Pages Torn From a Travel Journal (2 page)

Yet as for the motel–no doubt a discredited fleabag—the prospect I immediately rejected upon being informed of probable $1 ½ per-night fees (outlandish for these economic times and this locale!); while the stubbed-chinned ruffian-trio declined as well, as did the wayward British mother, all clearly as poor if not poorer than I. In my time I’d slept on many a bus to save much filthy lucre. Best to be prudent regarding creature comfort, & keep more funds available for some indulgence. The others deputed at once, to retrieve bags & baggage from the coach luggage compartment, & begin the simple trek on foot. (I did however like the
name
of the motel–the Gilman House. It had a nice creepish ring to it. I’ll have to use it in an upcoming tale, along with the suspicious likeness of the driver.)

A simple query of “Nate” afforded me directions to the commode facilities (the “donniker,” he called it), & upon entrance to the cubby I was slammed in the face by an absolutely miasmal urine/excreta odor so common amongst these out-of-the-way stops. Yet holding my breath, nearly teary-eyed by the vaporous stench, I proceeded to my business into a toilet
horrific
beyond description–an observation of some peculiarity for a travelogue, yet write it I remain inclined. Here, indeed, a 2
^nd
auspex occurred, a premonition of cogent effect. My thumbs did tingle as the unknown divination heightened, for amid typical crude scrawls of telephone #’s & names promising all manner of sexual formidability, my eyes stopped on a single graffito revealed via the crudest stick-figure drawing: a grinning male figure with obvious erection. Lying elevated before him was a stick-figure woman, arms & legs asprawl, circles for breasts & dots for nipples, a clump of pen-squiggles for private hair, then bugged eyes & a jutting tongue. It was the simplicity of the grotesqueness that had snagged my eye, not art-work at all, but an appallingly demented representation of a deranged mind. See, at first glance, the actions of the 2 stick-figures remained paradoxical, but as I scrutinized details . . .

The male, clearly, was inserting his erection
into
the
crown
of
the
prone
female’s head . . .

What madness was this to so visually vandalize the chamber’s wall, & what manner of
pervert
 had drawn it? The speculation was as depressing as it was beguiling. Indeed, who could even
think
of so depraved a thing?

Darkness, then, seemed to settle over my soul.

The world was changing ever-so-grimly, it seemed. A trifling matter–just a crude scrawl by a demented hand–yet for reasons I could not reckon with, I felt as though a portent had been infused into my very psychic fiber.

Before I quitted the abysmal closet, I penned a graffito of my own:
cthulhu
fhtagn.
Still, the ignorant drawing left me imbued in despair. I tried to recompose myself when I went back to the front office, loosening my neck tie & removing my jacket. At this point I was informed that the 3 scruffs had lit off for a nearby lake with their fishing rods that they’d unsecured from the coach’s luggage hold; presumably the pregnant Briton had joined them, to allay boredom. Other riders were already departing for the short walk to lodgings. “Gentlemen,” I spake to Nate & the bus operator, “if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll take advantage of these lush Virginian surroundings for a nature walk.”

Nate grinned wickedly at my notice, & said, “Sometimes there’s creeker gals swimmin’ in the lake–buck naked, they’ll be,” er—at least that’s what I
think
he said, the word “creeker,” yet he’d pronounced it more as “cricker,” which I presumed to be a hill-dweller of an even more rustic bent than Nate. “If’n yer lucky, you’ll get to gander some”–he rubbed his hands together as if greedy–“and, yee-ip, I ain’t kiddin’ ya, a lotta them backwoods hosebags are
lookers.
Got big ole tits settin’ out like Thanksgivin’ supper, yes sir!”

“Thet sew?” asked the driver in his own conflicting accent.

“Dang straight, buddy. And pussies? Shee-it! They got big hairy pussies just
drippin’
to get poked, and I’se mean drippin’ like a blammed
honey
jar
turnt upside-down! And sometimes you’ll a-see ‘em ettin’ each other, no lie.” He winked right at me. “Like to make ya wanna jerk out a creamer.”

This outrageous excess of information & crudity left me staring, but even more regrettably, Nate continued as if in a
fever
of vulgarness, still rubbing his hands together, “Yee-ip, I’ll tell ya, man.
Some’
a them hill girls out there’re so sick in the head for dick, you’ll shit your ever-livin’
pants!
”

I nearly gasped.

The bus driver piped in, “Sick in the head fer dick, yew say? Yew know, up narth we got gulls like thet tew, like they juss curn’t get
enough
of it. Way a rummy needs rum? These gulls need
dick
stuck in ‘em, ee-yuh.”

“Aw, shore, girls like that ever-where, man,” Nate replied. “S’way they was made, yessir! Was made ta be
filled
with cum, and fer ever minute goes by that they ain’t, it’s a blammed cryin’ shame. A bunch’a
fuck-pots
is what they is, an’ IIIIIIIIIIIII’se love ‘em!”

The driver laughed. “”I heer thet, feller!”

“But mind ya, these creeker tramps? The ones deeper in the hills, they’ll try ta charge ya money but if’n ya ain’t got none, they’ll likely fuck or suck ya anyway. That’s how dag blammed
horny
they is. Dick in the mouth or dick in the kitty, either way they
gots
ta have it . . . ”

Paling, I uttered, “I . . . appreciate being so apprized,” as I could stand
not
one
moment
more
of Nate’s butchery of the English language & dizzying entreatment of profane exposition, but then as I hastened outside, Nate crackled laughter along with the slab-necked bus driver.

Gads! What a thing to experience! The human sexual condition never fails to astound me. While I had
no
desire to behold “backwoods hosebags” “ettin’” each other, I did need a walk to clear my head of its sudden & inexplicable sense of foreboding along with the recent backwash of psychic detritus. Yet Nate’s crudities served to reinforce the dark truth I’d only started to learn in New York: that too much of the world revolved around matters of base & morbid carnality. Now removed from the squat repair building, I embarked into blazing sun & the sights of sweeping fields to the north & dense-packed woods to the south. Across the narrow asphalt ribbon, I spied the pregnant one waddling cumbersomely into a trail posted with a makeshift sign that read simply LAKE with a painted arrow pointing. Presumably she meant to join the rube fishers. So distended was her belly that she braced it as she walked w/interlocked fingers beneath its considerable girth. She stopped, glanced once over her shoulder at me, then continued & disappeared into the overgrown trail.

The weather could not have been more propitious, and I found a trail proceeding in the opposite direction & at once let myself be engulfed by it. The woods off the road were redolent w/delightful fresh spring smells, and locusts trilled pleasantly. Scenic strolls, just like scenic bus & train rides, were welcome opportunities for the esthete in me to emancipate my mind of life’s discord & to ponder upcoming tales. But after the queer observation in the commode–& Nate’s harrowing dissertation of local female proclivities—I found creative concentration beyond the realm of the possible.

Nate’s endorsement of the “creekers” stuck to me like a gadfly. Certainly some women, just as some men, were possessed of accelerated sexual yearnings, perhaps forged by upbringing or environment, or some hormonal imbalance as certain recent scientific journals were known to imply, though I was hardly the expert. I can only speak of my own libido which has always seemed to run on the low side. In times past, when the endless discourse with my New York Group turned to matters of crudity, it was made known to me that certain women exist stricken with syndromes such as
nymphomania
&
erotopathia
–hmm. Sonia, during my short-lived term of wedlock, had gone through such spates, for sure. She’d wake me from a sound sleep as though I were a vender on demand! & once Little Belknap, in one of his coarser turns of talk, had referred to a species of woman “hell-bent for cock,” he’d said; & CAS–quite the ladies man–had made similar references in his wild missives: women
obsessed
with the male privates. If I remember with any accuracy, he’d called them “head-queens,” of all things. I’d scoffed at such talk but then I was admittedly
not
an authority. For amusement I tried to think of a more scholarly appellation—a sufferer from some acute
pudendamaniacal
syndrome. Indeed, a
genitalus
obsessus!

Truly I am the odd man out in this world of musky lasciviousness–I find most of human nature deplorable & most of the human species cretin-like,
people
akin to the filling station itself:
human
hovels; while my cohorts jokingly dub me the misanthrope. I can only hark back to my short tale of the necropolis. I am an outsider.

Yet an outsider with some pomp. While many men would join in to the gutter-talk as a means of demonstrating masculinity, I know that it was my culture, my superior breeding & gentry that were the admixture which triggered my revulsion. But now, however, I’d be dishonest to refute . . .

Something about Nate’s foul-mouthed rant left me . . . sexually enlivened.

My privates verifiably throbbed.

I let my mind wander as I traversed the sedate trail, shaded by branches of century-old trees. Amid quotidian shelf-fungus, tree boles, flowery vines, one out-of-sort discovery stopped me in my tracks:

A yellowed mammalian skull–most probably canine–with a hole in it.

Later

In correspondence, August once referred to an associate who’d undertaken side-employment as a seller of lightning rods. This occurs to me now only as an undue
abstraction,
for I myself feel akin to a lightning rod, not one that attracts nature’s storm-born electrical emissions but instead?

Human sexual perversity.

With each step of my walk, it seemed, thoughts overtly sexual rankled me & filled my head with the most obscene images, i.e., Nate’s creekers, “sick in the head for d—.” Did such creatures genuinely exist? Thus far, I had seen none, & the more decent side of my reason hoped that the indelicate mechanic’s promises were pure invention. But . . . what of my
less
-than-decent side?

& all the while, that bathroom graffito left me helpless but to ponder what it insinuated. Such thoughts never occurred to me; they were useless thoughts, they were a waste of my precious faculties & shameful to be entertained by someone of erudite persuasions such as myself. I’d walked perhaps a mile down the trail, until it grew impassable; whereupon I retraced my steps, but after an undue amount of time I realized, 1), that the nature walk had indeed, finally, purged me of those obsessive sexual images which so distracted me, &, 2), I’d over-bound my starting point. Where was the exit spur back to the main highway &, further, the garage?

It was now that my “lightning-rod” analogy socked home. I heard–or
thought
I heard—a sound like the tiniest squeal whose tenor did not let on whether it be a squeal of panic or a squeal of delight.

Through some bushes, then, I thrust my head.

Like a great glimmering mirror, a small lake shined back at me–of course, Nate had mentioned a lake close by, hadn’t he? To wither the 3 roughs had repaired for a bout of fishing. However, when my gaze circumscribed the modest body of water, it revealed no signs of the men themselves, though 3 fishing rods were indeed apparent, each with its haft stuck in the ground at the shoreline.

Then it was the squeal that came to my ears again, & then?

Another more deliberate sound.

Crack!

Yes, a hard, wet smack, quite akin to a palm hauled across the cheek in violence. Behind a sprawl of unruly bushes I rose on tiptoes to afford a view—

& stood in utter shock.

There, several yards off the lake’s edge, I beheld a most primal congregation: the 3 surly roughs on their knees in the dirt, & whom they all knelt about was the huge-bellied Brit mother. All 4 of them were naked as proverbial jay birds.