so through the marijuana coziness
and marijuana homies to the marijuana loneliness
constrictive fear of phoniness
passive pragmatically justified self-holiness
the moments serotonin-less
judgment phobias
male figures in ads selling deodorants
monetized folksiness
frustrated bonerless
the next big tech startup ownership
coal-invested tesla motorists
beer pong rebuttal showmanship
incestuous and artificially selected dobermans
de-humanized custodians
mopping complexes for napoleons
snapchatted ghostliness
facebook friend page utopias
rotting genetically modified cornucopias
linguistic opiates
friends becoming associates
total disbelief in the harmonious
after-school daylong marathons of nickelodeon

through the neuroscience majoring
kafka fabling
students for justice and emp09athy tabling
the morning after leaving upon awakening
sense that time is hastening
summer spent at a restaurant waitering
and at adobe catering
while global warming gravening
selflessness keeps wavering
conditioned, convenient, blind oppressive labeling
violent porn favoring
hair straightening
teeth straightening
back straightening
mind straightening
all-inclusive resort vacationing
lion tiger bear endangering
nightshift laboring
life spent holepunching and stapling
offshore slave wagering
starving baby cradling
cake layering
xfinity cabling
good fencing good neighboring
never waving or opening so
apathy enabling

================================================================
Winnakcha

Steve relaxed the muscles in his face as he sauntered through the noisy cafeteria. His mouth quivered in search of a comfortable position below his nose, like a dog circling a patch of grass. He held a tray of gravy-smothered mashed potatoes, fried chicken, and steamed broccoli out in front of him with one hand, and raced the intensifying burn in his triceps to an open seat. This was a game he played to challenge himself. It was 105 degrees in Winnakcha and Charlie, the chef, was in a bad mood. Steve’s first couple of days Charlie had responded, “You’re welcome, boss,” when Steve had thanked him for the food, but this time he had just nodded with a scowl, sucking obsessively at some green between his teeth. Steve didn’t blame him. When he’d stepped out of his hotel this morning, he’d drooped like a soft piece of clay, and when he’d swung his Ram out of the parking lot he’d felt so light-headed that he had to pull over and drink a few sips of water from his metal canteen before heading to the drill site.
The cafeteria lay in the heart of the man-camp, engulfed by workers’ trailers. Curses and roars of laughter echoed metallically against the walls of the steel-frame food tent. The sharp scent of chemical disinfectant tinged the musty odor of dirt and gas. Packed tables of friends slapped each other on the back and howled about work, life. Steve headed towards a table that seemed less exclusive, a corner table populated by a well-groomed, sleekly spectacled giant in a sludge-splattered tanktop. A faint curiosity flickered beneath the man’s screen of stoicism.
“Steve,” said Steve.
The man finished chewing a large bite of chicken, wiped a gravy smudge from the corner of his mouth, and extended his hand.
“Mike,” replied Mike. His hands were leathery and his deep voice hummed like a muffled subwoofer.
“Good to meet you, Mike. You working Winnakcha?”
“Yep.”
“Very cool,” Steve replied. “Me too.”
“Wouldn’t be in this cafeteria if we weren’t.”
“Touché,” Steve caught himself. “Good point. So, what exactly do you do here?”
“Floorhand,” Mike answered, then pointed his finger at Steve. “Scientist.”
“Indeed,” Steve responded, disappointed he’d been so easy to classify. “How’d you know?”
Mike stared in deep thought at his broccoli. “Your hair’s loose. Roughnecks got shaves and businessmen got gel. You’ve got dirt on you but you aren’t dirty, and when you talk, you talk like you can see yourself talking. You hold your eyes open real wide, like scientists do.”
Steve leaned back uneasily.
“It’s good to be a scientist. Better to be a businessman, but still good to be a scientist. Not too many scientists in Wisconsin,” Mike revealed. “We’re an entrepreneurial kind.”
“So you’re from Wisconsin, eh? Is it true what they say about the cheese?” Steve grinned.
“What do they say?”
“You know, Wisconsin cheese, it’s famous.”
“Yep. What do they say about it?”
A droplet of sweat rolled between Steve’s chest hairs. “I mean, just that it’s good.” He cleared his throat. “That’s all I meant.”
“Yep. Sure is.”
Beige vortexes of dust danced outside the plexiglass windows of the cafeteria. “Do you miss it?”
Mike brought his Styrofoam cup of water to his lips and slowly drank it empty. “The cheese?”
“Yeah, the Wisconsin cheese.”
“Not enough to go back.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“My buddy Ty been telling me for years how much he was raking in over here, how it was the second Gold Rush. Guess that hooked me. I like Westerns.”
“Me too! I love ‘em. You ever seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?”
“Yep,” Mike grunted, picking at a blister on his palm. “You seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?”
“Is that the one with the, uh, the guy,” Steve’s eyes darted around the bustling cafeteria. “Shit, the guy with the,” he looked at Mike expectantly. “Oh shit, I think so, but I can’t remember. I’ve definitely heard of it.”
“It’s the one where John Wayne kills the outlaw and Jimmy Stewart gets the credit.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a wonderful film.”
“My favorite.”
“Very cool,” Steve smiled.
“Yep.”
Steve and Mike ate in silence for a while. Mike knew it was his turn.
“What about you?” Mike asked slowly.
“My favorite is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”
“No, where you from?”
“Oh,” Steve massaged his arm. “I was born and raised in Maine, and went to school in Connecticut. I heard there was good money here. Didn’t wanna be living at home.”
“What school in Connecticut?”
Steve shoved some potatoes into his mouth. “Yale,” he said with an inquisitive inflection, as if asking, “You heard of it?”
“Top school.”
Steve fidgeted with the top button on his shirt. “So, you got a lady in Wisconsin? A Ms. Mike, cheese churner?”
Steve sniggered at his playful remark. A hovering custodian lumbered towards a fallen tray.
“Nope.”
“What about here, how are the women of Winnakcha?”
Mike shrugged. “This is man-camp.”
“You’re telling me there’s not one female in this desert?
“There’s a strip club and the Internet.”
“Jeez.”
“Yep.”
“A strip club?”
“I’m going tonight,” Mike replied. He hesitated, fixating on an ant meandering over the ridges in the silver table. “Come if you want.”
“Sure thing, where is it? Or you know what, just tell me what it’s called and I’ll Google Maps it.”
“Intimissy.”
“Great.”
“Yep.”
“When should I arrive?”
“It’s not a date. Just come at night, I’ll be there.”
“Right-o, will do.”
They finished their plates and Mike stood up. “Alright, time to go make her come.”
“Pardon? I mean, what?”
“Make her come. Drill her. Plunge deep for her nectar. Back to work.”
Steve laughed. “That’s good, I’ve never heard that before. That’s good,” he said, then slapped his knee.
They shook hands and went back to work. Steve was excited to have made a new friend, especially of a roughneck, and while he navigated the Middle Winnakcha from a computer screen in his air-conditioned geologist trailer, he dreamt of chugging Keystones in a country cabaret with a gaggle of guffawing working men.

Steve was overdressed. Men in t-shirts and basketball shorts crowded around the entrance of Intimissy, smoking cigarettes and shouting at one another. He cursed himself for thinking khakis and a linen shirt were appropriate, sidled between the large bodies, and entered the club. The darkness reminded him of caves he’d explored on college field expeditions. Dim red and amber light draped the room. 70’s-porno synths warbled over undulating bass. Glossy digital photographs of the dancers hung on the walls in ornate, gold-lacquered frames. Men flocked to the bar like sperm to an egg, surrounding it and hovering at its perimeter. Waitresses in ribbons carried around trays with tissue boxes. The floor was damp; the walls were salt-stained. A woman in a shiny black leather corset mopped underneath the tables.
All of the men in the club were crying. Some sniffled, some bawled, but all cried. A slender woman with silver eyelids arched her back against the center-stage pole like a puma, rolling her shoulder blades against the chrome rod. Steve spotted Mike and a friend at a table topped with several pitchers of beer and maneuvered over, catching glimpses of himself in each mirror he passed.
“Steve,” Mike bellowed, wiping a tear from his eye. “Nice suit.”
Steve sat down and methodically rolled up his sleeves, careful not to acknowledge anyone’s tears, his fingers trembling as he laughed. “Thought I’d clean myself up for the fine ladies. I like your suit as well, what is that Armani?”
Mike brushed off his jeans and tipped his bone-white cowboy hat lower over his eyes. “You got it.” He gulped down a pitcher of beer and gestured to his friend. “Steve, meet Bobby.”
“Howdy,” Bobby sobbed. He was the shortest, most muscular man Steve had ever seen. He looked like a bodybuilding gnome. Sparse strands coiled from his upper lip like budding vines. His hair was spiked up in the front and he had an under-bite; it looked as if he was holding up his coif with a constant upward exhale. He was the oldest and shortest of five sons, and had wet his bed until age fifteen, when, sleeping on the floor with several other boys at a birthday party, he woke the ones next to him with a musty, familiar warmth.
“I swear to God,” he explained to Steve. “After living in man-camp for a year you can smell pussy before you see it, swear to fucking God.”
“Hey sweetheart,” he hissed at a passing dancer. “I want to fuck you.” She strutted by. “I said, I want to fuck you,” he blubbered after her.
Steve downed a few shots and stared at the silver puma. She wasn’t as busty as the other girls. Her body was taut wire and she coiled herself tightly around the pole as if she was strangling it. Wherever she pressed the pole against herself, a red mark would flash on her skin and fade away. Steve pushed his fingers into his arm and watched the marks flash and disappear, flash and disappear. They finished the pitchers of beer.
“Alexa,” Mike called at the puma. “Come down and dance for my friend here. He’s a scientist.”
Alexa released the pole and slinked off the stage towards the men.
“I was never too good at science. I’m more of a people person,” she sang, gripping each of the cool metal arms of Steve’s chair and smiling at him tiredly. He looked like Trevor, her high school boyfriend who had died in a boating accident on Lake St. Clair during her senior year.
Up close, Steve could see the imperfections in her make-up. She smelled like sweat and cherry cough syrup. Two small scars striped the bridge of her nose, and Steve climbed down them from her eyes to her lips, which were thin and tightly bound to her teeth.
“Heya Alexa, I’m Steve.”
“Hi Steve,” she whispered. “Put your hands at your sides, hun.”
Alexa sat on his lap with her chest in his face. He marveled at her rib dimples, her clavicle shadows.
“Are you from Winnakcha?” Steve blurted, unraveling into the music, the leather of the chair, the crimson smoke.
“I’m a Detroit girl.”
“Motor City,” Steve giggled.
“Let’s talk about you, Steve. Do you want to tell me about yourself?” she asked, like a kindergarten teacher.
“My mom’s an accountant, my dad’s a lawyer. The usual. My little brother is studying Econ at UPenn. You know the story. I went to Yale, you know Yale? Typical. Fuck it. What’s your family like?”
Alexa examined the unkempt man sleep-talking in dress clothes. “My mom worked a lot. I was very lonely growing up,” she pouted, her eyes glossy. “Were you lonely?”
Steve brushed her waist with his fingertips. She flexed her ass.
“Was I lonely? Yeah, I guess I was lonely. Watched a lot of television, played a lot of Minecraft. But it didn’t bother me. Man can find peace in solitude,” he mumbled before shaking himself alert. “How’d you end up here? How’d you end up dancing for a bunch of crying rednecks? Excuse me, I don’t mean that. I’m just drunk. I’m, I’m just curious, Ms. Puma, as to how you ended up dancing at this establishment.”
She analyzed the flutter of his eyelashes, the lope of his grin, and softened her gyration. “I always loved dancing,” she explained, flashing a cheery smile before returning to a somber expression. “Are you happy with your life here in Winnakcha?”
“Oil towns,” Steve muttered. “We’re the ones who keep this country going, isn’t that right?” He rubbed his jaw, grazing her breast as he put his hand back down at his side. “We’re all fucked, anyway, huh? Can’t ever predict what’s going to happen with a hundred percent certainty.”
“Mhm,” she assented eagerly, sensing the familiar tension gathering in his chest. “That’s right.”
Steve opened his eyes and stared into hers ardently. “We can never truly know the consequences of our actions, I don’t think. Any conviction about the future is,” he searched her face for the right word. “Is arrogant.”
“Yeah?” she prodded, accelerating her movements. “You think?”
“I know,” he exclaimed, breathing heavily now. His emotions were spiraling into his chest. “The only certainty is uncertainty, right? Like antibiotics, we thought they were saving us but they’re probably going to end up creating a super-disease that kills us all.”
The chords of the music progressed, building and flowing as Steve’s throat tightened, as his muscles clenched and his vision clouded.
“Same goes for oil and gas. We simply don’t know whether any of this is worse than anything else, do we? No, we don’t. Who knows what future science will tell us? Nobody. Who knows?”
The song finished and Steve burst into tears. Alexa nodded, radiating understanding, and untangled herself from his guilt. He paid her, tipping generously, then seeped back into the chair. The water in his eyes made the crystal chandelier glisten over the stage.
“Alright, darling,” Mike beckoned. “Get over here.”
She twirled and bent herself into his lap. Mike’s eyes were buried under a molten glaze. The denim rubbed against her inner thighs. “Long time no see, Mr. Fonda.”
“If I’m Henry, then you’re my darling Clementine.”
“I can do that,” she smiled, waving down a tissue box.
“I’ve got a new one for you,” Mike whispered. His sourdough breath hung between their faces.
“Tell it to me.”
As the music and weeping flowed around them, Mike slowly murmured his newest poem into Alexa’s ear.

“I was eighteen and I didn’t have a plan,
then a pack of Marlboros came and took me from my fam.
I was waving to my brother goin’ to Afghanistan,
holding a pack of Marlboros in his right hand.
I was working at a gas station under my old man,
then a pack of Marlboros came and shook me till I ran.”

His voice cracked. He swallowed feebly and continued.

“I stole a pack of golds from him to sell to a frand,
and that pack of Marlboros went and made me to a man.
My pops had me fired and instead of kicking cans,
I followed that pack of Marlboros to Badland sands.
But oh, how I miss my momma, how I miss that woman’s love.
Oh, how I miss my momma, how I miss that woman’s love.
Now I live in a white cell, cracking the Lord’s dam,
oh that pack of Marlboros went and made me to a man.”

Mike buried his head in the crook of her neck, then sat back with his eyes closed, ruminating. Alexa leaned into him as she unconsciously rolled her hips against his waist. Her silver eyes glimmered like underwater moons. “Beautiful tragedy, Mike. Clear and honest, like you. You’ve got to publish these. Share your art. I do it. I know it’s not always as poetic, but sometimes I am totally free. There are moments of it, moments where everything aligns and no one yells anything for twenty seconds. It’s just me and the music swaying together for a long moment, totally free. Sometimes I make a man cry without even opening my mouth, without even touching him.”
“What you do is beautiful. My things are just little things for your beautiful ears, Lex. And I know they bore you, but you pretend real nice and that’s enough for me.”
“I don’t pretend, Mike. Everyone of them, I’ve loved. And they’re getting better too. More, more, bigger than yourself.”
Mike grabbed a tissue from a passing waitress and wiped his eyes. The song ended. He rubbed Alexa’s sides with his calloused hands, holding on to her for a moment longer, then paid her, watching her strong back as she walked to another weeping patron.

The following day, Steve was penetrating the Middle Winnakcha with the help of a measurement-well driller named Esteban and a directional driller named Étienne when he encountered the Mystery Stone. The drill bit was approximately three kilometers below the surface when the well log presented impossible data to him and his crew. Steve paced around his sterile white trailer.
“Something has got to be wrong,” Steve exclaimed with frustration. “I think we need to make a trip.”
A trip would delay the project by at least two weeks. Costly weeks. Steve reexamined the fantastical green digits on his computer screen, shook his head, left the trailer, and headed to the drill site to bear the bad news.
The sun blinded him as he exited his trailer. Pipes, drills, and assorted machinery glistened in the bright light. A cacophony of metallic clangs, buzzes, and screeches wailed in the dry noon heat. Steve walked briskly towards Mike, who was lumbering across the drill site with iron pipes over his shoulders.
“Mike,” Steve hollered.
Mike reached his destination, unloaded the pipes, and turned around, squinting into the sun. Steve’s white button-up shimmered delicately against the sandy surroundings.
“I’ve got some bad news, Mike,” he stuttered. “We need to make a trip.”
“We need to trip out of the hole? Why the hell do we need to do that?” Mike hollered.
“The well log is malfunctioning. We can’t go any further with a faulty well log. We’ll be drilling blind.”
Mike took a deep breath and chewed the inside of his cheek. “It’s on you to tell the boss.”
The two men walked towards the rig floor, kicking up dust under the towering machinery. As Steve prepared a diplomatic, blameless explanation of the situation for the boss and Mike solemnly distilled Alexas from the distant bluffs and the steel latticework, a small pressurized pipe near the wellhead combusted, bursting into an infernal cloud of rippling flame.
The men were thrown to the ground. Their ears rang numbly. The flames traveled from tank to tank, exploding in spirals around them as the sun shone imperially over their heads. The towering rig stood firmly, erected proudly above the suffering men. The earth shook beneath them, and the hot grains of dirt vibrated around their bodies. A fissure ripped open across the rig floor, and Steve and Mike dug their fingernails into the dirt, trying not to fall in, but the sand was too loose to grip. The two thrashing men tumbled fearfully down the dark gash.

Steve woke up in a cave lit by a soft phosphorescent glow. Translucent pink crystals studded the sloped walls. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. Mike lay a few feet away. Steve crawled apprehensively towards his body.
“Hey, Mike, wake up,” he demanded, shaking his body.
Mike shot up and ran his eyes over the crystalline surroundings. “What’s going on? Where the hell are we?” he asked.
Steve glanced around hysterically then stumbled to a corner of the cave and vomited.
“Calm down,” Mike demanded. “Geologize.”
Steve pulled out his iPhone. “No service, god damn it,” he muttered to himself. He turned to Mike. “I don’t know what to tell you, man,” he said frantically. “I don’t exactly have much to work with here.”
Mike put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Breathe slow, and let’s figure this out.”
Steve steadied himself. “Okay, so, we’re underground. We’re not dead so we shouldn’t be that far underground. However,” he stated, pointing at the wall. “This isn’t shale. If we were near the surface this would be shale. This looks like dolomite, but it doesn’t make sense that it would be dolomite. Dolomite layers are three kilometers deep in the Winnakcha. We’d have died from that fall. Also, there would be no light down here. It would be absolute blackness. Yet, we can see fine. It doesn’t make sense. My best guess is that we’re, say, thirty feet from the surface, in some random pocket of dolomite, and the light is filtering through some small holes in this cave.”
They ventured down the jagged passage of crystals, following the pink glow to its source. Their boots squeaked against the glassy stone, and each squeak traveled ahead of them, fading down the corridor, then echoed directly behind them seconds later. The hushed sounds of their breathing transformed into whispered mantras, threading listlessly between the jutting gemstones. They walked deeper into the cave, hiking for hours. Steve could feel his bones grinding together with each step. Mike marched ahead, glaring forward immortally. Steve observed Mike’s rhythmic gait and used it to set his own metronome. At the point of collapse, they stumbled upon the light source.
“Oh my,” Steve gasped.
“Lord,” Mike added.
They had entered an immense chamber, the walls of which were swimming with tiny pink phosphorescent organisms. An organic hum filled the cavernous space.
“This must be some sort of extremophilic bacteria,” Steve sputtered in astonishment, craning his neck and spinning around. “But each individual organism is much too large, no, it must be some sort of undiscovered arthropod,” he exclaimed.
As soon as he spoke, the organisms scurried down the walls and heaped on top of one another in the center of the chamber, stacking themselves into a swarming tower. With intricate choreography, the tower began to assume the shape of an old woman, fifty feet tall, crawling with individual energies. She stared down at the two men with forlorn eyes.
Mike dropped to his knees in prayer, and Steve examined her marvelous structure, attempting to comprehend its dynamics. Mike was the first to speak to her, asking her where to go. She said nothing. Steve was the first to touch her, reaching his hand into her foot in an effort to pluck a single organism from her constitution. She yielded no components. Eventually, Mike and Steve sat between her toes, exhausted and awestruck. They felt no thirst or hunger. Steve turned to Mike with a look of humble ecstasy, his hair tousled and sweaty, his head light and hazy. He looked like an entranced child at the edge of a cliff.
“When I was eight years old, I rubbed my dick against my little brother’s back. In our hot tub. Not just his back. His asshole, too. Not in it, but around its edges. I’m not gay or incestuous but I did that when I was a kid and we never talked about it. I’m sure he remembers. That eight-year-old me doesn’t even feel like me, he feels like another character entirely, but nevertheless, he’s a part of me, and we’ve never talked about it,” Steve closed his eyes wistfully.
“Another time, this girl, real interesting and sexy, kinda emo, with this curly black hair and mole above her lip, exactly like those French models, was into me. We were in a musical together. Yeah, I did musicals. Anyway, she liked me, and I really liked her. We used to hold each other in the dark between scenes, pretending to be having an extramarital affair. But when I found out she liked me, I told her I wasn’t interested in her that way. Said, ‘Let’s just be friends.’ Because she had a reputation of being slutty. Whatever slutty means in middle school. People didn’t respect her. Maybe she’d given a blowjob. Shit that was half the reason I was interested in her. Brittney Moore. Wonder what she’s doing now.”
He picked at a hangnail. “Since high school, I’ve measured most of my actions against what I think this water polo player Sam Philips would have done. To this day I make an unbelievable amount of decisions based on this guy I had no more than two conversations with at my high school. How fucked up is that,” he chuckled, shaking his head.
“Pretty fucked up,” Mike answered. He stared up at the gleaming woman’s breasts and sighed peacefully, realizing it was his turn. “I write lyrics. Most of them are about Alexa, you know, Intimissy Alexa. Some of them are about me, about my life. I never showed them to anyone but her.”
He let out a low whistle and continued.
“When I was little, I had this next door neighbor named Porter. We were kids, and we used to pitch a ball to each other and hit it with my plastic bat. We were friends. Then he moved away. Went to a different elementary school. We went to the same middle school though. He was sharkbait, the poor wimp. Everybody gave him shit. I don’t know why, just a stroke of fate, I guess. I was never as mean to him as other kids were, but one time we were playing ball, shooting hoops, and he missed a shot, and I called him a faggot. It was just the instinct in me, didn’t even think about saying it. That’s not the type of language I was raised to use, I don’t know where it came from. Then everybody was cracking up and started chanting it, ‘Porter is a faggot, Porter is a faggot.’ Poor kid looked at me like I’d been his father and told him I wanted to put him up for adoption. But also like he was some sort of angel, and that I had been close to being an angel too, but just then had fallen. He walked away without crying and never came back. Changed schools.”
Mike relaxed his shoulders and studied the old woman’s beaded toe. “Once, it was me and my momma at home, pops was at the station or something, and I was eating a grilled cheese, Wisconsin cheese, watching Looney Tunes or something like that, and I heard the shower turn on. Our water pipes were special, pops would say, because they liked to sing, you could hear ‘em howling in the kitchen walls. So I hear the howling and I put down my grilled cheese and walk outside of the house, I don’t know why, and I go all the way around to the bathroom window and peek in. Only for a flash, I swear to God, I don’t even know why, it wasn’t that I was into her like that or anything, hell no, I just, I guess I just forgot what she looked like.”
The two men exchanged stories like this for a long time, warmed by the glow of the old woman. Over time, the pink light faded and the stone floor softened. The old woman lay down, and the two men, profoundly exhausted, curled into her warm belly and fell asleep, underground and understood.