Docker Takes Mist aka SallyHamilton into the Mountains: and What She discover . . .

     I settled into the back seat next to Docker in a low-slung four-door sedan about as old as me.

     "Awright, Mormo, move it," he barked to an enormous man behind the wheel, a man so huge he had to duck to see out the windshield.  Docker's two kids, about three and six, asleep, snuggled next to this giant.

      "Who told you where I was?" I said, slipping my arm through his.

      "That's not important.  We're together, now."  He pressed my arm to his side and kissed my cheek.

     "Where are we going?"

     "To the mountains, like I said."

     "In this?"  He didn't answer.  "Well, how long are we going to be away?  I--"

     "Baby, I'm telling you right now.  Cool it with the questions."  He looked straight ahead and put his arm around me. 

     "Where've you been?  What've you been doing?  I never heard a word--You never called, dropped me a line.  They wouldn't tell me anything at the bar."

           "Shouldn't've done that."  I couldn't see his face in the dark.  Couldn't tell if he was looking at me.  The tone of his voice warned me to keep mum about Darlene.

            "What were you doing?" I said.

            "Hnh?"

            "I asked you what you did while, you know, for the year--"
            "Was it a year?"

"More--a year, a month, two weeks, and three days.  We met in late August, last year.  I remember 'cause a couple of weeks after you left, we had to change from DST to PST--"

            "You lost me."

"Daylight Savings Time changes to Pacific Standard, you know, 'Spring forward, Fall back'?" 

"Ha, ha!" Docker guffawed, "Oh, that.  Sure, I know.  Who do you think I am?  DST to PST, PST to DST," he sing-songed, "You are really something else."

"You don't know anything about me.  But I intend to find out everything about you."

            "No.  No.  You won't find out anything.  There's nothing."

            "Don't you want to know what I did all last year?"

            "No, not really.  I don't give a shit.  I live in the Now, baby.  I'm a Now person.  There's no such thing as then, or even the next minute.  We could all be dead."

            "Docker!  That's morbid."

            "No.  It's the truth.  Someone could come along with an assault weapon and blow us all away."

            "You've seen too many movies."

"Never go to flicks.  Too phony.  Here!" he said, slapping the seat beside him, "Here's what's real."  He lifted his hand, "Right here's all I give a fuck about."

            "Stop it, Docker!  You're hurting me!"  I grabbed his wrist, "Get your big paw off my boob, you fucker!"  He pulled his hand away, laughing,

"Oh, God, babe.  I'm sorry."  He leaned over and kissed my breast.  I could feel the moist warmth of his breath through my sweater.  He raised it and kissed my bare skin and sucked my nipple.

"You know what I remember about you?  Remember I told you the first time we made love that the tip of your prick felt as soft and as smooth as a ripe apricot, my favorite fruit?"

"Get outta here!"

"Really.  The next day you brought me a whole basket.  You never told me where you got them so late in the season." 

"You never asked."  He caressed me, sucking.  I dug my fingers into his lush hair, exuding a fragrance of musky spice, and massaged his warm scalp.  He moved his hand between my thighs.  I found the belt buckle on his black twill pants.  Suddenly, he sat up, and with a sharp exhale, rolled down the window.  Mormo wiped the windshield with a crumpled bandanna hanky.     "We'll have plenty of time for fucking and messing around," Docker said, "and no one to bother us where we're going.  Now let's us try and catch some Zs."  I heard the clank of a bottle and saw his profile against the window as he upended a pint to his lips.  He passed it to me.  I took a couple of hits and handed it back.  One more swig and he pulled his leather flight-jacket around himself, drew me close, threw his head back and dropped off.  I tried closing my eyes, but every few minutes they'd pop open.

            Mormo drove on.  Whenever I caught his eye in the dim light of the rear view mirror, his thick upper lip curled.  The little boys, breathing softly, barely stirred.  I must have dozed.  Half-asleep, I heard Docker say, "Mormo, stop at the next place for another bottle."  In a low voice, thick with saliva, the big man emitted a low growl, then said, "Gas, Doc.  We need gas."  Still on the road at dawn, we stopped at a Gas 'N' Charge for fuel and a quick plug-in, took a pee break, and bought coffee, bagels, and orange juice.  The tow-headed kids sat quietly in the front seat eating and drinking their juice, as we barreled along.  They cuddled next to Mormo who, I now saw, wore a full beard and braided black hair in one thick plait down his back.  They never spoke.  I pulled my cell phone from my jacket on the seat beside me.

            "What the fuck're you doing?"  Docker snatched it out of my hand.

            "Calling work!  Give it back!"  He rolled down the window and tossed it out.  I couldn't have been more shocked if he'd punched me.

            "Man!  Why did you do that?  They'll wonder what happened."  My blood rose.

"They'll figure it out.  Nobody's indispensable.  You won't need it where we're going."  He gathered me to him, kissed and caressed me.  "Relax, baby.  You're with me.  Forget about work.  We're in the Now."  I went limp, closed my eyes.  The sensuous smell of his leather jacket made me dizzy.  I'll just take each moment as it comes, I told myself; que sera.

Jolted out of a deep sleep, but  not fully awake, my eyes still closed, I was hazily conscious of being carried along by the steadily humming engine on an interminable ride, bumping along a winding, narrow rutted road.  I cracked my lids enough to see stands of gigantic trees obliterating the late afternoon sun.  Limbs and shrubs scraped the top and sides of the car.

A MEMOIR FOUND IN AN I CHING

This is the first installment of Mist's memoir; in it she calls herself "Sally Hamilton."  Maybe that's her real name?  I tried finding her using it.  No luck.  She wrote it almost like fiction.  Perhaps it is.  Regardless, I was fascinated and could  hardly put it down.  Here it is:

My attraction was the sense of danger.  Not knowing what they would do next.  I dig adventure but never had the money or the time for travel.  I like roots; I like the security of having my own place and a steady job to pay for things I need to be creative; never wanted to marry or the responsibilities of raising kids.  I am attracted to men who live on the edge.  Like, once, I sort of went with this Latino dude -- Chilean and indigenous from LA -- who told me tales of the Mexican Mafia, his nine years in solitary for killing an inmate who tried to rape him when he first got in at age eighteen.  He had "PEPE" tattooed on his penis in crude block letters.  I asked him, why there?  "Es no much to do een preeson."  I had the sense to keep my distance.  The authorities ran him out of town, he told me the day he split for Vegas in his long, grey sedan he called El Tiburon.  I haven't heard from him in almost a decade.  I hope I never do.  Then I had a raging affair for a couple of years with a pot-farming cocaine dealer whom I stayed with outside of Laytonville.  We carried rifles on our rounds and flattened ourselves under shrubbery when helicopters whompah-whompahed overhead.  Responsible men have pulled guns on each other over me.

            Then I met Docker.

I'd see him at this arty-farty bar in the Potrero I liked going to because it was just over the hill from my place on Bernal Heights and on Saturday nights a jazz trio played.  The scene was a mix of artists, old-timey hard-drinkers, blue-collar workers, bikers, and musicians.  Women hung on Docker as he stood at the bar.  He knew everyone and everyone knew him.  When he looked at you, his green eyes danced with gold flecks.  One night, as I walked by, he grabbed my hand, pulled me over to a table, and held out a chair.  I took it.  He fell into one next to me.

            "I'm tired, fucking tired, man."  He lowered his head on his arms.  A women sidled up, pulled up his black cotton sleeve and wrote her number on his arm with her lipstick.  He turned his face towards hers; she leaned down and gave him a deep tongue kiss.  He came home with me that night.  We made love.  He sure didn't seem tired.  Then he told me about his initiation.

Docker was a white boy who'd been initiated as a kid.  He was tall and raven-haired.  He'd been captured by the Members who threatened to do him in when all he wanted was to be in.  That's why he hung around them, he told me.  When we first made love and I saw him without his shirt, I ran my fingers over the notches of scarification running across his shoulders.  (Before the end of the millennium, the trend was mostly tattoos.)  His skin stood up in even points, like on the vertebrae of some prehistoric amphibian.  As he talked, I imagined his fear in the darkness inside the heavy tapestry they'd flung over him and tied tightly.

     "I didn't know how long they kept me in there, man.  By the time they let me out, I couldn't see.  That's when they did this."  He gently touched his shoulder.  Docker spoke evenly, looking out into the darkness.  I curled close to him, my arm across his smooth chest, one leg flung over his hips, grazing his pubic hair.  He shifted his arm to a more comfortable position under my head and continued, "I kept losing consciousness, seeing all that blood come out of me.  But after I healed, when I got used to the mixture they rubbed into my wounds, I felt pretty damn good."

            "Were you scared?"  He tucked his chin to his chest and looked at me sideways, made a sound half-way between a grunt and a laugh which shook his shoulders, then turned away.  I figured I'd better not pursue it.  I felt an icky thrill running my fingers over the ridge of pliable flesh when he sat with his back to me on the bed after he had pulled his T-shirt off over his head.

            There's a theory of the Jung cult that goes: we choose the people closest to us in order to fill up holes in our psyches with experiences or pieces of our personas that haven't been developed.  Though I thought I took risks--or people said I did: traveling alone by bike, picking up guys because they fascinated me, like Docker, because it felt right--I knew myself inside.  I trusted myself.  People, when they first got to know me, an orphan bounced around foster homes, figured me for the librarian type.  I'd worn glasses since the fifth grade, was in drama class, student body officer, cheerleader, cum laude, all that rot.  Some of the hipper guys at school -- musicians -- would talk to me, but I couldn't figure out what they were telling me until I grew older and started hanging out in jazz joints.  They thought I was on drugs.  They read something in me back then that I was not conscious of.  So, applying this theory to Docker, is there a female librarian-type lurking somewhere in his psyche? 

For two weeks we rarely left my flat.  I'd just started my vacation, so it worked out fine.  The only time we got out of bed was to go dancing.  He surprised me one night by showing up in a classy suit, dress shirt, the whole works.  Took one look at me and said, "Are you going to wear that?"  So I stripped off my jeans, pulled a silk frock from a hanger, struggled into nylons with seams up the back, high-heels from some other era and stepped out into the beam of his approval.  He pinned a gardenia on my shoulder.  We went to a hotel downtown where a live band plays ballroom, which I love, but few dance like that anymore.  Docker literally swept me off my feet during tangos and waltzes.  He gave me a bracelet of silver and gold strands twisted together into a silver snake head, said belonged to his dead mom; a gift from his father who deserted the family when he was an infant.  He showed me faint initials engraved on the inside: "JP love to DM."  I took it off only once.  Then I had to go back to work and didn't see him for more than a year.

            I stopped looking for him in that bar after being told once too many times by the bartender: "You don't wanna know.  Stay outta here if you know what's good for you."  I laughed in his face.  "What is this some film noir dialogue, or what?  What are you talking about?"  "If you value your life, I'm not kidding," he said, "I wouldn't even admit I knew him, if I were you."  He looked over his shoulder as he talked.  "You think this is funny?  What's not funny is his brother got whacked last year.  They're going after anyone who knew him.  Darlene hasn't been around for weeks, either.  Now, get outta here.  You're a nice gal.  Go home, marry a banker or somebody.  You don't belong here."  But I thought it was funny.  Me, Sally Hamilton, in a '40s thriller.  Ignoring the bartender, I kept coming back.  He wouldn't serve me.  Others moved aside, giving me plenty of space.  No one mentioned his name.  I had become invisible.  And, I wondered, who was Darlene? 

      I moved a bunch of times and got an unlisted number.  Then, in the middle of the night, the phone rang.  I turned up the volume on the machine.  The voice on the other end said, "I'm coming by in a half-hour.  Going to the mountains with the kids.  If you want to come with me, be ready."  A zillion questions raced through my head.  I flipped on the speaker and said, "Okay," and before I could ask them, he'd slammed down the receiver.  What about work?  How long were we going to be away?  I cursed myself as I pulled on jeans, a sweater, boots, tied a cotton paisley scarf around my neck, and threw food, bottled water, clothes, and a bunch of other stuff into my big leather pack; tucked my cell phone in the pocket of my calf-skin field-jacket.  One questions loomed: How did he find me?