her dad. I went home and found a bunch of my clothes and things thrown around. I had a large collection of records and cassettes and it looked like she had thrown a bunch of them against the wall. I spent all night cleaning up.
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing after that. I missed Erin, but she was not coming back. I felt like a zombie but I had to put myself back together enough to find a new, cheaper place to live. I couldn’t stay in that apartment much longer. Andrew, a friend from the Tri-Cities who lived in Seattle, called me and told me that Erin and a couple of her friends had stayed in his apartment on New Year’s Eve. He said that Erin was with an old boyfriend and that he could hear them having sex while he was trying to sleep. I went out that night and found a sex shop with those little movie booths in the back. This was the start of a habit that lasted a few years.
This part of the store was dark, with only some small red lights over each station that was being used. One man lingered in the corner, like he was waiting for someone. I walked over to one of the empty booths and paused for a second and looked at him before going in. I left the door unlocked and took out some dollar bills. I heard the man try the doorknob and then the door opened and he snuck inside with me. The rules posted in the store started with “1. Only one person per booth.”
“Can I watch?” he asked. He didn’t say what he wanted to watch, but I knew.
I was nervous and I couldn’t get the machine to take the first dollar. It kept sliding back and forth like a tongue sticking out at me. I could hear the man breathing behind me. Finally, the dollars slid into the machine and the TV screen came to life. I pushed the button to change the channel until I found one I liked. I had my pants undone and so did the man.
“Can I touch you?” the man asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He was standing beside me now and I looked back and forth between the man’s hand on my dick and the screen. I reached over and held his cock in my hand and starting moving it. I felt something strange so I looked closer at him. He was skinny and slightly hunched. His face was thin, with high, almost feminine cheekbones. There was no hair anywhere on his cock and he wore a leather thing around it. A cock ring, I guessed.
We didn’t say another word until we were done. He left me there and slipped back into the dark hallway. My time was not up yet. I stood there, surrounded by cum on the floor, watching the TV, flickering with moans and skin, until it shut off.
Acid
I stayed in Spokane after the breakup and met a new friend named Vincent Price, with whom I had my first acid experience. That night was so much more memorable—and positive!—than the first time I had sex. Part of the downtown area was sectioned off, and makeshift basketball courts were everywhere. We found a ball and played in the dark for a few hours, laughing hysterically. Then, out of nowhere, some kids—they seemed to be about thirteen years old—drove up to us in two golf carts. They offered us rides, and we got in and let them speed us through Riverfront Park on the walking trails. The headlights weren’t too strong, and we almost crashed a few times before they dropped us off by our bikes.
We rode to a Safeway around five in the morning and bought orange juice, because Vince said it was “good for visuals.” We sat on the curb outside and watched the painted handicap symbol on the pavement bubble and expand. It was glorious.
Around eight in the morning we were finally ready to sleep a little. We rode our bikes over the little bridges of downtown Spokane. Our bodies seemed to be humming a song no one else could hear.
The Outlaw
I worked at the radio station on weekends and, after quitting the job at the record store, at a Tex-Mex restaurant called The Outlaw during the week. There were only five others who worked there and four of them were family. A husband, wife, brother, and son. The son was only about thirteen but he hung out there a lot, sometimes doing homework and helping out with the dishes when it got busy. The brother, who was the main cook, would sometimes have diabetic seizures and the rest of us would have to make him drink orange juice. The drinks were served in glasses shaped like old cowboy boots.
I remember being really impressed about how the husband ran the family business with such an easygoing nature. He was always telling his wife that he loved her and called his son honey or sweetie. It was the first time I heard a dad call his son names like that and it caught me off guard, especially because I thought the son would protest or be embarrassed. But he wasn’t. They were a close family. Whenever I saw a family like that anywhere, I would watch them carefully, as if they were a rare species of animal. I would want to go and join them. Feel that unbreakable bond.
I remember thinking that if I had a son, I would call him honey.
Dog Grave
When I first moved away from the Tri-Cities, Mom and Dad kept my dog, Scooter, for a while and then decided to give him away. He was about eight years old. Dad placed an ad in the paper and one couple responded to take him. Scooter went to live with this couple somewhere out in the country.
A couple years later, Dad decided to covertly check on him. He found out where the family lived and drove out there. He saw Scooter, chained up in a big empty backyard, and felt bad for him. Scooter saw him and ran toward him but couldn’t reach Dad’s hand. He wagged his tail and whimpered and barked. Dad told him that he’d be back to see him again soon.
The next week, he went back out and saw Scooter again. This time, the man who had taken him was there, working in the front yard. Dad talked to him and realized that the man and his wife had not given Scooter the attention and freedom that they promised. He talked the man into giving Scooter back.
Mom called me the next day and told me Scooter was back at home with them. She told me the story about Dad getting him back and I tried to imagine the whole thing. I went to Kennewick for a visit soon after that and played with Scooter a lot. I was sad and confused as to why they got rid of him in the first place, so this reunion felt like a second chance that I never thought I’d get. I realized that this was something rare and that I was lucky. I thought about all the people who loved their dogs until they died and how they probably all had dreams about playing with their dogs one last time. Sometimes you don’t know when that last time will be.
Scooter seemed the same to me, maybe just a little slower and older. Some gray hairs around his nose and mouth. I talked to him in a funny dog voice—part Scooby-Doo, part baby talk. I told him that I loved him and that he was always my best friend.
About a year later, Mom told me that Scooter was sick and they took him to the vet, who found cancer in his stomach and said he would have to be put to sleep. I was too far away and too broke to come back to Kennewick. Two days later, they went to the vet for the final time.
Dad took Scooter’s body, wrapped in his favorite dog blanket—one that I had given him when he was a puppy—and drove to some hills somewhere between Kennewick and Walla Walla. It was close to a highway that he had worked on and a place he once took Scooter to run free. He dug a grave, buried him, and said a prayer.
Big Dipper
It almost seemed easy for a while. Vince and I would walk around as the third band played and nonchalantly steal as much beer off tables as we could. By that time of night most people at the Big
