What Things Will Do To Survive
I’m in my tiny kitchen making myself a sandwich and cutting it up into manageable pieces to eat with a fork because I love basic PB&Js but hate the stickiness of jelly as it oozes out the sides and onto my fingers making them tacky. It films up my phone screen and if I bite the sandwich as a whole, I can taste the jelly hours later in my mustache.
I place the sandwich cubes in a warped piece of Tupperware with a suspect lid that keeps wanting to pop off. I try like ten times to make it fit to no avail when I realize I might miss my bus so I rush to catch the 101 express from San Francisco to Santa Rosa on 7th and Market. I forgot to pee before I left so I’m all anxious because the trip’s two hours with no traffic, and what are the chances of no traffic? With minutes until the bus arrives, I hustle my way into the Carl’s Jr. across the street and the place is tore up: people look like they camping at some of the tables, bedrolls, Ikea bags bungied at the top, hiking backpacks. I don’t even stress about the sign announcing RESTROOM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY and sprint to the back, but there’s a woman ahead of me in line. I keep looking at the bus stop and shuffling my feet.
The door opens and the woman says, You in a rush?
I nod. She motions me in.
I say, Thank you so much.
She says, Just call me the good Samaritan of bathrooms.
After, I rush back right as the bus pulls up, feeling like a boss.
I choose a seat with space all around me. This young guy gets on wearing a wife beater and smelling of flowery cologne, the sides of his head shaved and his flat top all spiky and gelled. He sits directly across the aisle from me and I’m like homie, why?but I don’t say anything.
Not ten minutes later, he asks to use my phone to call his ride waiting for him. I hand my phone over and when the screensaver disappears, my Tinder app pops up, still open.
He cackles when he sees it and says, Dude, swipe right on everything. It ups your odds.
After he calls his friend, I feel him watching me as the bus bumps and chugs in the afternoon traffic. An hour into the ride, as I fork bites of my sandwich into my mouth, I glimpse him chewing his nails, leaning against the window, stealing looks at me like he wants to talk.
I turn to him and say, Want some?
He says, Never turn down food, my pops always said.
I say, My father never taught me shit.
I give him the warped Tupperware with visible blobs of jelly and chunky peanut butter stuck to the sides. I consider offering him the fork, but he doesn’t hesitate. He quickly grabs one and places it atop another and picks them up and I see the jelly touch his skin. He tosses them into his mouth and grins like he and I are on the same team.
He gives it back to me and licks each finger on both hands loudly.
He says, Thank you my man, and kicks his feet up on the armrests of the chair in front. And closes his eyes. He softly hums a tune and it’s strangely familiar, his voice baritone and soothing.
I say, What song is that?
He says without opening his eyes, Ah, man that’s just me. That’s my song.
He’s wearing Timberlands with the laces all loose and tucked into the shoe rather than tied. Soon, he sleeps and it’s so peaceful. I watch him for a while before I turn back to my window and the farmlands racing by north of the city.
When we reach Petaluma, he high fives me as he struts down the aisle like he won something.
As the bus enters Mendocino, the bus driver says, Journey ends here, folks.
None of the four other single male passengers complain that the journey was supposed to end in Fort Bragg eight miles up the road. I don’t want to be that guy because you know. I give the driver a dirty look and bound off holding my backpack.
It’s hard to stay mad on a day like this in Northern California, a late summer afternoon, Sunday, when you got nowhere really to be. But I have only ten bucks neatly folded in the front pocket of my Carhartt black denim shorts.
And now I have to piss again. I meander into town and see this lady in full gardening mode because of the hot weather and sunshine, piles of cut hydrangea flowers and green leafy tree branches.
I say, Do you know where a public toilet might be?
She points with her shears and says, To the end of the road and make a right.
I hustle down this shockingly quaint and pristine street with cute beach bungalow after cute bungalow, a perfect Northern California stereotype. I see the bathrooms and hustle.
Yo man, the bathroom’s locked, a voice shouts at me on my left.
You’re kidding me, I respond and look at the two guys lounging in the shade of the bus stop. I realize I don’t know which one spoke to me. We stare at each other.
The guy on the right sporting a bandana around his neck and this shit eating grin says, Why would we kid you?
He turns to his friend and says, He thinks we’re kidding him.
The other guy says, I heard that. He looks at me and says, Why you think we’d kid you? We’re trying to help you.
I say, Help me by telling me where I can piss without having to buy something.
They both stand in unison and one says, Follow us.
The other grabs a half-full box of Tecates. They march down the sidewalk ahead of me. It really is a gorgeous day, stunning, warm, with a breeze that teases and cools you every few minutes then the afternoon falls back to stillness and heat.
The guy with the bandana looks grimy and grizzled in the sunlight. I’m a bit on guard.
He says without looking back, I’m Shawn with an H and this is Buddy with a B.
Buddy with a B shoves Shawn with an H in this tender way.
I’m staring out at the bluffs and the fog bunching up a mile or so off the coast, gray and threatening like some omen.
I say, I’m Chino.
They stop in front of a liquor store.
Shawn yells from the open front door, Hey Hunter, can this guy use the toilet?
Hunter, a tall man with an upturned nose and a super skinny face, says, It’s all stopped up, my man.
The two turn to me and Shawn says, You shit out of luck.
Buddy giggles and shoves a can of beer in his friend’s hand and then my hand and he shouts to Hunter, You hear that, shit out of luck.
Hunter responds, That shit is funny.
This makes all three toss their heads back and laugh widemouthed and genuine, full of something like faith and bravado.
I decide to join.
I chuckle once. I feel my laugh build. I let it fall out of me. Gain speed. Join the others.
I say after a minute, Luckily I don’t got to shit. I just have to piss.
Shawn says, Come on, Chino.
I follow them off the sidewalk and across a field littered with blackberry brambles and tufts of mean looking yellowed grass to a grove of eucalyptus trees, the tops of which are hazy because of the flowing fog. We get to the edge of the cliffs and I see surfers in the water below. They crack their beers and chug. I hold mine. I haven’t had a sip in over a month. I open my can and watch the white foam bubble out and over the top and down my fingers and dribble to the ground.
We stand and stare out onto the placid Pacific Ocean. It’s peaceful. Divine even. I think of the bus driver saying, the journey ends here. I think of the final eight miles I have to go and how I’m going to get there.
Buddy with a B then throws his can off the cliff and unzips his pants, keeping his belt buckled.
Shawn follows. His can floats and glints across the air.
I’m stunned. I haven’t seen someone litter so boldly, so cavalierly, in like forever.
I can’t muster the courage to hurl my can, so I toss it to the side. It thuds on the ground and a puddle of white foam pools around it on the dry dirt trail. I unzip and watch the arch of my piss dissolve into the air.
As we meander back toward the highway, a snake suns itself in the middle of the path. We all stop and watch it. There’s no rush. Only fascination. It’s rich brown and cream colored with dots of sharp yellow and has the most perfect geometrical design running along its body.
Buddy says, That’s just a gopher snake. I used to love holding snakes as a kid. My dad. He was such a prick. You know how dads are.
Both Shawn and I mumble something in agreement which makes me look into each of their faces like we connected or something, like we are children of fathers and we definitely know how they are.
Buddy says, He loved snakes though. He had a pet python he let us hold.
Shawn says, What happened to it?
Buddy says, It’s the only thing he took when he left my mother.
We both um huh because what else.
I say, I hate holding reptiles because of my dad. I was like five or six and we were camping and he called me over all excited like he found some treasure. He opened his hand and it’s a lizard. I remember it had these little horns and beady eyes. He told me grab it by the tail. So I did, and he let the lizard go and it swung for a second in my hand and then the body fell to the ground and I held this wiggling tail in my fingers. I freaked out and started bawling.
They laugh like it’s the funniest thing they’ve heard. Even more than me being shit out of luck. What can I do but laugh as well.
Shawn says, That’s so fucked.
Buddy says, What did he say?
I say, First he told me I killed it but when I freaked out even more, he told me to relax, to stop crying. He said the lizard was fine and then, and I remember this so clearly, he said isn’t it crazy what some things will do to survive?
Now no one says anything. We just stare at the snake. It feels a little awkward.
Buddy then tries to grab the snake, whispering, here snakey, here snakey, but it slithers quickly away like some irritated thing.
We continue walking to the highway and jog across it to be on the side that heads north. I drop my backpack and Buddy offers me another can.
I say, Nah, man.
Buddy shakes his head like he understands and turns back. Shawn with an H does the same. They both say, like they do this all the time, Fare thee well.
I watch them walking and hear them still talking about the snake. I enjoy their easy friendship. They stroll away like kings down the unpaved pathway leading back to Mendocino. I realize that they probably left knowing better than me that three dudes trying to hitch a ride was a lost cause.
So like that, I stand alone on the side of Highway One.
A bus like the one I got off a few hours earlier rolls on by. I see passengers through the windows on their way up the coast. I just shake my head like unfucking believable. The fog still stands guard off the coast like a threat. I watch cars slow as they enter Mendicino proper and pass me by. Finally, I raise my hand and put out my thumb. I’m a hitchhiking virgin. I realize all the stuff I know about hitching is romanticized. Two hours go by and the light begins to darken and fade away. I realize I may not even get a ride but here I am.
I’ve gotten this far and I’ve got time.
I only have eight miles to get to Fort Bragg.
I can walk it if I need to.
I can make it there.
I know I can.
* * *
“What Things Will Do To Survive” is an excerpt from Tomas Moniz’s novella All Friends Are Necessary, published in July 2019 as a chapbook by Mason Jar Press.