Tenting Today

By Philip Garlington

A young couple has graduated from a middling state college, and seeing nothing attractive about the workplace or graduate school, they elect to live in a tent in a public campground, getting by on small remittances from indulgent parents. The slacker narrator says that a work ethic, requiring punctuality, subordination, and allegiance to the logo, is beyond his tepid, self-involved character, and that it would be better all around for him to live quietly with his vegan girlfriend without raising dust or making a smudge. Too many busy strivers are soiling the earth, he tells his puzzled dad. He needn't be another work beast or donkey engine or punk go-fer answering to a cubicle overlord, if the dad will just deposit a small monthly sum in the young man's checking account. Although the youth is passive and soft spoken, his view is counter-American, and undermines good order and hierarchy. As slacker boy's mom says, if everybody were like him there would be no pyramids, the Great Wall would not be seen from space, and Notre Dame couldn't hold a joyful noise, for lack of brick makers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Garlington
• Release date: Apr 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452430065

Philip Garlington

Phil Garlington has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner, San Diego Evening Tribune, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Washington Times, National Enquirer and a dozen obscure sheets. He has also been a commercial pilot, teen squid, and college student body president.

Book preview

Tenting Today

By Philip Garlington

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2011 Philip Garlington

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. To share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

* * *

Rachael and I are recent state college graduates who live in a tent in a public campground. We won’t work, getting by on small remittances from our parents. Summer we camp in the mountains of Northern California. Late September we roll south to BLM campgrounds near the Mexican border. We are in substantial noncompliance on life’s responsibilities. We call it our vow of failure. Neither of us wants to succeed in the land of Sam. Our only commitment is to ourselves.

In the past, we’ve both held slacker jobs. It was too much. The mere requirement of punctuality was too much. I have explained the reality to my puzzled dad. Eventually he came around, agreeing to deposit $500 a month in my checking account. Rachael’s remittance comes from cashing out certificates of deposit, birthday gifts from her dad, a New York beagle.

I drifted under canvas accidentally. Rachael seized the life. I’ll summarize. Me, unexceptional white bread juvenilia in a succession of suburban apartments. No drama. Except that early on my mom ditched me and my morose ineffectual dad for a hard-charging Republican mogul. My mom is a coloratura; she needs drama. Home life with my dad was quieter without her.

I was an indifferent student. Not interested in sports either except for a little intramural baseball. In high school, nothing, although I always had friends, other bland latch key kids. My college mark was a plebeian’s C. Even this required contemptible expedients: internet cheating, excuse-making, Cliffs Notes. I had shit jobs along the way: McDonald’s navvy; dishwasher in a Chinese kitchen; table hop at the college cafe. I took a degree in American history only because there isn’t much of it, and a roommate had a stash of term papers for recycling. I have no interest in the past. I have no interest in sharpening the focus on a bit of dead tissue.

When I forced myself to look beyond graduation, I could only think teaching credential, even though I’m afraid of children. I signed up for a few ed courses. Asphyxiating tedium. A priestly vocabulary suffocating the pedagogical world in cant. The experience made me see I don’t believe in public education, or in hired teachers. I hardly remember anything about elementary or middle school. Mostly blank. I can’t remember much about the teachers or classes. I can’t even look back and see myself in the classroom. I don’t think I learned anything. When it came time for the SAT I boned up for the math by reading Algebra for Dummies at the library.

At first my dad took the line that if I wasn’t going to pursue a masters or a credential, then I had to get a job. My dad really isn’t a stern parent. He’s a hack newspaper reporter, and doesn’t have strong convictions. I think he was just saying what he thought he had to say. My dad’s okay, he’s a generous guy. To humor him, I conjured up a fictive resume. I filled out some job applications available at the student center. I went to an interview. It amazed me how terrified I was of the demure, self-possessed female who quizzed me: why did I wish to be an associate? where did I see myself in five years? how did I view working with others to reach mutual goals? My heart pounded in my throat. Midway through the interview I stammered an excuse and fled.

I couldn’t stand up to this kind of lisping interrogation. It wasn’t the inanity and smiling hypocrisy of this particular girl Pharisee. It was the death’s-head adumbration. A shadow fell across my face as I followed her finger: the road to minion-hood, acquiescence, servility, to a lackey life dragged out in service to my betters. I suppose that for those with a vocation, work is vital. Pluck and talent shoot like bubbles for the surface. For me, self-involved and timid, unwilling to strive, of little use, the song of the cubicle and the paycheck is not intoxicating at all. The price is my volition, the only thing I value.

Also. I lack the spine for even the mild regimentation of punch-clock Samland. (An aside: Sam. A coinage from my dad’s made-up vocabulary: Sam, Samland, Samish, equals EweEsOfHay. Samtown, our nation’s capital; Samolian, the mighty Buck; Samology, Fox News. My dad describes the American way of life as you were saying, but he stole that from ee cummings.)

Anyway, net line, I don’t want to play my social security card. Yet, without some ready, I wasn’t going to be able to fulfill the mensual with the landlord, now that my arms-folded, foot-tapping parent had delivered his sotto voce ultimatum. My droopy dead-end dad, open-handed and always guardedly hopeful about my prospects, had spotted my four years of tuition, books, rent, walking around money, never complaining except to mention every month that I didn’t understand the cost of living.

But I know arithmetic. Animated by my dad’s uncharacteristic firmness, I’d done a few figures. A full-time shit job? The after-taxes McJob would barely cover the tab on my burnt-orange-carpeted one bedroom apartment near the campus. Usually, I’m phlegmatic. I prefer to wait to see how things will turn out. Now the time barked for action.

I had never been a Boy Scout or taken any interest in fresh air. Sometimes my dad barbequed on the tiny patio of our various apartments. The other previous experience of the outdoors: a college roommate once invited me on a weekend campout, during which a dozen noisy drunks lit a bonfire and broached a keg. I didn’t have a tent, and slept in the back of my car. A few weeks after graduation, I ran into this same roommate at the Rumpus Room, my saloon of record near the campus. Just to say something, I ran down my stat, that of seemingly needing a job, not wanting one, ta da.

He said I should go backpacking for a month to find myself. It’s cheaper than the Oso Negro, he said. He was shortcutting to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which our old house had watched a couple of times. In the movie I think it’s the old prospector who says it’s cheaper to camp for free in the mountains than to pay a peso a night for a bench at the flop house. So I’m thinking. Hermetic solitude in the wilderness as a stimulus to insight. Historical precedent: Buddha, Jesus, countless obscure seekers, undertaking the lonely and inexpensive vision quest. I didn’t have a better idea.

I didn’t have any equipment either. I went to Wal-Mart and used my dad’s credit card to get what I thought I’d need: pack, sleeping bag, tent, stove, canteen, compass, whistle, some freeze-dried packets of food. I drove to a campground in the mountains, parked, loaded the pack, and started from the trailhead. I was carrying about 80 pounds. Half a mile up the trail I threw down the pack in the dust, kicked it a few times, and sat on a rock. A while later a pair of real backpackers came by. They let me heft one of their packs, which weighed maybe twenty pounds, the weight of my tent alone. They lifted my pack and shook their heads. I turned around and went back to the campground, where I pitched my Wal-Mart tent, boiled water for spaghetti on the tiny stove, and uncorked a bottle of wine that was in the trunk of my car

* * *

The Wal-Mart gear might be too heavy for the trail, but it seemed fine for the campground. My pitch had a picnic table and a fire pit. I decided I had gone far enough to find myself. The surrounding wilderness seemed sufficient, and my quest was just as likely to enlighten me here as in any other woodsy venue. It turned out this particular Forest Service campground didn’t charge a fee. Global warming. No water in the pipes, pit toilets instead of plumbing. No cell service either, but from the pay phone at the entrance I called my landlord and broke my lease. It was the Rubicon. Only a couple of hours into my quest, and I’d already made a life-altering decision. A huge weight lifted from my heart, my eyes blurred. I was free.

I called Melinda, my then girlfriend, and asked her if she wanted to join me at the campsite for the weekend. She didn’t. She was cramming for the LSAT. She aspired to beagledom via ivy halls on the Eastern seaboard. Melinda always referred to me as dear man, which meant that I was a transitional figure in her life. The undergraduate beau, the sweet but impractical swain who served as a place holder until she hit law school and more promising DNA. There was no drama when she dumped me a week later.

Next I called Rachael. I didn’t think of this as cheating because I’d already seen Melinda’s footman coming with my coat. I’d known Rachael for a few years; we’d hooked up a couple of times when we’d been drunk at parties. Nothing tense. I hadn’t even called her the next day. Rachael had food issues, and was too zaftig for me. I’d always see her sitting in the student lounge reading fat paperbacks of historical fiction. Black hair, black overcoat, pale skin, kind of Goth-lite, no tats or mascara. She agreed to visit.

But wait! She recently had become a strict vegan, and no grease could cross her lips; she couldn’t even stand the smell of a pizza anymore. All these years, lactose intolerant, she never knew, until she got the word from the guru at the Green Zone Cafe. This was new, because I’d been at parties where she’d wolfed her slice of the pie with gusto. Of course, we’d been toking. I told her to bring three or four big plastic jugs for water. I’d already found out from another camper that these could be filled behind a little store down the road.

One thing I liked about Rachael right off the bat: she had no desire to strive. She didn’t want to continue her studies, or have a career, or be an artist. She had no illusions about having talent. Money didn’t blow her skirt up. Doing work for others on the clock didn’t interest her. She liked to read novels; she liked to make astringent comments about the foibles of her friends. She wasn’t immune to the sip or toke; veganism apparently hadn’t changed that.

When Ranger Rick cruised through the campground, I flagged him to find out how long I could stay. It’s like this, says Rick. The rule is, two weeks. But at this particular out-of-the-way, under-used, waterless venue the rangers were reactive, not proactive. If a camper isn’t causing a fuss, Rick isn’t going to give him the boot. Ranger Rick would rather have me, harmless college milquetoast (in so many words), in the space rather than some liquored-up palooka that yells all night and sets the woods on fire. And if I wanted to volunteer to be campground host, the Forest Service would even give me a stipend (but that was too much responsibility). I took this to mean that a mild collegial boy could stay indefinitely for free.

That being the case, Rachael when she arrived suggested we go back to Wal-Mart to buy a bigger tent and other stuff to make ourselves more comfortable. She liked the tent idea right off the bat. Grasping the possibilities at a glance, she decided on the spot that she was staying. She had no other plans for her future. With graduation, she and her roomies were breaking up their house. Her dad and aunts were on her case to start grad school in New York, but she was sick of school. The campground and a life of self-directed indolence appealed to her. But she wanted more amenities.

* * *

Rachael won’t go into Wal-Mart herself. The musky prey animal smell bothers her. The ambiance depresses her. The low-rent cliental reminds her too keenly that she is an upper class intellectual Jewish girl from the East Sixties. She doesn’t like to think about beige starvelings chained to sewing machines, or about the cowed possessors of epicanthic folds and good small motor control who are threatened daily with being raped by thuggish shop overseers. Or about any other grimy scene of the global chase for cheap labor. She waited in the car.

Wal-Mart was having a summer blowout, and I got a 10’ by 10’ wall tent, as well as a screen tent that would fit over the picnic table. I got two camp mattresses, and two lounging chairs that ingeniously collapsed into a duffle. I got a small plastic inflatable wading pool, the kind for toddlers. Rachael’s idea. We use it for bathing in the privacy of one of the tents. We got a Mr. Heater, and a Colman two-burner propane stove. Except