Agent Orange - Inconsequential

Episode 5 - DORK continued...

FROM THE JOURNALS OF AGENT ORANGE:

Life is an adventure, but obviously one adventure is not enough for the average human. If it was, we wouldn’t have books, TV, movies, travel agents. The wanderlust hits some of us harder than others. For some, a semi-annual week on a nameless beach with a multi-colored drink festooned with fruit, flowers and miniature umbrellas is enough to keep them strolling through life. Others might need a romance novel or a noir mystery. Still others need something more exotic – aliens or superheroes, monsters or knights, magic or futuristic technology.

In the end it’s all escapism, distraction. Escaping the mundane, breaking the cycle of repetition, distracting yourself from the banality of an “everyday life”. Some people live with occasional distractions and others never settle into a pattern. The later are the real adventurers. Those who refuse to acquiesce to the lure of comfort and stability. To them repetition and the status quo are anathema, poison to the soul. To them new experiences are the sustenance they require to survive. Some must know everything. Some must see everything. Some must taste everything.

These lives of risk are no more than games of chance. There are losers and also winners. That uncertainty is a beautiful flame and until you touch it you have no idea whether it will burn you to ash or make you shine.

CHAPTER 5

Brandon: “I can’t see anything.”

Alan: “Who’s got the flashlight?”

Mike: “I do but the goddamn thing is dead or something.”

Alan: “You didn’t check it while we were packing?”

Mike: “I did check it. It’s just a piece of shit.”

Brandon: “I can’t believe we only have one flashlight.”

Alan: “Oh well, guess it’s cancelled.”

Orange: “We don’t have only one flashlight.”

Later…

“I told you this was gonna be lame,” said Alan. “What did you think we were going to find down here, hidden treasure?”

Brandon sulked. Orange stared deeper into the sewer, trying to see beyond the pitiful amount of light his flashlight gave off. Mike was spinning his nunchuks impatiently waiting for wandering monsters to smite.

“People hide all kinds of shit in the sewers. We could have found a body,” said Mike. He was just as pissed as everyone else that so far their trip into the sewers had been uneventful but he was more willing to continue than the others.

“Great,” said Alan, “a body would be perfect. We could bring it to school and dissect it in the lab. Or if it was a girl, Brandon could get his first touch of boobflesh.”

“I…” Brandon started, but he really didn’t have a defense against these types of accusations.

“He touched Mike’s sister’s boob,” Orange stated, as if he were only partially paying attention to the conversation, his standard way of communicating.

‘Bullshit,” said Mike. He turned on Brandon twirling his nunchucks in what might have been a threatening gesture if Brandon could have seen it.

“It was an accident,” said Orange in the same monotone as before.

“Still counts,” said Alan.

Brandon smiled at the memory he had relived tens of times, mostly in the privacy of a bathroom or bedroom.

“Okay let’s change the subject,” said Mike, “I don’t want to be hanging around in the dark with you fags talking about boobs.”

“If we were fags we wouldn’t be talking about boobs,” said Orange.