Sigh... A boy, a car, a girl. This one's for her. —July 20, 2022
In bed, he at the edge of seventeen and one considerably less, asked “If I ran away, you know, get out of Aleppo, would you come?” Friend, “Sure.” Planned to write a note etc. and grumbled until.
Mojo puddown the phone with a clang, and rushed out of the cherry phosphate pharmaceuticauldron cross the crass Deereater, Michigan villagey street, solid red Buick revved, cross the trax to the riverroad, on towards Ickyland. Cripete, whaddan afternoon. Yet he grinned softly to himself in humglorious anticipation of liberations yet to come. On two wheelie he cornered Ickystreet, and bounced down washboard cobbles millimiles to her pagan abode. Buick kaff-kaffired in disgust at Mojo's vast perambulatory mechano-ignorance, and rolloed to a halt right in front (a coincidence Mojo couldn't chide, sentimental buffoon) of Icky’s. As he leapt out to caress the car under its flayed hood, a vision of aphroloveliness bounded rapido out of the bushes, jeans-clad and carrying a minor knapsack. Icky, looking elated, out-of-breathed "This was all I could take out without them being suspicious.” "You mean you didn't tell them?' Mojo queried in sub-fear. "I told them I was going out with you—I'll call them tonight" Icky set everyone's place straight. Happier than he'd ever been. Getting down onto the mainroad, Four dollars of rhino gas was bought. Mojo and Icky were way on their way, theirs. Highway lapped past with a slurp-slurp happyface tattoo treadmilling water on Mojo’s psyche as they rode away, for Icky it was a truly bombadier, kinetic idea to suck some of the boredom mat of her summer vacation. The road unravelled before them like kittentwine, as miles passed painlessly in their modest vehicle of joy.
In the small town of Cheesey, corners stung the Buick, and Mojo had to dickaround under the hood briefly, em-bare-assed at the harking honchoes, idling engines in-a-lined behind. Jackalope, MI was old, and clothes ware on sale there. Mexacalis winced at their juvenalian presence, prescience. Roll on, Rollo, roll. Late in the nigh their Buicki rolled into Alibio. Roadwide cowtown, vague industry, manors, as a bluebadged bulldick stood surly before an orangey scrubbed turgid burger-Palance, a silhouette of justice before mercy. Jacked up-n'-off Chevelles Stutz’d and strutted sputtering by, darkgreen advertisements of youth aimlessly patrolling in xenophobic defiance. Mojo, wideeyed and cocksure, concerned, turned wan sidestreet, over a curb, and parked up the Buick behind a bar. The parking lot was dirt dark behind an aged tavern where village patriarchii probably rolled down ninepins and gruffed electorals over. their Pabsts. Anyway, Mojo thet it’d do, so he and Icky jumped out licked up and sauntered towards Main Street. A black Texaco mapman mumbled as the aesthetes loaded up-‘n-down and trotted uptown. Ick’s strong Santawalk, head held high on neck and breasts firm and sculpted, long-legged beside large bony Frankenstein-plod of Moj. The street stretched wide gaping before them, empty in the ten-o-clock shush. Streetmoon light hit-licked the shopfronts. Eleven bells. A bushy freeking ontos-sopher called to Icky’s attention but his "'sorry many we're closed" plea pushed the voyageurs bodily into a nearby elderly five-and-dime. Under the medical flouressence, he anoited the Teiscoes' LPs, while she dug the racks for Milkman & the Roaming Stoats. The two soon joined left to roam to the end of the street. Passing a phonebooth outside a corner drugstore. Icky haltertopped, whisped: “I'd better call home" Momo fished pocket from a handsome of dimes and squarters’ quatters. "You call, ask for my brother Alum" she cajoled, wanting her Mojo-beerbrother to speak connotations of preference before the responsibo-demandings of her own litheylee sylph. They halfheatedly argghed on the street corner for moments before he finality refuted, wanting nought to do with the beeseeched besieging chitty.
She squeezed her slip inside the pho’booth, coin-dropped, operatorr-rr-rr-rred till her blood brother sibling answered. “Hello Alum cancel my modeling 'cause Im going to the Dunes with M…” It was settled. That over, the dual strolled past drunks and indianas to the pocolocarno-cafe. Insidiouse„ a pudgey waitress-wench slapped down two big glass Croco-Choleas. Old village farts sat spitting at the counter, while in the cornerbooth sat a bevy of rippled red-eyed simplicissimus teen, two pair of vaguely greazo potential, brushing hair out of acne eyes clutching a brownpaper bottle. Fee’ing each offer up, they talked loudly and stared all encompassing, with challenging, mold orbs. Hex serenely regal presence made Mojo feel socially secure and free from non-relaxation. Their whistles refreshed and their minds closer to unencumbered, Mojo and Icky floated dreamily out of the dive, down the dark bonights street to the alley behind the bar where there parked, into patient Buick and happily got the hell out of town. Buick roared gutbucket out onto the open roads in search of sleep. Pave abated, slipped under his hubs like paper off a long fat roll, miles between them and the burg swathed in inky meant a good night's for both of them at no needless expense. A dozen or so away, wheeled off of Madam macadam to a lonely, ill-kept dirt barely-more-than-a catalpa’s cattle trail. She liked it, smiled, and licked her lips, moved close, whupped hills and dawn, a path to the edge of some farmer’s field beckoned, and Buick edged itself up, beside a tractor and stalled. They got out, looked over the empty plowed prairie, a farmlight glimmered in the short past distant. “This is as good a place as any.” Mojo didn’t care. A short strait of sea miles of earth lay rolling 'tween lift and life. Icky jumped in the hack seat, long, tennis-legs hooked over the front. Ratchet-jamming on the parking brake, the renegade Michiga-boy flopped back like a stout rainbow trout fish too beside. Soon uncomfort„ he braced against his bedroll and she slid over the vinyl seatcovers into his arms, just lying there. They talked of real, of ridiculous, of course. Long and a
night, some sleep. Their first together, outside of poorly real, parental homes.
Moors hissed a lacework mist fragrant as dung before daylight had a chance to singe its ephemeral coat-teat-tails. Wittnauer on Mojo's wrist said 'bout five a.m. and he rushed sensational to find Icky sleeping heavily in his arms. He snorted, she woke, they blinked, and exchanged words like postcards. He checkmarked the sky she stretched like a cat and climbed into the front seat. He cranked over Buick wth a phlegmatic explosion, the ole car grudging obediently underway, and Mojo and Icky crept unceremoniously onto the main roads and out of Alibio’s all-bison territory. As they summoned dawn with their drowsy, dressy spirits gradually pulling the mist off the priapus prairies, miles deferred to their mutual assure. SpittIe Creek was too early for a fox breakfasti, besides dad it's Saturday. Finally a Kali’mezzuzah bakery buggered at least its coffee-hips crept into their scams, demanding a stop. They bought a dozen cookies and two brew hot javas. They explored their environs, passing mammoth pharma-citadels. Upchuck was where their self-tranquilized friend Alice Wonderland's Quaaggas come from, though the People’s Puma Party deems them “death drugs”. A magical garden upswept them, a city park, quasi-Xanadu with swans arch–craning, Ming dynasty wood ducks lowing in obeisance, and mini-waterfalls. This was too good to be true, and they reeled into its crooked path byways. They walked hands in beside a stream, embracing Byronically in the seven a.m. like a couple of teenagers they were. They strolled music, digging on the perfection sculpted plum polyglot playlot, as pride in humanity swelled up in them at its good taste. Soon they came upon great rock outcropping blasted away to form lazy conscript enclaves for ‘coons, strutting peacocks, and, lumpy spread-eagled bears thoughtlessly painted blue by vandals. Or, by the zookeepers, for identification— Don’t shoot the blue ones!—in case they escaped? One exhibition cave contained, only one bee, probably scowling. They dwelt upon this vale for a time, then leisurely left via strange winding curves, awash in happy memories.
Outside of town, Icky shrieked. Mojo puzzled as she pointed out a bebe, scarcely a yard long, hopping in his driveway all dressed up, like a congressman on his way to church. The little yank played happily, first on one foot, then the other. His haircut was coldwar consumers’ military, a Francis Gary Powers Waring blender salesman razorcrew, with little ears sticking out of his jug like bottlenecks. His bizarre presence yet Dada-self assertion made him the object of the vagabonds' giggle. Icky loved him on sight, she normally disliking little tucks. Mojo envied him, wishing he was that age and cut. Nevertheless, the tot was contemplated later in other-words-fail-me opportune moments, by both Mojo and Icky the rest of the journey eternity. Heading in the most general of direction on a variety of unmarked roads, the schoolbus banditos seeped in every bead of local culture passible or possible. Soon after view the magick chit, a gross gothic barn loped menacing crimson, emblazoned para-continental in Roman bath lettering, “Barn Theatre”, sweet commercial with shows nightly. Absolutely a diminutive farmhand-house said “Elmo” largely. Outside the town Dourmanic a fluorine watertower had "Rudy” printed on it. Signs were big in that part of the state. Icky, Mojo took full advantage in committing it all to memory, to pull out upon the other when times were far-getable. Dourmanic was, as the song says, Sincerely Not Fun, signs deliberately confuso to the young lovesters’ discrepancy. Confidentially, they were rerouted thru the black boogie section of town until they came upon a crass plateau where hiways sighed and sent them upchuck out of town. Lickety-split on the proper road, they stopped by an, abandoned gen'l store to cool Buick, lap-dogging, like a house afire. Mojo had a cookie and a cigar, Icky looked for matches by the roadside, If Odilon Redon drew Christ's Crown of Thorns it would look like the button on Mojo’s tunic. Anyway, Icky's favorite pasttime, rummage sales, sprang up in rapid succession, so she implored her chubby-duckling paramour to stop. The. first at a hilly decrepit farm with ugly dogs, she bought a Norma Jean 1950s white Danae-dance dress, looking ridiculous on her post-consciousness silver womankind extravaganza chassis. Mojo looked at the toys and asked the old lady about the weather to the west. Mille down
the next, Ick bought for a dime a pair of clunky blue shoes from a lady bent down sorting rugs on the lawn. At the third, on a wrong rodeo haIf-dozen metric kilometers (word learned in Advanced Math class) from Duneburgh, Mojo saw the fattest woman he ever saw in his life, an Atlas Stonehange paperweight clad in yellow cotton straining to break from its tense confines, managing the boxcar–plus of yesterday's papers on their way to be pulped. Icky scrounged thru boxes, myriad, Mojo eyed a Czarist officers' greatcoat, but a stingray bike urchin dissuaded him with "It's not NOW generation,” gestured solemnly. No more was purchased and Von Buick galloped towards the lake and polysacral dunes. One more grouch sale, and a sIippry' katydid lay lady offered up to Mojo a Natural Steel brand lap guitar, crying thyme country ballads soft n' sweet. He yin’d and yang’d and almost bought but foresight gummed reckon in the back of his mind and again, more resolutely, so no more was purchased and that car of love galloped towards the lake and sacred sands.
Sand" mumbled Icky as they gulled onto the highway and the behemothing
"
,
dunes. "That's right; sand”, the crystalline crunchy grit down silica Castillian-hot veil orange transluce, pilled mountains of hill above and beyond, creeping into down over shoes, houses, cars, cats, roads, boats, abodes, planes, skydogs. Hotsun rabies poured damp his matted brow, as he peered over with a grin, she some apprehensived languidly. His Mecca, dreamed Citadel, Ur-abject of his reverence was finally he was here. With her. Buick rolled along, a-clacketa on the rumble roadway. “Okay, first thing let's get some lunch" Icky whipoorwilled. Major ‘thusiastically whipt ole Buick dawn the straightened narrow Red Bison Narrow Highway to a pink drivein-qua-noveIty-shop, advertising waterbeds $17.95, t-shirts, Frisbees (Icky's protocollegiate vice) and the usual chilidogs, burgers et al. Approached by a poplar nubilessence waitresse, the diptych declined her friendly offers and went inside. A mammoth bronzed beach bum and his spread sat sipping at a table aside, glimmering at Mojo and/or Icky fierce as AIibioniks two nights before. A less demanding girl took their orders, Icky eating a sandwich and Mojo some burger-or-other, Croco-Chocleas for both. The aliens left„ passing the jukebox making as, cryptic crack about cottage cheese. Mojo asked the servitude if she knew where they could camp by the lake, to only elicit a "Sorry, but I don't live around here*. They paid their tab, left, perused lakeward side roads, pondering illegalities. NO PARKING AT ANY TIME MOJO & ICKY said all signs. Suddenly as Mojo bellied along, muffle pop drop drag clang along the pave, sunk stopped car. He saw the pipe hang like a flaccid bum caught in the rails of the Twilight Limited, and pissed internally. Sat, thought all as one about this one. Icky thought of plans, and on her suggers he tied the dangle to the chass with the leather thong round his throattle. She’s an Einstein genius. They incited along to gas stations by the way, finally found one who’d do the necessary fix for $40 or so. Mr. Gas Man was paternal, understood, grizzled face and uniform from a life under cars and things. He profferred them a ride back to their accommodations, they loaded the trunk, “We’ll manage” was their offthewall answer to his inquiries about their ex officio campground. As afternoon seeped out of the pitcher, they jumped off and
Mojo immersed himself in an octopus-sea of inky thanks. “We’re here” he signed as Gas Dad drove away. Two Capitol-8-Track-Tape-Cartridge-Club freeks sat forlorn outside the State Park on the lawn, their shag hair splendor denim blue and boots hip. Proper. One sat businesslike, orange shoulderlength brushing as he grotto’d his teeth. The other, blond classic artnouveau hermaphro delicately stared watery powder-blue eyes into space, face contortionist like a girl on a beach with a fish stuck in her craw, contemplating his lifesituation.
Mojo approached these eleven blue men cautiously. They had, he voluntarily learned,been kicked outa the park, fined two dollars worth, threatened with a sixty-smacker penance and were victimized by verbal skillfulabuse from the park ranger, the well-known and popular villain Ranger Smith on "Yogi Bear". Leave late in the day, with the campers, they decorously warned their novitiate pals. The redfreak talked like a hard-edged Joe Blank computer programmerr supplying most of the lumberjack whoppers of their sufferings at the hands of the forest-crazed Federal badmouths, while the lil’ eunuch (Icky later said, you know, he could've been a girl) only stared limply, and when he did talk, he rumbled in one of those slightly guttural scrapey high voices that at least one kid along any given sandy beach always seems to have, and insists on shouting kid commands to his tow-headed cohorts with. Finally after his tirade, the businessman asked for a cigarette. Mojo the momo monster was thankful for this taut warning, and reached pocketside t'give him his second-to-the-last cigar, leaving him self-immolating at the bottom of a mountain of his own grinning felicitations, as Mo & Ick shouldered their packs and the sleeping bag and trudged lakewater-toward. Icky breathed soft a. whistle thru her teeth, half fatigue and half offhanded amazement as she and her star-struck friend trudged towards their spot. Mojo fearing scowling park denizens said "Let's ford a stream'. and they got their jeansbottoms wet. They paused on a hill, right at the near property edge of the State Park beach. Icky wondered the effects of absurdly camping under the public nose. A gaggle of puffy-faced teens in a well-organized folk song singalong shmirked as the ragtag roughriders trudged by sheepishly, wishing the obviously illegal sleeping bag didn't show. The sun crept slowly toward the magnetic lake. Sand turned to shrapnel, trees birthed seagull bones unto the sky then died', horrible twisted rotting Futurist corpses„ punctuated by the silent checkpoint carpet of deceased rainbow perch. They walked sun at their side (left hand) over gobs of sand and pebbles that would turn a jeweler’s eyes around, agag. A whale’s throat, that's how powerful it was.
The land just subliminally spake welcomes as they approached, so just as the solar buffoon was touching down after successful daily spaceflight, Mojito and Ickyangry reached the Citadel core. They sped and aped up the yawning embankment, the soft rolling hill of brush-lined sand, found tre spot, stashed their mutual stuff behind a sleepy Bo tree that would serve as their convivial shelter. Mojo put on a sweater against the .the upcoming, nocturne, Icky put on his thrillinois jacquet agin' the chill,, and they inclined to the beach to watch the now-vibrant pumpkin sun set over the water. Mojo lit a cigar and laughed a lot. Icky was happy. Mojo could hardly believe that he was here, his playpower nativity, land of the giants, scene of his initiation. An active life-force oozed all around, slurping beatific energy into every fibreglas of his pudd.ing-like flesh. As the coldness crept over them, they vanished up the trail. Mojo found a bottle of wine, and when friendly collegiate vagabonds camped above them asked about it, Mo, no Saint Peter, saw fate's croak trap and shelved his denials to produce it for them. They differed to share it and their warm fire, but Mojo the magus and Icky politely declined, to instead spend the time lying in the signing bag an a sandy ledge under the banyan grove, watching the meteoric sky and the prospectors’ fire flicker, laughing, talking, soul-spilling. That night Icky cranked Mojo off.
Ibizia and Madcap rose about ten a.m. Mojo just lay happily blinking, hot scalar solar plexus in his fly's eye, amused with self-realization’s Where*The*Fuck*He*Was impossibility, unlikely fantasy of lifer something he'd keep stashed, stored in a dark recesses, not even confiding after demi-dozen of stump-strength G-n'-T's, a hothouse pastoral he'd just dig himself to sleep on. Yet this was a carefully staged, reaI, something he would owe himself for a long after. Icky busied, nibbily munching the last of the grey soapy Kalimethuselah butterscotch icebox cookies, offered him one. She shed her shirt, shorts, donning her minor white ‘kini. Mojo, jeaned, wished he had swamsultables with him. Bemusedr they tidied camp and began their haIfhour trek down the beach-front to the city beach, and the pleasures it withheld. No one seemed to be from the posh cabineros that lined that stretch, hid discreetly in the woods but evidenced (and audienced) by substantial "NO TRESSPASSING"' signals. The town of Wacky Yaco Beach was crowded with humans, frolicking, fornicating, bolluxing in the foamie sweIl. A pylon halif-cackIed, a menacing, visor that only Mojo and Icky could see. Naomi was probably the name of the porcine slash that managed the dispensary there, so her lime-gravel father served the urban renewal furnituremovin' badass steamboat boys as he took Icky' and Mojo's orders for breakfast. They picked up the area advertiser—a poorly printed yet rack printed yet, racketship gazette. Very mega, thought the highschool editor-wannabe. On an illustrated birth announcement, Icky said, "It looks life the 2001 baby”. Old ladies and “Good Psychology Comics" abounded. Ochre dunderheaded pharmacists, Byzantine chiropractors, all amaIged-and-promulgamated under this black sun of jejeune journalism. Mojo, always the publisher, was deeply involved. Icky, the offhand Mark Twain, merely danced dilettantes around it. A certain bottlecap meant tent dente off on thatsummerssong "Trembling Dice", and it was considered as they passed the jukebox, Ick longing by now for the real Micki’s prowls.
They trotted the long walk back, and settled on their lonely perforation of beach. Icky unhinged her top to tan her vanilla bosom, but was forced to keep covering it before any pennyante andy magee hiking by. Mojo, in his baggy blue staph-of-life stepfather jeans lay enshrined beides trying to sun-darken his spread of continental paunch, pale and rubbery as a wet prophylactic balloon. Hours end upon overend they lay out, reddened shoulders hot, broily and crabbish. Sand expected sat clinging to everything organic, sacrosanct. It was a beach day. Also they walked the afternoom Tobruk, hours upon endless, to the pith of the Chic-crow-go crowd packed tin urban spendthrift. The hot sand. They hiked up the path hoping for a ride back to their repaired home car, and university girls in a VW van obliged amid sunburned arms, giggles. Off, Mojo paid the completed garage in travelers’ chex, glad he’d forsaken his previous steel guitar engagement. Back in, they pondered their situation. Should they try to contact Obese Gale, Mojo’s puffy one-nightin-a-boat sexconfidant (square as sin, but now she wears "jeans and halter tops", said her unexpected letter this summer, so she's OK), girl gall living in a beach town not far from here…? Ick shrugged that she thought so, and they looked for fun. Which spells, burgers first. Big Annie ran the youthy delicatessque in shirt sleeves, so over their sweetfizz syrups, they inquired within. No telephone (for your use) and none in the city, for beach combers ripped ‘em off for souvenirs. Try Saintshtevesville to the north. "But you can leave your car here overnight" she assented to their second inquiry blurb. They gushily-as-usual thanked her (where it says “they” it means “he”, for M. did all the talking in public life), and split. Saintshtevesville is built around a nuclear reactor, which, when completed a Bible’s year ago, gave the town its purpose and pride. Lit for Life! But at the gate of the energium, the guard who stops folk told them there’s no outside line (top secret) and headed them towards the non-town (hah!). Phonebooth found, they cajoled,
cawed the immobile negritudinal operator for proper numbers of "Bud" Handsome (Obese Gale's pa) on Leaf St., Muskoxen, Michigan. Finally digits were fount, madeleine chang change inserted, and call placed. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Brring. Lamely, lonely gulf as Mojo meta-realized, No. One. Was. Home. “So, we'll try later or tomorrow". Back in the wheels so loved, they stopped at one more garage salad. The state of Michigan was moving someplace that summer, had to finally clear out the garage. Icky suggested breaking up beaverboard icons of Our Lord Jesus Christ to use as postcards home. Oh yes, another thought. Nothing gained, they ventured back to Annie’s to stash the bloodred car. A white trucker-cracker picked them up, eyein’ Ick’s inny-outy thighs as Mojo flashed TIME-magazine milestones of rape and murder. He deposited them a halfhour’s hike from their camp. At the City Beach phone he made one more desperate try to reach Obese Gale, to no avail, under the auspices of a Godfather-like under-awning gathering. As night dropped they scurried back to their beckoning campus, dodging helicopters all the way. Temperate rose, not dropped with the night. Icky, nevertheless o.t.r. and bloody, gave in to the demands of Mojo’s loins, and they gradually stripped under the sleep-over-bag and fucked like gravity, greatly, enjoyably. Ever the barbarians, they washed and cavorted drapeless in the tepid lake and languid air, racially nude. They went back to bedroll and slept wise.
Next morning they went for a leisurely brunch at the beachside canteen Soon left for postcards, walking on the shady yet underdeveloped boulevard from the Public Beach to downtown, Icky muttered “I've seen that guy go by before" as a night-dark demi-Olds climbed over hills behind on streetracing tires. Mojo shrugged, plodding barefoot up the shrill level embankment. Suddenly the seen-before car passed, halted, and the shaggy-bear driver inside beckoned and unlatched. Ick n' Mo sprinted over, slid beside the gent, with felicitations. A gritty bluesband throbbed from the 8-track speakers as the longhaired mountainlummox recanted a sip off his Coarse beer. A beerfed shagrhino in blues denim, he oozed flesh and beard, over red vinyl seatcovers. This friendly fat satyr, overflowing Preraphaelite Ali Baba screeched tanklike to the the front of a seedy drugstore. “I'll be back this way in about 15 minutes, if ya wanna ride back,” he gruffed, and the unspoken affinity the duo felt for this rare-consciousness fleabag—but probably playfully enjoyable—hedonist and notorious prole-pleasure gourmet tempted them to languish sunups on the curb await for him, but expediency forced them to gratuitously to decline a finite return voyage as they, all smiles and well-wishes, hopped out of the cramped joycar and into the stinky pharmacy to look for the dullest postcards possible.
.
In the dingy cure-shoppe, Mojo sniggered at the rubes. Icky contemplated a postcard with a kitten provocatively pastelled in bed, captioned "I miss you.” Mo suggested she send it to his bison-buddy Jereboamm, never inserted into Icky’s charms, much to her inflamma-consternation. They both toothpoured over the ambiguous postaIs, till he finally decided on a classic view of a picnic table, she selecting delicately a peer equally dumb to the umpteenth degree. To make penmessage, the scruffians craftily crossed streets to a prissy little blanch branch bank, damnably suburban in whitetrim bay widow windows. Entering, a shirt-colored wirerimmed junior exec suspiciously eyed their barefeet browness, compounded by Mojo's shake-age hair n' beard or Icky's unhampered boobs. Casually traversing sensuous carpetry they roped against one of those things they have in banks to write on, you know. Finally letting them know what’s going on, he wrote of “minor car trouble" to his parents. She pencilled a curt "It's not strenuous" to Alum. They left the tightly-sphincter’d usurers’ abode and entered the neighboring Quonset hut post office, with a single quarter getting both cards stamped and them some. Slipping languidly (the tone of the whole daylight vacancies) from post office unto main drag, they strolled back towards the beach.. Shortly after musing an, abandoned freshfruit market, dwelling upon its contents-filled demise like a vision of Circe eating watermelon out the blue, the mobile muskmelon compatriot of earlier lore brupped to a scathing halt next to. Mojo and Icky leapt in, proud to see their metfriend. A written-about serious Heavy Meal trio blared forth from not-shy speakers. The bear-driver-person ruled up a subdivision road, explaining that he was looking for his friends, they were artists doing a mural for some guy's beachcomber frontal. Kids looked at each other with knowingly laughing eyes. “We're artists too," Mojo blurted, as Icky chuckled deeply, no feint. The giant didn't find his original sin friend, dropped Mojo and Icky off at the beach, but all were happy to find they all shared. Such a level of blessed artistic community, yes. The teen-artists headed back down the beach with a beam.
The svelte paraerotic Icky bounded from the beachhead oryx-like to the fullyfrontal font of sand camp, basking, glory in its greenberet dry bush concealment. Her sexy beach-crusted Toltec-woman feet padded poundily soft anthill fort footprincess. Mojo wheezed beautifully after her, adoration swirling in his bottlegreen aviator lenses. They packed up, sweaters, betters, his lumberjack whopper coat that Icky wore much more'n he dld, her daintilissima knapsack, spare shirt, sandaloes and the indomitable sweetpea bedroll, she shaking, off the sand argumentative, alive. They soundly buried their ecological rubbish, ruttish and boogalooed down the beach. Pie-eyed corpses of unethical herring, commanded the mounting sun, the mourning sun, and lay carpets of (SRC) milestones for Mojo and Icky to gauge their communication by. Aluminum cans and Keds, dead poplars and rabbles all preened with their visual tweezer verbiage from Mojo's brow-lip receiving little better than toadstool hmm-kaffs or wrinkled harrumphs from the overtly taciturn Icko. Their collective eyes getting the better end of solar pranks for nearly and hour, miles ‘tween the two civiIians and their cathedral hopeship campsite. The public beatbeach buzzed with minor, friendly activity, hardly reminiscent at the insectivore swarms of windowycity bastards that ate up the sweetspaceside of the great Mesozoic inland sea that previous Sunday, a heartland hot Sabbath fest so seemingly distant from Icky’s, Mojo’s rejuvenation headquarters. They hiked up the galenic boulevard from the upchuck parkinglot and panzer pub bathhouses, thumbs hitched out, though no friendly rides passed their way. Another. demi-heure of plodding saw them out the public garden of eden and on to the dreary redbisonarrow roadside. There their ragtag ruffhouse appearance caused tightdrawered stares from area fumblebums, Finally a pubescent circular-tent goodguy lava’ed up in a Chevrolet Gamera (baldly exclaiming itself in the back) offer-the solace (distance). Tapedeck braggadcio blared brag-midnite rock and roll, capturing Icki’s heart with a sweep and Mojo's pleasant relaxation.
They got off shortly at Fat Annie’s, thanking the soft country beefalo, who gave Icky backhand if-only-another-time looks in the rearview. Death hovered around Annnie’s roadhouse with a silent pall until little berrypicking children explained to a confused pair of aesthes how Annie didn’t work on Mondays. Saddened at no long goodbyes or breakfast, the Moj and Ick regained Buickwork. ransacked gently a grocer for bodily milkfunk, and headed north. They eldoradoed up to Luddbedlam by dark, scrimming in Ward's-clean W.T. Ghod cement-fioorscape in ravenspit greyitude. Hobbited dinglly scruff thru the groceanic aisles, heads bobbing for rolls and ojay. Futureshock gripped Mojo. Fat Gale seemed an unlikely for the next night„ but who was left? When the vision hit a like a ton of brickbats on a picnic paper plate. Bruther Bobo, olde oft-cited ex-city schizo school nice creep! Who lived in Teasmoke City, another ha'day's journey "further". Okea, thot Mo as he shrugged off troubles to scarf a dollah to pay a frizzy cashier (while instead, Icky wanted to stuff their purchases in her delicate soap-carving shirt, hah!). A pho'booth punctuated the parking lot, where Mojo managed to cajole up Bobo’s number, who's working in the H*A*P*P*I*D*A*Y* I*N*N (poppa tab Bobo icily teethed) But okay orgy, we tri-a-gin tomorrow, and MojoIcky scuttled like sandollar crabs down side roads. You know a loser-town has a bar w/a mamma plasterly starey-gaze horn head steer bull necking bovine outa the corner of this woody mertzmetropolitan pub, don’tcha? No chance of sleeping by lake, to finally end up, in a horsey path peeply disemboweling woods. Rain came continued, they ate, read, mosquitoes buzzbuzzbuzzed, horses and a Tugboat Annie lady actually passed. Motocrosses hummed distant. Icky let Mojo fuck her placidly, and they went to sleep.
Next day on de road and they finally got up Muskoxen way. From a shoppe centre in grosso profundo Fat Gale’s Town, they called once more last desprit-esprit no reply, waiting 1/48 of a day in a booksellars to make sure she wasn’t just ballin' her stead in the foyer, or such somesuch Dada. NO reply. The damn dual lost themselves alongside terribIe mayhem marinas and parks, finally edging proper out and up north, state coaatroads shunting onto harried experienceways, thru a town that thought It was Canada anyway. I don't know why, but it did. They drove ontos. M-M-M-MMMojo and icky pulled into Teasmoke City 'tout noon, battling bizarre traffic, navigating un-navigable awfuck traffic islands, and lust being general. Sunshine swept the oId city, the lakewind handblasting grit off townspeople grime, but making the midsummer atmos crummy. The solar hid behind a cave or clod, Buick snugnosed into a spatial, the kidz hopped out/in a nearby bus station. Greyhounded passengers stared, ultimately diversified, age gained by layers of crackIes, oracles; youth proud by smoot denims and dust, hats, satchels, Negro peoples and shoes. A quandary, a dairy. A diary. Upon spy-eyeing, a phone booth, the partners, in crime sped forth, farther shut-in„ and Icky produced a crumpled plain brown paper fron the night before with brutha Bobo's telefunken. A dime fell in, and Mojo quickly dialed and anticipated.
A familiar voice answered saluted. Mojo sounded hype. Bobo ,
grinned over the phone, instructed the little beggars to meet him at a Krakken grocery store. Buick zippity doo dahed down Teasmoke City streets to the fabled meeting place, Mojo saw Bobo skipping thru the poking lot. Ick claimed she never seen him in her life. Hands were shook. Diggy diggy lo inkarnak, bounded hausward the three to Bobolink's Cul-de-Sac Court address. Ms. Mamma gave them pizza dogs and bun, awkwardly intro’ing Ick sans groper Surinam, the way she liked it. Bobo took 'elm to meet 'Neefer, a Jennifer renamed to rhyme with (you get the idea), who toiled in a bistro by day. Redfaced, seraphic, said she "Sure, they can stay with me". They all went to Krakken’s and on the open road to Awakened Bear State Park where they tug into oranges, cheese, in convivial Vivian Stanshall cheer. Slouching into Teasmoke City they scoured the small regional airport for Bobo’s other friends. The jugend all beamed, fresh in Beatle-coifs, pleats and freckles, Adidas.
"They all look like Aleppo people two years ago", Marduk sneered, smeared bloat, ever thus pomp as a pompano, smootly. Brats, but they they were totally dependent on those doonesburgerys for someplace placid to sweat it out; the murky Neefer’s was the last resort. A convenience-communion must be served up first. Another friend of hers and Bobo’s named Dunk or something was at the airport they rheumed. Neefer, redfaced and Bronzino-eyed proved herself the ringleader of this burg, and environs. Bert & Ernie or somesuch, names equally meaningIess to the boy and Icky had an apartment they’d let transients, crash in, but those wiseacres were far from anything but home. Finally a quick stop at N’fer's confirmed it was ok to stomp there. They picknicked upon the local wooly animal dunes, the state's popular northern tourist attraction, with Bobo. Icky cut cheese with her German woods knife, a Stasi dagger. Talk and orange juice, food aplenty all so convivially supplied by Bobo flowed freely. Out on a rich man’s land they picked cherries. A cowboy, in an upstairs loft decorated with radio rock posters, who incidentally released two amateurishfun home movies that were Bobo’s pride, of desperados and G-men to be shown to the wanderers, they let ‘em in on wild talk of starting a progressive radio station up here, yet a wet-pipe dreamers' grin. Bobo had just rented a projector just to show these Super 8mm movies. After the day of local color, the art twins bathed at Bobo's basement villa prior to departing for Jennifer's and sleep. While Bobo’s ma would provide lunch meats’ barbecued hotdogs, no dice to accommodating couples "traveling in sin". “Y’know, Icky doesn't talk much” Bobo confided to Mojo while she was in the shower. "She doesn’t have to” Mojo’d. They crept into Neefer's backcellar door like a backdoor man, silent and then stretched out, on a nestled bed. They whispered till they fell, asleep. At dawn, when all were upstairs Mojo crept to the lavabowl and primped. They both thanked all good-bye. They once more wished Bobo well; Mojo, that perpetual ol' guitar army buddy, promised more than his share of Aleppo's good cheer. Then drove down roads.
On the roads real fast they passed cars and time and talked of things and stopped at towns. Once the Buick seemed to, smoke gas, but it handled real well even at seventy per. They argued proper roads and locations. Small town thrift shopper earned quizzic stares, them too, while groceries provided food and dada: a Kerr mason jar tomato head, aluminumetal armor, spoon scepter that says "We've got a date". Icki, loved it, Mojo kept it to himself They picked up a smiley jesusey hitchhiker not far from a youth Christ-camp conference. Sketchbook poked out like a tit from his knapsack. “Are you an artist?” they gestured, wanting so bad to see. *No...I just draw” meekly. “Yeah, that's what we're into" M feigned for impress. A bleak treeless lawn-concrete sale yielded nothing but dust. She counted those little footman-stableboy cast iron lantern coloredsons, "Sweet Black Seraphim" she called ‘em like the Roaming Stoats song, and planned a future heist. They crossed the center of the state. A town Saint Something-or-other convinced tastefuls even this young that it tried to be ugly, its park geodesic quonset-hut cinderblock architexture all silt horse manure, beside a prominently fibreglas-steel gaping lions-mouth, oversized and diluter drinking fountain. Now if that didn't take the week-old birthday cake... He pushed her on the swings, she parried and thrust’d. They ate bread and scraped dirt off. They left, talk of where–to-stay. "Iosco's father has got a farm not far from here!” Mojo blurted. He romanticized her first at the underkid cynico-cartoonist Jefferson Iosco’s party only a few weeks before. Okay. Before the end of her shrug they sped, listened to radio and asked directions. One more, garage sale produced a purpletint jazz shirt so eccentric that none would look good in it but her svelte slinkiness my Icky, a thumbful of black memory 45’s for Mo.
After dirt roads n’ shit and much trials and tribulations they found Bull Puckie Road where he knew Iosco’s family property owned up. They pulled into the rural driveway beside the house, lights burned info indicating human presence, if only Iosco’s pop. No cigar. they waited, scoured grounds, barn, pond, back windows (the pop allegedly known to have fuckin’ models and teenage girls there. Not even the polyhedrodome, papa’s lawn invention. The sat in the car a while longer. No paterfamilias, no one. So into townville them rolled anxious for a meal, rationalizing that Mr. might just be shopping for groceries (beer? both liked). In a stuffy soda bar they did up burgers and shakes, I think Mojo had chili. Signs for garage sales, Icky’s fave diversionary tryptophun, beckoned, and they ingrained themselves into the doublet's corporate mind, future for tomorrow to do. They got aligned. Johannes juveniles spreen 55 mph permo backwards down the dusty Ioscoesque rhodes-colossus-of rodeo roads back to the farm homestead. Still no humaneness there. Better to go, but where better to be? They waited sat, listened to distant Windsweptago radio, dying for one pulling, make-puring dose of the greatest rocket roll band in the world, perhaps the appropriate "Highway Line” that Milkman let the faithful guitarfriend sing, starting to get under the vuInerablo-hulk’s skin if only for its significance, or the bluesroar "Spy Met the Fly" to round things out. During one strange hit’s long chantey mystery organ solo, Mojo actually felt scared in the cool night dew car, but if Mojo was disoriented then Icy was his only orient. Y'know. He really wanted t' fuck. She sighed, said it bored her, but he promised to try. stripped nude in the backplastic stick-cold seat, she liked, or at least preferred him on top. She wanted more stimulation, and he used his tongue on that so-far insatiable. vaginodialatoris. She let him in, he finished and dressed and they each rolled over t' sleep.
Iosco’s farm, and it was niz place t' be dawn they decided. M. n' I., smelly and came, stretched, got up. Friday it was, and if it was Friday it marked a week since they been real gone. Looked a locked wee round the farm (where Mr. Iosco was rumored to take nude models, if I haven’t so mentioned) they went to town. On the streets some heavy rapping. "I thought you were tougher" Icky asked. "Would it have been different if I was?" and the hair on the nape of his neck bristled in anticipation, much the way your ears always burn when someone's t-ttalking about ya. “No, just different.” "For example" he half-bred, bored sounded but interested, wanted to listen. "I thought you'd make me do things for you. And you wouldn't hold hands."
They were holding hands—he almost slacked embarrassed. She cont'd. "You'd put your arm over my shoulder and, yiknow, fool around" and she juggled with her fingers what young Jefferson Iosco chastely called her “expensive French whore tits”, a phrase he probably got from his father’s farm. Like Icky’s breasts. So what, he thought and they walked around railroad streets looking for sales. She bought that great moaning disk "Je T'Aime" for a penny, and got a jug o' milk and rolls at the Krakken. And when they came back to the car, Mojo’s soul records left lying in the back window had been inundated by sun-heat. The flapjack flat 45s were now soft, oily crepes. Crap.
Crumples of their former selves, like fish out of water, a pungent, senseless suicide and they’d never play burned to a frazzle like Mojo's former incompetencioinnocence. This set him on his feet. Back to that farm for a last mint goodby or explanation. Workmen were there, saying they'd seen hide nor hair of the old boys, odd boys generally, the Ioscoes. Driven on, Mojo & Icky stopped to sleep by a shady lake all afternoon for hours on end. He got seasick from congealed cherries, was trippin’ all over. So they slid slowly home, too soon to Aleppo the tried and true. Yet the two tried each smallish town for action in the country for a movie they were still making in their heads, went to an old park where bikers teeter tottered, tried on top hats. This neat ancient baronial clearing-house Mojo knew was closed. At a drive-in Icky had already seen "Dr. Phaubus” so they decided there was no option but to go home. She mused about the beer in Germany, he drew on her dungarees-down legs in a dark but festive eight-miles-from-Aleppo village of Deereater, Michigan parking lot. Mostly scenes of oddball things they mentally recorded from the odyssey, and for the boy everything began to fall into place awright. Dropping Icky off, Mojo stepped kitchenside. Called home asking permission. Momma sounded weary, frightened to death. Icky bounded in/out back from her parents’ room, grinned “They said it was OK." Kinda kissed, those naughty wanderIusts, firm escapees of marshmallow ennui, exchanged bye byes. Mojo drove home, knowing full wet there'd be Hell to pay.
The Art Trip was written over the Winter of 1973, based on an excursion two teenagers embarked upon in August, 1972.
© Mike Mosher 2022 profmosher@gmail.com Juvenalia Rex
Front cover painting: "Lovers Under Burning Automobile", 1979.