The Wilds (26 page)

“Birds of a feather,” says Jeff, glancing mournfully in her direction. I sit down next to him.

At the front of the room, Ghunthag, a disgraced anthropologist rumored to have been arrested in the seventies for smuggling opium in a dead gorilla’s chest, demonstrates the Levalloisian flint-chiseling technique. Dressed in a deerskin tunic and Birkenstocks, he shows us how to produce a tortoise-shaped spear tip. He compares this particular tip type to the Clovis point, discusses the nuances of the Susquehanna projectile point, and
then lets us go at it—twelve cranky, caffeine-deprived wretches, pounding at flint chunks with crude stone chisels. Sipping from a ceramic mug, Ghunthag strolls among us, offering tips and pointers on tips and pointers and making bad puns.

“What do you think he’s drinking?” I whisper.

“Green tea,” says Jeff. “The fucking hippie.”

“I would kill for a caffeinated beverage.”

“But would you steal for it?” Jeff points at something he has hidden under the table: Ghuntag’s thermos, glimmering and mermaid-green.

“Want to blow this joint?” says Jeff.

“Hell yes.”

As Ghunthag shows the class how to bind a flint point to a spear with deer sinew, Jeff and I slip out and hightail it toward the woods with our contraband tea. Laughing like hoodlums, we plunk down in a wild olive grove.

We open the thermos, sigh as steam purls out. Kneeling reverently, we take a long, luxuriant sniff.

We pour tea into the thermos top. Pass it between us. Sip.

We relish this brew of civilization, nectar of gods, exquisite perfume of the Orient. We perk up. The sky is the blue of flame. Purple olives glow in the branches above us. Wildflowers waver in the breeze, and two yellow butterflies zigzag amid the beauty.

Bogwag of the Shaggy Bear People reclines on his side. His Art Zoyd T-shirt gapes. I try not to look at his belly fur, so bearish and frank compared to the smooth, coy abdomen of my fiancé. I most definitely avoid the moist bundle of his genitals, which rests against his sunburned thigh. I keep my eyes fixed on the sky, the branches, the dangling fruits.

I think I hear Bogwag grunt.

“What did you say?” I ask.

“Nothing. Oh, shit. What the hell?”

Bogwag leaps into a crouching position, points toward a cluster of brambles. I stand up. Some kind of redheaded, ridge-browed, ape-thing is peering at us through thorny vegetation. Now I see three ape-things mumbling behind the brambles.

“Agbagaba,” says one of them. It leaps forward, hunched and frizzy, spear in hand. And then a dozen of these creatures crawl from the bush, closing in on us.

“Fake Neanderthals,” whispers Jeff. “Actors. No worries.”

“Still kind of creepy. Like those cannibalistic hominids in
Quest for Fire
.”

“Excellent film. But, please, don’t say ‘cannibalistic.’”

“They’re fake, remember? Some kind of theater troupe.”

The Neanderthal leader, who’s wearing those ridiculous plastic hillbilly teeth, grins.

“Grogoth vagamoo,” he exclaims, hoisting his spear. I notice an iPhone pouch dangling from his suede diaper. He’s wearing Crocs and smells reassuringly of soap.

A wild-haired female lunges playfully at Jeff, her naked breasts dotted with clusters of fake frizz. The same synthetic orange fur adorns her arms and thighs. Suppressing a giggle, she snatches the silver thermos top from Jeff, twirls it in the sunlight to catch sparkles.

The fake Neanderthals rub their bellies and point at us. Smacking their lips, they look us up and down.

“I think we’re supposed to make a run for it,” I say. “Stimulate our fight-or-flight response and fry a thousand calories.”

“Not really feeling up for a jog,” says Jeff. “Kungar the tax attorney said they chased her for five miles yesterday. But then, she’s a natural athlete.”

“Oh,” I say, realizing that I don’t want Jeff to see me run. “It’s almost wine time anyway.”

We lope down the trail toward the hotel, glancing back at the hominids, who are now kicking around a hacky sack. Perched on the embankment behind them is a small woman holding a bow and arrow, ready to shoot, her centerfold-worthy silhouette backlit by the setting sun.

“Whoa,” says Jeff, rubbing his eyes and gawking. “I must be dreaming.”

The woman vanishes into the trees. I wonder if I should sign up for the Aurignacian Archery Workshop.

When we emerge from the forest, it’s almost dusk. We stroll right into an elegant patio scene, where cave babes lounge upon molded concrete chaises and frat dudes in loincloths feed them kabobs. A waterfall cascades down a boulder, filling a stone-slab pool. We’re back at Hominid Hotel, where meat smoke always wafts along the corridors.

At dinner the next night, Jeff strolls up to my table.

“Hey, Vogmar. Guess who I just ran into.”

“Who?”

“Our Neanderthal friends. One of them had the gall to bite me this time. I think she got carried away. Reminded me of my ex-wife.”

Jeff displays a set of red bite marks on his forearm and sits down at my table.

“Smells like a lawsuit.”

“Actually, I kind of encouraged her. She kept trying to grab my phone, giggling like a freak.”

“So your ex was a biter?” I say, wondering if his ex-wife is attractive, athletic, fleet of foot and long of limb, wondering why dumpy dudes like Jeff feel entitled to such women.

“It’s complicated.” Jeff winces and grins simultaneously.

As we dig into our grilled venison, my phone throbs like a persistent insect in my bag. I scroll through texts from my fiancé, feeling queasy as “
What’s up, sexy cavegirl
?” morphs into “
What the hell is the problem here? Six days of silence? I don’t know whether to be angry or worried sick
.”

I’m not exactly sure what the problem is, though I find his anger invigorating. I picture him grimacing. I picture him up out of his chair, pacing with clenched fists.

I stuff my phone back into my bag. I concentrate on the proper chewing of venison, producing just the right salivation level for maximum protein absorption.

After dinner, Zugnord introduces Dr. Randy Homes, evolutionary psychologist and author of
The Caveman Dating Guide
. Homes, a scrunched mouse of a man, natters on about testosterone-driven, promiscuous he-men and the faithful earth mothers who can’t help but love them.

“All men are hardwired to keep harems,” says Dr. Homes. “So, ladies, if he cheats on you, cut him some slack: his genes are to blame. Thank your lucky stars he’s not out raping people. Men are essentially semen-spurting machines, blindly programmed by their selfish genes.”

I think of my fiancé, burrowed indoors, protected by double-lined blackout shades. I can easily see him
hunched in the fug of our computer room on a weeklong porn binge, crushed beer cans scattered on the floor, leftovers congealing in Styrofoam takeout tubs, his multi-touch Magic Mouse crusted with suspicious secretions.

“Good Lord,” Jeff hisses into my ear. “He sounds like my ex-wife, who was a raging sexist. That whole rape-gene theory has been thoroughly discredited. Fuck this lame pseudoscience. Are you up for an evening stroll?”

“Men are inseminators; women are incubators,” lectures Dr. Homes.

I pick up my purse. “Let’s go.”

The moon, pitted and ancient and lit to capacity, shines upon the forest path. Exploring a side trail, Jeff and I find ourselves in thick brush. Suddenly, we see fire flickering beyond the bracken. We hear the throbbing of hand drums. We scramble through shrubs to get a better look.

Dead center in a Stonehenge-esque formation of rocks, basking in the heat of a bonfire, Zugnord reclines on a granite slab. A dozen naked cave babes kneel before him, bearing ceramic bowls. Shadowy drummers pound skins just beyond the firelight. Six bodybuilder types, all of them short and wearing fur diapers, stand guard with javelins. And then an ancient shaman, clad in a tunic of raven feathers and wearing a leather backpack, steps into the sacred arena. Except for a few wisps of gray frizz, he’s completely bald, his cranium pitted like the moon.

Chanting, the shaman pulls a stick from his backpack and scratches a symbol onto the ground. Next he produces a cloth bundle, unwraps it, and hands Zugnord a dark lump.

“Jesus,” whispers Jeff. “I think that’s some kind of animal organ.”

“Bet you it’s a deer heart,” I say.

As we watch Zugnord accept the object, we giggle nervously. Zugnord intones some mumbo jumbo while the shaman performs an obsequious jig. Then, without further ceremony, Zugnord devours the thing. The drumming stops. Blood drips down Zugnord’s chin. The shaman recedes into the shadows from whence he came. Zugnord belches, spits a piece of gristle onto the ground.

Cave babes creep forward with their bowls.

“Holy shit,” says Jeff. “Is that Kungar?”

“Who’s Kungar?”

“You know: the hot tax attorney.”

And there she is, the insufferably hot, naturally athletic tax attorney who complains about her nonexistent gut. I didn’t recognize her right away because she looks so much like the other cave babes, generically perfect, tall and toned with washboard abs and flowing shampoo-commercial hair.

Jeff sighs as the cave babes remove Zugnord’s loincloth. They smear what looks like blood upon his torso,
giving his groin area a good rubbing down, after which his horn of plenty rises. With the bored expression of a prime minister accepting an endless series of handshakes, Zugnord receives the oral ministrations of all twelve cave babes, including the tax attorney. When, at last, he mounts the hottest chick (the one who looks like Raquel Welch) from behind, the drums start throbbing again. The guards drop their spears and join the fun. Within five minutes, various couples are going at it among the stone monuments, representing a variety of copulatory positions, including the reverse-cowgirl, the wheelbarrow, and the seated-scissors positions. Kungar the tax attorney has paired up with a particularly buff guard. One of the cave babes is going down on another cave babe. Two of the guards are making out, gently stroking each other’s beards. Meanwhile, stray cave babes stroll among the fornicators, caressing thighs, breasts, and buttocks.

The theatrical nature of the setting and costumes, the perfection of the bodies, the silvery lunar light, all make the orgy seem like an Internet figment—distant, composed of pixels. I think of my fiancé, mouth slack and panting, eyes fixed on his laptop screen. Once, unexpectedly home from work early, I’d stumbled upon him in such a state. I’d felt a stab of jealousy upon glimpsing three busty vixens in schoolgirl plaid. But mostly,
I’d felt an eerie sadness, as though my fiancé had been body-snatched, his mind teleported
elsewhere
. When he turned toward me, his clammy skin had a strange cadaverous sheen. His eyes possessed a ghoulish luster, the same look he got when scanning eBay for vintage stereo speakers or reading Amazon product reviews or clicking through a stranger’s endless Facebook pics. I tried to explain that I wasn’t a prude, that the images struck me as depressingly cheesy, that I’d expected something more sophisticated from him. And then I walked away, removing my body from the terrain of his hibernation, but he’d followed me out into the brighter air of the kitchen, the screen door open to late afternoon cicadas, and salvaged the evening with a joke about our lawn-fanatic neighbor, describing the old man as a rabid shar-pei.

Jeff pulls a wineskin from his rucksack and offers it to me. I take a swig.

“I feel like I’m watching TV,” I whisper.

“Exactly,” says Jeff. “That ineffable feeling of narcissistic dissociation.” And then we find ourselves in that awkward yet primordial predicament, mouths hovering so close that our breath mingles. I’m drunk enough to lean towards him, but then somebody screams.

Zugnord the cave king is cowering behind a boulder. His guards scramble for their javelins. Cave babes stand around with crossed arms, looking annoyed. Into the
firelight steps a small woman clad in a tunic of leaves. Her hair is long and matted, her face caked with blue mud. When she hoists a bow and arrow and aims the contraption at Zugnord, I recognize her petite silhouette.

“Watch your ass, Wilbur,” she says. “Did I not express my discontent with your plan to build another Neanderthal village near my personal territory?”