When Men Hold Each Other

Sam awoke to the sound of murder. He was dazed and dizzy in a dark bedroom. He quickly reached for the nightstand to aid him upright, but missed and tumbled to the carpeted floor. Then, murder again.
"Dave!" Sam hollered. "Dave!" Sam reached out to Dave's bed, but it was empty.
He squabbled to his fours, a jackhammer suddenly throttling the inside of his head as he tried to get his bearings. A weak, feeble voice squeaked from down the hall in the bathroom, "Sam." He recognized the voice as Dave's. Dave wasn't dead but he was surely dying. "Dave," he cried out in the dark, still helplessly paralyzed on his fours and absolutely bewildered. "What's going on? Where are we?" Dave gasped, "I think I'm dying."
"Is this hell?" Sam asked, now breaking sweat. Dave began sobbing, almost crying, "Oh fuck--" Then deep from primordial bowels, Dave bellowed and screamed, vomit splashing and splattering the porcelain toilet. The vomiting sound triggered Sam's gut, and from his fours he heaved his insides onto the carpet, fell over next to his pile and passed out.

Earlier that day Sam and Dave had arrived to the stunning Buzios, the St. Tropez of Brazil. The two Americans were traveling the Brazilian coast, and upon arriving at Geriba beach in Buzios the two young men celebrated with Caipirinhas on the beach. Dave went to buy the second round and returned to Sam with two more drinks and an older Irishman named Tom. Dave introduced Tom to Sam. "Heard him speaking English trying to order a drink. I had to help him out, " said Dave, motioning a cheers to Tom. "He bought these for us. He and his family are renting that palace up there." Dave turned and pointed to a beautiful place on a cliff overlooking Buzios. Tom chimed in, "You boys would love it. I been with the bloody wife and kid all weekend. How about you boys join us for lamb tonight."
"Lamb? This is Brazil, man. The beef is the best in the world," said Dave playfully. "What do you think Sam?" Looking up at the gorgeous cliffside architecture, Same replied "Oh fuck ya."
And feast on lamb they did. They washed it down first with a bottle of Talisker and Merlot. Everybody was drinking hard. Tom, his wife Aideen and their 16 year old daughter, Orla. The more this family drank, the louder and redder their Irish faces became, cursing everything not Irish. Sam and Dave loved every minute of it, trading looks of disbelief and surprise from what the world had offered to two intrepid travelers. Soon after the meal, the dining table was covered with wine and whiskey bottles: Talisker, Jamison's, Glenlivet, and Macallan's. They were playing dice games and whenever Orla tried to tell them they were playing wrong, Tom and his wife yelled at her to shut up. "Can we tell her to shut up too?" asked Dave excitedly inebriated. In slurred drunk speech, Tom proclaimed "In this family we abuse the shit out of each other and see what comes of it!" He and his wife collapsed in laughter. Orla pushed away from the table, telling everbody to fuck off and die and ran away crying. As she was running from the table, Dave and Sam simultaneously yelled "Shut up Orla!" and joined Tom and Aideen in whooping laughter.

Sam awoke once again not to the sound of murder but to the buzzing of flies. He moaned in disgust, hitting them away from his face. He rolled over to push himself up and was faced with the buzzing flies in his rancid puke. "Ugh," he moaned feebly and sauntered carefully to the bathroom to rinse out his acrid mouth. Dave was passed out cold on the tiled floor, vomit splashed on the toilet and the surrounding tile. Sam stepped over his friend and washed out his mouth. He nudged Dave with his foot. "Dave, Dave, wake up. Come on. We got to get out of here. Wake up!"
Dave slowly wakes, groaning remorsefully. "What the fuck?" He continued groaning, now clenching his stomach. "Listen man," said Sam. "We got get out of here. We fucked this place up. Come on. Get up. It was that fucking lamb."
"That fucking lamb. I told you. What kind of asshole eats lamb in Brazil. Irish bastard." Dave slowly rose to his feet. He saw the mess he made and became sick once more in the sink.
"I'll get our bags," said Sam and dashed out of the bathroom. He return to the bathroom with both backpacks. Dave was on the floor again looking miserable and holding his stomach. Sam grabbed Dave under the arms and dragged him from the bathroom. Dave's feet dragged through some vomit and trailed it on the carpet exiting their room. Sam pulled Dave to his feet and aided him quietly through the dark house. They made it out the front door just as dawn was arriving.
Sam continued pulling Dave along until they reached the cobblestone street. The house was on top of a steep hill, about a kilometer up from the rest of the town. Behind them the sun was rising over the hills.
"Sam, my stomach is fucked. I can't walk this hill."
"Just hold on to me."
Dave wrapped his arms around Sam's shoulders. Sam held Dave tightly around his waist, and the two friends slowly descended the hill into the dawning day.

Underwater Explorations and the Shalimar Motel

The crew docked, unloaded the ship and checked into the Shalimar Motel. The Shalimar Motel was a fuck house, fuck pad, fuck stop, fuck whatever. It was where you went if you wanted to keep a secret from somebody you are not supposed to keep secrets from. But it was classy, in a scummy sort of way. There was a whirlpool in each room and above each whirlpool was a retractable roof that opened into the Rio de Janeiro night. There were mirrors on every bedroom wall and ceiling, porn on every television; king sized beds and a glass cabinet stocked with lubes, oils, condoms, champagne and bottled water. It was cheap and, hell, if you can’t bring back a woman in the evening, you still got a whirlpool and porn and all sorts of oils to get weird with. It may have looked odd for a crew of seamen to be checking into the Shalimar Motel without women on their arms, but it was where Captain Kane liked to stay before a major exploration, and tomorrow they would be setting out to find Atlantis.

It was also in the Shalimar Motel where the crew’s deckhand, Steve, was fingered in the ass for the first time. And it was the last time he ever thought about home.

Ever since Deckhand Steve was old enough to recall memory he couldn’t recall his home and had only a vague memory of his parents. He had a constant stream of ocean coursing through his memory, but could not put a land to that sea. A runaway orphan, deckhand Steve had been working ships since he was twelve years old in hopes of one day docking in a place that he could recognize as home. Five continents and five years later, Deckhand Steve was now in Brazil, checking into the Shalimar Motel.

He had stayed in fuck houses before, but nothing like the swank decadence of the Shalimar Motel. In fact, the aesthetic of the motel was initially too intoxicating for the young man. Besides, he had a new city to explore, and perhaps a home.
Unfortunately for Deckhand Steve, Brazil was not his home, nor were the Brazilians his people. While feasting on salgados in a nearby bar, the locals quickly informed him in broken English about the cornerstones of their society: women, barbeque, and soccer. Though he enjoyed women and meat, he loathed soccer. He detested the notion that a professional sport could end in a tie, that a championship game could be decided by a shootout and why these guys made such a big deal about scoring a goal if the size of the ball is miniscule compared to the size of the goal. He wrote off Brazil like he had all the other countries he visited, further accepting the fact that his home is no longer a part of this world.

Deckhand Steve fell into a draining depression. He was only 17, yet he had searched the seas, traipsed many lands and penetrated dark caverns in search of origin. Finally defeated, deckhand Steve raised his hand and bellowed, “a beer and a shot of that shit,” now pointing to the cachaca.
His gringo speak spoke volumes in the crowded bar. It said, “I am lonely and god-damned tired,” which upon entering a Brazilian woman’s’ ears, specifically Nilcea’s, it translated as, “money, and sex.”
Nilcea approached Deckhand Steve and asked, “Oi, tudo bem? Voce parece triste, por que?” He glanced slowly up to the beautiful Nilcea. He did not know Portuguese, nor did he feel like trying. Instead he repeated the one phrase the crew told him to say in case of a situation like this. He looked her in the eyes, grinned fretfully and squeaked, “Shalimar Motel?”

Deckhand Steve opened the glass cabinet, pushed aside the oils and lube and grabbed the champagne and two glasses, while Nilcea turned on the whirlpool, retracted the roof and stepped out of her clothes. Steve followed suit after popping and pouring the champagne, and the two sat naked in the bubbling water timidly sipping from the glasses. Though Nilcea throbbed with excitement of being in the Shalimar, Deckhand Steve remained taciturn. His laid his head down on the edge of the whirlpool, closed his eyes and began fantasizing about a home he couldn’t recall. Perplexed, Nilcea was not going to waste her time in the Shalimar Motel. The décor and the deluge of swank had incited a ravenous sexual appetite inside of her. She lowered herself into the water and waded closer to Deckhand Steve. She reached to his right foot and with her fingertips began lightly gliding up toward his calf and back down to his ankle. Her touch sent an electric tremor through Deckhand Steve’s idle body, clearing his mind of distress and hopelessness. His eyes remained closed, but his lips began to smile. Encouraged by his response, Nilcea sensually continued working her fingertips slowly up his leg.

Suddenly, as Nilcea was exploring the contours of his leg, Deckhand Steve found himself no longer in the whirlpool but in a submarine. He was on an underwater exploration navigating the depths of the ocean, seeking uncharted territory. The submarine was moving simultaneously with Nilcea’s hand. The closer her hand moved towards his groin, the closer the submarine approached a distant radiance.

Nilcea, furthermore encouraged by his glowing expression, worked her way up his thigh, unaware that Deckhand Steve was no longer present but deep within the Atlantic.
The submarine was now gliding through a dazzling glow. It was too bright for Deckhand Steve to see beyond the luminosity. He shielded his eyes from the light; unable to make out what was ahead. Just then, Nilcea reached the base of his penis and began stroking it carefully. As she did this the submarine moved through the light and into the clear view of a disenchanted, ancient city. Deckhand Steve’s heart began to race and his body stiffened in shock. Nilcea mistook this reaction as a sign that he was going to blow, so she quickly removed her hand from his dick and began massaging his balls. But the real cause for his reaction was that for the first time in his life Deckhand Steve had recognized a foreign place. He had been here before.

The submarine moved slowly around the city just as Nilcea slowly moved his balls around. From the viewing window Deckhand Steve saw how this place had once defied dimensions with staircases in all angles, stretching for miles. In the center of it all was an eroded palace with barnacled gates, and it was surrounded by destructed housing foundations and extending roads. And remarkably, Deckhand Steve knew exactly where those roads once led. As he began mentally reconstructing this place from memory, he began to see apparitions of the people who once lived there, and as these apparitions became more vivid he began recognizing the people and remembering their names. The city began to rapidly reshape and rebuild itself. The algae, the barnacles, and the decay all gave way to fantastic reclamation until it was suddenly a functioning city again.

Nilcea began exploring the region between the balls and the anus. As she did so, Deckhand Steve saw his parents. They were walking home from the market and they looked exactly as he remembered them. Then from up the street, little Steve, maybe four years old, came running to greet them. It quickly dawned on him that his submarine had entered a portal to the past, and he became terribly afraid of what he would see next. His parents suddenly froze and his father dropped the groceries. People began to panic and run madly in all directions. In the meanwhile Nilcea was inching closer to his asshole, and he had a wild look on his face. She asked him something in Portuguese, and he responded with a gasp so she pressed on. But the gasp was obviously not a pleasured response to what Nilcea was doing, but to the horrors he was witnessing from the viewing window of his submarine. His people and his place were being crushed and ripped apart by atrocious sea monsters until there was nothing left but ruins and a solitary escape vessel vanishing safely in the dark sea.
As he continued to look on in dismay, Nilcea slipped her middle finger into his asshole and penetrated.
“ATLANTIS!” he shrieked. It scared the shit out of Nilcea and she quickly withdrew to the opposite end of the whirlpool. “ATLANTIS!” he cried out once again, his eyes wide and crazy. He jumped from the whirlpool and skirted across the tile to the telephone. He quickly dialed Captain Kane’s room number.

“Captain, this is Steve, Deckhand Steve. Listen , I won’t be with the crew tomorrow. But I have no doubts you will find Atlantis.”
The captain chuckled. This wasn’t the first time he had lost a crew member to the magic of the Shalimar Motel. “This is a common feeling to have in the Shalimar, young man. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
“Captain, what’s the point of returning home when all it means is ending up where you started?” He then hung up the phone, got dressed, grabbed his bag and opened the door. He turned and took a long look at a startled Nilcea sitting frozen in the steaming whirlpool. He really didn’t know what to say to her, so he shrugged his shoulders and squeaked, “Shalimar Motel?”

He left and headed for the docks where he purchased an eternal ticket on a ship that never stopped sailing.

Loam

The last I heard from Zillmann was a few months ago. He was writing mad poetry about Mars and working in a plant nursery. We spoke recently and he said he has been digging his hands in the fresh loam. I told him it was vile to say such a phrase, but he insisted the loam is where his hands have been. I countered by telling him that if I ever bothered to find out what the hell loam is, I may congratulate him on his loam. But for now I will keep my eyes set upon this bloated dog on the sunny side of the road hoping that Zillmann will keep his loamy hands to himself.
Been on this bus for too long. Somewhere between Only God Knows Where and a Borracharia. I feel all these people have a right to be on this bus because they need to be on this bus. They need to be somewhere, and hopefully soon. Maybe it's work. Or maybe family. But it's important for them to get there.
I have nowhere to be. And I tell myself that is a good thing. Some kind of Buddhist load of shit about not being owned by material obligations, and letting go, yet I feel queer and nauseus with these thoughts. And it could be because I am writing while in a moving vehicle, but maybe I have reached a time in my life where traveling has become tiring revolutions around the anywheres of the world. I am no longer shocked by culture, wealth, poverty, or landscape. I understand that we live in different places and that we eat different foods, that water falls and deserts dry, and the hills are high and the valleys are low.
What blows my mind more than anything is that we are alive. That on this bus we have all achieved, up to this point, a moderate success in not dying. Waking up is a tremendous miracle. Throughout our experiences, at any time, the introduction of one unneccessary particle to one ordinary situation can shatter everything. A displaced particle can make this bus driver kill us all, or such a particle can cause the man next to me go for my gringo throat at the next rest stop. But none of this will happen. We will still drink wine and eat bread; this is miraculous. We are alive while phantoms circle over our bodies. Zillmann sifts through the loam and writes beautiful poetry about Mars.
Incredible.