Like a Dog. Tara Jepsen

      City Lights Books | San Francisco

      Copyright © 2017 by Tara Jepsen

      All rights reserved

      Cover photo by Tara Jepsen

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Jepsen, Tara, author.

      Title: Like a dog / Tara Jepsen.

      Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, [2017] | Series: City

       Lights/sister spit

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017022443 (print) | LCCN 2017032370 (ebook) | ISBN

       9780872867352 | ISBN 9780872867345 (softcover)

      Subjects: LCSH: Self-actualization (Psychology) in women—Fiction. |

       Self-realization in women—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. |

       Drug addicts—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION /

       Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | FICTION / Family Life. |

       GSAFD: Humorous fiction.

      Classification: LCC PS3610.E675 (ebook) | LCC PS3610.E675 L55 2017 (print) |

       DDC 813/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022443

      City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

      261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

      www.citylights.com

      For Travis, obviously.

      I sit on a dirty, flat rock, wearing a hot pink sports bra and boxer shorts, staring into a small fire. I am an arboreal flower with two idiot pistils, my arms. My brother Peter and I are in Idyllwild camping. The San Bernardino forest is a panoply of pine pleasures, the stuff potpourris are named after. The olfactory environs a certain segment of plug-in air fresheners and cleaning products aim to evoke. You are cleaning, but you are also planting a grove of evergreens.

      I can eat anything for breakfast. Canned ravioli, pizza, ice cream, it’s all fine with my road-dog iron stomach. Right now, I’m roasting two wieners on a long fork for breakfast and after I eat those, I plan to toast some marshmallows. Main dish, dessert. That’s proper meal structure.

      I hear the quick whistle of the zipper on my brother’s tent. He emerges with his long hair in a wild golden snarl around his head. What a beautiful dude. He pats it down, and draws on his menthol. He picked up that habit in prison, the dummy. My mom is not a fan. She’s been teaching smoking cessation classes for thirty years so this is probably an accurate place to say, “That’s ironic.”

      “Hi,” I say. I approach Peter like he’s a feral cat. Slowly, intuitively. Neither of us likes surprises or changes in course. We like gentle tones. You might perceive a level of chaos looking at us, owing to the tattoos and well-worn clothing, but we’re more like high-strung pacifists. Tense buddhas.

      “Good morning, Paloma,” he says with mock formality. “Is the coffee stuff still out?” I point him to the Jetboil, which gets water ready in mere moments. There is so much rad innovation in camping gear. I bet if you told REI that curing breast cancer would be a great camping accessory, there would be funding and a cure in an instant.

      “You want a hot dog?”

      “Not yet. Coffee first.” Peter sits on a low chair we brought. He smokes, looking at the sky through some towering pines. A hawk or vulture or something flies over us, a singular tear in the cloudless blue.

      We’re going to Yucca Valley to skate a pool today, someone’s backyard spot that won’t be around much longer because the house was bought, and the renters are being kicked out. We drove down from San Francisco to ride it, after a heads-up from a friend down here.

      I consider cracking open a beer, just the crappy kind that’s mostly water, like a Pabst. A breakfast beer. But I have to consider Peter, who has only been clean and sober for two months. The whole family is hoping that this round sticks. Realistically, he will be around people who drink, so I keep telling him he has to get ready for that. He says it’s no problem, but I can tell he’s doubtful, or annoyed, or something. Regardless, I decide to wait to have a beer. I can always run out to the car and slam one while he skates. Peter is such a jerk when he’s on dope, I want to do everything I can to support his sobriety.

      I decide I can’t wait and take a walk around the campground. I grab a beer from my stash in the truck and slide it into a spongy coozie. The camping spots around us are about half full (note my optimism). I can tell some people have been here a really long time, probably years. I pass a guy sitting at a picnic table, a long white beard hanging from his pillowy, pink face. He is a large gentleman, his body the shape of an upended boulder. His thick feet are crossed under the table, shod in water sandals. If the psychic vibe around him were a perfume, I would describe it as acrid, stormy, and suicidal. Disenfranchised: the new scent from Calvin Klein. His eyes slowly rise up and I move on quickly, looking away. I try not to lock eyes with the violently discomfited, unless a friend introduces us.

      I see a lady hanging laundry on a rope tied between two trees. She wears crisp, pink shorts creased down the front of each leg, and a pastel plaid blouse. She’s focused. I’m trying to get my beer down quickly so I can toss the can and get through my burps before returning to Peter. I wave to the lady, but she doesn’t look up.

      We pull up to an inauspicious ranch-style house in Yucca Valley. There’s a Toyota pickup backed into the driveway, and the front door is open. There’s a small pink plastic Jeep next to the front door, and a couple other playthings evidencing a child. The Toyota starts out of the driveway, and I jump out to catch them.

      “Hey, my friend Kevin gave me your address, is it cool if we skate?”

      “Hell yeah, he told me you were coming. He didn’t tell me there would be a chick skater, that’s rad!”

      “Yep. Thank you!” The choice not to say something bitchy in response to “chick skater” makes me feel wild and free, a genius of picking my battles.

      We grab our boards and shuffle down the driveway through some dusty desert weeds. Inside, there’s a sunken living room with a large drum kit set up, and lots of U-Haul moving boxes. A couple huge, black speakers are clustered near the door with some mic stands. A dude with a red mohawk says hello and we show ourselves out to the backyard, where some concrete steps lead down to a small, empty right-hand kidney. There’s a red anarchy symbol graffitied on one side, and a bunch of random other tags. All the vegetation in the yard is dead except for a persistent light blue wallflower straggling out from the fence near us. Peter immediately gets in the pool and rides a backside line over the light, ollies over the hip, then grabs his board and stares at the deep end. He lines up a frontside double-double, then stops and pulls his hair back.

      “Get in here!” he yells. So I do. We skate hard for an hour or so, then sit on the side panting, wiping sweat, drinking water. We let our legs dangle into the shallow end, like kids at a birthday party.

      “This is the best shit,” Peter says.

      “It’s fucking rad that we get to do this again.”

      “Yeah, that was stupid. I’m stupid.”

      “Does it feel crazy to skate sober?” I ask, hoping he won’t get mad.

      “It’s weird. For sure.” He pauses. “I’m trying to think, was I always high when I skated? Because it feels like I’m kind of learning again.”