Weekend A Posteriori

Warning: Strong Language

I wrote most of this piece in one sitting at our normal Tuesday Night Group Meeting. This is a departure from my normal writing style - I was extremely ill with strep throat at the time, so my mind was in a bunch of places. Things really turns around at the end. Enjoy!

I wanted to know what it felt like to go.

I wanted to know who he was. I hoped in some weird way that I could coax him into showing me. But, I had no idea how. Why did I keep thinking about him? I just looked up and there he was - he was willowy. How far can a tree bend?  I asked him something about Chicago in an unnatural screech and he didn't hear me. It was really loud downstairs. There were lots of other unnatural screeches. But he smiled, and it split me down the middle. 

There's this type of beech tree - ironwood - that's also called "muscle wood", because the trunk looks like a really smooth, toned bicep. Don't ask me why, but I just couldn't stop thinking about this tall, scruffy-looking boy's lanky limbs and ironwood trees. It's one of the most erotic images that comes to mind, actually.

But then I thought, shake it out - there were probably too many birds in that tree already. 

And still, I don't know. I wouldn't have minded standing just a little bit closer to him I guess. Just one more bird. If that's cool, I mean. 

He was in a band where he and his friends would throw paint on each other. He and his girlfriend had split up a week ago after she left him in South Haven for some rock climber. He was thinking about dropping his anthropology class because it started too early on Mondays and Wednesdays. I was drunk, and for some reason, I could not stop talking about maps. It was just one of those nights. Why did I always try talking about local history at Eastside bangers? Because fuck it, I guess.

I already knew he wasn't feeling it. 

Jenna was still in the bathroom, so there were guys just pissing out of the windows. He also had to go piss out of a window, and would I mind? No, whatever, I'd be fine. Cool.

I'd be fine. I just wanted to tear the earth open with my hands so i could hear it talk to me. I wanted to slap the ground with my hand until it started sobbing. I really needed answers. 

But sometimes it gets dark suddenly. Sometimes, the party all runs outside into the yard.

OK. So I followed some guys into the forest behind their house. That guy (Ironwood) ran off ahead, and his roommate, who had been trying to talk to me all night, hung behind. He kept asking really falsely intellectual questions and acting interested in whatever I said. Yeah, I know. Whatever. There was a field on the other side of the trees, and that's where we were going, he says. He asked if I could tell the difference between a pine tree and a spruce. I had been making shit up for the last forty five minutes at this point, but even I can tell the difference between a pine tree and a goddamned spruce tree.

Mid-sentence, I tripped and fell on some kind of a burrow. I'm sure it was hilarious to see it happen. My tights looked pretty hit and I had to pick a bunch of pea gravel out of my palm. The gentleman roommate wanted to help me and he kept trying to touch my scrape. I don't know, maybe he was an alright guy. 

We walked for what seemed like forever. Humid Midwestern summer nights are so weird. It felt like I was hitting these invisible pockets of resistance passing through the dark, thick air. I have always been afraid of the sky when it's really, really dark and cloudy with no city light. Especially wandering through fields with distant friends, when all I can think about is the sky and the void and how we all exist in a vast expanse of nothingness when we can't actually see the stars.

Now roommate is asking me what some plant is. And I tell him that plant is quite obviously burdick. No, really, it's burdock. It has a tap root that goes down to the center of the earth. I am yelling, and I have drawn a crowd at this point. 

"Does it really go down to the center of the Earth", asks a dark, willowy figure.

"Of goddamn course it does," I lie. My palm is throbbing and the sky is vacant and all I can think of is me and him tearing the earth open with our fingers and sweating together and how maybe I'll get a whiff of his laundry scent if I'm lucky. It's hot, and he's so hot.

Ironwood is already trying to pull up the burdock. His roommate and two other girls are also sort of half-heartedly trying to loosen it from the dirt. Someone offers to run back and grab a shovel.

What bothers me, is I don't know why we spent so long trying to pull out this stupid plant. Eventually we had dug a pretty deep hole in the ground. But what we pulled up was a root that was, i don't know, like 30 feet long? 

And - I'm not kidding - the end of it was wrapped around there was a human fucking skull! Fully intact! It had to have been a human skull. It had a little spade etched on one side of it - like, from a deck of cards - and a heart on the other side. I'm not fucking kidding. And thing was ticking - and there was a pocket watch tucked inside. Do you want to guess whether that thing was set to the correct time or not? Ugh. I tucked it back inside the skull and threw it back in the hole. I'm certain it was staring up at us through the night. It was even glowing greenish a little, maybe?

Anyway, that was a pretty strange party. That guy, I don't remember his name, ended up going home with this Art History grad student and eventually he dropped out of community college. So that was pretty much freshman year for me. What was it like when you thought you were in love for the first time?