Deemster Derek: Revised

The guy really did come from nowhere it seemed. We were all sitting in the grass field of a parking lot drinking away the day, waiting for the night, waiting for the real bands to hit the stage, and then suddenly there he was. Actually, if you want the truth, I did see him approaching from a distance, lumbering from side to side in his bright orange jacket, and I did make eye contact and give him a friendly little nod, but that’s something my friends will never know. I guess that’s why he decided to sit next to me.

“Shit man, I’m almost senile and I’m only 25,” was his opening line. He was cross legged on the ground and the statement had an air of pride - he laughed after he said it though, so you can take that for what you will. He smelled like everyone else at that festival, like a goddamn hippie. Yes, they still exist. It’s almost a sweet smell, a mixture of B.O. and half wiped ass baked in the sun, melded together by caked on dirt and sand and whatever juices they’ve drank or bits of food their beards have accumulated. This place was filled with that scent. It pervaded every crowd and lingered in every line. In the port-o-potties it would lay in wait and attack in full strength. I thought that in this open field we would escape it, but I was wrong.

“You know what I mean, brother,” was the next thing he said, and he said it to me. I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded, and he nodded back. He looked like an out of work Jack Black. A huge belly and short, stout legs. A beard that was long unkempt and two blue eyes that rested in his skull so glazed over and lazy they just screamed, “I do drugs.”

He looked around the circle and everyone looked back.

“Could I get one of those beers?” he asked. I thought it was downright rude and expected someone to tell him to fuck off, but Rob, the one next to the case was already drunk, and a big friendly bear, so he tossed him a can. The guy snagged it out of the air, and downed half of it in one chug. He used his dirty sleeve to wipe his beard.

“Ahh,” he said, “now that’s some good shit, am I right brother?” And I genuinely did agree. It was some good shit under this hot summer sun next to all these reflective car hoods, without a breeze or cloud or speck of shade to be found. Sure, alcohol and sunshine both act in a dehydrative manner, but that never stops the drinking. While the warmth is beating down, consequences are negligible.

He put up his hand for a high five and I wondered if LSD or Hepatitis could be transferred via palm to palm contact, but what could I do? I gave the hand a slap.

“Right on,” he said and I looked at my friends.

“So what’s your name man?” Rob came in. I was grateful, but at the same time wondered why he was being so friendly. The guy was clearly scum and I wanted him gone. It was me he was sitting next to, and it was our beer that he was drinking. Five dollars of that case was mine.

“I’m Derek.”

“That’s cool man,” said Rob. “Do you work here or something?” Derek laughed and gave a tug to his coat. Like I said, it was thick and bright orange, and he must have been sweating his balls off in the heat.

“Nope,” Derek replied, “I do not. The coat’s working though. It got you, and it got me in here for free.” He raised his pudgy wrist and waved it, laughing like a martian. A blue festival bracelet dangled around, nestling with thick, dark arm hair.

“Sick,” said Rob, and he took a sip of his beer. Derek did the same, and then asked for another, and Rob gave it up. The bastard. I looked across to one of my friends in the circle and his eyes widened. Derek cracked open the new can.

“So do you guys know where I could find any deemsters?” he asked. Immediately the silence of the group broke. One of the guys, Bill, laughed and darted his eyes around the circle as if this were the punch line to a joke. No one got it.

“DMT? No we don’t have any of that stuff,” Bill responded.

Derek laughed back, his throat gurgling like it needed to be cleared. “Damn, that’s too bad,” he said, “I’ve been looking for some deemsters all weekend. This place is dry.”

I looked down at Derek and tried to put some significance to the three letters. D.M.T. Dextro-morpho-something or another. A hardcore hallucinogenic drug that I’d never even seen on T.V. Damn. The drug was mysterious, like this Derek, so I decided to pull out my pad and pen.
“So yeah,” Derek continued and looked at me. I gave him a nod because I had no idea what he was referring to, and his glazed eyes lit up.

“You’ve done it?” he asked. It was like he’d found a brother, a co-conspirator, but I responded, “Me, no way,” and his eyes returned to their dull. He looked down and picked at a few grass blades and the group remained silent. No side conversations, no one flicking each other’s ear or horsing around, nothing. All eyes were on Derek.

“What’s that stuff like anyway,” said Bill, his voice small, but with an edge. The question was spurred out of curiosity, and probably voiced to ease the silence, but I could tell he was egging the guy on. The heat of the day called for some amusement. Reflective car hoods and tall grass, taken in by bloodshot eyes, in a beer after beer manner can get quite old. There were eight of us, and one of him. He would be our clown.

Derek looked up from the grass, but kept picking blades. On some he’d pull as deep as the roots and dirt would dangle in hair-like strands.

“You take life,” he said, “you know, life, it’s usually in 2-D. Well, a DMT trip is life in more than 3-D, it’s life in like, 3.7-D.” There were a few chuckles around the circle and that kept him going. “Yeah, I just love smoking deemsters man. It’s nice because the trip’s only like 15 minutes. But let me give you a word of advice. Don’t smoke em in your weed bowl. Your pot will taste like rubber forever. For-ever.”

“Now that’s some advice,” laughed Rob and we all joined in. Sips of beer were taken and the silence broke. Those sitting next to each other started talking, jump started out of their buzz and a warm wind picked up, comforting like a blanket, but loose like a sheet.

“If you want advice man, I’ve got it.”

I looked down at him and smiled, “Oh yeah?” I said.

“Of course,” he replied.

So I clicked my pen, found a fresh page in the pad, and gave it a heading: “Unconventional Wisdom?” Seated, Derek spread his arms, and began.

“Well first off, I don’t use any money, man. Everything is traded. For example, you stand on the corner of the street and hold up a sign that says ‘My family was raped and murdered by a clan of rival ninjas. Need money for Kung Fu lessons.’” His voice held an air of pride.

“Wwwhat!?” came suddenly from Stanley, the youngest of the group by three years. The kid’s mouth was agape, flashing bright-white teeth as he spoke. Feathery, blond hair shook with the shake of his head. “Does that work?”

“Yeah it works, we made fifty dollars off that one once.” Derek chuckled reflectively and leaned back, reclining on his arms. The belly that held all of our beer lay before him with a white crack revealed between tight shirt and shorts. I could see belly pubes. “But if you want to be more conventional,” and he said this right to Stan, “just run around the city screaming your ass off, banging a tambourine, setting off your friend’s car alarm – if you have a car – and hold up a sign that says ‘Will shut up for a dollar.’”

“That. Is. Awesome.” Stanley replied, wowed, and others in the group, older by those three years were wowed too, but wowed differently. Their wow showed its face in their silent cross leggedness on lawn chairs, in their white knuckled grip around beer cans that sweat like them in the sun and the heat and the situation. My wow, was a ‘Wow!’, explanation point and all in my pocket notebook. The breeze again blew, but now smelled of unwashed bedding. Of scum. Of Derek.

“Yeah, it is,” Derek crossed his hairy legs; they were caked in dried on dirt and I could hear the long grass scratch them. I didn’t know what would be said next, if anyone would question further, since the conversation had reached such an early climax, but then Rob pressed on. Rob, drunk off his big ass and silly. He said something to the effect of ‘so what do you do’/ ‘where are you from’ with the implicative laugh of ‘who the fuck are you, you strange, strange man?’ But that glossed right over Derek.

“I’m from Cali man,” said Derek, saying Cali like people from Illinois think people from Cali would say Cali, “but right now I’m living in West Lafayette, Indiana.” Immediately all eyes went from Derek to Dan, another kid in the group. He was wearing his school colors, black and gold, with the name, Purdue stamped across his chest. A connection had been made, and yeah it was intriguing, but apparently Dan didn’t see it as so. He was gazing with his head tilted back at the cloudless sky, responseless. I wasn’t even sure he’d heard what was said through that wild mop of hair of his covering his ears. Then Derek said, “You go there, man?”

Dan didn’t move but said, “Yeah.” He, like Stanley was younger, but only by a year. I didn’t notice when he started looking at the sky, and with that pale skin of his I hoped that he’d applied sunscreen, he didn’t need a burn. All the other’s eyes were fixed, glued, to Derek, even mine, but Dan was looking straight up. ‘I thought I was the only one who looked up there,’ I thought, and in my notepad I drew a line. Under it I wrote: “Sky so blue, do you look down upon me too?” Then I joined Dan looking skyward and saw the sun much farther to the west than I’d suspected. How many hours? How many beers? When did Derek get here, and when will he leave? When will we leave, and when will it end? All the answers I didn’t have, but Derek kept talking, and I kept listening. If the others were too, I don’t know.

“I usually just travel from festival to festival,” he said, “but to make money to support my dog I make jewelry. You guys should check me out on Myspace, do you have Myspace?”

Stanley said, “Yeah, I’ll hit you up man,” and Rob said, “You’re dog?” Dog coming out like glitter, leaving a smile in its trail. Derek however, did not smile back. Instead he sat straight up from reclining and became rigid. He licked his lips and took a swig of his beer, looking Rob right in the eye.

“My dog has beautiful physique, I take her everywhere.”

I wondered where she, this dog, was now. This claim was clearly a lie, but still, I was curious as to how faithful to it he really was – and if he was, how he managed to do so. Across from me, Stanley wiggled and giggled, probably at the words “beautiful physique” and the rest of the group did that fast exhalation of air you do when you hear something truly ridiculous. Only Rob replied.

“A beautiful physique?”

And cross legged in that long, green grass Derek became poetic. The breeze picked up again and carried his words, “She’s beautiful man, so sleek, and slender, and jet black like the night. Sexy really. I put neon tape to her fur so she looks like a service dog so I can take her on the bus and stuff. My baby. Beautiful physique,” to all of our ears. Then, taking his own cue, he pulled a packet of neon stickers from his pocket.

“I should spruce this jacket up,” he laughed, and peeled off a hot green star. Stanley replied, “Hell yeah, man,” and Derek slapped it on his sleeve. When he looked down at it in examination, his whole body did a shrug, and the belly, his burden, wobbled. Satisfied, he took a finishing gulp of his beer and threw the can over his shoulder. Its emptiness landed with a soft ping.

“Could I get another one of those, brother?” He looked only to Rob when he asked, but he wasn’t the only one looking at Rob. I glared at him, Bill stared at him, and Stanley flashed a smile and nodded. Rob passed him another can. When Derek cracked it, I took a sip of my own, it was becoming warm from disuse, and as I swallowed it I put pen back to pad. “One can get very far on personality,” is what I wrote, and I began to think about executives and diplomats and Derek’s future. I shuddered.

“So Derek,” I finally said, but before I could continue a loud guitar screech wafted its way over from the festival grounds. Everyone jumped, and Derek said, “Sick.” This meant I had to wait to ask my question, as they all got riled up from the noise, and remembered why they were there, and started talking and laughing, but through the excitement I got his attention – which was again his blank, glazen stare.

“So Derek,” I said, “have you ever gotten into any trouble for all this stuff?”

“Trouble? Trouble? Trouble? Trouble? You think I’d get into trouble man?” he scoffed, and everyone stopped their talking and listened in. “You think I get in trouble for that stuff? Ha!” And he actually said ‘Ha’. “Everyone knows that as long as you’re two states away, they don’t mind.”

“What do you mean, they don’t mind?” Stanley asked.

“Like felony wise, man.” Is what he said back, and of course I wondered if it was true, and I guess everyone else stopped to wonder it as well. We each went through what seemed like another beer, which seemed like ten minutes, but the period was really indeterminable. It passed, and then it was gone, but I can remember glimpses, I can remember feelings. I remember a bird flying overhead and wondering what he saw as he soared. Eight kids in a circle, and one man, all clutching golden cylinders and raising and raising and raising them to their lips till they were through, then reaching for another till the case ran dry. The man begging for more from the kids and making himself their jester so they wouldn’t say no. His skin unwashed and hairy, his hair knotted from lack of treatment, his eyes dull from all he’d seen and done, but his smile still shone, flashing those familiar, bright white teeth. He sat and picked at the ground with ferocity and intensity, punishing it. Around him sat the younger, watching in wonder, but in a wonder that bordered fear. Were we all the same underneath the blue, or were we different, as we appeared atop the green? The infinite paths that could be trodden all produced variance, how did Derek come to be? Was he all that he said, or just a good story teller who liked beer?

I looked back up to the sky, joining Dan, who still held his head upward with a grin, and a few of those big, fluffy, harmless, summer clouds floated their way into view.

Then the one who spoke first was not an interviewer, but the subject himself.

“So you guys wanna hear a funny story?”

And of course we did. Had we said no yet?

“Ok,” he swayed, “so last night my buddy was like, looking for his Molly,”

“His Molly?” Stanley interrupted.

“Yeah man, his Molly, you know MDMA?”

Stanley turned a bit red, and it wasn’t from the sun. He said, “Oh yeah, my bad,” and wobbled his head back and forth. “I’m a little drunk, man. I know what that stuff is.”

Derek looked down at the grass again and smacked the ground, “Sooo yeah,” he said, looking to the others of the group with the smile of a wolf, haggard and hairy. “He was looking for his Molly and I was like here it is man!” He broke into a gruff laugh, a guffaw, and rubbed his beard. He took a big gulp of his beer.

The wind blew in response, and we sat in wait for the rest. Derek seemed to have forgotten what he was talking about, as he paused and looked to the horizon.

“Well did he do it, then?” One of us finally asked.

“Yeah, but it had been cheeked.” Derek awoke and stood up with a quick jump, dropping his beer can where he sat. “It had been cheeked guys - it had been up someone’s ass.” He clapped, and put the group into a disgusted fit of laughter. But then he changed, then, as we were all laughing, buzzed and amazed and young and lighthearted, he looked to the sky. No one really noticed; everyone was all too wrapped up in the afterglow of the joke, talking about it, imagining it, debating over whether or not it was worth snorting cheeked drugs, and wondering if the guy who did them ever found out, but I saw. I saw Derek looking skyward, grounded on his stout legs stilly. He closed his eyes and took a breath, taking in the sweetness, enjoying, not moving at all. I couldn’t help but watch him, and I saw that there was no smile. His lips were hard pressed shut and his brow was furled. His pose struck me, and I wanted to write something poetic, something meaningful in my notebook, but nothing, nothing came to mind. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but couldn’t find it in me to speak. Around his neck, I saw a necklace made of intricately woven hemp, and garnished with three clear-blue glass bulbs in the center.

Derek looked down to the can at his side and kicked it. He turned to me and said nothing. We had a moment, eyes locked, him reading me, I reading him, then it passed.

“Well I gotta go guys,” he said. Everyone broke their conversations and looked to him, each differently. Rob smiled, and reached for another beer – a parting gift. Bill remained still and watchful. Others piped in with a collective, “Later man,” or “Peace” and Dan un-bent his neck to say “SEE YA DUDE,” with mock enthusiasm.

Stanley stood up and shook his hand.

“Thanks for the advice, man” he said. His lanky, youthful figure, light and playful, met with Derek’s bulk, and when Derek got hold of the hand he held onto it for a time longer than expected. Stanley shook it up and down, like you’d see in a silent movie, and added, “Take it easy,” as a polite way to say, ‘Okay let go’, but Derek did not. He held on, he clung, and his glazen eyes dove through Stanley’s skin.

“You guys want some real advice,” he said in monotone of voice and figure. No one said a word, and I looked to Bill two seats over. His eyes were fists.

Derek let out a sigh laugh and dropped Stanley’s hand.

“If you want some real advice,” he said, “it’s this. If a girl ever tells you to come inside her, don’t. Just don’t”

We all laughed, again, like every time before this guy had said a word, and Derek smiled like before, but this time, this time I knew it was forced. As I wrote what he said in my notebook, he turned and walked away, giving a blind wave and saying some sort of mumbled farewell, and everyone again said buhbye. I could hear him, from behind, crack open that last beer we’d given and I imagined him draining it in one chug, walking through that tall grass, under that hot blue sky, navigating the make shift parking lot back towards the festival. Back towards those hippies, back towards the noise.