Chapter 1: https://withtwoesses.medium.com/holly-and-her-dusty-pranksters-chapter-1-f4656b418a5c
Camp Shitstorm
Polanco stood, slightly hunched, in the middle of camp, poking with a long piece of rebar inside an upright fifty-five gallon metal drum. He had the build of an undernourished computer programmer who occasionally stumbled across a barbell and did a few reps. As he stabbed at the burn barrel’s innards, an occasional ashy reminder of the prior night’s camp fire floated up and out of its open maw, forever lost to the dry desert air.
Most years out here, as the sun began to set at night, the residents of Camp Shitstorm were drawn to the barrel’s fire to warm their bodies. They would roast marshmallows and share stories from their day, like cattle rustlers at their nightly ritual in every spaghetti western flick ever produced. Very much unlike that cinematic trope, however, the tales shared by Polanco and his crew consisted of weirdly-flavored sno-cones gifted from neighbor camps, outlandish handmade LED outfits, trips taken to other dimensions, massive art pieces climbed on, and — invariably — a new, diabolical prank that someone had witnessed that day.
At least that’s what happened most years out here on this desolate tract of dried-up lakebed. But this particular year was even more unrelentingly hot than usual. Oppressive temperatures had lingered deep into the evenings all week, which completely obviated any need for additional sources of heat. Despite the obvious impracticality, Polanco — quite dedicated to his role as Camp Fire Chief — had dutifully prepared and ritually lit a small fire each night.
Over the years, the burn barrel had acquired a number of open wounds on its beveled surface. Block letters spelling “Shitstorm” appeared most prominently: acetylene-carved at a slight diagonal, reaching nearly half the cylinder’s circumference. A few months earlier, back in his Oakland workshop, Polanco had added new emoji-inspired lightning bolts and smiling poop piles next to the camp’s monicker.
He was leaning over the rust-tinged barrel, assembling a tepee of kindling for that night’s fire, when he heard a sudden *bang*, followed by the harsh scrape of metal on metal and a loud *whoosh* of air behind him. Polanco jerked his head around just in time to witness a backpack flying through the air as his RV violently regurgitated a frenzied blur of arms and legs from its side door. He gasped, and — without thinking — burst into delirious, uncontrolled laughter.
Holly stood straight up nearly as quickly as she had fallen, brushing herself off even before she was fully rebalanced on her feet. Fortunately, the RV wasn’t raised too far off the surface of the playa and a bolted-down fragment of avocado green shag carpet partially cushioned her fall. Nothing felt injured, but she performed a quick self-scan anyway. Satisfied she was still in one piece, she raised her eyes toward the laughter, tunneling her not- amused glare squarely between her boyfriend’s eyes. Polanco, upon seeing that all-too-familiar look on her face, covered his mouth with his free hand and abruptly stopped cackling.
“Hey, thanks for making sure I was ok before you started laughing, asshat!” Holly yelled at him from across camp.
“I’m t-t-t-t-terribly sorry, m’lady,” Polanco stuttered nervously as he dropped the length of rebar and rushed to his girlfriend’s side.
He grasped her left hand gently with both of his and dropped awkwardly to one knee, “Pray tell, hast thou injured thyself? Can thou forgive thy prince this trespass?”
“I’m fine, Polanco” Holly sighed. “Stand up dammit. And can you please stop talking like that for just one second? I am NOT in the mood!”
He had been speaking like a knight of the roundtable for most of the week, starting the moment he stepped from their RV onto the playa floor. Even the shock of her tumble hadn’t broken him out of character. Polanco had inadvertently invented this persona many years prior, when, on a dare, he had drunkenly performed a few lines he remembered from a Renaissance Fair reenactment of King Arthur. His campmates christened him ‘Sir Blabsalot’ on the spot. Holly had been enamored with her boyfriend’s little portrayal when she first encountered Sir Blabsalot. But as the week wore on, his schtick had begun to really grate on her.
He sprang to his feet and brushed his medieval persona to the side for the time being, not wanting to upset her further. “Ok, Hol. I’ll stop.”
Polanco was butt-ass naked from his shoulders to his knees. The only pieces of clothing adorning his walnut shell-tinted flesh were a pair of dirt-encrusted black army boots that came halfway up each shin, a gray Tudor flat cap on his head, and a dust- blocking red gaiter that rested slack around his neck. Even though he had warned her that this was basically all he wore on the playa when the sun was out, Holly wasn’t comfortable with it. It was one thing for him to stroll around in the buff every morning in the privacy of her San Francisco apartment, where witnesses were limited to Holly and their aging bengal cat, Mr. Boppers. But she had yet to fully adjust to the fact that his ample secondary sex characteristics were visible to every random stranger that happened to stroll by during the day.
“That was quite a tumble, Hol. Are you ok?” Polanco checked in, “Don’t worry, I’m the only one who saw it I think. It’s just me in camp right now. Unless you count Warm Breeze over there in his hammock. But he’s passed the F out.”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine.” She took a deep breath to calm herself and slowly blinked her eyes as they adjusted to the sun’s merciless rays. “But I think our generator is on the fritz again.”
“Nah it’s fine,” Polanco shook his head, “I just turned it off when I got up. We’re running way low on fuel and I’m afraid we won’t make it to Sunday unless we ration.”
“Well, I nearly *died* in there, just so you know,” Holly proclaimed, “When you talked me into coming to this wretched desert ‘oasis’ of yours, you did *not* prepare me for this heat.”
She mimed air quotes around ‘oasis’.
“Oh, puh-leaz, you’re just being melodramatic.” he teased, which caused Holly’s glare to resurface.
Polanco grasped her gently by the shoulders and leaned in to place a gentle kiss on the tip of her sweaty nose. “Sorry”, he apologized. “You’re right, the playa is hella hot this year. But would you have agreed to come with me if I had made a big deal out of it?”
“Hey, what time is it?” Holly changed the subject rather than answer his loaded question.
Polanco lifted his arm, peered jokingly at his bare wrist as if a watch were there, then squinted at the sun’s acute angle. “I’d say it’s about…an hour til sunset.”
“Whoa. Are you serious? I slept all day??” she asked in disbelief.
“Yeah, but I’ve only been awake a little while myself.” he noted, before adding “Clearly we needed sleep real bad, huh?”
Holly wiped sweat from her neck and glanced around, still a bit disoriented. It was almost as stifling outside as it was in the RV, but an occasional gust of air was at least hypothetical out here on the open playa. Polanco noticed that her lips were severely cracked.
“Are you feeling ok, Hol? You look super dehydrated.” He grabbed Holly by the hand and marched her to Camp Shitstorm’s sorry excuse for a kitchen. “What have I been telling you about keeping enough water in your system? Remember the ABDs of playa survival: A, Always. B, Be. D, Drinking water.”
As she trudged behind, Holly scanned the four RVs and three tents that comprised the totality of their camp’s shelters. To give the tents some semblance of protection from the sun, a rectangle of reflective aluminum netting material — roughly the size of her entire studio apartment back in SF — had been secured to the roofs of two of the vehicles. Thanks to near-constant gusts of wind and general Stormer laziness, the fabric had begun to sag so much that it brushed against the top of the freestanding hammock frame that was positioned between the tents and the kitchen.
Polanco lobbed an observation toward the hammock, “That’s some good nappin’ there, Warm Breeze. Damn good.”
Warm Breeze stirred at the sound of his name, like a sleeping dog hearing the word ‘treat’ interspersed in human conversation. He had been passed out for hours in the hammock next to the kitchen, with his red neck gaiter pulled up around the top of his head. He unconsciously adjusted his crotch, pulled the gaiter down over his eyes, and promptly dozed back off.
At this time of day and sun angle, the droopy tarp provided a modicum of shade for the camp’s ‘kitchen’. Holly formed air quotes when talking about their ‘kitchen’ too, since it was nothing more than a beat-up card table, a couple of red propane stoves, a big orange jug of potable water, and a black plastic trash can ziptie-secured to one of the table legs. The other reason she had a hard time calling it a real kitchen was because all its meals had consisted of bags of dehydrated, just-add-hot-water slop.
“Prisoners of war eat better than this.” Holly had complained the night before, while wolfing down much-needed calories.
Polanco tilted the water jug to test how full it was. It wasn’t entirely empty, so he unscrewed Holly’s backpack pouch and placed it under the spout. Once its polyurethane bladder was nearly full to the brim with sun-warmed water, he sealed its cap and offered it back to Holly.
“Drink up. You’ll feel better soon, I promise.” he kissed her on the cheek. “Oh, I bet you could use some ibuprofen too. I had some when I woke up. We were as wasted as 400 rabbits last night, huh?”
Holly nodded and hooked her elbow through the strap of the pack. With a sleeve of her shirt, she cleaned the dirt-encrusted mouthpiece as well as she could before taking a swig. After gulping down tepid water for an uninterrupted thirty seconds, she paused to breathe. “Where is everybody, ‘Lanco?”
“The rest of camp was about to ride out to deep playa for a short art tour when I woke up. Here, take these.” Polanco said, thrusting two round red pills toward Holly’s headache. “I told them I would stick around until you came to. They wanted us to meet them at Pandora’s Box in a bit cuz DJ Kristoff is supposed to spin around sunset.”
“Ok. How much time do we have?” Holly swallowed the pills. “I really gotta pee.”
“Not much if we want to catch Kristoff, but I’ll wait for you if you want to go to the portas” he replied, before noticing the smudge on her cheek. “Wait a sec, hold still.”
Polanco pulled the red neck gaiter up and over his head. He found a corner section of it that was slightly less dirty than the rest, spat on it, and — before Holly could object — started rubbing at the grimy remnants of her close encounter with the RV door.
“Did you get this when you fell? What happened there anyway?” he asked, mid-rub.
“It was that janky latch again.” she grimaced, but stopped short of protesting his fatherly gesture. “My hand slipped on it and I lost my balance.”
He gently tilted her head toward the ground as he finished removing the rest of the smudge and Holly immediately laughed. “Looks like Lil Polanco could use some attention when you’re done with me, babe.”
His eyes traced her gaze toward his crotch, where he saw that, indeed, Lil Polanco was streaked with soot from the burn barrel. Big Polanco spat on a different, decidedly dirtier section of fabric and tried to remove the dark gray mark from his foreskin. The scrubbing merely spread the charcoal smudge further down his shaft, though, so he abandoned the attempt.
“Actually, I’ll go with you.” Polanco improvised, “Maybe they finally refilled the hand sanitizers so I can clean this off.” Then, remembering her porta-potty adventure from the night before, he cracked a mischievous smile and quipped, “Plus, *somebody* has to make sure you don’t get trapped in there…again.”
“You’re sooooo funny.” she retorted playfully and started toward the gap between the two RVs that formed the southwest border of camp. Two familiar blue beacons glowed off in the distance, marking the nearest array of porta-potties.
Polanco shuffled in her tracks and shouted after her, “Got your potty kit, Hol?”
Without slowing her step, she opened the main compartment of her backpack and made sure she had a plastic bag and fresh wet wipes. She responded “Yep, all set” as she blindly stepped onto the street on the other side of the RVs and nearly had her leg ripped off by a low-flying dragon.
