Smokestacks and Pipe Bombs (Part III of IV)

I pull the lichen off my sack and throw it at the blonde one in Bananarama, and she quickly eats it. McDougal never lets the Bananarama girls eat on these kinds of trips and I feel bad, I usually hide fries and stuff in my pockets and sneak them when McD is asleep. She kind of grunts at me in appreciation.

"Okay Max, stop this car and let's find some drugs," he yells, even though the car is sitting quietly in a Denny's parking lot and my name is not Max.

"Will do," I say, and open what's left of the passenger door. We walk into Denny's, where people get shot all the time, and sit down in a sticky booth. I try to imagine what we must look like, McDougal with his He-Man costume and giant stuffed purple tiger, me completely nude. God, how did I come to this.

"We'll have the best drugs you have, and some flapjacks," he orders, and then adds "and I'm running for President."

Next thing I know the server is under the table sucking off McDougal, I'm smoking PCP out of a Chinese bong, and we have more blueberry pancakes than we need. I offer some (pancakes) to the family sitting next to us and they decline, so I quietly ask the dad if he'll sneak some out to the 80s girl band chained to the axle of our car. He agrees, and I relish the small victories of life.

Moss Back Lichen (Part II of IV)

I woke to find a mouth ful of Flexerol. Or Flexerel. Flexiril? The one where in the commercial the woman is throwing a dying mouse to her cat and Still the Same is playing behind the medical warnings: you could lose your genitals, don't take with Prohaxenol, you may have reflux, don't run faster than a fast walk, you could die.

I look over and see McDougal is asleep at the wheel. Well, at the wheel is generous, as he is actually in the back fucking Bananarama, and asleep, but you get the point. It's a colloquialism. I drop my eyes down and see that the accelerator has a brick on it. I look up and see the sunroof has a flag of Switzerland flying out of it. I look down and see my scrotm has lichen scotch-taped all over it.

"McDougal!" I whisper.

What the crap are these? Raisins? (Part I of IV)

McDougal stole a boat. Not like a yacht or anything. Just some stupid-assed row boat or john boat or canoe or something.

Thing is, there's no goddamn water here.

Nights I can't sleep because I never know when I'm gonna open my eyes to see the big man standing at the foot of my bed with a molotov cocktail and a disemboweled otter or something.

He wants to raft the Tennessee Tombigbee, raping and pillaging the power substations along the way. Says we'll live off the fat of the land, we'll get our food from trees, our sex from local shops and gas stations, our spirits from drinking methanol.

There's no such thing as methanol.

I tell him, you can't run for president and rape people at gas stations at the same time. He responds by cuffing me with a broken chalice and eating my Wii.

"You have NO IDEA what men of power can do," he says to me.

"That was a line from Revenge," I tell him.

"No way out," he says.

"Oh yeah. I forgot those were two different movies. Man, Costner loves him some formula drama doesn't he?"

"No way out," he says again.

"I Know. I know."

"Seriously," McDougal says. "You're going to die here."

So I grab a satchel and pack the necessary accoutrements for a boat trip with McDougal: lotion, pears, grenadine, four mongol (mongrel? Maybe both?) children, boom box, pack of blank cd's, some rainwater in a goose bladder, eight Fortune magazines from 2003, and a pile of nickels.

"That's it?" McDougal asks. He seems pissed.

I run through our last outing. What the fuck am I forgetting?

"Banana-fucking-Rama!" McDougal barks.

Shit. I forgot Bananarama. And I got no idea where they are.

"Relax," McDougal says. I follow him outside where he opens his trunk and there they are ... the angels, Siobhan, Sarah, and Karen.

"Hello, Ladies!" I say with a smile.

Karen immediately and violently vomits all over the trunk, my pants, and the asphalt.

"GUFFAW!", McDougal guffaws.

"Three of my world famous Syrup of Ipecac Martinis and look who can't hold her jelly!"

I feel bad for Bananarama, but fuck, they signed up for this shit. No pain no gain.

We peel out of the driveway, McD and me in the front seat, Bananarama in the trunk, and the satchel left back in the puke on the asphalt. All of us are nude and bruised from the neck down. I can see that McDougal is heading South, which is in no way the direction of the Tombigbee, but I don't bother to tell him.

I know what's south, and all I can do is drift to sleep to gather strength.