Jim and Chad, Part 2 - 1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 

Unlike on the East Coast, in this part of the country where the street lights are few and far between, I can see everything around me in the brilliant, bluish-white moonlight and starlight of the pre-dawn darkness. And because the humidity is much lower here, I already know that it's going to be one of those unusually clear and haze-free days, something that I know I haven't seen in a long time.

 

I'm standing on the side of a road staring up the side of a canyon. It's not straight up, but it looks damn near close to it. In front of me are a set of stairs made out of old, worn railroad ties that go up for about fifty feet. From what I've been told by the locals, the stairs lead to the start of a trail that climbs roughly 4,300 feet in altitude from this point to my destination at the top of the nearby mountain. Thank God I'm in really good shape for my age; otherwise, this might literally be a killer of a hike.

 

There's a sporadic, cold breeze down here in the canyon. It rustles what's left of the leaves in the nearby oak and ash trees before it brushes across my face and clothes early on this Wednesday morning in the middle of October. Along with the chill, the breeze carries the scents of nearby cedar and pine trees, and all of it constantly reminds me that I really am outside and not still in bed and dreaming about what I'm doing.

 

The birds and chipmunks are also out, flying and scampering right by me as if I were part of the landscape. And a few moments ago, I saw my breath in the headlights of a couple of cars headed down the canyon, driven by somebody probably going into work. I'm sure each of the drivers had a good chuckle looking at some doofus as he stares up the side of the canyon, wondering what he's about to get himself into.

 

My mind is still a little groggy because it's early, but that's probably a good thing. I'm hoping sanity will take over after it's much too late to turn back. But then sanity at any time of the day has been a rarity recently.

 

After a quick glance at my watch to see that it's about 15 minutes before six, I start up the steps, taking each step as it comes to me, much the same way I've gotten myself into and out of messes my whole life. The day pack on my back is a little heavier than I want it to be, but it holds all the essentials (maps, GPS, water, food, cell phone, etc.) for this ten-hour hike, eight miles up to the nearby peak and another eight miles back to the starting spot at the bottom of the stairs.

 

I also have a new camera for this trip. It's a small, thin, lightweight beauty, with 12 mega-pixel resolution and a bunch of memory to hold lots of pictures. It can take movies with sound, too. Yesterday, I got some good pictures of the nearby rock formations and other scenery that I'll sort through when I get back home. Unfortunately for my psyche, those same formations look ominous and menacing in this morning's moonlight, and the feeling I get from them makes me wonder what this day is going to do to me.

 

At the top of the stairs, I meet the trail. Before going on, I take a deep breath and look back down the stairs and out across the canyon. Although I'm not a fan of heights, especially on the sides of steep hills, I like what I see: the moonlit outlines of trees and roads located along the sides of the narrow, V-shaped canyon; lights appearing randomly in the windows of houses along the sides of the canyon as their slumbering occupants awaken; and a slowly brightening horizon way off to the east.

 

The new day dawning gives me some much-needed encouragement as I turn and continue up the switchbacks on the side of this canyon. Soon my legs and body get into a rhythm with my heart pumping faster than usual, but still at a steady pace, a pace that I can stay in for quite a while. I chuckle to myself as I think the rhythm could be similar to that of two people in bed starting up a long screwing session, not too fast, not too slow, just right for a long buildup to an explosive and mind-blowing conclusion. I hope that I will find the trip to the top of the nearby mountain to be as breathtaking and satisfying as such sex might be.

 

The profile for this hike is steep for the first four miles with lots of switchbacks up the side of the canyon to a saddle point between two mountain peaks. A hiker climbs about 2,800 feet in this first section. The remaining 1,500 feet are covered in the remaining four miles to the top, somewhat uphill for three miles with a steep push to the summit in the final mile.

 

Being a resident in a city near Washington, D.C., I figure that this hike will be something like taking a hike from the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial round-trip four times. That isn't all so bad until you include going up and down the stairs of the Washington Monument each time you pass it (eight times total). And did I mention all in a single day, too?

 

The part of my mind that performs "reality checks" is still groggy and is beginning to wonder what the fuck is going on here. But the survivalist part of my mind is fully awake and saying that this is the right thing to do, I can do this, I have to do this. I know it's gonna be one hell of a hike, but I have to prove that I can do things by myself again.

 

As the light of dawn begins to brighten the landscape, I think that if my partner had been with me, we would have taken the northern trail up and come back down the southern trail, making a complete round trip. But Chad isn't with me today. As a matter of fact, I have no clue where he is. We'd had a fight, one of those relationship-defining or relationship-destroying ones. I haven't figured out which one it was yet, and that's part of the reason for taking this hike. Although my body will be struggling to get me up to the top of this mountain, my mind will be wandering and trying to figure out what's really happened the last few days.

 

It all began on Sunday when Chad and I flew from the East Coast to Las Vegas. He'd been on a short fuse with me all that day and I had attributed that to lack of sleep for both of us. Both of us had been working 60- to 70-hour weeks since late June and that left little time for us to be together. I worked most of my overtime in front of the computer in my condo, but lately Chad seemed to want to do his overtime in the office or at his townhouse. Either way, the last couple of months has passed with us apart much more than together.

 

In our "spare time" in mid-July, we'd bought a dilapidated, two hundred year old Victorian house with an old boat dock on the Chesapeake Bay, and it was being completely renovated to make it our new home. Actually I had bought it and he was going to pay me back, but I made sure he was on the deed. The only thing that would stay the same was the basic structure. Everything else was being replaced: roof, walls, floors, electrical wiring, plumbing, kitchen appliances, bathroom--you name it and it was being replaced. Even the driveway, landscaping, and boat dock were being replaced as well. The house was everything that we thought we wanted. But as the renovations proceeded, Chad seemed less and less interested.

 

Finally, my brother and I had buried both of my parents in the unbearable, 100+ degree, wet heat of an August in East Texas. Dad died of a stroke in late July and Mom had a heart attack a couple of weeks later. Both were in their mid to late eighties, and it seems they were destined to go together. Luckily neither of them appeared to have suffered. Since Chad didn't know either of them, he didn't accompany me on either trip. And with their small farm and all the stuff they left behind, my brother and I had to spend almost the entire month there to get it all straightened out.

 

As I look back on it, I wish Chad would have made at least one weekend trip to Texas to meet my brother and his wife and to see what I really liked about my parents' farm. I sigh and shake my head as I think of the standard cliché, 'Hindsight is always 20/20.'

 

This trip to Las Vegas was to have been a relaxing trip, one where we could get to know each other again. We were to have been at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas until Tuesday (Chad loves golf and the Wynn has its own golf course), then spend some time in a cabin in the mountains just northwest of Las Vegas until Saturday. After that we were to travel back to the Wynn for the last day of the trip (with a round of golf, of course), and then back to the East Coast on Sunday. It was to have been our week together to rejuvenate, to play a little golf together, to renew our relationship, and, frankly, to fuck each other to complete exhaustion several times during the trip.

 

But the trip had started out rough and it seemed to get rougher each day. Although we'd planned the trip about six months in advance, Chad had forgotten about it. He wanted to cancel it, but as it got closer, I had pleaded with and prodded him into coming with me until he finally gave in. However, company management had also planned for him to work a proposal that week, so he ended up having to bring work with him.

 

I should have recognized that this wouldn't work out and should have canceled the trip like he wanted, but I was too close to the situation and too tense from everything else to think clearly. I just wanted us to get away from work and be together for a while. Then on top of all of this, the first leg of the trip from D.C. to Dallas had been physically rough because of bad weather, and the second leg from Dallas to Vegas had some whiny bitch of a male flight attendant in first class where we were sitting. Everyone has flights like that every so often, but I was hoping it wouldn't be this one.

 

We were initially in awe of our suite at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas when we finally got to it around 10 pm (1 am mid-Atlantic time). At close to $500 a night, it should have been perfect and it was--at first. It had a nice, large, marbled entryway which led to thick, plush carpets in a big living room with heavily padded furniture and a huge flat-screen TV. This part of the suite alone was almost as big as some of the apartments I had lived in many years ago, and it was certainly better furnished than I had expected.

 

Then I walked into the bedroom and discovered that it had two smaller beds instead of one king bed. When Chad saw the beds, he snickered at first then laughed out loud. I was pissed off over the whole situation and wanted to change suites, but settled down some when he put his hands on my shoulders, massaged them for a few seconds, then hugged me from behind while calmly saying, "Relax, this will be okay." I'll always remember the uneasy feeling that rippled through my body when I noticed that his face looked relieved that there were two beds instead of one.

 

A couple of weeks after returning from Texas, whenever Chad came to my condo after working late, he had started a habit of sleeping in the bed in the guest room. He said he was doing that so he didn't wake me; unfortunately, it looked like he was continuing the same pattern here. I so wanted us to start sleeping in the same bed again. Sure I wanted sex with him, but if I couldn't get that, at least I wanted be able to wrap my arms around him and feel the warmth of his body as I slept. That alone would have helped, and being without it for some time now left me feeling starved for affection.

 

But instead of changing suites, I wimped out and gave in. The urge to sleep had become too overpowering to object to anything, so we stripped down, collapsed into our separate beds and allowed the comfort of them to lull us into sleep quickly.