Trash

Part of a love story I read at Marie Ségolène's event at Franklin Parrasch gallery last week

Koda was eating a lot of Twizzlers in the front seat of the car, with her feet up on the dashboard, leaving oily marks on the window with her toes.

Chickie was pulling off the highway and saying things like, ‘there’s water around here’ And next thing they’d be stumbling down a muddy path towards a stream. A river. A reservoir. When they put their hands on each other there was a delicious ache in the place between the pit of your stomach and the place between your legs. On the waters edge she pressed her face against the bark of a healthy tree and Chickie pressed his face against her. They were in love in a way where little else matters besides touching as often as possible.

Chickie was off the booze. He needed to go for long mysterious runs around the motel each night and eat a lot of sugar in order to remain both hyped up and calm enough to stay off it. Koda liked to say he was like a champion racehorse that needed to be ridden often, in order to not go totally insane.

Sometimes Chickie would drive in the nude. Actually he did it a lot. He sat with his manhood hanging out like a monkey and one foot up on the seat. A hand on the steering wheel, an apple in the other. Crunching through its dayglow green skin as they drove. Eating the entire seedy core. Koda giggled and tensed up when people overtook them, certain they could see inside the car.

She’d put her feet in his lap and play with him until there was nothing else to do but pull over.

Their desire for each other was one endless throb.

In the back seat of the car, where no one sat because it was only ever the two of them, was a bunch of trash. Story telling trash. Bottles of Jack Daniels from nights where running hadn’t been enough - an inch of temptation leftover at the bottom. A pile of estate sale junk. A hairy blanket belonging to a dog that had since died. A bag of green apples gone mushy.

Everything they did was slow and lazy. They were driving aimlessly because it was summer break and Koda was still in high school and Chickie was a teacher.

Chickie’s real name was Jonah, which is perfect for a teacher but didn’t suit him.

Koda’s real name was Dakota, which suited her perfectly.

One day they were driving down a road and suddenly it was the most beautiful road. They had no music on. The windows were down just a little. Warm air filled the inside of the car. Koda thought even her blood felt like the right temperature. It reminded her of the first day of spring after a long winter when you can walk outside and your skin and the air around it are in perfect harmony. Neither disturbing the other’s equilibrium.

Outside the car America’s kudzu hugged everything. Koda imagined being underneath it and felt like part of something bigger. Something ecological. Something dirty, like in the soil way. Chickie let the sunlight - which was being rapidly blocked and then unblocked by the trees and hitting his face rhythmically - calm him. He stopped chewing on the corner of his thumb. They entered a complete stillness. A hush came over them for what felt like eternity. There was a warm, golden feeling which leaked out from a holy place and covered the entire world.

Koda looked out the window and became a cloud. Chickie looked out the window and became a leaf. Koda was a dead possum. Chickie was a beer can. A dew drop. A phone line. A cigarette butt. A waterfall. An unmovable rock. A plastic wrapper. The sky morphed from dusky blue into strawberry milk pinks, butter yellows, orange creamsicles, edged into something bloody before slipping into a deep American Denim Blue. A cowboy sky.

The kind of sky Cowboys lived under.

The two lovers sat wide eyed as it passed them by.

Sometimes in the face of nature there is nothing to say. Be like a cow, chewing cud at the foot of the greatest mountain. Be like an eagle hardly moving as the air takes care of you.

Be fucking quiet.

And they were. For a long, long stretch of perfect road. Not a sound but the vehicular hum of the jeep around them. They sat, at attention. Like soldiers. Eyes glugging up the view. Hearts slowing down. Matching each other’s rhythm. In biological harmony. Everything in perfect attunement. Thinking, this is what the Buddhists are on about when they say there Is No Self.

Once the sky turned dark, and the roadside lights turned on, Koda broke the silence. Did a big exhale like Woosh. Like, can you believe that? They looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. Chickie said, something happened there, and Koda knew what he meant. Yeah, she said,

I think we were in awe.

That night they slept at the Heartbreak Hotel and Chickie took a picture of Koda in front of the sign, her hands up to her eyes in fists and her mouth pulled down into an exaggerated frown, going wahhh wahh like a baby crying face. In another she posed with her hands in a heart shape over her own heart, breaking the hands apart to signify a heart break. And in the last one she stuck her tongue out at Chickie. He thought how beautiful she looked and she thought about how this wouldn’t be so funny anymore once they had broken up. How she’d probably have these pictures in a box somewhere and think damn how bold of us to laugh in the face of heartbreak like that’ll never be us. She always had to ruin things when they were still good.

In the room she pulled down her shorts and walked around in her underwear. Turned the teevee on to Forensic Files. Chickie announced he was going on a run. Koda went to the bathroom and watched a roach crawl up the side of the tub, slipping down each time he got halfway up. Zzzwoop.

Chickie called out

See you baby

and the door swung shut behind him.

Koda moved around the room and pretended she was being watched. She felt icky about touching anything because of the roach. She took her top off and looked at her body in the mirror. She laid on top of the comforter and tucked her hands beneath her cheek in prayer. A crime was being described, and a clump of hair they’d originally missed at the scene was going to change everything.

Koda nodded off without meaning to.

A mystery amount of time later, Koda opened her eyes and could see the back of Chickie’s head outside the one window in the room. His unbrushed honey colored hair was wet around the neck from his run. He smoked a cigarette desperately. Koda sat up in bed and watched him. He was lit from behind by the hotel sign she’d posed with earlier. It glowed red and made the outline of his head fuzzy and romantic. Chickie looked both ways like a felon and lowered his head slightly as he brought a shooter to his mouth and held it tilted upwards until the liquor had drained out. Then he brought a similar bottle to his lips except this one was mouthwash - swished it around before pausing and deciding to swallow that down too while he was at it.

As she watched Koda felt a little scared, the way you do when you catch someone.

Chickie opened the door and paused. Koda felt like a little girl. He took a beat to think, before reaching into the pocket of his shorts and tossing her a fresh, unopened shooter of her own.

It was an invitation, a shrug. A test, sort of. Koda was 17. She wasn’t a big drinker, but she knew from her teenage experience that she was a good drinker. She didn’t get squeal-y and sloppy. She liked the warm hug of liquor and how it made her feel sweet and introspective. She held the tiny baby twist top of the miniature bottle and cracked it.

“Let’s go to the bar”

Chickie’s voice was muffled behind the bathroom door.

“I passed one on my run. It looked pretty good.”

Koda rocked her head back and drank half the bottle. Winced a little, and swallowed the rest like it was cough syrup, plugging her nose up from the inside.

She found a Twizzler on the desk, loose from the rest of the pack and chewed on it as a chaser.

“Sure, let’s go”

Chickie held her around the waist and put his big head against her. It was his little apology. Like a dog, saying I’m sorry - but come play. And Koda obliged.

She hung her head out the window of the car and let the radio do its thing. The song could have been any song and still felt nostalgic. She could see stars in the sky even though there weren’t any. She felt big and small. She thought of home and felt sour about it and desperate to get back all at once. She thought of starting school and felt too old. She thought of her father and felt too young. She thought of Chickie and felt pure love. She thought of her future and it felt like stepping off a cliff. She thought, tonight we’ll just sit at this bar of strangers and wrap our legs around each other and it’ll be dumb and easy even though something complicated is happening right now.

Chickie reached into the back seat and patted around until he felt the old bottle, taking a swig and handing it to Koda. She finished it off and threw it back to where it came from. The empty bottle bounced against all their other life defining trash and landed somewhere among it. A hair clump of evidence.

When Chickie laughed he sounded good and free.