Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:28:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: August Zellner <ahzellner@att.net>
Subject: Julian - Day 6A

JULIAN

Day 6 Part A

The next day was Thursday, and this time when I awoke I was alone, and
nobody called to wake me up either.  My timeshare was eerily quiet.  Would
I ever hear from my handsome young clan elder Julian again?  Would he even
come by to pick up his last few clothes, or the souvenirs from Rock City
and Ruby Falls and Mammoth Cave?  I looked at those things and, seriously,
I got a lump in my throat – I was happy for Julian and his new life in
the forest, but was going to miss him too.

My plan for that day all along was to drive to Fort Wayne and back – and
if you know anything about Indiana you will also know that from Fresh Links
that's a four hour drive, each way.  And like I have said every other day,
I don't intend to bore you with some detailed explanation of how this trip
fits into my family history research – except to say I was driving all
that way just to go look at one grave, and then drive all the way back!
Yeah I really did that, because I can't think of any other reason for the
rest of my life why I will ever be even this close – four hours away
from Fort Wayne, Indiana – so it was now or never to go visit my
great-great-great-grandparents.

So anyway, I called my wife a couple of times during all that driving, and
told her how I love her and missed her, and how I'd be home in a few days
... and then, late in the afternoon, my phone rang again and when I looked
at the phone number – it was Julian!  Oh Julian, Julian, are you really
calling to talk to me?  This is wonderful!

"Hey old man, where are ya?" Seriously, those were the very first words out
of his mouth when I said hello.  "Umm, well I'm on my way back to the
timeshare, I think I'll be there in about an hour," I said, "Where are
you?"  "I'm here waitin' for ya."  "But – but – what about the
forest?" I said.  "Oh come on!" said Julian, as if he hated the forest.
But then he backed off.  "Acksully, the forest is okay – I'll tell ya
all about it when ya get here – and it's a lot nicer than any shithole
but, ya know, this is the nicest house I've ever lived in – even for a
week.  I just wanna live in it one more night, okay?"

Gee, I guess I never really thought about it that way.  To me it was just
another timeshare in the middle of asshole-to-nowhere.  But to Julian, it
seemed like a mansion.  "Hey Julian, are ya hungry?"  "Oh man I am
STARVIN'!" he said.  Now that sounded like my boy.  "And you got, like,
nothin' in this fridge, man!"  "Well, feel free to eat whatever ya do find
in there, but how about if I take you out to the nicest restaurant I can
find?"  "Oh, so ya wanna take me out on another date, eh perv?"  He was
funny, and he was ssssooooo cute, even over the phone.  "Yeah, like a
date," I said, "Hey, I'll make it official and take ya to a movie too if ya
want."  "Uhhh, yeah," he said, "How about Mexican Teenage Pro Girls?"  "Oh,
so you found that?" I asked, suddenly embarrassed.  He just laughed.

And so I hurried home to my young boy, and when I got there – holy shit!
– he was dressed in just his cargo pants, and with all the arm and ankle
bracelets and the body and face paint still on him.  "I'm not allowed to
take this stuff off for three days," he explained.  Ohhhhh, he was
beautiful.  "But I can't take you anywhere without a shirt and shoes," I
lamented.  "Oh, well I can wear a shirt and shoes, but I just can't take
this stuff off," he said.  So he got just enough clothes on and we headed
out.

As you might imagine, in a town like Fresh Links the "nicest restaurant I
can find" is going to be at the resort – specifically Diamond Jim's
Ristorante, which according to the web site "has an expansive menu of
American favorites from eggs benedict to specialty cut steaks and is
located adjacent to the casino floor."  All this, even though it's
supposedly an Italian-themed restaurant.

The waitress who came to take our drink orders didn't say anything but she
was clearly a little taken aback by Julian's appearance.  But after a few
minutes looking over the menu, out came an obviously latino man dressed in
chef's garb holding our drinks.  "Julian! Julian! I knew eet hadt to be
you!" he proclaimed as he set the drinks down.  "Andt you mahst be dee
gentleman who hass brought heem to findt hees forest," he said.  "Eet ees
an honor to meet you seρor."  He shook my hand vigorously while Julian
explained that he was the head chef here.  Oh this figures, I thought –
of course Julian already knows this guy, he must have met him the other day
while he was roaming around the resort with the cleaning crew kids.  Maybe
they all had lunch right there in his kitchen!

"I haff always admired dee Forest People sso mahch," the chef said, "Dey
haff kept all off deir tradishonss – not like sso many off oss who haff
cahm here, or eeffen een our own countries.  And now, God has brought both
off you here to save hees people andt bring dem to deir new forest home.
You are my honored guests tonight."  Then turning to Julian he said, "And
whaht weel you hafve Julian?" and they started discussing it in Spanish,
but I heard the word "cheeseburger" mixed in there several times.  I was
floored!  How could he come to the finest restaurant in Fresh Links and
order a cheeseburger?  Shouldn't he at least have some kind of fabulous
traditional latin food?  The chef must have seen the incredulous look on my
face, and when he turned to take my order I said, "Seriously?  He's getting
a cheeseburger?"  He smiled and said, "But eets gon to be dee finest
cheessburger een all off Indiana."  Well I certainly believed that!

"And what weel you haff seρor?"  "Oh," I said, "you're the Top Chef
here!  So I want you to bring me whatever you most enjoy making."  "Well
you may not beleef deez, seρor, but I enchoy dee French cooking aboff
all else!"  Well actually I did believe that – I mean why not, right?
He's a latino head chef in an Italian-themed American restaurant, so why
shouldn't he love French cuisine?  So I said, "It has been so long since
I've had Beef Burgundy ..."  "Oh, seρor," he said, "eets jost gon to
melt een your mouth!" Oh god I could hardly wait!

And as we enjoyed the best dinner in all of Fresh Links together, Julian
told me about some of the perks of being a young clan elder of the Hoover
Forest People.  "I get my own hut, and I can have any girl I want live with
me there!" he said, "So I can have Lupita live with me."

"Well in that case, what happens to Florito?" I asked.  "Yeah, that's a
problem," he said, "I have to take him too if Lupita's with me – but as
soon as her parents come back he goes home."

"So does that mean you can, like, make Lupita stay with you even if she
doesn't want to?"  "Yeah!" he exclaimed, "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Well I don't know Julian," I said, "Here's a piece of advice from an old
geezer who's been with a few girls and women.  If any girl doesn't want you
anymore, the best thing to do is just let her go – even if you still
love her and want her to stay.  Because, seriously, if she don't wanna be
there she's just gonna make your life a living hell – cuz if there's one
thing girls know how to do best, that's it!  And then what have you got?
No, you're better off just ditching her right then and there, and go
through the pain, and be over it.  And like my dad used to say, `Nothing
mends a broken heart quite like fucking a new girl'!"

"He really said that?"  "Yeah, actually, he did."  And he really did, too!

"So anyway," I said, "I've been wondering about something.  If there's
three forests, and Lupita's clan claimed the first one, and the clan chiefs
and elders of the different clans have always known how to get a hold of
each other, how come somebody in Lupita's clan never, like, just called
your clan chief a long time ago and said `Hey man, we've got a forest here
with your name on it, why don't ya just come on up and have a look?'"

Well, the answer to that question turned out to be that as far as anyone
was concerned, no, actually these forests never had anybody's name on them,
and that included any other clan of the Juva Forest People.  Just because
Lupita's clan showed up and found their forest, it was never obvious to the
Miami Nation or even to her clan that the other forests were now somehow
"reserved" for other Juva Forest clans.  That kind of thinking only makes
sense now because of the internal logic of this story.  And if you think
about it, even if you knew ahead of time that Julian's clan was "destined"
to find a new forest, who's to say it's one of the Miami Nation's forests,
right?  Why wouldn't it be some completely different forest in, like,
Oregon or someplace?  Actually, nobody can call you on your cell phone and
say come get your forest.  Jesus and the angels have to lead you there.
And to this day it's still not obvious to either the Miami Nation or the
Forest People who will come to find the third forest – or when.

"Okay," I said, "so what was it like when you went to find your forest?"

"Ackshully, it was pretty cool!" said Julian.  "First we all ate some
mushrooms to bring Jesus and the angels to guide us."  "Oh, well that must
have been fun!" I said, "Have you ever had mushrooms before?  I haven't, so
I don't even know what that would be like ..."

"Yeah well ackshully, our clan chief had most of them, so he was the only
one that really got wasted.  The rest of us only got a little bit."  "But
what about Lupita's clan chief?" I asked, "He must have had a bunch of
mushrooms too, right?"

No, cuz he didn't go!" Julian said.  "Nobody from her clan went – just
our clan to find our forest."  Oh, right, of course, I thought, I am way
too wrapped up in the internal logic of this story to realize that only
Jesus and the angels can lead you to your forest – nobody else can take
you there, not even a related clan chief.  He can't even go with you, so it
must have been just the five of them – Julian, his uncle Tito, their
clan chief and two elders – summoning Jesus and the angels by getting
ripped up on mushrooms.  "But still, I got a little buzz and it was like
the whole forest was shiny and shimmery and shit."  Oh good, cuz I wouldn't
want it any other way.

"So then we went into the forest, and I had to go first cuz, like, I'm the
one that came here first, right?  And I didn't know which way to go, but it
didn't matter cuz every time I looked around, it was like I just knew, ya
know?"  No, I don't know, but please go on. "We followed that little river,
right?  And there was a path along side it but sometimes we were on the
path and sometimes we were off the path and sometimes I didn't know where
the fuck we were but, like, it didn't matter and the forest was shining and
shimmering and shit, right?"  Uhhh, okay ...

"And we were going and going and like, all of a sudden I looked around and
like, I just knew that was the place, ya know?" No, I don't know, but
that's not what matters here.  "And so when I looked around, I saw
everybody else looking around too, like we all just knew at the same time,
right?  And then the chief starts dancing and yelling some crazy shit I
couldn't figure out, and the forest was shining – and, like, the Sun
Spirit shined down into the forest and showed us a clearing, so that was
the clearing for our village."

"Holy shit, Julian, that's really something!" was all I could muster.

"Yeah, right?" he said, "So we spent, like, an hour clearing out the
clearing to make it ready and so we won't forget where it is."  Oh, right,
I forgot to tell you, they were all carrying machetes in this little
journey of discovery.  So to fully appreciate all this, you have to imagine
five Juva Forest People in face and body paint and arm and ankle bracelets
and headdresses, hallucinating and carrying machetes through a forest on a
hot summer day in Indiana, coming to a clearing and suddenly realizing that
Jesus and the angels have given them this place to dwell under the
protection of the Miami Nation of Indiana, Inc.

Pretty cool, huh?

There was, however, one little remaining problem with all this.  For even
as Julian and his fellow clan elders cleared away the clearing that the Sun
Spirit had shown them, and chopped away a path through the forest back to
Lupita's village, no one had even asked themselves whether this new village
Julian's clan had marked out for themselves was even located on one of the
40-acre tracts owned by the Miami Nation.  It was not something that
mattered to them.

But fortunately, that was something that mattered an awful lot to the Board
of Directors of the Miami Nation of Indiana, Inc.  So no sooner had
Julian's clan elders returned to Lupita's village to rejoin the great
celebration going on there, than the Miami Nation guys who were standing by
with survey maps and aerial photos and GPS software on their iPads headed
back down the trail to determine precisely where the fuck this new clearing
was.

And the good news was – tadahhh!  Yes indeed, the clearing was on the
"southern" tract, which meant that if any of those Miami Nation guys had
harbored any lingering doubt as to whether Julian's clan really were the
correct people coming from afar to dwell under the protection of the Miami
Nation, well any such doubts were erased right then and there.  They marked
out the four corners of the 40-acre tract for future reference and returned
to Lupita's village, where the great celebration was in full swing and it
was just about lunchtime.

"So, like, what'd'ja have for lunch?" I asked.  "Roast moose or something?"
Julian just laughed hysterically.  "No ackshully – it was catered!  I
think all the food came from one of the casino restaurants, maybe even this
one!"  Don't it just figure, right?  I was trying to imagine what it might
be like to be part of the catering staff for an event like that one,
standing behind a Swedish meatball table.  "I ate a little, but then I
asked Uncle Tito if I could come back to your house cuz really, I was wiped
out after all that everything, and who could get any sleep with a lot of
whoopin' and hollerin' goin' on?"

"So that's what you did this afternoon, you crashed at my timeshare?"
"Yeah."

Fine with me.  And by that time we were just about done with the finest
dinner in all of Fresh Links, prepared by a chef so honored by our presence
that he insisted over and over that he just couldn't possibly take my money
to pay for it.  And so Julian and I went back to the timeshare together.

First things first – it was time for me to call and check in with my
wife.  "And you have to be quiet while I do that," I reminded Julian, so he
went upstairs for a little while.  So I talked to my darling and told her
how much I loved her and missed her – which is the truth! – and I
told her all about the great French cuisine I had at the finest restaurant
in all of Fresh Links – but of course I left out everything else.  "I
love you, honey, and I'll call you tomorrow morning, okay?  Love ya,
bye-bye."

As soon as I hung up and while I was still holding the cell phone in my
hand, I looked up from where I was sitting on the couch, and I saw a very
beautiful young golden brown Hoover Forest clan elder, adorned in partly
faded body and face paint and arm and ankle bracelets, but otherwise NAKED
and just beginning to walk down the stairs.  Oh god oh god! – is he
really going to do this?  Is he really doing this for me??  I was at first
stunned as I looked up at him, but after a couple of seconds I regained
enough composure to press the power button on my phone to turn it off, then
reach over and grab my camcorder from where it was sitting on the end
table.  I managed to get the camcorder going just as Julian was coming
around on the landing halfway down the stairs, so now he was facing me,
walking down the steps toward me, and each time he set one of his feet down
a step he jiggled his ankle so the bracelets jangled against each other
just as if he was performing a ritual dance ... a naked ritual dance, just
for me.  In one hand he was holding a DVD case, which I knew to be filled
with Mexican child porn.

When Julian reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped briefly and
jiggled his hands and feet so all the bracelets jangled together while I
filmed the whole thing and zoomed in for a close-up of his bouncing penis
and balls.  Then I panned back out as he walked up to the couch.  He sat
down on the far end from where I was, sitting sideways to display himself
just as he had done in the car on our very first day together, except that
this time he was not a dirty shirtless migrant labor boy.  No, he was a
fully adorned naked forest clan elder, the most exotic young boy I've ever
seen.  He had a big shit-eating grin on his handsome face.  "You are SUCH a
pervert!" he said.  Then he held the DVD case up to the camera and said,
"So perv, like, are we gonna watch a movie or what?"

Oh, yeah, right, the movie.  I paused the camcorder and set it down on the
coffee table in front of me.  Then I took the DVD case out of Julian's had
and brought it to the TV, all the while trembling a little bit, totally
nervous.  Oh god oh god oh shit – now that this was really happening my
mind was so screwed up I just knew I'd never be able to even get an
erection no matter how much hardcore Mexican child porn was playing right
in front of my face!  Still, I had promised that boy a porn flick, so I was
pretty much stuck with whatever was gonna happen now – even complete
humiliation.  I slid the disk into the DVD player, grabbed the remote and
returned to my seat.

I flicked the remote nervously to skip through the phone sex ads and get to
the "feature" selection screen.  After looking that over for a couple
seconds I selected the one I had watch on Day 3 of this story – the one
with just the young boy and girl I had pretended were Julian and Lupita.
"I think you'll like this one," I said, and pressed the play button.

At this, Julian laughed.  "Oh right!" he declared, "You already watched all
these, haven't you?" and he laughed some more.  I was caught and humiliated
– already! – but I just said, "Well, not all of 'em ..."

And as I said the last time I described this "feature," it starts with just
the two of them on the couch French kissing and making out and feeling each
other up, and "Lupita" stroking "Julian's" hard cock while they talk softly
to each other in Maya-niole.  Then after a couple of minutes, "Julian"
reaches over to the end table and grabs a joint, lights it up and those two
kids start getting stoned together while they continue to make out and feel
each other up.

I was watching this sequence uncomfortably trying not to look at Julian too
much when I suddenly heard Julian say, perhaps a little sheepishly, "I wish
WE had some weed – that would be so cool ..."

Now it was my turn to laugh.  I paused the video right in the middle of
"Julian" taking a hit and said, "Actually, Julian, we DO have some weed!"
"Oooohhhhh SHIT!" he said, "Ya mean you had reefer this whole time and
didn't even tell me?!"  "You didn't ask!" I said, "and anyway, I'm
surprised ya didn't find it when you were going through my shit looking for
the porn!"

"But I was just lookin' for porn, ya know?" he said as I got up.

"Well, wait here and just gimme a minute," I said, heading for the stairs.
"Yeah, okay, I'll be right here ..." he said.