Fear and Loathing in the Tidal Basin
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It was the basin, I can see that now. Sure, the blister-raw heat of a summer even the most roughnecked and troppo-deranged VC regular would classify as sweltering didn't help matters. But mid-week and ears-deep in a brand of shit this maddening and stupefying, I can now see the true bastard behind our circumstances. It was the basin all along.
It was a typical afternoon here. The humidity was thicker than the cigarette smoke inside a Cleveland porno theater and then it happened: the mud bed erupted, a sea of claws and pincers swarming toward the house in demon droves. It was no time for pussy-footing. We grabbed some oars and a rusty pickaxe and we reaped crab souls.
Blood and chaos joined the humidity as crabs clashed with their human adversaries. We swung our shit with savage frenzy, like Vikings on a mushroom-induced murder high. A cacophony of scuttled clicks and smashed exoskeleton mingled with gently lapping riverwater and the birdsong of tidal wilderness.
The canoe trip did nothing to bring our addled sanity back into functional ranges, but I’m going to have to save that one for tomorrow.
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@Horace it’s been a long week…
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The canoe trip.
Your everyday acid fiend is used to things like watching their dead naked grandmother crawl up their knees with a knife in her mouth, but no one in straight society should ever be forced to handle this kind of trip.
We shoved off and paddled through murky waters made more obfuscated by a blinding afternoon sun hellbent on human rotisserie. That's when it happened. Sauna-hot winds howled like the damned, and the waves rose poplar-high, bumrushing the boat like hoboes coming down from a bad batch of mescaline.
The waters raged and the winds bitched. The tempest would reign. No hope of safe harbor.
De Sade would tell you that there's something about chaos that beckons to the souls of the deranged. I can tell you that we laughed in the face of the maelstrom, relishing the eventual embrace of our sea-as-executioner. The boat eventually gave in and lifted into limbo. I blacked out at some point, maniacal grin still pasted on my face hours later, coming to amid a heap of debris and sodden flinders.
In exchange for a six-pack and some soggy Pall Malls, a townie named Texaco Mike took us by fanboat to where our whole wretched misadventure began. We told him we didn't want to talk about it.
If only the water park resolved itself half as cleanly.
