09/06/2009 & 09/07/2009: Labor Day Weekend

It was around two in the morning and Sawan was feeling good after finishing some homework and watching Star Trek at the HUB center movie theater. Sawan crossed the dimly lit Pollock Rd and entered the parking lot near his dorm. And there he was. Eric’s large belly was visible behind the pale shirt. “Hey man what’s goin’ on?” Eric enquired as Sawan walked up to him.

“Nothin’ much we just seem to keep on bumping into each other today don’t we?” Sawan replied, calculating what was going to happen next. Eric owed him ten dollars and now Sawan wondered if he was going to pay his debt now or later.

“You wanna blaze?” Eric asked. “I’m trying to find a place to crash but everyone seems to be busy or aren’t picking up. I’ll find a place though.” Eric looked down and fiddled with his phone under the white street lamp in front of his car.

“Sure,” Sawan resigned with a twinge of uneasiness while simultaneously feeling a needy desire for the sensation Eric had offered. It had been a wholesome night so far, with healthy activities such as doing homework and watching a movie and now at the end of the night it seemed things were taking a turn for another type of favorite pastime. “Whatever, I deserve this after all this work and it’s so hard to get a hold of Eric I’d be better off if I made him pay up now,” he reasoned to himself.

The pair both got in the car and they whizzed out of the parking lot and headed towards downtown State College via Shortlidge Rd. They parked a few blocks east of Dunkin Donuts on College Ave and waited to hear a call back. The minutes turned into half an hour and then an hour. Sawan was now feeling impatiently edgy for a cigarette. “Are you having any luck?” Sawan asked irritatedly.

“No, but I’m still trying… I’m sure someone’s awake, God damn I can’t believe this is happening to me right now,” Eric replied. He had been staring off into space as he shook his head out of his reverie and lifted his phone again. Apparently Eric had been having a markedly different night than Sawan that he had related to Sawan passionately while they sat in his car. “But yea can you believe that? She acts all flirty towards me this ENTIRE time even though she has a boyfriend, who happens to be one my best buddies and then when I FINALLY tell her I like her she sends me that drunk text message. That was the most f’d up thing she could have done. ‘Do you want to see me suck Mark’s dick?’ Like what the hell was she thinking when she sent that? She must have been wasted. And now Mark’s all pissed off. I tried to talk to him earlier but all he did was yell at me. Now he’s calling but I’m not going to pick up... Oh look… another message… from Mark… it says ‘you better stand down or else I’m coming through.’ Coming through? What the hell does that mean? Wow. I’m going to have to tell him ‘Mark I know I shouldn’t have hit on your girlfriend but man I swear you HAVE to look after that s**t because I SWEAR she was DEFINITELY asking for it!’”

Sawan listened to all this nodding his head understandingly and agreeing with him politely while wondering about the guile and duplicity of women and how he felt this way sometimes about Victoria and others. There had been more than one situation where Sawan had felt betrayed by a girl though of course this certainly wasn’t true of every girl nor did it happen every day. Still Sawan felt some semblance of sympathy for Eric though his main interest of the night was still unfulfilled. Sawan was now dying of boredom in the cramped dirty car and stretched his legs. “Can’t he just accept that no one is going to pick up their phone at 3:30 in the morning? He’s probably going to try to bail out of this. I’ll be damned if I’ll let him; he made me waste all this time!” he thought angrily. Out of habit Sawan muttered with a tired smile, “I wish I was rolling.”

“You wish you were rolling?” There was a slight pause and then Eric said, “That’s funny I actually have three bombs with me right now.”

“Sawan did a double take and exclaimed, “What?!?! Really?!?! Are you serious, you actually have bombs?”

“Yea they’re in my wallet.” Eric casually replied.

“Where did you get them from? Do you want to do them tonight?” Sawan pressed.

“That’s what I was thinking. After what’s happened, I don’t know I just feel like letting go of everything,” Eric mused.

“Yea that’s exactly how I feel, I just want to forget about everything and roll dude,” Sawan persuasively pushed. “I have to try this, this is the only thing that I haven’t tried that I’ve always wanted to try and now it’s within reach I just have to get him to agree,” Sawan greedily thought. After some more haggling from Sawan, Eric finally realized more than an hour and a half later that none of his friends cared to smoke from his six hundred dollar volcano machine.

“Fine if you know of a place to go smoke then we can go there if you’re sure it’s a hundred percent safe and you have to promise to pay me back for doing the bombs,” Eric huffily replied as they started the engine, a little past four.

“I told you, for the hundredth time for the past hour, Sunset Park is safe, no one ever goes there in the middle of the night, trust me I’ve walked there plenty of times, it’s completely empty it’s near a dead end way north of campus.” They were now going along the northern edge of campus when they suddenly turned left at McKee St. They followed the road to the dead end and turned into the empty parking lot on the left. Parking in one of the spots, Eric turned off the lights and turned around grabbing his large sports bag in the back that held his six hundred dollar volcano machine and pulled out a far more conventional device, a small fancy bowl. Eric packed this and soon they had it lit.

“There you go man.”

“Thanks dude,” Sawan muttered as he grabbed the bowl. He lit it and took a heavy inhale and held his breath while he looked out of the windshield in front of him into the dim moonlight that filtered through the trees in the park. His eyes then glance at the lit dashboard where lights were turned on. The more he looked at them the stronger the image before his eyes became. Sawan’s thoughts slowly filtered out of his mind as time slowed, until finally time came to a halt. Sawan involuntarily glanced at the time. 4:23. Not very surprised, he absentmindedly scratched his chin and looked at Eric who was still doing most of the talking. “He’s worser than I am,” Sawan mused as the car started moving again now, the task complete.

They parked the car in one of Penn State’s main parking lots and stepped out. It was now closer to five as Eric opened his wallet and fished out two of the bombs. They were both yellow and in the shape of Bart Simpson’s head. After getting one Sawan closely inspected it before opening his mouth and tossing it in. He swallowed without chewing but not without tasting a wretched disgusting sensation burn across his tongue.

They walked back to Pollock Commons. The walk took about fifteen minutes. As they walked Sawan studied his emotions and feelings carefully knowing it would take about fifteen minutes to a half hour to take effect. As Sawan walked a nearly imperceptible calm settled over his being. As they neared Pollack Commons Sawan had Eric hysterically laughing about nonsense. Now Eric had a different idea.

“Yo, why don’t you and I split the last one and smoke more? Let’s burn cruise or something we’ll use the volcano! Just let me go get my ipod first and we’ll be set to go!” Eric enthused.

“That sounds like an awesome idea,” Sawan candidly agreed. They parted ways outside the Commons and Sawan pulled out his phone to listen to some techno songs. He had always wanted to roll to techno and now he found himself jumping up and down to beats from Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Armin van Buuren and Infected Mushroom in the darkened courtyard that was steadily becoming brighter. He looked upward and as his eyes moved from left to right the hue of the sky steadily changed from deep blue to lighter blue and white in the direction behind Pollack Commons.

Sawan’s mind felt cheerful now beyond belief and he now realized that the bomb must have taken effect. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this buoyant for such an extended amount of time; that is, longer than a moment’s chuckle or crack. All of his problems suddenly seemed distant and solvable.  His mind exuded a confidence that seemed to permeate his entire body, there wasn’t a single thought or move that had to be over contemplated. It was like being permanently stuck in the same giddy feeling one has when they stop laughing to a joke but still feel bubbly. Eric emerged from Shunk and together the pair left Pollack.

 As they slowly climbed the hill Sawan’s music listening was periodically interrupted by Eric who continued to talk. Instead of feeling outright annoyed Sawan felt more sympathetic and understanding of Eric and saw him simply as a person who couldn’t stop talking. Looking behind Eric Sawan saw that the sun had finally risen over the mountain. It was so symbolic in techno songs to see the sunrise and now it had happened. Its strong yellow light cast all of University Park under its domain, creating long shadows. While walking they broke the last Bart Simpson in half.

“Here give me that, I should have the bigger half,” Eric chortled. Wordlessly Sawan exchanged one piece of Bart for another as they neared Eric’s car once again. This time they went away from University Park and took a highway east before taking an exit and ending up on one of the long winding roads in the enormous bright green Happy Valley in the depths of huge cornfields. After searching with some difficulty they eventually perched the car atop a hill on a small side road winding inside the cornfields. Sawan had never felt so relaxed as Eric pulled out the volcano from his sports bag and packed it. The clear plastic bag atop gradually filled with a bluish haze and Eric pulled off the cap and they commenced taking drags of it. It was such a picturesque scene below them of people whizzing by in their cars contentedly on a drowsy early Sunday morning. The music blared inside the car as Sawan sat calmly taking it all in while Eric continued to relate to him one story after another.

The cornfields seemed so thick and dense. People led such a happy relaxed laidback way of life in this part of Pennsylvania. Old pickups drove by below, as if out of an old movie about the Great Plains or the South. This was Happy Valley, the other half of it that was not discussed much. “I wonder what makes Happy Valley so happy,” Sawan mused. “People probably grow things other than corn in these fields as well… that is why this is the Happy Valley,” he dreamily pondered, contemplating his new revelation for a few seconds allowing this concept to sink in. “A whole valley where farmers were jollily and secretly growing bud… they probably hid it in the corn.” Sawan was shocked. It all made so much sense. Sawan’s head was slowly starting to float higher and higher until it bumped the ceiling of the car.

“Do you ever get the idea that when you do this you can hear other people’s minds?” Sawan asked Eric sporadically.

Eric laughed. “Yea sometimes I do… S**t someone’s coming quick put that bag down quick!” Eric bellowed. A battered pick up truck was tottering up the muddy trail. A pin of fear stabbed Sawan’s brain and started to expand as his head jolted up and he saw the pickup truck at a fair distance down the trail. The pin dissolved immediately as Eric started the engine hurriedly and began skidding the car down the hill and calm once again enveloped his mind. He waved to the passing farmhand who seemed to be in his late 20s to 30s. The farmhand gracefully waved back.

It was just a scare over nothing; they simply had to find another location. They soon found another similar hilltop beside some trees and ferns with cornfields below and the scenic road below them. The sun was slowly rising through the trees and soon the car was caste in a sweltering blaze. Sawan was starting to feel more friction between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Eric passed a water bottle that was still half full. Eric repacked the volcano.

“This should really do the trick, really get us up there,” Eric huffed as he turned on the volcano that was invented for cancer patients. After a few minutes of this, something happened. Sawan became paralyzed, his mind was numb and he caught his breath for a moment. The past had faded and the future didn’t matter. He was literally stuck like glue to the present. His body felt incredibly light and somewhat stimulated. It was as if he was being tickled by a large feather on the inside of his body up and down. By now the gentle euphoria he had been feeling had reached a quiet plateau on a mountaintop and he was surveying the scene below. The sky was a light baby blue and feather pen clouds lay across it neatly. Rolling brown and green hills in the distance touched the sky while closer to the car bugs buzzed noisily among the green trees, ferns and corn. They were parked in a sea of green. The dirt road they were on was just shy of the shade of the trees and the car was heating up fast. Sweat broke all over his body and his throat was starting to ache. But they had water. They took more gulps.

“My friend tells me when you’re doing x that you should touch things,” Eric loudly shared with a goofy grin. He began rubbing his fingers on the scruffy fabric beside his door handle. “Oh my god Sawan man you have to try this touch this.” Eric pointed at the cloth fabric. Sawan reached for it on his door and began to stroke it with his finger. Immediately to his shock Sawan felt a rather familiar tingling sensation spreading warmly throughout his groin, tickling his entire nether region up to his belly, the kind he usually felt when he was busy with Victoria. He felt amazed and slightly disconcerted at this property of ecstasy.

“Yeaa…,” Sawan said after an extended pause, with an embarrassed, bewildered and dazed semi-smile on his face, “it’s kinda weird that it does that.”

“Yea isn’t that sick?!” Eric raved. Sawan became acutely aware that this was actually a peculiarly queer situation to be stuck, aroused as in constrained and slightly dripping, in a confined space with a guy in a sea of grass out in the countryside. This was a slightly creepy dilemma to be in so Sawan decided to distract himself from the intrusion of this strange truth. Looking out of the open window his mind began to drift subconsciously to that little girl who followed him everywhere. How he really needed to be with Victoria in person right now, he ached for it. Suddenly he noticed the song that was playing on the radio.

“Oh my god, holy s**t! Why the hell is that song playing? Oh my god… I just knew it. I just knew it!” Sawan suddenly yelled animatedly as the song “Hide and Seek” chirped cheerfully in the background. “Hmm watchya say? Hmm that you only meant well, well of course you did…” it bubbled electrically. He shrieked in laughter, lost it and reached up for the ceiling to start molesting it, the thick warm tingling sensation engulfing his whole body.

Eric was giggling insanely repeating, “Sawan, oh my god Sawan…” Sawan was now cracking up hysterically banging his fists against his legs. It wasn’t just that it had played when he was rolling, but that moment of all moments when he was THINKING of her. Everything clicked then; he just knew without any doubt whatsoever that she was “The One”. It was freedom from the insecurity, suffering and doubt he had always had wondering about what role Victoria had in his life and losing her.  This emotion was the very definition of ecstasy.

However about a half an hour later things were starting to feel a little different. Sawan noticed a rather somber heavy calmness envelope him as he stared off into space. He felt as if he was in an airplane that was beginning its descent through the clouds. However in some other ways he was still flying higher and higher as they finished bag after bag. Sawan noticed the paranoia beginning to ascend as the bomb explosion started to fade. His perception of the environment began to change so that the entire scene in front of them seemed like a hot steamy Wonderland. “Is that an orgy in the trees,” Sawan dully said pointing to trees in the distance across the road that seemed to resemble a painting of naked green people clasping each other.

“No Sawan… I just see trees.” Eric chuckled, looking in the direction Sawan had pointed to. Sawan felt dehydrated and the water bottle seemed about half empty by the time he had finished a few sips. “But yea hallucinogens can interrupt neuron transmitters so that radiowaves are distorted.”

“Radiowaves!?” Sawan gasped.

“Yea these are all radiowaves that we see, the spectrum of light,” Eric incorrectly elaborated. Still this flabbergasted Sawan, both the terminology and the very concept. Radiowaves. The word sounded so mechanical to him. And transmitters? Transmittors transmitting what from where? Outer Space? When he thought of the word transmitters he thought of electrical devices that transmitted nonliving frequencies, not anything related to living beings. The concept of reality being a video game disturbed him before it faded away.

Other strange ideas started floating in. Vehicles rove by with U-haul trailers attached to them. “People are moving westward away from the East Coast into Pennsylvania and finding niches like Happy Valley. They’re leading an agricultural lifestyle again, the bare necessities. It’s almost as if they knew something and were preparing for some great disaster down the road.” Sawan speculated. “Imagine if all the coastlines were nuked. These people out west would be saved. World War III! People here don’t want Asian domination. America would rather just exterminate all their foes in an insane shootout before their opponents became too powerful… Or maybe Asia would attack first!” He thought wildly. The building being built in front of the Pollack Area had a huge gigantic concrete foundation. “It’s almost as if it were a bomb shelter than just a special physics building!”

“-but you know Sawan sometimes I think the only girl I need these days is Mary Jane you feel me? She’s always reliable and she’s always there to relieve stress without any trouble you know what I mean?” Eric blurted, waking Sawan out of his reverie. As it sank into his head what Eric meant, Sawan slowly figure out Eric was saying that playing with his volcano was better than girls.

“What a loser,” Sawan thought disparagingly, “he’s given up on girls, nothing replaces girls!” Sawan desperately thought of little V again.

“Sawan, where’s the cover? Oh there it is you have!” Eric smirked as he reached between Sawan’s thighs and grabbed it from where it was lying on the seat. Conscious of the act and that they were both still horny Sawan was now experiencing a serious case of homophobia. Who was this guffawing Eric really? What did he symbolize? Satan? Was Eric gay? Was he trying to get Sawan to go gay? The volcano between them with the inflating plastic bag over it resembled an erect penis. What the hell was exactly going on here? This was so evil and revolting suddenly. Sawan’s paranoia was now starting to squeeze his brain sending his mind racing.

“Things didn’t seem so chill now,” Sawan realized as he became less responsive in talking to Eric and he stared off into space. He needed sex. It was a major priority he had never fulfilled in his life.

*          *          *

            His airplane had just nose-dived and crashed with a glorious fiery explosion, all the engine fuel instantly igniting and frying the whole contraption. His broken crispy corpse had emerged, juicy, heated and bloody on the inside and burned like a sausage on the outside, from the wreckage. The cell rang. It was them. They were here. How could he possibly face them like this? It took Sawan a moment to decide whether to answer and then another moment to decide after talking to them what he should do next. “Don’t just sit around you have to go meet them!” the people around him quietly insisted.

*          *          *

            The whole campus was disappointed with him. Their serious set faces looked away and they muttered about his stupidity as he staggered by. The world was a colorful hell. Heat waves rose from the concrete as he crawled towards the Honda Civic in the distance that was parked outside the Pollack Computer lab. It was nearly noon.

            “Chuti Amu (Little Mother)! How are you!” his short work worn mother asked as she hugged him. “What’s wrong? Ane balane ayage a*s! Ocoma rathu patai (Oh look at his eyes! They’re all red!)! Sawan what happened? Did you stay up late? Are you drunk?” She was assuming the worst already.

            “Yaiya!” Harini yipped.

            “Hey Thumper,” Sawan mumbled gazing at Harini momentarily before dropping his gaze to the ground.

            “Can’t even look at his sister,” someone walking past muttered. So he returned his gaze to the nearly twelve year old stout kid who Sawan had nicknamed after Bambi’s sidekick this year.

            “No mom, I just stayed up really late… and I’m really tired, and thirsty, do you have anything to drink?” Sawan rasped, his eyes half closed and body utterly exhausted and spent, droopy like a wilting flower.

            “Yes, we do. Let’s go eat lunch,” his father replied, sizing him up, squinting, before berating his wife on her quick conclusions. If she was the prosecutor, he was his attorney, even if the old man probably thought otherwise. They piled into the car and drove off to the same Sunset Park where he had sat in another car only a few hours earlier. As he dejectedly stared into a shiny plethora of various shades of yellow, brown and green his parents pressed him to figure out why he appeared so depressed and gloomy. Everything seemed so pointless and meaningless in Sawan’s eyes as his fingers squished the spiced and flavored rice, beans and curried chicken into clumps slowly without any real desire. The food he usually had a taste for especially during infrequent visits felt nauseating, making him feel bloated, like a stuffed turkey roasting in an oven. Why not tell them? Why resist? Without any further thought he related to them the incident that had occurred a few days ago within the Sri Lankan community. As it dawned upon his parents what had happened, they began furiously yelling at each other and arguing about what should be done, speaking swiftly in Sinhala. It was decided. His mother would talk to Victoria’s mother, Aunty Veenus, to settle the matter. Still it was only later in the day that he got off his chest what he knew was the most relevant source of his anguish. As he was walking towards Pollack commons for dinner with his sister, he confessed.

            “Thumper I did what Juny did. I did bombs,” Sawan mumbled.

            “What’s that?” Harini wondered.

            “Ecstasy.”

            “Yaiya!... bad boy!” Harini angrily rebuked and kicked Sawan’s thigh with her boots. He knew she was disappointed in him but right now he didn’t care. Taking a hold of his hand she began hurriedly dragging his walking carcass past the smirking bystanders, his flip flops embarrassingly sometimes falling off his feet. After having another smaller meal with her during which most of his peers eavesdropped on them in the large dining hall, he walked her back to the car where his parents were waiting and waved them off. Before he went to bed he took a shower. It was in the shower where he received his greatest punishment of all.

            “Sawan! You moron!” an angry voice rang as the warm water cascaded around him which he took large gulps off.

            “V?” he replied cautiously, bewilderingly staring at a pipe overhead.

“How dumb could you possibly be? You could have died today! You’re lucky that you didn’t!”

“Are you aware of everything I do at all times?”

“ I know everything you do you IDIOT!” Vicky furiously fumed causing him to cower slightly under her rant. She sounded like an old fishwife. Hurriedly getting out of the shower, an exhausted Sawan went into a deep slumber around eleven. The next day he read fifteen pages in six hours.