Fraud Read Free Page A

thrill briefly with the thought that we might just drive all the way, although I know for a fact that there is no road up the mountain.
    We are climbing this Christmas Day with two of Larry’s friends. It is three men and a baby. The climb begins easily enough, although I am somewhat alarmed to find myself sweating profusely after only fifteen minutes. I am hot and my clothes are starting to feel heavy and moist. Before we begin the earnest ascent of our trip, some 1 , 900 feet straight up within the next half mile, we stop at a spring to fill our canteens and take a short break. The water is fresh and exceedingly cold. I am asked no fewer than three times if I’ve ever had better water than this. I allow as probably not, certainly never colder water. Yes, that water is good. Very good. Boy, that is some good water, you betcha. But it is still, for want of a better term, water. Unless you spend your life drinking disease-ridden bilge directly from the Ganges or you live beside some strip mine’s trace metals dumping site, extended discussions of water are a little bit like that annoying New York foodie habit of ascribing a “subtle, nutty flavor” to things with very little taste.
    The guys are shooting the shit. “I gave Mona her Christmas present last night,” one of them says, referring to a girlfriend. “My tongue still hurts.”
    A lot of the talk focuses on “ 1028 s.” (“Think we’ll see any 1028 s?” “That was a real good 1028 day.” “All we need is some 1028 s to make this a perfect Christmas.”) Apparently, “ 1028 ” is code for babes.
    I try to join in by asking them if they know the term 23
skidoo
. They do not. “Well,” I begin, “it’s from the twenties in New York, and the Flatiron Building at 23 rd Street creates this wind tunnel that, I guess, used to blow pretty young girls’ skirts up, and the cops would signal one another that they could see the thighs of some lovely young thing by saying . . . uh . . . ‘ 23 skidoo’ . . . it was part of the slang . . . you know, like, uhm, like 1028 .”
Flowers for you, Miss Garbo!
    Later, Larry asks us: “Hey, what’s the difference between oral sex and anal sex? Oral sex’ll make your whole day and anal sex’ll make your whole week.”
    I am amazed. This is not really much of a joke at all, more of an observation, I think, and I find its relaxed, surprisingly positive attitude toward anal penetration a complete eye-opener.
    “I don’t get it,” says one friend.
    “It’ll make your hole weak. Your H-O-L-E W-E-A-K. Get it?”
     
    Oh. Good thing I didn’t call forth a hearty “I’ll say it will!”
     
    The storm picks up rapidly as we ascend, rain and sleet falling and freezing immediately. The usual foursquare dimensions of evergreens, all staunch angles, needles, and propriety, are rendered Mae West voluptuous by a two-inch-thick coating of rime ice. Above the treeline, the last third of the climb, the temperature drops yet further by a good fifteen degrees, and the bare rock is glazed and dangerously slippery. My footing is becoming ever more precarious, and despite the crampons in our backpacks, Larry makes no motion toward stopping to put them on. He is testing my manhood, and also my temper. I say nothing and continue to climb. I am starting to get cranky. We finally make summit, its bare, wind-carved rock undulating: silver, pale, lunar, and glamorous. Shrouded in fog, we cannot see more than thirty feet in any direction. It lends a false sense of enclosure to everything, like a diorama from the Museum of Natural History.
    And, no, I don’t feel somehow better that we got to the top without the crampons, although I tell Larry otherwise as I take a long pull off a Sierra Nevada. I find nothing particularly ennobling about what we’ve just done. I’m not sporting any added tumescence; I have no sense that I’ve stared down anything significant. I find life itself provides ample and sufficient tests of my valor and