Chapter 10: Pentecost

When the Word of the north traveled down to my earth

And woke the sleepers whom I call’d my neighbors

Back home things were normal. School was coming to an end. I drank beer in the warm evenings with Duane and Red, Bambrick and Trevor. I took my finals. I went with my grade to Seaside Heights for Prom weekend, a New Jerseyan rite of passage. Some psychedelics were taken in these weeks, but no seminal experiences were had. There was too much anticipation on my mind, and the settings were not ideal. The little house I grew up in had become a party venue, as my mother was rarely home. I had shifted from the consumer of parties to their host; good practice for the summer ahead.

I graduated, got my diploma, and spent a week or two doing nothing much at all, waiting for the days to pass. Alexandre and I decided on Facebook that they would come in late June, stay a week with me in New Jersey, and then we’d get going, New Orleans as the main destination with a sidetrack to D.C. to meet the infamous CLT of /mu/.

Alexandre and Henri would be arriving in America just the same way I departed, through Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, a harsh and gloomy dungeon that hadn’t been redone since it was built in the late 40s. I told them I’d pick them up, so I slept over at my grandparents’ house in Cliffside Park, a cramped little town built along The Palisades, imposing cliffs off the landmass of Jersey overlooking the Hudson connected to Manhattan by the G.W. Bridge. The Cliffside house was where I lived from ages two to four; my parents moved in for help when my sister was born. This was not the house of my father’s father, the farmer from Donegal, but my mother’s father, an Italian who climbed his way out of the poverty of Union City into the luxury of international golf tours through financial success as a sandwich franchise mogul. His fortune in recent years was waning, but his house was still regal, a Tudor manor built by a lumber tradesman in the 1800s now redesigned to be dolce vita in the extreme: a balcony overlooking the river, an in-ground pool with stone walkways and a jungle of flowers surrounding a koi pond, marble cherubim horsed upon the mirrors of the walls, hand-carved wooden counters and tables imported from South America, ornate wine decanters, hundreds of books about the 20^th century that only old Manhattanites possess, a basement spotted with golf and bocce ball paraphernalia, its columns lined to the ceiling with matchboxes collected from all over the world, softball awards and Friar’s Club adverts, a framed poster of a country club guido leaning on a Rolls-Royce with “Poverty Sucks!” printed above it.

I drove through the Lincoln Tunnel at 6 A.M. without having had anything to eat. I circled the Terminal several times looking before parking. I went in to search for the idiots—no luck; they didn’t have cellphones and could only communicate through Alexandre’s tablet. “They probably don’t have Wi-Fi.” The most recent message was from last night, a picture of Henri at a hotel bar reading Alexandre’s copy of Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama translated into French. I excavated the entirety of the building, twice, three times, basement and upper levels. I checked the bus schedules; “their bus was late, but they should be here by now.”

I gave up and left. As soon as I got back to the house, I had a Facebook message from Alexandre. “Finn, we finally got Wi-Fi here at this ghetto ass McDonald’s. Where you at.” I told them to take a cab, giving them my grandparents’ address.

Shoeless, I sat waiting on the front terrace poring over a copy of Emerson’s Essays—this was the summer to get absorbed in “The America,” as Henry Rollins called it. They finally pulled up. “Ay Finn! Wee made eet!” They struggled to pay their $50 cab fare as they had yet to convert their currency. I paid for them, too excited to give a shit about money.

We strolled into the backyard; they were shouting and sighing in joy. I situated us next to the pool on the latticed copper-aluminum lawn chairs. They pulled out a handle of vodka from their bag; I went and got Solo Cups and a Yankees-branded ashtray. Henri jumped into the pool.

“Oh mann, everyone’s reech in Amer-ri-cah!” he laughed, swimming up to the edge.

“Dhis is fuckeeng nyyyceee,” Alexandre said, ashing his cigarette. “Finn, you were right about de American Camel Golds. Dhis shiet is way better.”

“So how was the ride?”

“Alright,” Alexandre answered, “I read de whole time mayn, couldn’t sleep.”

Alexandre went to get in the water, and then he froze. “Hold on. Fienn, dis vodka will not last us all day, man… we are goin’ to have to get more man,… we are goin’ ta have ta get more, man!”

“Yeah but let’s swim first. We’ll get it later.”

“Alright,” he answered, tossing his leather shoes to the side along with his copy of Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit. “Well, we better!”

The early afternoon was spent like this, lazing in the sun. I talked about Sir Thomas Browne; I had sent Alexandre Hydriotaphia, Urn-Buriall over Facebook and he was translating it into French. We brought up the line, “How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes: common counters sum up the life of Moses his man.” I said the last phrase was a reference to Psalm 90, the prayer of Moses, which meditates on the way God “turnest man to destruction.” They told me about Glamorama, Alexandre imploring me to read it. “Isn’t that guy like mid-tier?” I asked. “Nah man, we loove him in French. He is de best contemporary author.” “What about Houellebecq?” “No, fuck dat edgelord. I mean he is funny but he is complete nihilist piece of shit. Ellis is cool. He writes about de rich people of LA and New York. Dis one is about models becomeeng terrorists.” Henri reassures: “it’s fucking amazing, man. I haven’t read any other book about our times dat’s as good as dis shiet.” This got us talking about what we would go on to write, what we would be. I was looking over at the city, looking forward to studying there, all the publishers I might meet, telling them they must visit. But first we had this whole summer exploring America like a banquet from the gods laid out before us.

Our pores were teeming with energy and expectancy. Hope was as palpable as the humidity in the air, placed like thick molasses over the cold water. Each suggestion about where we should go increased our metabolism, shortened our breath, until we were bursting with religious enthusiasm, talking in tongues. Alexandre was yelling at this point, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of vodka in the other like a Russian mobster, swearing. Henri was banging his head to the Kanye playing from my phone. “Fuck man, dhis is real fuckin lyfe, man!”

We got hungry; I went inside to get towels. I was confronted by my grandmother, a little Jersey City Italian lady usually sweet but right now unnerved.

“Finn, ya friend with tha long hair smokes like chimneyy!” I looked out the window and saw Alexandre with his cigarette raised, standing over the pool.

“It’s fine, Nan,” I said dismissively. “It’s normal where he’s from.”

“He has been smoking fa’ hours. No one yeh age should be smokin’ like that.”

I calmed her down, explained how Henri was studying chemistry and Alexandre literature. She handed me the towels with a look.

We drove down to my family’s deli to feast on free sandwiches. My grandfather shook their hands and made a joke at their expense—something about the French. He went off on a little tangent about his career. My Uncle Joe came from the back room in his softball shirt and gold chain. “Ay, what’s up budddaaay! So these are the rawkstahs!” he said with his thick Jersey accent. He then brought me aside. “Don’t be smokin’ in front of your grandmother like that. You’ll worry her to death.” Not to stop—“Me n my friends were just like you at your age”—just to be discrete. I nodded sheepishly.

“When your grandfadher was talking, I really felt dis Americeen Dream thing,” Henri said as we went on our way to the liquor store. I quickly took notice of how much and how often they, especially Alexandre, needed to go on alcohol runs. But this was not an obstacle, because Henri had a fake ID his friend made for him using a template of a French license. We took the bottles back to the house and played billiards in the basement until one in the morning. It helped that my grandfather smoked down there—the several packs we incinerated were odorless.

The next day we took a bus into Manhattan. We thought this would be great, but it filled us with stiffening loneliness. We met a guy named “Cheddaville” in Washington Square Park, who promised to bring us to a rave: we waited, alone amongst millions, for his text, and, with my small interjections about my friends, Henri and Alexandre spoke up, requesting that we cut the Cliffside visit short and head to Orville sooner than planned. An hour later we sped down the highway, Alexandre blasting Death Grips through the cassette-to-aux tape I had plugged into my ancient car.

* * *

By the time we pulled into the Orville 7-11 it was late. I introduced Alexandre and Henri and everyone got along instantly. I walked over to talk to Red and heard a loud “FiNN WHAT DA FUCK” come from behind me: Alexandre was in the backseat of my car, yelling that the cap to his gin bottle wasn’t on right and spilt all over his stuff. It only ruined a book, not his expensive tablet. He salvaged the rest of the gin in an emptied water bottle and threw it in his backpack. All the Americans laughed at his antics. After we spent some time drinking and smoking in the parking lot, I took the Québécois back to my house; they said hello to my mom and younger sister—not yet aggrieved at the situation—and unloaded their sleeping bags and spread them on the floor of my bedroom.

* * *

I woke up at six in the morning to Henri whispering, “Finn, Finn, wake up!” I apathetically mumbled, “what’s the matter…” “De police are at your door, they had to drive us home.” My eyes shot open. I pushed myself off my bed and staggered down the stairs. At the side door stood three officers, two males and a female, with apprehensive visages, anticipating some further mess. Their faces turned to relief when they beheld me, an Orville kid just as confused as they were, before quickly turning back to firm cop looks.

“Good morning officers, can I help you?”

“Yeah, are these two staying with you?”

“Yes they are.”

“Well we found them lying on someone’s lawn halfway across town at five o’clock in the morning. They were lost and drunk and had no idea where you lived. Keep these guys on a leash.”

That was the best advice I received all summer. I said thank you and closed the door. “What the fuck happened? I thought you were asleep in my room.”

“Wael,” Alexandre answered, swinging his finger in the air like a conductor, “we couldn’t sleep and wanted to see de town, y’know, so I grabbed de bottle of gin and we started walking, and we walked and walked and got drunker and drunker…Dhen de next dhing I know aem sitting on some lawn weeth de gin pouring near my side and Henri laughing like a beetch, and I haeve a hole in my pants near my dick and some fuckin blonde cop comes telling me to get up and get ina cop car and I was just liek, yo…”—he shakes his head—“why honey?”

“You said that?”

“Yeh, he did. She wasn’t too happy.” They laughed.

“You guys are such fucks. I’m going back to bed.”

* * *

The next morning we awoke to my mother’s fiancé Frank, a well-intentioned meathead, yelling up the stairs. “WAKE UP BOYS, WE GOTTA PAINT!” My mother could no longer afford the house; my father hadn’t sent her child support in years and the homecare jobs she worked, when she wasn’t out with Frank, weren’t enough to pay the bills, so she was trying to sell it.

My friend Red came over for breakfast but instead received a paint roller. He climbed up on a ladder beside us.

Sometime later I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and my sister stopped me in the hall. “Your friend Alexandre is weird.” “why?” “He used my brush this morning and didn’t even take his hair off it.” I apologized on his behalf; we laughed at his bizarreness.

I went back into the living room to Frank in his tank top yelling, “NICE guys, it’s looking great!” He threw a dresser over his shoulder and took it outside. “Yo Finn, is dis guy Frank on coke or somedhing?” Alexandre asked. “Nah, he’s ten years sober. He had two DUIs because he was a raging alcoholic and now AA teaches him to channel his addiction into weightlifting.” My mom then came in with my little dog Toby in her arms, making her hilarious alien-hyena kissing noises. They looked at her in confusion; the Jerseyness was upon them and it was somehow more insane than they were.

My mom made us food after we were done. We played my Morrison Hotel tape as we drove over to the grocery store to buy liquor, the Mercedes cruising into the parking lot to the hazy mirage of “Waiting for the Sun.” We watched Henri go in from the car windows; minutes later he came sprinting out as a Korean store clerk ran after him, cursing that she was going to call the cops. We sped off toward the next store.

Henri was highly intelligent, and a crazy bastard like Alexandre—when he wanted to be. I noticed that Henri had a morality about him that pulled back from Alexandre’s ceaseless debasement. “I’m always feeling like a piece of shiet after I do drugs,” Henri told me. I could see Henri Apollo doing battle with Dionysian Alexandre during the short time I was in Québec; now it was center stage. Alexandre wanted “the dancing,” he wanted to drink to no end, he wanted to write, and to piss in future’s face. Henri drank and sometimes he’d “dance” too, but he did not pursue Rimbaud’s “systematic derangement of the senses” as the sole way to access the hidden realms of consciousness. But Alexandre tells me, while we wait for him to get another bottle and a 30 rack, that he has the spirit of an artist—he points out how Henri will feel music throughout his body when you play something good for him, that he has fire in his eye when he experiences aesthetic genius.

We zoomed up my driveway and headed into the backyard, the hot afternoon summer sun shimmering down on the thick grass. As Red and Henri talked about life in Québec, Alexandre told me more about his play on the Book of Judith. Into my speakers he plugged “Arma, caedes, vindictae, furores” from Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans oratorio. It shook the table with militaristic might; it remains for me a prime example of what we meant in those days by “the Sublime.” The picture on YouTube showed a painting of the pearly beautiful Judith holding the ugly decapitated head of Holofernes the tyrant, her freshly bespattered blade underneath his scraggly beard, her people now liberated from captivity. A resounding concert of victory reverberated around this baroque spectacle. He again brought up the question of contemporaneity; to him, his writing on “Christianism” was just a way to write about the lives of real people from the past. Christianism is a human religion, unlike the others, and supremely so. He explained that he was not trying to appropriate something he does not feel because it is “pretty,” but was rather giving an honest portrait of human interaction. We talked about Longinus’s On the Sublime and he said he wanted to write about “a feeling of utter bliss dat mankind alone is capable of bestowing to the world.”

Then he plays “Mañana” by Peggy Lee but says he doesn’t know what it means. I tell him they’re saying “tomorrow is soon enough for me” and say maybe it’s a reference to On the Road, where Sal’s Spanish girlfriend’s brother says “Mañana man, mañana! Have another beer man! Mañana!” every time they face a worry. Alexandre bangs the table and says “Yes! I fuckeeng love it!” We kill the rum.

* * *

I had experienced the Ecstasy of the Sublime in Québec, my Resurrection; now it was time for my friends at home to receive the grace, like the dove of the Holy Spirit descending upon the community of believers.

Apparently the entire town had figured out I had visitors: every friend of mine came out of the woodwork, and some more kids I hardly hung out with outside of school, to pay gawking homage to these psychos. Mark Prochazka came over and showed them his experimental music. “Ay, turn that shiet off,” Alexandre scowled. “I like it,” Henri shot back. They dared Trevor to drink the bottle that my other friend, Sandlot, had been spitting his chewing tobacco in; he did and then vomited everywhere. Henri shouted “OHHH shhIEET” and sprayed him down with my gardening hose. “Dis shiet is happennning, raightt, naoow” Alexandre was heard saying in a video he filmed and uploaded to his new Instagram account, “riverrunstatelyplump,” named after the first two words of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses. Then he took a picture of him holding Tao Lin’s Taipei up to Trevor’s exposed asscrack as he sat with the spins on a lawn chair. Sandlot, weighing 250 pounds, challenged Alexandre to a drinking contest; Alexandre drank him under the table, chugging from the rum bottle for an additional ten seconds after his opponent had been vanquished. Red was laughing hysterically at how cool Henri’s shirt was, a button-down with leopards and other wild cats all over it. “Duu-uu-ude, the swag on these guys is fucking dope!” Conversations about philosophy erupted spontaneously. “But Max Stirner’s ego is corporeal!” Alexandre shouted at me in between shots, nodding and flicking his cigarette. “Dhere is no metaphysics in his shiet! He means my flesh is supreme!” Bambrick, the group historian, discussed with Henri the court of Louis XV with fervor over the Timber Timbre playing. All, I, neeed, is some sunnshiiine.

“Finn, how on earth did you meet these guys,” Mark whispered to me. “You alone, from your own will, have brought all this together.”

A friend whom I rarely saw, Foz, pulled up to my house and rolled out the red carpet; we all climbed into his gigantic white 2010 Ford Explorer, the one with the mean grill before they rounded it out in the buglike style of the 2010s. He drove us to Burger King where a crowd of kids from various grades stood chilling in the parking lot.

Vishalah, this huge Indian dude who once bragged that he killed a dog in self-defense when he was three years old in his home village, pulled up with his souped-up BMW and told Alexandre, Henri, Red, and me to get in. He shot up the turnpike doing 110 before careening over the train tracks, some ridiculous trap music playing.

We eventually made our way to my friend Kate’s house. Alexandre was restless. “So is dhis what you guys do for fun, just sit on a porch and drink beer?” He singled out this kid from the crowd, a Colombian dude who for some reason was named Mehmed, and picked a fight with him. “Look at dhis guy with the gay striped shirt. Yo stripey!” he yelled. “Why are you dressed like a fuckeeng faggot?” Mehmed turned around and with a voice crack said “at least I’m not wearing a dress shirt with flowers on it!” Alexandre snapped back: “Dhis shirt is more expensive dhan your entire house! Fuck you stripey!” By this point my friend Duane had arrived; he was a few years older than us, an electrician in training who had dropped out of his private Catholic high school to pursue a coke habit, who mixed white supremacist slurs with a pothead Pearl Jam sensibility. He dressed up for the occasion, wearing a button-down to match the French Canadians’ style. He was loving Alexandre’s tirades, roaring with laughter at the name “stripey.” Alexandre was waving around a handle of vodka which Kate’s mother saw from inside and came out yelling. “Kate, I said no drinking!” Alexandre told her to just kick him out and let everyone else continue on. She refused. We all had to leave.

As we walked back to my house, Duane and Alexandre, absolutely hammered, started picking up decorative flowerpots outside of closed restaurants. “Watch this,” Duane said, and threw a huge stone pot into the street; it shattered into pieces, dirt flying everywhere. “Haha!” Alexandre chortled, “Shit mayn, Duane you’re a crazeee fuck!” Alexandre picked up two more and slammed them into the ground. After buying cigarettes from Rite Aid, Alexandre ran out and took a shit on the hood of the lone car in the lot, dropping his white pants and groaning like an old man to send the crowd of teenage delinquents cackling. Red called out, “Alexandre, you realize this is the car of the store’s owner, who you were just talking to?” Alexandre affirms, “he shouldn’t have leeft his cahr where I needed ta shiet!” They smashed some pots near the police station. I felt worried, I felt bad, but then I said fuck it, thinking of all the times the cops pulled up on us in middle school to kick us out of the parking lots after the stores’ clerks had called them, leaving us with nothing to do in this boring suburb but play video games depressively. We’ve been kept down for too long. It is right to rebel!

Foz met us at the big park behind my house, bringing with him his girlfriend Samantha and her best friend, the glorious Elizabeth, the girl I had loved. I hid my excitement. We made our way to the picnic tables we had previously dragged over to my back fence to form our own little abode. No one used the park these days: it was a quiet dark oasis for us to party in, all hemmed in with great big evergreen trees, not a parent nor a cop in town could see what went on in this huge field of revelry.

Red slammed back some rum with me and we started discussing this trip. “So where are you gonna go?” “We’re thinking New Orleans. Going to pay a visit to this super smart music guy we know from D.C.” Duane’s ex-girlfriend arrived with the girls from Kate’s; she was a bad influence on these shy girls and lit up a joint for them all to share. They started calling people from the crowd to come talk to them. Perhaps to impress his ex, Duane started a friendly fight with Henri: Duane pinned him to the ground, making him yell and kick, all the girls laughing. Alexandre then tried to fight Duane; they’re pummeling each other in the dirt and within a minute we hear “What da fuck mayn, you ripped my FUCKING SHIRT!! Dhis was an expensive-ass shirt you fuckin’ faggeet!” More laughs all around.

“Didn’t you say this guy is going to die soon?” Trevor asked me. Elizabeth and Samantha were listening in. ‘That’s what he said to me, something about intense liver damage.” “Dude’s gonna die from alcoholism before he’s 19!” By this point a massive swarm of kids from the younger grade had formed. They were asking us all these questions and just watching like it was theater. “Mayn, in New York we saw de Freedom Tower. You Americans are fuckin’ awesome. Dose terrorists knocked down yoar towurs and you beelt one right back up, 1776 feet high. Fuck dose towel heads!” The crowd giggled maniacally.

I went over to Elizabeth and asked how she was doing. “Oh you know, same old,” she smiled. After my intense feelings for her had subsided, we ended up getting paired as lab partners in Psychology and had become good friends, overriding the initial anger I had. I asked her how her job at a local restaurant was going. “Good, I get lots of tips!” I’ll bet.

Gradually the massive crowd dispersed. I said goodbye to Elizabeth. “Make sure to keep me updated on your road trip!” she said. “It sounds so exciting, I’m envious.” We shared one of Alexandre’s Camel Royals. “Aren’t deese so much better than the Golds, Finn? Oh, hello, I am Alexandre,” he said to Elizabeth and held out his hand with his sleeve all torn up. Eventually Foz drove Elizabeth and Samantha away and all the others took off to watch a game at someone’s house.

Towards the tail-end of the night Duane and Alexandre were reaching devious levels of drunkenness. They ran out of the back entrance of the park and began knocking garbage cans over, one trying to outdo the other. Duane was throwing trash bags up in the air. Red and I followed warily behind them before turning back around.

This was not the same Alexandre I had met in Québec. That aloof dandy was gone; I didn’t realize that he would be gone forever. He had been replaced with this ostentatious, loud, overbearing maniac, who loved to start fights with everyone around him, piling on the insults just as he piled on the intellectual references to me when he didn’t have an audience. His interest in classical music was slowly disappearing; an interest in the literary sublime, and more specifically philosophical-political commentary, was emerging. And as he approached closer to the gates of the Sublime, the danger grew. The tirades would become more immense, the negations would only increase, as he strove to gain access to the glowing fireball of pure affirmative freedom somewhere out there.

Slowly, though with the thumping energy still remaining, the night cooled and faded into sleep.

* * *

We went for a hike the next morning with my ex Jess. “Why de fuck are we hykeeng,” Alexandre asked. “I hate hykeeng. What is dhere to see in de woods?” “Shut up faggot,” I said. “It’s a nice change of scenery.” “Dhere are too many trees on dhis earf. I say we cut some more down. De environmentalists are full of shiet.” Henri picked up a frog and shoved it in Jess’s face, causing her to scream. Then he put it in a Pepsi bottle and shook it until it died. I grimaced. “Why da fuck did you do dat?” Alexandre asked. “Fuckeeng piece of shit.” Henri looked at him. ‘Fuuck you, broo,” he said with dripping sarcasm and rattled off a sentence in French with a nasty tone. “Tabarnak,” Alexandre glared back.

* * *

Mid-afternoon and we were taking mushrooms at Bambrick’s house. Bambrick, wearing a Grateful Dead shirt, got his big ushanka with a hammer and sickle pin from out of his closet, a souvenir from when he was a fat internet edgelord in middle school; I took a picture and sent it to our patriotard friend who was about to go into the Marines. “Commie fuck!!!” he sent back. Duane was there as well as Hoff, Trevor, Vin, and Red. Alexandre and Henri got their asses kicked by the shrooms. First there was Henri, who wandered away from us. We didn’t hear from him at all—again, no cell phone—until much later when he stumbled into my house during a rainstorm. Apparently, he had strolled from my house to the highway, a good fifteen-minute walk, and stood on the overpass, tripping profusely, watching eighteen wheelers roar underneath him as a massive black storm cloud formed overhead, the trees shaking to the gusts of wind. He said he was terrified—“Man, eet was liek de end of de world.” He tried to find his way back to my neighborhood, spotted some woman on her porch and asked her, “Do you know whare da big park ees?” This turned out to be Vin’s mother, who called him to say one of the “Canadian boys” were lost.

When Vin got this call we were over in a different park across town; Poco, who didn’t partake, had driven us. I was playing Exuma’s “Mama Loi, Papa Loi” gazing into the colossal pond on one of its fishing docks. The reeds were waving in the wind of the coming storm, and a light drizzle began making dots in the water, like the world itself was weeping. The drums slammed into the earth, the shaman cymbal staffs rang like jingle bells. I see fire in a dead man’s eeeyee. I walked back to the other guys, who were on the shore watching the water lap at the downhill dirt path. Alexandre wasn’t having any of it, holding his stomach and silently complaining to me that he didn’t feel well. “Dhis shiet is nothing like what we haev back at home.” I began telling him about Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” the emphasis on how blessed everything is. “I don’t feel blessed.” “You must begin to feel blessed!”

Poco was a small little guy who acted like a 70-year-old man, usually in a blazer with a pocket watch. Today he wearing a safari shirt and hat. “Alexandre, listen ta this piece a music ah composed,” he said in his elderly tone. “Ah hum.” He was an amateur composer, a talented jazz musician now dabbling in modern classical, with plans to go to a music conservatory. He blared it from his Hyundai Sonata stereo. “Jeeesus facking chraist, I think I’m gonna puke,” Alexandre said back. “Fuckeeng serialeesm, it is so painfully awful, I puke this music up for braekfest.” Hoff, another trained jazz musician and something of a know it all, volleyed: “What do you know about music?!” “I have been composing since I was eight, and I can tell you… dat dhis… shiet is … fuckeen trash,” he managed to croak.

I got back to see Henri pacing in my driveway. After bringing them inside and getting situated, Alexandre laid down on the couch and grabbed my laptop. I put on a concert recording of Phish’s “Bouncing Round the Room” and sat on the other couch, perpendicular to his. I started receiving Facebook messages on my phone from him, right next to me and unable to speak:

Alexandre Cavelier

6/30, 6:34pm

everything around me is making me extremely anxious (due to the drugs in my system) and I cannot interact with people, I feel like Tao Lin in his everyday life

the sound of that crowd is scary and i absolutely am not kidding this crowd is scary

Alexandre Cavelier

6/30, 6:35pm

a few minutes ago i was just in your couch, and every time i would close my eyes, i would see things so horrible, and would feel so terrified, and then every time i would open them it was just you without a shirt on just reading goethe, and i started laughing at how absurd the whole of it was

Alexandre Cavelier

6/30, 6:35pm

i would close my eyes and dead fetuses would come up angrily

there were like people ive hurt before just accusing me (and they literally were there), and I would open my eyes and there was just you sitting there reading Goethe

I looked over at him, laughing. “I'm fine man, I feel the mermaids in the song in my chest kissing each other in the sunlight, and they are breathing up into my throat, I feel good.”

After we sobered up, Red came over we went out for dinner. Not long after Henri was slapping his cheek with a hamburger from Burger King, chuckling at the absurdity of fast food—Alexandre was on a speech about the complex finesse with which the “Whopper Meal” was designed, remarking on the “freshness” of the tomatoes, the “creespy qualities” of the lettuce, and the delicious cheese placed upon the grilled meat. “De motto, “Have Eet Your Waye,” is an expression of pure Americaneesm. It is the Whitmanian “I” personified,” he said. We were hysterical.

I wanted to bring one of my friends on the road trip, but I was not sure who to invite. Hoff crossed my mind as a possible candidate, but he turned me down to develop his study-ethic for his physics and math college courses—an ethic that was never to come to fruition. Bambrick had no money, or at least said he didn’t, as did Duane. There was some trepidation about going with us, out into the vast unknown. Red was getting along fine with them, and ever since I read On the Road I thought he would be a great choice, both because he is a sociable, wild, hilarious guy and because I wanted to strengthen our friendship before he joined the Navy. And so it was that Red was chosen by all three of us.

It had taken some time to perfect our fake identification: we downloaded French ID card templates from Google images and edited them in MS Paint, pasting Alexandre’s face over a fake man named “Nicolas Bertau.” Henri changed it to “Goebbels Gabbler,” sending Alexandre into a convulsive fit: “HAHAHAHAHA.” Alexandre created one for me, writing “Ferdinand Bardamu.” But we were never able to laminate them—we just wanted to rush out into the wide expanse of America; so Henri was the only one with a fake, our only source of getting alcohol. “Eet’s some good ID, I got arrested for vandalism in a Las Vegas casino and de police never discovered it was fake,” Henri reminded.

Into my trunk we packed their sleeping bags along with one for me and one for Red; a duffel bag of clothes from each of us; their flashlights and various other gear in case we camped; Red threw in some Meals Ready-to-Eat (MREs) he got from his cousin in the Army. I picked up the gold ornament I took from the tree in Québec and tossed it into my backpack. We spent a few hours in my driveway, inviting my sister to come out and hang with us. She thought we were crazy, but was entertained. Soon after my mom came home. I went in the house and she started questioning me. “Finn, why do you want to hang out with this guy? He is a degenerate!” After trying to soothe her worries and explain myself, I finally said in exasperation: “Because he understands Homer!” She looked at me blankly. “I can’t stop you. You’re an adult. Just be careful.”

We set off to Red’s house, where we would sleep our last night in Orville.