Year 03
I am not a car guy, but this weekend i found myself catching my breath when I was first introduced to Ross’s gold 1967 Camaro in full daylight, its top just finishing its retreat to the back hood. We rode in the Camaro almost exclusively the entire time we were in New Hampshire. My favorite part was the looks… at gas stations and stop lights, wide eyed, covetous, keenly appraising the four of us in the car (five, after we were joined by Martha).
I had never been to New Hampshire before. The names and numbers of the highways that got us there were meaningless to me, made all the more alien by the day-early fireworks that exploded in the night all around us. The state itself was equally as foreign; different slang, different prices, a different way of driving. Vehicles on the Maine beach’s parking lot all open and empty, the Philadelphian in me feeling almost compelled to vandalize them for being so trusting.
It felt more real than Philadelphia, though, as if the commonality of an experience makes it less like reality. Like I was a trendy kid eschewing the new pop album to embrace indy critical darling, only with New Hampshire instead of something off of Barksuk records and irreverent, heathenish, treasonous wit rather than any kind of nationalistic spirit. I still wondering the same wonder: is it good because I like it, or because no one else I know does?
Friday morning I woke up at eight twenty seven, so that by the time I rubbed my eyes, stretched, and walked to the kitchen it was eight thirty. Time for work; not even alien surroundings can convince my brain that it is not time to communicate efficiently at half past eight. Saturday saw me rise at the same time, again unprovoked and exactly.
I resolved that over ninety percent of my liquid intake would be alcohol. I was that guy, the guy from the big city turning a peaceful sub-urban vacation into a bender. I was that guy, drink in hand at all times, but even while i went through the motions i knew that it wasn’t me; it felt exactly the same as playing a snooty New York writer trapped on a Pacific Island for my acting class: i knew the paces to go through, but I never felt connected to the character.
On Sunday morning, hung over and ready to head home at eight thirty on the nose, I finally felt like I understood the both of us; we were using a change in location to attempt to focus our image, but without any normal references to work from we were skewed, suddenly out of control and unlike the selves that we had grown accustomed to.
If New England can at once transform and fascinate me to such a degree, how would I react to Alabama or California, England or Denmark, India or Australia? How frightening to think that all of my weakness and confidence might stem from a place outside instead of a place inside, and that a simple change of scenery could alter or even invert it.
Not the sort of independence I had intending to be commemorating, but fitting nonetheless.
I couldn’t help but wonder: had she just bought it? She seemed unaccustomed to how to wield it, where to leave it — one of those extra-long black umbrellas with a crooked wooden handle, the sort that belong in brass umbrella stands. With all the rain we’ve been having, maybe she had enough of sodden hairdos and damp white blouses turning ever so translucent. Maybe her bumpershoot busted its spring one time too many. Maybe she enjoyed the way it doubled as a whimsical walking cane.
She could not decide whether or not it belonged on a coat hook, and it certainly wouldn’t fit under the table. Unwieldy, but aesthetically pleasing. One of the most elemental choices in life. Wound up hooked over the back of her chair, slightly swinging, pendulum-like as the waiters breezed by in their smart black slacks. Swinging, and I was half-hypnotized, tapping my fingers to the music and watching it, a third as tall as me, swinging.
Inevitable, when its swing swung too broad and found its hook sliding down off of the chair. As if in bullet time, i could almost hear the inaudible wood on wood scraping, scraping as it found its way slowly from the chair to the floor, now lying directly across the smart black waiters’ path.
Only five feet away, not so far; i could have easily leaned out of my chair to right it again. It wasn’t my place, though, to change how it had found its way to the floor, or what would happen next.
Everything is a domino, i thought, as the waiter tripped over the elegant black umbrella, then righting himself with a cross look on his face. He picked the fallen accessory up from the floor and offered it back to his apologetic patron, who was still slightly puzzled as to where to place her prized new accessory.
Cradling my head in my hands at my desk, I inch my fingertips around to the temples, massaging. I sometimes wonder what would happen if i could open up my head, pressing my fingers tightly on either side and pushing up ever so slightly, swinging it up and back, tipping it back to rest on the hinges that would lie buried beneath my thick hair. Instead of a mess of flesh and blood I imagine inside a tangle of color and light, and of thoughts, packed in tightly and giving off sparks of electricity as they rub excitedly against each other. They would have no gravity of their own, their weight inferred by my body. Exposed to the outside air would they be like balloons, floating up in a parade of escaping color? Would I just helplessly grasp at their strings, not even knowing what I was trying to hold on to, but acutely aware that my insides were on display — not just one fleeting thought that would have never escaped through my lips, but the whole of all of my thoughts. All those parts that I would rather keep hidden or leave forgotten, just ascending up, up, up and away, leaving me empty and inexorably heavier without them because our gravity is reciprocal, lending them my weight in exchange for their ability to lift my head nearer to the clouds.
No matter how badass you look with you new buzzed hair cut, scruffy visage, black wifebeater, and “don’t fuck with me” carriage, an entire exercise in acting can be ruined when you remind the dry cleaner not to forget your black shirt because it’s “part of today’s outfit.”
Up until that point i was doing really good character work, though.
But, really what do pissed off looking potential West Philly gang members usually say when the dry cleaner tries to steal their favorite shirt?
