Sinners Never Sleep: Jaws on the Floor (II)
“I have to pee,” are probably the four most wretched words to hear on a road trip. Especially when we’d just left the gas station and pulled onto the interstate. Very especially when the next exit wasn’t listed for another thirty-six miles. Very doubly especially when you’ve been watching your boyfriend chug the two liter bottle of mountain dew and have been consistently warning him that despite previous records, he was in fact not a camel-human hybrid. Very doubly triply especially when you two were the ones cooped up on the back seat of Josh’s metal deathtrap together, and The Sinner’s spastic lurches were proving to have a very… ‘interesting’ jello affect on Chris’s food-baby, akin to the size of a four-month pregnant lady.
“I have to pee,” Chris said again like he was simply pointing out scenery.
“Seriously? We were just at a gas station,” Emma replied from the passenger’s seat.
“I didn’t have to go then,” Chris whined. Hard to say exactly why I found his four-year old impressions so endearing.
“The next stop is less than a half hour away, can you hold it?” Josh asked from the driver’s seat.
Chris contemplated it, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Maybe.”
I can’t really defend my reasoning for what I did next, except that the boy totally deserved it. I unbuckled my seat belt and stretched across the street to straddle him. His eyes widened comically and I cackled. The next minute he was writhing underneath me, screaming and laughing and trying to push me off as I tickled him mercilessly.
“Dani! Stop, I’m really going to pee!” he gasped, batting my hands away.
“Moron!” I laughed, “That’s what I’ve been telling you for the past half hour!”
“Stop! Stop! I can’t hold it!”
Josh grew very alarmed, as the jumped octave in his voice indicated, “Dani, I swear to god if he pees in my car, you will be cleaning the thing till it smells like daisies!”
Emma decided to go all philosophical, “Pee is such a weird word—”
“—Dani, stop!—” Chris shrieked.
“How bout piss?—” Josh offered.
“—Stop! It’s going to come!—”
“—Excuse me Mr. Camel, I thought you had a bladder the size of Hong Kong?” I giggled, ruthlessly squiggling my fingers into his abdomen.
“You’re sitting on my bladder!—”
“Too biology professor speak—”
Something warm seeped between my legs. I grew very still. “You didn’t,” I whispered hoarsely.
Chris cowered beneath my legs. “Please don’t break up with me—”
“Holy fuck!!” I leapt off Chris like a heart attack as Josh proceeded to perform the fastest screeching highway pull over and brake in the history of ever. Emma was leaning over the seat and yanking Chris’s door open even before we had completely stopped. He tumbled out and scrambled to his feet to lope awkwardly a few yards away holding his crotch. I peeled out the other side and began stripping my shorts frantically despite the traffic whizzing by. “Chris, you motherfucking wannabe camel, you owe me a pair of shorts!”
Josh retaliated, “Dani, you owe me a leather car seat cover!”
“So much bodily fluid!” Chris could be heard moaning off to the side.
“Guys,” Emma spoke up, “I’m pretty sure this can be cited as public indecency.”
“Oh my god, I have Chris pee on me!” I wailed.
“Oh my God, there’s Chris piss on my seat!” Josh caterwauled.
“Hey, Chris piss, that rhymes!” Emma snickered.
“Peeing this much literally hurts!”
“Ew, god I can smell it!” That was Emma again, now bolting away from The Sinner.
“Emma,” Josh had managed to extract the condemned seat cover from the seat and was uselessly flapping it in the air, “I think there’s cleaner in the trunk, can you check?”
“And please toss me a new pair of shorts and underwear?” I piped up, still in my somewhat damp underwear. “Oh and a lighter. These soiled things must burn.”
After a few minutes of rummaging, she turned back towards us. “Sorry, no cleaner, but here Dani, catch,” and a new pair of shorts and panties were flying through the air.
“Okay, Emma?” I didn’t like the tone of Josh’s voice, “you’re going to have to explain to my mom why I’m in jail when we get back. Dani, I’m going to kill you!”
“Me? He’s the one who defiled The Sinner!”
“I told him not to drink so much!”
“So totally worth—Jesus, Chris, put some pants on!”
“Hey I’m still thirsty, is there anything else to drink?”
And that’s how, after a whopping total of three hours on the road, we ended up spending the first night of The Road Trip in a seedy motel on the outskirts of Tuba City. And also how Chris ended up at the butcher’s shop to purchase a slab of meat for the blooming bruises across his arms.
It was a revolting and rancid fifteen minute race to the next gas station where I paid for the most expensive interior car wash they serviced. It was a two-hour wait till they could round up enough guys willing to face the putrid job, and another three hours until it was finished. A great portion of the five hours I spent on the gas station bench, sleeping, reading and just thinking. Chris went out for a bit for the meat and to shop for a new pair of pants. Turns out, in addition to his tendency to over exaggerate the feats of his bladder, Chris was a shit packer as well.
When he returned, he shot me a timid smile and I figured it was his way of apologizing for taking a piss on me. I smiled back and patted the spot on the bench next to me. “You look pensive. What’s up?” Chris could read me like a book.
In truth, my stomach had been churning ever since we’d started out. A soggy bag of dirty laundry I didn’t have room to air rolled over and over in my gut, and the Premature Peeing Fiasco had been my only reprieve from the chore so far. That was why I’d said to Josh it had been worth it. It had been worth it for just a few hilarious, albeit scarring, minutes to forget the real reason why I’d agreed to this road trip. But looking up into Chris’s sweet and open face, something stuck in my throat and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get the right words out.
Instead, I gestured to where Josh and Emma were standing close to each other on the other end of the convenience store, huddled over some random merchandise. I put a smile on my face, “Look at our little boy, all grown up and getting them girls.”
Chris knew me well enough to know when I didn’t want to talk, so he shifted his body so that it was angled towards them. “Josh is a goofball. What have they been up to while I was out?”
“They’ve just been roaming the aisles,” I shrugged. “He makes her laugh a lot.”
“That’s sweet,” he grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“Yeah it is,” I squeezed back.
He pulled me up from the bench and we snuck into the aisle on the other side of the one they were one. Coincidentally, it was the baby supplies aisle, and I chucked a pack of diapers at Chris. He palmed and shelved it, then pulled me close and covered my mouth with his hand so we could hear Josh and Emma. He smelt like the Chocolate Axe I’d bought him for his birthday, and I was struck with how much I’d miss him.
“Of course I miss him,” I was pulled out of the dangerous train tracks of my thoughts with the similarity of Emma’s statement to my own. “But even if this all never came to be, some part of me would be missing this more. My dad wouldn’t understand. It’s his world, I’m just trying to live in it.”
“What do you mean?” And I swear I could practically see Josh standing there, looking over Emma’s shoulder as she fiddled with something, taking up the right amount of space and becoming a sort of wall against whatever she wanted to keep out. He was good at that sort of thing.
“By his books, I’ve got it all down to a pat, and why would I need anything more? I have my life figured out, a great college and virtuous major lined up, and no permanent record to mess that up. I’m living out his American dream. I’m going to be something someday,” Emma explained.
“What’s your American dream?” Josh asked.
She sighed. “Well, of course I want to be something someday. But that’s just someday. Someday is a day so far off that you can comfort yourself with knowing you hold the power to push back the due dates. That’s just not enough for me. I want to be something today. I want to do something right now. I want this ridiculous road trip because I’ve never been lost. I want to defy expectations. I want mistakes and regrets because I haven’t grown up yet. I want... oh wow, I’m totally babbling!” she broke off nervously.
“No! I like listening to you.”
After a moment’s pause, Emma asked shyly, “Why?”
“Because… because you have a pretty voice.”
“Josh,” I could hear a smile in her voice, “really why?”
Everything, anything, he could have said, he chose to cut these strings. “Because I think what you feel is something all of us feel in a sense. There’s this paralyzing fear that we have a future to make for ourselves, all ourselves. And, god, a future is what your life is made up of, can you imagine messing that up? And so, so many just stay rooted down into the track they’re set into because it’s familiar. And those people are missing something and they know it, but they never find the words to say it. And you just did.”
I could hear their breathing slow as I could only imagine that they were drawn closer to each other.
“Josh,” Emma practically whispered, “Do you live in that fear?”
“I don’t know,” he replied in a deep voice.
“Yes. But I’m trying not to.”
They kissed. I think he kissed her. I don’t remember thinking much, but I remember looking up at Chris, his sturdy arms wrapped around me, and thinking about them kissing on the other side.
By the time we piled into the car again at about 7, I was studiously trying not to think about anything. Chris was driving this time and I was in the passenger seat. We followed the sun out west to where the horizon cried orange and gold and bled into violet somewhere behind us. Soon, gray stars like thorns were poking their way out of the sky with the half moon to coax them on. With Mumford and Sons playing softy on the radio and Chris’s strong profile guiding us on, I thought we could have kept on driving through the night. No one had asked me my American dream, but I wanted to keep going into tomorrow and the next day and forever and the next day, because the truth was I was scared. It was that stupefying fear Josh had clutched onto. So elusive before, like the vapor of fireflies, and now it had a name and became something real to envelope me and isolate me from the others.
Chris, god I loved him so much, but I almost didn’t recognize the silhouette across the middle console. Chris had been my everything once. And I hated the stupid girls who giggled that behind fluttering hands over a crush of two weeks, but three years, this was true. And Chris as everything had become so… comfortable. Livable. Familiar. In fact, we’d both been accepted into U of A on scholarship and already had plans for an apartment together come junior year, painted blue. It was the dream.
I’d also been accepted into NYU, but the tuition was too high and the distance too far.
I wondered how foolish it was to chase dreams.
Of course I still loved him, but eavesdropping on Josh and Emma reminded me something of what the beginning felt like, the electricity and the humming stomachs and the magnetism of something lovely, dark, and deep. Life and love wasn’t built from beginnings though, and I was old enough to know that. But up until now I’d been too scared to admit that maybe I was just young enough that this didn’t have to be the last beginning.
Emma had mentioned that she wanted to get lost. I wanted to be found again, but I didn’t know where I might wash up. My hands unconsciously reached for Chris’s across the console and maybe he knew then, even before I knew, that I was going to hurt him.
We drove through Tuba City around nine, and turned back at 9:30 when we realized we didn’t have enough gas nor knew how far away the next town and sleep might be. The motel we rolled up to was two-story peeling white stucco, but they offered us a decent rate for two rooms and running water. As we began unloading the car, I heard Josh ask to Emma, “What would your dad say if he could see where you’re spending the night now?”
Hands on her hips, she took in the façade. “M-TEL 67, op-n -very da- o- t-e week -t mod--t prices” announced itself in sickly neon green and that was about the only light shining on the place. “Eyes bugging, heads rolling, jaws on the floor, oh baby! But isn’t that kind of the point?”
Josh smiled a silly sort of smile as he let her pass him and then caught me by the elbow as I was walking by. “Isn’t she… wow. Just isn’t she incredible?”
I followed his gaze to her curvy shadow, her messy ponytail, the soft purse of her lips as she hummed something we couldn’t hear. “She’s just a girl, Josh.”
But the scary thing was, I think he saw her as something more. The cruelest thing we can do to a person is make them more than human. We cannot let ourselves pin our hopes and dreams on a corkboard butterfly just because it’s almost like exactly what we want to see. One morning, the pins might drop out and we might be staring at this mystery we never thought to see. Or one morning, I might look in the mirror and see this mystery staring back at me.
I glanced over to where Josh was helping Emma with her suitcase and she was smiling sunnily up at him. I knew she was just a girl, but to Josh, she had become so much more. She was his crazy drunken courage in proposing this road trip that would lead down many an uncharted path. She was his timid step into the oblivion of taking a chance and riding the whirlwind to see where chance may drop off. She was his ludicrous idea that we could go after what we really wanted even if we didn’t quite know where we might turn up. She was just a girl, and I was so incredibly proud of Josh for going after her despite the mask he made her wear. But in that pride was seeded something of jealousy. Josh had done it, conquered the vague ‘it’ of incomprehensible fear. And I wanted to do it too, beast the diaphanous ‘it’ of unknown apprehension.
I looked towards Chris, and despite the shooting pain that went through my chest, made my decision. And in that moment, underneath those thorns that bled an invisible red, I knew I was making an enemy out of the one I loved best and there he stood, leading his life of positivity, smiling, just simply standing there, hands in his pockets, eyes on his heart, smiling at me. I must have been blind to not have seen the signs, but the light of the half moon illuminated everything that had been missing.
I walked forwards and into Chris’s outstretched arm like a stone-cold zombie, and he guided me into the building. Everyone else was going to hang out for a bit, maybe map the route to Disneyland so we could arrive by tomorrow night, but I complained of a headache and went to sleep in the other room. The blankets were thin and itchy, the bed hard and lumpy, the window rusted shut and the AC broken, but none of that mattered because I couldn’t fall asleep anyway. Instead, I recalled the last time I’d ever seen my dad.
I was four again, dressed in a sailor’s frock and playing lights sabers with my older brother out in the yard. There were suitcases on the porch and the car idled in the driveway, but that was okay. I was four—no one ever left me; they only came, delighted at how fast I was growing, and stayed around forever. Suddenly, I was flying like Superman and Dad tossed me into the air. I squealed excitedly as he nuzzled me close and tickled my fat little belly.
“Where are you going Daddy?” Carter asked. He was six at the time, but he still didn’t know the difference between hello and goodbye.
“I’m,” Dad’s voice faltered. He sat down crisscross applesauce next to us in the grass and pulled Carter into his lap. Carter fussed. He was a big boy, he would stand, and I crawled into Daddy’s lap instead. “I’m going away on an adventure,” Dad whispered to us.
“Adventure!” I shrieked. “I wanna come!”
“Sorry kiddo,” he smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled, “this is a solo call. You’re going to have your own crazy adventures some day.”
“My own crazy adventures?” my eyes widened at the thought.
“Your own crazy, fantastic adventures!” He loaded his words with care and aimed them at the desperate. “You know, you’re going to leave this place here. You’re going to escape and fly like a bird to the other side of the ocean. You’re going to… to…”
“I’m going to battle the evil super galactic space monkeys!” I clapped and giggled.
“Exactly!” he laughed. He had a chuckling sort of laugh. “You’re going to battle the evil super galactic space monkeys.”
“What am I going to do Daddy?” Carter yanked on Dad’s shirtsleeve impatiently.
“Son, you’re going down into the depths of the deepest sea and wrestle with the beastly kraken. You’re going to explore the darkest caves and the highest mountains. You’re going to do some amazing things. You both are.”
Carter was satisfied with the answer, but then asked, “What are you going to do Daddy?”
“Me?” Dad looked away. “I’m going to go out into the world and tell everyone to be ready for the two superstars on their way.”
“A comet’s coming to crash on us?” I squirmed in his arms.
“No, you doofus, we are the superstars!” Carter tugged on a lock of my hair.
“Hey,” Dad tucked his hand away, “don’t call your little sister a doofus. And yes, yes you guys will always be my superstars. Never ever forget that you will always be my superstars, and no matter about anything else you hear, I will always love you.”
Dad humored us by joining in on light sabers for a few minutes, but then he went to stand next to where mom was watching us. Carter and I were screaming up a storm with theatrical grunts and groans from where we’d been slashed by light sabers so I don’t know how I heard Dad say this part, but I remember his words clearly: “Such pretty little things. So much prettier without me.”
He left after that, and for a very long time, I always pictured him driving through the back roads of a America in his little blue car, shouting through the moon roof with a bullhorn, “Make way world, my superstars are coming through!” Soon, I grew out of that picture and imagined him on wild quests to all four corners of the earth, meeting the Dali Lama, escorting the president, shaking hands with the Pope. Eventually, the picture morphed into the four corners of a kitchen table and around it gathered a different family of superstars. Megastars, because the woman Dad had left us for had to be mega to trump our super. We would always be his superstars. Right, well.
Fourteen years later and I tried to recall all the adventures we’d been promised. In a funny sort of way, Dad had prophesied what would become of us. Carter had gone to study abroad in the Swiss Alps, but had become involved in drugs. He battled with his own sort of tentacled suck-searing beast and traversed the sort of dark caves I never wanted to imagine.
I… I was still flying, looking for a place to land.
I rolled over on the bed and squeezed my eyes shut tightly. In the haunting dance of the phosphenes I found a fitful sleep.
