Palo Alto

by James Franco

I wish I was Mexican, or Hebrew, I mean Jewish, I mean Israeli, or Mexican Jewish, or Mexican Jewish gay, because it can be so boring being you sometimes, and if you were the most special thing like that, it could be really great, but maybe some people say the same thing about you, and you want to tell those people: “No, you’re stupid, it’s no fun being me.”

  “Maybe we should try it,” I say.

  “Michael, I’m serious, don’t do something crazy just because we’re talking about your olden-time things again. Just let me the fuck out if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No, man, I’m just saying that maybe those Mayans were onto something. Maybe if we take someone’s heart out and sacrifice it, then something special will happen.”

  Joe looks at me like he wants to figure me out, and I know that he can’t figure me out because he isn’t laughing and he isn’t arguing, he is just staring.

  “Maybe we could take Hector’s heart,” I say.

  We are going to see Hector over at Foothill, the junior college. He lives near there and sells us shit, and we’re supposed to meet him in the corner of the parking lot. Hector isn’t a scary guy, he has a nice-guy face, but he could probably fuck somebody up if he wanted to.

  “Hector would fuck you up,” says Joe.

  “Not if I stabbed him in the stomach,” I say, and I’m reaching under my seat with my left hand as I say this, and I pull out a foot-long kitchen knife and then I point it at Joe while I’m still driving.

  “Fuck you, Michael. Fuck you, Mike-al!” He screams and I laugh because he has funny inflections when he gets excited. “Why do you have to be like this?” he says. “Why do you have to be Jack the Ripper psycho? Why do you have to be so crazy? I just want to buy some weed, I don’t want to kill anyone, and I don’t want to take their heart!”

  “You said you wanted to, puta, so I’m just saying, then let’s do it!” I’m talking with a phony accent.

  “Don’t call me puta, bitch! And put that fucking knife down! And watch the road!”

  I poke the knife at him, at his fat stomach, lightly poking at it with the tip of the knife, but he’s wearing a puffy North Face jacket, so it doesn’t stab him.

  “Stop it!” he says.

  I love driving down an empty dark freeway, lit up intermittently by the lights at the side of the road, and when I see the lights, I think of all the little worlds out there, all the little animals living in their habitats out there, and how we could pull over and have an adventure at any one of these forgotten pockets of the world, just nothing zones, backwash refuse property in the wake of the great freeways, and I like passing all of them, racing down the freeway, like a tunnel into the night, and racing but still being able to carry on a whole action scene with Joe, and I think it is like life because I am racing, and time is pushing me forward and it’s not going to stop and I will have a few passengers in the vehicle with me, and it’s either enjoy the scenery together, or listen to some music we both like, or maybe just have a little poking knife game because you want to know if the other person is really there.

  We smoke with Hector and get so high. Finally he has sold us some good shit. We smoke out of his mini dragon bong, out in the lightless corner of the Foothill parking lot. It’s a pretty great spot—you just walk up the hill a little ways, and it’s under some weeping willows, and there is a small stream, and brick buildings, and a faux altar constructed out of stones.

  We smoke more and we cough every time. I think about the little dragon that the bong is and I so wish that dragons were real, because it would mean that none of this shit was the end of everything, because this world sucks, and even if you are high it only lets you escape a little bit, it lets you escape enough that you know there could be something better, but it won’t let you into that place; like standing on the cloudy threshold of heaven and seeing something so bright and tantalizing and warmy-womby feeling but not being able to enter, just feeling the heat a little on your face, and you want to cry and smile, but instead you just stare and you can’t do anything.

  “Hector,” I say. I am lying on the altar thing and staring up through one of the willows, whose drooping, arcing branches are like jagged fissures in the sky. Hector is sitting against the base of the willow’s trunk. “Would you rather be the pope or Pablo Escobar?”

  Hector doesn’t think long.

  “Escobar, bitch, he gets to have all the fun.”

  “Pope gets to live in the Vatican, see Michelangelo all the time,” I say.

  “Escobar,” says Joe. He is superhigh. He hogged more of the weed than Hector and me and he is hunched like a pile of trash against the base of the altar. His head hangs forward like a sleeping mule’s.

  “Shut up, Joe,” I say. “We know what you want. You want the knife.”

  “What knife?” says Hector.

  “This puta wanted to cut out your heart with this knife,” I say, and hold up the knife for Hector to see. It reflects a little in the dark.

  “If you try, I will fucking kill you, homes,” Hector says to Joe. It seems like he’s angry, but he’s too tired and high to get really angry.

  “I didn’t say I wanted to… ,” says Joe, but he doesn’t finish.

  “Fuck you, lard-ass,” says Hector, and Hector and I laugh, and Joe shifts a little because he is angry, but he is too lazy to get up, so he just shifts around.

  He’s still looking at the ground, but he says, “No, Hector, this fucker is always asking me stupid questions and trying to kill me. He wanted to cut out your heart, homes. That’s how I lost my tooth.”

  “No,” says Hector. “You lost that because you are Jack-O’ the jackoff.”

  Me and Hector laugh.

  Then we all sit for a while not saying anything. I can feel their mind-killing slime thought rubbing on me and corroding me, and killing me.

  “Hector,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says without looking up.

  “Would you rather be gay or be a girl?”

  He chuckles a little. Hector can be cool sometimes. Sometimes he is wise.

  “Neither,” he says.

  “Just saying,” I say. “If you had to choose because a genie said so, what would you choose?”

  Joe, still looking at the dark dirt, says, “Both of ’em still have to suck dick.”

  “Exactly,” says Hector. And Joe laughs a little. A chuckling pile of trash below me.

  “Would that be so bad?” I say. “Don’t you ever get jealous of those girls in pornos that get to be on their knees in the middle of all those dicks?”

  “Are you fucking serious?” says Hector.

  “Don’t,” says Joe. “This faggot is always asking stupid questions and giving stupid answers; he don’t mean it.”

  “No,” says Hector. “This faggot is serious.” He’s looking at me now, I can tell.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Don’t you like the idea of an around-the-world blowbang?”

  “I like to have a girl suck my dick, but I don’t want to do it,” says Hector.

  “Me neither,” says Joe, but he is mumbling.

  “Why not?” I say. “What’s the difference?”

  “What’s the difference?” says Hector. “Because I am going in, and she is being got inside of.”

  “And why is one better? Why does going inside make you better? Aren’t you, like, on her turf inside her, isn’t she in control of you? Like a mommy with her little baby making him feel good?”

  “Because,” says Hector. But he doesn’t say anything else.

  * * *

  On the way home Joe and I are driving down the empty freeway. It’s like two thirty in the morning and we’re still pretty high, and if I look up, directly at the road lights above us, I can see kaleidoscopic rainbows building and turning on top of each other in the core of the bulbs.

  And I feel like I’m remembering all this from somewhere, but I’m not sure where, and everything is a little hazy, and I remember that there is an angel named Michael, and he had a flaming sw
ord, and…

  And I say to Joe, “Let’s drive the wrong way down the other side of the freeway.”

  Joe is almost asleep, but he says, “Wha?” and I can see the black gap just to the left of the center of his mouth.

  “I’m going over to that side,” I say.

  And I think of the olden times, when knights would aim huge lances at each other and you would feel that when it hit you, feel that force of the momentum of the horses’ pumping, channeled into the lance, and for a second you might know that you were really alive. And a little ways down the freeway there is a gap in the center barrier, and I turn the wheel and cross over.

  Yosemite

  The drive up to Yosemite was long. My father played Bach the whole first half. We drove through Milpitas, Pleasanton, Dublin, Manteca, Escalon, and Oakdale. We had been to Yosemite before with my mom, but that was when it was snowing. There wasn’t going to be snow this time and it was just me and my dad and my brother.

  At the turnoff for the Old Yosemite Road, the sun turned tangerine and my dad took out the Bach and put in a tape of his meditation lady. My brother and I chanted with her using funny voices, but that lasted only a few minutes, then we were quiet again. My dad drove and hummed quietly to himself. My brother and I would trade the front seat at every rest stop. I was two years older, but I got carsick more easily, so I got the front longer. I had been in the front since East Oakdale. The Old Yosemite Road was crooked and my dad drove slower. Soon the sky was getting gray, but there was purple above the mountains. My brother was asleep in the back. He was slanted over with his face in all the puffy jackets.

  “Dad, can I turn the heat up?”

  “Yup.” I did and cupped my hand over the grate until it was too hot and I pulled it away. I wasn’t tired even though it was dark outside and we’d been driving for hours. I leaned forward but my seat belt held me, so I undid it and leaned again and picked up my father’s old, thick Bible with pages falling out and a rubber band around it.

  “Put your belt back on,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. I clicked it in place. “I was just picking this up.”

  “My Bible.”

  “I know,” I said. “Why are the lines colored?” There was yellow, and pink, and green highlighter, all faded, all over the pages.

  “Those are passages I like.”

  I asked him why.

  “Because they help me.” I read a little. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.It meant nothing. I closed it.

  “You go to church?”

  “No,” he said. The lady and the people on the meditation tape were chanting softly.

  “Why do you have the Bible?”

  “I just open it when I get in the car. Whatever page it opens to, I read.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, it helps me.”

  I put the rubber band back around the leather cover and held the thick thing in my lap. We went through a town with only a few lights and my dad slowed. The headlights bounced off some signs into my eyes. One said Yosemite thirty miles. Then we were on the windy part going up the mountain. The tape came to the end and my dad ejected it and left it sticking out of the player. It was white. The Bible tried to slip down my leg and I held on to it.

  “Adam and Eve,” I said.

  “Yup,” my dad said.

  “Noah.”

  “Yup.”

  “Moses, Abraham. Jesus, David. The flood, killing the ram, the plagues, first there was light, then darkness, then water, then land, then the Garden of Eden.”

  “Where did you learn all that?”

  “At Sunday school, where Mom takes us.”

  “Unity?”

  “Yeah.” We got quiet as we wound up the mountain. The car went so close to the sides and there wasn’t always a barrier. Last time we did this part of the drive in the dark too and I hated it. I secretly held on to the side of the door with my right hand. There were pennies in the handle and I pushed them back and forth in the holder with my index finger. Dad’s AA medallion was in there too.

  I hoisted up a little and tried to look over the side of the cliff but there were just trees and black, and there was too much back and forth, so I sat back. I tried to pretend we were going into the Misty Mountains and there were goblins around us, but I felt dizzy and I stopped. We kept going and I couldn’t sleep, all I could do was sit there.

  “You want to know what my dad did with me when I was little?”

  “What?” We were talking quietly because of my brother in the back.

  “Nothing.” He laughed a little. “My dad was a son of a bitch.”

  We were quiet for a while.

  “Why do we go to Yosemite all the time?”

  “We’ve only been a couple times. You don’t like it?”

  “No, I do. I like the Ahwahnee. But why do we go?”

  “I guess because nature makes me feel good. And I want to spend time with you and Alex.”

  “Because you love us?”

  “Yeah, because I love you, and I’ve missed you.”

  At the Ahwahnee there was no one around. We parked and followed the footlights along the stone path. My dad carried Alex in one arm and his suitcase in his other hand. I followed with my heavy backpack. The lady at the desk gave my dad a card key and I followed his footsteps down the red carpet with the boxy Indian designs.

  In the room, my dad lay Alex on one of the two beds and told me to get into my pajamas. He got some things from his suitcase and went into the bathroom, then the water started running. I took off my shoes and socks and jeans and put on my gray sweatpants and took my toothbrush into the bathroom. I was barefoot and the floor was cold. My dad was in his T-shirt, sitting on the toilet in the corner.

  “You should knock.”

  “Sorry, I heard water.”

  “It’s okay. Brush your teeth.” I did and looked only at myself in the mirror. “There’s some toothpaste in my toiletry bag there.” The square black bag unzipped around the whole side and opened like a mouth. There were two gray Bic razors, and a black and red can of shaving cream that said Barbasol, and a small white and green tube of toothpaste with a Roman column on it. The toothpaste was grainy on my brush and chalky in my mouth. If I looked at the border of the mirror I could see a slanted version of my dad wiping. He stayed on the seat and put the toilet paper between his legs. I always stood up to do it. He wiped for a long time and I mostly looked in my own eyes. Then he was behind me.

  “If you brush like that you’re going to ruin your gums.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Do it like this.” He took his brush and did strokes in only one direction at a time, starting from the gums he went down on the top teeth and then up on the bottom teeth. My dad’s teeth were long and nice, except one was a little yellow. He also had heavy eyelids that made him look a little evil.

  We went to bed. I lay in the bed with Alex but he didn’t wake up. My eyes got used to the dark and I wandered them down the red band of Indian patterns at the top of the wall. The design was like one long zigzagging tunnel. The room was dark and quiet and full of bodies and I fell asleep.

  In the morning we ate in the great hall. The walls were made of stone and there was a fire in the huge stone fireplace in the center. The pillars around the room were huge, made out of real trees.

  “Pancakes are good for hiking,” my father said. “Try to eat all of them.” I tried. I had pancakes and orange juice and hot chocolate and Alex had French toast and hot chocolate and my father ate scrambled eggs and bacon and black coffee. It was all stuff that we didn’t usually eat; we usually had cereal at home. There were also little circular plastic jelly containers with pictures of fruit on them, dewy orange slices, a huge glistening strawberry, two raspberries, side by side, plump and wet. I didn’t have any toast because of the pancakes, but I lined the jellies up at the top of my plate. Five colorful circles.

  “Alex only ate half of his French toast,” I said.
Three halves of the French toast were soaked in a swamp of syrup.

  “He’s smaller.”

  “Why do I have to eat all my pancakes?”

  “You don’t. But they’re good for energy. That’s what hikers do, they eat a bunch of carbohydrates and your body keeps them inside as spare energy when you need it. If we’re going to go to Yosemite Falls, then you’ll need your energy.”

  “Can we go down the waterfall?” said Alex.

  “No, stupid, you’d die,” I said.

  “Don’t say that. Yes, you would die. The waterfall is very powerful and there are rocks at the bottom. But every once in a while someone gets trapped in the current at the top and they go over by accident.”

  “And they die?” said Alex.

  “Yup.”

  “I don’t want to die,” said Alex.

  “Everyone dies,” I said.

  “I’m not going to.”

  “You have to,” I said. “You’re going to freakin’ die.”

  “Chris, stop.” My dad didn’t get loud but he took my hand and squeezed. “Alex,” he said to my brother. “You might have to die, but it will be okay.” Alex shook his head. “Dying isn’t bad, it’s just another trip. Like our trip here, to Yosemite. It’s like going to another Yosemite.”

  Alex said, “I hate Yosemite and I hate dying.” My dad was done with his eggs and had only half a piece of bacon left neatly at the side of his plate. He had put his knife and fork in the center to signal that he was finished. I put my knife and fork the same way on top of the last downy pancake.

  My dad sipped his coffee then put the mug down and said, “I know you boys don’t like coming to Yosemite. But I think when you’re older you’ll appreciate it. I never had a place like this when I was young. And if you really don’t like it, we never need to come again. Okay?”

  “I want to never come again,” said Alex.

  “I like Yosemite,” I said.

  “You can go on the waterfall and die,” said Alex.

  “Shut up,” I said. I mashed one of his French toasts with my thumb. Alex whined and it looked like he was going to cry.

  “Alex, stop. Chris, stop.” We both sat still. “Listen. Neither of you is going to die for a very long time. I promise. And when you do, you can go anywhere you want. It doesn’t have to be Yosemite. It can be any place.”