Iqaluit
I think it would be cool to learn everything there is to be learned.
So it was that Keene was writing his novel when Dean burst into his bedroom, almost fudging his pants in the process. "Come on, man, let's go!" screamed the crazy cat, pulling the fox from the chair with a sick burst of energy. Both Keene, fox, and Dean, tiger, were a blur of body, and feet, going down a tenement staircase somewhere in the quieter outskirts of Westfield.
My name is Richard, and I'm a black dog, nothing really special. Both of my parents were mutts, so, for the grace of God, there go I, too. I sat behind the wheel of this fat little speedster, a long, pacific blue paint job body, the kind of crazy length that does not go in the modern times anymore. The Longshoremen sang " 'Til Sally Came Home" on the FM, a hot little jazzy rock thing, as the left corner of my brown cornea viewed the duo blur swing open, leap into pacific blue, and slam the left back door. "Off we go, monsieur!" And, so, off we went. My right foot left the brake, and I swear to God, the fucking car left the road, and we took off up Route 91, towards the mountain towns. What were we looking for? Did it matter? No. Was it drugs, getting high, sex, all of the 'typical' taboo shit? Well, 'they' say so, the establishments, man, the fucking men, but that's why they're fucking men, because they're idiots. I think women should be allowed to run America; might give things a little twist, a little more LIBERTY.
So, it was me, Richard, Keene, and Dean, flying like some absurd 90 on the mountain passes. We might as well have been drunk, for this one bicyclist (what the fuck is a bicyclist doing out at night without a reflector?) was in the fucking middle of the road, and we just kind of clipped it, well, sort of, but I guess the bicyclist kept the crazy balance going.
"What the fuck are that happening again?" roared Dean, our ripping tiger, like seventy five inches, and one hundred fifty pounds. Dean was always on cough syrup, always high out of his fucking head, and our bespectacled maniac was such a trip to behold. Tonight, he was almost nude except for a pair of 1997 style gray baggy jeans, sans underwear, and no shirt. A backwards Red Sox cap adorned his peanut butter crunch furred head, and two identical laps of lampblack creamed a stripe under each of his large green eyes. A very loose grin fell from his drippy lips, and his small, pink tongue curled out from between bad, gray teeth.
"What a fucking crunk that was, eh, bandito?" laughed Dean, referring to Keene, who was a little, if not a lot, pissed from being dragged out of his apartment at about one in the morning from a third level loony.
"You asshole! Working on my novel, now that I can catch my breath . . ." muttered Keene, a sixty eight inch yellow fox, with long stringy hair, crazy orange eyes, and the ends of his hairs culminated in blondish-red strawberry bursts. He was always well-dressed, and tonight was no different. A white dress shirt with a thick yellow tie, sported beneath by black suit pants, plum dress shoes, and plum gloves covered his one hundred thirty-five pound frame, racked with too much pot, and whiskey, and too little nutrients.
"What is it this time, Romeo?" whispered Dean, really rolling now, his sticky tail coated with God knew what beating left, and right, to the new Flamingo Crashes beat jam on 99.7. "Some fucking faux Hemingway, eh?"
"Infidels, I swear", hollered Keene, but even he couldn't keep now from laughing now a little, because between the three of us, we had all experienced Flamingo Crashes together as a trio, back two years ago in March, at the Hampton Beach Civic Center, in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Then, we had all been rolling, but we had rolled responsible. Cough syrup, of course, came later for Dean, but for us back then, a few blunts, mixed with two or three shots of Midori apiece, topped off with our favorite Bible verse, Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God", which Dean always responded by saying "No shit, Sherlock," in the most ominous voice, began our first adventures together.
"Infidels," laughed Keene, but he tried to hide it beneath a veneer of anger, which did not him any good.
"Yeah, that's right, you two, but just listen. We have to go quite a ways now, you understand," said I. For we were on our way up northland, far up northland, like perhaps past through Canada, and whatever crazy shit we might just see going up that way.
"Wait, you're joking, right? You must be joking."
Dean and I both shared an amused glance. "Iqaluit, man."
The drop of Keene's vulpine mouth was too fucking comic, and Dean, and I almost flipped the speeding car over a right mountain pass, laughing so hard. "You mean . . . where the fuck is . . . where?"
"Ice, slushy, we'd freeze our balls off, but who cares? We're talking Labrador Sea, man," rampaged a seeming funny, yet delusional Dean, who could no more sometimes place two sensible words together when sober, much less when intoxicated, which he was most of the time. Of course, Dean had had his fucking nails pulled with rusty pliers as a cub off of his paws for spilling milk, and had witnessed some other sick, sad shit in his lifetime, like his mother getting raped by, from what I heard, the great-grandfather with one testicle or something or other, but either way, Dean was fucked up major in a royal way, and so who gave a shit if he was cocked all the time?
"So it's just like that, eh?" said Keene. "Drop my novel, no change of clothes, and off we go, to ice, and slushy! Infidels, I swear," and now our lithe fox was back to being poison pissed. "Goodbye novel, huh?"
Up ahead, a sign said HUNTINGTON 4. Cool, I thought. "Hey, guys, we're almost to Huntington. Let's keep going. All points north, next stop, Greenfield, MA. We'll rest then."
"Ok, jeeves, then drive."
"It'll be fucking cold up that way, man. Don't you know?"
Dean and I laughed, like we would for most of the trip. "We have 'Ol Blue," whistled I.
"YEA!" called out Dean, in a goofy earnest reply. "' Ol Blue. And then maybe we'll go to Namche Bazaar afterwards, near the Everest."
A full, glittered moon hung over our open roofed long car, burning almost 100 now, and before I knew it, my own crazy cough syrup jabe kicked in. "Cool," I whispered into the night, and I swear, I saw a pink Cool just swirl up, round, round, tiny, tiny, and round, and up into the night, swallowed by the white moon, and we were going further upon to Greenville, and Iqaluit.