Palo Alto Stories

“Neither,” he says.

“Just saying,” I say. “If you had to choose because a genie said so, what would you choose?”

Joe, still looking at the dark dirt, says, “Both of ’em still have to suck dick.”

“Exactly,” says Hector. And Joe laughs a little. A chuckling pile of trash below me.

“Would that be so bad?” I say. “Don’t you ever get jealous of those girls in pornos that get to be on their knees in the middle of all those dicks?”

“Are you fucking serious?” says Hector.

“Don’t,” says Joe. “This faggot is always asking stupid questions and giving stupid answers; he don’t mean it.”

“No,” says Hector. “This faggot is serious.” He’s looking at me now, I can tell.

“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t you like the idea of an around-the-world blowbang?”

“I like to have a girl suck my dick, but I don’t want to doit,” says Hector.

“Me neither,” says Joe, but he is mumbling.

“Why not?” I say. “What’s the difference?”

“What’s the difference?” says Hector. “Because I am going in, and she is being got inside of.”

“And why is one better? Why does going inside make you better? Aren’t you, like, on her turf inside her, isn’t she in control of you? Like a mommy with her little baby making him feel good?”

“Because,” says Hector. But he doesn’t say anything else.

*   *   *

On the way home Joe and I are driving down the empty freeway. It’s like two thirty in the morning and we’re still pretty high, and if I look up, directly at the road lights above us, I can see kaleidoscopic rainbows building and turning on top of each other in the core of the bulbs.

And I feel like I’m remembering all this from somewhere, but I’m not sure where, and everything is a little hazy, and I remember that there is an angel named Michael, and he had a flaming sword, and…

And I say to Joe, “Let’s drive the wrong way down the other side of the freeway.”

Joe is almost asleep, but he says, “Wha?” and I can see the black gap just to the left of the center of his mouth.

“I’m going over to that side,” I say.

And I think of the olden times, when knights would aim huge lances at each other and you would feelthat when it hit you, feelthat force of the momentum of the horses’ pumping, cha

Yosemite

The drive up to Yosemite was long. My father played Bach the whole first half. We drove through Milpitas, Pleasanton, Dublin, Manteca, Escalon, and Oakdale. We had been to Yosemite before with my mom, but that was when it was snowing. There wasn’t going to be snow this time and it was just me and my dad and my brother.

At the turnoff for the Old Yosemite Road, the sun turned tangerine and my dad took out the Bach and put in a tape of his meditation lady. My brother and I chanted with her using fu

“Dad, can I turn the heat up?”

“Yup.” I did and cupped my hand over the grate until it was too hot and I pulled it away. I wasn’t tired even though it was dark outside and we’d been driving for hours. I leaned forward but my seat belt held me, so I undid it and leaned again and picked up my father’s old, thick Bible with pages falling out and a rubber band around it.

“Put your belt back on,” he said.

“I know,” I said. I clicked it in place. “I was just picking this up.”

“My Bible.”

“I know,” I said. “Why are the lines colored?” There was yellow, and pink, and green highlighter, all faded, all over the pages.

“Those are passages I like.”

I asked him why.

“Because they help me.” I read a little. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.It meant nothing. I closed it.

“You go to church?”

“No,” he said. The lady and the people on the meditation tape were chanting softly.

“Why do you have the Bible?”

“I just open it when I get in the car. Whatever page it opens to, I read.”

“Why?”

“I told you, it helps me.”

I put the rubber band back around the leather cover and held the thick thing in my lap. We went through a town with only a few lights and my dad slowed. The headlights bounced off some signs into my eyes. One said Yosemite thirty miles. Then we were on the windy part going up the mountain. The tape came to the end and my dad ejected it and left it sticking out of the player. It was white. The Bible tried to slip down my leg and I held on to it.

“Adam and Eve,” I said.

“Yup,” my dad said.

“Noah.”

“Yup.”

“Moses, Abraham. Jesus, David. The flood, killing the ram, the plagues, first there was light, then darkness, then water, then land, then the Garden of Eden.”

“Where did you learn all that?”

“At Sunday school, where Mom takes us.”

“Unity?”

“Yeah.” We got quiet as we wound up the mountain. The car went so close to the sides and there wasn’t always a barrier. Last time we did this part of the drive in the dark too and I hated it. I secretly held on to the side of the door with my right hand. There were pe

I hoisted up a little and tried to look over the side of the cliff but there were just trees and black, and there was too much back and forth, so I sat back. I tried to pretend we were going into the Misty Mountains and there were goblins around us, but I felt dizzy and I stopped. We kept going and I couldn’t sleep, all I could do was sit there.

“You want to know what my dad did with me when I was little?”

“What?” We were talking quietly because of my brother in the back.

“Nothing.” He laughed a little. “My dad was a son of a bitch.”

We were quiet for a while.

“Why do we go to Yosemite all the time?”

“We’ve only been a couple times. You don’t like it?”

“No, I do. I like the Ahwahnee. But why do we go?”

“I guess because nature makes me feel good. And I want to spend time with you and Alex.”

“Because you love us?”

“Yeah, because I love you, and I’ve missed you.”

At the Ahwahnee there was no one around. We parked and followed the footlights along the stone path. My dad carried Alex in one arm and his suitcase in his other hand. I followed with my heavy backpack. The lady at the desk gave my dad a card key and I followed his footsteps down the red carpet with the boxy Indian designs.

In the room, my dad lay Alex on one of the two beds and told me to get into my pajamas. He got some things from his suitcase and went into the bathroom, then the water started ru

“You should knock.”

“Sorry, I heard water.”

“It’s okay. Brush your teeth.” I did and looked only at myself in the mirror. “There’s some toothpaste in my toiletry bag there.” The square black bag unzipped around the whole side and opened like a mouth. There were two gray Bic razors, and a black and red can of shaving cream that said Barbasol, and a small white and green tube of toothpaste with a Roman column on it. The toothpaste was grainy on my brush and chalky in my mouth. If I looked at the border of the mirror I could see a slanted version of my dad wiping. He stayed on the seat and put the toilet paper between his legs. I always stood up to do it. He wiped for a long time and I mostly looked in my own eyes. Then he was behind me.