Radland

RADLAND

Sean Ulman

Copyright Š 2011 by Sean Ulman All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-0-9828032-7-1 Published by Deadly Chaps New York, NY 2011 Cover Design by Deena Acquafredda Book Design by Joseph A. W. Quintela http://www.deadlychaps.com

C

ontents:

1: EYE C 2: “Blacklands” 3: Premiere 1 4: Premiere 2 5: Ed, the Player 6: Springbreak 7: Las Vegas 8: Tijuana 9: Beware Bandidos 10: Ensenada 11: Starlet Cs ★s 12: Guerrero Negro pm ✓pt.

13: Guerrero Negro 2 14: Guerrero Negro 3A 15: Guerrero Negro 3B 16: Youth Cast 17: Youth Cast 2 18: Swine Fluid 19: Understudy Study 20: Mulege 21: Planet Boojum

22: La Paz 23: San José del Cabo 24: Beach Camp 25: Birds&Rain 26: Scrutiny on Mutiny 27: Hot Spring 28: Moon Boojum 29: Breakfast Oasis 30: ✓pt. 2 31: Holy Cow 32: 1Man Bandido Band 33: Branded Bandido 34: Baneful Bandido 35: Bantam Bandido 36: Bludgeoned Bandido 38: About the Author

1

E

YE C

I(me) C(see) irrevocably.

What EYE(digital camera) Cs can be edited shaped framed flipped.

I C she: starlet ilk, off-farm fresh, fruit-frappe sexpot.

EYE Cs aloof frosty posture, squashed aplomb.

I C she dumped; a first! Thirst, vulnerable = viable.

EYE (filming from snow cairn): I strutting up, eyeing dime.

2

“

Blacklands”

28min 8mm color 2K SDU Grant. A bomblet Short.

FADE IN Ed atop blue VW in Black Hills N.P (no permit) regarding cinder-tinder steeples, lead-knifed dunes. Thunder pound, EYE trembles, bison trample. Bug sooted slate.

Ed’s face pumice-pied.

Ed eats last grass blade. Cut stomach bleeds into graphite-gray earth. Sleeps, dreams reality.

Man surrenders to landscape at outset.

I admit 1 flaw – lacks a starlet.

2

3

P

remiere 1

160 buzzed coeds blanketed on lawn. My film projected on gym’s big brick wall. Sound synched to each’s IPOD, drive-in dirigible. They sip cinema syrup, levitate into phantasmal eve.

Aurora borealis burgeon above as onscreen Ed ekes opening line to onyx obelisks, “Why man? Only to awe?”

Projector tick.

In the vacant dorms 2 goons pilfer 18 laptops.

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4

P

remiere 2

Ed crashes VW into tarry spire. Od’d on awe; can’t join land. Penalized for nicking earth, Ed perishes.

FADE OUT All too euphoric to applaud. Projector tick.

Wet moans. Lovers in the bush boning w/ clothes on.

Shooting ★s unzip sky, fizzle.

I cry b/c I gave them this.

Paying debt to Ingmar Bergman Terrence Malick Werner Herzog Tarantino PTA Aronofsky Wes… I’ve built & lent an artful escape.

4

5

E

d, the Player

I cast Ed in lead of 2 one-man casts. 1st in my dope debut film “Blacklands.” 2nd as friend.

His close up screams for silver screen: red curls, blue pupils, peppered freckles, marble teeth; 1950’s hayseed farmhand or refined twin of MAD mag’s mascot.

Raspy lilt; raw hilt on act craft & he takes direction.

No opus w/o Ed, no cross-campus celebrity.

So we’re a symbiosis & buds besides: I’m all the sand; Ed’s an ant.

5

6

S

pringbreak

She heard I and Ed rapping (overacting): “Baja baby! 1wk 8000mi 90°!”

She’d seen “Blacklands,” Ed’s acting acumen, my eye.

We’re not ugly. Genius is vogue.

EYE Cs doe eyes dart, a shook shale vase.

I C she has no plans 4 break.

Eye: I strut, deadpan, “Hablas español bella dama?”

She doesn’t. But she C’s my deep eye, beseeching, besieging, assessing her figure.

“Um… Can I bring a friend?”

6

7

L

as Vegas

Midnight. Giant Lite-Brite Lego desert installation. Flickers pulse my page, “Mersault slept.”

Luxor beam HWY 15. Nice to glide by deluxe farce. No one wins in Sin’s fiefdom.

Ed exits. She wants 1spin.

EYE Cs her bisect smut leaflet gust into Flamingo, Ed taxiing tart’s purse.

She smacks Ed’s mug w/ $$bag. Ed acts KO’d.

1spin 3cherries $800. “Trip’s paid for.”

♥ in throat .3 sec, I icily turn page.

7

8

T

ijuana

Noon. Melt. Fence. Donut cart. Vendor ogles her waggling bun.

Doles glazed buns, licks pinkies, pink lips. Aching to taste her, I drive up.

Swarthy guard grills me, inspects passports, peeks 4 Xtras.

I roll tires 1rev. She rolls ↓ window.

In 2mirrors (Rview, guard’s eyes) I C her glowing throat drip dew ↓ tapered carnal dale.

His choice: search us & her body’s geology, or make her smile.

He winks (she blinks) and waves us thru.

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9

B

eware Bandidos

My bro’d warned me, “No night driving or camping. Bandidos!”

Spindly legs wriggle under Subaru. Lu screams. Man pops↑.

Jolly. Blathers benign español greetings & apologies.

He is Tall, Slow & Harmless.

Wrench in T-bone paw, nothing leaking from car.

Sneakers scuff. Asthmatic hyena’s muffled guffaws. Dopey lookout bookin it.

“Lo siento,” tall tame man says “Mi familia es muy pobre.”

He empties his empty pockets.

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10

E

nsenada

Pork empanadas. My treat, her$. Beach picnic. Tubed surfers.

I want to crush her like waves sand sand. Raze & daze babe: bulldozer in rut.

Ed wants to lap her: filmy receding surf: hazy lay of ½dozing lambs.

Our eyes convey opp-stylized desires, she sighs. Girls lift, walk.

EYE Cs girls hold hands, pick shells.

I flick a booger on Ed. He knows I aim to incite action 4 EYE. He stares off, bloated ♼ blocking art.

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11

S

tarlet Cs ★s

Beside sullen Lu Ed drives 1lane dirt Rd slow so EYE can absorb orange sage-specked bank crumbling beyond beauty’s unsmug mug. She turns too soon, Cs rolling camera, can’t roll w/ it.

Bashful. Blushes, brushes bangs, blows kisses.

A pickup bolts by blaring mariachi musica, blows dust. Sun twinkling ochre chaff. Shot has potential.

“Lean out,” I coach, “Cough!” She Cs ★s, rolls ↑ window.

This film’s a flop.

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12

G

uerrero Negro pm ✓pt.

Gutters lined w/ fire rings 6 a side. Ceremonious inspection. 8 new soldiers. Iron scowls, wispy staches, assault rifles.

Passports possessed.

Boy, baggy desert-cammo fatigues, drags shaving mirror taped to rod under car. Apprentice dentist itching 4 sticky cavities.

Passports pass, passed back.

I glare at rifles, think: they’re for safety.

Fixation affixes fret, gains gainsay.

Guns are meant to go off.

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13

G

uerrero Negro 2

Hotel Ballena. From 2nd busted twin bed she bedroom eyes me as Lu starts shower.

I send Ed out 4 more Pacifico Ballena 32oz bottles.

Door shuts & she’s on me. Straddle saddled.

“I want to be your ★. But I need a ★,” she pants. De-pants.

No time to explain a guy needs a sec to stiffen. Her wet mouth in mine fixes it.

A rough sprint. Used, hardly abused, yet I C so little.

A cheap thrill.

I’ll take it.

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14

G

uerrero Negro 3A

Hot dog stand. Bright corner on ill-lit dirt streets. Chipper vendor, puffy gold cheeks, thief hands, flips snap-shut silver lids, tongs the works, spins grilled links.

Makes small talk w/ regular - regular talk, not small, talk he means. “CĂłmo es tu familia? Dile a ellos les digo hola.â€?

His son pours horchata dixie cups, makes change w/ inherited alacrity, eyes us, then Cs looming 6. Swallows grin.

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15

G

uerrero Negro 3B

Cholo teens, baggy black denim. Cut us, dip digits in tin bins, dummy dumping cooler on peer cashier.

Leader Cs her, fishes gold chain 4 wallet.

Buys her hot dog. They want to C her eat it.

She lets him touch her face; trace elusive world’s illusive entrance.

Her frosty stare ices him, avows ‘poor boy go play.’

She walks off like Ingrid Bergman.

Frazzled bossboy flexes, shakes down vendor for his cut & then the rest of it.

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16

Y

outh Cast

“I’m still young.” She strips in prickly thicket. Trash sacks thwap thorns. She asks @ audience.

“It’s 4 art,” I say. “We choose. Big films audition audiences.”

EYE Cs 10x what I saw.

In natural form she finds her form.

She can act. Tempt. Tips lips & nips in lumpy light.

Smooth seraph smothering scrub’s pricks stickers spiked slash.

Tramps pitaya hydra. Alabaster arms lash medusa braids. Cut. Blood slithers ↓ belly. “Ow!” “Cut.”

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17

Y

outh Cast 2

I make like a makeup artist, baste her breasts w/ blood, chink hip w/ cholla hunks.

EYE pulls off her pouting flailing failing. “No no I’m a mess.”

EYE barges in. “Yes! Yes!” I coalesce w/ theme – beauty beaten by land.

I strip, swab her w/ my best Tee. Caress. Like a starved swab just in port, I make to make it w/ her.

Kneed in groin, I grovel to EYE to preserve her superior posterior splotched w/ cactus smooches.

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18

S

wine Fluid

Rejected, I re-appropriate my appetites. Park beside dead dog.

Perky portly owners, serve pork tacos salsas guac & pork juice portion cups.

They wait to C us slurp delicacy. I chug, scald throat. “Muy buena, gracias.”

Girls grimace at greasy tea’s stringy sinews.

Wife goes. Man stays, squints, perhaps considers quitting cooking. I slap up a tortilla & attack.

“Ed! Fucking drink it!”

EYE pans btw sour actor & dour owner.

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19

U

nderstudy Study

Chicks up front. Lu changed, chatty, ‘my bf this, my bf that.’

I like challenge. Taken is tempting.

EYE likes her darty eye. This darkhorse temptress never learned how to look others in eye.

So when her lent mint-tint lenses land, they wallop.

EYE pans copper-soil gutters to rot palapas to Lu’s jade gems.

Ed nudges me. He I & EYE watch 2 boys on bikes watch a 3legged mutt hump a dog that may very well be a rat.

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20

M

ulege

Breeze. Hush. Lush palms. Bougainvilleas fringe orchards. Rivers gush. Forest frosts desert rim.

Spacious screened taco stand. Stone counter. Bamboo floor.

Fresh lass serves fresh bass w/ 7 salsas. Father filets with celerity and felicity.

Orioles overlap liquid timbres.

Waitress asks to touch Lu’s silk tresses.

EYE Cs Lu’s eyes close, velvety tanned hands thread (sexy slant on Salon scene), Ed loving girl love.

21

P

lanet Boojum

Bands of rubbery black spruce-like stands bend like flagellum or Dr. Seuss’s serpentine stalks shagged w/ fur tuffs.

Red-tipped barrels prickle sun-pelted plat, sprinkle sage & baked clay. Embed ore: onyx-ruby garish crystal-radish gardengarnish.

EYE Cs levitating colored levels, blue sky blued by land’s piquant pigments: coffee mint ochre mud blood.

Lay a Maná song over page & Bam! The opening and/or ending.

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22

L

a Paz

EYE Cs blue-footed boobies perched on port cranes, Sea of Cortez pano-rama, Pemex bano. Girls going in as 2 mujeres hermosan exit. Btw parties. Heels. Skirts. Legs! Lil jackets.

Gringo gals gawp. Señoritas flounce w/o flinching or glancing.

Ed&I entranced-entrenched.

I lift EYE on gas guy grunting at pump insertion, leering at spruce bellezas swanning.

3 guys’ slouched maws & ↑brows agree: here, they grow them more organic.

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23

S

an José del Cabo

Concrete round@s. Beeps blinks scorched palms languid lamps.

Fin de semana de fiesta at Soriana tienda.

Familias. Madres: lipstick purses babies. Padres: cowboyhats boots buckles collars. Niños: bathed, behaving.

Norteña musica. Couple dancing at deli. I try eye contact. Few strangers who C relate.

Teen stocks fruit bins, tumbling plums, hustles out crates of mangos papaya jicama…

Checkout. Mature child sacks staples expertly.

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24

B

each Camp

Arroyo btw 2 stucco villas, 2 tents. Eve wind&rain warped warmed trumped by tequila.

Ed&I lose throw-rocks-at-rocks-contest. Paying bet, playing up no-debt dude 4 Lu, I slurp shot out Ed’s navel. My guess (girls will 1up us) is off. Lu does let me lap her salty throat.

Leaving Ed&nymph necking, we collect surf’s sapphire krill below periwinkle milk moon. In untaken tent Lu learns me copious lenient lessons of rejection.

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25

B

irds&Rain

EYE: roadrunner peddling paddle pitaya labyrinth, puffs crest, parachutes, spears purple gecko, swallows squawks scrams, sand puff. Quail covey promenade, pyrrhuloxias preach flute toots, pelican parade plies wave, scrub jays splash ochre scrub skyblue.

Rain. Cacti bloom, plump plants, earth earthened. EYE cannot smell scent treasure chest.

Girls kiss like lovers off screen to spurn me.

I may find this film.

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26

S

crutiny on Mutiny

Local guide trades bait 4 single cig. “Now we fish big fish.”

EYE sweeps: motor-angling angler against desert sage-soot dunes doomed to be Timeshare.

Guide spits splinter pick, coal eyes glint. Lure hit!

EYE: Ed reeling aqua bull dorado, guide batting hot dolphin dead.

7 fish in boat 1hr in.

Cut motor to lure circling monster. Orca? Ed cracks knuckles packs tackle.

All the better for film if he aims to overboard me, except EYE isn’t sea-proof.

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27

H

ot Spring

In lieu of big tip, guide tipped us to utopian ranch. “Bring fish.”

Inland. Pebbled drive quartz inlaid. Pastoral wealth, shade fowl goats…

Owner ambles up. White linens, silver stache, futból pelota pass w/ niños.

Ed proffers 2 fat snapper. Owner grins, pts out path.

NY couple exits cordial palatine’s pool. Girls drop tops.

I close eyes 4 finer view: my film’s calcifying shell – these true-blue people & their crude rad land.

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28

M

oon Boojum

I imagine colossus scythed moon post-cyclone, spared winsome weeds.

Eye Cs limber timber wind-bowed, bowing to dust-crust sowed w/ cellulose jewelry: pin cushion coins, ruby-buttoned barrels, jade pewter paddles, alloy fringed aloes, titanium chaff; Lu loping leaping 3Xsow-cowing, slaking desert’s thirst to be 1strate stage, spinning supplicating becoming Last plot pt allotted.

Lady-landscape communion.

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becoming.

29

B

reakfast Oasis

Boogey N. SoDak ETA 4 days. Bellies sated at fated cafĂŠ. Sister owners, silk hair jet.

Ambrosial tamales. Plates dense as discuses. Table tiled desert mosaic.

Faded starlet pays (4Xtip), asks sisters to act (stalwart 4 her to seek script sup role).

EXT- Dust Lot Cute colts quaff potent coffee, crank cigs, milk break, scowl, curse. Diesel smog smears fallow scraped landscape, pan to Pemex, chugging truck.

Forfeit infectious.

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✓

pt. 2

Sleepy station, snoring shepherd, sherbet sunset. Spdbump’s spikes glitter. Glide over or puncture? Guards guard guards in 8v8 soccer match. Skins’ smiley striker jogs off scratch dirt pitch, checks papers, flexes 4 girls, flicks ↓ switch, spdbump’s jagged jaws sink.

“Cuidado eh.” Guard, I & EYE C soapy moon. “La noche.”

Sprints on. Beauty banana’d ball feeds breakaway. Charging gloveless goalie slides on gravel, stones him.

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31

H

oly Cow

Dusk. Driving, hands 10&5. Herky jerky. Dark.

Hunch(ed) – huh-harm?(shoulders) Ghost cow, traincarwide, pallid moonglow, beluga-white.

Wheel – roulette & helmsman’s rudder. Swerve L ln, as if thru cow, swerve R ln, no squeak.

Girls sleep thru (cow&night).

“Better park,” Ed says.

Sit by bitty bandit campfire. Polish Polish vodka, talk about life, us still living & the cow’s credibility.

“Ghost? Hallucination?”

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32

1

Man Bandido Band

Bean breakfast. Ed&I flippin thru clips. Odd bandy-legged man lurches up HWY 1 grunting, hurting. Hunting? He’s no bonafide bandido, no crook to weak sneak. He does have a 6” blade glazed a chrome sun-blaze. Ghost eyes milked, washed.

Sloshed? Drugged?

Pauses by bumper. Poses. Sheathes knife in sweatpants’ band.

“Hock.” Hawks lu-gee. Boogies ample vaudeville jig.

“What gives?” I ask Ed. “An audition?”

32

33

B

randed Bandido

Conveys aim to act. Pretends wineskin bandolier’s a purse, poses like a lady, pleads, “Película – like Robert Rodriguez – chch-ch-ch.” I get it, quick cuts, chopped takes.

We run a sketch. Sham bandido plays wham-bam bandido.

Marauds Ed. They wallow in gutter wallow awhile, then, when knife glints against tourist’s throat, Ed & I swallow sandy panic marbles.

“And… Cut.”

33

34

B

aneful Bandido

Sheathes knife, grins, shakes Ed’s hand. Appears, rather than to grimly graft us, he meant to hone craft. He asks to watch playback. Problem is, viewing footage as macabre departure from my movie’s soul (this raw land’s tender people) I/Eye faked filming.

When I refuse to hand over camera he brandishes knife. Tent unzips. He turns.

We sense our spiteful judgments nearly justified as out step the girls.

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35

B

antam Bandido

I C in slow mo

asif in cu tt ing

room.

After he lunges 4 Lu I empower EYE bc his choice is intriguing; I sense a short story.

Lu lurks free

he detains dame.

Flailing she bites his arm; his false bawl is bawdy.

But Ed is already a ramming alpha ram i n g plea warns her captor.

Rash slash

/

so

deals Ed a grave groin gash.

35

“Ed!� her

pe a l

36

B

ludgeoned Bandido

Wounded Ed reenters ring. Lu leaps on thug’s back. Even match.

1 more & we’d win.

I hesitate 4 same aim as 10 sec ago.

As long as I endure (ie: don’t get gouged by gauche gaucho) I shall be a legit artist.

I set EYE on bumper, frame shot btw tents.

I strut up.

Ed’s 1st kick crumples him behind tent.

“Ok people,” I nag, “Can we keep him between the tents. Aha. Drag him up. Yes! Tilt his head. Ok Ed. As you were…”

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37

F

in

Anchorage 2010

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38

A

bout the Author:

Last summer, in a cabin on the Chickaloon mudflats near Anchorage, Sean Ulman, worder birder server, shelved his long novel about Seward and art to write the short story "Radland".

Resting on the cabin porch, listening to hermit thrushes’ dueling flutes, chowing spam and ramen, reflecting on road trips through Baja Mexico, he measured his spirit near a harmony he thought only approachable by works of art.

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