Road to the Centerfold of Mattoon...

We load the van. There are Gatorade and power bars. Beano is listening to House of Pain on his Walkman. Leatric is behind. Joe somehow gets the back seat all to himself.  Beano is a junior. He has been dating Corinne who went to my grade school since she was in seventh grade. He has gained weight this season. Coach claims that he is not putting everything into the season as he should being a junior.

 
When we arrive at Mattoon Coach checks us into a hotel at the edge of town.  He gives us magnetic keys to our rooms.  I am sharing a room with Leatric and Hans Logrotto. There are two Queen sized beds in the room. Lee has already stated that he isn’t sharing a bed with anyone so that I can either sleep on the floor or crash with Hans.  think about Hans’ uncircumcised Penis and pray he doesn’t get Morninwood especially if I’m facing the opposite direction in the middle of the night.
  
           
Leatric says something about the water being bad. He goes into the bathroom and blasts the hot water on full tilt. 

“What are you doing?” LaGrotto inquires.

“Ya’ll don’t know how long the water has been sitting in these pipes, see. Ya'll gotta let all the nasty water out.”

We are in the room less than three minute when Beano calls says this is front desk, they want to know if this is the room where all the butt-fuckers checked in and then hangs up.
 
 

 
 
The hot water is drilling out of the spout. Hans is fucking with the alarm clock. Somehow he has a Swiss army knife on him at all time. He opens the alarm clock up and begins dissect the wires. When I inquire what he is doing Hans says that he just wants to see what the inside of the alarm clock looks like.  Water has been gushing out of the  aquiline beak on the bottom of the tub, instilling curtains of steam.
 

“Dude, Lee, I think all the bad water has been  drained. It’s all good now brother.”

 

Leatric tells me that I don’t know shit. That in these little hick towns you got to let the water gush for fifteen minutes or so.”

 

“Lee, the plumbing here doesn’t have kidney stones. Everything is fine."

Drapes of steam begins to envelope the room. Before we know I the smoke detector is going off. Hans leaps on the bed with bare feet and attacks it with his Swiss army knife.

 

“Dude, Lee.” I crack open the window. Lee says again that ya’ll don’t know about how bad the water is in these little hick towns.  There is a knock on our door. It is Coach. He walks into a sauna where both the alarm clock and the Smoke detector is vivisected and splayed out on the bed.

 
 

The phone rings It is Beano. I am hesitant to pick it up thinking that it is the front desk. It turns out to be Beano. Beano feels compelled to call every five minutes. Even though he is right next door.

“Dude, your not gonna believe this man,. Ahh Dude!!!!"

 

He says he’ll be right over. Hans has his head tilting and is looking at the serrated smoke detector as if it is edible.  Beano comes right in followed by Quynor and Tony Boone, our seventh man.

 

"Dude, you guys aren’t gonna believe this.  I found this under the mattress can you believe it? Dave? Dave."
 
  I ask what is it. Beano is laughing hysterically.

 He holds out the magazine. The glossy innards topples out from the center like a glazed tongue.

“It’s porn, dorkfuck.”

 
 “Fuck.”

Dude, it’s a Penthouse has Dave. It’s a Penthouse, Dave. It's a fucking Penthouse..”

“Fuck.”

 

 

Everyone is staring. Hans seems almost giddy.

 

“Can you believe it man. It was fucking just right under our mattress in our room.”

 Beano starts to life up the fellow mattresses in the room like lids on coffins. In the tem minutes we have had our room hans has dissected the clock and the smoke detector Lee has completely fogged up the quarters with steam and Beano has found porn.

Beano opens the magazine to the center. A model with a bad-eyes perm has her hands between her legs.

 

“Look Dave. She’s fingers her twat man look!!”

I have never seen a vagina this close before. In a way it looks infected all I can think is that it looks like the great pit of Carkoon from RETURN OF THE JEDI.

 

 
 

 

“Lick it Dave. Lick it Dave. Lick it.”

Beano is shoving the magazine in my face, he is telling me to sniff. The closer the vagina gets the darker in become until I can taste the weak glossy adhesive of the paper.

 

“Lick it Dave. Fuck it with your mouth Dave! Lick it man! Go!”

 

The Vagina is in my face when there is a knock.

It is Coach.  Beano lifts up our side of the mattress and wedges the magazine under the bed I am to share with Hans.

 

“Looks like you guys went ahead and acclimated yourself right away.” Coach says, with a smile, informing us to get into our swim trunks even though the hotel does not have a pool.

 
 

Coach is treating us well. Mattoon is the highlight of the Cross country year. It is our main trip.  Even though we are staying inside a one story Days Inn Coach dives us over to the Holiday  Inn and sneaks us inside. We go swimming. We dunk each other. Beneath a glaze of chlorine We splash. Beano seems like he can’t go  We go inside the sauna and Coach teaches us how to take deep breaths, pebbles of sweat slaloming down our brow.
I don’t want to over do it. I am conserving everything for the race tomorrow.  Mattoon is Coach telling us that we have busted our ass.  We eat at a godfathers pizza that looked like it was built in a Wisconsin Dairy barn.

We go to the movies at the Mattoon theatre where Hans Lagrotto does impressions of Wayne’s World in front of locals patrons that leaves coach shaking his head.

Mattoon is a thank you for all our hard work. It is coach thanking us for all the collective hours we put in over the season.

 

It is also a reminder that, even though we might not want to admit it, the bulk of our season is lamost over.

 

The finish line is in sight. Soon this season will be no more.

 

 

 

 
 
The first thing Hans does when we arrive back to our hotel is lift the matters. He removes the centerfold from the center of the periodical in a solid swipe.
 

Hans puts a centerfold above the mirror as if it is a religious relic.

Lee shakes his head and says that is fine. Lee says that he is showering first since he says that he knows what ya’ll white boys be doing in the shower and it be nasty.

 

Hans reclines on his die of the bed and flaps opens the Penthouse perusing it like an atlas.

 

I crash on my side of the bed. I tell Hans that I’m not gonna shower til morning. That I’m just gonna get some shut-eye.

 

“There’s only like two times a year when I don’t get to wake up early and do my paper route.”

 

Hans responds to my statement by turning a page that seems to already be stuck together.

 

The phone pings. I pick up. It is Coach saying Lights out. I tell him that lee is taking a shower but that we are gonna crash.

 

“Get some rest tomorrow. Yo guys have a big race.”

 

I smile.

 

I tell him thanks.  The second after I hang up the phone pings again. When I pick up it is Beano.

 

“Dave. Fuck Dave, I want my magazine back. Fuck.”|

 

Beano I’m trying to sleep.”

 

“Dave man. Where’s my fucking magazine man?”

 

I hang up. Hans inquires who called. Three seconds alter the phone rings again.

 

“I’m not picking it up. I’m trying to sleep.”

 

Hans yells at me to pick up the phone. The magazine is open as if it is giving shelter to his loins.

 

“What?”

 

“Dude, Dave man, turn to channel 331. Just do it man. It’s fucking amazin.”

 

I hang up. Hans turns at me and inquires who it was.

 

“It was Beano. He’s pissed about the magazine. He says that we should turn to channel 331 for some reason.”

 

W.out questioning Hans snatches the remote. The channel is nothing but fizz. There are latitudinal slashes. Occasional there is what looks like a body seismically quavering.

 

The phone rings again.

 

“Dude, Dave!! Do you see it man. Do you see it?”

 

I tell him I see nothing but what looks like a  hurricane shot through the lens of an overturned 7UP bottle.

“Dude man. It’s porn they are fucking fuckin’ Dave. They are fucking fuckin.”

I hang up again. Hans ask me what is going on. I tell Beano thinks that the static is porno. Hans goes crazy.

 

 

 I am trying not to be the wuss. I am trying to tell them that I need rest. That my leg has been ambivalent. That as of this time I am only maybe 50 percent at best. That I am numb all the time. That when I wake up in the morning I hurt.

 

I need to go to bed. I am ready to call it a night.

 

“What are you doing bro?”

 

Hans tells me that he is trying to torch pornographic movie through the fizz. I tell him that he can hardly see it, the it looks like green nipple porn. Lee comes out of the bathroom and tilts his head.

 

"Here, dawg let me see that knife you be usin'."

 

Lee holds the knife as if he is performing oral surgery. He pecks at the back of the tv. Before I know it the picture is lucid. There is a naked girl sucking someone with a moustache's cock.

 

 

“That’s how us brothers do this yo. South side.”

 

We are in Matoon Illinois and we are watching porn.

 

Hans Lagrotto with the uncircumcised pecker is up close to the screen.  Leatric is saying that’s how we do this.

 

“Guys we got a meet tomorrow, we need to be sleeping.

I am greeted with unanimous shut the fuck ups.

 

There is a knock on the door. It is Beano, Tony and Quaynor.

 

“Dude, we heard you guys are watching porn, dawg!!”

Leatric says that he used the screwdriver on Hans’s McGyver pocket knife that he has used to dismantle everything in the room. On the screen the man with moustache  is flagellating his tongue like Jackson Pollock and wet paint into an oversize canvas. Her bush looks like a dried out crouton.

Beano is out of control. He is pogoing up and down.

“Oh my God. Look man, They’re fucking. He’s eating her out!”

 

With the exception with Coach and Peacock I am the only one in our team who is not salivating still life in front of the screen.  In medias fuck  the one male shouts out that he realized that the voluptuous female on top of him is somehow related to him.

 

The music continues to thump.

 

My leg hurts.  In all candor I should be out for the entire season. In all candor I pushed it too hard last summer stroking the lower hemisphere of my libs over the hills in Bradley park thinking about Kim Zmeskal.

 

In all candor I should not be running.

 

I try to tell them that we have a race again tomorrow. I try to insinuate that it is one in the morning and we need to get some rest.

I try not to think about the girl I am purportedly courting naked. I try not to think about placing the undulating fleshy anvil of my mouth over unclothed precincts of her anatomy.

I am sleeping in my boxers.

The Gideon bible is lodge in my jeans.

My jeans are look like two denim zeros sloughed and abandoned  on the cold linoleum of the bathroom floor.