Wide Eyed (13 page)

In the middle of the night, my dog and I share candy on the couch. He sits next to me with his paws crossed, staring at my bag of taffy. He’s like,
I’ll eat it all even if I have to barf it up after.
He’s like,
Go For It.
He likes the lime ones; lime is my least favorite. He freaks on sweets. I know it’s bad to feed him donuts and Jujubes, but I can’t resist. He lives for this. It makes me feel like we’re both living our dreams. Sporty, like
Extreme Dreaming!
I imagine myself being interviewed on network television: “I’m just doing the best I can, shedding a little light. Trying to make a difference.” Full of slogans, holding my Bit-O-Honey. It’s like, you have dreams, night after night, for years on end, they don’t make any sense, you wake up, and fuck it—you give your dog a little candy to cheer yourself up. Is that so bad? I mean, is it? I could be thinking of ways to sabotage my will-o’-the-wisp cousin, but no. I just eat candy.

The night after the lavender cat, Laura and I are riding through the sky in a glass elevator, a modern one, not like Willie Wonka’s. All four sides of this elevator are made of windows that you can roll down, and the strangers riding with us are hanging out, smoking cigarettes over the edges. I think of what Charlie says in the book—
It’s eerie and frightening to be standing on clear glass high up in the sky. It makes you feel that you aren’t standing on anything at all.
The sky feels underwater—same blue—and the elevator feels like a glass-bottom boat. It would have been just as surprising to see a hammerhead shark swim past as it is to see this red-tailed hawk flying below the smokers. Things speeding by, like in the tornado before Oz—a cow, a witch on a bike, trees with roots hanging down. Instead though, a hawk and cigarette butts.

Laura shouts, “Come stand on the edge.”

“Why don’t
you
stand on the edge?”

Laura lights up, and the smoke wafts into my face.

“Blow it out the window,” I tell her. As if there aren’t windows all around us.

She leans over and whispers, “You know, you could die up here and I wouldn’t tell anyone.” She gets ready to push me over.

I wake up knowing that if I stayed asleep, I would’ve died. Basically, I just saved my own life.
Ha!
I think, in the darkness.
You can’t kill me!
This applies less to my twisted cousin than it does to the universe. I roll out of bed and into the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of chocolate milk and drink it in the light of the fridge. It’s the ultimate chocolate milk commercial—
Narrowly escaping death, she reaches for the only thing that can satisfy, Milk!

Next day I go to Disneyland. I feel guilty for leaving the dog home alone all day. “I’ll bring you a treat,” I tell him, as I pet his head and pull the front door shut.

“He’ll be fine,” my friend Lois says, putting her sunglasses on. She’s an optimist. “Once you ride Space Mountain you’ll forget all about him.”

“That’s true,” I say, wondering what Laura’s doing. I decided yesterday to stop inviting her out, which also contributes to my guilt. I know from past experience how much it sucks to feel guilty at Disneyland. You’re twirling in a teacup at sunset remembering you told your mom you’d cook her birthday dinner; you get off the ride and find a pay phone to call and apologize, but you didn’t bring her phone number with you. Harsh.

The Haunted House reminds me of Laura, the painting of the beautiful young girl that morphs into an old hag with snakes in her hair.

“That looks like my cousin,” I say to Lois.

“Or you,” she jokes.

“Shut up,” I say, elbowing her. Still, it’s uncanny.

“It’s a ride, not a funeral,” Lois says.

I remember the glass elevator. “Don’t you love Willie Wonka?” I ask Lois.

“We’re at Disneyland,” Lois says. “Wrong fantasy.”

“Let’s get candy,” I say. When we exit the mansion, we head straight for the stand where I chomp on chocolate turtles and candy canes. I buy Mickey Mouse Pixy Stix for the dog, after I picture his nose dusted with the sugar powder. So cute—canine cocaine. Lois’s tongue turns blue as she chews gumdrops. All I can think about is death. Laura, I’m convinced, is trying to kill me with her mind.

“I think my cousin’s psychic,” I say.

“What?” Lois says.

“Last night, in my dream, Laura was trying to kill me,” I explain. “She sits at home all day, tripping out on eBay … I feel like right now she’s sending me evil vibes.”

“No more candy for you,” Lois says. “Anyways, you can’t die from dreaming about death.”

“But she could be willing my demise,” I say. “Voodoo.”

“Look, Laura might shop too much on eBay, but that doesn’t make her a Voodoo priestess,” Lois says. “That’s, like, from a bad horror movie.”

“We’ll see,” I say. “I better start sleeping with Snickers under my pillow. When I go out, I want to be well stocked.”

“There’s plenty of candy in heaven,” Lois says.

Lois was right: I did eat too much candy at Disneyland. That night my dreams were a mess. I breast-fed a hippo. An albino man with glass teeth stalked me; every time I turned around he was Windexing his grin. My dog spoke backwards, telling me that he needed to be brushed.
Hsurb em,
he said. What’s worse, the glass-toothed man finally cornered me at a party, bit my arm with his jagged fangs, and I bled to death while everyone stood around drinking beer.

But Laura wasn’t responsible. She had her chance to get in there and damage me, while I was trapped in my sugary nightmares, but instead she stayed up all night haggling, pale-faced in her computer screen’s glow.

I get dressed in the morning, grab my favorite thing out of the pantry—King-Sized Reese’s—and ride the long orange package over to her on my bike.

“It’s 7 a.m.,” Laura says as I hug her. “You’re sweaty.”

“I brought you this,” I say, handing her the peanut butter cups.

“Thanks,” she says. “Why are you here so early?”

We go inside and she pours me coffee.

“Were you up all night?” I ask. “Doing eBay?”

“Not all night, but for a while. Why?”

“I had a vision of you sitting at your desk, bidding on shit.”

“I posted some new animals,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. But at Disneyland yesterday, I thought you were trying to kill me,” I tell her. “Now I know you’re innocent.”

“Good,” Laura says. “What, are you like taking steroids or something? You’re sweating like a horse.”

“Fuck it,” I tell her. “That’s not the point. I realized something. I realized that you may be tweaked, but you’re no psychic vampire. I thought about dad. I thought about how your mom kept it secret. It was like she was in the glass elevator. She could see everything going on, she was taking it through the roof, and we just twirled around, like cows in a tornado. Well, that’s over. I’m in my own elevator now, and you can’t push me out of it!”

“Okay,” she says, rubbing her head like she has a headache. She asks, “Were you up all night?”

“No, man, I was dreaming about hippos and glass teeth.”

As I hear myself say that, I wonder if I am finally dead, and if these conversations are the kind dead people have in their dreams. Assuming the dead dream.

A UNICORN-LOVER’S ROAD TRIP

I. Souvenirs

Texas is shaped like a cross.
Love’s
gift shops were crosses too, with long, gridlike aisles. Each shop was stationed at a truck stop and had a disco-era, red heart logo. I got lost in
Love’s
rows of junk. They were stocked with Lone Star State souvenirs: baseball caps embroidered with farting bulls, leather Texas-shaped key chains, and miniature die-cast metal oil-drilling machinery.

Love’s
also sold unicorns. They had nonfunctional 3-D sculpted unicorn plates, glass unicorns with gold hooves and horns, and fake jade unicorn carvings imported from China. I guess
Love’s
carried these overpriced animals to provide homebound truckers with whimsical trinkets for their wives, girlfriends, and daughters. Their ladies thank, hug, and kiss them, adding the unicorns to their curio shelves. All over Texas, females gaze sentimentally into glass cases crammed with unicorns, reminiscing about the time Dad came home.

Unicorn souvenirs symbolize a man’s distance from the women who love him. A unicorn’s essential magic is diminished in tacky gift exchanges. My boyfriend Matt gives me unicorns sometimes, but only really nice ones. I can’t justify buying pricey souvenirs for myself. Therefore, I only bought unicorn greeting cards. I don’t want to become a woman whose house is full of cheap sculpture.

II. Lodging

Matt and I pulled off at a dilapidated roadside motel. Some windows were boarded up, and the walls were stacks of half-painted cinderblocks. But there wasn’t another motel for miles. The manager’s front porch was a single gas pump. He lived in a gas station. I couldn’t imagine his life of constant pumping, dreams and sex interrupted by ringing bells when customers pulled up.

Our room smelled like shit. Old dishtowels were stapled over the windows. A stained mattress hid a powdery pile of cement where construction had halted. A lamp with an insect-hating bulb cast a druggy yellow glow. Porn was the only thing on TV. Our bed was lopsided thanks to squeaky, broken springs.

Lying there, we wondered if our lives were in danger. In the car I’d been horny and now I wasn’t. We got dressed, returned the key, and continued driving ganked up on sugary orange-slice candies.

Sixty miles later, we reached a town with a string of motels, and chose one that looked more promising. A patchouli-scented Indian man escorted us to Room 8. Hanging above the bed was a picture of a unicorn and her colt enjoying waterfalls and mistmade rainbows. They stood on an island surrounded by streams and wild ginger plants.

We set down our luggage. My faith in unicorns was renewed. We’d stumbled out of Texas and into paradise. I got horny again thinking of magic horses.

III. The Obsession

I’ve dreamt of unicorns my whole life. I want one for a pet. Unicorns are real. I see them peering out from behind boulders in the woods. Unicorn-pegasuses fly across full-moonscapes when I stargaze. I count on unicorns appearing when everything goes well. They represent safety and hope.

But I also love raunchy white-trash unicorns. There are lots of them in Texas, mixed among the classic ones. Unicorns reflect the thoughts of people who appreciate them. Fantasy animals manifest human desires.

IV. Gasoline

My main goal on road trips is to avoid running out of gas, so gasoline is always an issue.

When I turned sixteen, I took my first solo road trip to Las Vegas. I ran out of gas and pulled off the highway. A kind man stopped and emptied his red canister into my tank. Another time, I had to drive fifty miles on fumes.

One day in Texas, Matt and I barely made it. We were so relieved to see the giant red heart. When we drove into
Love’s,
Matt filled the gas tank and I went inside to pee.

A haggard man eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos leaned against the hot dog display. I remembered a bouffant-sporting poodle lady driving a pink Mary Kay Cadillac back in Dallas. She was eating Cheetos too. Texas seemed junky.

Then a glint of refracted florescent light caught my peripheral vision. A table of tiny crystal unicorns shined and sparkled. They were half-priced from having chipped tails, scratched-up manes, and missing horns.

“You like them unicorns?” the sales lady asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Can I have one for free?”

“Nope,” she said.

I wasn’t going to pay $6 for a broken unicorn. I went out to the car, got the camera, came back in, and shot some pictures of the unicorn spread. The figurines gave me a reason to be in Texas. Suddenly, I was a unicorn photographer. My truck stop spread could be in a fashion magazine. Unicorns never go out of style. I’ve got folders full of magazine unicorns. Cameras often capture the magic of mythical creatures. I wanted to document the delicate, rejected horses and give their lives in Texas meaning.

V. Geography

Natural Bridge Caverns’ mascot was a slick orange brontosaurus. I expected to see a dinosaur caged in an ornately carved stone pen. Matt and I skipped the Alamo so we could go underground.

Driving to the caves took us through Austrian-style villages landscaped with tulips, windsocks blowing from porches, and cobblestone driveways. Billboards advertised frothy steins of lager. It was a challenge not to pull off the road and get wasted.

At Natural Bridge, opalescent white limestone walls were frosted with thin layers of warm, sulfuric water. Steep, curvy paths lined with colored spotlights gave the caves a kitschy, interplanetary feeling. A “fried egg” stalagmite glowed from red to green when Matt’s camera flashed on it. A glossy black heap of bat guano had a brontosaurus shape like one had suffocated underneath it. Silt in the creek beds looked like finely ground white pepper. Blind cave-dwelling shrimp may have been hiding in wet crevices.

As our tour group wound through prehistoric spires and mounds, I noted the majestic names of the formations:
Sherwood Forest, Castle of the White Giants, King’s Throne.
Castle of the White Giants? It was a gigantic room, baroquely decorated with chandeliers, cave bacon, drapery, and other aptly named rocks and mineral deposits. A hump shaped like a harpsichord caught my eye. The 100-foot-high ceiling dwarfed 50-foot stalactites hanging over us. The socalled “white giants” reminded me of unicorn horns. How many blind shrimp were skewered as those horns emerged during some ancient earthquake?