by Joe Pandolfi
I was still hypomanic when I entered Dirtworld the first time. Still mixing my brown with clear, so to speak. Who knew that the best chaser for heroin was a little bit of meth? It made me feel like one of those inbred kings in the fifteenth century. Grandiose. Untouchable. My dealer brought me to a bonfire, where I promptly monopolized the conversation. Told everyone I was writing the next great sociological dissertation. Embedding myself within the Central Oregon homeless population.
I was confident enough to convince most of the people I met. With my J. Crew sweater– sleeves covering my track-marks–thick glasses, and general air of East Coast pretension, I didn’t look like I belonged.
Things had changed though. I still said I was working on my dissertation, and I still wore the same shit, but I lived here now. There was no confusing that. Still, my neighbors called me “The Professor,” no matter how many times I pedantically explained that I hadn’t finished my degree.
There was something about high desert rain. It intensified every aspect of Dirtworld. The air reeked of juniper and petrichor; wet dogs howled in the new day. In my tent, I was bleary eyed and terrified.
I was reeling from another nightmare–Pete’s green eyes staring still, his body like a wax figure as I tried and failed to shake him to life. My tent’s walls were a dead lung, expelling me. I slid out, heaving. His face faded slowly. When it had gone, I noticed the dirt, normally dusty and fine, clung to my bare feet like iron to a magnet. The Cascades were sugar-dusted pastries in the distance.
Naked, my body looked gaunt and pale. Best not to dwell on things like muscle wasting, or whether that rash was a staph infection or syphilis or just an allergic reaction. I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my thigh, the tiny rose, and shivered.
I slipped on my stained khakis, pocketed the indestructible brick of a phone Theresa gave me, and headed toward the small, flapping American flag of Howard’s home.
“How ya doin’, Professor?” Howard barely looked up from his gardening.
I swear, if a white picket fence existed out here, Howard would have put it up already. His converted RV—with its complicated rainwater collection system and garden beds bustling with squash and kale—was singlehandedly raising property values for every other tent on the block.
“Living the dream,” I said, my perennial response to that inane question. How does it look like I’m doing?
“Still doing dope?” Howard straightened. I could almost hear his bones creak. His gaze was that of a surgeon, though.
“No one calls it dope anymore.”
“Gonna take that as a yes.”
“Until it kills me, probably.” I flicked my wrist. I was tired of telling people I was trying to get clean. We’re all trying. I just wasn’t trying very hard.
This didn’t surprise Howard. He’d seen men die screaming. He’d seen flies on bloated bodies and defoliated mountain slopes and about a thousand other guys like me burn out out here. All he said was, “I bet,” then gestured over my shoulder. “You’re in trouble.”
I turned to see Kitty storming toward me. Her dyed hair stood on end like she’d been struck by lightning, and her pink puffy coat was soggy, covered in dirt. “Hey! Asshole!”
“Hey Kitty, you look wet,” I said.
“Yeah?” She wanted to slap me, I knew it. “It poured last night. You were supposed to help me fix that hole in my tent!”
“I’m sorry, okay? You coulda grabbed me. You know where I live.” I couldn’t help myself.
“Ugh, you’re unbelievable.” Kitty gave me a Gorgon stare, then stormed off. Howard sucked his teeth behind me.
“You’re not helping, old man. Think I can borrow a knife or something?”
Kitty’s tent was a sunken Spanish galleon, full of silty water and hidden treasures. I decided not to tell her that setting up in a drainage confluence was a bad idea. Truly, I didn’t believe a patch in her canopy would’ve solved this.
I eyed the hole in the rainfly while she hung her sopping clothes in the big juniper above her camp. It was like a Christmas tree, except the ornaments were bras, panties, and sweatpants. I recognized a black, lacy set. The holes in the waistband were still there. A few months ago, Kitty had tackled me in my tent, cold hands hungry against my numb skin. I’d done my best to take that set off her, but I was obliterated, and my fingers ripped through the thin fabric. I remember both laughing, but not much else.
She caught me staring and I froze. “You just come here for the show?”
“No… sorry. Zoned out.” That time was past. She was more like a sister to me. Was that fucked up?
“Sure. Perv.”
I pulled out the knife Howard lent me—an old standard issue Marines Ka-Bar—and began cutting a few chunks of tarp off the pile she had on the ground.
“Hey! What are you doing!?”
“Making a patch?”
“Not from those ones!” Ah, of course, these tarps must be special. “Which ones, then?”
“I don’t know, take it from that shitty green one.”
Howard’s duct tape was a godsend, and I began to tape down my patch. I outlined a large square, much larger than the tear, and placed the tape carefully. An image of Pete, cordoning his canvas with wide, blue tap, fizzed in my mind.
Pete was probably the best of us.
Theresa was the overachiever. She practically had law school printed on her birth certificate.
I was the fuck-up that always failed upwards. First choice university, accepted to the PhD program I wanted, even with my subpar Quant score.
But Pete was genius, through and through. Probably would’ve been the next Picasso or Degas if it weren’t for me. I wished every day that I’d taken that pill first. That it had taken me and not him.
How did I become arbiter of his afterlife?
I tried practicing my breathing. Mindfulness. I focused on the way the crinkly plastic tarp smelled below my fingers, like Dad’s garage. Polyurethane and paraffin. I was just getting somewhere when my serenity was shattered.
Dogs yelped. People screamed. I recognized one of the voices. Kitty and I dropped what we were doing and followed the noise.
There were about twenty people arranged around Doris’ tarp palace. Vance, a big man with a shaved head, and tattoos that would merit admission to the Third Reich, was tearing apart Doris’ place. He was screaming something unintelligible about ‘trans freaks’ and ‘pedos’ and ‘groomers.’ It was hard to understand but sounded like something you’d hear on Newsmax or OAN. Doris was pounding her fists on his back. She kept stopping her assault to fix her blonde wig.
“Stop! You’re destroying my home!” Doris wailed, her voice ragged. Vance, holding one of the stakes that held up her entryway, slapped her, backhand. She went sprawling on the wet ground, blood spurting from her nose. In an instant, she was back up, pulling at his arms, trying to slow the damage.
Nobody moved. A lesson from undergrad Psych flashed in my mind.
Kitty nudged me. “Go.”
I stepped forward, sized up my opponent. Vance was thick with muscle, clearly in some psychotic rage, and I was… well, re: muscle wasting. Still, maybe the crowd could stop him before he killed me.
“Hey, Vance! Lay off, dude,” I shouted over the din.
Vance stopped, turning his caged tiger eyes on me. I was distracted by the bulging vein on his skull when I realized I was still holding the Ka-Bar. Shit. “Yeah? Gonna stab me, Professor?” My nickname was astringent in his mouth. “Come on, what the fuck are you gonna do, pussy?”
I dropped the long knife and put my hands out to placate him. “Nothing, man, but you gotta go. This shit is beyond the pale.” Beyond the pale?
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Vance started walking toward me, and I’m ashamed to admit I flinched, stepping back. I kept thinking about what that tentpole would feel like rammed down my throat.
“Are you a freak, too?” He pointed at Doris with the pole. She scowled. “You gonna try n’ trick me, too?”
“What? No, I—”
Vance stopped walking. Something moved in my periphery.
Beside me, Howard stood with his M14 leveled at Vance’s chest. “You heard the kid. Kick rocks, cunt.”
There was a moment where I think Vance considered rushing Howard. But then, Howard released the slide of the rifle, loading a big round of don’t-you-fucking-dare, and Vance shrunk.
A few minutes later, and after much more cursing, Vance had collected his crap and was back on his way to 97—that great asphalt artery that carried us between temperate California and the Columbia.
We all tried to help Doris put her home back together. Dirtworld had a tendency to expel bad actors. There was a general sense of mutual aid, but if we did have a community defense militia, it would be an army of one: Howard.
Kitty held Doris, wiping the blood from her nose and cooing in her ear that it was “okay, it’s going to be okay.” I felt like a hero, presenting Howard’s duct tape to Doris. She sniffled, snatched it from my hand with long, spindly fingers.
“You’ll build the place back better,” I said, “It will be the Taj Mahal of tents.”
“It already was,” Doris laughed and rose, “But thanks, Professor.” She patted my back and joined the others restaking her entryway.
I extended a hand to Kitty. Her green eyes touched mine, and for a minute I saw the admiration and affection she used to hold for me. Then, I saw Pete in them. I looked to the sky, nausea gripping me.
It was better with someone you trust, right?
Pete’s neuropathy kept him in constant pain. When the doctors stopped giving him percs, he came to me. I was the family pharmacy—everyone but our parents knew it—but I didn’t have what he was looking for. I knew a guy who could get us some, though.
I picked Pete up from his studio apartment. He had on the big coveralls he wore when he painted. They were freshly stained with thick globs of red and black. Pete tried to explain. Told me that the pain had stripped him of every joy. That even painting hurt now. That he just needed a way to feel normal. I told him he didn’t need to justify himself to me.
My guy assured us these pills were the real shit. We picked them up and took the long drive home.
I wanted to see what Pete was painting, so I came inside with him after he took one of the pills. I watched him spread the oil paint on his palette. His painting was uncomfortable to look at. It was ink black, veins of neon red running through it, dendritic. I could still see it, years later.
I won’t describe what went through my head when it was happening. I won’t talk about the long, painful minutes when I was reassuring myself everything was fine, even as he was turning grey. How shaky my fingers were as I dialed emergency. How many times I got the three digit number wrong.
Because, in the end, it doesn’t matter. I was too slow, too stupid, too broken.
The chaos had dissipated, and I was putting the finishing touches on Kitty’s tent, when the brick phone buzzed in my pocket. On the tiny screen, a message read: ‘can i see you?’ There was only one person who texted me on here, and it was the same person who gave me the damn thing.
I met Theresa at the event horizon; the raw, abraded wound where my world, Dirtworld, chafed against the world she lived in.
I met my sister between milepost 131 and 133 on Route 97.
Theresa pulled up in her Lexus. The headlights were cat eyes, and the windshield reflected an open, blue sky. I stupidly waved, before putting my hand back down at my side. She stepped out of her car but did not leave the doorway. She just stood there, watching me. Dressed
in a pencil skirt and smart jacket, she looked so put together. “Hey Robbie.”
“Hey Theresa,” I mimicked.
“You wanna get in?”
“Okay.”
Inside her car, things were not so put together. Kids toys littered the backseat. Apple sauce packages shifted under my feet. I definitely sat on some loose Cheerios.
She pulled out, and we drove in silence for a while. Phoebe Bridgers sang about Kyoto. Finally, Theresa spoke. “How are you?”
“Living the dream.”
“You know what I mean, Robbie.”
“I’m still using. If that’s what you’re really asking.” I don’t know why I was so combative with her. Maybe it was that her life, in comparison to mine, was patronizing. Her nice car, her beautiful family, her ridiculous house—it all seemed to mock me.
“You know that’s not what I’m asking.” Theresa tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. I noticed that her wedding ring was gone, replaced by a thin band of white skin.
“So, what are you asking then? If I’m tired of being a fuck-up? If I’m sick to death of myself?”
Theresa bulldozed me. “I’m asking if you’re ready to talk about it.”
I composed myself. “Why today?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she snapped.
“Oh, but I do?”
“Why can’t you just accept my fucking help?” Theresa yelled. The car got quiet, until all we could hear was our breath, the tires, and the stereo.
Frankie Cosmos sang about being the fool. My voice cracked when I tried to speak. I swallowed it, set my jaw, and spoke again, growling out the words. “I don’t deserve it, Theresa.” I couldn’t look at her.
I watched the junipers blur, forming a clean brushstroke of greens and tan outside the car window. I saw Vance stumbling along the roadside. I heard Theresa sniffle but kept my eyes on the window. The road lines slowed, and she pulled off before the Space Age.
Theresa’s breath hitched. Then, she was crying, her head on the steering wheel, hands gripping the wheel so tight it looked like her knuckles were going to tear through her skin. My tears didn’t come. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. Through the sobs, I heard her say something.
“What?”
“I said, it’s not your fault.” She sobbed again, then took a deep, nasal inhale and straightened her spine. Her eyes were just like his. I looked away, feeling the nausea come on again. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t.
“Look at me, Robbie!”
The tears left her eyes puffy and red, but her jaw was iron. Her jacket was wrinkled. Her hair was greasy, stuck together. She was visibly older than the last time I’d seen her. Less angry. “It’s not your fault. You had no way of—”
“It is.”
“Shut up, Robbie.” There she was. My big sister. A smile tugged my lip. “It’s not. Pete made his own choices. I lost one brother. I’m not going to lose another.” My smile faltered. I hadn’t heard his name spoken in so long. He was my specter, my haunting. I’d forgotten that she and I shared his ghost. I tried to organize my thoughts enough to say something. Something that could justify my crusade against myself. But Theresa spoke first. “Just please, come home.” Her voice was so pathetic, it just broke me.
My tears came then. She undid her seatbelt and pulled me into a hug across the center console.
The leather dug into my side. The car rang at us, aggrieved, despite the fact that we were sitting still. I stayed rigid for a moment. Then, I relented, putting my own arms around her and squeezing.
I wanted to tell my sister so many things. I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t had the strength to go to Pete’s funeral. That every insult I’d thrown, degradation I’d caused, and thing I’d stolen lived with me, every day, in my heart.
But it all sounded cardboard-thin. Her face was drawn when she pulled away from me. Her eyes foraged in mine for an answer. I found my answer in hers. Despite all I’d done, she still needed me. Maybe I was strong enough to admit that I needed her.
I told her what she wanted to hear.
“Okay.”
I think I left a better version of myself behind. In Dirtworld, I was the Professor. Out here, I was Theresa’s burnout, addict brother.
Theresa’s basement was unfinished, but it was still cozy. Her kids were great, and we spent many nights glued to the big TV downstairs, playing Mario Kart. Their little hands were much more dexterous than mine, and I got trounced more often than I won. Theresa’s now ex-husband, William, was still an insufferable prick, but he wasn’t here anymore.
The methadone appeared to be working. I’d even re-opened the crusty laptop that held my incomplete dreams of doctoral fame.
I still woke up from the nightmares, though. The darkness of the basement did not help Pete’s wax face fade. On mornings like that, I had to get out, no matter my condition. This morning, I grabbed my laptop and went to reenact my grad school rituals: americano on an empty stomach, sitting in the back of a coffee shop, hoping some pretty girl would see my genius.
I stalked the streets of downtown, an imposter. Lights were up for Christmas, wrapping the scrawny saplings in yellow light. A high, grey sky brightened damp asphalt. Perfect, manicured families crossed the street, climbed in and out of their BMWs, hands full of shiny bags. It felt like walking through an ad. Then, I heard a familiar voice radiating from the alley.
Kitty was sitting on a blue flannel blanket, playing her ukulele, with Zebra and their dog Millhouse next to her. A case sat open, crumpled cash balled against the black satin. I’d never heard a more beautiful rendition of ‘Last Christmas’. Her hair had changed again—a cauldron green. Her eyes were closed as she played, and I leaned against a column to listen.
When she finished playing, she set the instrument down. I wasn’t sure she’d recognize me. My face was fuller and I was wearing some of William’s reject clothes. But I clapped anyway.
“Look who it is,” Kitty said. Millhouse remembered me, too, wagging her tail and pushing her body across the brick walk like a worm. I crouched down and rubbed her belly.
“Good to see you, Kitty. You too, Zee.” Zebra grunted. They seemed put off—Kitty wasn’t, though. Her eyes locked on mine. I didn’t look away.
“How’s life?” she asked. A family walked by behind me, the father’s face showing a hint of distaste. Hands grabbed tiny hands, clopping steps sped up as they passed.
“Mind if I sit?” Kitty nodded. My knees cracked as I sat next to her. “You know, I’m living the dream.”
Time passed, Kitty sang carols. I liked the view from down here. I liked the way people averted their eyes. I even liked when moms in cardigans and men in scarves stopped to drop cash in Kitty’s ukulele case; their faces attended by the unique, upper-class sneer that was both pity and self-congratulation.
I could have sat next to her for the rest of the day, but Zee’s incessant twitching and rough throat clears were activating me. I never liked them; it was clear they currently did not like me.
And what were Kitty and I, anyway? Strangers, really.
Four Christmas’s ago, all us kids had met up at my parents’ house in Sisters, Oregon. It was a yearly tradition, and every year it was harder for me to make the long drive from Stanford. The week was grating on my nerves. On an early night, with William sucking up all the air in the room, Pete and I had exchanged our last pleading look, and wordlessly decided to remove ourselves.
In my parents’ driveway, we leaned against the boxy hood of my Volvo and I packed my one-hitter. Pete took a long drag, blew the smoke out into the crystal night. The quiet descended on us like a blanket of fresh-fallen snow. Pete was often reticent with his opinions. Not tonight.
“I don’t know how she stomachs him.”
“Class is a hell of a cult,” I said, trying to connect the web of stars above into anything meaningful.
Pete laughed. “I’ve had my fill.” When I turned my eyes back down to the world, Pete was wearing a mischievous smirk. “Let’s go to Portland.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.” Warm light bathed the snow behind him. Our family was visible through the windows, crashing into each other in waves.
Three hours later, we were trying to jam my Volvo into a too-small spot on Hawthorne. Then, we were in a bar, leather booths like plump tongues beneath us. Our phones vibrated simultaneously on the sticky table. We turned them off, thinking we’d deal with the fallout tomorrow.
Pete tottered into me as we walked. He could never hold his liquor, or his line. I was focused on a bar ahead of us. A girl was standing outside–big, gold-rimmed glasses reflecting red neon, cigarette in her hand. I was gonna make a fool of myself, I was determined to, when Pete pulled me into a tattoo shop.
The only artist there was a tall man with gauges. Pete came on strong. “You have a pen?” The artist rolled his eyes but nodded. Pete pulled a crumpled napkin he must have pocketed from the last bar and flattened it on the front desk. He drew a rose, barely disturbing the thin bar napkin, then pushed it toward the artist. “Can you do this? On both of us?” The artist nodded, smiling. I’m sure the nightshift at a tattoo parlor brought with it many stories, but I hoped this was one he remembered.
“Why a rose?” I whispered to Pete as the artist prepped his station.
“City of Roses!”
Our thighs burning, we kept walking, bumping into each other until we reached a park. In the cool darkness, there were slumps across the ground, heads moving among the piles. I tried to grab Pete but he collapsed on the grass, staring up at me, smiling. “I’m tired.”
“No, come on Pete, we gotta keep moving.” He was already asleep.
Pete was big, too heavy for me to move, but it was freezing outside. I stumbled over to the slumps. There were about five people bundled up among the bushes. One of them was heating a meth pipe. The others were petting dogs, talking to each other, and nestling against black plastic bags of soft goods. I crouched down, trying to strip the drunk slur from my voice. “You guys got an extra blanket?”
The man with the meth pipe turned off his torch. His eyes roved over me uncomfortably. Then he balled a fist in the blankets at his lap and pulled one out like a rabbit from a hat. “Uh, yeh…jus’ bring ‘er back in the mornin’, yeah?”
“I will. Thanks man. Means a lot.”
Pete snored, his thick chest moving up and down rhythmically. I threw the blanket over him, wafting musty ammonia, and curled myself beside him on the cold grass. The tops of the trees were bare of leaves and crown shy. Pinpricks of stars winked between the branches, and I thought I could finally make out the shape of things. For that night at least, I thought I might have figured it all out.
I was rubbing my thigh, reflexively, trying to focus on the words burning on my laptop screen. No matter how long I read, I was still unable to imagine the person who had written those words.
The Central Oregon houseless population filters between twin states of being. In one, they inhabit the streets of the city, ‘busking’ on street corners, and gathering at the food pantry and methadone clinic. In the other, they have built an anarchistic system of social cells that sit on Bureau of Land Management parcels in a web around Bend and Redmond. They refer to this space internally as Dirtworld. Dirtworld is a patina on the pastiche of terminal capital. It is also a modern example of human social organization without a centralized government–one that exists inside the American system of governance but outside socially reinforced rules of land ownership and tenancy.
Patina on the pastiche? I deleted this.
For about an hour, I wrote and re-wrote the first sentence of my introduction. Nothing I wrote captured the experience or the empathy that I wanted to express. Eventually, I deleted the whole thing and opened a new doc.
Dirtworld was home when I had none.
Joe Pandolfi (he/him) considers writing both his purpose and his passion. In his downtime, he enjoys riding through Northwest forests, watching bummer films with his partner, and entertaining his kittens, Thelma and Louise. You can find his upcoming work in OSU’s Prism Magazine.