Sieben

“Just step up.”
I pause.
The bright, high desert sun is beating down upon me.
My heart is racing within me.
“Common. Just step up.”
I think about it, but doubtfully so.
“Joshua Green!” It was more of a command, but with a slight hint of a girlish giggle that somehow manages to bounce lightly off of the granite and sandstone rock walls around me. “Take your right foot, put it on that little jib lip and just step up.”
I start and then pause again, which isn’t helping because blood is rushing to my forearms to help my fingers maintain their death crimp on two miniscule, almost invisible projections of granite rock that wouldn’t even be visible from more than five feet away. I’m inches away and my mind stalwartly refuses to believe that either one offers enough purchase to help support my weight while I “just step up” to the next equally and stupidly small foot hold. God bless Boreal and their proprietary rubber soled climbing shoes. They’re sticky. My fingers, not so much.
Presenttly, I’m about two thirds of my way up a climb sardonically called Road Rash in Joshua Tree National Monument. Joshua Tree is a breathtakingly beautiful park located in the high desert of Southern California’s Mojave, located somwhere north and east of the sprawling hellish, shallow expanse of the LA Basin. To the south, the Chocolate Mountains separate it (and me and my shaky forearms) from the upper Morongo Valley and the Salton Sea flats that lead down to Palm Springs. To the west are the mountain resorts of Big Bear and Arrowhead, where the desert gives up its aridity to the fragrant pine forests of the San Gabriel Mountains. To the north and east, the world effectively ends, turning sandy, brown, ugly and eventually leading to Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas.
Nuff said.
I’ve heard tell, but have yet to confirm, that the earth turns green again somewhere near the fabled, rumored land known as Arkan-sauce, although I remain skeptical.
But Joshua Tree is strangely beautiful. Large clumps of granite rocks that look like huge piles of boulders form interesting citadels of shade in the surrounding desert, where enormous and ancient Joshua Tree cacti point their middle fingers upwards towards the heavens as if to say “Thanks, God. Thanks a shit-ton for making these goofy-ass bipeds come climb rocks in my scenic wonderland. We need these polluting undulates like we need property developers and/or rectal polyps, but then I repeat myself.”
God doesn’t often listen to Joshua Tree cacti, at least I don’t think so.
The climb I’m pausing on is a mere 5.9 rating—a low intermediate rating in the parlance of rock climbers and nothing worthy of so much trepidation and hesitation. I’m normally a solid mid-range 5.10 climber in the gym, but as any rock nerd will tell you, the gym, like all man-made artificial realities, is a piss poor substitute for the real world. The cacti, meantime, like Beth, are mocking me. In this case, Road Rash is so named because of the quality of granite that forms the building-sized Paleolithic boulder that the climb is on. All climbs are named—an honor generally bestowed upon the first person to standardize the route—and many if not most have simple, adolescent names that reek of youthful exuberance and the hubris of young adulthood. Names like Poo-In-Your-Britches, Ass Whooper, Lurking Fear and Butt Munch come to mind. Thus, Road Rash is a more subtle reference to the possibilities offered therein. You can easily hike up the back side of Road Rash to set your anchor atop. You can then simply toss the rope back down, hike down and around, and set about to climbing the Rash while your partner belays from below. It’s a simple top rope problem. No, really, that’s what the guide book says. Guide books never lie.
Mostly.
The problem, it seems, is that 100 million years of nature haven’t yet managed to dull the infinitesimally small and countless crystalline granules of the granite extrusion that eons of water flow eroded to look like a large boulder. The silly bitch has the texture of rough grit sandpaper. While that makes for good friction against the sticky rubber soles of climbing shoes, it also makes for not-so-good friction against one’s exposed skin should one slip and tumble down. The danger on this climb is not from death due to falling or cranial avulsion or anything quite so easy and/or pleasant. Rather, it’s the excruciating flaying of one’s flesh while scraping and grinding against the wall as the belayer’s anchor catches. Granite when polished makes for grand countertops, but it enjoys its revenge against us for such an inglorious use by shredding the skin off of goof-ball climbers. Thus the climb’s name: Road Rash. The cacti watch with their eternal patience, no doubt hoping the goofy kid, namely me, puts on a good show.
I pause again. Beth at least, doesn’t want my blood. At least I hope not. She’s impatient, but she won’t say or show it. God bless her. She—like all climbers of merit—secretly cheers for others in the hopes that they will not only send the climb (send—verb, transitive: climber parlance for kicking rock ass and, more importantly, not flaying the flesh from oneself) but will also prove the line up the route, thus providing the visual cues as to where to go when it is her turn, clues known in climbing lingo as “beta” (beta—noun: climber parlance for “you go first and see if this silly thing makes you bleed”). I’m doing a poor job providing said beta, but my forearms are looking rather Popey-esque. Neato.
“You’re doing great, Josh. Take your time and step up when you’re ready. I’ve got you.”
Thanks, my love. Do you, by chance have a new set of forearms for your man? Now I’m looking around in desperation. There’s a philosophy in outdoor climbing that you have to develop trust in your shoes. Whereas the rock gym provides man-made, plastic and appliqué-textured walls upon which to schmear one’s shoes, the great outdoors provides an endless variety of conglomerates, granites and other crystallized stone alloys upon which high tech, modern rock shoes/boots/slippers gain incredible purchase. A skilled climber, in fact, can virtually dance up most 5.10a climbs and less without so much as the occasional balancing hand hold. Tragically, I am no such climber, and as I ponder my next step up (it’s all in the feet, you know) while my forearms and calves prepare to rip free from their confining tendons and ligaments such that they might bludgeon me to death in their utter frustration at my lack of spinal fortitude, I look around in even more desperation.
I know that large cacti 100 yards to the left is positively convulsing in laughter, at me rather than with me, I might add. I also notice a rather conspicuous coyote, looking equally bemused and apparently rolling its beady eyes at the stupid biped. Great, the flora and fauna are all friggin’ critics, it seems.
I’m hoping to find a nice hidden ledge upon which to rest for a spell. That’s the silly thing about granite rock. The crystals somehow align themselves so as to form a natural camouflage of sorts. It’s almost as if about a zillion years ago nature said to herself, “Self, someday there will be this horridly dorky critter named Mankind who will do stupid things like bungee jumping and rock climbing and NASCAR Racing and Really Big Belt Buckle Wearing. Therefore it’s my duty if not altogether my holy responsibility to design things such as tensile breaking points, gnarly, sharp granite, redneck alcoholism and lightening to take care of such problems lest this foolish creature destroy my lovely planet.” I always thought that she was a bitch, even if I envy her sardonically dark sense of humor.
No ledges though. And, much to my chagrin and annoyance, a spry, lithe little climb monkey has mounted the rock base beside Beth and proceeds to free climb the rock as if he’s dancing his way across a ballroom floor. Granted I’m a hefty 175 pounds—positively gargantuan by sport climbing standards—but this little elfin prick weighs a buck twenty at best. And he’s free soloing, which means he’s got no ropes, no anchors, no belays. And he zooms right up to the point that’s taken me over 30 minutes to haul my lame ass up to, huffing and puffing. He’s not breathing, the freakish little rock vampire, his blonde locks flowing down from his oh-so-chic poneytail. In a little over a minute he’s equal to me.
“Gutentagen.” How ever the shit you spell “hi” in Kraut.
Great, I think, the master race.
“You are delaying too long, meun freund. Just stepenze oop.”
And with that, he deftly dances his way up and over the next lip about ten feet above me and disappears high above. This is, no doubt, Lil’ Rock Hitler’s warm-up for the 5.14b he’s going to try to redpoint later (redpoint—noun: climbing parlance for “don’t even think about it Josh”). And suddenly I become enraged. My pituitary and adrenal go to work and I lunge forward and upwards with a newfound strength that propels me towards his imagined foot, which I imaginatively grab and hurl him to his death below. In stead I find the next hidden ledge, this one a generous one inch deep and haul myself up another five feet.
“See, Honey,” she giggles from below, “all you had to do was just step up.”
Did she call me “Honey?” Dunno, because as quickly as it hit me, the adrenaline goes away and suddenly I’m shaky again.
“Hey Josh?”
“Yeah, Beth? Just taking another little breather.”
“Did you talk to Gunther?”
“Wha?…”
“That guy who just sent beside you?”
“Oh, him.” My arms are resting and my calves are starting to shake now.
“Yeah, the German guy. Gosh, he was sure cute.”
Sonofabitch. Surge number deuce and suddenly I’m positively sprinting my way up the rest of Road Rage. Either I climb this bitch, I fall and skin myself silly, or I catch the prick and grind his uber-mensch face into the granite. And then I’m on top, chest heaving, forearms pumping and belayer hysterically giggling down below.
“Off belay,” she laughs, and I laugh too. It worked.
Okay, let’s consider the score. She asked me to a long weekend at Joshua Tree, just the two of us in a two person tent. She called me Honey. She used jealousy as a means to get something she wanted, namely me off this stinking route, presumably so that she can climb some before we return to Hidden Valley Campground, our tent and, most importantly, our cooler of Tecate beer. Hmmm, this could prove to be a promising start to a glorious weekend. Now I’ve just got to down hike off of this pig of a rock with legs made of warm jello. Nice. But Beth waits below, and that’s motivation enough.

One would think that the American punk rock movement of the early to mid-1980s was predicated on anger, angst and hatred. All I wanted was a Pepsi and such. As opposed to the music genre’s origin in post-60’s England where the thematic message was one of arrogance combined with obnoxious anti-social behavior festooned with really skinny neck ties, the American movement that came of age during the first Reagan Administration (ironically enough, the same time as me) seemed far more angry and aggressive than it’s oh-so-gitchy-anti-establishment roots. It’s simple, really. Compare the Sex Pitsols with anything by Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys or the Meatmen. Sure, Sid might have had that whole self-mutilation, kill the chica thingy going, but can anything he and the lads did really compare with “We’re The Meatmen And You Suck?” What did John Rocker possibly have on T. Boone? Did the entirety of the Buzzcocks lineup weigh-up to the same beefy standard of Hank? Nope.
Don’t get me started.
More importantly, don’t get me wrong. I’m not goofing on the ancestral roots of the seminal musical genre of the 1980s. For the record, the Big Hair Metal movement was not seminal. Semenal perhaps. Glitzy and glammy definitely, but not seminal. Winger will fall into obscurity as will, with any luck, EnoughZEnough. Bad Religion, Husker Du, the Ramones and Oingo Boingo, however, endure. Thank the powers that be for that. Yes, we’ve already hashed through my monotonous lifestyle and upbringing, and yes, we’ previously discussed my nonsensical ravings on Kiss, Rollins and my musical meanderings. Frankly I don’t expect any of you to agree with me or, more importantly, to understand. This is MY story after all. If you don’t like it, suck up the amount you’ve read, chalk it up to the opportunity cost of doing something else with your time other than rotting in front of the idiot box, and put the story down. Go ahead. Better yet, you could do yourself a favor and listen to the brilliance of “Chemical Warfare” or “Clean Sheets.” Think about the sublime message contained in one sentence, so much said with such profound economy: “Clean sheets mean a lot, for a guy who sleeps on the floor.” Get it? Read it again, slam back a quadruple uber super mega late, throw down a machaca burrito or two and listen anything by Descendants or Fear or Mojo Nixon or the Beatfarmers.
Nevertheless, the object lesson contained herein is that the American Punk Rock movement is/was not about violence. The latter was a byproduct of tight-assed, no-hair-having, swastika-wearing goons who glommed onto the subject matter. The material itself was not about hate or violence, self-hatred maybe but not about hurting others.
For a while, a long while, you know, I was all about violence, both internal and external. It occurred none too long after IT happened. For that period of time, violence consumed my soul, my essence and my purpose of being. Kind words and deeds by benevolent strangers on Fiesta Island notwithstanding, most of my time was spent, either waking, sleeping or breathing in a constant state of rage. Most of the time it was silent, a pent-up aggression that led to countless waking fantasies that included torture, beatings and occasionally evisceration. I was able to focus that inward violence, and my work productivity soared. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when appropriately motivated and when you have nothing to go home to.
Unfortunately, sometimes my anger took the form of naked, raw, out-in-the-open rage that seethed forth until I had to let it out. I always felt it coming, mind you, and I was typically astute enough to hop in the car immediately in order to drive somewhere to vent. Mostly I spent my wad in the car, screaming until I was horse and often banging the steering wheel until the entire column shook with each blow. In retrospect, I cannot fathom how I didn’t have an accident or lite-off my airbag. There’s a nice endorsement for my car, my coping mechanisms not so much.
More often than not, the rage hit on my way home from Arcadia. It’s funny, really, because I would have thought myself completely spent after another Friday night sitting beside her headstone, carrying on conversation with and declaring my love for someone far beyond my reach. Like darkness oddly seeping and oozing from an open door into a lit room, I could often feel the rage flood into my soul as I realized that I would never again hear her lovely, girlish voice nor ever again feel the brush of her soft blonde hair against my cheek as she hugged me goodbye every morning before I went to work.
The dragon would growl, roar, recoil and attack. It would typically build, gradually at first and then faster and more chaotically until I inevitably found myself somewhere at the side of the road in the middle of the night, lost on a side street off of Interstate 15 in the Inland Empire screaming, physically screaming, standing beside my car until I thought for sure my head would explode or my heart would rupture. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed. And it would always end the same too. Me huddled at the side of my car, engine still running and radio still blaring some sort of fast tempo’ed American Punk Rock. The coyotes that always seemed to linger just beyond the edge of ambient light, I’m sure, wondered who the insane biped was who was shrieking into the darkness of the night and pounding his foreheard into the dirt, for they, or it, were/was always there, staring with odd intensity as I played out my weekly passion. And there I would kneel, worshiping at the altar of angry, violent realization of lives lost, until at last my thoughts would return to the living and I would hear her voice telling me how foolish the goofy Jewish kid from Texas must look, Ramones blaring “Somebody Put Something In My Drink” while his forehead oozed blood. “Get up, Sweet Josh,” she’d implore within my aching head. “You’re very sweet, but this is foolish. My husband should not be sitting in expensive dirt on the side of the frontage road off of I15 at 3 a.m. on a Friday night.” I never listened to her in those moments.
As always, though, the sobs eventually slowed and finally stopped. Empty, no more gas in the tear tanks. And then I would begin the long drive home to Ocean Beach, hoping that I didn’t get pulled over by the California Highway Patrol for drunk driving (which I wasn’t) or for wholesale self-pity (guilty as charged). The violent thoughts, however, remained.
Thus, it came to pass that during a rare daytime rage that on-set while I was driving to Arcadia rather than from, I kept driving. I got on the 60 to the 210 until I joined the 10, upon which I drove east until I passed the huge windmill power farm and made the offramp up, past the Morongo Valley up and into Joshua Tree. And somehow, the rage, the violence and the profound sadness subsided as I watched the shadows of the boulder cities grow long in the setting sun of the high desert sky. In the distance, little points of light became visible as camp fires lit in Hidden Valley and the other sanctioned fire-safe areas. The multiliths of the San Gabriels to the west grew into large, dark masses with a hint of ochre in the sky behind them. And the rage subsided. Joshua Tree, it seemed, was a place of peace, a place that her ghost and I could both enjoy. It was truly sublime, and the tiniest inkling of hope crept into my tabernacle of hatred, and for a moment the hatred subsided. But I was still without her, and while Joshua Tree had soothed the fire within, the park nonetheless reminded me of what had been, the promises of love and friendship, and the stark loneliness of the high dessert took me back to that trip where I had bested Road Rash and forged memories with my soul mate. Memories and experience, after all, are the only things that we truly posses.

Five hours later it’s night time and Beth and I are sitting around a fire we’ve built in the approved fire pit that the National Park Service provides for campers. Now, if only the NPS would also provide kegerators full of Dos XX Lager. Still, we’ve got a lot for a last minute camping trip to Joshua Tree. The park is frequented nearly all year long, save for the hottest months of late summer. People come from all over the country, but mostly from California, Arizona and Nevada to climb, to hike, to mountain bike or perhaps to simply get away from things for a while in order to commune with Nature as a means to get in touch with oneself. Me? I’m hoping to get more in touch with Beth.
Now, lest you brand me a dog, a maggot or a player merely in quest of a quick piece of ass, I need to qualify a few things about myself. You see, in spite of all of my prior ramblings about normalcy and the Really Big Belt Buckle/neo-punk doldrums of Josh’s life, I was never—never ever—a player. I was by most standards a late bloomer, not really dating until midway through high school, and even then favoring the outcast girls. While they were the antithesis of pure punk, I nonetheless dug the goth girlies with a passion. Something about pasty pale, morose girls dressed in black and festooned with far too much black eyeliner finally piqued my curiosity in the fairer and, in this case, significantly more neurotic sex. Even then, however, I was anything but a player. Sex happened (as it often does at that age), and it was awkward and foolish and messy (as it often is). There wasn’t nearly as much animal passion as I had been lead to expect after years spent watching late night soft core pornography on Cinemax. I dabbled in it from my junior year of high school onwards, but more as an occasional pastime rather than an adolescent obsession. It’s often said that it’s better to be lucky rather than good; tragically I was neither. Player? Not on your or my life.
College? Yeah, I dabbled in “it” there too, but I seemed to spend more time draining the keg and sleeping off the after effects in-stead of chasing skirts. Flight school? That is, ostensibly, a target rich environment, yet I was busy immersing myself in things like the Federal Aviation Regulations Part 91, or Vertical S-1 instrument patterns rather than partaking of Pensacola’s seemingly endless supply of southern belles all searching for Navy husbands. Whereas “An Officer and a Gentleman” might have been geographically misplaced, the cliché of Navy town girls hunting for aviator husbands was still true. Fortuitously, I was skilled at avoiding them. Besides, P’cola is in reality the other LA—Lower Alabama—and the girls there, much like those in Texas, were into Really Big Belt Buckles. I was into Hawaiian shirts. The two don’t readily mix except in fission/fusion explosions often resulting in bar room brawls.
That’s another story.
Anyhow, I finished my purgatory sentence there and moved to Southern California—the Green ancestral homeland. What I found shocked, amazed and delighted me. Here the women were natural, deeply tanned, definitively athletic and eschewed anything relating to line dancing, mullet tossing or Really Big Belt Buckles. Still, I was anything but a player, much to Chuck’s eternal disappointment. I was loath to “jump on the grenade” on his behalf when we went out hunting in pairs. How does one explain at the end of the date, when one’s partner has hooked up and departed, that one was really only talking to the other girl in order for the guy friend to hook-up with chica nombre dos? One doesn’t when you’re Josh Green, although on a rare occasion I was surprised to be told “it’s okay, I don’t mind, can I spend the night with you anyway?”
Okay, I might not have been a player, but I wasn’t daft. Sex is still nifty no matter what, and it’s even better when it’s with somebody other than myself.

But I digress. Like I was saying, at this point it’s not my goal necessarily to hook up and have sex with Beth. The stirring in my naughty bits aside, I am as content to hold her hand as I am to kiss, and both seem to elicit the same response down under. In stead, I’m simply looking for an excuse to get a little closer to her, to establish This and Something Special and perhaps even Exclusive, although to tell the truth, I’ve been exclusively hers since that first evening at the rock gym. Great, she’s turned me into a sap. Love, perhaps?
Our campground is fairly nice as far as Joshua Tree campgrounds go. By that I mean that there’s a paucity of large-fanged tarantulas, which I always figure to be a plus on most dates, and to this point nothing has exploded nor have any flesh eating zombies tried to feast on our brains—also things that benefit dating decorum. So I figure I’ve got that going for me. In addition to that, we’ve managed to snag a Hidden Valley camp site that has a fire pit and a fresh water spigot. Fires, by the way, are typically disallowed at J Tree, no doubt due to the extensive lobbying by the cacti and the gila monsters. But, since we were intuitive enough to play hookie from work and come to J Tree on a Wednesday rather than the weekend, we’ve found ourselves alone in the beautiful desolation of the high desert. Hidden Valley is mostly ours tonight, and in the distance we can see the camp fires of a few other mid-week climbers, all no doubt delighted by their/our collective decision to ditch work in favor of the grandeur of nature. Remember what I said before about California? It’s all true. Texas not so much.
I’ve brought with us a large cooler, lots of camping gear, a pair cold weather North Face sleeping bags for the two of us, one tent (an important point when one is on a camping date), food, a case of Mexican beer, a couple of Mexican blankets, two Crazy Creek camping chairs that can also be used as bivy pads under the sleeping bags and a portable stereo including several Kiss and Bob Marley CDs. What I didn’t bring were condoms (remember, I’m not a player but I am a realist), Cheeze Whiz (contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have a purpose in every occasion) or extra sleeping bag pads.
That last point might seem somewhat obscure, particularly compared to the sublime nuances of Cheeze Whiz, so please allow me to explain. The thing is, it’s generally thought that a person camping in cool or cold weather should have no less than two inches of padding between their sleeping bag and the ground. The issue isn’t one of cushion; rather, it’s one of insulation, for without a sufficient amount it gets bone-numbingly cold at night even in a 0 degree sleeping bag. And therein lies my brilliance, or so I think. It’s going to get very cold tonight at Joshua Tree, perhaps as low as 30 degrees. I didn’t bring enough insulating pads for both of us, but I did bring those blankets which I plan to spread on the floor of the SINGLE tent I brought, after which I intend to suggest we put our sleeping bags so close that we’ll be touching in order to share our warmth. See? I’m not a player, but I am a devious, sneaky little bastard.
I put a CD in, Kiss’ “Smashes, Thrashes and Hits” (one has to pack judiciously when being devious), I pop us a couple of Dos XX Lagers and I cut two slices of lime while Beth cooks the weenies that she’s skewered on two sticks over the fire. The first song, humorously enough, is “Let’s Put the X in Sex.” I blush and it’s good that it’s dark.
“Hmm. Interesting choice in music, Josh.” She’s grinning in the fire-light’s dancing rhythm and blushing too, but I can’t see the latter. I hear a coyote howl in the distance as I look up to see Beth’s award winning smile.
“What?”
“The Kiss, I mean. Is one of those for me?” she points in the fire’s glow at the two beers that I’m holding.
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Actually, I was going to put these out on a rock over there to satisfy Quetsapoochie—the ancient tarantula god—so that we won’t be bothered by creepy crawlies in our sleep tonight. Well, that and I figured on double fisting for a while or at least until you get my weenie cooked.”
“Okay, Flyboy, I’ll cook your weenie alright, but I also guarantee that it’ll be all shriveled and blackened. Not much good between two buns, you know.”
“Whoa. That’s a pretty convincing argument Beth.” I hand her a beer.
“Quetsapoochie?” she smiles as she takes it.
“Yeah, well, that’s my poetic license again. ‘Sides, it sounded good on the spur of the moment, donchathink?”
“Something like that.” She says warmly. “Now about this song….”
“I thought you liked Kiss.” The coyote howled again.
“Oh, I do, but I’m curious about your choice in music, Josh. Incidentally, I don’t think the wildlife approves.”
I take a drag on my beer. Hopefully this sounds convincing. “I had to pack lightly and couldn’t bring a ton of CDs. This seemed a good choice.”
“Uh-hu. I might believe that. But I don’t.” The coyote howled yet again. “She most certainly doesn’t.”
She smiled again and I blushed again. Paul wailed his innuendo. Vinnie Vincent wailed the guitar (this was post-Ace Kiss, you know). Thanks guys.
“Nice try, though, Flyboy. How about this in stead? Let’s play ‘Let’s put the T in Tequila?’”
And with that she produced a small bottle of Sauza and a shaker of salt from her backpack. “You cut the limes and then we’ll do a couple of shots, but we’d better hurry before your weenie shrinks. ‘Sides, this should help us warm up.”
Trust me. Believe me. There isn’t anything shrinking on me at present. And I’m positively on fire.
Two shots go down quickly and we chase with our Dos XX. Joshua Tree incidentally sits at about four and-a-half thousand feet above sea level. The air is arguably rarified here, but I think I can make a safe and fairly convincing argument that the ozone and pheremones that Beth and I are oozing are displacing more than enough oxygen to help speed the liquor on its way. She pours another shot, cuts a slice of lime and sprinkles some salt on her hand.
“Come here Josh.” I kneel in front of her. She holds her hand to my mouth. “Suck.” It’s a command that I obey. My naughty bits feel heavy. “Drink.” Another command as she lifts the shot glass to my mouth. The fire in my gut hardly matches what’s down below. “Suck.” God bless this woman; she puts the lime backwards in her mouth and leans into me. Again, I do as commanded and her tongue pushes the lime into my mouth following closely behind. For a very brief second I enjoy the beauty of the moment, our mouths locked together, her hands pulling my head to hers while her fingers run through my hair. And then she somehow knocks the lime slice down the back of my throat and I choke. Literally. And hack and cough and probably turn a bright shade of crimson although it’s hard to see in the fire’s glow.
At least she has sense enough to whack me hard on the back, and I spit up the lime slice, which lands in the nape of her fleece pullover somewhere in the region of her breasts. She’s laughing hardily and I can’t help but join her. The coyote, I swear, is also laughing in the distance.
The other reason I was never a player? I’m a clutz and a goon. This entire scene is sooo Josh the Toad.
“You’re weenie’s on fire, Josh,” She laughs.
It’s still not the only thing on fire. Trust me. “Yeah, well, you got your boobies wrapped about my lime, Beth.”
“So it is. So it is,” she giggles. “Maybe if you’re a good boy I’ll let you go a huntin’ later. In the meantime, let’s eat that weenie.”
Somehow, someway, in that moment I miraculously manage to not spontaneously combust, melt into a gelatinous puddle of goo and/or explode. I’m not a player, but I’m playing well enough. Perhaps sincerity has something to do with it.