Chapter 2

Restlessly, I turned and walked back to my RV at the small rental park about a mile away. The park offered no hydro or solar power, but did have intermittent water and a nice little communal shower. Really, I needed no more, living very simply on old reggae music, yoga, daily workouts, and a steady stream of alcohol and marijuana.

The Chinese built RV served as my art studio and home for the past three years after I split when my father went to prison. The RV was Daddy's hypocritical ministry on wheels. I drove off with it one day, never looking back at the shitty excuse of what some called a family. Daddy was a charlatan hetero firebrand preacher jailed for child molestation, and mom nothing but a born again hooker turned prostitute for the almighty.

As I approached the RV, Herman waited in his usual place; the fiftyish male and I were best buds. I loved his cranky old demeanor, odd tattoos, and scarred body. "Got any dines," he asked in his strange wooden voice, vocals cords burned from many years fighting chemical spills as an old sea dog.

"Yeah, got plenty, come on in and we'll eat," I told him. We gave each other a little hug and entered the RV.

"You know where everything is," I added.

Sardines, farmed on the cleaned up East Coast, were a staple of the poor, along with a variety of genetically manipulated food products flourishing in the heartland of our country.

He started rummaging through the well-organized cupboards. The Thorogood designed RV had seen better days, but we kept the baby running like a charm. The swift little ride gave me the freedom I needed to live on the road—and the get away power when the law decided to be a problem.

I heard Felicity at the door scratching on the screen and walked over to open up. The greedy mutant cat peered up at me as if asking, "Where the fuck have you been?"

Her brood meowed with her, although they were too scared to come inside. About three weeks ago, the six kittens showed up at the door to the RV with Felicity. I had no idea what happened to their mother, but Felicity took the role of mother now, ensuring they received some of the scraps from our table. The kittens were so cute and fattening up nicely since joining our small family. I especially enjoyed an all black Tom with a missing ear. Due to the way he curled his tail and bossed around the other kittens, I called him Lucifer.

"Get lost," I told the Felicity as she jumped on the table, perusing for some food and beer. I felt Felicity's rage in a low throated mewl, sounding like the ruler of this abode. The damn cat always complained about her food; however, her feisty spirit made me proud. I liked fighters, not wimps.

Opening the cooling unit, I pulled out yesterday's remnant soy burger and gave it to her. She turned her nose up, showing her disdain. "Eat that you silly ball of fur," I told her. She hissed at me again, jumped off the table, and went to Herman, who would give her sardines, for the cat knew how to get her way. I took the soy burger and left it out for the kittens. They were not so picky and gobbled the small portion down in a flash and then meowed for more.

I tried to connect with Felicity's mind to settle her down, something I had not yet mastered. She turned her head sideways, meowed once, and then ignored me. In moments of deep concentration, I had discovered the strange ability to connect with animals. Nonetheless, the animal brain existed as a mystery to me, processing in strange patterns based on survival and reproduction. At best, I could feel animal emotions, but couldn't control their actions.

"Stop it with that cat," Herman interrupted, knowing the way Felicity and I communicated, his thin body twisting in my direction. "Where did you hide it?"

Ignoring his last comment, I replied, "She's not listening. You spoil her."

A wide smile stretched his crinkled skin, his bald head shining in the dim light of the room. "You're not gonna tell me?"

I sat and thumped my fingers, waiting for him to push me to find what he wanted.

Rummaging with great tenacity, Herman finally discovered the items, "Aha, can't keep it hidden from me, girl!" He came and sat beside me, carrying my bong, a bag of marijuana, three beers, and four tins of sardines.

Oh, how I loved this man, taking his calloused hand and giving him a wink. Herman and I met through his act of kindness when I was a minor and running from the law, secreted away in my RV in Austin at a vagrant camp. I was about dead of starvation and synthetic heroin use when he knocked on the door of my RV one day and nursed me back to health. I cussed him the entire time I went through withdrawal, never quite figuring out why he saved me. We had been inseparable ever since. If I loved anyone, it was that old man. He lived in his mini-hydro a few feet from my RV, and we kept an eye out for each other's stuff.

"You're such a brat," he said, sliding a beer my way.

"Old Man," I mocked him, both of us pausing to laugh at the little game we played almost every evening. "You always smoke my pot."

"If you did some fuckin work instead of cunt huntin, we might afford more of the stuff."

"Least my equipment works, and I ain't complaining like you always do."

Herman clutched his chest, feigning great pain, "That's a low blow, kid." We both enjoyed our play fighting, him always pretending great pain at my words.

"Let's get high, Herman—you useless male. Never met a male I could stand!"

"Ah baby, you know you love me," he quipped.

"Pfft, loathe you is more like it—pity you like an old tom-cat I wanna feed but not take home to Mummy. C'mon, now zip up your mouth and let's feast at my royal table, Mr. Man." I gazed into the face of the wizened soul, my affection running deep for the male—the only affection I ever held for any man. A crow called, and we turned to the window and viewed stunning constellations teasing black emptiness.

After a moment of peaceful quiet, he spoke in a soft voice, "Been a long time since the sky looked that good." For a cranky old cuss, Herman had the heart of a poet.

"The planet's making a comeback, that's why the skies are clearing and the beach is getting so much more traffic—if we could only keep the Chinese from fucking it up."

"There will always be someone, Thorogood is funding the Chinese off of our dollars," he added, circulating the latest gossip. We sat melancholy and still, enjoying the stars in the sky, wondering about what the future held for the queer and the poor.

He eventually let out a low whistle, opened a can of sardines, and put it on the side of the table. Felicity went at it immediately with great vigor. She gobbled down the tin within seconds and then hissed wanting a beer. I popped a top on a can of Nathaniel's Pale Ale and poured it into her bowl. She lapped at it thirstily, causing me to smile about my alcoholic cat.

"Brought in two hundred today fixing an old desalination unit in town," Herman said, opening a beer and then downing it in one long draw.

I nodded, groaning very quietly, "You smoke that much in a week." Loading my bong with pot, I lit up and inhaled great Mexican weed.

"Calling the kettle black?" he asked, petting Felicity with a coarse touch.

Herman contributed to our wealth by getting odd tinkering jobs in town. Since he was heterosexual, he had more freedom than a queer, being allowed into all the places with the signs reading, Faggots Not Welcome Here.

The cat moved away from Herman's attention as I blew out my fumes, and I knew she wanted a hit too, so I put the bong on the table, allowing her to inhale the remaining smoke. She put her nose directly over the small bowl and breathed deeply, jumping off the table after a few seconds only to start chasing her tail. Herman and I burst out in a fit of the giggles.

Taking another hit, I coughed once and then held my breath, not wanting to lose any more of the prime drug. The immediate euphoric high flowed through my nervous system, relaxing the vagaries often troubling my mind. Pot felt like magic to me, the tendrils of the drug attaching to the neurons in my central nervous system to slow my reactions. Marijuana and alcohol helped me forget the tragedy of my life and maintain some sort of equilibrium.

"And you did nothing today but get high, eh?" Winking at me, he stopped talking, taking the bong and reloading. Picking up my lighter from the table, he drew in a satisfying toke. Blowing out the smoke smelling of burnt rope, he added, "Tell me I ain't right." He wiped a smoke tear from his eye and started giggling, "Christ, this is some powerful weed."

"THC enhanced baby, and I sold some pot this morning ... and painted a portrait, brought in a couple of hundred myself. So quit your bitching." I wrestled the bong away from him, reloaded it, and took a long pleasing hit.

Felicity jumped back on the table wanting another hit, so I let her have one by blowing directly in her face. The cat batted her eyes a few times and then fell over with her tongue hanging from her mouth. I laughed so hard I almost peed.

Herman scolded me, "Don't be like that with an innocent cat!" How could I explain to the grumpy old soul that Felicity was far from innocent?

Taking the bong away from me with a quick move, he lit up. After holding his breath in for a few seconds, he blew out the thick smoke, saying, "Mean queer, and are you ever gonna do anything but try to pick up women and smoke weed?"

"You're gonna smoke up all of our profits," I told him, not denying what he said, because Herman knew me like no other. He couldn't help but tease me about my sexual proclivities, which were often loud enough to hear around the park when I scored with a hot girl. I knew it gave him a good fantasy, thinking about two women having sex.

I took the bong away from him and inhaled the remainder of his hit. "You old dog," I teased him, feeling giddy and stoned.