The Synchronized Skunk

"What in the fuck is that funky smell?!"

Verbalizing before his exhale, Wainright squeezed out, "I think istha weed...pahoooffff."

"Let me smell the bag...(sniff)...Na. This weed ain't that fuckin' good."

"Oh, fuck! There's your answer. Watch out, dude!!"

"Oh, shit!" (SCREEETCH.....PADOOMP!!) To no avail and way after the fact, due to my pathetically slow marijuana-induced reaction time, I nearly sent Wainright's rusted out, lime green, piece of shit Gremlin into a ditch off the side of highway 41 attempting to avoid a creature that was scurrying across it. Our bag of shwag had dumped all over my chest and legs.

"Fuckin' ay, I just killed a skunk!" I felt terrible. I hated running over animals.

"Fuck. Well it was either him or us and anyway, the little suicidal bastard deserved it for spilling our pot," Wainright said, stoned off his ass, before bursting out into laughter and pointing at me.

"How do you know it was a 'him'?" Wainright's eyes were tiny red slits at this point and he looked comically perplexed by my question.

"Huh?"

"The skunk. How do you know it wasn't a girl?"

"Um...because it had a white stripe."

"What? You're fuckin' higher than me, man. All skunks have a goddamn white stripe."

"Nu-uh...(squeezing out another hit)...Doncha ever watch Pepe' Le Pew, the cartoon skunk. Some of the bitches he chases around don’t have a white stripe...pahooofff."

"It’s the same bitch and she's a cat, dumb ass. Now quit bogartin' that joint and give me another hit so I can be as stupid as you."

Wainright was a friend of mine who I had met at the end of my first year of college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was older and more advanced socially than I was...well, relative to me anyway...yet he was definitely not part of any mainstream click or any anti-mainstream click for that matter. He was in his own off beat, strange head and though I was physically the stronger, Wainright assumed somewhat of the lead role in our relationship being that I was still coming out of my introverted shell of social derelection. He was highly intelligent, tall and good-looking, even with his big pointy nose and thin stringy hair and I liked him because he could mold into whatever group was around him yet could still keep his smart ass personality in tact. He would always manage to piss off the biggest, meanest motherfucker in the bar but would also always manage to save his own ass by talking his way out of it...barely. Sometimes I think he did it on purpose. It would make me nervous but in the end he would usually have a drink with his potential assailant, possibly his way of getting any conceivable threat around him on his side in order for him to feel safe in whatever space he was in.

At the time, Wainright and I were both majoring in architecture and he had just won a thousand dollars in a conceptual design contest for creating a futuristic McDonalds set in the food court of a giant space station. I think he partially created it when he was stoned or on acid. After he got the money, we decided to use it intelligently...you know, for partying, going to concerts, and buying drugs, etc. Our mini-road trip north would use up the last of his winnings.

"...whoooof...ahaw...ahaw...ahaaww! Fucking yuck. That resin tastes nasty...(cough, cough). The bowl is cashed. There's no more left, dude. We're out...hahaheha."

After finishing what was left of the weed, Wainright and I fell into a suffocating laugh attack, the kind of hysterical laughter where one has to fight for a gasp of air in the midst of a squeezed, flush smiling face and tear-soaked, reddened eyes. We were driving from Milwaukee to Oshkosh to party with some of Wainright's friends but couldn't wait just a couple of hours before starting in on it. Our ride consisted of plenty of mid-to-low-grade Marijuana (before we spilled it) and a liter of Jose' Cuervo tequila. The car was full of smoke and we were passing the bottle back n' forth trading off shots.

"Hey, Wainright. That's right!"

"(giggle)...What?...(giggle)."

"Stop laughing and listen to this. You gotta hear about the dream I had last night. I just remembered it!"

"Ok...whew. Go ahead...(chuckle)."

"Well, the dream started with you and I in the woods, some forest somewhere in the universe, and a fucking skunk, man, I'm tellin' ya, a fucking skunk appeared and started to chase us! I ran and got away from it while you stood there laughing as the little stinky bastard reared up its tail towards you. Then we materialized in my apartment before you got sprayed but the skunk materialized with us as well. We were in the same positions but the background changed--you know how dreams are. Anyway, I ran out of the room, the skunk ran passed your feet, did a circle around you and grew into the size of a bear before pissing on your face. It didn't lift its tail and spray like skunks do, it literally pulled out a big black cock with a white stripe down the middle of it and pissed all over your face while you continued giggling!"

"Well, I'm glad we ran the little motherfucker over then! Hey. At the Dead show, a couple weeks back when we were tripping on acid, I remember seeing all kinds of skunks and skunk related shit...or did I just imagine that I did?"

"No, as a matter of fact we did see a lot of skunk shit...mixed with bears...yea, dancing bears. There was one van there that had a skunk painted on it...a skunk smoking from a bong with some psychedelic colors and what not surrounding its head. The van had the Grateful Dead's dancing bears sticker on it as well. It’s probably what sparked off my dream."

A few weeks previous to our road trip to Oshkosh, Wainright and I had taken blotter acid in the parking lot of the Alpine Valley Amphitheatre before the start of a Grateful Dead show. It was my first time to have ever dropped LSD. I remember the small paper tab having a clown face on it and how amazed I was by how such a tiny piece of paper could have such a huge effect on my psyche. It blew my fucking mind. I remember seeing from about 30 yards away, Wainright and myself walking and looking up into the sky. I can recall how stupid my gait looked before wondering to my "self"(?) the obvious riddle that if I was the person I was watching, then who was it who was I that was watching my self...? Upon this thought I immediately shot back into my body, once again inside my head looking up in the sky at an airplane that Wainright felt he was communicating with.

"Did you hear that? The guy in the plane spoke back?"

"Dude, I was just out of my body. I can't look at the plane anymore or I'll be on the fucker or something. I think I'm losing it...I...I...I don't know who I am!!"

"Hahahaha!!! You'll be al...hahhe...right just focus on doing something. Hey, let's go talk to that fucked up hippy who's face down in the dirt. I'm sure he'll say some fucked up shit."

"Nway, dudey. I canevenardly tawk you to you. I'm fuckin' fucked up...and up...no don't look up...ground hold the ground, man!! Wayright. I've gotta lay down...okay, I'm layin' down right here...I don't wanna die...NO!! Barbed wire! Wainer watch out for Barb's wire!!!"

Wainright fell to the ground, laughing, crying and pissing himself. There was no barbed wire or Barb's wire, for that matter. Not in the 3rd dimension anyway. I was gone. I had to do everything I could just to stay in my body. I loved the fact that I had an outer body thing happen--it opens up many possibilities and all, but it was too much for me. I had snapped. I mean I had heard a literal auditory "snap" inside my head, an alarming sharp and instant popping sound followed by an agonizing, gut wrenching pain in my abdomen where it felt as though my stomach had spiralled itself into a tight knot. My physical sensation was coupled with a counterpart of mental anguish spewing out images of a dark vision of my future as I was lying on the dirt of the parking lot, unable to move.

My vision was real and it was horrifying. Doom. No matter what action taken against it, there was a certain layout, a certain program set aside for me before I even entered this life and it required and consisted of doom, impending doom, dread, morbidity, paranoia, confusion and apathy all creating a texture on the inner wall of a million mile tunnel made too long to see the light at its end. My only hope was that for the simple fact that it was a tunnel, made it a logical truth that there had to be an opening at its end or it would not have been tunnel in the first place.

I sat up from the ground with a small shred of hope. The first image I saw out of my sunken reverie was the site of Wainright's sloppy, red laughy face staring at me, waiting for my next ridiculous move. It felt as though I was lying on the ground for hours but only about 3 or 4 minutes of actual 3-dimensional time had passed.

"Well, the plane is gone. Do you want to go talk to those Rastafarian dudes?"

"No, man. I'm alright here. I feel sick."

"How about we go in this van with that skunk on it and fuck around?"

"You mean play with the knobs and shit?"

"No. We could suck each others dicks."

"...?...Uh...no, thank you...?"

"Okay. How about we go over by where those Hari Krisnas set up their tent and go have 'em try to convert us?"

"Yea, man. That would be cool." I had to agree to something being that the alternative was "sucking each others dicks". Wainright blew off his comment like it was some common nonchalant thing that guys ask of each other, and then slid into his next sentence as if he said nothing shocking or bizarre. I never knew him to be in the least gay. He always had fairly decent looking chics. I didn't question him at the time. Later he claimed he never said it.

"Yea, you were pretty fucked up at that show, Adam."

"What show. You mean the parking lot. We never made it to the front gate. We couldn't even find the fucker!"

"Remember you had to drive home still frying on that shit? We must have tripped hard for over 16 hours. I think we actually ate 4 hits because I remember seeing perforated lines going down the middle of the tab where we were supposed to tear off and eat only a corner each and save the rest for later. I'm pretty sure that's what happened, man."

Driving on acid, especially the first time you've ever taken it, was definitely a hyper-paranoid and terrifying situation. I remember leaving the show...I mean the parking lot, at about 2:00am and I had to be at work by 4:00am...to remove asbestos, my summer job at the time. I was still high when entering the dark enclosure that was only lit in its corners by flood lights that casted shadows of demons. At least that's what I saw. Removing asbestos is a hellish experience in and of itself and to add to it the spice of LSD was insufferable.

To remove the cancer causing mineral, you must first enclose the asbestos ridden room in plastic and bring in loud hepa fans (giant filters), flood lights, water hoses, and scraping tools. A paper suit had to be worn along with a filtered mask that was attached to a hose for breathing in air that was transported from outside the circumscribed space. The flood lights gave the room a cave-like look and all physical human senses were blocked or inhibited. It was hard to see outside of the wet asbestos-caked mask, the fans were loud so we had to use sign language to communicate, it was 120 degrees in the enclosure and your sweat couldn't evaporate and cool you because your body was surrounded by an impermeable paper jump suit. I couldn't see, hear, speak, smell, or feel. It was the closest thing to hell I've ever experienced...possibly the hopeless tunnel I had envisioned a number of hours before.

While beginning to fill up the inside of my mask with tears of claustrophobic horror, anxiety, and fear, I remember tucking myself away into a corner of the plastic walled grotto and crying myself to sleep until the end of the shift. I didn't get caught, I was commended for working through lunch, and I kept my lame fucking job.

"Why the fuck did you go to work after that. I couldn't even imagine it. I would rather have quit. That must've been fucking insane."

"It was. I don't know why the fuck I did it. I mean, my brain cells were still frying when they conspired to make the decision for me to go in! Hey, Wainright. Check that out over there. It's a dirty bookstore right in the middle of nowhere. I've never been in one. Are there girls in there, like peep shows and shit?"

We were about half way up to Oshkosh and off the side of the highway, surrounded only by farm fields was an x-rated video arcade and bookstore. The parking lot was full of mostly trucks and semis. Signs on the building also advertised tobacco pipes, i.e. bongs and paraphernalia so we decided to stop on Wainright's request.

"Let's check it out. They got sex and drug stuff. Cool. We could watch a movie and jerk off too...(giggle)."

"As long as you don't try to suck my dick again."

"Dude. Why do you keep saying that? I did not try to suck your dick. Maybe you want me to suck your dick."

"You totally asked me at the Dead show if we should suck each...hey Wainright! Check it out!" In the parking lot on the back of a semi-trailer was a painting of a skunk holding a flag with some shipping company's name on it. The truck was black, white and red.

"That's fuckin' weird. I don't know though. Maybe we're just noticing skunk shit because we're talking about it."

"Maybe, but maybe not. Too fuckin' weird bro. Wonder what fucker in there owns the truck. Maybe he'll know the secret of the skunk."

When we walked into the establishment, there was smut and guilty looking pervs everywhere. No one could look each other straight in the face. ‘Why are they embarrassed’? I thought. It's just porn. Apparently, the "wrongness" and "tabooness" of being there made the sex thing more dirty and perverted enough to get off on. So I tapped into it as well and grabbed the classic 70's skin flick, "Taboo", to preview in one of their little porn booths or jack shacks, if you will. Wainright also joined in on the perversion in the booth next to me on my left after purchasing some whip-its and a canister to open the whip-it cartridges with. (For those unschooled in cheap thrills, legal substances that get you high, glue-sniffing and aerosal inhaling and the like, whip-its are nitrous oxide cartridges used for creating pressure to push whip cream out of its can. It's also used as a type of anesthetic in dental offices and is commonly referred to as "laughing gas.")

The room was small, dark, and dank and smelled of sweat, cum, and pine sol. I remember feeling greasy and claustrophobic and wanted to leave until a hot scene in the movie pulled my attention off of my discomfort. Wow! Porn! Such a high it gives you especially when you're young and not getting any. I loved it. I wasn't exactly clear about the rules but I'm sure masturbating was allowed, I mean that was the whole point, I thought, so I pulled it out and started "waxing my dolphin" as Wainright liked to put it. I felt like a dirty perverted fuck but what a rush it was. Why do things that are considered wrong or immoral seem more fun than anything else?

In the midst of my jacking process, I had been glued to the screen and really hadn't investigated my surroundings very well. I looked to the left and noticed a hole in the partition that separated the booths. It was the perfect size to put a penis through so I figured out what it was for right away. 'Damn!' I thought. Why would someone stick their wang in a hole not knowing who's on the other side? After all, there were no women who frequented the establishment and even if you didn't care, wouldn't you be afraid of some psycho chopping your cock off or something? I put my ear near the hole on the left of me and heard Wainright saying things in between his giggles like, "Oooh yea, fuck that bitch you pig fucker!" and "Yea, take it in the ass you fuckin' whore!"

I looked towards the partition on my other side, opposite of my friend's and centimeters from my elbow and much to my dismay, was a hard penis stuck through the glory hole to my right. I let out a startled, quick, "Ah!" and involuntarily punched the penis giving it a strong right uppercut that would've made Mike Tyson proud. I never saw a hard man's penis in person before. It seemed to have a personality of its own and I swear it tilted its head and looked at me. "Ay, how ya doin'?"--it might as well have said in an Italian accent.

My now injured masturbating neighbor to my right and person attached to my newfound Italian penis friend let off an absurd and distorted medley of agonistic and cataclysmic screams of pain. I heard his door slam open and the sound of quick heavy footsteps as he tore out of the building. Wainright and I opened our "cell" doors simultaneously and I told him what happened. He, of course, laughed his ass off as I grabbed his arm to pull both of us out of the establishment before we got into any kind of trouble. After all, what an embarrassing assault charge that would be to face in a public court--assaulting a penis! Fuck that. We were getting out of there if I had to drag Wainright out by his...well...by his penis even, the giggling cocksucker.

"Wainright! I think the glory hole fucker is the guy with the skunk truck. Look it's pulling away!"

Wainright pointed at the truck and yelled in the air like an honorable superhero, "Follow that penis!!"

"We're coming to get you you skunk charming, glory hole fucking jag-off!"

About 3 other trucks were pulling out of the parking lot at the same time so we really weren't sure if the driver of the skunk semi and the owner of "the penis" were one and the same person but it didn't matter. It had to be him! It just made sense. So as soon as we stopped laughing and Wainright got his car into gear, we found some loose gravel to peel out of to start our pursuit. After all, it wouldn't be a proper chase if we hadn't started it of with some squealing sounds or something equivalent so after trying unsuccessfully to burn rubber on regular pavement (by backing up 3 times and trying again), we drove off to the side of the road and found some loose stones that the Gremlin could successfully spit up and spit up those stones it did! God, were we cool!

After hitting top speed (about 63 mph), the lime green Gremlin's heat gauge began to rise to the beginning of its red danger levels forcing us to slow down and end the hunt for our skunk/penis villain who was never even close to being in our sights anyway.

"Wainright, this is the worst superhero vehicle ever. Is this thing going to make it? Should we pull over and let it cool down or what?"

"Na. It does this all the time. We'll just go the minimum speed. Here. Bust open some whip-its. Let's do some of them while we wait for the car to cool off."

Hippy crack, they call it. What a trip whip-its are. They're the only thing I know that can significantly alter the LSD high. They're intense as hell and the cool thing about doing them is that the high goes away and you're back to normal within about 30 seconds of breathing in the gas. The trouble is, is that they're not very conducive for driving...at least for about 20 seconds when your body's completely out of control. You've just got to hope your alignment on your car is straight. Then you'll be alright until you recouperate.

"Fuck, man, be careful! Shit. Wait until I'm fully recovered before you take a hit so I can properly hold the steering wheel for you. I could see us gradually going into oncoming traffic but I could barely move to do anything about it…hehe.Wainright. Wipe the drool off your fuckin’ face, hahaha." With some people, nitrous makes them drool and flap their lips involuntarily.

"Huh? Holy fuck! I'm driving!"

"You alright?"

"Yea, I'm fine but I was gone. I had some awesome thought about the meaning of life but I can't fucking remember what it was. I heard this helicopter sound in my head like I usually do on whip-its but then this gigantimongus realization hit me and then I saw the road and, poof, the realization was gone. I'm telling you, it meant something. Here. Load me another hit. Actually, load me a double. I want to find out what it was."

"Alright here, but wait until that car passes. I'll get the wheel. Go slow, dude."

Wainright took his double nitrous hit and after he stopped shaking and drooling, he looked at me, raised his eyebrows, put his finger in the air to make his epic statement and..."Goddamn it! I can't fucking remember. As soon as I'm off the high enough to talk, I lose the thought. Fuck! It was so cool but..."

"Dickhead. You do this everytime you do whip-its. I'm getting fucking curious myself about what the hell it is."

"I don't know it’s like a deja vu but with a secret behind it. Fuck it. I can't explain it."

"Hey. Check it out. Look over there. Another dead skunk in the road. That's the second one we saw on the side of the road besides the one we hit. It must be skunk season."

"There's no such thing as skunk season. Though I think it could be rabbit season."

"It's not rabbit season, dude. It's fucking skunk season.

"No way. It's rabbit season."

"It's skunk season."

"Rabbit season!"

"Skunk season!"

"Wabbit season!!"

"Skunk season!!"

"Wabbit season!!"

"Wabbit season!!"

"....Skunk season!!"

"Wabbit sea...no fucking way! Wainright there's the semi-trailer with the skunk flag! See it. Wait, no it’s got...its fucking different but it’s the same black, white, and red truck except this time the skunk is making an evil face and holding a flag of a skull and cross bones!!"

SCREEEEEEETCH!!! Wainright came to an almost instant halt and pulled off the side of the road. "Dude. What the fuck is going on!! I swear that's the same fucking truck! Someone's gotta be messin' with us. Pick up all the empty whip-it cartridges and crap. Let's get rid of all of our illegal accessories and shit right now, bro!" He was freaked.

"I'm with ya. I've got chills going up my spine and I just got super-fucking paranoid."

We put our pipe, our bong, empty and full whip-it cartridges, the canister they came with, a nearly-finished liter bottle of tequila, empty Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans, and pot seeds and ashes that we found on the car's carpeting, all into a plastic bag and set them on the side of the highway before pulling off at the next exit in an attempt to collect ourselves. The feeling of impending doom once again had blanketed my reality.

We purchased some spring water, used the bathroom, took some deep heavy breaths and were back on the road only a few more miles from our destination. Cops, cops, and more cops were everywhere and sure enough, we were pulled over to the ever so discomforting sight of blue and red flashing lights while making our final exit off the highway. We made a frenzied yet covert check of the interior of the car as the police officer was walking up to the driver's side door. I remember looking at him in the rearview mirror and realizing how intimidating the whole thing was--the official police vehicle, the official uniform, the gun, the stick, the electronics--and at the same time, I also had to hold back from laughing at the opposing realization of how childish and costumey the officer looked as well.

Though still stoned, drunk and brain dead from the nitrous, somehow we were able to maintain and Wainright, using his superpowers of bullshit and chameleonism, got the stick out of the cops ass long enough for him to let us move on without a problem and we even got him to crack somewhat of a smile. About 2 minutes after being back on the road, both of us completely forgot what our words were to the cop or for what reason he stopped us or why he let us go so easily. We didn't realize how fucked up we were until reality and its possible unnerving consequences were right in our faces and somehow by pure survival instinct, we were able to put up the subterfuge that we were straight and sober, law-abiding locals.

"Were we speeding?"

"I don't know, man. I can't remember what I said to him. We were just pulled over by the cops, right?"

"Sure as shit were but I don't remember a goddamn thing!"

"Actually, I think he pulled us over for going too slow. I'm not sure. He just talked and I said stuff and he left. I know what the fucking skunk partially symbolizes now, though. I mean, it's pretty fuckin' obvious."

"Black and white."

"Yea, black and white. As in the color of their cars. As in cops...as in duality...as in we the bad guys partying and them the good guys spoiling the fun...or vice versa. Something along those lines."

"Dude. We were transcending the opposites. We were noticing duality on the way out!"

"More like descending into them, if you ask me. Either way, I can't believe we got rid of all the shit we had in the car. Can you imagine? And how the fuck stupid can that pig be not noticing how out of our fucking gourds we were? He must have never been a partier. Fuck, man, I guess we just got lucky."

"Yea, lucky. Now let's go do some more illegal shit!"

"Hehe....gluttonous cunt."

We had finally made it to Wainright's friends party but it was near over, not to mention boring, cliche' and anti-climactic. His childhood buddies were bland and typical and nothing like what I had anticipated out of Wainright but then again it did kind of make sense. Whenever I would think I had him labeled in a certain category, I would learn he was the opposite of or at least off to a side angle of what I assumed of his character. In this case, I finally had Wainright pegged as a freak of some kind, but then he busted out with some unexpected conservatism and typicalism.

It was your basic college type party with your basic hoopin' and hollerin' college dipshits, kegs of brewsky, and played out stupid pranks that have been done a thousand times before. Being that one of these asswipe's house was the place where I had to sleep that evening, I felt compelled to communicate with everyone and try to weave in and out of their limited and judgmental conversations. Anything interesting or cool that I thought that I had to say was discarded or ignored. It reminded me of the arrogant little clicks in high school and I wanted to get the fuck out of there. So after grudging through the retarded and ignorant mentality and collapsing my body on a beer-drenched floor, I had awoken to the smell of piss and stale cigarettes and to the sight of Wainright's lanky body draped over a recliner, still holding half a cup of beer in his hand, his eyes opening in unison with mine. We were ready to get back on the road and back to Milwaukee.

"Huge tits!"

"What?"

"That brunette chic at the party. She had huge fucking jacks! They were beautiful round, real tits...I can't believe you didn't see them. You love big tits."

"That party sucked, dude. That one short, preppy kid with the gay lookin' buzz cut fuckin' thing and the sky blue sweater was saying shit about me that I couldn't hear or understand followed by him and his faggoty friends laughing and staring at me. It reminded me of high school and your friends are lame and boring by the way."

I was pissed. I hated being at effect of anything and not being able to leave when I wanted to fucking leave because my friend was having a good time at a party that we drove HIS car too. I was forced to endure a bunch of idiots and couldn't fuck with any of them because they were Wainright's "friends" and owners of the house where I had to stay that night. It sucked and I let Wainright know it.

Our drive home was a hungover and bitchy experience. Besides the continuous smell of skunks, the trip was uneventful and drawn out. Upon seeing the small, gray and old industrial skyline of downtown Milwaukee, I let out a sigh of relief and felt my body settle. Milwaukee--the town I always want to leave but am always glad to be back in. I suppose a lot of us have this kind of town in our lives.

At the time, I was living with my folks but staying with Wainright about 3 nights a week. He told me to drop him off at his girlfriend's house and take his car back to his place. He got out, laughed and we agreed that over all we had a pretty good fucking time. I began to pull away as Wainright approached the front door of his girlfriend's duplex. A weird sense of emotion and deja vu had come over me and about a second or two following this strange and subtle feeling, Wainright and I witnessed a skunk darting out of the bushes to the right of the steps where he was standing. As in my dream, the skunk ran passed Wainright's feet, nearly brushing up against his legs before scurrying into the bushes on the left. We looked at each other in disbelief, Wainright shrugged his shoulders in an "I have no answer for what just happened" gesture, we both shook our heads in astonishment and I drove off and went to bed.

Throughout the end of Summer and into the Fall, Wainright and I continued our debauchery with more acid, more tequila and more skunk synchronicities. Skunks just became the backdrop to our hallucinatory, drunken haze. We were on a roll and our stinky furry friend was our mascot.

Hell, Wainright and I were in synch even when we weren't as in our separated yet united Halloween experience where we took a bus to Madison, dropped a couple doses of cid, and traded off swigs out of a bottle of Cuervo all while we were dressed up as 70's style street hookers. We stepped out of the bus on State street, hazed, blazed, and crazed. I took 2 steps off the bus and lost Wainright for the evening. The next morning, we got back to Milwaukee at the exact same time. Wainright had entered the back door and I had entered the front door, simultaneously meeting at the midway point in the kitchen.

"No fucking way! Did you just get here!?"

"I just walked in the front door fuck fuck! What the hell happened? I got off the bus and, poof, you were gone! You had my money and my ID! I don't know how the fuck I did it in high heels but I climbed a tree on State street looking for you above the crowd."

"You climbed a tree in drag? Hahaha!"

"It wasn't easy, man, especially with the bottle of tequila in my one hand. It was a skinny tree too. I had to stab the tree trunk with one of my stiletto pumps as I screamed out your name at the top of my lungs. I was swinging from the tree like a drunk ass chimpanzee in drag while people crowded around telling me to jump. I got about two, three stories up before some rent-a-cop knuckleheads told me to get down."

"I had a fucked up night as well."

"Fuck you, Wainright! At least you had money and shit! I ended up sleeping at the Wisconsin Badger football team’s frat house or whatever the fuck it was...on a beer soaked floor again, I might add. Everything was semi-cool until the next day when Halloween was over and some ugly brute of a drag queen was in their house. The night before I was a funny guy dressed like a woman but in the morning, they called me a faggot and through me out...literally and physically threw, as in thrown in the air, out!!"

"Relax, man. I didn't have it much better. I slept in a hotel lobby with my face buried in some couch and my ass up in the air while some drunk redneck fuckers were feeling me up and shit! When I woke up and they saw that I was a man, they wanted to beat me into oblivion! The concierge called the police and the rednecks bolted before they showed up. The police escorted me to the Greyhound bus station. They told me to leave right away or they were going to throw me in jail. The whole experience made me feel like a cheap skank. How the fuck did you get home?"

"I was walking downtown, with my nylons ripped, my make-up running, wig all fucked up, hungover like a bitch in bright daylight, freezing my ass off with no money or identification..."

"Dude! You're going off! How did you get home!?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you--at my lowest fucking point, these two hot chics I knew from the dorms at UWM saw me walking and made fun of me. They didn't recognize me until I took the wig off and told them who I was. I explained to them my situation and they said that they were on their way to Milwaukee anyway, so I tagged along. They gave me food and shit and I got a phone number as well."

"Well, then shit, man. I guess it wasn't all bad."

"Yea, right. Fuckin' hell."

Wainright and I laughed about our synchronistic and poetically fucked up night but it was the beginning of the end, not only for us but for the enigmatic skunk, as well. A little under two months later, Wainright, Benedict Wainright, if you will, had turned on me half way into one of our many psychedelic mushroom trips. From the perspective of an unaltered mind, it could have been interpreted as a petty betrayal but coming from my highly intuitive and symbolistically based hallucinatory backed consciousness, his actions were offensive, gutless, and revealing of his true selfish colors.

It happened on Christmas Eve during a blizzard on Milwaukee's Eastside in front of the historic Oriental Theatre. We had went to see an animated film festival where previous to the start of the show in the theatre's lobby, Wainright and I had scarfed down 2 or 3 grams each of some clean and highly effective cubensis mushrooms that we had cut up and sprinkled on a peanut butter and "shroom" sandwich. Upon leaving the show, each rubbing our mandibles that were cramped and sore from 2 hours of nonstop laughter, we got bushwhacked by some college chodes who decided to chuck snowballs at us for whatever the fuck reason, more than likely because they seen us laughing and acting like a couple of idiots. The iceballs looked like giant glistening boulders with an exaggerated velocity that my mushroom mind's sped up and heightened senses could not comprehend as anything less than an ultimately horrifying threat to my safety. Wainright, the chickenshit fucking traitor, freaked out as well but instead of sticking it out with his friend, chose to join the other side and began pegging me with snow grenades right along side our assailants! Betrayed!! I was obliterated and left to die, lying on the sidewalk in a pile of half-broken snowballs, cold ice, and muddy slosh.

That night I ended our friendship and stuck to it the next day even after sobering up. Shortly after, Wainright moved back to his hometown of Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin just outside of Green Bay. I have never seen him since. The last I heard of him was that he had developed a bad cocaine habit. Who knows. Fuck ‘em. He was one of those numerous characters you meet on the path to your destination but not a character you would see at the destination itself. I think the skunk had the right idea. Piss on him.

Less than a week after the snowball incident and during the Winter interim, the break in college between semesters, I had pulled another indulgent all-nighter of dissolution and again showed up shabbily coherent for my job of hazardous waste removal. While the work crew was preoccupied with their set up preparations, I had crept off down a side hall in a stealth-like, clandestine manner and, to my great fortune, I had found a room tucked safely away where I could hide and rest my tattered and battered body. I looked towards the back of the room and jumping out at me, impossible to miss, was a mural of a giant smiling skunk, Pepe’ Le Pew, of course, covering the entire space of the wall. I threw down my tools and my body and propped myself comfortably up against the wall, looking up at the painting. 'What a fitting image to fall asleep to', I thought. I cracked a tiny, lazy smile and was completely unconscious in a matter of seconds.

Six hours later, I was awoken by my foreman. This time, there was no weaseling my way out of it. This time I had lost my job. “The skunk told me I needed to sleep” were my last words. Fired. Halle-fucking-luya. I left my tools and gas mask on the ground as an offering to the skunk god, flipped of my boss, naturally, and went the fuck home. It was over. Everything was over--Wainright, my job--all over. It was also the last time I saw Pepe’ in any mystical form or message and with New Years approaching and 1987 coming to an end, so was the era of the dualistically exalted, synchronized skunk.

My vision was real and it was horrifying. Doom. No matter what action taken against it, there was a certain layout, a certain program set aside for me before I even entered this life and it required and consisted of doom, impending doom, dread, morbidity, paranoia, confusion and apathy all creating a texture on the inner wall of a million mile tunnel made too long to see the light at its end. My only hope was that for the simple fact that it was a tunnel, made it a logical truth that there had to be an opening at its end or it would not have been tunnel in the first place.

I sat up from the ground with a small shred of hope. The first image I saw out of my sunken reverie was the site of Wainright's sloppy, red laughy face staring at me, waiting for my next ridiculous move. It felt as though I was lying on the ground for hours but only about 3 or 4 minutes of actual 3-dimensional time had passed.

"Well, the plane is gone. Do you want to go talk to those Rastafarian dudes?"

"No, man. I'm alright here. I feel sick."

"How about we go in this van with that skunk on it and fuck around?"

"You mean play with the knobs and shit?"

"No. We could suck each others dicks."

"...?...Uh...no, thank you...?"

"Okay. How about we go over by where those Hari Krisnas set up their tent and go have 'em try to convert us?"

"Yea, man. That would be cool." I had to agree to something being that the alternative was "sucking each others dicks". Wainright blew off his comment like it was some common nonchalant thing that guys ask of each other, and then slid into his next sentence as if he said nothing shocking or bizarre. I never knew him to be in the least gay. He always had fairly decent looking chics. I didn't question him at the time. Later he claimed he never said it.

"Yea, you were pretty fucked up at that show, Adam."

"What show. You mean the parking lot. We never made it to the front gate. We couldn't even find the fucker!"

"Remember you had to drive home still frying on that shit? We must have tripped hard for over 16 hours. I think we actually ate 4 hits because I remember seeing perforated lines going down the middle of the tab where we were supposed to tear off and eat only a corner each and save the rest for later. I'm pretty sure that's what happened, man."

Driving on acid, especially the first time you've ever taken it, was definitely a hyper-paranoid and terrifying situation. I remember leaving the show...I mean the parking lot, at about 2:00am and I had to be at work by 4:00am...to remove asbestos, my summer job at the time. I was still high when entering the dark enclosure that was only lit in its corners by flood lights that casted shadows of demons. At least that's what I saw. Removing asbestos is a hellish experience in and of itself and to add to it the spice of LSD was insufferable.

To remove the cancer causing mineral, you must first enclose the asbestos ridden room in plastic and bring in loud hepa fans (giant filters), flood lights, water hoses, and scraping tools. A paper suit had to be worn along with a filtered mask that was attached to a hose for breathing in air that was transported from outside the circumscribed space. The flood lights gave the room a cave-like look and all physical human senses were blocked or inhibited. It was hard to see outside of the wet asbestos-caked mask, the fans were loud so we had to use sign language to communicate, it was 120 degrees in the enclosure and your sweat couldn't evaporate and cool you because your body was surrounded by an impermeable paper jump suit. I couldn't see, hear, speak, smell, or feel. It was the closest thing to hell I've ever experienced...possibly the hopeless tunnel I had envisioned a number of hours before.

While beginning to fill up the inside of my mask with tears of claustrophobic horror, anxiety, and fear, I remember tucking myself away into a corner of the plastic walled grotto and crying myself to sleep until the end of the shift. I didn't get caught, I was commended for working through lunch, and I kept my lame fucking job.

"Why the fuck did you go to work after that. I couldn't even imagine it. I would rather have quit. That must've been fucking insane."

"It was. I don't know why the fuck I did it. I mean, my brain cells were still frying when they conspired to make the decision for me to go in! Hey, Wainright. Check that out over there. It's a dirty bookstore right in the middle of nowhere. I've never been in one. Are there girls in there, like peep shows and shit?"

We were about half way up to Oshkosh and off the side of the highway, surrounded only by farm fields was an x-rated video arcade and bookstore. The parking lot was full of mostly trucks and semis. Signs on the building also advertised tobacco pipes, i.e. bongs and paraphernalia so we decided to stop on Wainright's request.

"Let's check it out. They got sex and drug stuff. Cool. We could watch a movie and jerk off too...(giggle)."

"As long as you don't try to suck my dick again."

"Dude. Why do you keep saying that? I did not try to suck your dick. Maybe you want me to suck your dick."

"You totally asked me at the Dead show if we should suck each...hey Wainright! Check it out!" In the parking lot on the back of a semi-trailer was a painting of a skunk holding a flag with some shipping company's name on it. The truck was black, white and red.

"That's fuckin' weird. I don't know though. Maybe we're just noticing skunk shit because we're talking about it."

"Maybe, but maybe not. Too fuckin' weird bro. Wonder what fucker in there owns the truck. Maybe he'll know the secret of the skunk."

When we walked into the establishment, there was smut and guilty looking pervs everywhere. No one could look each other straight in the face. ‘Why are they embarrassed’? I thought. It's just porn. Apparently, the "wrongness" and "tabooness" of being there made the sex thing more dirty and perverted enough to get off on. So I tapped into it as well and grabbed the classic 70's skin flick, "Taboo", to preview in one of their little porn booths or jack shacks, if you will. Wainright also joined in on the perversion in the booth next to me on my left after purchasing some whip-its and a canister to open the whip-it cartridges with. (For those unschooled in cheap thrills, legal substances that get you high, glue-sniffing and aerosal inhaling and the like, whip-its are nitrous oxide cartridges used for creating pressure to push whip cream out of its can. It's also used as a type of anesthetic in dental offices and is commonly referred to as "laughing gas.")

The room was small, dark, and dank and smelled of sweat, cum, and pine sol. I remember feeling greasy and claustrophobic and wanted to leave until a hot scene in the movie pulled my attention off of my discomfort. Wow! Porn! Such a high it gives you especially when you're young and not getting any. I loved it. I wasn't exactly clear about the rules but I'm sure masturbating was allowed, I mean that was the whole point, I thought, so I pulled it out and started "waxing my dolphin" as Wainright liked to put it. I felt like a dirty perverted fuck but what a rush it was. Why do things that are considered wrong or immoral seem more fun than anything else?

In the midst of my jacking process, I had been glued to the screen and really hadn't investigated my surroundings very well. I looked to the left and noticed a hole in the partition that separated the booths. It was the perfect size to put a penis through so I figured out what it was for right away. 'Damn!' I thought. Why would someone stick their wang in a hole not knowing who's on the other side? After all, there were no women who frequented the establishment and even if you didn't care, wouldn't you be afraid of some psycho chopping your cock off or something? I put my ear near the hole on the left of me and heard Wainright saying things in between his giggles like, "Oooh yea, fuck that bitch you pig fucker!" and "Yea, take it in the ass you fuckin' whore!"

I looked towards the partition on my other side, opposite of my friend's and centimeters from my elbow and much to my dismay, was a hard penis stuck through the glory hole to my right. I let out a startled, quick, "Ah!" and involuntarily punched the penis giving it a strong right uppercut that would've made Mike Tyson proud. I never saw a hard man's penis in person before. It seemed to have a personality of its own and I swear it tilted its head and looked at me. "Ay, how ya doin'?"--it might as well have said in an Italian accent.

My now injured masturbating neighbor to my right and person attached to my newfound Italian penis friend let off an absurd and distorted medley of agonistic and cataclysmic screams of pain. I heard his door slam open and the sound of quick heavy footsteps as he tore out of the building. Wainright and I opened our "cell" doors simultaneously and I told him what happened. He, of course, laughed his ass off as I grabbed his arm to pull both of us out of the establishment before we got into any kind of trouble. After all, what an embarrassing assault charge that would be to face in a public court--assaulting a penis! Fuck that. We were getting out of there if I had to drag Wainright out by his...well...by his penis even, the giggling cocksucker.

"Wainright! I think the glory hole fucker is the guy with the skunk truck. Look it's pulling away!"

Wainright pointed at the truck and yelled in the air like an honorable superhero, "Follow that penis!!"

"We're coming to get you you skunk charming, glory hole fucking jag-off!"

About 3 other trucks were pulling out of the parking lot at the same time so we really weren't sure if the driver of the skunk semi and the owner of "the penis" were one and the same person but it didn't matter. It had to be him! It just made sense. So as soon as we stopped laughing and Wainright got his car into gear, we found some loose gravel to peel out of to start our pursuit. After all, it wouldn't be a proper chase if we hadn't started it of with some squealing sounds or something equivalent so after trying unsuccessfully to burn rubber on regular pavement (by backing up 3 times and trying again), we drove off to the side of the road and found some loose stones that the Gremlin could successfully spit up and spit up those stones it did! God, were we cool!

After hitting top speed (about 63 mph), the lime green Gremlin's heat gauge began to rise to the beginning of its red danger levels forcing us to slow down and end the hunt for our skunk/penis villain who was never even close to being in our sights anyway.

"Wainright, this is the worst superhero vehicle ever. Is this thing going to make it? Should we pull over and let it cool down or what?"

"Na. It does this all the time. We'll just go the minimum speed. Here. Bust open some whip-its. Let's do some of them while we wait for the car to cool off."

Hippy crack, they call it. What a trip whip-its are. They're the only thing I know that can significantly alter the LSD high. They're intense as hell and the cool thing about doing them is that the high goes away and you're back to normal within about 30 seconds of breathing in the gas. The trouble is, is that they're not very conducive for driving...at least for about 20 seconds when your body's completely out of control. You've just got to hope your alignment on your car is straight. Then you'll be alright until you recouperate.

"Fuck, man, be careful! Shit. Wait until I'm fully recovered before you take a hit so I can properly hold the steering wheel for you. I could see us gradually going into oncoming traffic but I could barely move to do anything about it…hehe.Wainright. Wipe the drool off your fuckin’ face, hahaha." With some people, nitrous makes them drool and flap their lips involuntarily.

"Huh? Holy fuck! I'm driving!"

"You alright?"

"Yea, I'm fine but I was gone. I had some awesome thought about the meaning of life but I can't fucking remember what it was. I heard this helicopter sound in my head like I usually do on whip-its but then this gigantimongus realization hit me and then I saw the road and, poof, the realization was gone. I'm telling you, it meant something. Here. Load me another hit. Actually, load me a double. I want to find out what it was."

"Alright here, but wait until that car passes. I'll get the wheel. Go slow, dude."

Wainright took his double nitrous hit and after he stopped shaking and drooling, he looked at me, raised his eyebrows, put his finger in the air to make his epic statement and..."Goddamn it! I can't fucking remember. As soon as I'm off the high enough to talk, I lose the thought. Fuck! It was so cool but..."

While beginning to fill up the inside of my mask with tears of claustrophobic horror, anxiety, and fear, I remember tucking myself away into a corner of the plastic walled grotto and crying myself to sleep until the end of the shift. I didn't get caught, I was commended for working through lunch, and I kept my lame fucking job.

"Why the fuck did you go to work after that. I couldn't even imagine it. I would rather have quit. That must've been fucking insane."

"It was. I don't know why the fuck I did it. I mean, my brain cells were still frying when they conspired to make the decision for me to go in! Hey, Wainright. Check that out over there. It's a dirty bookstore right in the middle of nowhere. I've never been in one. Are there girls in there, like peep shows and shit?"

We were about half way up to Oshkosh and off the side of the highway, surrounded only by farm fields was an x-rated video arcade and bookstore. The parking lot was full of mostly trucks and semis. Signs on the building also advertised tobacco pipes, i.e. bongs and paraphernalia so we decided to stop on Wainright's request.

"Let's check it out. They got sex and drug stuff. Cool. We could watch a movie and jerk off too...(giggle)."

"As long as you don't try to suck my dick again."

"Dude. Why do you keep saying that? I did not try to suck your dick. Maybe you want me to suck your dick."

"You totally asked me at the Dead show if we should suck each...hey Wainright! Check it out!" In the parking lot on the back of a semi-trailer was a painting of a skunk holding a flag with some shipping company's name on it. The truck was black, white and red.

"That's fuckin' weird. I don't know though. Maybe we're just noticing skunk shit because we're talking about it."

"Maybe, but maybe not. Too fuckin' weird bro. Wonder what fucker in there owns the truck. Maybe he'll know the secret of the skunk."

When we walked into the establishment, there was smut and guilty looking pervs everywhere. No one could look each other straight in the face. ‘Why are they embarrassed’? I thought. It's just porn. Apparently, the "wrongness" and "tabooness" of being there made the sex thing more dirty and perverted enough to get off on. So I tapped into it as well and grabbed the classic 70's skin flick, "Taboo", to preview in one of their little porn booths or jack shacks, if you will. Wainright also joined in on the perversion in the booth next to me on my left after purchasing some whip-its and a canister to open the whip-it cartridges with. (For those unschooled in cheap thrills, legal substances that get you high, glue-sniffing and aerosal inhaling and the like, whip-its are nitrous oxide cartridges used for creating pressure to push whip cream out of its can. It's also used as a type of anesthetic in dental offices and is commonly referred to as "laughing gas.")

The room was small, dark, and dank and smelled of sweat, cum, and pine sol. I remember feeling greasy and claustrophobic and wanted to leave until a hot scene in the movie pulled my attention off of my discomfort. Wow! Porn! Such a high it gives you especially when you're young and not getting any. I loved it. I wasn't exactly clear about the rules but I'm sure masturbating was allowed, I mean that was the whole point, I thought, so I pulled it out and started "waxing my dolphin" as Wainright liked to put it. I felt like a dirty perverted fuck but what a rush it was. Why do things that are considered wrong or immoral seem more fun than anything else?

In the midst of my jacking process, I had been glued to the screen and really hadn't investigated my surroundings very well. I looked to the left and noticed a hole in the partition that separated the booths. It was the perfect size to put a penis through so I figured out what it was for right away. 'Damn!' I thought. Why would someone stick their wang in a hole not knowing who's on the other side? After all, there were no women who frequented the establishment and even if you didn't care, wouldn't you be afraid of some psycho chopping your cock off or something? I put my ear near the hole on the left of me and heard Wainright saying things in between his giggles like, "Oooh yea, fuck that bitch you pig fucker!" and "Yea, take it in the ass you fuckin' whore!"

I looked towards the partition on my other side, opposite of my friend's and centimeters from my elbow and much to my dismay, was a hard penis stuck through the glory hole to my right. I let out a startled, quick, "Ah!" and involuntarily punched the penis giving it a strong right uppercut that would've made Mike Tyson proud. I never saw a hard man's penis in person before. It seemed to have a personality of its own and I swear it tilted its head and looked at me. "Ay, how ya doin'?"--it might as well have said in an Italian accent.

My now injured masturbating neighbor to my right and person attached to my newfound Italian penis friend let off an absurd and distorted medley of agonistic and cataclysmic screams of pain. I heard his door slam open and the sound of quick heavy footsteps as he tore out of the building. Wainright and I opened our "cell" doors simultaneously and I told him what happened. He, of course, laughed his ass off as I grabbed his arm to pull both of us out of the establishment before we got into any kind of trouble. After all, what an embarrassing assault charge that would be to face in a public court--assaulting a penis! Fuck that. We were getting out of there if I had to drag Wainright out by his...well...by his penis even, the giggling cocksucker.

"Wainright! I think the glory hole fucker is the guy with the skunk truck. Look it's pulling away!"

Wainright pointed at the truck and yelled in the air like an honorable superhero, "Follow that penis!!"

"We're coming to get you you skunk charming, glory hole fucking jag-off!"

About 3 other trucks were pulling out of the parking lot at the same time so we really weren't sure if the driver of the skunk semi and the owner of "the penis" were one and the same person but it didn't matter. It had to be him! It just made sense. So as soon as we stopped laughing and Wainright got his car into gear, we found some loose gravel to peel out of to start our pursuit. After all, it wouldn't be a proper chase if we hadn't started it of with some squealing sounds or something equivalent so after trying unsuccessfully to burn rubber on regular pavement (by backing up 3 times and trying again), we drove off to the side of the road and found some loose stones that the Gremlin could successfully spit up and spit up those stones it did! God, were we cool!

"That brunette chic at the party. She had huge fucking jacks! They were beautiful round, real tits...I can't believe you didn't see them. You love big tits."

"That party sucked, dude. That one short, preppy kid with the gay lookin' buzz cut fuckin' thing and the sky blue sweater was saying shit about me that I couldn't hear or understand followed by him and his faggoty friends laughing and staring at me. It reminded me of high school and your friends are lame and boring by the way."

I was pissed. I hated being at effect of anything and not being able to leave when I wanted to fucking leave because my friend was having a good time at a party that we drove HIS car too. I was forced to endure a bunch of idiots and couldn't fuck with any of them because they were Wainright's "friends" and owners of the house where I had to stay that night. It sucked and I let Wainright know it.

Our drive home was a hungover and bitchy experience. Besides the continuous smell of skunks, the trip was uneventful and drawn out. Upon seeing the small, gray and old industrial skyline of downtown Milwaukee, I let out a sigh of relief and felt my body settle. Milwaukee--the town I always want to leave but am always glad to be back in. I suppose a lot of us have this kind of town in our lives.

At the time, I was living with my folks but staying with Wainright about 3 nights a week. He told me to drop him off at his girlfriend's house and take his car back to his place. He got out, laughed and we agreed that over all we had a pretty good fucking time. I began to pull away as Wainright approached the front door of his girlfriend's duplex. A weird sense of emotion and deja vu had come over me and about a second or two following this strange and subtle feeling, Wainright and I witnessed a skunk darting out of the bushes to the right of the steps where he was standing. As in my dream, the skunk ran passed Wainright's feet, nearly brushing up against his legs before scurrying into the bushes on the left. We looked at each other in disbelief, Wainright shrugged his shoulders in an "I have no answer for what just happened" gesture, we both shook our heads in astonishment and I drove off and went to bed.

Throughout the end of Summer and into the Fall, Wainright and I continued our debauchery with more acid, more tequila and more skunk synchronicities. Skunks just became the backdrop to our hallucinatory, drunken haze. We were on a roll and our stinky furry friend was our mascot.

Hell, Wainright and I were in synch even when we weren't as in our separated yet united Halloween experience where we took a bus to Madison, dropped a couple doses of cid, and traded off swigs out of a bottle of Cuervo all while we were dressed up as 70's style street hookers. We stepped out of the bus on State street, hazed, blazed, and crazed. I took 2 steps off the bus and lost Wainright for the evening. The next morning, we got back to Milwaukee at the exact same time. Wainright had entered the back door and I had entered the front door, simultaneously meeting at the midway point in the kitchen.

"No fucking way! Did you just get here!?"

"I just walked in the front door fuck fuck! What the hell happened? I got off the bus and, poof, you were gone! You had my money and my ID! I don't know how the fuck I did it in high heels but I climbed a tree on State street looking for you above the crowd."

"You climbed a tree in drag? Hahaha!"

"It wasn't easy, man, especially with the bottle of tequila in my one hand. It was a skinny tree too. I had to stab the tree trunk with one of my stiletto pumps as I screamed out your name at the top of my lungs. I was swinging from the tree like a drunk ass chimpanzee in drag while people crowded around telling me to jump. I got about two, three stories up before some rent-a-cop knuckleheads told me to get down."

"I had a fucked up night as well."

"Fuck you, Wainright! At least you had money and shit! I ended up sleeping at the Wisconsin Badger football team’s frat house or whatever the fuck it was...on a beer soaked floor again, I might add. Everything was semi-cool until the next day when Halloween was over and some ugly brute of a drag queen was in their house. The night before I was a funny guy dressed like a woman but in the morning, they called me a faggot and through me out...literally and physically threw, as in thrown in the air, out!!"

"Relax, man. I didn't have it much better. I slept in a hotel lobby with my face buried in some couch and my ass up in the air while some drunk redneck fuckers were feeling me up and shit! When I woke up and they saw that I was a man, they wanted to beat me into oblivion! The concierge called the police and the rednecks bolted before they showed up. The police escorted me to the Greyhound bus station. They told me to leave right away or they were going to throw me in jail. The whole experience made me feel like a cheap skank. How the fuck did you get home?"

"I was walking downtown, with my nylons ripped, my make-up running, wig all fucked up, hungover like a bitch in bright daylight, freezing my ass off with no money or identification..."

"Dude! You're going off! How did you get home!?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you--at my lowest fucking point, these two hot chics I knew from the dorms at UWM saw me walking and made fun of me. They didn't recognize me until I took the wig off and told them who I was. I explained to them my situation and they said that they were on their way to Milwaukee anyway, so I tagged along. They gave me food and shit and I got a phone number as well."

"Well, then shit, man. I guess it wasn't all bad."

"Yea, right. Fuckin' hell."

Wainright and I laughed about our synchronistic and poetically fucked up night but it was the beginning of the end, not only for us but for the enigmatic skunk, as well. A little under two months later, Wainright, Benedict Wainright, if you will, had turned on me half way into one of our many psychedelic mushroom trips. From the perspective of an unaltered mind, it could have been interpreted as a petty betrayal but coming from my highly intuitive and symbolistically based hallucinatory backed consciousness, his actions were offensive, gutless, and revealing of his true selfish colors.

It happened on Christmas Eve during a blizzard on Milwaukee's Eastside in front of the historic Oriental Theatre. We had went to see an animated film festival where previous to the start of the show in the theatre's lobby, Wainright and I had scarfed down 2 or 3 grams each of some clean and highly effective cubensis mushrooms that we had cut up and sprinkled on a peanut butter and "shroom" sandwich. Upon leaving the show, each rubbing our mandibles that were cramped and sore from 2 hours of nonstop laughter, we got bushwhacked by some college chodes who decided to chuck snowballs at us for whatever the fuck reason, more than likely because they seen us laughing and acting like a couple of idiots. The iceballs looked like giant glistening boulders with an exaggerated velocity that my mushroom mind's sped up and heightened senses could not comprehend as anything less than an ultimately horrifying threat to my safety. Wainright, the chickenshit fucking traitor, freaked out as well but instead of sticking it out with his friend, chose to join the other side and began pegging me with snow grenades right along side our assailants! Betrayed!! I was obliterated and left to die, lying on the sidewalk in a pile of half-broken snowballs, cold ice, and muddy slosh.

That night I ended our friendship and stuck to it the next day even after sobering up. Shortly after, Wainright moved back to his hometown of Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin just outside of Green Bay. I have never seen him since. The last I heard of him was that he had developed a bad cocaine habit. Who knows. Fuck ‘em. He was one of those numerous characters you meet on the path to your destination but not a character you would see at the destination itself. I think the skunk had the right idea. Piss on him.

Less than a week after the snowball incident and during the Winter interim, the break in college between semesters, I had pulled another indulgent all-nighter of dissolution and again showed up shabbily coherent for my job of hazardous waste removal. While the work crew was preoccupied with their set up preparations, I had crept off down a side hall in a stealth-like, clandestine manner and, to my great fortune, I had found a room tucked safely away where I could hide and rest my tattered and battered body. I looked towards the back of the room and jumping out at me, impossible to miss, was a mural of a giant smiling skunk, Pepe’ Le Pew, of course, covering the entire space of the wall. I threw down my tools and my body and propped myself comfortably up against the wall, looking up at the painting. 'What a fitting image to fall asleep to', I thought. I cracked a tiny, lazy smile and was completely unconscious in a matter of seconds.

Six hours later, I was awoken by my foreman. This time, there was no weaseling my way out of it. This time I had lost my job. “The skunk told me I needed to sleep” were my last words. Fired. Halle-fucking-luya. I left my tools and gas mask on the ground as an offering to the skunk god, flipped of my boss, naturally, and went the fuck home. It was over. Everything was over--Wainright, my job--all over. It was also the last time I saw Pepe’ in any mystical form or message and with New Years approaching and 1987 coming to an end, so was the era of the dualistically exalted, synchronized skunk.

(Wisconsin, July to December, 1987) . . . . . aa

 

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