At the gas station, Stevenson buys speed shades, a gold hoop earring. He buys a burned EDM CD, a whicker cowboy hat, a jar of pickled quail eggs. Then, an eighth of some synthetic cannabinoid, Boom, despite us having plenty of the real deal in supply. 

By the Mason Dixon, he’s calling for stick-and-pokes to commemorate the skate trip we were only eight hours into: “Hell Ride? Road Crew? Matching tramp stamps that read Best Friends Forever?” 

“Forever and ever, and ever, and ever, you mean,” I say.  

Then he’s at the motel sink, bleaching his hair with cleaning solution he lifted off the maid’s cart; some excess drips into his eyes. Between all the Boom and the scorch of the bleach, when he finally looks up at me, you’ve never seen such red sclera. “Pink Eye?” he says to me, laughing. 

By Jacksonville, he’s squinting; feverish, pearled with sweat. Not to mention, the cough he started the trip with has completed its journey into the dark recesses of his lungs. “Fuck—it’s like someone shooting a mud cannon at a wall,” I tell him. For this sin? He hacks a few at me. A stare down commences: two thin crescents of glassy eyeballs begging my pardon.  “Groove with Me?” 

Then we’re soaked in Miami’s neon, driving the main drag, and I’m sweating, too; I’m shivering despite the heat as Stevenson hangs his bleached head out the window, pressing his pointer finger to his nose, asking the revelers where the party can be found. “Please,” he says after I ask him to can it, “like your nose wouldn’t water at the sight of a sack of flour.” 

Then we’re cruising; we’re flying down the drag as Stevenson limps behind—because, oh yeah, did I mention, he’s been injured this entire time? A full walking cast; no lie. To him, it makes no difference. Meanwhile, not a half hour later, I’m already dying for the artificial chill of AC, the sticky cling of some motel sheets; an early plane ticket home.  “Look Alive?” 

Later, outside a bodega, a Jesus-looking guy asks him for a light. His cigarette is wet-looking, apparently, and Stevenson can’t understand why he won’t accept his offer of a new, dry one. “Just take it,” he says until Jesus admits the wetness is the point. Then Stevenson gives him the lighter, and watches on with giddiness, and then disappointment, once the initial tokes didn’t launch his head from his neck like the Starship Rocket. “Angel Dust, then?” 

Then it’s the next morning, and I’m splayed out on the curb outside of a Waffle House, sick and hungover, when a rail-thin young lady—an up-and-coming porn star, apparently—sidles up to Stevenson with a tea-cup Chihuahua in the crook of her arm. “Are you famous or something?” 

“World famous.” Then he’s open-mouth kissing her dog; he’s cradling it, cooing to it; then, getting bitten by it, as the whooshing nearby traffic poses the next question: 1) Does he drop the dog, leaving its fate to the traffic? Or, 2) Allow the dog to finish dishing out its tiny violence. He chooses the latter, handing the dog back with an easy smile that causes the porn star looks at me like I might be able to explain the limping/swollen/bleached/coughing man. But even if I could, if I so much as wiggled my pinky toe, I would puke all over her. 

Then, later yet, I’m on Expedia, trolling for plane tickets, when a local skater drops us a pin to The Arc of the Covenant, these perfect brick quarter-pipes, a once-in-a-lifetime skate experience.  Thankfully, there’s a small patch of grass there. On which, I have no choice but to lay and hold myself, groaning over the sounds of everyone’s joyful noise. 

“Piss Drunx?” Stevenson says to me, suddenly standing there; a mangled puff of grey, so much more horrific in the daylight. 

“How about There’s No Place like Home?”  At that, he remains silent, more silent than I’ve ever known possible. There’s beer foam on his scuzzy mustache, and when he finally wipes it, you can see the scabbed star of teeth on the back of his hand. His eyes might be closed, they’re so swollen. He teeters there another moment, and when he speaks, it’s as if out of a trance: 

“You know what, we need to talk. We’ve needed to talk for a long time. Let’s have the conversation. The essential one. Are you ready? Look at me. Witness me. Are you witnessing the truth of the matter? Prepare yourself. Are you ready? Are you, then?” he says, and keeps saying, without saying anything, digging at me, digging and digging, until I have no option but to stand.     

Then, smash-cut, and it’s years later, and every time I pull my pants down, there it is looking at me, as always: the falling out ink, his illegible scrawl. I’ll be on the toilet or getting dressed for work or my shorts will ride up, and it serves as a reminder: Stevenson’s reemerging from wherever he’s gone to, arms aloft, backlit in neon, edges glowing, still spreading his gospel.