The dudes are all right. Sometimes its nice to see them swimming around in the river or standing in the yard with their beers, but when it really comes down to it, I don’t think I would care if an afternoon came and went without the dudes showing up. I might sit in the driveway just throwing rocks at other rocks or something else.
But that would never happen because the dudes and myself are all working for the same cause. We hang through the days for a reason, you know. Everyone might get bored if we didn’t gather. And the House, my house, is the place that we gather. If the dudes didn’t gather here, would they have any place to gather at all? And if we didn’t gather nobody would ever go swimming or do anything at all.
I probably wouldn’t think about the possibility of the dudes not appearing one day if it wasn’t for Crocs, I probably wouldn’t think of anything at all if it wasn’t for Crocs. I guess that’s because Crocs isn’t here, where I am chilling with the dudes. And because she’s not around it reminds me that there’s other stuff past out where we chill and really that’s just annoying, but what can I do?
Crocs isn’t her real name, it’s a nickname that was given to her when she first moved here because she wore those shoes called Crocs, those dumb foam or rubber sandals, or maybe clogs. They look like something that you would use in the kitchen to wash a really dirty pan. Crocs had these terrible Crocs shoes. They were pink and dirty like a gross homeless baby. She had like sort of customized them with fur lining around where the foot goes into the Croc and there were all these little trinket or charm sort of things hanging off. They were really just the most horrible shoes of all time, I don’t know if she realized it or not.
Nobody ever really gave her a tough time for having these shoes, nobody ever jeered or anything. But she got the nickname from them, and in the opinion of yours truly, that is the worst thing. Once she realized that was her nickname she stopped wearing them.
But the nickname stayed on her; it was weird that she stopped wearing the Crocs once she realized everyone called her Crocs, but didn’t bother to tell people to stop calling her Crocs. I don’t know if the nickname made her realize that the clog things were stupid or if she decided to stop wearing them for other reasons. I guess its just that people care about different things for different reasons and its just stuff I shouldn’t bother thinking about, but I do sometimes.
So even though I’m hanging with the dudes for most of the days, I’m thinking about where that Crocs might be at. In the day she pops up from blank spots in my head and then goes away, at night she’s there all the time, sitting quiet and everything around her is totally black, no light at all, like its just Crocs and me hanging in Limbo, not saying a thing. When I wake up in the morning and remember how she was there sitting in my black dreams, my chest kind of hurts.
On most afternoons and evenings you might catch Crocs standing in front of her house with her arms hanging over the chain link fence. Behind her you might see some wispy, weird little plants with their heads getting blown around everywhere in her yard, which is a yard pretty much made of just that dust and those wispy plants. I’m always surprised when I see how dusty her yard is.
Her house is all dry looking too, like scraggly ranch house with the stucco all coming off and chipping, the place looks like one of those little castles in aquariums where the sad fishes go hide; just a kind of creepy spot.
Nobody in New Hampshire lives in a stucco house. But then again, I’ve never seen her back yard, and the woods go forever behind her house, so who knows what’s hidden back there.
She moved from Arizona with her Dad a while back. I understand that there are a lot of stucco houses in Arizona, so maybe her Dad picked the stucco house so that they wouldn’t feel so bad about having to leave Arizona. I don’t know why anyone would miss Arizona, why would anyone want to live in a place like that? I always have Arizona in my head as a place where everything is always hazy and like half on fire; a place with like one cracked out looking bird sitting on a midgetty tree in the desert, a landscape so fevered its like the place has been going crazy as long as its been around.
They definitely are all about their air conditioning there. There are probably people in Arizona who read magazines about different kinds of air conditioners. Once you get too old to swim everything is probably boring as hell and all you want to do is be cool and dry in the air conditioning.
So even though I’m hanging with the dudes for most of the days, I’m thinking about where that Crocs might be at. In the day she pops up from blank spots in my head and then goes away, at night she’s there all the time, sitting quiet and everything around her is totally black, no light at all, like its just Crocs and me hanging in Limbo, not saying a thing. When I wake up in the morning and remember how she was there sitting in my black dreams, my chest kind of hurts.
On most afternoons and evenings you might catch Crocs standing in front of her house with her arms hanging over the chain link fence. Behind her you might see some wispy, weird little plants with their heads getting blown around everywhere in her yard, which is a yard pretty much made of just that dust and those wispy plants. I’m always surprised when I see how dusty her yard is.
Her house is all dry looking too, like scraggly ranch house with the stucco all coming off and chipping, the place looks like one of those little castles in aquariums where the sad fishes go hide; just a kind of creepy spot.
Nobody in New Hampshire lives in a stucco house. But then again, I’ve never seen her back yard, and the woods go forever behind her house, so who knows what’s hidden back there.
She moved from Arizona with her Dad a while back. I understand that there are a lot of stucco houses in Arizona, so maybe her Dad picked the stucco house so that they wouldn’t feel so bad about having to leave Arizona. I don’t know why anyone would miss Arizona, why would anyone want to live in a place like that? I always have Arizona in my head as a place where everything is always hazy and like half on fire; a place with like one cracked out looking bird sitting on a midgetty tree in the desert, a landscape so fevered its like the place has been going crazy as long as its been around.
They definitely are all about their air conditioning there. There are probably people in Arizona who read magazines about different kinds of air conditioners. Once you get too old to swim everything is probably boring as hell and all you want to do is be cool and dry in the air conditioning.
Croc’s dad is basically my model for how I imagine Arizona people. I can imagine Crocs’ Dad wearing sunglasses, sitting underneath a shady spot and saying, “The drier a man, the better a man. The cooler a man, the fresher a man.”
But I’m not very good at making up saying for people from Arizona and I’ve never even really talked to Crocs’ Dad.
What I do know about Daddy Crocs that he is really dry and old as fuck. He wears huge sunglasses and sports some Crocodile skin boots that people definitely notice. Some people say he walks with a limp because he got hit by a car sometime long ago, but I’ve never seen him walking around so I couldn’t tell you.
I only catch him sometimes leaning on the hood of his crème-dirty sedan, dressed all in white clothes that are sort of yellowy-looking, arms folded, talking to Crocs while she leans on the fence. Nobody knows too much about Daddy Croc, he is a guy who mostly watches T.V. And that’s fine because it means he lets Crocs do her thing and he doesn’t give a shit because he’s inside his crème dusty house with M*A*S*H* and F-R-I-E-N-D-S or he just waiting for the summer to come so that he can turn on the air conditioning.
What I do know about Daddy Crocs that he is really dry and old as fuck. He wears huge sunglasses and sports some Crocodile skin boots that people definitely notice. Some people say he walks with a limp because he got hit by a car sometime long ago, but I’ve never seen him walking around so I couldn’t tell you.
I only catch him sometimes leaning on the hood of his crème-dirty sedan, dressed all in white clothes that are sort of yellowy-looking, arms folded, talking to Crocs while she leans on the fence. Nobody knows too much about Daddy Croc, he is a guy who mostly watches T.V. And that’s fine because it means he lets Crocs do her thing and he doesn’t give a shit because he’s inside his crème dusty house with M*A*S*H* and F-R-I-E-N-D-S or he just waiting for the summer to come so that he can turn on the air conditioning.
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