Mensa in the Jungle
a humorous short story by J.Macon King
“You a Mensa, Jack?” My next-door neighbor, Dean, asked in his deep manly voice, from across our side fence.
“No. I’ve taken a couple IQ tests high enough to qualify, but I’m not officially…”
“My Mensa group is having a party.”
“You’re in Mensa?” I tried to modulate not sounding surprised. Dean? Mensa? The oldest and best-known Brainiac society in the world. Member brains needs to be in the top 3% of the world.
SO IT BEGINS
I first met Dean when my wife and I were awakened about 6:00 A.M. the first night in our new home in Marin County by the eerie sound of banging from our front garden. Following this was bleating and crying. I slid open our bedroom glass door and peered out. An animal was at out front garden gate and a person was with it. A deer had his head and antlers stuck in the slats of our gate. In my underwear, I stepped out onto my deck. In his underwear, a muscular bearded man straddled the deer like a pony, holding an antler with one hand.
Had he been taking his deer for a ride and ran into my gate? He must be trying to help unstick the poor thing. In his other hand i noticed a Rambo knife. Loosening a gate board from the deer’s head?
He paused. I paused.
“Morning. I’m your neighbor…” the man jutted his beard toward next door. “Dean.”
He placed the blade under the at the struggling deer’s throat and looked for my reaction. Oh? Oh! Recovering I said the first thing to come to mind. “Hold it right there, you crazy Bambi killer!” No, that wasn’t it. Actually, I said, “Do what you have to do.”
He did. Promptly slit the deer’s throat. When the deer stopped jerking, he untangled the antlers while calmly saying, “I’ll save you some venison.” Dean started a bloody trail as he dragged the deer back to his house.
My young wife, Bix, still groggy from our bottle of celebratory champagne, tugged her nightgown down, smoothed her blonde hair and inquired, “What was all that?”
“I just met our neighbor.”
“That’s nice.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said, “Uh, yeah. He’s getting a housewarming present for us.”
Shortly, we heard a hose dragging and spraying out front. Destroying the evidence.
Later that day I heard chopping and sawing and went out on the front deck to see what was happening. Dean heard me over the fence and yelled to me to come over into his garage. I went next door, past his intimidating, gray-black pickup in the drive, and past his piles of pallets, chopped-up pallets, and firewood. I would realize that this man was obsessed with firewood, had fires in at least two fireplaces, plus two wood burning stoves, going pretty much constantly. Even in summer. Perhaps he was cold-blooded. And related to Paul Bunyan.
I knocked and entered his spacious two-car garage facing his rather fortress-appearing home lined with boulders. Among the assorted Ducati and classic Norton motorcycles, scraped-up motorcycle leathers and helmets, work benches, tools, axes, chainsaws, chains, gas cans, and, oh my, bear traps!? dangling on walls— hung, upside down on hooks from a ceiling beam, a dressed (split-open, headless, and disemboweled) deer.
“I’ll get you some of this meat in a week or so, when it cures. OK, Jack?” Dean was quite a bit older than I thought, maybe mid-fifties. He eyed me.
“Uh, my wife is vegetarian.” I said watching his eyes narrow. “But, great. you know, more for me. Thanks.”
He nodded, less warily. “You know, in Marin County, killing deer is illegal. Even if deer are eating thousands of dollars-worth of your landscaping. Regularly and repeatedly which they do. Leaping gracefully over fences, moats and small dogs. Also a crime to kill any other creature which may be dangerous. Protected species include rattlesnakes, coyotes, wolves, black widows, scorpions and perhaps yellow jackets. Because ‘they were here first.’ ”
So I was now technically an accessory after the fact, and he was sure I wouldn’t rat him out. I bragged to him I, too, loved motorcycles, and owned a BMW R90S. His face lit up…then he lit up a pungent joint and handed it to me to seal the deal. It smelled like a skunk had sprayed it. Having tapered off when I married, I got higher than I wanted after a few puffs. Something scratched at the interior door.
“Be cool, don’t act afraid, but DO NOT put out your hand,” Dean told me.
Another deer? Alive and kept as livestock? A llama? Skunk? At this point, to my stoned mind, nothing would surprise me. He opened the door, and two enormous giant huge dogs came bounding out. And straight at me.
To my credit, I did not run, hide behind Dean, or climb up a bear trap chain. I held my ground and said, “Good dogs, who’s the good dogs?” Also, to my credit, I owned a dog, usually have had dogs, and generally, dogs liked me. The pair did a sniff of me and fortunately, there just happened to be a bloody man-size piece of meat nearby, which was interesting and more edible smelling.
“What? What are…”
“Akitas.” Dean calmly explained. “From the mountains in Japan. Good bear-hunters. That’s Kurasawa and Samurai. Kura the bitch and Sam the stud.”
Freaking bear hunting dogs? Of course, that’s what Dean would have.
“Anything that comes in the yard, they’ll kill. This deer’s lucky he didn’t come into my yard.”
I looked at the slaughtered deer carcass. Yep, lucky. As a rabbit’s foot.
Because we got high and we both liked bikes, and his dogs didn’t kill me, just like that, Dean and I were apparently friends. Dean was threatening-looking but had a composed manner. Like a good athlete, or an assassin —ice water in the veins. Holding back until a move needed to be made. I eventually determined that the strong weed was self-medicating for him. I enjoyed his sense of humor. True, a different sort of humor, which I was not so familiar, but would grow on me.
***
DEAR MENSA
A couple of weeks later Bix and I were staring at the pile of fresh and frozen venison on our counter. Now back to the Mensa party invite from across Dean’s Akita-Proof Fence:
My neighbor Dean was many things: a carnivorous, macho, motorcycling maniac, owner of a classic Porsche 911 as well as the largest, meanest, Darth-Vader-looking Dodge Ram pickup truck in town, but…
“Mensa’s having what, a chess party?” I inquired. “I have a bunch of sets I can bring, like my Napoleon set! Josephine is the queen. Of course, you would know that…” Dean slowly shook his graying, curly black-haired head no. I took another shot in the dark. “Oh, I know, Avalon Hill games.”
“What’s that?”
“Complex hex-grid map board games like Waterloo, Blitzkrieg, Stalingrad…”
“No.”
“Bridge, Scrabble, palindrome contests? Fibonacci races? Oh I know, Go. Go offers more possible board configurations than there are atoms in the universe.”
“You really get wound up, don’t you, Jack?”
“It’s just I’ve never been to a Mensa party, Dean, so I have no idea.”
“Apparently not.”
“Frankly, Jack, the co-founder, Berrill was disappointed that so many members spent so much time solving puzzles. This is a party party. We have fun. We make up our own live games or mind games, I guess. This party is at a kind of nature ranch we’ve booked, out past Sacramento. On the river. Catered, cabins. My wife is Mensa as well. Bring your wife.”
“Bix? I’m not sure Bix…”
“Oh, she qualifies.”
That should have been a clue, but maybe I’m a C-minus almost-Mensa. I went inside and told Bix.
“Mensa?” She giggled. “He’s Mensa? I thought he was a member of Neanderthalsa.”
***
THE UNCOOL RIDE
In my aging, blue Volvo wagon, with one of the once ubiquitous “Baby on Board” stickers I could not scrape off, I drove us up endless Highway 80 in endless swarms of cars and big rigs. My beautiful wife, Bix, and Dean sit in back. Bix is a native San Franciscan, former stage actress turned personal trainer. Dean’s wife SuSu was at shotgun. Seeming an odd match, SuSu, was also fit, a yoga devotee. The only child of a former Ambassador to Japan, she was gracious and semi-formal (she never used contractions and found ways to contradict people without appearing to), grew perfect orchids, and decorated their home with Japanese artsy items.
“Jack. I’m surprised you have a Volvo.”
“Yeah?”
“All the motorcycle riders I know can’t stand them.”
“Huh. Funny, the Volvo salesman didn’t mention that.” I laughed at my own joke since I bought the wagon used from some lady. “I like them, because cops ignore them and apparently babies feel very safe boarding them.” Biz and I had been considering babies since before the move. “You notice that your Porsche and my Volvo are almost the same color of blue?”
“They’re not.”
The car went silent prompting Biz to intervene, saying, “Dean, I’d love to hear about your…self?”
He began telling us a bit of his background: former defense attorney, implied disbarment, semi-pro motorcycle racer. Oh, and a former large-scale pot-farmer in California’s “Emerald Triangle.” He said a few people he knew were busted, and trailed off… so I asked him how he made out.
Dean said, with previously-referenced humor: “All right. I have high friends in places.”
SuSu changed the subject. “We’ve never been to this resort but we’ve heard all about it from our group. Most of us are staying in rooms in the main building.”
“So, Mensa on one side and woMensa on the other?” I joked.
That got a snort from Dean, at least.
“We have you two in a private cabin,” SuSu continued without smiling, “across the meadow from the “bunkhouse” as they call it. Even though there’s no bunks.”
“So, it’s been debunked?” I tried again.
A cute laugh from SuSu this time. “This is really glamping, not camping.”
“What’s that?” Bix asked.
SuSu explained that glamping originated in the U.K. in the 2000’s to brand “glamorous camping.” She elaborated, “This was popularized on knighted gentry estates of heirs who couldn’t afford the appearance of giving a crap about maintenance, due to being in their cups half the time.”
“Forty acres along the South Fork of the American River where we can swim, and a pool,” added Dean.
“Oh, can’t wait,” Bix said.
ARE WE HERE YET?
At Sacramento, Dean directed me winding our way through brown hilly and forested areas to end up somewhere toward Placerville. Eventually, through a couple of rustic gates and down a long, graveled private road. A large two-story farmhouse with decks came into view and we stopped in front by the “OFFICE” sign.
We all got out to stretch in the hot sun, and a very lean, very tanned man in his thirties came out, wearing a big, contrasted white-toothed smile. And nothing else.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said almost chortled. “I’m Dick, one of the owners,” he enthused greeted in obvious gayness with his dick dangling, “and you must be part of the Mensa group. Some are here already.”
It’s funny how when one sees a naked person unexpectedly one can’t stop staring at the nether region. His entire body was tanned. All over. He was brown as nuts, even his… Then another man came out, younger, almost a twin, also naked.
“I’m Jamie. Hello, howdy.”
“Oh, Dick and Jamie,” I joked.
Bix’s eyes and mouth widened at the realization what kind of camp this was. She involuntarily made the classic two-armed cover over her tube top and shorts.
A large jet-black dog suddenly bounded out from the house. Taller than Dean’s Akitas, but lankier and a long head. A Great Dane. The hound leaped toward SuSu, sniffing her, who, used to XXL dogs was unfazed, then on to sniff the crotch of a shocked Bix, who recoiled.
“Peter! Stop it! Behave!” both Dick and Jamie cried. Jamie lurched for the dog collar and eventually brought the dog to heel. “Sorry, he’s still young.”
“Looks almost full grown to me.” Dean stoked the Dane’s long rectangular head and sized it up. “Almost three feet tall, maybe 130 lbs.”
Dean presented us all in a cursory introduction, Dick gave some information and maps to us men, clearly checking us out, and pointed down the road, now dirt, and exclaimed, “Yummy dinner on the big deck at six, so see everyone then.”
“Oh,” Jamie interjected, “Remember, we are in the wilds here,” he chuckled, “in more ways than one. There are wild animals about, so just be aware, and no open food, things like that.”
“So, a nudist colony, huh?” Bix said in a slow voice. “I don’t think that was mentioned.”
“No. Not a colony. Nudist camp. Don’t you love it?” SuSu replied. “So free, unencumbered by society’s boundaries.” In a proactive defense to Bix’s obvious concern, she continued, “In Japan, they are very comfortable with nakedness. It is even celebrated each year in Okayama in the Hadaka Matsuri, meaning Naked Festival.”
“I do kinda like being a nudist occasionally, “Bix said. “Usually in my own bathroom, and bedroom.”
“Men pee in the bushes, so consider it like a big bathroom,” Dean joked. I think.
“Uh, I guess I should not have,” Bix said quietly (while I hoped she wouldn’t say “come”), but thankfully she murmured “brought so many clothes…”
DONDE ESTA LA FIESTA?
Back in the car with Bix upfront. In a quarter mile or so of oak-tree lined dusty road, we passed some weather-beaten cabins (former sheds?), including our own #9 “Moon Cabana.” We rounded the “meadow” to a less weather-beaten building (repurposed barn?) with a full second-floor deck.
In front were several wrinkly, saggy old guys playing bocce ball. Their saggy un-sunned groins and rears white as flour.
“Hey, Dean, look. See—games.”
As we dropped our neighbors off with their bags, “hellos” came from the deck with the sound of a jacuzzi. Naked bodies and sagging breasts waved from the rail.
Dean and SuSu waved greetings and asked us, “Want to meet some folks now?”
Bix and I looked at each other. So far, not so glamorous. Then again, she grew up in a socialite family and I had lived for a time in Hollywood. And Bix and I appeared to be the youngest guests there. By far.
“Love to a little later,” Bix said. “So hot. I’d rather get settled and go for a swim first.”
As soon as we were driving off to our Moon Cabana, I winced in advance of Bix, in her tight voice, “What the fuck, Jack? A nudist camp?”
Fortunately, I was Mensa enough to have my defense prepared. “Honey. You’re already in short shorts and a tight tube top. Your bikini is smaller than, I don’t know, a Barbie doll’s. So, you’re already not that far off.”
“If you had boobs, and a muff,” she said, “you’d be more…”
It was true, Bix had some boobs, all right. A blind man couldn’t miss those. Now, Exhibit B of my Defense: “Look, men have to worry about getting a big boner in front of everybody, so that makes…”
“You better fucking not.”
So much for that, so I said in mock milquetoast, “Yes, dear.” My mind, or something, wandered to what pert SuSu would reveal beneath her staid façade. “Oh shit. But, uh, this conversation is not helping…”
“Ja-ack! We should dump our stuff and go straight to the cold-ass river to cool you down.”
We pulled up next to our shedana cabana, ran in with our bags. As we stripped I wondered if her bikini was going to make an appearance.
“Screw it, but this better not be a swinger party, too.” She noticed my thoughtful look, and shook her head with a scoff.
“Honey, relax, we’re on vacation in the deep dark woods.” I reached for her singing the old 60’s song, “Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good…”
“Damn it, Jack, it’s not funny— I think I’m about in my moon cycle.”
“Is it a full moon?”
“Close.”
“Oh? Oh. You mean it’s an official Moonsa Mensa Menses?”
She grabbed a towel and snapped it at me, then wrapped it around her nethers.
“What is it with men and women?” I asked. “Men, and wolves, get hornier with a full moon, and women…get their, you know…”
“Jack, criminy, it’s OK, it’s a real word. Men! You can’t even say it.”
“Uh, you didn’t say it either! We’re never sure if it’s… and we don’t want to jinx…”
“The river beach is just a ways down,” she said, ignoring my comment, looking at the map. “If we take the shortcut trail instead of the road.”
I followed her towel out as she headed down the bushy, viney path in the rear. After only a few steps, I saw the oily gleam from the leaves.
“Oh no,” I groaned.
She followed my gaze. “Is that poison oak? No way. It is.”
“And it is…” we looked around. “Everywhere…” we said in unison.
“Jack, are you freaking kidding me?” Bix asked. “A nudist colony full of poison oak?! Is this a nudist colony for masochists?”
Bix was very sensitive to poison oak. Me, not so much. But if she got, and we slept together, which I was looking forward to, I would get it.
We carefully cut went back to the road which was also lined with poison oak bushes as if landscaped. After a short walk arrived at a grassy lawn below a knoll, with a shallow part of the river beyond the man-made sandy beach. A lovely little oasis.
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
Another couple, about our age, were already frolicking in the water and we dropped our things and entered also. The curly-haired woman in the water had large frame eye-glasses and small breasts, so, of course the man, hipster-looking with man-bun and anime tattoos on his, well, a lot of places, started a conversation with my wife’s breasts. The woman was drinking a Miller and offered us cans from a net bag tied to a rock near shore. I gladly accepted.
This Rachel did have other attributes to make up for her sizing, and wading back in the river we conversed about Mensa. This was their first outing with the group as well. I couldn’t tell if she was flirty, since I’d been out of the game for a while, but she was very smiley and touchy.
Then, in British accent, she blurted, “I like the cut of your jib, sir.”
I refrained from looking down to see if something was going on. Embarrassed, though a little flattered, I blurted, I mean quipped, “Funny, I’m not Jewish.”
Rachel hesitated before blurting, “I know. I’m Jewish. That’s not what…sorry, I was trying…”
We were saved by Bix loudly informing the man, “My eyes are STILL up here.” She pointed to her face.
At this point I had no idea what was happening with Rachel or Biz. Apparently, the eyes didn’t stay up there as Bix soon waded to me, swigged my beer, gave Rachel a glare, and with a back-entry flourish, belligerently backstroked out away from everyone.
Dean suddenly appeared right next to me. Stealthily, nakedly, hair-ily, and a bit agitatedly. He must be very good at stalking deer, and bears. I introduced him to Rachel and, either cleverly or lamely, asked him, “What’s your wife SuSu up to?”
He gave me a funny look and said, “Holding court in the jacuzzi.”
“You seem, uh, what’s going on?”
“I have to get in the water. I’ll tell you in a minute.”
We three joined Eyes Up Here and all of us went further in toward Bix to cool off in the late-afternoon heating-up sun. We are all buck naked, of course, so it was more comfortable, at least for some of us, to be able to get in up to the waist. As we went further out the river went from warm to tepid to cool to cold to quite cold and at a certain point the current picked up and all but Dean backed off. He swam out and continued swimming at first upstream, testing its white-watering strength against his, I suppose, and then down current. He finally swam back to us.
Bix went into shore for a beer. A few moments later all hell would break loose.
“Watch out, Bix.” Dean said sonorously over the river rushing. “There’s poison oak right by that rock.”
“And lots of stupid yellow-jackets,” she called back.
“Bix is terrified of yellow jackets,” I said.
“And there’s no wasp traps. Well, a couple non-op ones by the jacuzzi. What’s worse—all this poison oak! You see that it’s…”
“EVERYWHERE,” he and I said in unison.
“They should just spray it all with Roundup, ” Dean continued. “If I had known, I would have brought my own Roundup. This is unacceptable. I’m going to ask the if they even have any Roundup. If not, I should push both those skinny fairylarries in the poison oak. It’s irresponsible to let it get out of hand like that. And hot water, like in jacuzzis, open one’s pores up completely to poison oak oil.”
I was taken aback as I, fortunately, had never seen him upset.
Eyes Up Here, of course, had to man-bun-splain to Dean. “Plants are neither good nor bad. They just are…”
WE ARE ALL ANIMALS
“Shh,” Dean said, looking up the hill from the river.
“Don’t you…’
“See that?” Dean pointed. We all looked.
“No. What?”
“Right there. Flashes of tawny hide.”
Eyes Up Here and I saw nothing again, then looked at each other.
“Thought it was mountain lion. Possibly a bobcat. Disappeared now. Lions will circle around and sneak up on you.”
“Wild big cats are my totem animal, you know,” Eyes Up Here announced. “Anyway, as I was saying, before your interruption— plants were here on earth first. Before animals. And man? In fact, man, I should say mankind, well, really personkind, is a total late-comer. Almost a trespasser on the kingdom of flora.” Yet…” He weaved his hands benevolently. “…yet, we are all animals.”
I looked to Dave to see his response, which was nil.
“And Roundup? Really, dude? Near this waterway and ecosystem? And those wonderful forest cats and creatures.” He pointed up the hill. “Rather brutish, wouldn’t you say? That stuff’s almost as bad as Agent Orange.”
Dean was still watching the hill, though his face remained calm, I noticed his biceps were twitching. He said, “I’m sorry, were you speaking to me? I wasn’t listening.”
Eyes Up Here obliviously continued, “And sexual orientation slurs…”
Terrified yelling issued from shore,”No!! Aaah. Sto-oop!”
We all turned. Bix was standing on the lawn, behind some lawn chairs and a shrub, beer in hand, spinning around and around, naked of course, all blonde hair, boobs and beer flying.
“Oh shit,” I said. “She must have stepped on a yellow jacket nest.”
But Bix wasn’t waving her hands in the air. There was something else… What the…
Uncertain what’s happening in the glare of the sun, Dean and I take steps toward the beach. Bix runs backwards a few steps.
“Rattlesnake?” Dean wonders.
We finally see it—not yellow jackets and not a snake and not a cougar. Circling Bix, first on all fours, then rearing up like a man, was what looked like an emaciated bear. Dean and I run splashing awkwardly to the beach.
Bix runs around to our side of the obstructions, trying to get something between her and the bear. It runs right through the chairs after her and she screams. It is the dog. The Great fucking Dane. The dog has a pink XXL boner.
Dean and I run toward her. The dog is obviously looking for an opening and Bix has some showing. She’s flailing at the dog now and screaming more. The dog rears up on back legs, its block head close, ready to knock her to the ground. Bix makes a spinning juke, stepping back. Oddly, I remember she’s had dance lessons.
“Dick, Peter, James,” I yell, “whatever your freaking name is, heel, down, sit!” No change. I start just yelling, like Indian war cries or something, trying to distract the dog. The dog is leaping and frisking, on a mission.
Dean and I run closer, me looking for a stick, a big rock, something. Nothing, just sand and grass and flimsy folding aluminum lawn chairs. Uncertain, I freeze, like I’m watching a train wreck. What can I do with a creature that size? It’s the size of a pony. What can I do?
Dean does not freeze. He runs straight at the dog. I think he’s going to just tackle it, football tackle. He probably was a left tackle or…
One punch. That’s all it took. Yes, Dean punches the damn dog straight in the nose. Wham bam, mush, and with a sharp yelp, the dog crumples and falls over. Like in slow motion. Tim—BERR! It’s a K.O.
Dean grabs a towel, wraps it around Bix, walks her away from the dog, and sits her down on a lawn chair. I finally make it over to her to hug and abashedly comfort her. She doesn’t look at me. She looks at Dean.
“I thought he was just playing at first. Just playing…” she trails off. “Thank you, Dean, thank you, you saved me.”
Eyes Up Here and Rachel run up. In his superior admonishing voice, he says, “Dude. I can’t believe you did that. You punched that puppy!”
Dean’s glance bores a hole into the guy. Oh-oh, I think.
The dog, slowly gets up, shakes himself a few times, looks around, and lumbers off, sneezing. Rachel goes to Bix and consoles her.
Eyes Up Here’s Mensa brain must have kicked in then. “Uh, wow, that was quick thinking. And, I think I’m getting blotchy.” He shows blotches all over his legs. “You know, Roundup maybe not a bad idea after all.”
“Let’s get the hell out of this place,” Dean said in his manly voice. “Check into a motel.”
“How ‘bout Susu?”
“My wife is very reactive to poison oak.”
“I guess your little group.” Biz says with a wan smile, “may not be so smart after all.”
Dean shrugs. “No.”
“All right,” I say. “Were with you, ‘One Punch Dean.’”
He almost grins. I do recognize one thing about this he-man that made me feel better about my shameful cowardice. Mine is bigger than his.
THE END
Read another J.Macon King story “20 Feet from Enlightenment: A Coming of Sage Story” here.
And a spooky story “The Gravedigger’s Score” here.
Read some of J.Macon King poetry here.