Fool of a Foolish Thomas Foolery

(Untitled, 2010)

Thomas was a fool, sure of that, he ran around with his pants down, tripped here and there, but took it like a man. He was the bravest person I ever met, and I called him the bear. He ran in circles of friends, he was quite popular, and when he told me he was leaving this rock I had no clue what he meant until the following day.

Two weeks later I received a call from him, he said he needed to be picked up, he was at some gas station, naked and lost. He had been on the news, or at least his face from his mother's photo album, and was reported missing. I never told anyone else that he had the intentions of leaving or rather, disappearing, I felt he wanted mystery, I think I gave him that. I finished my coffee, got in the truck with a flash light and shovel and took off to Nevada in search of my dear friend.
The road was quite, it was moments from dawn but it seemed to take forever. My headlights trailed on and on with a sea of little paired spheres of lights appearing all around the road. It was a little dreamy in the morning fog, the coolness hitting my windows and fogging the frame of my windows. It felt like I was on my way to something great in the American landscape, like Monument valley; a sight never taken for granted, and a place commonly seen as photographs but never quite make it as grand as being there and seeing how ridiculous it is.

The gas station was exactly where Thomas told me it was, with two giant billboards advertising a Indian casino in the opposite way I was travelling. There in the first light was a spark of human glowing in red and orange, lost and wet like a newborn, and cupping his junk. That Thomas I knew too well, he must've been the craziest person at that moment, as I pulled up, killed the engine and steadily approached with my hands waving the side of my hips as if I was about to draw some real western shit. I was confused at the sight, and throughout the whole time I was wondering, what the fuck happened to this fool.

Thomas screamed upon touch, he had pissed himself earlier, and then calmed down a bit after, and screamed again. I laughed and then realized he was serious, and so I just started talking to him in a way a stranger talks to another stranger when one of the strangers is in need of help and the other stranger doesn't exact know how to help so they need some help on how to give help.
In the car, with an extra small work coat on an extra large dude, Thomas stayed silent for the whole way back. The morning light was now settled into a white light scatter and everything that once was spectacular was now gone, it was a normal day. Every once in a while Thomas would turn his head towards me, and stare. I'd look over, and just say what, and he would just look beyond my face and smile. I was getting tired of wondering if Thomas was joking or now at this point, he was the type to get seriously messed up and be serious about it for a moment, and then fade into this foolish character again without anyone noticing and just fool you in a new way. Damn! I got ya again, dickhead.

But that never happened, he just stared out the window, with his cold flesh slowly turning the familiar orangish pink of his former self. We stayed silent for the rest of the trip, seeing the roads interrupted with the occasional driver, and then open and quiet again. Was Thomas really that fargone that he couldn't at least let a fart out and keep a straight face? At points I wanted to kick him out of the truck, he was a hitchhiker, but I had to take care of him. What happened to the Thomas that called me on the phone, did he go out in the desert and do some messed up drugs? The car started smelling like shit so I rolled the windows. I had to get my head right in Thomas' lap to roll his since clearly he wasn't doing anything for the next little while.

Bumps would be hit, the sun would rise, and the stops will be made; for gas, for food, and for pissing and shittin'. The desert rolled by and it was looking like a nice day in Tucson when we arrived to my place. With abandonment we find ourselves with a tool in hand, from a stick to a knife, and the clothes on our bodies potentially the last thing we'll ever wear. Our teeth clinch together, and we let out a good ole GRRRRR! and we become wild. We piss and shit anywhere, and we'll eat anything. I've been in this situation, and you've been in that situation, between you and me we've seen it all; small islands in the Pacific to which haven't been seen since the days of wooden pirates, to lost in the high desert to which folk songs were inspired by. With each time you think to yourself this day and the next are not good days to die, you have to get all the final arrangements just right, and by the time you do that, while surviving in the mean time, you get out of that situation, and soon those thoughts of how to die pass you by, forgetting them to the everyday grim. Back in and back out, it all seems the same sometimes. I haven't lost a lot of hair on my head, but I certainly have a fair share of whites. The ghost of our past is catching up, it will haunt us, say a yes-yes-yall and a boo-who, and who? But never will that ghost harm us, it can kick over that book, turn off and on that light really fast and strobe-like, but it can't touch us. These days I'm beginning to think I'm a wondering in circles, from a desert to an island, to a marriage, to a divorce, I keep doing the same thing, in different situations, over and over, until I'm at the point...

DAMN! GOT YA AGAIN, DICKHEAD!

(more elaborate: each time is a further attempt at something not yet perfected not yet realized, upon the moment, with each situation to read the air with a tongue, to taste the uncertain future.)