Land of Sunshine

I had a damn fun weekend. One of my best friends, Dustin, invited me over to his new place, a mobile home which sits on 40 acres, where he will most likely, in the next five to seven years, build a house, raise some kids, work, eat, shit, have fun, screw his wife, and then die. He's a good bastard. I hope, when he dies, he does so during his sleep after having a good time in bed, old enough that sex is athletic and causes a bit of pain even when it's not a marathonic encounter.

He knows I'm close to broke, so we drove down together in his jeep, listening to Faith No More's album Angel Dust, which I hadn't heard since sometime in the mid 90s. That in itself was nostalgic because, when I was 18 or 19, Dustin and I would drive around, stoned, listening to that album. If you've never heard it before, then I suggest you don't go out and buy it. It's disturbing, sarcastic, painful, downright spooky--but Dustin and I could always laugh at it; we didn't understand the pain or psychosis of the music, but we could certainly understand the angst, since we were young, hated authority (the hate now having simmered to a general distaste) and leaned toward the ways of stupidity, even though both us of are and were bright individuals. So we listened. And remembered. Sang along. Screamed. And laughed. Geez. He really can't sing worth a shit, but he is fun to listen to; his energy is infectious. You feel it when he tries to sing, his face scrunched together, the veins in his throat popping out, his arms, sometimes not even on the wheel, pumping to the beat. The freakin' weirdo.

Dustin and his wife, Shelley, a fun woman three inches taller than her husband with sandy blonde hair, and a willowy body, live on the southeast side of Oklahoma City, barely within the city limits. There isn't much around the place within four miles. No grocery stores, gas stations, fast food joints. Nada. And they prefer it that way. I had only been there once previously, and even though it was dark, I remembered exactly where it was without looking at street signs: pass four hills after the left turn at Royal Bavaria, a great German resturaunt where they brew their own beer, and then a right turn, pass two more hills, and at the bottom, after climbing the second hill, is the gravel entrance to their 40 acres. And their was a brand new mobile home I hadn't seen before. The first time I was there Dustin and I simply walked the acreage. Beautiful land. Oak trees, pecans, cedars, walnuts, dogwood, shrubs, tall grass, thorn bushes, brambles, a creek that split the acreage, parts of it open land, and other parts dense with wood. All it lacked was a home. And there it sat, almost as if it had always been there, except the eight feet of packed dirt on all sides of it where there used to be tall grass that hadn't been cut in nearly 30 years. It still hadn't been cut. It was cleared and uprooted by violent machinery.

I'll write more tomorrow. I'm tired.