Chapter 65

65

Staring out the back of Jamie’s Subaru hatchback, I watch the passed road twitch eastward behind us. Like a couple discovering love, it looks somewhat familiar...but feels so awkwardly unknown.

As we head into the mountains surrounding the city, the Jamies occupy their time in the front seat singing along to Janis Joplin’s Pearl. Their voices stimulate my mind, a lyrical ignition, uniting with the passing pavement and the whipping wind to conjure recollections of the past. Drifting into thoughts, memories rush at me, and I allow myself to wander into:

A classroom. My childhood. She sits across the room from me, as usual. Yet, today there is something different about her. Today she wears a different pair of glasses, her hair parted evenly down the middle. She sees my eyes and smiles just slightly. I attempt to, but cannot, smile back. Her attention returns to Mrs. Everett who is teaching the class how to diagram a sentence. My gaze stays fixed upon her. I’m too busy trying to remember how she looked in her other pair of glasses. I wonder, to myself, which pair she likes better.

The first poem I ever show my father. It’s the conclusion of a dinner together at his home outside of town. He reads it, twice I believe, and hands it back to me. His eyes squint, as if he is looking for something very small deep inside of me, and says, “You didn’t write this.” His voice sounds like loose gravel being pushed aside by four tires coming to a stop. “It’s too good.” Suddenly I decide that I will never show him my work again.

Myself laughing in the corner of John’s parents’ kitchen. John is in the living room rolling another joint. “We should refill my dad’s bottle of vodka with water,” he yells from the other room. “Do you think he’ll notice?” His words sound as if they are tightrope walking across the string connecting two aluminum cans. I continue my isolation in the corner, laughing.

The day I saw the family cocker-spaniel lying dead in the back yard.
The injections. Needle after needle being inserted into my veins by a black man wearing white. Every one causes some sort of pain.

The curly headed girl who took my virgin hand and placed it under her oversized sweatshirt.

My birthday party. Seven years old. It was snowing outside. No one attended. Even my mother felt sorry for me.

A photograph. You and I sitting at dinner together. I burnt it in a plastic trash-can one windy day in December. The trash-can tipped over, and the wind blew the fire and ashes all over the yard. I thought that I might burn the entire house down that day. I didn’t, but I finally began to forget about you.

A one night stand and my confused walk home. 

The moment I realized that I had to go.

The university library, and the stacks we always wanted to make love in.

Your living room couch.

An abandoned house and the rock salt shotgun.

Your disappearance.

My misunderstanding.

The glow of the flash.

The grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, you made, when I showed up on your doorstep, at two in the morning, my clothes ripped, my face covered in mud, high on acid, needing a warm place to stay, which you denied me, when you shut the door, and asked that I never return.


My life, as it comes rushing toward me, like this western road leading me to a home that I’ll barely even know.

“Richard,” she says to me. “Richard, wake up. We’re here.”