Love in the Time of Climate Change (21 page)

Jesse's sister had an even filthier mouth than her brother. She was three years older and had been a marvelous role model for him. She had bought him his first bag of grass when he was sixteen, got the sister of one of her close friends to deflower him a year later, forged him a fake ID when he was nineteen, and was a consistently badass influence on him.

Clara was a second-grade teacher in Glenfield and we loved her dearly.

As much of a motormouth as she was, her boyfriend was solemn and silent. He was a prominent attorney in town and seemed like a nice guy, but it was sort of difficult to tell. When the bunch of us got together it was hard as hell for him to get a word in edgewise. And now with Sarah, who could chat it up with the best of them, in the picture, he seemed destined for silence.

Clara hated Romney even more than we did, if that was humanly possible. The sound of his name brought forth either a blood curling scream or a string of slanderous, raucous filth.

“Christ!” she continued, spittle frothing from her lips. “Fuckhead wins and I'm out of here. Seriously, I'm moving to Canada. I swear to God I am. I refuse to live in a country with a shit-for-brains president again!”

“Hey Clara,” I said, giving her a big hug.

“Darling!” she said, hugging me back. “Please tell me everything is going to be okay!”

“Relax!” Jesse said. “As I said, it's in the bag!”

All that did was raise my anxiety level another notch or two. As smart as the Roommate was, his track record on calling elections was mixed at best. To this day, one of my most haunting memories was the Gore/Bush 2000 debacle. Sitting in our dorm room, high as kites, Jesse dancing jigs as he called Florida and the election for Al Gore.

We all know how that went down.

“Shut up!” I cautioned. “Don't jinx it. And stop changing the damn channel!” Between Jesse and his sister we had stuck with one station for no more than half a minute before frantically moving on to another. I was queasy enough without being subjected to the dizzying number of channel changes.

“The polls …”

“Quiet!”

“It's as good as …”

“I'm serious. Don't say it! Don't say anything. Here, take the Cheetos—if I eat one more I'm going to puke!”

The night was long, as election nights are wont to be. I was the odd one out, with no one to snuggle with. The leftover pizza, the rancid pepperoni, too much crap food, a nervous, over-acidified stomach, channels changing faster than Romney's flip flops, the future of the planet at stake—I was on the verge of pukedom. Every time a
state was called for Romney, I grew increasingly nauseous. I had ceased to be entertained by Clara who, whenever Romney's name flashed across the screen, continued to unleash every foul word known to humankind, sometimes in multiple languages, often accompanied by obscene gestures including three full moons at the television, these last high jinks getting huge laughs from Sarah.

It was somewhere around the third joint that the major stations, even the fascist Fox lie-through-their-teeth network, called the election for Obama.

Thank God! Finally, finally, it was all over!

Occasionally, just occasionally, good triumphs over evil. Not great, but at least good.

Jesse did his “Fuck You Romney” victory break dance, getting the cord of the stand-up lamp wrapped around his ankle and bringing the whole damn thing crashing down on his head, much to the delight of Sarah and his sister, who waltzed with her boyfriend around the wreckage singing poorly but loudly.

Nah, nah, nah, nah

Nah, nah, nah, nah

Hey, hey

Goodbye.

I sat on the couch, pretty stoned but not nearly as nauseated, breathing in and out and in again, wondering what Samantha was doing at that very moment and feeling content to know that we would live to fight the good fight another day.

—

With the election finally over, I was once again able to sleep and grateful to shift my late-night fantasies away from the humiliating collapse of the Republican Party to something much more inviting. Like me and you-know-who.

No sex in this evening's installment. Not even foreplay.
Just that warm and fuzzy feeling of contentment and tranquility. Pure domestic bliss. I could so clearly see it. Our passive solar house sitting high on a hill, the green of the Berkshires stretching out forever. Photovoltaics (hmm … four kilowatts or five?) and solar hot water on the roof. An organic garden and mini orchard out back. Two cats in the yard, a few chickens clucking away (no geese!). Our bedroom window wide open to catch the twinkling turnons of the fireflies.

“Did you plug the car in?” asks Samantha dreamily as I turn out the lights. “Of course, sweetie,” I reply, reaching out to pull her close. Ahh …

Speaking of plug-ins, I have this fabulous idea for a television commercial starring,—
voilà
—Samantha and (duh!) me. Guaranteed to sell. A Super Bowl ad, an instant viral sensation on YouTube.

Two vehicles pull into a dusty, desolate South Texas gas station. Tumbleweeds tumble, flies buzz, waves of heat rise from the pavement. Very rural and redneck. An incredibly hot attendant (guess who?) sits out front, decked out in sexy cowgirl outfit with a ten-gallon hat and fantasy riding boots, low slutty shorts and a super-tight top, plenty of cleavage for the camera to lazily pan over. She's fanning herself, bored to tears.

Your Hollywood-handsome cowboy with an eight o'clock shadow and dreamy eyes (no, not me!) gets out of Vehicle #1 (a souped-up gas-guzzling truck, of course). He opens the hood.

“Know what I got in here, darling?” he drawls.

She continues fanning and swatting flies.

“Three hundred and sixty horsepower, six speeds, zero to seventy in three seconds. Hell, I can tow the damn gas station behind this baby. Why don't you and I take her for a spin.” He smiles, the sun reflecting off dazzling white teeth.

No response.

Meanwhile, out from Vehicle #2 (just a car) shuffles our hero, yours truly. Nerdy, poorly dressed, flicking fast-food crumbs off his smiley-face sweater, a Doctor Seuss–like hat perched crookedly on his head. He stumbles and barely catches himself.

The cowboy snickers.

The attendant bats her beautiful eyelashes. “Fill ‘er up?” she asks.

“Oh no,” says I. “I don't use gas. It's all electric. I'm just looking for directions to Dallas.”

Wiggling her gorgeous ass the attendant sidles up to him, slides her hand up his thigh, and blows softly in his ear.

“You drive,” she coos. “I'll ride shotgun.”

The cowboy spits and grimaces.

Voiceover comes in, Morgan Freeman again: “The all-new electric Whatever. Taking you places you've never dreamed!”

I told you. Guaranteed to sell.

Am I brilliant or what?

J
ESSE AND
I
HAD SPENT
the better part of a Saturday afternoon endlessly watching YouTube videos of mountaintop removal, a.k.a. mountains being blown to shit, to smithereens, sky-fucking-high. We stared, unable to avert our eyes, helplessly transfixed, as mountaintop after mountaintop disappeared.
KABOOM!
Over and over again.

As if strip mining wasn't bad enough; Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Virginias managed to one up it and find an even more horrific way to get out the damn coal.

Literally blow the tops off of mountains.

Jesse had celebrated the successful passage of the medical marijuana referendum question the week before (hooray!) by heading down to a northern Connecticut porn shop and buying a bong, still illegal to purchase in Massachusetts.

Guns yes, multiple rounds of ammunition of course, but bongs? God, no! What are you thinking?

Christening it “The Head Hunter,” we were on our third bowl, wallowing in our angst and anxiety, mountaintops and minds blown to kingdom come. If the psychotic
effect of watching mountaintops blasted away didn't necessitate a prescription for medical marijuana, nothing would.

“Wow! One more mountain!” he begged, choking on his hit. “Just one more!”

The images were difficult enough to watch stoned, next to impossible straight. Hence the need for pot.

One moment there it was. The most beautiful of all Appalachian hills, draped in a vibrant, forested quilt of beech, ash, birch, and hemlock. Cloaked in wildflowers—trailing arbutus, Oconee bells, heartleafs, and rue anemones. Witness to geologic uplift and eons of erosion. Disturbed by hurricane and fire, flood and drought. Idyllic home to white-tail deer, black bear, and bobcat. Serenaded with the choruses of songbird, frog, and insect. Its back massaged with all of the little folk—plant, animal, fungi, and microbe. Climbed and hunted and gathered and made love on by people for ten thousand years.

One moment there it was. The most diverse, amazing, natural wonder you could ever imagine. A temple to the gods and goddesses. A shrine to all that was sacred.

And then, in a blink of an eye, with one push of a button or flick of a switch or click of a mouse or however the hell else they blow things up these days,
KABOOM!
Mountaintop gone. Forever. Vanished!

We were looping Queen's “Another One Bites the Dust” (and another one, and another one)—music to blow up mountains by.

Who says one can't multitask when stoned? We were blasting tunes, mountaintops, and our fragile little brains, and, frankly, doing all three quite well.

“Wow!” Jesse said. If he were to have said “wow” one more time during this horror-fest I was going to blow his top off.

“What god createth, humans hath destroyeth.”

Spoken like a true atheist.

And then, as if reality weren't surreal enough, Jesse had figured out a way to run the videos backwards. We got the heartache of watching mountaintops blown off, but then the joy of watching them sewn back together, all in an instant. Off and on. On and off. Absolutely mesmerizing. Over and over again. My head was spinning. I could feel my brain rattling around in my cranium, loose as a caboose.

“I wonder who thought this one up?” Jesse asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, were a bunch of suits sitting around in a boardroom and some dude said, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. Screw those pesky hillbillies feeding us all this shit about black lung and emphysema and tunnel collapse and living wages. Who needs 'em? Let's just blow the fucking mountains up! It's a win-win situation. We make more money, they go back to their hovels and stills where they belong.'”

I couldn't help but laugh.

“I mean, put yourself in their shoes.” Jesse continued.

“The last place on earth I'd want to be in is their shoes, either the miners or the corporate hacks.”

“Yeah, but think about it. If you don't give a shit, if you truly don't give a rat's ass about anything other than the bottom line, then it makes perfect sense.”

Damned if the Roommate wasn't right. Mountaintop removal was the ultimate cluster fuck. But to some corporate fat cat in his mansion a thousand miles away, it all made perfect sense.

Rivers? Streams?

Who needs them? It's not my water.

Hiking? Hunting?

That's for Losers!

Aesthetics?

Overrated!

Wildlife? Nature?

Whatever!

The locals?

Fuck 'em! They're poor!

Those are all externalities. Obstacles to get rid of. Foes to be vanquished.

Coal, on the other hand? Now you're talking the real deal! Shit that matters. Black gold. Get it out of the ground, quick and cheap, and let nothing stand in your way.

We will move mountains to get it. Literally
remove
mountains.

Got a hill of coal? Blow it sky high! Gobble up the good stuff. Burn the son of a bitch and fry the friggin' planet.

And make a shitload of money doing it.

The words of John Muir, high on my list of the Top Hundred Good Folk, echoed through my rattled brain: “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

Written a hundred years ago in 1912 at the height of Muir's battle over the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, these words could have been written today.

Jesse was right. It made perfect sense.

I could see Satan, doubled over in laughter, pissed that he didn't think of it. John Muir rolling over in his California grave, wondering why history is destined to repeat itself endlessly, wondering when, if ever, we'll learn from our mistakes.

“Wow!” I said, taking one more hit. “Wow!”

Just when I thought I couldn't get any more bummed out, or stoned for that matter, there was a knock on the door. We looked out to see two well-dressed twenty-something guys clutching what seemed to be Bibles.

“Don't answer the door,” I begged. “Please. I can't handle this. I'm way too stoned.”