15 North

We are in the desert. It is as hot as hell. The kind of heat that you embrace because it is the only way to feign comfort. This past week has been a blur. It is difficult to know where to start.

We left Manayunk, PA in the morning and arrived at Valley Forge by noon. The Grand Parade was a dry orange and we played catch for a while in the long grass. It was as warm as I could remember in the past month and we enjoyed it lazily without much discussion or excitement. For a while I stared off at the horizon and tried to imagine that winter of 1788 but it was difficult in the heat and a bee landed on me knee which was distracting. I watched as Domenic sprinted across the field and dove after a ball which he missed and it rolled down the hill. He lay in the grass on his stomach and slapped the ground with his fists. We left after an hour for Gettysburg.

We didn't arrive at the campground until dusk. Small particles were suspended in the air and it reminded me of snow. In a rush we set up camp. We had stopped for firewood and Domenic was fumbling with matches while Brandon and I set up a tent his mom had used in the seventies. It was in great shape and durable, but the pull cord on the door was rough as twine and difficult to use.

"Tonight is like practice before we really get out there."

Domenic had already burnt through half of the matchbook.

"Yeah, we need it. I'm a bit rusty," and Domenic smiled again striking a match and watching as it fizzled out in the leaves and twigs he had gathered in a small pile, "Toss me that lighter, I'm being ridiculous."

After we settled down Brandon carved open a few cans of chili and we boiled it over the fire. It tasted delicious and I thought how chili might get sickening after a month but right now it warmed my gut like coals and it felt nice. We were all tired and content and we sat around the fire quietly. I watched the smoke curl into the night sky. The flames were leaping as if to try and escape but the most they could muster was this thin, grey, transparent wisp that became the night and then was gone. I think home is here or wherever you let it be. That night we fell asleep to the sound of light rain and the darkness.

In the morning we drove north to Rochester. I was behind the wheel. As we came into the Catskills autumn was in full rush. Oceans of red and yellow rippled across cliffs and glistened in the day. Roads tore through valleys like scars and our tires were melting on the concrete. Ray Lamontagne's voice poured out of the speakers like smoke.

Our destination was Joeb's, my college roommate, to whom I had promised a visit since the day we met it seemed. He is my closest friend, a large part of my fondest memories of my life in New York. His interest are different than mine so we rarely compete and are able to offer objective views for each other.

Honestly, I don't know what it is - our friendship. As I write it I cringe at how matter of fact it sounds. As if that reason alone explains why I trust him like gravity; a few too many nights spent with John Jameson when we were younger and more reckless could lead to an innate feeling of home.

After a night in the city we drove half an hour to Joeb's house on Canandaigua. It was raining when we pulled down the long drive. The day was dreary and the nights were already catching up to us. Silently, we collected our things and hurried for shelter as the rain fell psh, pht all around and puddles formed at our feet. Joeb opened the door and the four of us hurried inside for shelter, breathing heavy and stomping our feet. I could sense the silence of the dimly lit house. It really wasn't a house in the way you could imagine one unless you hung out with George Jung in the late seventies. The entire west facing side was glass and it stood on a cliff with a pulley-like elevator to bring people down the rocks to the dock. Artwork lined the walls while statues and gargoyles posed in different corners threatening and strangely enticing. I stood in the kitchen corner and stared at the grey clouds and white capped waves pound the shore in wonder.

"So what are we doing tonight, Gatsby?"

Joeb smiled. "I don't know, poker? I have wine. I have a lot of wine."

"Well I'm happy."

Joeb brought us down a spiral staircase to the basement, "Remember I told you Paul's family had that old hard cider recipe? Well I ordered these guys from Kentucky."

He opened a door into a cement room and flipped the light. Standing in the buzzing halogen were four fifty gallon cedar barrels, so large I began scanning the room for an explanation to how they arrived in the basement in the first place.

"Yeah, these held one batch of Kentucky bourbon, which is what the recipe calls for. Brewing two hundred gallons of this shit."

"Send us some when it's done."

"I think I am going to brew one barrel for six months, one for a year, and the other two for three years."

"Wow. That is quite the project. You didn't want to start smaller in case you mess it up?"

"Hey. Johnny Tsunami. Go big or go home."

We talked about cider for a while but it didn't last too long because none of us knew anything about cider or cedar barrels so Joeb told us a story as he took us through the rest of the house of the gay couple that had owned the house before him. They had installed a window in the shower.

"They said it was so you could see it from every room in the house."

All of the bedrooms were beautiful. Each were enclosed by one back wall and three walls of glass facing the lake.

"The sun is a bitch in the morning."

"Oh. I'm sure it is," I saw Domenic roll his eyes sarcastically and I muffled a laugh.

That night we drank wine until we could barely keep our eyes from closing. It was raining indoors was comforting. We played cards and joked until inevitably Joeb and I found ourselves in a conversation we would usually discover just before we went to sleep.

"It's been a long time now, but I still think about it, yeah."

"You alright though?"

"Yeah, I don't know what that means, but yeah. I guess I am just hard-boiled about the whole thing, which I guess is the strangest and in a twisted way the hardest part."

"I saw she has a new boyfriend."

"Yup."

"So what was all that talk about figuring herself out?"

"You tell me."

"It is so weird how time ticks along by so slowly but so much shit changes so fast, or at least it feels that way. Just thinking back, I mean, I just never saw any of this. I guess I don't even know what this is, really."

"Yeah, it's all fucked up. The more people I meet, the more people I miss, the more people I start worrying about, the more I go crazy."

"We're young, though."

"We are young as hell. Cheers. Let's get sleep."

I woke the next morning to the sun showering through the blinds. It was early, and I tried to ignore the heat but it was like a blanket and I was sweating and awake.

I went downstairs and Domenic was drinking coffee and writing in his journal. I saw him take a sip without lifting his pencil from the page. Joeb was pouring a cup for me, and Brandon was sifting through laundry slowly and breathing slowly to try and focus.

"How long have you been up?"

Brandon shrugged, "No idea. Twenty minutes?"

"You guys want to take the boat out?"

"Hell yeah."

We rode the elevator to the dock and waited under a gazebo for Joeb to lower the boat into the water. We were all pretty disorientated but the coffee helped. As soon as we launched out to the middle of the lake and picked up speed, the sun vanished behind a thick film of grey.

"Sonofabitch."

"This is still the best way to start the day," said Domenic as he dove off the side as the boat slowed and he disappeared under the colorless water. It consumed him completely, and he emerged spouting water from his mouth at the back of Brandon's head.

"What the-? You oaf."

Domenic laughed, he looked up at the sky and with his arms thrust forward and propelled backward with his toes poking through the surface towards the sky.

"Throw me them there ski's, there."

We spent the rest of the morning taking turns water skiing until it became too cold and our stomachs were sick.

At one point while Brandon was skiing he kicked off one ski with the intention of riding slalom. Joeb was driving, and we he turned he saw the ski spin off and assumed Brandon was falling. He released the throttle slightly, and Brandon's weight lurched forward the foot he had not fully managed to land on the ski began to extend back behind his now off balance body. When Joeb realized his error he pushed hard on the throttle, and Brandon's body was jolted forcing his back leg to shoot upwards until it was parallel, like his panicked torso, to the water. For one instant, an image I will never forget, Brandon skied content, in his size 32 white Hanes boxer briefs cuffed around his thighs like a diaper, as perfectly as a figure skater, his face torn between excitement and inevitability, he balanced himself the only way he could without thinking, before he lost a grip on the toe rope and it skirted across the surface like a stone and his face pounded the wake like a drum.

We left Rochester that afternoon for Cincinnati.