Dennis Goes Camping: Part 1 (AA, drinking, fucking, plans, fights, fucking, hope) | 2016

Camping. Jim wanted to go camping. Dennis hadn’t been camping since he was thirteen. So almost a decade ago. He associated it with screaming former drill sergeants and forced push-up regimes. He didn’t associate it with nature. Fuck no.

He was thinking about how he didn’t like Jim’s idea during the silent part of the AA meeting. Dennis was an incoming sophomore at college. His school required him to go to these meetings if he wanted to stay an incoming sophomore. That’s what Dennis had been warned about at the very end of the previous semester. Go hang out with the kill-joy adults every week or don’t come back to school. It sucked for them that his grades were so good. They couldn’t just kick him out under an academic pretense. So he sat in this weekly AA meeting, thinking about how he didn’t like camping. “Dennis, what’s on your mind?” Stan, the leader of this chapter, spoke. “Tequila,” Dennis said. It wasn’t quite untrue. Those of the darker humored persuasion laughed. Stan gave him a look that asked why he couldn’t ever just… That many dots. “Actually, it’s camping,” Dennis said. “I just don’t want to go camping this weekend.” “Who are you going camping with?” “Did I say something about actually going through with it?” Stan was quiet. “Just a buddy of mine.” Dennis said it a little quieter. After a pause, another guy, Tom said, “There’s no good camping in Illinois anyway.” “There isn’t any good civilization in Illinois,” Dennis said. He picked up his tiny cup of coffee and took a sip. Cold and dull. “What do you associate camping with?” This from Stan again. Dennis sat back. “The correctional I was sent to when I was thirteen.” “What’s a correctional?” “A youth camp. For fucked-up kids. The full-metal-jacket type stuff you hear about that should be violates basic human rights, blardie blar.” Everybody was looking at Dennis. “And you were sent to one of these camps at thirteen?” Tom again. Dennis nodded. Stan leaned forward. “Dennis,” he said. “I know how it is. I was sent to one of those camps too.” Dennis and Stan looked right at each other for a little while and Dennis thought, If that’s what I’m going to look like when I’m like forty-five, I won’t be getting any pussy. He almost felt bad for Stan as he thought it. He wondered how much Stan’s face might lighten up if Dennis were to send him an audio recording of he and Charlize some time. He’d made a few. Dennis was glad to leave the sausage fest of a meeting at four and head over to the bar to meet Dirk. He’d stopped drinking for three weeks, sure, but that had been two months ago. His new fake ID worked just fine. It was late August, the fall semester was about to begin, and he was almost in the clear.

Later that day, in the evening, as the sun set through the shaded windows of his shoebox bedroom, Dennis found himself fucking the brains out of Charlize, who lay sideways on his bed because that was her preferred position. Charlize’s head bobbed up and down on the pillow like a long saw moving across a tree’s body. But her motion was vertical, not horizontal, and she was complicating the symmetry by arching her chin upwards, meaning her black bun—Dennis had forgot to untie it—tamped down the pillow just enough so that it didn’t fall off the bed. Dennis wanted it to fall. He liked the view in this position better when the Charlize’s head was completely bent over the bed’s edge and her tits jangled around in the lower frame of his vision while in the upper frame her jaw became ever wider as she kept crying out, “Yes! Shit! Yes! Shit!”

While she practiced her new form of spoken word poety, Dennis briefly relocated his brain waves to his junk. His un-tethered junk; his bare-skin erection slopping back and forth down there; not as fast as he could give it to her, but fast enough to qualify as fucking Charlize’s brains out.

Dennis’ junk felt sloppy-wet. Wet in the way his feet used to feel as a young boy in rural Illinois, his bare foot moving in and out of the sucking mud and Dennis thinking of how strangely pleasing it felt. Had that been his first sexual experience?

Dennis focused back on Charlize’s face as she started in with the chorus: “Shit! Yes! Shit! Dennis!” She had changed it up a little in recent visits.

Dennis wondered: had Charlize had a comparable sexual experience with the elements of the wild as a little girl? When she had been a truly little girl, of course, he hadn’t been born yet. Did she ever wonder how old this instigator of her swampy vaginal wetness really was? Surely she couldn’t still believe that he was just three years younger than her.

How insulting, Dennis thought, and with that thought in mind, pounded her harder. He lay flat on her chest. He simply stared at her gaping mouth, her moans that doubled as breaths, feeling wispy and meaningless against his nose and eyes. They calmed the feeling in him that he had to make use of these moments Charlize had before he shot off inside her. He had to be honest with her.

Charlize’s arm moved in a circle around Dennis’ spine as if it was dough for a pizza pie. He took a break from her mouth and looked to the side. Beyond Charlize’s shoulder he could see the rumpled outline of a yellow pair of panties. They were not Charlize’s. They shriveled against his wall like a disgusted creature who couldn’t believe him. He looked back in to Charlize’s face.

In one swift motion, Dennis did it. He undid her purple hair bun. Charlize’s black hair spread everywhere. A 31-year old career woman with reddening cheeks, an open mouth and squeaky vocal chords, her head sawing up and down vertically on a green pillow, as a backdrop of her hair fanned out on both sides of her. A strand of Charlize’s hair flopped up and down on her cheek and landed just inside her mouth. Charlize was starting to bear her teeth. Dennis puffed and suppressed a grunt. He held back the tingling load dying to splurge out. With the same careful hand that had placed the pillow under Charlize’s head, that stroked her earlobes in the breath-catching or snuggling times they had, and that had undid the purple lace of her bun, he brushed the hair out of her mouth and let himself release.

The swamp went: suck suck suck.

Post fucking, sometimes they cuddled. Other times Charlize was all business. She worked from home, shooting numbers and statistics in to cyberspace and getting paid a commission to do it. Dennis sometimes wondered if whenever he came inside her she was reminded of the e-mails and financial figures she ejaculated in to the web and if this made her feel good or took her pleasure down a notch.

Probably neither.

Today, Charlize was all business. Her black slip was pulled tight over her legs. She stood with her back to Dennis, swabbing her groin with a tissue.

Dennis dug under his pillow. He felt the crinkly plastic of the dime bag he’d almost used up and lifted it out. The broken light that flashed on the ceiling illuminated the remains of pot sliding around in the bag. Dennis thought about smoking it and at the same time glanced back at Charlize, still swabbing at something in her nether regions?

“Lots of clients to deal with, it seems,” he said.

“Why do you say that?” Charlize said.

“Don’t you think you should maybe send out a mass e-mail to all your rich people telling them you’re out of the office due to a yeast infection?”

Charlize dropped the tissue. She sighed. She turned towards Dennis.

“Stop being offended by the fact that I have a job.”

Dennis hoisted himself up and took his bowl from the bedside table. He fumbled for a lighter and lit it. As he lay back down, he admired his abs. Charlize had said something about them weeks before, in one face-flushed moment in the middle of coitus. Dennis took a hit.

“Get high with me before you go,” Dennis said, blowing out smoke. He looked upside down at Charlize. She was buckling up her pants. She reached down and picked up her pink tank-top. It was the same shade of pink as her labia. Charlize shook her head.

“Dennis,” she said. “You’ve been stoned since I got here. How long has it been since I’ve seen you sober?”

Dennis stood and walked to her.

“What’s with the “Mother’s Against” stuff?” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders. She was tense.

“You used to laugh at my jokes. You haven’t been laughing a lot recently,” he said.

“Are you all right? Are you about to start menstruating?” he said it softer.

Charlize pulled away.

“Okay, I’m going to go now, Dennis,” she said. “And you can call me again when you don’t feel like being a stoned asshole.”

She picked up her purse. “By the way, looks like you’ve got some extra clothing on hand? Maybe donate it to the salvation army or something?” She gestured to her right. The yellow panties. She left.

Their first fight. Well, it was nothing. Dennis knew that. He took another hit.

Charlize’s tissue lay on the floor. Dennis picked it up. He sniffed it. It smelled like…over-chlorinated water. Yes. That was what her pussy smelled like.

That night Dennis, blitzed out his mind, watched a series of amateur jackass videos on the Internet and cackled hysterically because every single one went horribly wrong. Then he listened to a voice message left the previous day from a lawyer claiming to represent “Sophia Moore and her family,” who were choosing to proceed with charges against him; something something failing to help pay medical bills something something aborted pregnancy. Since it was so late, Dennis figured he’d call back. He left a message after the beep: “Hey. You have no fucking evidence. Seeya.” He hung up knowing it was true and that the lawyer knew it, too. There’d been that tone of resignation to the wishes of his client even in the scratchy cell phone message. Dennis took another hit after hanging up the phone—this time a long one—and coughed. And coughed. He dropped the bowl and the faintest sprinkling of ashes fell out. That was the end of the dime bag. Weed: Dennis’ anti-alcohol. He stood in the bathroom, not sure how he’d gotten there and feeling like he’d just eaten something, staring at his erect cock. It actually looked bigger than it had a year before. And Dennis felt like this wasn’t just the pot; every time he glimped his own erection recently, it just looked like his dick had grown a little. His dick, after being immersed in a host of women’s mouths and vaginas in the past year, had finally gone through puberty. He had started measuring his dick at age thirteen and had done it every year since, to no avail. Now, there was no need for the measuring tape; boot camp was over. The dues had been paid. No STDs, no infections: a perfect record. Eh, one pregnancy apparently, but otherwise perfect. His dick deserved some kind of award. A medal of honor. A video game named after it! Holy shit! Should he suck his own dick? Was that the answer? Dennis asked it to himself out loud: “DENNIS TOMINSKY, IS THE REWARD YOU WISH FOR THAT OF SELF-FELLATIO?” Without answer himself, Dennis bent over and, glad that all the acrobatic workouts at the gym had paid off, took himself in his mouth.

Dennis and Jim sat in the Hopebad Tavern. They had come to discuss camping logistics. They were five beers deep and hadn’t decided where they wanted to go yet.

“Starved Rock,” said Jim. “I’m cool with Starved Rock.”

“Starved Rock is a fucking cliché,” said Dennis. “Let’s get out of state.” He chugged down almost the rest of his beer.

“See if my car doesn’t break down, sure,” said Jim. He took another sip of his beer. “Aaauuuuuuuuggghghhhhhh,” Dennis burped.

“Rooooooorrrruuuuuoo,” Jim burped.

The two young men broke in to laughter.

“You sound like a dog having an orgasm,” said Dennis. “But I suppose you would know.”

Jim shook his head.

“Says the guy who killed a cat.”

“I did not…” Dennis shook his head. “I did not kill a cat. You know the story.”

At the next table over, three women and one hulking man glanced his way.

Dennis turned to them. He met eyes with a tan girl in a plain white shirt. Her pupils were disgusted with him and her irises were a cold green uncertainty.

“I didn’t kill a cat,” said Dennis. He walked over to the table.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he patted her on her tan runner’s leg just above the hem of her torn denim shorts. “I love animals.”

She didn’t flinch. She just scooted her leg out of the path of his hand when the guy beside her jumped out of his seat. Dennis winked at her. He nodded to the red-faced guy in the backwards Cubs cap who stood staring at him with pursed lips.

“Feels hot in here to me, too,” he said to the guy. He and Jim traded snickers. “Excuse me?” said the guy. He took a minor step forward. Jim hiccupped a few times. (The guy was fat). He and Dennis cackled. The guy spoke: “If you come within an inch of her again. AGAIN…I will carve the shit out of both of your asses and you won’t recover.” “Carve the shit out of our asses?” Dennis said. “Are you a proctologist?” He two of the girls giggle. One of them was the tan girl; Dennis knew because he saw her laugh. They suppressed their giggles as soon as Cubs guy glanced back at them. Cubs guy made a huffing sound and slammed his body down in to his seat. Jim was still silently giggling. He took a drink from the glass of water beside him. Dennis thought Jim was a pussy for drinking water when they went to bars. Jim was the one who actually legally could be here and he danced around his liquor like a four-year old learning to ice skate. “Okay, okay,” said Jim. “We’ve got to brainstorm now.” “Nah,” Dennis said, shaking his head. He drank the rest of his beer. “I’d rather get plastered and think about it later.” He felt in a suddenly inspired mood. “Dude, that’s your response to every—“ Jim began. Dennis was already out of his seat. He went to the bar. “Ay,” said Dennis loudly at the counter. “Four Jameson shots.” The bartender was an old-ish man with curly hair who saw Dennis at the bar often, knew he was underage, ignored it, and ignored everything else, too. This time all he had to ignore was the loudness of Dennis’ voice, which was comparatively easy. He got the bottle of Jameson, poured the shots and brought them to Dennis, who said: “Dennis Tominsky.” “I know,” said the bartender. “Wise man,” said Dennis. In two hands he carried the shots back to the table. “Four shots?” said Jim. Dennis nodded. “One for you.” He pushed a shot glass over to Jim. “Two for me.” He downed one. Dennis picked up the remaining shot glass, went to the table beside them and placed it down in front of the tan girl. “And one for the brave woman who puts up with Joe Smalldick on a regular basis.” Outright laughter. The tan girl blushed. She looked not so tan for a moment. Dennis returned to his seat and drank his shot. Out of the seat—virtually swooping out of it, like a Hawk with clipped wings--came Cubs Hat. He grabbed Dennis by the shirt collar. He knocked the chair over. He walked Dennis to the wall and slammed him against the jukebox. “Pretty sure I was in the two-inch range, bro,” Dennis said before getting his face slapped. “Fuck you! Fuck you! You’re getting fucked up, okay?” Dennis saw Jim walking over in the background. He assessed the situation: Oversized sports fan with a limited vocabulary. Jim, an ally, and not a bad fighter (he’d boxed in high school). Himself, a still-scrawny guy who had five beers and two shots in him. Dennis saw the shots as an advantage. He saw his size as an advantage. The fact that Cubs Hat was holding him against the wall, fuming, drool escaping his lips, but without the blows coming, or even his hands forming fists: an advantage. “Hey bro, your hats on backwards,” Jim said and turned the cap around around. Cubs Hat spun around and lunged at Jim. Dennis stepped out of his grip and turned his hat around again. “Dude, it’s still on backwards,” he said. Cubs Hat looked back over his shoulder. Now a fist was clenched. He swung it forward. Dennis was familiar with ducking: another advantage. The only advantage to having a terrible father. He crouched down, swung his legs around in a half-circle and tripped Cubs Hat straight down on to his face. Now the bartender was yelling at them. “Hey you kids stop it! Stop it you two! I’m calling the police! I’m calling the police!” Jim and Dennis stood on either side of Cubs Hat. Jim kicked him in the back. Dennis kicked him in the ribs. Cubs hat swatted at them with his arms and Jim danced over his one arm and Dennis, not quite the dancer Jim was, half-tripped and saved himself with a punch to Cubs Hat’s face. “You know there are nicer ways of asking me to put on some tunes for you,” Dennis said. Tim laughed out his open mouth. They kept kicking. Dennis kicked Cubs Hat in the balls. Jim kicked him in the back of the head. Dennis kicked him in the face. “What kind of jams do you think this hillbilly fuck rocks out to?” Jim asked. Dennis stopped kicking and stepped over the heap on the floor closer to the table. All three women were standing, but none of them wanted to move. “Ladies! What kind of jams does this hillbilly fuck rock out to?” Dennis called. The three of them looked at each other. Tan skinned girl looked at Dennis. She said something very softly. Dennis stepped closer to her. He came within an inch of her. He looked into her eyes and she looked away once, then looked back again. “What was that?” Dennis said. “Colt Ford,” she said. She said it like it was the name of death. She looked at the floor. Dennis turned away and went back to the jukebox. Jim was circling Cubs Hat now, kicking him occasionally, assessing the likelihood of the man standing. From his peripherals, he could see the old bartender following him, trying to confront him, holding back out of fear that Dennis was one of the dangerous ones. (He was). Dennis body slammed the lower half of Cubs Hat. Cubs Hat cried out something mangled. Dennis went to the jukebox, took out a dollar and inserted it in to the jukebox. He flipped back and forth, back and forth, until—his luck, why was it his luck? Why was it this good?—he found Colt Ford. Dennis put on “Chicken and Biscuits.” Cubs Hat was reaching up with one hand. There was a gash on his face. He was rolling around from side to side. “Okay guys,” he said. He breathed heavily. “Okay…” The song came on and Jim and Dennis sang in unison; “Kind of like chicken and biz—kits!” As the country electric jangle blast that followed the titular line did its following, Dennis delivered one more kick. Jim delivered one more kick. Dennis spit on Cubs Hat’s cheek. Jim spit on the gash that actually extended a little down his neck. Kind of like chicken and biscuits. Dennis dashed back to the bar. He felt alive, of the air. He felt like he was floating. The bartender was behind the bar again. “Sorry man,” Dennis said, grinning and shaking his head. “Sorry about that guy. I know you get assholes in here sometimes, but that guy must take the cake.” The bartender stared at him. He shook a little. “Get out of my bar,” he said through clenched teeth. “Here, look man, I need to close out,” Dennis said. The bartender paused and thought. In the background a raspy voice called out from the doorway, “Hey man, you want me to call the cops?” The bartender got Dennis’ card and receipt. He slammed it on the table in front of him. “You have thirty seconds to get the hell out of my bar and never come back.” Dennis scribbled in a signature. “Hey look man, it’s cool,” he said. He produced his wallet. He produced a one-hundred dollar bill. He placed it on the table. “It’s cool.” Kind of like chicken and biscuits. Dennis was at the table beside the girls. One had already run off. Another, a blonde girl hurried away as Dennis approached. “Katie, come on,” she said and tugged at the tanned- girl’s arm. Katie pretended to take a step toward her friend but kept looking at Dennis. “You’re a fucking asshole, you that?” She said and shook her head. Dennis closed his eyes once and nodded softly. Katie shook her head. “You asshole,” she said and almost laughed. “Katie?” said Dennis. “Yes…” Katie muttered in the softest mutter. “Dennis,” Dennis said. He was scribbling his phone number with the pen he’d taken from the bar on the back of the customer receipt. Kind of like chicken and biscuits. He folded the receipt and placed it in Katie’s hand. She let it drop but she glanced at where it had fallen. “What are you doing?” she said. “Seeing you soon,” said Dennis. He and Jim ran out the front door. Their run down the sidewalk through the blurry sun felt like running through armpit sweat; hot, blurry, about to puke, suffocating. But they made it to Jim’s car on the other side of the block and drove off just as drunkenly fast as they could. Kind of like chicken and biscuits. They almost hit a parked SUV on the way home and they did hit a traschcan. 

Two days later, on a cooler day, when the air in Dennis’ 3rd floor walkup felt bearable, Katie did her best imitation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Her mouth was open in the same half-oval as the woman on the bridge in the iconic 20th century painting of modern angst, except Katie was feeling a bit better than that woman. The noises coming out of her mouth were jagged falsetto female sounds that complimented the creaking of the bedsprings and Dennis’ occasional groans. One of her hands was clasped against the side of her mouth. Just like Edvard Munch’s portrait of 20th Century angst. Dennis clasped his hand that wasn’t pinning Katie’s other hand to the top of the pillow on to the other side of her cheek. Not quite like Edvard Munch’s portrait of 20th Century angst, but this here was Dennis’ artwork. Katie’s head bobbed back and forth against the edges of the two pillows she lay between and Dennis moved his hand away from her’s. He slipped it under her thigh, which he’d already done, ten or so minutes before, while holding her spazzing legs against his cheeks so at least he could get a proper massage with all the liquid amassing at the top of her vulva and spilling over in to his mouth. This time he hoisted her leg upwards. He removed his other hand from the other side of her cheek and did the same with Katie’s other leg, restoring her face to a closer approximation of Edvard Munch’s portrait of 20th Century angst. “Aaaaahhhhh! Fuuuuuuucckkkkkk!” Was Katie’s comment on this restoration. Dennis had more leverage and he enjoyed it. His cock moved in and out of Katie more feely. He felt the whole world of physical pleasure fortifying itself at the tip of his junk but he wouldn’t let it go just yet. He was wearing a condom with this one and with condoms he could hold out for longer. His record: something like nine minutes from start of feeling orgasm happening to being fully out of jizz. Dennis moved his pelvis faster. A pubic hair (Katie’s) fell off his face and landed on her sideways cheek. Katie’s skin wasn’t so tan anymore. Her face, at least, had gotten pretty red. Katie flung her hands across Dennis’ back and clawed him with her nails. She’d done this minutes earlier when the situation hadn’t quite escalated. Except this time, the louder falsettos having ceased for just a moment, she started bursting out two pants a second and said, over the span of about four pants, “I can’t…(huh ahh huh aahh)…feel (ahhh huh ahhh) my legs…” Munch!

Her clitoris was all fucked up. Dennis had witnessed some fucked up clitori in his day, but his cock had just wrecked Katie's vagina. She sat at the edge of his bed, dabbing at her folds, tucking her lips back in, the expression on her face one of a woman who seriously does not want to get a yeast infection. Dennis lay down at the other end of his bed. His shirt was still off, but his bottle of Jaegermeister was still open and a joint was rolled. He lit up the joint. Now he suddenly wanted to go camping with Jim. He wanted them to figure something out right away. His life was now, as John Mellencamp had observed. They would pitch their tents and built a fire and watch the stars and Dennis would deal with the withdrawals of his vices by being one with nature. Bring it, trees. Bring it, crickets. Bring it, fresh air. But first he had to drink and take hits and black out to the view of Katie cleaning up her vagina.