"Tent-a-Cles!" on the Hillside (draft)

Part one.


He wouldn’t tell us much about the scars across his eyes. He was staying at our house at random, and when some people saw him for the first time they couldn’t help but ask, “Hey… how’s it goin? Uh, what’s with the scars?!” Lennart didn’t flinch. He stares. A lot.

His response communicated in the unconventional sense of the word. His tone was concentrated, and he said (slowly - surely, but slowly, as one who conquers mountains of the mind), “In an accident.” He didn’t say it the second time, so I felt lucky to have heard that his brother has scars in those exact places. It blew my mind. Their faces – opposing sides of an equation or branches on a tree? A natural Rorschach in caricature. I wanted to meet his brother… maybe see them side by side, and then get to know them, then see two personalities that grew-grow-willgrow to the same light?

We met through the internet. We gave him a place to stay, and in exchange they gave us some cigarettes. …Without having to pay. In fairness, they also gave us amazing stories of their travels, including a time they got kicked out of a Turkish barber shop since they almost started a fight with the hairdresser who gave them the worst fucking haircut they’d ever experienced. The Turkish and Ze Germans hate each other. They told us, and we learned.

They stayed at our house for over a week, and no doubt – we had an amazing time. There’s no way to describe the way it feels to share life experiences with someone who breathes different air. It’s bizarre, and it’s funny, and you want to circle the globe until your feet are brown and calloused, until you have so many stories that you understand true love, and better: all the ways people laugh when they learn something shocking, new.

…………………………………

Everything was normal before they went to Vegas. They stayed with some other Germans while they were there, and Johannes, the other guy living in our house for so long, would only stay in his room when they got back from their trip. They were rather close-mouthed when they returned. I found them sitting on the balcony, and they didn’t say much, staring at their computers, only, “Yes, it was fun.” Now, they talked to each other in their own language more than before. I prodded, and we were able to laugh about similar experiences with collections of prostitute baseball cards.

Upon his return we took Lennart into the Malibu mountains. It was a charming experience, to appease his eagerness for “Baywatch” destinations. Hah - BOOBS. “David Hasselhoff!” he yelled and we all laughed together, including Lennart the German. The drive took longer than expected, and after miles of dark ocean we swirled up a hillside. It was fucking hilarious, I’m sure, to the outside observer who saw five sublimated young men – one so different than the other four, and that strange one experiencing our creative taste in music. Eventually, we got out.

There was a path that hugged the side. The sky was light enough, and, hazy. We took the path, and the German had no shoes, still, after more than a week, but we walked and walked. Turns around any bend offered no view, no sensible place to stop but this journey was by chance and we walked like zombies until we felt comfortable enough to rest. We stopped on the side of a hill, and in front of us we saw: dark trees touch hillside against valley floors dawning subtle sea before the shimmer of Santa Monica, and I’m sure each of us thought: that German guy sees it differently than we do.

We got bored, staring at the place around us – a good thing, especially in close vicinity of a trusted stranger that you want to learn about.
As before, he seemed new, after Vegas, in a way that tangled my mind. It seemed he was ready to take over the world.

I sat down, and started throwing rocks at trees. As I got better at hitting the trees, ~distantsilhouettes~ and it made the German curious. I watched as he bent over and found the right rock to throw. He tried, but he was worse than me, and I made a point of telling him. …It’s good to fuck with someone; Emotion. You learn about them. Anyway, we raced until one of us had 10 hits on the tree, which took longer than you’d expect - 15 minutes. He was a slow learner, but almost caught up towards the end. I beat him 10 – 8, and I even let go of one point.

Then, nothing special.
He smoked cigarettes.
We talked about the stars.

Quiet.
Quiet.
Quiet.
Quiet.
Quie

That's when he told us about The Aliens.