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the archive(s):
issue no. 3:
Rodeo Days / Ian Whitney
Why do gas stations insist on fluorescent lights? Even in the middle of the day, when the sunshine outside is a warm blanket spilling off the mountains, the light inside a gas station is always a green toxic sludge that makes me feel like I am in an aquarium.
Everybody is buying food for the road. Dellos is microwaving a burrito and has a box of donuts hanging by his hip like a confectioner's sawed off shotgun. Deentz is wearing a cowboy hat and is staring at an "As seen on TV" display that depicts two parody hillbillies in overalls with buckteeth. The microwave dings. Dellos buys the burrito and donuts. Deentz buys the teeth.
I buy nothing because I can't get my mind to run any sort of calculations and am unaware what costs what and how much money I have in my pocket. I don't want to take my money out to count it, as if I could, because there is a pair of aquarium children dancing in the candy aisle and I am sure they would pounce on me if they saw money. Children. I've got to get out of here.
Manos is pumping gas in the car. He is tall and skinny with a ponytail and cowboy hat that makes him look like a stallion that skipped breakfast. Gleeze is sitting in the backseat listening to the radio. He is wearing red, which seems a strange choice for a day at the rodeo.
Dellos made the mushroom tea and chased it with two hits of acid. Deentz took some acid; I'm not sure how much. I drank the tea. Gleeze smoked some grass. Manos is sober, he's driving. He isn't sober because he's driving; it's simply a happy coincidence. Frankly I wouldn't give a shit if one of the aquarium children were behind the wheel, so long as I don't have to deal with it.
Manos pulls out of the gas station and Deentz hollers, "punch it Chewy". We are in a Ford Taurus, "punching it" is like kicking a stoned turtle. We are heading north from Colorado to Wyoming. It is Wednesday. We are going to a rodeo.
Dellos is eating donuts, the burrito has disappeared like some cheap lover in the night, and I wonder if it was ever really there at all. Dellos is seated back left. A true original, he has a personality like a tangerine dusted in sugar, and currently he is concerned with nothing but the task at hand donuts on acid.
Gleeze is telling Manos to find something on the radio. He is seated back middle and squeezed to posture like a German haircut. He seems far away in his red shirt and I observe him as though watching a cardinal through binoculars.
Deentz is sitting back right, directly behind me. Deentz is built like a grizzly bear and powered by the heart of a puppy. He is always planning and pranking and his laugh is as jolly as a drunken uncle. I turn to face him wearing what I imagine is a smile there is no way to be sure at this stage. He stares straight back at me from underneath his wide, black, multi-gallon cap and there is mischief in his eyes. I wish I could maintain a safe distance, I sense danger, there could be a mother bear about. What happened to those damned binoculars?
Deentz grins gently and from behind his stretched lips there appears a mouth full of teeth so grotesque that they could inspire a mother to drown her child. So this is why gerbils eat their young. How was he allowed to survive? How did he get behind me? Oh dear God, how had I never known? The horror escapes me like a tequila morning and I feel my face begin to twitch. My mind shattered, I turn back to watch the road.
Focus. Happy thoughts. Pixies and flowers. Birdshit on the neighbor's car. It's no use. Those fucking teeth are like a lye icepack slowly burning a hole through the center of my brain. I peak in the rearview, still there. He is watching and he smiles. Oh what I would give to have been mauled by the mother bear so as not to endure this torture. Disembowel me, feed me to the forest, whatever it takes, just get me away from those teeth.
I glance again, side mirror, play it smart. He'll never spot me from there. Clever. It takes five minutes to adjust the mirror. Blast, he's still looking right at me. How could he know? When Deentz smiles there are now only normal happy teeth that any gerbil mother would love.
The road is a razor stretching to the horizon. The sun has ducked behind a black puddle of sky turning our journey into a funeral procession north beneath the jagged shadow of the Rockies.
The sky puddle spills in a brutal explosion of water that hits the windshield like it was tossed from a heavenly bedpan. Lightning rips the darkness overhead into sections that quickly heal like paper reborn. The car is on ice-skates. There are faces in the rain that turn out to be headlights on a distant string of big rigs. The faces remind me of the aquarium children and I fumble nervously with my pockets.
It's official Dellos did eat that burrito. I know this because he starts throwing up out the window and it doesn't look like powdered donuts. Gleeze is clawing for more space but Deentz has none to give. The big rigs rip by us spraying water through the open window. The car shudders from the blast. I hope that was water.
When Dellos pulls his head back into the car he looks like he has been drinking from a fire hydrant on parade day. "I feel so dirty", is all he says and everyone begins to laugh.
Silence grows in the car like a beanstalk to the stars. Chemicals cough from the muffler as we hurdle through space and time towards the land of Cheyenne where horses laugh and cowboys sing. The sun is sneaking along the sideline of the horizon looking for someplace to get back in the game.
The road is wet, the sky is wet, our Dellos is wet but somehow none of it matters. We are moving forward, slipping and sliding our way north, and the sense of purpose is overwhelming.
When we arrive in Cheyenne we burst from the storm as though escaping a tornado and landing in OZ. The sky is as bright and warm as make-up sex and there is the bustle of activity everywhere. RV's, cowboy hats, spurs, Copenhagen, and laptops. There is horseshit everywhere. Big makeshift signs scream "Rodeo This Way", "Rodeo That Way". Manos tears through the little streets following the trail markings like an asphalt Indian.
A sign appears, "Rodeo Parking Two Blocks" with a giant arrow attached. Indians. As we slow to turn into the parking lot a wave of fear washes over me like a heat lamp. Something is wrong, there is a girl standing in the street, she is not very pretty but could be charming in a small town overalls kinda way. A second girl stands beside her giggling.
As we pull alongside the two girls the first unleashes a smile of "As Seen on TV" honkey teeth that cracks the mirror of my mind so violently as to ensure that I will not recover for at least seven years. As we roll to a stop in the parking lot I am shivering weakly.
Deentz laughs with a bellow of understanding that shakes the car and would shame the big-rigs we passed earlier if they were close enough to hear. I should have jerked the wheel. I could have run the little trailer bitch down and saved my psyche. I would have probably even gotten to see a bit of the rodeo before the police got a hold of me. Too little too late.
Outside the car for the first-time since the gas station, Dellos excepted of course, we are herded onto a yellow school bus that will carry us the rest of the way to the fairgrounds. Note to self: When taking large quantities of hallucinogenic drugs and being of fragile mind Avoid school buses.
The bus is authentic, big and yellow, with tiny seats made for tiny asses on their way to be socialized by bitter women who wear glasses and collect cats. The seat freaks me out. Deentz is sitting across the aisle directly behind a woman cradling a newborn baby in a blanket that makes it look like a white rabbit. The bus driver turns up the radio and Jim Morrison sloons, "Riders on the Storm" through tiny speakers hidden somewhere in the bus, or in my mind, but I hear it and Deentz does too.
After about 43 seconds on the bus Deentz proceeds to loose his shit. I can't really blame him, he looks about as comfortable as a circus bear on a mini-bike the way he is crammed into his undersized green vinyl seat. I am in the process of wondering if body bags and school bus seats are made of the same material but am quickly brought back into the now by a shout from Deentz.
Staring right through the face of the white rabbit baby into some unique beyond, Deentz shouts, "Fuck". The woman is shaking and too scared to turn around. I think she is afraid to admit to herself that she is sitting directly in front of a grizzly bear. "Fuck", and the white rabbit baby stares right back at him as if to, "You're telling me man". "Fuck", as my mind realizes that this could get real bad, real quick.
I have to do something. There are cowboys and Indians about and I'm sure they have guns and knives to skin bears, and maybe even rabbits, if given the chance. I can't let it happen, that bear is my friend and I'm actually kinda taking to the rabbit baby and find myself wishing the woman would put him down so he could hop around a little.
I turn to Deentz and say, "So howzabout them teeth on that chick in the road, that was some weird shit huh?" The psychological sensation is like tearing stitches out with a harpoon but it seems to work. Deentz comes back. He looks at the rabbit, then at me and says, "Yeah, some really weird shit".
The bus starts rumbling. I can feel the cowboys staring at us and know there are Indians hidden in the green vinyl bushes of the bus seats around me. The woman and the rabbit move a few seats forward. Dellos, Gleeze, and Manos are elsewhere in the bus but I dare not look lest I give away their positions. I wonder if they are armed. Deentz and I sit quietly. Jim reminds me, "Šriders on the stormŠ"
When we finally arrive at the fairgrounds we are faced with pandemonium, but anything is better than the school bus. Horses jump and kick, trailer children chew tobacco and eat sugar off of sticks; cowboys stumble about drinking smoothies and dreaming of southern California while Indians in disguise infiltrate cowboy circles as an intelligence measure.
We find a few seats on bleachers near the arena. It looks like a giant sandbox for adults except that it doesn't actually have any sand in it. It has lots of dirt though and I think a decent castle can be built of dirt and tobacco spit if the builder is determined. Dirtbox.
We sit and watch as a woman in a pink leotard rides the face of a horse as a stunt. I find myself wondering what the horse is thinking. Probably something like, "huffaflfawberguffaw", but that is merely speculation. Deentz says, "She can ride my face anytime she likes". Gleeze huffs. Manos guffaws.
I am drinking a soda, at least I think it is soda, but I can't really recall where it came from. Better not to question these things.
After the leotard act I watch a cowboy get thrown off a horse. It's kinda like watching a rape, only in this particular rape the rapist gets tossed and has his face smashed with a cloven foot. Little men dressed in white come out and drag the rapist away to a little white van with cardinal lights. I wonder if he still has any teeth. I wish I had my binoculars.
The show proceeds with lots of dusting and bouncing, laughing and raping, and the day wears to dusk like a man exchanging a sweaty t-shirt for something, "a little more comfortable"
The final spectacle of the day is the wild horse race in which a dozen cowboys try to saddle a bunch of wild horses and get them to move in a logical direction. I think to myself, "good luck fuckers, I've been trying all day, you'll never make it past them god damned teeth".
Horses buck and flip, ropes fly, cowboys stumble, a horse falls and traps his hoof in the fence. For an instant I forget I am at a rodeo and figure I have just awoken from a comma in a glue factory where Ole Auburn is refusing to cooperate and a bunch of elves in oversized hats are trying to persuade her otherwise.
I am out of soda and decide to go get another one, although I have no idea where a person gets a soda in a glue factory. While I am gone a cowboy wins the wild horse race. I had been rooting for the Indians, but they always lose.
By the time I get back from an unsuccessful soda hunt everyone has started to file out of the bleachers. It's a good thing Gleeze is wearing red because it makes him easy to follow in the crowd. I follow the group out towards the school buses. There is a hotdog stand on the way. Manos buys a hotdog, he brings me a soda. The soda tastes good and I wonder what it is, better not to question these things. We all sit down by the roadside to wait for the school bus. There is dust in the air. In time, it will settle.
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