It didn't take long to figure out why Golden was called Golden. The people were beautiful, the architecture was splendid, the weather was gleaming, and the small-town vibe brought with it a wave of nostalgia reminiscent of the town I grew up in.
Within ten minutes of being in town, we'd been invited to sit down at a patio outside a restaurant. Mike, the man who'd invited us over, was quick to order us each a beer, and he let us share the rest of his meal.
Mike had some strange stories. He claimed that he'd once inherited just under a million dollars, and had given it all to charity. Since then, he'd fallen into a deep depression which led into alcoholism. Despite repeated A.A. meetings, he was hitting the bottle pretty hard. Still, he said, he loved to share; what was his was everyone's.
He invited us back to his dilapidated trailer to have a few drinks. The scent within the trailer (undoubtedly wafting from the moist blankets strewn across the floor and unwashed dishes in the sink) was repulsive at first, but, like any smell, it soon subsided as we got used to it.
He had a sixty pounder full of whiskey on the table. We pulled our sixty pounder out of our backpack.
Things began to go awry quite quickly.
A few drinks turned into a few dozen quickly, and our voices rose into vocal eruptions. The whiskey mixed itself maliciously into our bloodstream and brought forth our anger; Fernweh and Scrib began to front, insinuating a fight but never following through enough to lay hands on eachother. Mike, pretending to be a voice of reason, threatened to still all violence with his own two fists and crush all those who portrayed violence around him (funny, since he'd only just been talking about how he couldn't and wouldn't ever find himself in a fight.)
While Scrib and Fernweh were verbally duking it out outside, Mike went back into his trailer and sat with Aids, begging her to kiss him. Repeatedly. We figured it was time to leave.
Amongst the deafening blare of Fernweh and Scrib trying to overcome eachother's egos, we hardly noticed Mike as he jumped onto his bike. "I've gotta go to the fucking bar. Right now! Take anything in my house."
He sped off, leaving us confused. He hadn't even finished a quarter of his own 60. Whatever.
We packed up our stuff and headed back downtown. It seemed that Scrib's ego had conquered Fernweh's for today, as Fernweh had taken on a whole new persona. It seemed that since he hadn't been able to step on Scrib's psyche, he was now drowning in insecurity. He wallowed in self-pity, his words became a soft mutter, and a half-cut grin hung off his face in a melancholy way. He abjectly followed us around, promising that he wouldn't take our money, that he wasn't worth our time, until eventually he wandered off.
Moments after this, I ran into the right person at the right time. He wanted to hear some didgeridoo, so I played a decent riff and he dropped us 70 dollars. We decided to go grab lunch at an Asian restaurant around the corner. We didn't bother looking for Fernweh - we knew that he wanted us to feed him, but his shattered ego wouldn't let him accept any food. If he found us, the meal would have been filled with useless confrontation. We'd offer him food, he'd refuse, then he'd sit with us staring hungrily at our plates.
Once we settled down at our table, Fernweh strolled in. He had his shirt hoisted up around his midsection, and wore his mandolin on its strap underneath his shirt. With a sway in his step, he looked as if he had down syndrome and a massive, ridiculously shaped abdominal tumor. He ordered a glass of water, glanced at our table, then stumbled out of the restaurant.
We finished our meal, and, several hours later, Fernweh found us as I was sitting in a garbage can with the 60 pounder. He was in a much better mood, but that story is for another day.
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