Do you know how to suck dick?

Do you know how long it takes to drive from the Bay Area to Boulder, Colorado? I do. It takes almost exactly 24 hours.

We had driven 24 hours straight. East through California, through Nevada, past Salt Lake City and up into Wyoming, then finally back down into Colorado.

I only have a couple of thoughts about the intervening states. First, Nevada is mindnumbingly boring. And it's so much bigger than you can imagine. Second, I had no idea that waves crashed to shore against the Great Salt Lake. Who'da thunk it? That's one big fucking lake, I guess. The city looks like something out of a sci-fi movie - giant cliffs placed haphazardly next to a roiling sea. Jets fall out of the sky and skim the highway about 30 inches above the cars, then disappear through sea-foam and rock formations. In the middle of the fucking desert. Finally, Wyoming is also massive, but much more interesting. Interesting to look at, at least. My totally uneducated guess is that they have 1 resident per 500 square miles in that state. In their massive isolation they've also re-invented english. We stopped at a gas station that advertised Pop;Ice;Beer;Gas. All separated, as God intended, by semi-colons.

So.

Aaron and I were to meet a friend who was going to school in Boulder. The only thing that we knew was that he lived "on The Hill". I was under the impression that "The Hill" would be a bit like Telegraph in Berkeley. Initially it looked more like Main St. Disneyland.

At least there was, sort of, a hill. I would think that so close to the Rockies, natives would call a place a "Hill" in a facetious way, like a Texan might call his 100,000 acre ranch his "back yard". But irony seems to be lost on these people (must be the lack of oxygen). In a little bowl valley, nestled between towering, sheer cliffs, sits a little city with a tiny "hill". And as if named by Jebediah Springfield himself, the little city is aptly called Boulder. Down the road is "Stick", "Tumblweed" and "That Creek Where Johnny Took A Piss".

Because we were young and didn't worry about things like telephone numbers or addresses before going on a road trip, we simply parked the Festiva and began to look for Seth.

His last name makes the question of asking about Seth X sound something like "Do you know how to suck dick?" The jocks were not amused, and we were too tired to repeat ourselves. Imagine two grungy, bleary-eyed, long and oily haired fucks walking around town offering oral pleasure. The jocks were not amused, but the people who looked like us seemed happy to offer us drugs.

"What? Not stuff, man. Seth. Do you know how to suck dick?"

"I need money, man. Muh-nee. I don't need no help with that, you dig?"

What was I saying about Disneyland? Maybe it was a bit more like Telegraph.

I honestly do not remember how we found him. I'm sure that it's a story in itself. I mean somehow, knowing nothing except for the general neighborhood in which he lived, we ended up finding a non-descript guy in a smallish city.

I don't know if it was the same Seth that we were looking for, but he was a good guy and let sleep in his apartment.

That first night Aaron and I were too tired to sleep. We lay on the floor in the dark and moaned as our bodies tried to process 30 hours of wakefulness and 5 packs of cigarettes. Each. I think we finally slept after Seth went to work the next morning, and didn't wake up until the middle of the next day. Seth was already gone.

That's how we learned that he had a room mate. I believe her name is Kendra, but the details are fuzzy. While we were unsticking ourselves from the floor, Kendra walked in. She raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips as if to say "So, you can move. I was beginning to think that Seth had just purchased ugly furniture."

Very quickly the initial look of disgust was wiped away and she smiled, offering us something to eat. That offer amounted to ketchup or water. We both decided to have some water.

Seth called from work and told us to go down the hill to a video place and rent a VCR and a movie called "They Call Me Bruce?" Obviously he was already high. I don't remember what he did in Boulder, but based on experience I'm guessing that he sucked dick for pot.

Aaron and I had a respectable stash ourselves in the Festiva, if we only we could remember where we had parked it. We should have just worn a sandwich board advertising "Mug Us!" as we walked up and down the streets, a VCR under my arm, a bag with movies and goodies clutched in Aaron's hand.

Luckily we were not challenged, and we found the car unmolested, the pot unsmoked. Somehow we found our way back to Seth's house. Maybe it is more like Disneyland, afterall.

Laden with edible food, entertainment and other such goodies, we returned to home base. This is where the story becomes (more) muddled. We were supposed to stay for a night or two before continuing our journey to Memphis. We ended up staying at least one week. Although I'm pretty sure it was two. I think two weeks because I remember our friend in Memphis being non-plussed for our only staying half as long as we had spent in Boulder. And we must have spent at least a week in Memphis. Speaking of which, do you know how long it takes to drive from Boulder to Memphis? I do. Just about 30 hours. But watch out for Kentucky. That's where I started hallucinating. Maybe we should have scheduled more than one day between destinations.

If you've read this far, you might as well brew some tea and let me continue with the mental snapshots of Boulder that pass for my memory of this "layover".

They Call Me Bruce? was a sage choice. It is perhaps the dumbest movie that I've ever seen, but 3 joints later it is also one of the funniest things that I've ever seen. It's like that song, "we smoked two joints before we smoked two joints, and then we smoked two more", but then we watched the movie, then we smoked two more, then we watched it again, then we smoked two more, then we hit mute, put Ummagumma on the stereo and watched it again. It was spectacular. All of those people you knew in college that told you to watch The Wizard of Oz while listening to The Wall? Unimaginative losers, the lot.

In fact, I've only had a single more satisfying experience. In another town, another time, we were on shrooms and watched The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones while listening to Ween. Truly, you have never experienced utmost hilarity until you watch Barney talking to George about the flies on his dick.

At some point Seth received a care-package from his mom. It contained 4 gallon sized jugs of ketchup, several pounds of dried spaghetti, and a teaser sampling of Chef Boyardee. It all came in a huge box, and the delivery man was sweating from just carrying it to the door from his truck.

We attempted to make spaghetti for the four of us (don't forget about Kendra). They only had one pot, really just a sauce pan, so we crammed as many noodles in as possible. It took an hour for the mess to cook properly. This was a good thing, actually, because the "couch" was just a love-seat. Only two people could sit on it at a time. If you managed to get a seat on the couch, you stayed there until you started to pee your pants. The alternative was a 1960's aluminum dining room chair designed by Marquis de Sade. Or the floor. Why was the spaghetti fiasco a good thing? Because it made such a mess that it was possible to get either Seth or Kendra to stand up and correct the situation, at which time you could sometimes get a seat on the couch. "Move your meat, lose your seat," has always been the mantra in my household. It was doubly true in Boulder.

Kendra once tried to take her seat back. She started with the "I live here" line of guilt. Sorry, sister. Been there done that. We just laughed. Next she attempted the "But I'm a girl!" angle. While giving her points for advancing women's lib significantly - backwards - we just let her know that it was a natural progression of equal rights.

Well, equal rights be damned. She exacted her revenge at the dining room table, playing poker. We must have played for at least three days straight. My ass still hurts from sitting so long at the torture-chairs. None of us had money, so we played for bud. I think we came out ahead, because we stashed what we won, and smoked whatever we would have, anyway.

So passed two weeks. I think we must have eaten once or twice. We may have even left the apartment. But I don't remember.

Aaron and I decided to leave one morning while Seth was work. We had traveled with heavy snackage, and we had a Costco size pack of those cheese crackers with the peanut butter well and red "smearing stick" that we hadn't yet broken into.

So we lugged the pack from the Festiva back to the apartment and built a shrine, right at the top of the stairs in front of the living room. These snacks are basically rectangular cubes, so they stack nicely. We built what was originally supposed to be an altar, but eventually turned into the Ark of the Covenant. You know, the covenant betwixt Man and cheese-food? It worked pretty well, but it's hard to stack a convincing Seraphim out of crackers. All told, there must have been fifty or more pieces. I hope this helped supplement Seth's ketchup stock.

On top of the Ark we placed a single joint. To this day, I wonder if God didn't wipe it out like the swastika on the shipping crate in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Waawaaawaaawaaawaaa. Rats running, cockroaches scattering, the joint burning without burning, forever and ever amen. But my guess is that Seth just smoked it. Then went and plied his "trade" for more.

I didn't know Seth very well before the trip. He was a friendly acquaintance in highschool, maybe even a friend, but I'd never spent any real time with him. But since the visit, we've remained close. If he ever reads this, I'm just joking about the dick-sucking thing. Well, that he did it, not that his name sounds like it. He and I eventually became room mates back in California. Someday I'll have to tell you about the vending machine that we bought from one of his ex-girlfriends. But that's another story.

Aaron and I fired up the old Festiva and continued the journey East. If you're interested, I've already posted about our experience in Kansas. Maybe one day I'll get around to the week in Memphis.