Exploration

Using a 1st person persona narrator, describe a scene in the past, using a 
present event to provoke the memory.  Use long revealing sentences and set the 
tone as playful and somewhat joyous.

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	So here I am with a margarita in my hand, no salt, one of those berry-
sweet kind that sets my teeth on edge and keeps me wanting pretzels or Tostitos
or peanuts, and this girl/woman, the daughter of my best friend in high school 
that I’m staying with, is hitting on me – god, she’s thirty years younger than 
me, but I’d like to and I’d like to, but I’d like to take her hand and take her
over the wall and slide down into the wash and she would be like Mary Anne when
I was sixteen and there were palo verdes, mesquites and acacia on the banks 
with sand on the bottom and moss on the north walls and the sand cool even if 
it was 105 and, god that Mary Anne (she was bitchin…) and her pink flowered 
matching bra and panties and little brown nipples that hid under the Kleenexes 
she stuffed her bra with, god she was hot.  And this girl/woman with the big 
blue eyes that is touching my arm and her dad, my friend Karl, asking me if I’m
okay.

	“I’m fine,” I say and things are okay “are you?” I ask, cause it’s his 
brother’s wake after all and there’s this girl/woman looking at me…  And she’s
looking at me and then I want to ask her to come with me into the wash and 
smoke a joint, but I raise my margarita in a toast to Kevin and shrug at Steve 
in the corner with his wife, who’s there cause Steve never goes anywhere 
without Linda/she’s is not good at alone, never has been.
 
	I remember laying with her in the wash, her panties on my face, I’d 
wanted to ball her and we’d fucked and smoked and fucked some more, like 
bunnies/rabbits and we laughed and laughed and cried and laughed and then 
Sara/Moonshine came up the wash with Kevin and we smoked some hash and held 
each other and cried and laughed and Sara took off her clothes and we all 
fucked til the moon came up, or maybe it didn’t, but when I went to go home 
cause my mom would be pissed if I didn’t Kevin and Sara picked up my jeans and 
crawled up the side of the wash and hung them on a cholla, just cause they were
stoned but so was I, it was dark, so what the hell, Mary Anne was gone – and 
someone, maybe Dave, toasted Kevin and said what a wonderful guy he was and we 
would miss him and I looked at the girl/woman and could see her missing him, 
but I could see her in my arms, stop! I felt my face smile and watched myself 
and laughed as I climbed up out of the wash, watching to make sure my dick 
didn’t end up in the cholla or the fucking prickly pear and I stumbled through 
the weeds to the road to walk the four miles home (at least I wasn’t walking 
back to church and that straight-ass youth group) and I walked, swinging in the
breeze in the heat but I thought it was cool cause it was dark, no moon, and I 
heard people coming toward me and a car the other way and it was girls, you 
know the preppy-cheerleader kind that would never smoke, and I stepped behind a
telephone pole, I was skinny that way and then the headlights hit me standing 
there in my t-shirt and shoes.
 
	God, it scared me and the girls screamed and pointed and ran and I 
stood there with my dick hanging out in a full spot light with Karl, Kevin and 
Sara rolling and laughing in the Bug, Kevin threw me a pair of too-big jeans 
and after I put them on, we drove over to Debbie/Sunflower’s house, picked up 
her and her sister and went out to Redington and watched the moon rise and the 
stars spin, felt the cool air rising from the canyon, and I pulled out my pipe 
and stash and we smoked hash, drank tequila with limes and salt and fucked on 
the top of the cliff, with the little rocks gouging our knees and backs.  And 
now there’s this girl/woman touching my hand, I ignore her, I know better so I 
get up to hug Sara and Mary Anne and Karl and Sara’s sister, where the hell is 
Debbie?, and we walk to the short wall looking over the naked wash behind the 
house and laugh as we raise a toast to the trees, the moss, to weed and hash, 
to Kevin and the jeans hanging in the cholla.

Kathleen Speck
04/25/09