Brief Interviews at Jenny Lake with Hideous Men
“Gonna climb a mountain, the highest mountain. I jump off, ain’t nobody gonna know”
Marshal Tucker Band
Somebody talked to me about schooling and reading. “I went to college and graduated magna cum lade. It was a private catholic academy. I majored in philosophy, statistics and psychology. The nuns rode bicycles and when they saw me smoking they’d say, ‘Your body is a temple.’ I like to read. I like to read Russian Literature. I like F. Scott Fitzgerald. I hate Zelda. She was in the nut house and whining like, ‘Oh, my husband stole all my ideas. My husband stole all my ideas.’ I hate poetry and I don’t read poetry, but I love Sylvia Plath and the Bell Jar.”
What the fuck? I didn’t drive all they way out to Wyoming to listen to flakes talk about literature.
This story concerns itself with sex and money and liquor. Playing out in some of the most beautiful regions our nation has to offer. A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, and I’m so sick and tired of men and their women and women and their men, and who the hell can keep track of all the one-off-it liaisons, and what kind of sociopath would have the patience to do so anyways.
A redhead first viewed behind the register at the Dornan’s wine store (offering spectacular views of mountainous regions) when I’d accompanied Harrison Ford to buy a 6er of PBR tall boys. Aside from the fact she bore an uncanny resemblance to the long pale carrot top that was good enough to take my virginity off my hands for me that one time a million years ago, another noteworthy physical attribute was her peculiar piercing: a metal bar through the skin over the bridge of her nose, capped at each end by 2 metal bulbs. I’d never seen a piercing like that. Ringing up a woman’s bottle of wine, she looked incredibly bored. I’d seen that before, and was a sucker for beautiful women with peculiar piercings behind cash registers disinterestedly going about their menial labor.
After guzzling Coors for a few hours around sundown, and sipping Old Crow for a few hours after dark, she didn’t have to try hard, and she sure as hell didn’t. Things came to pass that we were in her room alone together. I was on top of her on the top bunk of her employee housing bunk bed and 2 fingers deep in her vagina. As far as I could tell by the sounds coming from her lips, she found the come-hither curling of my right index and middle finger inside of her to be a pleasurable experience. After a while our bodies collectively had no where to go but ‘all the way’ and fiddling about with the condom, I had to tragically inform her that I couldn’t hold up my end of the agreement.
“Sorry babe,” I told her. “I don’t know what gets me off anymore.” Then I buried my face in the strawberry tuft between her legs and she dug her heels into the small of my back.
I heard the word from the little black birdie that there’s a recession going on. Welp, you couldn’t prove it by me folks, zipping ‘round Wyoming in my car. I felt like a million bucks. I felt like this was the jazz age at the start of the new millennium, and I’m F. Scott kick-ass Fitzgerald taking names.
The architect could not believe his recent stretch of good luck. He was gifted free back issues of Dwell magazine. He had studied abroad in Florence and organized the photographs taken there in a slideshow with it’s own original soundtrack. He’d graduated from Kent State University’s architecturally world renown architecture program. He applied for, was offered, and subsequently accepted a job at an architecture firm in Ann Arbor Michigan. That’s quite a step up from working on the sales floor at a Best Buy in Akron Ohio. C’mon man. Ann Arbor Michigan. That’s a pretty hip little town. The architect went up to Ann Arbor to scope out apartments, but here’s the best part! He had a sweet little honey to take up there with him. She’d been engaged, but not to him, and broke it off, and ran away with the architect to Ann Arbor. Her cell phone was turned off the entire trip. She worked at Best Buy too. The architect and his little honey lied to their co-workers about where they were going. Think about that forbidden romantic getaway the next time you approach that cuddly Blue Crew at the BBY to inquire about the latest iPhone or schedule a time for the Geek Squad to set up wireless internet at your house.
XXX-XXX-XXXX: hey. its ____. im really sorry about last night. im a huge jerk. i hope you don’t hate me. we should hang out some time.
Sent: Jun 28
ME:Hey ____. Nah, I don’t hate you. I’d like to hang out again too. Keep in touch. Let me know if you come to Yellowstone.
Sent: 7:27 AM
Stating earlier about how sick I was of men and their women and women and their men, what I was getting at was that out in Wyoming I’d arrived clean shaven with a smug sense of entitlement on a clear and blue sunny day. The mountain air had added a radiance to my complexion, and that same radiance was added to the complexions of my 3 friends I’d gone down there to visit. My 3 friends were all looking for surrogate mothers. Consequently my 3 friends are all little sex-fiend slutbags. I got so sick of men and their women and women and their men, cuz the lovely ladies on staff were stacked to the chuckwagon ceiling, bused in from places like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Flown in from countries like Russia and Bulgaria. Displaced from home and vulnerable down in Dorny Land, the dramatic and erotic mountains always in sight, prevalent and excessive consumption of alcohol gets everyone’s blood running a little hotter. It adds an extra tingle to everyone’s crotches. It adds an extra swell to everyone’s genitalia. On top of that, one could have an easy lay on hand for a few months, and when the summer season is over, walk away and never have to see the beautifully sad loser again. Out back of the employee housing were some chairs circled around a bucket filled with beer cans and cigarette butts. When the shifts let out everyone congregated there drinking and smoking and it was worse than a dating bar filled with singles on ecstasy.
Me and the Redhead at round 2 were feeling good. We were feeling good because we were on top of a mountain. We were feeling good because all the stars were out, and all the stars were kind enough to look the other way. We were feeling good because we were by a clump of trees. I was feeling good because I was standing with her legs wrapped around my waist and my arms hooked over her thighs while my hands ran around her lower back. She had her arms wrapped around my neck with her hands on the back of my head pulling my face to her face and suctioning her lips against my lips and rubbing her tongue against my tongue. All the stars that were kind enough to look away were also kind enough to go “la-dee-da, la-la-dee-da-da.” The mountain we were on top of was called Shadow.
Her plans were to go to South America. There’s some Mayan stuff there. Next year, 2012, the last year on the Mayan calender. She’s ready for it to be over. She wants to see how it will all go down.
She kissed another boy, then I went to sleep in my car. I said, “Ouch. That hurt” (pause) “Ouch. That hurt,” I said.
In the morning I found someone had pulled the rubber blade from my left windshield wiper.
The redhead had graduated from college with a degree in anthropology. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
The rubber factory’s Chief Executive Officer had a smug sense of entitlement after 30-some-odd years at the helm of the rubber factory. She had a son who was working in Yellowstone and fooling around with redheads in Wyoming. She had a daughter who was working at Best Buy, and her daughter’s coworkers were lying and going on secret romantic getaways. The Chief Executive Officer was selling her dirty old rubber factory for a six figure sum. She was getting out while the getting was good. The ink had dried on the deed. The ink had dried on the check. The Chief Executive Officer planned to be drunk on Korbel for months. She was going to be laughing and stumbling and dancing all the way to the bank - PNC bank. There was one sour note though, there was one cloud in the silver lining. Her sister was speaking to attorneys, preparing a lawsuit against the Chief Executive Officer of the rubber factory.
No automobiles were on the road during the drive to Jenny Lake. There were no automobiles or picnickers or people in the parking lot either. Walking between the trees I didn’t pass a single person. At the lakeside, suddenly the air was very still and the slats of sunlight ceased all movement. Ripples arched over the surface of the water. A rowboat approached. Inside sat Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Sylvia made a megaphone of her hands and called to me “Is that you? I thought it was you. Stay there. I’ll row to shore. You can get in.”
“Better not Sylvia,” Ted Hughes said. “There’s not enough room in this boat.”
“Fuck you Ted,” I yelled. “I’ve always thought you were kind of an asshole. Why don’t you go back to England and fuck yourself or read some birthday letter or something.”
Sylvia pulled an oar out of the water. “I agree.” She held the oar at a slanted angle in the air. “I always thought you were kind of an asshole too.”
For such a mousey woman, Sylvia sure packed a hell of a wallop when she swung the oar and cracked Ted Hughes’s skull open. He slumped to the side then fell overboard. The splash didn’t make a sound as he quickly sunk to the bottom out of sight.
Sylvia rowed to shore. I got in the boat and grabbed the oar handles. “Take a break Sylvia,” I told her. “I’ve got this.” I rowed and rowed until I had rowed the row boat to the middle of the lake.
“I’ve got some personal issues, Sylvia. I’m sure you can relate. I haven’t read your poetry. I read one of your novels. You didn’t stick around to see how the whole thing played out, but that book has been kind of a big deal for a while.”
“I wrote a short story about Yellowstone.”
“I know. I haven’t read that either. I work in Yellowstone.”
“I know.”
“Maybe you can help me out Sylvia.”
“Like how?”
“Tell me my aim is true. Tell me my heart is in the right place. Tell me eventually there will be some peace of mind. Tell me we’re all in this together. Tell me we’re all doing the best that we can do.”
“Silly boy,” Sylvia scoffed. “I can’t do that.” She pointed at the zipper of my hooded sweatshirt. “What’s, what’s that?”
“What?”
“That, that right there.” She leaned in closer to examine what she was pointing at. “You’ve got someth - right there.”
I looked down.
Sylvia quickly lifted her curled index finger up. The middle knuckle tapped against the tip of my nose. Sylvia smiled and didn’t say a word.