No man and woman in their early thirties, so apart from the rest of the world, so alone and stuck together in a lonely cabin in the middle of nowhere for three weeks, day and night, didn’t think of sex. It would be as natural a thought as eating or drinking water, and probably as frequent. We even had booze, (cases of beer which we both drank copiously) and lines of speed to fuel the fire. But I never did ‘pinch’ her half as hard as I might have for the most intimate details about their curious lives, their bedroom foreplay and kisses, as all this crossed my mind in our late-night conversations, a movie at least in this media barren world.
She spoke of their love affair and life together and their split-up in generalities and had no colorful adjectives or details to enliven it. She was a bland narrator, one who doesn’t know what lights up a scene with a single, telling word, unimaginative. She was a perfect businesswoman, the best, pragmatic and on time to a tee, and in this role she served me better than anyone else in money matters. So I took no notes of our conversations and lost interest after these first week for any journalistic peek into the lesbian world I was hoping for.
I always considered myself a radical. Now the idea of such a woman, not only against society but men too, was intriguing. I wondered if there were men like that, a mirror faction that hated society but women also as some deadly enemy. Chuck came to mind. I could picture him in some far off retreat. But women, that was an idea that broke all the laws of nature and millions of years of human evolution. Were they were born-again Amazons? I wanted to meet this Penthesilea, but not at gunpoint. As ‘K’ began to enjoy my late night stories, she opened up and told me what she knew.
Her partner in business and love just wanted to make money so she could afford to leave the world of men forever. The hamburger joint was doing O.K. with a steady stream of customers, but the slender profits would take years to meet her goals. So they started selling pot, right at the drive-through window in little bags with your hamburger, to the steady customers they knew. This bumped it up a bit but not enough. So they moved up the next notch to cocaine. Business skyrocketed, the money was flowing in. But they both knew this was a limited-time offer before a bust, so they sold the business to an unwitting buyer, showing him their fantastic books, for another big profit and got out just in time after six months of white powder specials. ‘Cheeseburger please, with one dash of mayonnaise’. ‘That will be twenty seven dollars sir’. They disappeared into the hills, safe and sound.
But I never got to meet this Amazon queen with a shotgun in her hands. ‘K’ showed me a Polaroid picture of her one night, both of them arm in arm in white T-shirts and jeans, so she haunted my imagination for a while, as a person I was dying to meet. She was a beauty in that picture, petite, and in my mind, deranged, and so doubly attractive to me, the ‘pity’ effect once again kicking in. But that’s as close as I ever got to this brief fascination. I asked ‘K’ once to drive me to this nearby ranch, I was so intrigued. She told me it would be too dangerous for me, (possibly getting shot) and damaging to her reputation, revealing a secret.
In our first rendezvous I told ‘K’ that we’d each clear over twenty thousand a week easy, but I liked to take a week break after each transaction, just to enjoy life, and that I could supply everything, forever. She was all ears. After our talk it was time to see the place. So a few days later Louie and I got into his Toyota truck and drove up there. He knew the way, having been there several times, (I could never figure out why). It would have been impossible for me to find it, as the dirt road had so many forks in it with no road signs, even instructions would have been impossible.
It was a beautiful Fall afternoon and after viewing the property, the small ranch house, trailer, sheds, generator, Louie asked if we could take her ATV out for a spin. Louie drives this little vehicle and I sit behind him on a bumpy ride as we speed up and down hillsides, ever faster and ever steeper as Louie is determined to test the limits of this loud machine.
And he does find the limit. Determination and perseverance will get you to your goal. He attempts one final, very steep and rocky hillside. We get a running start and race up. The bike revs loudly as we grind our way up but right near the top the incline increases ten degrees and all of a sudden the bike overturns and we’re tumbling down, with the heavy machine, to the bottom. The A.T.V. isn’t damaged and as Louie pushes the bike off him and then gets off of me we stand up, brush ourselves off and think we’ve only suffered minor cuts and bruises. We drive back to ‘K’s place, talk some more, drink a few beers and Louie and I set off for the three hour ride home.
As we get to the highway, I tell Louie to pull over at the next liquor store as my shoulder is beginning to ache. I want a bottle of wine to dull the pain. I drink the whole bottle on the way home but the pain increases. At Louie’s, where I still have my room, I take a shower and now the pain at the top of my shoulder is reaching a screaming, unbearable degree of agony. I dress and call ‘C’, telling him my plight. He’s over within minutes with some brown, Mexican heroin. He lays out two lines on my desk, he does the larger one and hands me the straw. I snort the line, not even an inch long and within seconds the raging, excruciating pain in my shoulder vanishes. This happens so instantly and completely that I feel like one magically transformed from a whining cripple to a superman who now wants to go out on the town and party all night.
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