The Pig's Ass porter's taste is bitter. Violent convulsions drive through my tongue and down my throat with the warm creamy brown flood. The Porter, causes reflection of a meal at a Tarbert's guest house years before . We were there eating the local offering of steak pie. It cried for a drink that matched it. The only brew offered came from the local pub. The drink mirrored the cold Scottish August evening -- bitter and dark. I never had such a beer. My definition for such things weak. The taste for beer new. I had no working knowledge of the difference in ales, stouts and porters. This beer had a biting edge to it.
My preference was sweet, cold hard cider. This taste, the product of a region where I grew up. The orchards production of hard sour apples made a cider that left me begging for more. My Sicilian employer, offered cold hard cider as a drink, after a dirty day of landscaping. The walks home full of cheer while the nectar's edge grew dual. The Talbert beer was not sweet in any form. It was a hard slap on the tongue and daggers knifing the throat to the gut. I loved it. It had masculine sensuality to it.
The introduction to new tastes, the result of our drive across Scotland. The road trip of four days required every driving skill. Navigating narrow roads, entering round-a-bouts, while sitting and driving in the passenger side of the car. This was challenging.
Driving is what I did. Manhattan, D.C. and L.A., driving such places required being flexible. The only city I refused to drive was Mexico City. Driving was part of the deal between Carol and I.
My fear of failing her caused me to double check every impulse. The woman next to me was on a personal quest. She had a romantic vision of this storm driven Hebrides island of Lewis and Harris, land surrounded The Minch and the Atlantic. Her visions of the Scottish islands, formed from romantic novels she read as a teen. I knew nothing of it. My job was to make it happen. My life was being reshaped day by day. My taste in food changed. Thoughts of her drift casually through me.
Now after the long two hour ferry trip, I was drinking this bitter thick-as-molasses beer. Its flavor washed into that of the meat gravy, forming a tantric union. Its knifing caused my body to shiver violently. I reached for more. Slow drinking matching my eating. The hard warm stout clawed and ground its way down my throat like raw sex.
The Scottish Iles of Lewis and Harris or the small fishing village of Tarbert are now long behind me. These memories of 2003 and earlier play strongly in my head. My friend, Mr. Hood, and I are 8000 feet on a mountain top in the middle of the plains of Montana. We sit on folding chairs facing each other, as if this mountain meadow and its grand view of fenced grassland below is our living room. We both are nude hikers. Naked we sit in the afternoon sun, drinking from the brown colored glass bottles. We share a taste for porters and stout ale. The Pig's Ass Porter a local brew from Belt, Montana. The meal is cold fried chicken, potato salad and bean salad, bought by Hood on his way to this location. The evening is warm, the light of the day golden.
The thought I drink too fast flashes through my head. There are those who accuse me of drinking my occasional beers like soda pop. I don't drink to get numb or to make what I want to do easier. I drink too fast because I consume my life faster than I can produce it. This is a monster, it consumes everything before I do. The third bottle was on my lips before my friend had finished one. There is guilt in this. I am like those nearly naked pink pigs on the label of Pig's Ass Porter. No, this pig wasn't dressed in black tails like those characters on the label. No need for clothes, not up here on this mountain top. The pig image somehow fits me no matter the differences.
These thoughts are consumed, along with the road dust of one hundred miles. The distance to our central mountain retreat. Naked I wait next to my car. Hood's red jeep pulls in behind my car. We hug as brothers. Our rule naked all the time, everywhere. We work like ants moving our cargo from the road to a meadow. Camp goes up fast as we talked. Our duties understood, we each drive tent stakes into the hard rocky ground. The air echoes with the hammering. Long rods are slid through the sleeves that give the tent its full erect form. Our conversation, like groping hands pulling stories of the pasts out of our thoughts into voice. Our lives full of unexplainable intersections.
We each were looking for a hiking buddy who could deal with nudity. Our women unwilling to engage in such extreme activity. Our individual search brought us in contact through a nude hikers site. We camped three times the summer before this summer. Nicknames developed as we wrote and developed plans over the winter. He became Mr. Hood or some form of that name. I became Mr. Ring or some other form based on the context of our writing. A winter passed. The fruit of our planning now all around us. This camping trip kicks off another summer. By the end of our outing, our bodies will be covered in nettle rash, scratches and cuts from bushwhacking our way up pathless mountain drainages.
Eating our meal, we plan the time. The discussion of going for a night hike and swimming a mud hole flows in the air between Hood and I. The body across from me leaks other thoughts while we talk. Hood's slow dripping cock, revealing. This is new to me. I draw and paint nudes, I don't remember my models ever doing this. No, there was a model who drooled like this while on a photo shoot in an abandon industrial site, back in my old art college day. I did not understand the meaning of it then. I have no recall of seeing any man at the De Anza nudist camp ever leaking like this while sitting around and in the hot tub. It is a mystery to me, one of many. Mr. Hood was speaking other thoughts. His hood of skin slides a bit more back. Another stream of clear fluid, drips in long string, landing on edge of folding camping chair.
A story written by a 14th century Florentine about a maiden and a desert hermit crosses my mind.
Hermit, pointing to himself, explaining to the maiden, "this is the Devil." Then he pointing to her," this hell." He opens her hell casting the demon into her dark prison. The Devil's hood slides off his head, his mouth drools. How the Devil tortured her soul. The Devil crying, weeping and spitting fire in hell. How she loved having the Devil in her.
She begged for more and often.
These thoughts are pasted on to the observation I make of my friend. My mind drifted from the story , to my friend's voice and then flies on its flight of reflection.
My thoughts of past whorl pooling in my mouth with the ale. Naked thoughts bring color to my body. The fish monger with the clam, washes through my senses with the beer running down my throat.
The Seattle fish market, a fishmonger holding up a giant clam. Carol and I watched in rapture. The salesmen's dress in gray long sleeve shirt, yellow rubberized overalls and rubber boots jokes with the tourist. The clam's long whitish yellow over size syphon hanging. The fleshy tube gains length, waving arm showed the prize to the crowd. Carol and I traded course suggestive comments.
