal law, only everyone, including the cops, are loaded.

                It was late at night when they arrived, and the Baja 500 was set to start at dawn, just four hours away. Only 50 yards from the port called “Baja Naval,” the race vehicles were lined up at the starting line. They stretched out for several hundred yards, like a sinister war train, painted brightly for effect. They were silent now, but with the sunrise, the air would be jolted by hundreds of revving engines, and low flying choppers.

                For now, the trio had to get off the street. The shortest distance was Anthony’s, the local nightspot. Here they could blend in, and wait for the event activities. The lortab was still gripping Luke’s veins, and the effect, coupled with the trip, had put him in a state of unrivaled separation.

Anthony’s is a big box of a building with a 20-foot King Kong gorilla jutting out over the door. The inside is packed wall to wall with sweaty salsa dancers, chubby truck drivers, race fans, high-end prostitutes and their well-dressed brokers. Latin men rush up to greet you and escort you to your seat, which is always shared by someone else. When they sat down, the band was blasting away with a Spanish version of “Whip it” by Devo. On the dance floor was a Korean couple, dancing like a stiff white couple. A lanky, 60 year old cowboy in a red shirt was scooting around with his 30-year-old wife, and two hookers were spinning like tops in tight mini dresses. They had traveled into the inner workings of the beast. They were safe here.

                It was when Fanjio jumped up and hit the dance floor that they met their tablemate. He thrust a Pacifico and a tequila chaser at each of themand shouted, “Have a drink, and then you can help me get these women topless.”  Luke was completely removed from the simple things like sound and language; they still registered, he just had no drive to process them. So much so that all he could do was nod.  But our new friend said something that made Luke sit up a little straighter.

“I thought you were in California,” he said. “And what brought you here? Miss the Crazy Horse?”

The voice pierced the smoke that hung in the bar. It was a cannon blast, jolting him back into alert reality.  By some odd sideways coincidence, they had managed to end up at Anthony’s in Ensenada, at a table with Boo Wiles.

“Well, Boo, it’s about time you show up,” Melco shouted, kicking Boo’s chair.

“Yeah, I figured you’d get into trouble and scoot down to Mexico sooner or later,” Boo replied, sitting up and grinning, as he always does when engaged in a solid round of sarcasm.

“Actually, this is perfect,” he continued. “Now we can all go see Delcan.”

This is what brought Luke into to fold. What did he mean, “go see Delcan?” before he could ask, Anton Rash rushed up to the table, his head colored from the dance floor lights:

“Hey, I just saw Juan Manuel Fanjio!” he said excitedly.  “Juan Manuel Fanjio’s in here!”

As quickly as he said this, and before any of us could react, the band exploded with the most obnoxious version of  “Stuck On You” by Lionel Ritchie, producing a dramatic shift in the mood of Antony’s. The crowd on the dance floor parted like a curtain, revealing the lone figure of five-time formula one driving champion Juan Manuel Fanjio. He stood there, leaning to one side, as the band continued. The singer sang the lyrics, “Stuck on you…got this feelin’ down deep in my soul that I just can’t lose….”

Couples paired up and danced, as Fanjio stood there with an eerie blue light on him. The image served to remind us that we were most certainly not out of the woods yet. Anton continued:

“Man, look at him! He’s so smashed he doesn’t even know where he is! I wonder why he’s here.”

In that instance, Fanjio threw his left hand into the air, and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Luke looked over at Boo looked at him and then at Melco, and then back at Luke. For some reason, he felt compelled to reveal all the details of the events that led to this shaky table at Anthony’s. Being still in the grasp of the Lortab, he was convinced Boo Knew Fanjio was with them. This was, of course, ludicrous.

Nonetheless, he continued,

“ It’s simple, really. There was a fight at the bar in Avalon and Fanjio started it because he was drunk and pretty soon the whole place was throwing chairs and bashing in heads and we rowed out to the boats before the cops got there and the next morning we found out that Fanjio was passed out down below and we knew we couldn’t let anyone know we had him because they’d never believe us and then the fear took hold and we decided to skip country and make it down to Mexico where it might make more sense for Fanjio to be, and anyway he’d lose his sponsorship and we really didn’t kidnap him and it all just got so out of hand that-” Before he could finish, Boo pulled the post card out of his pocket. The one from Delcan. Luke stood bolt up and shouted,
”Oh yeah! Delcan! What are you talking about?” Melco fell over in his chair and began to laugh in that loud, raucous laugh that he does whenever he is presented with the blunt absurdity of any situation. This was certainly it. “ You brought Juan Manuel Fanjio down here with you?” Boo asked, leaning into the table.

“That’s right,” Melco replied, out of breath from laughter.

“Does he know where he is?” Anton asked, looking out at the dance floor.

“Not literally,” Luke said, picking up the post card. “What’s all this Delcan stuff?”

“He’s down in Erendira,” Boo said. “He bought a hostel down there.”

 Now the great nebula was forming. Had he taken the time to read the post card, Luke would have been prepared. That goofy maniac had somehow managed to pull the money together and buy a hostel on the coast. It was only fitting that he didn’t learn of it until now-less than an hour from Erendira.

“Let’s go dig him,” Anton said loosely.  “He’s got a whole scene down there.”

“And the Baja runs right past it,” Boo offered.

There was, of course, the question of Fanjio. Was he safe? Was the mission complete? Had we done the right thing?

There wasn’t much time to consider the ethical proprieties of the situation, considering the sun had come up, the race was underway, and Fanjio was in the corner, being shaken by a pair of policia.  He was barely coherent as they pawed at him, and made a gesture that said, “wait right here” as they went outside. They were coming back, and who knows what he had told them. Eventually he loped up to our table, where Melco was asleep, snoring on Anton’s shoulder.

“Mr. Fanjio,” Boo said with a smile, extending his hand. “How’re ya feelin’?” There was a strange calm in Fanjio’s eyes. He was smiling. “I think I know what it is,” he announced, waving his finger. “I think you’re afraid I’ll tell them what happened.”

“Tell who what happened?” Luke asked, attempting a shrewd coyness.

“You shouldn’t try that shrewd coyness, Lukey,” he said. “And anyway, the policia have gone to find my brother. You can go now, I’ll be ok. But you better go now, because they want to know who brought me here.”

“That’s true,” Boo said. “We are gringo’s. If they learned anything, they’d hit us hard with every gringo clause they’ve got. They might even make some up. We should go on and find Delcan.”

We passed the policia on the way out, as they were coming back in.

Outside was a bleach bright world of post-race start chaos. While squinting from the sun, they negotiated the littered streets, passed race fans, through groups of Federales, across piles of checkered flag streamers and Tecate banners. Boo was parked across the street, in a dirt field. The air was silent now-all the buggies and trophy trucks were by now speeding through the countryside. They all piled into the truck without incident, saying nothing as Boo started the engine. Soon they were rolling over bumpy roads. From inside the camper shell, they could not see where they were, laying still as the truck made vicious turns and jumped over huge potholes. When the truck stopped, Luke sat up in time for the camper hatch to open. Boo stood out side, chewing on something. Then he thrust a bag at us.

“Taco?” he said casually.  Six a.m. and they were enjoying tacos. Real ones, for that matter.

From here, the road trip went largely un-noticed. Luke and Shank both were out cold, catching up on much needed sleep. But when Luke did wake up and look out the side window, curious Mexican scenes would roll passed. At one instance, while they were moving through the hill country, he looked up in time to see a woman standing next to a wooden shack surrounded by rusting machine parts. She was particularly sultry, with her long black hair that was just a little windblown, and her brown skin. She wasn’t thin, but it didn’t matter. She had on a dirty t-shirt and a blue plaid skirt. That image took him back to sleep until they were forced to stop at a Federale check point. It consisted of a folding table, laden with assault rifles, and around six fully armed combat troops who were checking the credentials of each vehicle. There were ten or so in line, all affiliated with the race. Fifteen feet ahead of the check point sat a lone trooper-all of sixteen-behind a sandbag wall. He had a rope attached to a spike chain, no doubt with orders to yank and blow the tires of anyone who tried to make a bolt for the highway. Melco jumped out into the dusty air. The only sound was the crunch of shoes on gravel and the low muttering of the Federale commander as he inspected and questioned each vehicle. “It’s a dragnet,” Melco whispered. “They’re looking for kidnappers.” The road had taken its toll on Shank-he had slipped into a paranoid funk. He began pacing.

“They’re looking for us,” he continued. “We’ll never get by, wait!” He crouched and listened in the direction of the lead vehicle. “Did you hear that? He just said Fanjo! Did you hear?” Just then, Boo and Anton appeared from the cab.

“There’s a side road over there,” Boo said. “We’ll go that way and try to get around this.” We climbed in and turned left, down a long, sloping dirt road, which ended at a modest farm. They all got out, and stood there, among loose dogs and chickens, a woman standing at her screen door. It was as if we were supposed to be there, like this woman is visited daily by packs of puzzled gringos. Luke looked up and asked her, in some of his worst street Spanish, if she knew where the highway was.

“Nosotros necesitos el camino. Donde?” he said to her, trying not to rouse suspicion. From their vantage point, we could see the Federales and the line of trucks, and there was certainly no other way out. She smiled and pointed generally south east, and let loose with a string of eloquent language, from which he could only make out the words, “away” and “race.” They thanked her and started back down the road, toward the roadblock. By now the traffic had picked up, but Shank was no less tense than before.

 

The lead man poked his head into the truck. He filled the window with his stubbled jaw and olive drab Castro-style cap. Two bored-faced soldiers stood behind him, one with a cigarette.

“A Donde Van?” he asked quietly, Rifling through the truck with his eyes.

“Erendira,” Boo replied. There was a long silence. “Quanto diaz?” he asked. “Three or four,” Boo responded. “Muy bien,” he said finally, waving us through. As we started to move, he called out again:

“Gringo!” he said, slapping the side of the truck. We stopped. He held up a “Baja 500” poster. It was clear. He wanted a shwag as a toll. They’d need to lay a race item on him, something from the 500. Boo had nothing but a few Jaunt magazine stickers, but that was enough. It was clear now that no one was looking for kidnappers out here, and anyway none of them were so nervous as Melco. But the next town would hold a new direction for Shank, and an edgy situation for the rest.

9

                It was mid afternoon when they rolled into San Juan de Las Pulgas, a small fishing village on the coast. There was no movement, except for a cat slowly walking an adobe fence. The group walked into the first bar they found-a red adobe shack called, “El Madinero.” There was a tiny marina behind the bar, with two tuna boats and a sloop rig. The sloop looked familiar, and as he got closer, Luke read the name on the stern. It was “Witch Way,” Beano’s boat. The small world of Baja was closing in. He braced himself for the reunion.

 Inside, sailors and fisherman sat at small tables, telling stories.  The walls were covered with photos

 from the American T.V. show “Hill Street Blues,” which was odd, but not abnormal. Taped to the counter were hundreds of Polaroids of the people who had spent a night or two at El Madinero. Shots of fat white guys arm in arm with large-hipped latin women, blond sorority chicks making fools of themselves.  Melco seized one in his hand and tossed it on the table. They all looked down at the picture. There he was. In the picture, Delcan was standing on a table, posing with a cop and an old smiling woman, wearing a wet suit and a cycling helmet. In his left hand was what looked like a tennis racquet, but it was actually a very large maraca. His horn-rimmed glasses reflected the flash in a bold, almost sinister way, and his pale face glowed. He had been through here. But when?

“I got us all whiskey shots,” Anton said, sitting down. “What’s this?”

“It’s Delcan,” Luke said. “Delcan was here very recently.”

“When?” Anton asked.

“We don’t know,” Boo said. “All we have is that photo to go on,”

This is where things got a little strange. It was one those circumstances where things seem to mesh in an odd way. Our conversation seemed to be incorporating itself with the table next to us. Words would be repeated. So, when Boo said, “..all we have is that photo to go on,” the neighboring table echoed with “Go on.”

At first it was small. Just an odd coincidence. Then, it continued.

“Maybe he’ll be back, “Melco said. “Maybe we should wait here.”

“Wait here.” sounded from the table, and with that, a gentleman got up, and stepped over to us. It was the Navy seal. The first mate from “Witch Way.” He was drunk as hell.

“Go on, go on, go on,” he shouted. “Wait here. Hey there. Hey y’all. Ya’ll guys wanna get a drink?”

“Come on back an finish up, Toke,” shouted Beano. “Let ‘em all be.”

Toke, as we learned the first mate’s name was, leaned in and murmered,

“Ya’ll see the women in the corner?” he asked Boo. “I’m takin’ em all. Watch.”

We looked over at the women. One of them had a jacket with the word “Disraeli” written across the back. Beano was shouting now.

“Hey boys,” he called. “Don’t mind old Toke. Have a drink.”

“Howdy, Beano,” Melco shouted.

“You know them?” Asked Anton.

“Missed y’all on the trip down,” Toke said with a leaning smile. We’re headin’ out in the morning if y’all wanna,”

Toke’s invitation was loudly preemted by one of the women from Disraeli:

“Here’s the answer, Toker,” then she chuckled. “We ain’t goin.”

“Fuck off, Toke,” one of the other women shouted.

Toke was agitated.

“Come on back, Toke,” Beano asked. “No need to,”

All three women stood up and shuffled over to our table.

“We’re shovin’ off right now and we’re takin’ a hostage!” said the woman in the jacket. Then she grabbed Melco.

“Me too,” said the other, grabbing Anton.

Melco and Anton could hardly protest as they were practically carried out the door under the loud protests of Toke. Beano began to laugh. Just like that, they were gone. Swept off by the sirens. The bar was quiet now, and Toke stood, panting. Glowering.

“Let’s go get ‘em.” He growled.

“Good on, ya, Toke!” shouted Beano.

“Arriba!” shouted the bartender. They all began to laugh.

A violent and robust flurry of preparation ensued. Cases of booze were hoisted and stacked like ammo cans. Gear was donned feverishly. All the systems on the boat-sails, winches, hatches,–were shaken and rattled to life. Disraeli was well out-a good half mile-but we could still hear their jeers.

“Make ready boys,” Toke shouted. “We’ll be boarding their craft inside of three hours.”

Beano stood on the dock, calm and ready. Women from the village ran up and offered him bundles of fruit and serapes. He accepted them graciously.

“Via con Dios, Don Beano!” they would shout, laughing and throwing their hands into the air.

Beano took a huge breath, and then stepped into the cockpit. There was a noble silence, except for the muffled “whup-whup-whup”of a lone pennant flying off the stern.

“Mr. Toke, prepare to shove off.” He said proudly. It was only now, as they set out to sea in pursuit of Disraeli, that Boo and Luke were able to put into perspective the epic shift in scenario that had taken place.

We were now locked in a game. This was only sport to the cruising set.

“They got out quicker than last month,” Toke shouted, charging the bolt on the assault rifle.

“If they make it to Erendira, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

A loud blast of sea spray leaped over the bow, soaking Toke, who didn’t move an inch.

“Sounds like we’re going to Erendira anyway,” Boo said, smiling.

“Sure enough,” Luke said, locating and opening two Pacificos.

“Phone’s ringin’!” Beano said casually. He was referring to the VHF radio. With which Disraeli was hailing us.

“You’re on commo, Luke,” Toke said flatly. So, it was his job to keep up a dialogue with Disraeli.

Once below, he located the handset of the VHF transmitter, and after a startling roll of the boat, Luke replied to the voice on the other end.

“Sailing Vessel Disraeli, this is Witch Way, Over.”

After some time, a swell of static brought the voice of Melco Shank to his ears.

“This is Disraeli. All is well,” he said. Then he giggled. “She’s been commenting on my chin.”

At first, Luke was puzzled.

“Shank, listen. They know eachother. What the news on your end, over.”

Shank was smitten, as he has a tendency to become. And all attempts at gathering important information were squelched by his dreamy-eyed pinings.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all a game,’ he said. “I think the blond one thinks I’m interesting.”

There was female laughter in the background as he spoke, and another one asking him to tell us that they were going to “beat our asses.”

“I asked her about Erasmus,” he said giddily. “Know what she said?”

“What’d she say, Melco.” Luke asked.
“She said my chin reminds her of that movie with Robert DeNiro. Then I told her about my love of Dostoyevsky and she offered me a bottle of wine. I think she was trying to say..”

Shank’s rambling was interupted by automatic weapons fire. Not from our boat, but from theirs.

This was answered by return fire from our boat, and to Luke’s horror, it was Boo who was doing the shooting.

“It’s okay,” Shank said calmly. “They’re all blanks, it’s all part of the game.

“Where’s Anton?’ Luke asked.

“He’s in the head, vomiting,” Shank replied. “So, I think Sara’s interested in maybe travelling together.”

By now, we were within 20 yards of  Disraeli, and each boats crew were standing in their respective cockpits.

“You aint gonna make it!” shouted the tall blond woman, waving a bottle of red wine. “We’re gonna beat your asses!”

Toke had a wild look of sport in his eyes when he said,
“Come about, Beano, I’m gonna jump their transom.”

They made a hard left turn, churning up a slosh of violent ocean upon which we pivoted, slamming the sails to starboard. The force knocked Beano off his feet, and Boo went over the rail, gripping the gunnel, with one leg in the water. Luke was thrown against the mast. He noticed the bow as it missed Disraeli’s stern by inches. It was silent tension for three seconds as the two boats crossed planes, and for a second, Luke locked eyes with the short redhead on the enemy boat. She had freckles on her cheeks, and a razorlike, beaming smile with zinc-white teeth. And just as the tension passed through that invisible eye when it’s anyone’s guess whether or not they’ll collide, she said this:

“Hits harsh, honey.”

As she was saying this, she was rolling past on that smooth, arcing motion generated only on sailboats. To this day, whenever he’s caught in three or so mad seconds of tense fear, Luke can see that reckless angel gliding past, saying, “Hits harsh, honey.”

But as quickly as it came, it went. Instantly they were clear of their boat, and rapidly pulling away. In those seconds, however, Toke had jumped to the other boat, and was standing in the cockpit, howling, as all three women piled around him like crazed little sisters. Even stranger was that Melco had leaped to our boat in the same instance, and was lying on the foredeck, panting and laughing.

“Goddamn,” Beano said, shaking his head. “Good thing he made it this time. Last time we had to circle for ten minutes while he fought the current trying to get back aboard.”

As Beano was laying this yarn on the group, he was backdropped by vast ocean, and slowly they became aware of Boo, who was clawing his way back into the cockpit over the transom.

“Yep, they’ll get him good and loaded and we’ll all have a good laugh Later on. You boys havin’ a good time?”

Boo had made it in by now, and soaking wet, he sat down and opened a beer.

Miraculously, the two boats anchored in a cove only feet from Coyote Cal’s, the hostel in question. It was a white, monolithic hybrid of a Spanish Mission and a fortress, with a balcony and a tall tower. After a short ride in the inflatable “shore boat,” the group waded onto the beach like discoverers. Before they could cross the dirt road to approach the hostel, two high-end desert buggies roared by, chased by a helicopter. When the dust cleared, they were met by what seemed like a ghost. An old man with a long gray beard stood across the road. He had on a motorcycle jumpsuit, and an old pair of cowboy boots.

“Hey there, Sookie!” Beano called.

Sookie only nodded.

Inside the hostel, a German college kid was playing super nintendo, his backpack leaning against the couch. More trucks roared past outside, and Boo was in a gallop to get up to the roof.

“You think Delcan’s here?” Melco asked.

“He’ll be back tonight,” the German kid said, not looking up from the screen. “He went to go get some cabbage.”

This was it. We’d found him.

“This’ll be crazy,” Melco said with a droll slant.

“Let’s go up to the roof and wait,” Luke said.

Just then,  Beano, Toke and the girls clammored inside.

“Can we fuck in here?” the blond asked, laughing. All five of them strode through to the kitchen, and the group climbed the steps to the balcony, where Boo was sitting with Anton, watching a cloud of dust down the coast on the horizon, which was growing larger and louder.

Here it is, the bleach-white veranda, buffeted by the wind, overlooking the vast blue ocean, as dirt buggies roar by. This is where we came in.

It’s not clear how it happened from here. Maybe it was Anton and his contrary nature. Maybe it was Boo and his affinity for bluntness. It may have been Shooter’s tendency to act as if he’s the best at-whatever it is-or Melco’s removed, aristocratic nature. But whatever started the mean-eyed shouting match that split the group like a rail would surely not be resolved for some time to come.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Anton shouted agitatedly. “It’s just that you’ve never rebuilt one.”

“I don’t need to. I know that the friction would grind the bearings into powder,” Boo retorted. They were arguing about mechanics, a thing they believed in like a Hopi believes in the earth. They weren’t going to budge.

“So what,” Melco said to Shooter. “I think she would anyway.”

“I hope you don’t tell her that,” Luke snapped. “You’ll look foolish.”

“I guess you could tell me all about looking foolish, Luke,” Shank returned.

“Just go off and lose then,” Luke shouted. “I don’t care.”

“I don’t expect you to take that back,” Shank said. “But if you do, it won’t be for long.”

Luke got up and walked to the other side of the balcony. No one talked. Then Melco did.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m going with Sara to Cabo.”

Anton and Boo wouldn’t even look at each other. Luke laid down on the wall and looked up at the sky. Soon he was confronted by a dark-haired woman with a striped floppy hat. She stood over him, casting a shadow.

“Hey there, beatnik,” she said.

“Hey there,” Luke replied.

“I bet you’re arrogant,” she continued, drunk and smiling. “You’re an arrogant beatnik.”

“Why not,” Luke said, incredulous.

“You’re an arrogant beatnik and I’m gonna kill you!”

She began swaying and laughing. Then she backed away, revealing behind her a shirtless and tan Delcan Montgomery. He had seven seashell necklaces and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He screamed:

“Hey maaaaaan! Howwwwwsit Haaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”

Nobody else made a sound. They were all gripped with quiet anger towards each other. But Delcan had a way of being the loudest goddamned thing in any room, country or place. He continued:

“Heeeey! This is Tatianna Juju. We met in Aruba.”

Hello, Tatianna,” Luke said politely.

“Arrogant beatnik,” she replied.

Shank chuckled, rousing attention from Tatiana.

“Hi there,” she said. “I’m Tatiana.”

“She’s from Rhode Island,” Delcan offered, becoming aware of the tension on the veranda. A buggy sped by, filling the air with its nasal roar. Anton got up and left, and Boo pulled his hat over his eyes and laid on his back.

“Well, don’t everyone freak out at once,” Delcan said, and Tatiana let out with a burst of laughter that stopped as quickly as it started, accentuating the following silence.

“Are you guys high or something?” Delcan asked.

No answer.

“Good to see you,” Schuter finally offered, sitting up and walking back into the hostel.

10

Delcan threw a party later that night. Everyone turned out on the courtyard of the hostel-a huge patch of beach sand ringed by low adobe walls. Tiki Torches lit the scene, and the German kid served Coronas from behind a bar made out of a rowboat, and some old surfboards. The crews of Disraeli and Witch Way respectively were congealing for a volleyball match, laughing and shouting  ,spilling beer down bare chests. Luke sat on a low wall, sipping his beer, thinking about what he had said to Melco. It wasn’t the first time they’d been at odds, but this time it was bitter. There was no reason for it; they just get proud, and won’t back down. He noticed Boo and Anton. They were silent, smiling occasionally at the ridiculous volley ball game. Shank was on the roof, staring at the ocean.

“You’re an arrogant beatnik and I’m gonna kill you!” sounded from a shadow near the door. Tatianna emerged, offering Luke a caraff of wine. Delcan followed. In honor of his guests, he was wearing a purple dashiki (middle eastern robe) and a maroon fez. He had on his horn-rimmed glasses of course, and he was guzzling a V-8 drink.

“Nothin’ but potassium,” he said, tossing a joint to Luke. Luke tossed it back.

“well how’d you pull this off?” Luke asked smiling at Delcan. He knew it was something to do with accounting.

“The last guy didn’t want it anymore,” Delcan explained. “He wanted to stay in Aruba. So, I gave him what I had made from doing corporate accounting for this big corporation. I had $30,000. That’s a million in Aruba, so he gave me the keys and I flew up.”

“You always had a knack for the random luck,” Luke said.

“It’s beautiful here,” replied Delcan. “Right on the ocean. And we’re even on line.”

On line. That snap-to jangle of our generation. Email was gold out here, and Luke wanted to hop on. It would be good to check in, see how ad sales are doing, check personal mail.  Besides, it would be a welcome diversion from the bad tension among the group, party or not.

As the machine logged on, the party outside grew louder. Toke was yelling about being spiderman as Luke focussed on the screen, noticing an email from John Burg, and old friend of the group and current room mate of Ryan Juke. The heading read: “urgent. reply soon.”

Luke opened the file while chuckling about the sounds outside. Toke was being cheered by the women, who were yelling for him to “get up.” Luke’s mind reeled at what they could be talking about, but it could only be absurd. Then the message came up on the screen. It was pointedly sobering to read while tuning out Toke, who was shouting, “I’ll jump! I’ll jump!” the message read:

“Ryan went camping Friday by himself and he’s not back yet. My climbing gear is gone. Have you heard anything?”

The screen glowed pale white on Luke’s face. The message was serious. Something had happened. Outside, the women were yelling,

“Jump, Toke, Jump!” It culminated in a flourish of cheers and applause, but all Luke could register was the message on the screen. Shank walked in, noticing Luke.

“This must be the place,” he said flatly. “I’ll wait till you’re done.”

A phone call to John confirmed the reality. Ryan Juke is dead. He had taken John’s climbing gear without permission and went out to the mean, jagged Superstition Mountains in Arizona, to the seven-hundred-foot granite shaft known as “Weaver’s Needle.” The search and rescue crew found his car at the trailhead, and John rode along in the helicopter, looking for any signs. Drag marks on a cliff pointed to a crevasse. The impact had blown his backpack off his body, ripping the shoulder straps. He fell seventy-five feet, at least.

When the news was broken to the rest of the group, no one spoke. It was as if sound was sucked out of the world. Nervous smiles emerged. Incredulous giggles. The volleyball game was raging along, completely separated from the impact of dead Ryan Juke. Delcan stood in his dashiki and fez, silent.

“Goddam Juke,” Melco muttered. “He went and did it to himself.”

The group moved in a little closer. The rest of the party faded into distant tones, and all anyone could register were each other’s faces. Instantly, all previous events lost any meaning. Nothing. Not the Magazine, not Tucson and the Huachuca Mountains, not Seattle, not Avalon and Fanjio and the yacht club, not even Toke and Beano had any significance. And in a very real sense, everything that had come before was as dead as Ryan. All of their exploits were in honor of Ryan. His death made them see-for the first time-their own fragility.  It was the end. It was time to go home and say goodbye.

There was a long silence. It lasted the rest of the night, and into the next morning. It was one of those episodes of complete removal, as if the silent deliberate nature of the world had been amplified, and the ego dissolved. Tufts of grass on the beach. A rock. A shadow cast on a wall. The timeless, muted sound of the surf. All of these things filled Luke Schuter’s head. They were the things of reality. A thing like death makes the world a little louder. It allows the world to assert itself as the rule. No matter what you do or say or talk about, that tuft of grass on the beach, that rock, the surf will always be present. Quiet and unchanging. If there was a voice for this condition, it would say, “this is and always will be, even when you don’t notice. Even while you’re attempting to create your own.” The world, nature, has its way of announcing itself when everything else is irrelevant. And the bigger part of the message is the realization that it has always been there, through every funny little thing you’ve ever done, just waiting for you to notice its merit, to understand its un-challenged signifigance. Luke didn’t speak for the entire day, and neither did anyone else. They all agreed to return at once to Arizona, for the funeral. Delcan took them as far as San Juan De Las Pulgas, where they piled into Boo’s truck, and headed home.

11

Wrecked in Mexico: An epiphany(Jaunt Magazine, never published)

By Luke Schuter

We were way down in Mexico when we got the news that Ryan was dead. It made the whole trip seem false. I felt like I should have been there. I felt like I should have helped with the search, but I knew that wouldn’t have changed anything. I wasn’t talking to Melco Shank at the time, due to a petty argument, and Boo and Anton weren’t getting along either. We had to ride together for 15 hours in that truck, going back to Tempe, and no one talked until Tijuana. And that was only to say, “there’s the off ramp.”

Everyone was thinking about Ryan. Remembering what he was like. We passed a hitchhiker outside of Yuma, and it is certain that each one of us secretly thought, or hoped, that it was Ryan. It was like we were having a

conversation without talking. Death does strange things. The inside of the truck became like a cell, lit by the orange glow of the dashboard. The desert outside was just black, except for the occasional cactus made bright by the headlights. After a while, it became like meditation: look out the window into the black desert, notice your transparent reflection on the glass. Consider it. Think, “ is that how I look?” Realize how goofy that thought is, and then focus back on the blackness.

We sat in two rows, in the front and in the crew-cab, like pews in a church. We were silent. Melco put a tape in the player. It was Morhine, “Cure for pain.” We all loosened up a little. This was Ryan music. The lyrics: “Someday…there’ll be a cure for pain.”

“”That’s when…I’ll put my drugs away,” Melco sang.

We all laughed, a little.

And that’s when it happened. The next track was that one. The one Ryan used to dance like a nut to. The one with the chaotic baritone sax and rumbling bass line. The loudest Morhine song in the world. We turned it up, and for me at least, Ryan was projected like a movie on the windsheild, head back, laughing, dancing his insane, liquid, meandering dance, yelling things like “whoa!” and “nude!”

We were all laughing, and I believe we all saw him projected there on the windshield.

I believe it.

The truck cab became the cathedral. It was church, and Ryan was its holy ghost. Soon, we were all laughing, crying, telling stories, picking on each other. We never saw it coming. It was complete harmony.

It was the dead guy highway church.

Later, at the funeral, we all sat near the altar. It was a stout, wooden altar. Draped across it was a white cloth, on top of which sat a basketball, a pair of diving fins, and a chessboard. Ryan’s things.

The church was packed with people, and they all had that reluctant, uneasy posture of patrons at a strip club. It was the furtive look of community, spiked with shame. John Burg and I sat off to the side, separate from the main group.  John looked over at me. He had sad grief in his eyes.

“Luke, why are we here?” he asked.

‘Well, because all the good seats were taken by his immediate family,’ I said, half smiling.

We both laughed, a little.

 

Here’s a short story set in the future, when the nation is split between the TV watchers and the non TV watchers, and the presidential election is a reality TV show.

 

The Television of the United States

     Luke walked through the large double doors and stopped. He removed his pack and his shoulders felt like fishing floats on salt water. The road dust leapt from his boots and floated to the marble floor. He looked up with tired, excited eyes at a 20-foot-tall television screen. He had only seen them in books or heard of them in stories, and now he was in front of one for the first time, and the blue light made him feel very small and very curious. It was like walking in on God with his back turned and waiting for him to wheel around and notice.     Luke was speechless.

     At the base of the massive screen sat a woman at a desk in a dark suit – one little dot against the blue. She stared into her own television screen and yet another screen sat in front of her, facing Luke,  that read, “Start Here.”

     He made his way to her desk and started to introduce himself, but he was interrupted.

     “Wait!” said the woman, smiling, not looking up at all from her personal screen. “Here it comes.”

     Luke was puzzled.

     “I’m sorry?” he said quietly.

     The woman shrugged and looked up for one second.

     “That Part!” she said. “Wait. Okay. Here it is!”

     She held her screen up to Luke’s face just in time for him to focus on the image of a man in a white suit, holding a peacock like a baby as he said, “Tonya, you’ll always have my one-two-nine.”

     Next, a massive explosion filled the space behind the man, and he looked slowly over his shoulder.

     “Oh my god, don’t you love that?” the woman asked.

     Luke just stood, and hoped to find the right words.

     The woman tilted her head and made a face like she was thinking.

     “You must be an immigrant,” she said. “Sorry, I just totally love that show. Okay, here, take this and walk through that door.”

     She handed Luke a silver bar with an arrangement of buttons on the front. Luke walked through the door, which was labeled, “Port of Entry, Television of the United States.” Once inside, Luke found himself in a forest of television screens. People, looking just as lost as he felt, stood at the screens, each with the same silver bar in their hand. Luke noticed a screen with a flashing green light above it, and moved intuitively in that direction. Once in front of his personal screen, it came to life. Luke’s heart raced as the screen produced a crisp image of a woman standing next to a stack of smaller television screens, all of which displayed images of families laughing in slow motion or people walking on beaches carrying sandals in their hands. Then, the woman spoke.

     “Welcome, and thank you for choosing our country. Is this your first trip to the Television of the United States?”

     The woman’s question echoed from other screens in the room.

     “Is this your first trip to the Television of the United states?

     “First trip to”

     “Is this”

     “The Television of the United States?”

     Luke looked around to notice other people pressing buttons on their silver bars. He looked down at his and found a button marked yes.

     He pressed the button.

 

 

     The screen before Luke lit his face with orange and green light, and his eyes widened as a blast of trumpets and laser beams filled his ears. Then, a voice sounded from the screen:    “The Television of the United States is always excited to receive new Viewer Citizens. We’re certain your stay here will be both entertaining and fulfilling, but before we begin, here are some products you’ll need to purchase within the next 23 hours to remain a legal Viewer Citizen…”

     There was a short hiccup of blackness on the screen, and Luke shifted in his boots. Then, the screen lit up again…

     “If you’re new to the Television of the United States, particularly if you are from the White Dot Collective, you’re probably experiencing some anxiety due to the strange and exciting environment you find yourself in. That’s why you will buy NoShy Omoxil 900 within the next 23 hours, or risk arrest and deportation. NoShy Omoxil 900 … start feeling like everyone else today.”

     The announcement ended with a blooming flower accompanied by sedate piano music. It made Luke laugh, and the piano music made him think of home, and the day he left to see the Television of the United States, and to try to become the president.

     Back home, before he thought about ever leaving, the stories his father told him of the days when television was legal everywhere only made him wonder.

     “We were the ones who rejected television,” his father would say. “We were the pioneers.”

     The White Dot Collective broke away from the nation in the fall of 2032. The founding fathers outlawed television in their land, which spanned from what was central Kansas all the way to the Pacific Ocean. East of that border, another new nation formed. The Television of the United States made TV its god and government, and the people based their lives and social agenda upon the Television. The Television of the United States adopted a new constitution, which was not written, but rather a video montage of classic television images set to a medley of TV show theme songs. It played three times daily, and when it did, all Viewer Citizens stopped what they were doing and moved, trance-like, closer to the nearest television screen.

     The White Dot Collective, on the other hand, embraced a more organic and television-free lifestyle, and held to the belief that their way was better.

     Luke wondered why, and needed to know for himself.

     “Here, our leaders are chosen through consensus, and based on their experience and wisdom,” Luke’s father would say. “Over there, they choose their leaders through television. They elect the loudest, shallowest contestant from the show.”

     His father spoke of the political arena in the Television of the United States — a reality TV show on which contestants vied for the presidency of that nation. The show — and the prize — was open to anyone, citizen or not.

     “What’s wrong with that idea?” Luke asked his father.

     “It is shallow and it poisons society with horrible values,” replied his father.
Luke wasn’t sure he agreed, and the notion of becoming the leader of a nation by simply winning a TV game show was attractive to him. So much so that he packed up and left his home — under the loud protest of his father — to see the seductive and glittery land to the east. To see the Television, and to compete on the show that would make him president.

     Luke found lunch after he completed his in-processing to the Television of the United States. He found it in a cafe across the street. A Rueben sandwich in front of fifteen television screens all displaying the same thing — a man with a bald head and sunglasses making a string of declarations:

     “This week, all citizens will buy floor cleaner and orange tumblers. You will find them at any retail outlet. If you have trouble finding a retail outlet, a police officer will be happy to point you in the right direction. Also, all contestants for Real American President must meet on Tuesday in the Bureau of Programming building.”

     Luke noticed next to him a young woman who was half watching the screens, half glancing at him. He realized he was doing the same, and when he made eye contact with her, she smiled and looked away.

 

 

     Luke leaned back in his chair with a casual coolness. He took a sip of his iced tea and then, glancing at the girl, moved to set it back on the table. But he was off by three inches, and his glass hit the floor with a loud crash.     The girl jumped in her chair and immediately began straightening her things on the table. Luke crouched to clean up his mess.

     “Do you need some help?” asked the girl.

     Luke looked up and hit his head on the underside of the table. The girl smiled.

     “Oh, ah, no, no,” he said, “I’ll get it.”

     The girl climbed off her chair and began picking up pieces of glass. Her brown hair fell in a mess to one side of her head, and as she worked, it brushed across Luke’s face. The two of them worked silently, collecting the glass as the announcer continued:

     “If you’ve already purchased your new silver couch and loveseat combination, you may indicate so by displaying a red light-emitting diode at the end of your driveway. If you have yet to purchase a new silver couch and loveseat combination, you’d better move fast…”

     The girl had stopped cleaning, and was looking at Luke, who stopped as well when he noticed.

     “Do-do you have your silver couch and loveseat combination?” he asked with a nervous tilt.

     “Are you serious?” replied the girl.

     Luke gestured to the screens.

     “But aren’t you supposed to-”

     “Where’d you come from?” asked the girl finally.

     “Well, ah, I’m from the west.”

     “No TV,” said the girl immediately.

     Luke leaned back a bit.

     “Yeah, that’s right. Not like here. Sorry. This is all just a little bit amazing to me, but I’m sure you’re used to it,” he said.

     “What’s that like?” asked the girl.

     “What?” asked Luke.

     “No TV. Ever.”

     “Well, it’s…there’s…”

     Luke couldn’t find the words.

     “There’s a lot more to do and a lot more time for it all. Even though it’s the same time as here and all, but I guess with all the shows to watch, you really don’t need to-”

     “My name’s Johanna,” said the girl.

     “Luke. I’m Luke. Hi Johanna.”

     “What do you mean ‘a lot more to do?’” asked Johanna.

     “Well, like right now, in this cafe’, of course there wouldn’t be any television screens, but somebody would probably be busy building a bike and maybe we would be playing music, or trying to anyway. But sometimes people just sit and eat their lunch and listen to each other and argue and laugh.”

     “People build bikes?” asked Johanna.

     “Well, it’s just an example, but everyone has a thing they do with their time,” explained Luke. “It’s what my dad calls ‘deliberate thought manifestation.’”

     “He calls it what?” asked Johanna.

     Luke shrugged.

     “I know, it sounds so serious,” he said. “It’s just his way of saying people who are free of TV discover talents and ideas they never knew they had.”

     “Oh yeah!” replied Johanna. “That’s like on “Summertime Road” when Will tells Sally he’s going to build a bigger living room and she tells him he’ll need to get help form the neighbors and then they all have a big picnic.”

     Luke went blank, and Johanna brushed her hand across her hair.

     “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”

     “Is that on TV?” Luke asked.

     Johanna looked away.

     “Yeah. What isn’t,” she said. “What do you do with your time?”

     “Here?”

     “No. When you’re home. When there’s no TV.”

     “I guess I just like to learn new things,” Luke said. “But I came here for a reason.”

     “To see what TV is like?”

     “No. To become the president.”

     Johanna went blank.

     “Are you serious?”

     Luke held his head up, and looked up.

     “The President of the Television of the United States.”

 

 

 

As if to punctuate Luke’s declaration, all fifteen television screens lit up with a fanfare of image and music. It was the National Constitution, and it began with the theme music form TVs “Hill Street Blues,” and went right into the hard electric guitar riff from “Magnum, PI.” Images of Sid Caesar, Bea Arthur and Fred MacMurry filled the screens as the entire cafe dropped whatever they were doing and stared.     Luke collected himself and stood up awkwardly. Johanna lit a smoke. Then, she began to speak, which alarmed Luke.

     “I can’t believe you came all this way to try to be president,” she said.

     “Aren’t you supposed to be quiet during the Constitution?” he asked. “That’s what they told me when I went through customs.”

     Johanna shook her head as if annoyed by a flying insect.

     “Let’s go,” she said, moving for the door.

     Once outside, the two were made small by a cityscape dominated by television. Massive screens blared from every corner, throwing the Constitution onto groups of citizens made zombie-like by the event. Johanna moved quickly past the static crowds. Luke followed her.

     The two of them moved like swift beetles through a forest of video and rock-like obedience. They were their own kinetic system.

     Johanna led Luke across the street and into an alley, where she turned into a small doorway and unlocked the door. Luke found himself in his new friend’s home: a beat little apartment filled with houseplants and bookshelves, and one little TV that was cluttered with well-used candles.

     “I have to have that in here,” she said, changing into a kimono right behind Luke, who was busy examining the TV. “It’s the law that I have it.”

     “Can I turn it on?” asked Luke.

     “Yeah, whatever.”

     Luke pushed the power button and the set came to life. It was a commercial for the show, “Real American President.”

     “Get ready to Throw Down!” cried the announcer, as contestants lined up amid strobe lights and struck curious poses.

     “Real American President! Where anyone can rule the nation by being the baddest and the best on the screen!”

     Next, Luke observed footage of contestants running sprints and arm wrestling, with one dominant shot of a contestant – most likely the winner – standing on a platform covered in whipped cream as roses bounced off his face and chest.

     A book fell to the floor next to Luke. Then another, and still another. Luke did not notice that Johanna was demonstratively dropping books to the floor next to him from a distance of four feet. For Luke, the loud whump of the falling books fell silent to the pageantry of the commercial.

     “You really want to do that?” asked Johanna.

     There was a pause, and then Luke answered.

     “I’ll bet that guy spent a lot of time preparing for the show.”

     Johanna let out a sigh, and then went to the kitchen and produced two glasses of wine.

     “Why is it that you want to be the president?” she asked putting a glass in Luke’s hand.

     “Well, it’s a powerful thing, leadership, don’t you think?”

     “I guess.”

     “Yeah,” he continued, “and here, anyone can achieve it.”

    “And all because of TV.”

    Johanna drank her wine in long, breathy gulps. Luke was already finished with his glass.

    “What about home?” she asked. “How would you get to be president there?”

    Luke leaned in a little closer.

    “You have to prove yourself, I suppose.”

    “How?”

    “Well, you have to be a leader.”

    “And what about here?”

    “Well, I guess you just have to have a gimmick.”

    “What’s the difference?” asked Johanna, and the two of them laughed until they fell to the floor.
          If  Luke had learned anything in his nineteen years on the planet, it was that a girl in a kimono giggling on a living room floor was valuable beyond words. So he rolled over, and began to twist a lock of her hair around one of his fingers.

    “What exactly are you doing?” asked Johanna.

    “I’m twisting your hair around my finger.”

    “That doesn’t seem very presidential, mister,” Johanna said, stretching.

    “I thought you said my idea to be president was lame?”

    Johanna paused.

    “Well, only sort of. I mean it depends on what you would do with your presidency.”

    Luke stopped twisting her hair. She took his hand, and made him start again.

    “What if I banned television?” he said, looking to her for approval. Johanna yawned.

    “Can’t do it,” she said. “It’s in the rules. No president shall have the power to remove television from the national culture. You know? Separation of Church and State and all that.”

    Luke sat up, and so did Johanna. He leaned in and looked at her chin. She smiled.

    “Separation of Church and…what was the other word?” he asked, moving closer.

    “State,” said Johanna, and then she leapt to her feet.

    “I’m going to bed,” she said abruptly. “There’s your blanket on the couch. Good night.”

    Luke sat on the floor like a startled hamster, staring at Johanna’s closed door. Then, he noticed the television, sitting just to the right of him like a stoic siren, waiting for him to pay attention. He began to feel around in the half-light for the little rectangular box he knew would operate the television. Johanna called out from behind her door:

    “It’s over by the lamp,” she said calmly.

     Luke looked, and found the little rectangular box sitting at the base of the lamp. He picked it up and pushed the green button. The television screen lit up with a single burst of baritone, and immediately he was staring at a man sitting in a sports car. The man had on sunglasses and seemed nervous. Luke was mesmerized. The man looked out the window and began humming to himself. Luke moved closer to the set. Then, the man spoke.

    “Man, I’m finn’ tuh git my money back soon as I fine my bat,” said the man in the car on the television. Then, a loop of artificial laughter sounded from the set, and Luke got confused. He pushed a button on the little rectangular box, and the screen changed suddenly, which startled Luke.

     Now he was looking at people running through a field of flowers while bongo drums rumbled in the background. Then, a giant snake appeared in the sky, and all the people scattered. Luke pressed another button, and again the screen changed. This time it was a woman singing something about furniture.

     Luke fell asleep to the woman’s song.

 

 

He woke up when the sun came through the window and hit his face like a blast of hot water. Johanna was sitting next to him, sipping coffee and reading an old history textbook. When she noticed he was awake, she began to read out loud.    “In declaring its independence from the Television of the United States and citing the pervasiveness of television and other mass media as a key corrupter of society, White Dot Collective founder Clement Hondo Pastoriak declared Tuesday that the newly-formed nation would prohibit the use, purveyance or proliferation of any such medium.”

    Luke sat up and rubbed his face.

    “Where’d you find that?” he asked. She kept reading.

    “Television of the United States seasonal president Seth Jacobson, whose election platform included several off-color jokes about people who don’t watch TV and a high-energy dance routine, said of the declaration, “I wish them luck, but if they get bored, they can always come over here to watch TV.”

    “That was a big day, man,” Luke said. “It was kind of weird and exciting at the same time, you know? I mean, we were a new nation.”

    “And no TV,” Johanna said.

    “Yep.”

    “Was that hard, not to have TV?” she asked.

    “Not really,” he said. “We already didn’t watch.”

    “Did your family work with the independence movement?” she asked.

    “I guess you could say that.” Said Luke, “My dad is Clement Hondo Pastoriak.”

    “Get out,” said Johanna.

    “No, really, he’s my dad. My dad is the father of the White Dot Collective.”

    “And now you want to be president.”

    “Of the Television of the United States,” said Luke.

    “And if you win,” continued Johanna, “then we’ll have a president Pastoriak.”

    “Wouldn’t that blow their minds?” Luke said with a smile.

    “Whose minds?” Johanna asked, “ours, or your family’s?”

    Luke hesitated.

    “Yours, of course. The viewer citizens.”

    Johanna just stared, and shook her head.
   
    The rest of the day found Luke and Johanna standing in line to sign up for Real American President. It looked like they were standing in line with circus performers. People in American flag top hats stood next to others in glittery jumpsuits, and all along the wall were television screens, blasting slogans and clips from previous shows. One massive screen beckoned the contestants closer to the sign up desk, and Luke began to get excited. Johanna did not share the interest, but liked Luke’s company, so she tolerated the situation. Luke wore a motorcycle helmet painted like an American flag, with yellow letters that read “Evel Pastoriak.” He stood silently as Johanna eyed the helmet.

    “How’d you ever come up with that?”

    “What, Evel Pastoriak?” he asked, puffing with pride. “You know, like the daredevil …”

    Johanna cut him off.

    “I get it,” she said. “Are you gonna do stunts?”

    “Something like that,” said Luke. “Evel Pastoriak. Daredevil son of Clement Hondo Pastoriak.”

    “It just might work,” said Johanna, rolling her eyes.

    The massive screen boomed out orders for the next contestant in line to approach the window. That was Luke. He stepped forward and signed up. The clerk read his helmet as he filled out the form.

    “That’s a nice helmet,” she said, smacking her gum. “Isn’t Pastoriak that one guy that said no TV ever?” she asked.

    Her co-clerk corrected her.

    “No, Kelsey, his name was Hondo. He was a rebel against TV. But he’s, like dead now.”

    Luke looked up and smiled.

    “Nice touch,” said the clerk.

    Luke completed the form, turned around to face the line of waiting contestants, and threw his fists into the air.

 

 

A blast of bright white light filled Luke’s eyes, and he cast a long shadow on the stage. He’d made the final round, and he liked it. He was ready now to take the prize, to become president of the Television of the United States.    The audience fell to a hush, and a fountain of sparks exploded to his left and right. It startled him, and when he jumped, the motorcycle helmet fell in front of his eyes. When he pulled it back into place, he saw the host of the show: a little man in a red suit. Up close, his face was beaded with sweat, and sloppy eyeliner ringed each eye. The lights made a halo around his head, and Luke thought of a solar eclipse.

    “You’re a natural, kid,” the host whispered, and then he turned to the audience.

    “Can this man be your president?!” he shouted.

    The audience sent out a collective “whoooo!”

    Luke began to laugh.

    “Are you ready to rumble?!”

    The audience continued the noise, only louder now.

    “Or will this man continue to be your president?!”

    The host motioned to the edge of the stage, where a blond guy in a black suit emerged. He held one red rose in his left hand, and he calmly walked to Luke’s side.

    The audience cheered:

    “Bradlee! Bradlee!”

    Luke glanced at his opponent, incumbent President of the Television of the United States Bradlee Ramsteiner. He was smooth, and Luke took notice.

    Bradlee tossed the rose to the audience and began to speak.

    “Hello viewer citizens.”

    The audience wooed once more.

    “I am still your leader, and I will be your leader at the end of this day. My opponent is good, and he’s funny, too.”

    Luke didn’t like that. He didn’t want to be funny.

    “Evel Pastoriak,” continued Bradlee. “A clever homage to the enemy of the Television of the United States, the man that divided our great broadcast zone. Some say Evel is a descendent of Clement Hondo Pastoriak. Some say he’s an impostor. I say we can’t take a chance. How do we know he’s not an agent from the White Dot Collective, sent here to undermine our way of life?”

    The audience began to murmur, and Luke took a deep breath. Bradlee looked at him, saying, “How do we know, Evil Pastoriak? How do we know you’re not here to destroy us?”

    Luke looked into Bradlee’s determined eyes. He had not come this far to be called an enemy of the Television of the United States. He had not come this far to lose, and now every nerve in his body wanted to win. He had become intoxicated with the idea. The thought snapped in his brain like a twig, and then he spoke.

    “Are you afraid of the White Dot Collective, sir?” he asked Bradlee, and his voice echoed from the dark silent audience, and now he was standing by, watching himself say these words. “Because I am not. I am not afraid of the White Dot Collective. I am not afraid of my father!”

    The audience gasped, and Bradlee blinked. Now Luke was locked into a trip he could not control, and he watched himself continue.

    “I will be president of the Television of the United States, and as your president I will…”

    It was like a teakettle coming to a boil.

    “I will invade and destroy our enemy! I will declare war on the White Dot Collective! I will destroy them!”

    The audience went completely mad, shrieking and leaping from their seats. The din of their cheers made the air rattle, and Luke began to scream, “I will invade their land and I will destroy my treasonous father!”

 

 

 

Luke was transformed in that instant, when he spoke the words of war against his father. His brain told him he said it to win the election, but his racing heart showed him that he meant it. His pounding head and his clenched fists and his heavy, proud breath showed his new subjects that he was for real.

Hours later, after the victory party and the hype, Luke sat like a stone on Johanna’s couch. He stared into an imaginary distance with a scowl. The television told the rest of the story.

“Fourteen Divisions from the army of the Television of the United States stand ready for orders on the Frontier,” said the news anchor, and electric green, night-vision images of hurried soldiers and rows and rows of armored vehicles filled the screen. “President-elect Luke Pastoriak is expected to issue orders within the next several hours.”

The camera cut to a military officer standing in front of a massive tracked vehicle as soldiers moved and shouted from the tank.

“Our people are prepared to carry out any order,” said the officer. “We’re strong and we’re capable, and we are loyal to our new leader. Most of us to tell you the truth are just anxious to finally get this over with.”

The camera then cut to a map of what was once the western United States, now the White Dot Collective. Animated arrows pointed to cities and geographic features as a voice gave speculation on possible invasion routes. Johanna was shocked and confused.

“They’re serious,” she said to Luke. “They’re ready to go to war against your home and your father because of you.”

Luke said nothing.

“This isn’t a game, Luke. This is reality and now what you said just to win the election is going to…”

Luke launched from the couch and exploded.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I meant what I said?” he shouted, “Maybe all this needs to happen and maybe I don’t give a fuck and maybe my time to be in control has come and now everybody is just going to have to accept it!”

Johanna stared at Luke, and he stepped closer to her.

“It’s about control?” she asked.

“No. It’s about justice.”

“For what?”

Luke grabbed her by the back of her head and tugged on her hair. Now they were very close.

“You’re powerful now, do you like that?”

Luke nodded.

“What’s the best place to put your power? How can you use it best?”

Luke gripped a little harder on her hair.

“I am doing that.”

“By going to war?”

And now she put her hand on his chest, and let his heart beat into her palm and through her arm and into her breasts. Luke ran his hand from her neck through her cleavage and to her waist, and soon the two were no longer talking. Amid gasps and tugs Johanna’s clothes were torn, and the couple blended with a halting sigh. The shadows from the blinds moved across their faces as Luke lifted her inner thigh. The shadows moved faster and faster, creating a warm red chaos as all of their veins coursed and pulsed as one loud river of lust.

In the morning, Luke was gone, and Johanna felt like a sheepish child, gripping her cigarette like a tether. She began to pack. She knew Luke was with the army. She also knew she could not stay. She knew she would have to find her way across the frontier to warn the White Dot Collective, if only for her own soul.

Three days later, Johanna found herself in the back of a truck in a long, dusty war train, somewhere in what was once Kansas. She posed as a journalist to hitch the ride west, and would vanish from the column the first chance she would get.

The truck came to an abrupt stop, and Johanna awoke from a waking sleep. Outside, soldiers jumped down from vehicles and formed up in loose lines.

“Who’s on point, goddammit!” shouted a tall man from the front of the truck.

The sun and the dust and the desolation made Johanna squint.

“Tell Delta to get motivated or they’ll be guarding the fucking shitters for the rest of the invasion.”

The officer looked at Johanna with belligerent eyes.

“Who’s this,” he said, looking at her but not speaking to her.

A pair of young cocky troopers appeared at her side.

“She’s good, sir,” one of them said. “She’s media. Gonna make us all stars.”

“You came out here to watch?” asked the officer.

“You could say that,” said Johanna, taking his picture and acting interested.

A group of soldiers sprinted past, and the officer turned his attention to them. Others started to shout, and Johanna and the officer hopped onto the hood of the truck to watch.

Up ahead about 70 yards, they could see a military vehicle. It was light green with a blue flag with a white dot in the center. Two soldiers climbed out of the stopped vehicle and took positions on the ground. A voice sounded over a loud speaker:

“You have entered the sovereign territory of the White Dot Collective,” called the voice. “Declare your intentions or be fired upon.”

A young soldier tugged at Johanna’s leg to get her attention.

“Hey reporter, you got your camera ready?”

A loud bang punctuated his question, and Johanna looked up to see the vehicle on the horizon explode in flames. Next, a frenzy of automatic weapons fire erupted from every available troop on the line, cutting down the remaining White Dot soldiers, who were running away.

Then, everything got quiet and strange. Some troops began to laugh. Others reloaded their rifles.

“Just like the range,” said a troop next to Johanna. “Did you see those fucks run like that? This shit’s gonna be easy.”

The sound of rushing air was followed by a crackling noise, and a tank just 20 feet away exploded, scattering troops to the ground. Johanna wasn’t sure if she’d jumped or fell, but she was on the ground also.

“Second squad, guns up!” shouted an anonymous voice, and several soldiers got up and rushed forward, forming a line on a nearby ridge. More shells came in, sending metal and smoke and body parts all around Johanna. Next, five helicopters appeared behind the column and raced toward the opposing forces. One of them exploded and spun slowly to the ground as the other four let loose with a hail of rockets.

These images were sterilized through digital satellite feeds and then fed to viewer citizens several hundred miles away. They sat in cafes and living rooms and watched footage of speeding tanks and wide shots of buildings exploding as the words, “Pastoriak orders invasion: resistance is heavy,” scrolled at the bottom of the screen. People watched in silence. Some clapped.

“The president is expected to give a statement later today,” said a reporter, as the flag of the Television of the United States – red and white stripes behind a small rectangle of static – waved slowly in the background. “Until then, we’ll continue to bring you live coverage of the war.”

Luke sat alone in a dimly lit room. Three television monitors painted him light blue with light. He listened.

“Several hundred enemy soldiers are reported dead in fighting east of Topeka, just 40 miles beyond the border with the White Dot Collective. Local officials claim a hospital was destroyed during the fighting there.”

Luke took a deep, heavy breath.

“Elements of the 34th light armor division are fortifying positions along the Marais Des Cygnes River, bracing themselves for an expected counter attack from White Dot forces.”

Luke watched as a young captain wearing muddy battle fatigues and a helmet came into view, smoking a cigarette and rubbing his face and chin compulsively.

“We got hit pretty hard just about an hour ago,” said the captain. “But we’re stable now and ready to repel any counter strike from the enemy.”

“How many of your men did you lose?” asked the reporter.

The captain thought for a long time.

“We’re at about half strength right now,” he said. “But we’ll hold out.”

The reporter went on to say the enemy forces preparing to attack numbered nearly 20,000, but Luke didn’t have time to listen as his aides entered the room and told him it was time to go live and give his statement to the media.

In a half-destroyed farmhouse on the front, Johanna sat crowded with tired soldiers. Two of them were putting the final connections together to get a live satellite signal on a video monitor. The screen came to life to reveal Luke standing at a podium. The room erupted in cheers. Johanna felt a chill through her body. Then, Luke began to speak.

“I just want to give my gratitude to our troops,” he said.

The room was silent.

“I, ah. I know that this has not been easy and that a lot of you are fighting hard and I just want to say thank you. We’ll get through this together.”

Luke appeared startled as the pack of journalists in front of him lit up with questions. He picked one.

“Mr. President, what to you say to the people that claim you only started this war to win the election?”

Luke smiled.

“Tell that to the troops,” he said.

“It was troopers that said it,” replied the journalist.

A soldier next to Johanna threw a beer can at the screen.

“Get fucked,” he shouted, “they had it coming!”

Luke spoke again.

“I want everyone to understand that our reasons for fighting go far beyond the election,” he said. “We’re fighting for a good and noble purpose.”

“Could you tell our viewer citizens what that purpose is?” asked another journalist.

Luke thought about it for a second and smiled, and then he replied:

“Ratings,” he said. “Market share.”

The press corps burst with laughter, and then they began to applaud. Luke shouted over celebration:

“And when its all over we’ll make billions in syndication!”