Surfing The Corn

Thurber was a fucktard. In the fifteen years since he slid out of his mother’s slimy birth hole, he had mastered the art of being a shithead. He was dumber than a dirty sock and just as useless. The English language never sounded as ugly as when it rolled of his idiot tongue and polluted your intelligence. Extra syllables placed in misused words and the “r” he added to every thing ending with an a, made me want to cock punch God for not putting his soul into a toad or a dung beetle, or even a fungal cell hiding under some old guys toenail, anywhere but here. He was clueless to his ignorance and went blissfully through life completely unaware that at any moment he might get outwitted by a rock and get stuck holding down the earth while the rock made off with his car. The modified bowl cut he sported for as long as I could remember glistened black with an unwashed sheen. His shaggy unibrow pushed down on his squinty eyes that never stopped blinking and always seemed to be looking at something else. I had known him since second grade and had always avoided him like a dog turd on the sidewalk.
But there we were, just the two of us, in the bathroom nobody ever used because it was right next to the teachers lounge. I leaned back against one of the sinks. Thurber nervously pushed open both stall doors making sure we were alone. He seemed satisfied, then he shuffled back over to where I was. His shoulders bounced in a nervous twitch and he blinked at a spot just over my left shoulder. We paused for a moment in an awkward silence. My eyes tingled in the menthol vapor of pristine urinal cakes.
“So you got it?” I asked, ending the silence.
“Yeah.” Thurber mumbled out of the side of his mouth.
I waited for him to reach into his pocket or something, but he just stood there swaying in a tiny circle.
“So?” I barked.
“Yeah, yeah, hold on.” He reached into his jean jacket and pulled out a plastic bag. He flicked his wrist and let it unroll. “How many do you want?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I had no idea. I never did this shit before.
“I don’t know, how many do I need?” I tried to keep up my cool, “I mean is it any good?”
“Fuck yeah its good I took three and I’m balls out man.”
“Okay, give me nine.”
He looked surprised. “Nine?”
“Yeah, I got to get some for my friends.”
I held out my hand and he shook nine tiny chunks of what looked like blue plastic into my palm. I pulled my cigarettes out and pulled off the cellophane wrapping. I dumped the drugs in, folded it up and stuck it into my wallet.
“How much do you want for these?”
“Three dollars a hit.”
I flipped out twenty seven dollars from my roll of ones and held them out until I felt him take them. I gave him no more words. I just turned and stepped out of the bathroom into a sea of kids moving like cattle to their next class. I had to find Finkler.
I knew Finkler had Typing fourth period so I wiggled against the flow pushing my way over to the south hallway.
Typing was some archaic hold over from the fifties. It was taught by Mrs. Wright, a shriveled up old white haired dinosaur that should have retired a couple of decades ago. Most of us had computers, but her classroom was filled with bulky old typewriters. Her class was a joke but a lot of kids took it as an elective because it was an easy A. Finkler was never one to pass up an easy bump up on his GPA.
I made it to Mrs. Wright’s classroom and waited just outside the door. The river of bodies quickly drained out and the tardy bell echoed down the empty hallways. Like clones on a scripted page, the teachers closed their doors in unison. I heard the squeaking sneakers of some clown that took too long with his cigarette and was trying to outrun a tardy. Why run? If you’re late, you’re late. It’s not an absence until you miss half the class. If you don’t make the bell, you might as well take the whole twenty minutes. Fuck it. If the bell rings and you aren’t done with your smoke, take your time and have another one.
I heard some laughing and turned my head to the right. I saw Finkler, Krasney and Dumper turn the corner. I started walking up and met them next to a water fountain.
“Dude!” Dumper greeted me the word that made up ninety percent of his vocabulary. Krasney just nodded and bent over the fountain to grab a drink. Finkler flashed his goofy slack jaw grin that dampened all the girls and even caught me off guard form time to time, but not this time.
“Hey” he said.
“Hey.”
He was high. They all were. They probably sparked up a bowl in Dumpers IROC. Dumper was the only guy in our group that had a nice car. His dad owned a pizza place and Dumper worked there all the time. He didn’t seem to care about anything and always had weed.
Dumper hugged me and aimed his inflected “Dude” at me in a way that meant see ya later and bounced. Krasney left the scene with out a word.
It was just me and Finkler.
I stared at him until the squeak from Krasney’s sneakers faded past the chemistry rooms.
“What’s up?” he half whispered and half snorted. He pushed his model high cheekbones up, squinted his eyes into tiny pink slits, and unfolded his smile.
Jesus, his smile, it was smoother than summer butter and whiter than a nuns ass. It was the greeting card his inner beauty sent out to the world. Finkler was kind of shy and he was quiet as a mouse, but everybody heard his smile. It was more than brilliant, it was musical and enchanting. His mother had overlooked a multitude of youthful transgressions, under its spell. Teachers turned a blind eye after basking in its beauty and so many young girls spread open their virtue just to grunt with sweaty abandoned under its hypnotic glow. I even got swept up into it every now and then, in moments of pubescent doubt.
“I got some dots.”
“Huh?” Finkler looked over his shoulder and giggled at something I wasn’t in on.
“I got some shit. Do you want some?” I pummeled his pot relaxed brain with more questions than it wanted to deal with and he started to get freaked out. Finkler took a couple of steps back and stashed away his smile. He shook his head a couple of times, then pushed both hands down and out from his body in the international sign for “Slow Down, I’m way to high for this shit.”
“Dude?” I asked.
“Dude!”
“Dude?” I asked again.
“Duuuude!” he smile and held out his hand.
I dumped three of the little blue dots into his hand. Almost instinctively, he popped all of them into his mouth and swallowed. “How many should I take?” he asked.
“I guess three.”
I tossed three hits on my tongue and closed my mouth. I didn’t know if I should suck on them or swallow them, so I balanced them on the back fold of my tongue.
Finkler slapped my shoulder, “I’m off to class.” He flung open the door, took twenty steps down the hall and went tardy into his typing class.
I swallowed and freaked out in silent panic. We weren’t supposed to separate. What the fuck? Now what? I couldn’t just stand there, some douche nozzle hall monitor might live out his wet dream and nab me.
I had to think.
I didn’t.
I went to class. I strolled into Mr. Schaeffer’s communications class almost ten minutes late. My lame attempt to slide in went completely noticed.
“Thanks for joining us Mr. Ferguson.” Mr. Scaeffer greeted me as he put down the chalk and turned around from the blackboard. “Did you enjoy the extra ten minutes?”
I crumpled my self into a desk in the back row. “Yeah.” I said
“You did?” He moved down the row to where I was. “Tell us, what you did. I’m sure the whole class wants to know.” He sat on my desk then cocked his head slightly upward. He had shoulder length curly black hair that glistened with some kind of product and he shook it for affect. I looked up over his Graucho Marx mustache and flaring nostrils and couldn’t see a glimpse of the teacher I used to think was cool.
“Fuck you!”
“What was that?” he squeaked as he slid off my desk, “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” I stood up and walked out of his class and away from the collective giggle erupting behind me. He might of brought his ingdignant protest out to the hallway, but I never noticed. I just kept walking away and cruised down the checkered hallway into a smile.
I went out the front door.
I walked past the flagpole.
I went down to the street and pushed the button on the crosswalk.
Purple came up and shook my hand then led me across the street. I met his friends, Marshmallow and Shinything and we ran away from the angry guy in the booth to the other side of the driving range. I think somebody was hitting golf balls at us, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop giggling until I flopped down into a cornfield.
I rolled over and closed my eyes against the sunlight. My ears soaked up the noise of the silence I never heard. Time bent just enough to let me see her face and space warped into a kaleidoscope.
I was tripping.
Shit yeah! Mother Fucker!
I was tripping.
Tripping balls.
I already forgot how I had gotten there but it was abvious where I was.
I was in a cornfield.
I started moving down the diagonal that the cornstalks had opened for me. I walked for a while until I got freaked out by the echo of my hair bouncing against my ear. I stopped and walked in a circle around myself, making sure not to step on my shadow. I didn’t mind how loud the humidity was, but when I started to smell the solitude and the moist brown earth burped over my shoes rather rudely, I flopped down on my cheeseburger beanbag that wasn’t there and called a time out.
I was prostrate across the bottom of a corn tank, psyched that I remembered the law of gravity and giggling like a feathered fucked nun. That is when it happened. There was never anything more amazing than that moment. I stepped out of myself looked at the me. I was hung on the wall for everyone to see. I saw my reflection in the world’s eye. It was ugly. I hated it. I stood up and tried to punch at it, but I couldn’t hit it. It just swirled around myself like dust in a sunbeam.
“Hey!” somebody shouted.
I looked diagonally down the corn and saw Finkler, his smile stretching past the edges of his face. Jesus, how I loved that smile. We stepped closer and I grabbed him into a hug. He stiffened, and then relaxed past the awkwardness, fumbling back a hug. It was nothing less than a moment and we separated.
“DUDE!” Finkler howled.
“DUDE!” I answered. This was better than butter, “What the fuck, man? I didn’t think I see you here.”
“Shit!” Finkler said letting his voice fall to a whisper. “Until I saw you, I thought I was running through a jigsaw puzzle.”
We both breathed heavy with laughter. I pushed my arm out against his shoulder and he folded into a sit. I looked down at him and we both lost our giggle. I looked over to the tree line and smelled yellow.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
Finkler jumped up, “See what?”
“What?”
“Fuck you.” Finkler snorted, “That is fucked up, just plain fucked upped” He kicked at the dirt and sent a few rocks rolling. He pushed his arm up onto the air and dangled a big wooden M in front of me. It was the boy’s bathroom pass from Mrs. Wright’s typing class. He felt my question and answered before I could ask.
“I looked up at the ceiling and saw four typewriters dancing across it shouting “My name is QWERTY!” Finkler went opaque, “I started screaming I had diarrhea and demanding the lave key. Mrs. Wright didn’t no if I was going to hit her or shit on her floor. She handed me the key and I ran out the door. I didn’t stop running until I ran into you.”
“No Way!”
“Hell Yeah!” He responded.
We let the conversation drop, spreading out into our individual trips. I didn’t notice the pause, but after a while, Finkler did, “I got some rum at my house.”
I followed him out of the cornfield and through some woods out into a suburban neighborhood. We marched past all the identical houses to the one he somehow remembered was his and he keyed us into the air conditioning. We listened to Pink Floyd and drank until we stopped tripping and the day blurred into night