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I'd probably be more worried if I hadn't been here before. So many times before. I'm sure the cops will just shoot us on sight rather than bother with the paperwork of proper legal procedure. Would we really be missed? The stupidity of youth is only surpassed by the stupidity of those that should know better.
The tires slide for a moment on the wet pavement then catch again with a desperate yelp. Juan is still spotting victims, then suddenly launches into a lucid sounding accolade of Nietzche. "Man, old Nietz could dig this scene. Politics, economics, war, death...this would be perfect." It would be philosophical macho posturing from anyone else but Juan really thinks about this stuff. For some reason, I feel compelled to argue, though I know he'll humiliate me. How that alcohol bleached brain can retain so many books is beyond me.
Beer philosophy is always an odd situation. I'm too fuzzy to actually quote anything or even hold a steady line of reasoning but my ego is inflated to the point of ardently defending some point, whatever it is. Juan just laughs and goes on describing how a leather clad Friedrich would hang with our crowd. "Think of that whole thing about hope increasing man's torment. He's right. Its right here around us. Just look around at all this shit. The lottery is just a way of keeping all these poor south side niggers dreamin' of Vanna White and those sixty gee Porsches instead of tearing the Coke building down. Hell, Nietzche would be all over this."
The rain picks up from a misty drizzle to a pleasant summer pitter-patter. The sound on the windshield is grating and annoying. Well, my inability to cope with these ghoulish streetlight reflections or to make the point that Nietzche wouldn't give a damn is what's really annoying. I'm just directing that frustration at the rain since it's so unavoidable.
With a final squeal of the tires, the truck jars into a parking space. Beyond the haze floating behind my eyes it clicks that we're not home. When I look at Heer Pilot, I see he's already gone. Free will, my ass. I gave up control over my destiny long ago. I just follow along as always.
Juan is bounding up the creaking stairs of Kristi's apartment and I try to hurry after him. I reach the entrance as Juan pushes the door open and regally enters. Everyone from the club is there, floating in the dark. We had probably agreed to meet during that hypnotic swirl of music, bodies and bottles but I can't remember. But here, amongst the candles and the haze of cigarette smoke, were the silhouettes of nearly all of them. I sit among them, all on cushions or boxes or folding chairs and two laid out on the tattered couch. Juan strides to the only lounge chair in the room and sits as if it were a throne, specially reserved for him.
Neon lights, from the city outside, come through the window and shine on Juan's wavy black hair like some cheap urban crown. He reaches into his worn black leather overcoat and produces a tarnished one hitter which he passes around with all the sanctity of a Mexican Indian peace pipe. Then he starts talking about the wild blast up the Interstate: the way the lane reflectors flicked past in a pulsating line, the street light's reflection running across the puddles, the stiff in the Porsche...
I nod ascent and let my listing head rest on the window sill. Lazily staring outside at the carnival of steel and stone, wood and brick. Saucers of sickly yellow and orange float above Ponce: winking, blinding-snapping, camera-flashes exploding off car chrome and wet hoods. The steady blinking of the neon bar lights across the street give the tree branches a perverted kaleidoscope of displaced colors. The music of the city: car's accelerating; brakes screeching; dogs barking; sirens; motorcycles; conversations; hoarse shouts; bangs and snaps; yells and laughter all mixing with the punker dirge on Kristi's cheap stereo and the stifled coughs in the darkness nearby.
Juan, having caught everyone up on our trip across town, begins to plan for a wild adventure...
Pulsating, shimmering linens flail at my swollen face accompanied by the droning beat of a distant drum. A sticky paste oozes across my tongue and slowly glues my drying lips together. The faint scent of cigarettes finally catches my attention and everything snaps into a crude focus as I wake up. The normal burden of orienting was delayed as a I struggle to find air amidst the gummy, deadened mass in my mouth and the shellac inside my bronchi. It is so incredibly difficult to get any oxygen it hardly seems worth the effort. Besides, last night I was having trouble orienting myself with Reality and I was awake then. How can it be any easier when I've got the added disadvantage of only being half-conscious now? Surely it would be best to just give up and fall. See where I land. What better way to test these hippie-tripy ideas...
Within this barrage of thoughts: this pulling to return to the Brahma or urge to fly through the film-celluloid glimpses of acid tainted realities or to just settle into the primordial blankness of death or just even to just quit having to gasp for a breath that doesn't taste of yesterday's rank nicotine; within this there is the slow dawning of the average, everyday gloom. The unlightenment of dragging this young raging consciousness into the frigid light of normalcy. No longer the brilliant dream philosopher or a brave socialite but just another person that has to beat feet to make the nine-to-five.
It is a headache that would make any fictional Irishman proud and getting out of bed is the last thing on my mind. However, the first thing on my mind is getting this month's rent stipend in hand and that inevitably moves the bed issue quickly up the list. No matter what I think or feel, it is another day of playing fast forward to earn the bones needed to cover the "shelter" portion of Maslow's famous pyramid.
Last night's gruesome brain cell massacre left me haggard but at least last weekend's forethought left me with clean laundry. I have no idea why anyone gives a crap how you dress to work on the telephone all day. Sadly, that's not the most confusing of Corporate "US of" America's idiocy. Oh great, I just crawled out of bed and I've already got my Marxist rantings pounding through the gears. I'm destined for a job on some littered roadside begging for handouts or better yet, I'll be the Jesus-Punker-Christ martyr of the Young Communists (if enough of them can stay alive in modern America to form up). Hell, even that's a greater vision of glory than I'll likely achieve. I can't even get to work on time, how will I ever make it as the symbol of a better tomorrow?
While fumbling down the hall, I hear mumbling or moaning from Juan's room. If I had the time, I'd stick around to see if he's just got a shit-kicking head pounder like I do or if he brought a consort home last night. Likely the later, considering he always handles the women and drink better than I do. Oh well, no one will care if he's hungover as long as he call still keep the gas pump's ticking.
The truck is half up on the curb and at enough of an angle that the neighbor's Celica is blocked in. The note on the window is from the apartment complex manager. Surprisingly, its not about the unique parking angle but about the 18 foot long black marks leading up to the rear tires. Damned if I know where that came from but it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out I was at least peripherally involved. Ah, let 'em throw me out. I'll use the Interstate exit in front of their units when I start asking for spare change!
The truck's starter makes a dull thud and grinds like a tortured grindstone. Another thud, this time sharper and the V6 spins to some simulated life. Its emasculated putter is overshadowed by the nearby threat of Juan's time-space rending big block. When the flicker of life's shadow is so short, the boring functionality of a pickup is quickly dimmed by the veracity of an impractical street terror. There will be thousands of bland sub-compacts, mini-vans and utility vehicles rolling into work today but its the evil hunks of steel and horsepower that burn so brightly in our memory. Whether it's the fright of a timid housewife or the ego-shattering self-introspection of the tie-be-decked business dweeb or even the righteous approval of the street-creed wannabes, the passing of a true asphalt beast never goes unnoticed.
But that car quietly sits, awaiting Juan (and presumably his bedmate) to awaken its forceful strides. The meager stumbling of this old truck will get me to work but won't do anything for my confidence. Then again, Monday's aren't commonly something to look forward to in the business world so why should the day's transportation be any different?
I make more than twice what Juan makes and according to the outspoken elders of our society should feel better about having done so. The whole team goes "Rah-rah" when you're doing your part to better yourself. They yell louder still when you're doing it for the corporate godhood. It is a choice that faces us daily. Or rather, that sneaks around behind us daily since it would be far too brave if we were ever to suddenly spin and confront the issue directly. We play our part in avoiding a face-to-face meeting with our decision to follow the norms of our day. We let "tradition" be the guard which keeps us locked within the cells of our social roles. Somehow, Juan seems to waltz back and forth, sometimes my prisonmate and sometimes wistfully whisking out the front door without so much as an attempted escape. Its as if there are times when he lays the rules of society aside, as if he were just casually using them for bed side reading. Free to pick it up again, whenever the mood strikes but equally able to leave it unattended for months without even a hint of curiosity.
There is no doubt Juan lives in a different world but I'll be damned if he's able to explain to anyone how he does it.
Without having had a clear thought all morning, I push open the spotless glass doors that lead into another of the shiny boiler rooms that are an integral part of every stockholder's ocean yacht. The costumed crew all running hither and thither, taking care of the Important Action Items and forming into Working Committees. What an inane amount of activity when all that's really required is to sit in front of a telephone and answer people's questions. Have I mentioned these spectacles of corporate stupidity before?
Mammy Irene mouths her daily greeting of "Hello Preacherman!" then sulks back into the drudgery of a caller's rantings. At least there is some of the south's traditional camaraderie here in the dank trenches. The middle-managers have already exchanged any semblance of personality they might have had for a higher bottom line on the bi-weekly dividends. Worse yet, any time they have left over after preening the upper managers is spent frantically trying to make a job for themselves. The nightly cascade of requests for status reports, functional team meetings, group discussions, morale boosting social gatherings and information dissemination memos just grows as each supervisor tries to validate their position to the manager. (and the manager to the director; the director to the vice president; the VP to the Exec-VP; and so on). What an inane amount of bureaucracy when, as I've said, all that's really required it so sit in front of a telephone and answer people's questions.
Worse yet, its even more inane that this whole building of five hundred or more people are willing to put up with it. Its all for one and none for all when you're in pursuit of the lousy buck. Our daily gripe-and-bitch session today features a overwhelming selection of items from which to choose. Terese points out that Evan is getting promoted. The gasps of surprise almost deaden the whirrr of the microwave's fan and cover it's annoying "ding!". Its not that anyone doubts his skills, he just seems like too nice a guy to be thrust into the maelstrom of the management games. No matter how good he is now, I've no doubt he'll blossom in time. He's got brains and he's never been afraid to use them. All it takes is a little mental computation while playing nine holes at the bosses' private club and he's bound to be as shrewd as they come. In fact, I might as well start keeping hourly time reporting notes now, since he seems like he'll be on the "efficiency" path to greater glory.
Terese and Irene are both having trouble with the company's health care system. I'm surprised they haven't just written "old age" into the prior condition clause of the insurance policy by now. The whole friggin' medical profession has been roped into the sacred triangle of doctors-insurance-lawyers and sunk the whole concept of healthcare right along with it. Each piece of the structure innocently points to the other two as the root of all evil, then meets its participants later for a scotch and cigar. Meanwhile Irene's bunions are worse. She's gotten better results from her great aunt's "soakin' salts" than anything listed on the HMO's approved drug list.
If I ever aspire to being a martyr, maybe I can immolate myself in the offices of the American Medical Association. God only knows a bomb wouldn't do any good as I'm sure their front office is just another squeaky clean boiler room like this one. Considering the lousy costumes they have to wear, I'd guess their secretaries probably have bunions too...
And so it goes, each piece of the corporate structure is uniformly lambasted until the microwave's buzzer makes one last irritating bleat and then we file back to the confines of our cubicles. The din of our complaints quickly merging with the break room's dust, never to last longer than an afternoon before the ghostly cleaning crew returns the blinding shine to the boiler room.
Now it is afternoon's end and I see in the stack of supervisory statistics I'm managing to maintain "satisfactory levels of accomplishment". This means I'll be honored with a seat at the phones again tomorrow and that the Gods On High, or at least on the high center dais that overlooks our maze of cubicles, might authorize the vacation request I submit on the way out the door. I don't know what Juan has planned but I'm sure it will be better than another day of "satisfactory accomplishment".
Rather than bolting for the short-lived freedom of the parking lot like the rest of my co-workers I stick around and talk with Irene. She needs to kill thirty minutes or so every afternoon before walking down the street to the bus stop. We share a pack of nasty generic cigarettes and talk in the shade of a manicured fruit tree. As if the weekend's lapse had never occurred, we're immediately back into Friday's conversation about the deep-water Baptists in her hometown.
As usual, I find myself walking a thin line. The empty satisfaction of lambasting the bastards would just ruin my friendship with Irene. In fact, its odd that I'd say "friendship" considering we hardly know each other but her noble negro hardships appeal to me. For whatever reason, I genuinely enjoy hearing her perspective when the same conservative, neo-traditional opinions from anyone of my own race would immediately send me into in-your-face tantrums.
Nearly half an hour and I'm yet to say that Jerry Falwell is a lying, moralistic nazi that's done more to corrupt the underlying meaning of Christianity than anyone else this decade. I am proud of my restraint, if that is actually something to be proud of, but there is a slight blush when it occurs to me that I haven't been willing to be completely honest with someone I refer to as a friend. Oh well, its a small charade compared to what put me here at work to begin with.
As Irene hobbles off to the MARTA stop, I slink among the econo-compacts to find where I parked my truck in the blur that started this day. The surreal drug fantasies seem to be in sharp detail when compared to the bland faint memories of the past eight hours. Even my commute home is so routine my brain shuts down early, if in fact its really been working at all today. Well, I know I was actually having to *think* during the religion talk with Irene but even then the past few years of collegiate brainwashing programmed me with half what I said then. It sounds good enough to net me a nickname like "Preacherman" but I'm my own enemy when I'm blasting the established clergy for their rote repetition of the party line.
I turn into the apartment complex and immediately break into a grin when I see the twin tire marks leading down the hill and angling into the parking spot in front of the apartment. I'm sure Rhonda blew a gasket when she drove in this morning and its really no wonder she left such a heated message on the windshield this morning. Considering the splendor of the artistic expression I see displayed in the medium of rubber and asphalt, I wish I'd been alert enough the night before to really experience it's creation. Then again, I also wish it had been Juan's tires instead of my own as I'm sure a good 1/8 inch of rubber was involved in this magnificent work. At least we're taking his car next week. We'll pay more in gas than it would cost to replace my tires but at least the torch which illuminates our adventure will burn much more brightly.
The sounds are impossible to avoid. So loud and filled with meaning that my spine is shivering. That primal roar of the engine, the hum of the tires on the rough asphalt. The creaks when we find a particularly harsh bump. The wind whistling through all the imperfections in the body and windows. That crackle from the cheap stereo speakers. Even the distorted guitar and shrieking vocals bring an excited tingle at the base of my skull.
Up front, Juan and Kristi are deconstructing Klee. I wasn't aware he'd ever seen a Klee painting. Now that I think of it, he probably hasn't. Lack of first hand knowledge has never stopped him from arguing. Worse yet, it rarely stops him from being right. This must be the case now because Kristi is digging in for the long fight. Her comments aren't really going for the jugular, just building the stonework of some, currently obscure, reasoning. Juan is keeping her busy, mainly because he's working so hard to pull things into the realm of philosophy, his own favored battleground, rather than art theory where Kristi has the upper-hand. I'm lazily watching the progress of this tug-of-war as if it was on late night TV. A certain forced disassociation since I'd be buried if I dared try to join in. Its another three hours before we reach Florida. If I was wrong, there is no where I could hide and lick my wounds since I'm stuck in the back seat of a car. On the other hand, there seem to be plenty in rural Alabama...
Juan changes tapes and that snaps me back to the present. It appears the stalemate has ended but only because they've changed topics altogether. If neither horn of the bull looks appealing, I guess you can always leap over the forehead. Now they are talking about one of the new clubs in town. Certainly a less volatile topic and one into which I might be willing to venture.
I mention I like the place and they both start as if they'd forgotten I was in back or perhaps they has just assumed I was asleep. Kristi quickly agrees but Juan is adamant the place is evil. Perhaps its some residual latino superstition but I suspect it has to be more. Juan is too philosophically minded to get caught up in some hand-me-down belief without having found his own validation. Maybe its just a social defense. Club Catalan, our current hangout, has certainly been good to Juan. Since he got to be friends with the bartender, both the booze and the ladies seem to find their way to him with alarming regularity. But that just doesn't seem right. Juan's certainly not one to turn down a drink or a skirt but he doesn't seem to let either rule his life. Hell, I can't figure out what could rule his life, other than his own heart. There is probably some insidious aspect of the place that will be revealed in a year or two and then we'll all understand. However, for the moment neither Kristi nor myself can understand Juan's abhorrance.
A gas stop becomes the next focus of our collective consciousness so another topic is quietly shelved without any real resolution. This beast that is our magic carpet is a hungry thing. Our escape from out everyday routines is made all the more valuable when we're pumping in high-test. I head in to pay and Juan hands me a couple of crumpled bills. "Grab a RC an a bag of Cheetos, wouldya?". The RC is a humorous request, no doubt his nod to the rural surroundings but its the wink that accompanies the Cheetos request that really cracks me up. No matter how disgusting puffed and powdered starch might be, they're still the munchies of choice among the disenfranchised youth of America.
We stop in Eufaula, AL to walk the streets and enjoy the waning sunlight as it reflects off the antebellum mansions. Juan lights a Marlboro and leans up against the column on someone's front porch. The image of a minority youth lighting up some tobacco on the steps of an Alabama plantation home would undoubtably throw the liberal left into epileptic fits. Something that would probably make Juan enjoy his smoke all the more. Not so much because Juan disagrees with the liberals but because it would sell his reputation as being an anachronism. Sometimes you have to put your beliefs aside in order to bolster your social standing.
As the dark descended, or perhaps re-descended considering the negro past in this area, on the town we resumed our journey south. Not being able to see the small town and rural communities is perhaps a blessing. Cynicism can't help but run rampant after seeing the juxtapositions of run-down schools but every trailer and shack equipped with a satellite dish and a swimming pool. It doesn't take any renegade big-city, self-proclaimed intellectual pundits to question their priorities. Instead, we all take turns describing out views of enlightment and other haughty things.
to be continued...