anti-Spiccococococococolli.

I have a cousin, and it sounds like I’m making this up, but he would not eat anything save plain white pasta or bananas sliced up with sprinkles.  Nothing else.  He did this, as far as I know, until he was about thirteen (and may still).  With no judgement on his parents (and without wondering how he did not get rickets or scurvy and die), it still boggles my mind.

If you can’t try anything new or scary, you will miss out on all of the most wonderful things in the world from sex to sundaes to tapas.

But he had one thing right.

White.  White.  White.

If you aren’t going to wear oxfords or Clarks.  If you aren’t ready to strap on monk’s and you want a casual shoe, nothing is better (in my very narrow mind) than white shoes.  And no white shoe looks better than it does if it is beat up a little.  Just like my cousin’s fetish with white foods, what we call classic footwear looks best white and well worn in.  Canvas Vans with holes in the toes and stains and wear from walking.  White leather Rod Laver’s with gray cracks and folds where the shoe has flexed and where the outer layer of paint is flaking off.  White perforated leather Pro-Keds with little tears in the vamp right near the trademark blue and white stripe.  Terminators with your skinny jeans tucked in and a beatup padded ankle cuff with a little bit of writing near the sole.

I can’t justify it.

But I love it.

White kicks.  Beat to shit.

It smells like feet like fail and rotting. Imagine maggots swimming around in pork and beans and stringy cheese like strands all over your face.

The oatmeal made a sticky mess in the saucepan, the peaches as they heated up and began to loose their cohesion, added to the general gooey mess. It looked like natto, the fermented soybean dish unpopular in Japan. A burnt tongue taste revealed the need for sugar, but it was quickly too much and the whole damn thing went steaming into the garbage disposal.

I regret.

Even if it was ten years ago, I didn’t like backward baseball caps or cargo pants so why did I wear them? I wanted to dress like Denis Lyxzen or Guy Piccotto, but felt too stocky to pull it off. Add to that branded t-shirts and it’s all the shit I’d never wear now. I had a pair of sandals.

I regret.

Was I mean to that girl who said she liked my glasses? She was young and lithe in a Greenpeace shirt and it’s not that I don’t agree with you, mam, it’s just that the sun is a bright white blanket of hot right now and even if I talk to you, your friend that stands there tomorrow won’t know that and it will all begin again.

I regret.

He felt the weight of his gut as it pressed against and stretched his white dress shirt. Didn’t he used to wear jeans in a size thirty? But it was too late. His liver spotted, sausage like pink fingers held the bite of Denver omelet just below his mouth and he got lost in the silver sparkle glitter embedded in the otherwise white formica table top.

They dressed better in 1997 than I do now or perhaps ever will. I should have put more of a focus into that look back then, instead of skate shirts and Sal 23 Etnies.

I regret.

She didn’t know what had come over her, but Sammy had so much and she had so little. The plastic action figure style Rainbow Brite and the box of Nerds, half grape and half something like strawberry, and the An American Tale video didn’t seem like things she’d even notice. But as she waited for her mom to come pick her up, every time she looked at that little pink vinyl purse holding the purloined items, she felt a stab of…

I regret.

Not saying good bye to you that one last time. Sure we were no longer the best of friends, but then you stepped on that plane and it crashed into the ocean. The mighty, cold, slate blue arms of Triton holding you down forever under foamy waves. It’s dark and deep and there are monsters in there that we don’t even know about, and they play with what’s left of your body and I’ll never ever get to say anything useful. I still think your hair was dumb, so fuck you for dying and making me look stupid, but you decided I wasn’t cool enough to be in your bunk anyway that year.

I regret.

I think I scratched that guy’s door in the parking lot. I’m pretty sure I did. I wish I had waited and left a note. Sure, sure I’d had to fix my car after a few hit and runs, but… but I still can’t sleep and I’m tired of trying to find shapes in the popcorn ceiling in my bedroom. I stare at the ceiling and I wonder if you had to get the car fixed for work and if that squeezed that last little bit of money you had left out. The last bit that was going to buy your kids food and finish paying off the banks that are after you and since I did that and you had to do all of that, you’re now homeless and it’s my fault and I get to sleep in air conditioning and…

I regret.

Why would he do that? Doesn’t he know that pisses me off to no end? She looked in the mirror at her face, past her face, and into the room behind her. Did I do something to push him to this? Every time I try to get him to step out of his comfort zone, he gets mad and we end up doing the same boring shit over and over again. What about an Indian restaurant? What about this documentary on the No-Wave movement in NY in the 80s? What about… what about something you don’t know about and risk? Why does he do that? If I tell him to listen to Wire because they’re amazing, he doesn’t listen. But if a friend of his tells him, he’s all about it? Does he listen to me? Maybe this is all a mistake.

I regret.

I will not regret my horribly opinionated views on fashion: flip flops and crocs are for children, cargo shorts are ridiculous and ugly, logo t-shirts are for fools, wear clothes that fit, over printed shirts make Jesus cry, skulls are typically for cowards, flash is like masturbating (a little is good, too much is disgusting and don't ever mention it to me again), don't wear gym clothes/shoes unless you are about to workout (like now... or now... or now), looking tough is a suburban teen masculine facade for confusion and tastelessness... don't be tacky. Don't be vulgar. Don't put shit in your hair and double don't spike it up. Mohawks/fauxhawks/elaborate hair are/are/is the mallest thing ever, and skateboarding can never be punk again.

Hours and years have been sweated and in other ways “nervoused” off my life with regret. The crushing guilt of not doing the right thing at the right time and the worry and the tears over heart breaking stories real and imagined. Over my own inadequacies and being tired of being wrong or mean or unapologetic or too apologetic. At some point it should stop. Before it kills me. Then again, what’s wrong with longing and regret? Those stories that touch us most are the ones that fucking mean something because we’ve brushed up against those much bigger or much smaller feelings.

Don’t regret regret regret regret. Regret.

I don’t know who “they” were, you see, but I have this ticket stub and half a hunch that it will lead me to something important.  The ticket stub was shoved under the wiper blade of my old red Silverado, though I didn’t notice it at first.  I’d been up since five checking on the heard down by the dugout as the purple massed dark clouds indicated that and I was a bit bleary eyed.  I plopped down onto the threadbare silvery seat and rolled a cigarette, turning the engine over as Gordon Lightfoot came on over the tinny speakers.  ”Just like a paperback novel…”  Half awake and smelling the wet dust smell of impending rain and the phosphorus scent from the matches I noticed the ticket stub on the other side of the cracked and yellowing windshield.

“Goddamn.”

I didn’t want to get up, hell I didn’t know what that damn thing was for.  I looked in the rearview mirror and the bags under my eyes were darkening, my eyes bloodshot and my hairy greasy and unwashed.

“Fuck me, you goddamn shit bag.  You look like half a nightmare.”

I swung the door back open and idly grabbed the ticket stub, just as a big gust of wind nearly took my faded green John Deere hat on a trip.  I felt the dirt sting as it hit my hands and neck.  The hat read “Nothin’ Runs Like A Deere” and that damn hat was always threatening to off and leave my dome.

I drove back to the main house and knocked on the door.  I don’t have a phone in my trailer, see, and I reckoned I needed to make a call.

Mrs McLaughlin opened the door, her thick arms liver spotted and pink, the sleeves rolled up and the forearms were covered in flour.  She was pulling her fingers through folds of the apron, wiping off the dough.

“Hi Alan, it’s a bit early for dinner.  I could find some cold cuts and pickles, but…”

“No, mam.  I just was wondering if I could use your phone for a minute… I… I think someone’s trying to get hold of me.”

“Oh, no problem Alan.”

I pulled my boots off and walked over to the old orange phone and dialed the only number that was pressing on my mind.  I could smell the rolls baking in the oven from the kitchen.  That sweet flour smell was intoxicating.

“Alan.  I knew that would get your attention.”

I cursed under my breath, as so Mrs McLaughlin wouldn’t hear  ”Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“It doesn’t work like that Alan.  You don’t get to come back to town and just slip into a ranch and a fifty head of cattle.”

“You know this ain’t my ranch and my part of the herd is one of the few things I own now, and I’m not going to give it up just because you’ve got some grudge.”

“Alan, I’ll make this simple: if you want it, you know the price.  It’s not changing, but time is running out.”

Dialtone.

I thanked Mrs McLaughlin for the use of the phone and walked out behind the barn to my trailer.  It was the sort of trailer that was meant to sit in the bed of a pickup truck, but that Neil McLaughlin and I had setup on cinder blocks.  The McLaughlin’s sold me the trailer for three hundred dollars and the truck was mine if I could get it working, which I did.  Since then every damn penny I made went into the herd.

I walked into the trailer and settled into the bunk, contemplating my next move, I put a tape on and put on the old black and tan “Realistic” branded headphones.

Stiff Little Fingers.  La Peste.  999.  Blitz.

Six years ago, I was a thousand miles away.  Skinny jeans and tailored button downs.  No baths for a week and elbow to elbow in sweaty clubs.

Smoke.

Feedback.

I’d made it to Toronto because my old man had found out about the time that Tommy Wilson and I had gotten drunk and been caught fooling around in Captain Wilson’s holding cell.  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police office in Brooks wasn’t meant for our unholy sexual deviation.

“We shoot the queer steers, I oughtta shoot you.”  My old man never spoke to me after that night and I drove my Ford pickup non-stop on the Trans-Canada until I arrived in Ontario.

I didn’t speak to my old man for seven years.

Hell, I never really spoke to him again.

And that farm house I can see out the scratched glass window was the farm house I grew up in and the barn was the place that Cindy Blair and I first fooled around in, listening to The Who and Vanilla Fudge as we stared up at the rafters, sweaty and tired.  I loved Cindy Blair more than I loved life itself, from the way her head felt nestled next to mine to that strong sweaty smell right after… right after when we laid in the back of that truck.  The way she smiled at me or jumped when I took her to see Jaws.  These were my memories, right?

I honestly couldn’t remember how I got here or how the McLaughlin’s ended up owning our farm.  But when I came back for the funeral, I guess I just couldn’t leave.

I don’t remember that, but my memory is going…

Shit, the ticket!

The stub was for a theater in Alsask, which was on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan.  I know the place.  I saw an Indiana Jones movie there and used up the last of the coke I had, I think, in the bathroom.  I remember the hard wooden seats and the poor sound coming from the old speakers in the front of the theater.

It had to be there.

“Neil, give me the keys to your Camaro.”

“What, fuck you Alan, I got a date tonight.”

“Neil, give me the keys to your goddamn Camaro or I will tell your date about the time I caught you looking at them pictures of Burt Reynolds.”

“Oh fuck you Alan, it isn’t like that, eh?  I just wanted to see what he had that the ladies liked, you know?”

“Neil… remember last week when I did your chores when you were hungover and still asleep at Cathy’s house?  Remember how I kept that under my hat?”

“Goddamn it Alan, I… you know, I was going to get lucky tonight, eh?  Just be careful, the storm is supposed to be a big one.”

When I shrug my shoulders and grab the keys off of his nightstand, Neil pretends to lunge for me, but I knew he’d hold back.  I knew it just like he knew that I was a fucked up commie faggot who deserved to live out of a trailer year round, huddled up to a kerosene heater and pissing in the woods.

The car idles rough, something I attribute to Neil’s poor timing job.  You can’t just drop a 396 into an engine bay with new headers, a supercharger, and two big barrel Holley carbs and not adjust the timing.  That dumb son of a bitch.  He did manage to put a retard control in, to prevent pinging, but that was it.

I feel the smooth Hurst t-shifter in my hand and drop that fucking thing from neutral to first.

The backend swings wildly as the tires smok and finally it grips and shoots me forward.

“Fuck you Neil.  Fuck your family.”

I can’t say what I think I’ll find at the theater, only that… only that I have to get there.  The ticket stub was dated for 1978, which is a bit odd… who saves a ticket stub for seven years?  Only one person.

Cindy Blair.

Maybe she had a grudge or felt dirty, the first man she’d loved moving to the city and getting caught with other men… maybe this was her revenge against me.  Fuck Cindy, I wasn’t doing anything that didn’t feel right.

The wind is whipping hard now, I can feel it push the car to the side, it’s blue and white frame creaking in the wind, but it isn’t raining yet.  The clouds are darker and more sinister looking than ever and lightning crackled in the background.  Neil’s only tapes in the car are Journey, Styx, ELO, and Rush and I am not about to listen to that shit.  So I just sit quietly and listen to the car creak and the engine whine in the wind.

I’m low on gas by the time I reach Alsask.  The damn thing just drinks too fast to be practical.  As fun and sexy as it is for blowing the skirts off of farm raised high-school cheerleaders, it’s a piece of shit as transport goes.  It is fucking fast, so I’ll give it that.

Here’s the thing, I’m reluctant to admit.

I haven’t slept since I came back to town.

I think I’m seeing things.  I think I’m hearing things.  The way that the drunks in town stare at me as I walk by, not flinching and not breaking their gaze on me.  The way that even the Moore’s daughter, the one that “isn’t right in the head”, looks up from picking at the scabs on her knees when I walk by and how her hollow eyes just latch onto me and the pupils that normally bob around with her stringy hair, just lock onto me.

It gives me chills.

I stay up late at night, reading Louis L’Amor novels and old copies of Reader’s Digest that my mother had stockpiled in our basement, near the cold room and the McLaughlin’s threw rudely into a shed.  Luckily I found them when I was out pissing on a fence, back last January or I would have been bored to suicide by now.

I don’t sleep.  So I don’t totally know if what is going to happen is real or not.

Sorry.

My front tire violently deflates as I turn into town.  I didn’t run over anything, but I’m pretty sure someone has shot it out.  The car, going too fast anyway, plows into the sidewalk and I’m sure the steering rack is fucked beyond.  Oh well, sorry Neil.  Priorities.

Maybe Cindy is waiting in the theater and she want’s me back.  Lord knows, I still love her.  Her family is rich and maybe they would be nicer to me than the McLaughlins who make me attend service every Sunday, thinking if I don’t they’ll find me seducing Neil.  But it ain’t like that.  I’ve loved man and woman and I don’t know if it’s right, I sometimes think I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and to easily woed.  I know that Cindy was probably the only one I ever thought I loved.  Maybe it was because I was young, but maybe it was real.  Who knows?

Ouch, something hit my neck.

I’m bleeding, goddamn.  By the dust flaking off the buildings around me, I can only guess that some concrete sliver has nicked me and is slowly taking the life from me.  Left side, though.  So I ain’t gonna die anytime soon.  Fuck that was surprising.

Who is shooting at me?

I hear shots echoing down the oddly empty main street.  All the doors are closed, a few even boarded up.  The storm is supposed to be that big. Like dust bowl in 39 big.

It starts raining.

It’s not light rain.

It’s loud.

It hurts.

The brown ranch shirt I’m wearing is too thin to offer much protection, but at least it’s washing the dust off of my boots.  Too bad it’s ruining my tobacco and my papers.  Too bad my matches are too wet to light.

More gunshots.

Shit, who is shooting at me?

“Alan you’d better get your depraved ass out here, if I have to hunt you, I’m going to kill you slow.”

It’s a woman’s voice and very hard to hear in the rain.

“What?  What the fuck do you want with me?  I’m as broke as a man can be and I ain’t got nothing left in the world.  I’ve done or been done to, just about every horrid thing you can imagine.  How do you now killing me wouldn’t be a blessing?”

“You made a fool of me, Alan.”

It’s Cindy.  She’s going to kill me.

“Cindy, I loved you.  I loved you more than I ever loved anyone.  I would have gone off to war for you.  I would have killed a man in cold blood to defend your honor.”

“Than why did you do it?  Why did you do any of it?”

“I don’t know, Cindy.  I don’t know.  Maybe I was bored, maybe when my mom got sick I just didn’t care much anymore.  Maybe I just wanted to get out of this life and I did what I had to get kicked out.”

I put my hands up and walk out, in front of the IGA grocery and walk down the street.  It’s getting to hard to hear her from around the corner and the rain is getting worse.

I walk under the awnings that sporadically line the right side of the street.  Cindy steps out in front of me.

I recognize the Winchester 300 Magnum in her hands.  It’s got a crack in part of the stock where I once slipped and used it as a makeshift staff, hitting a rock and lucky I didn’t shoot my head off.

Cindy is beautiful as ever.  Her blue eyes and her slightly upturned nose.  Her auburn hair and the way those jeans encase her long, long legs.  She looks as tired as me, though.  Her face is drawn and weather beaten.  She looks like she’s been riding horses hard or been out on the range every day since I left.

“Fuck you Alan.”

She shoots me.

I have to say, I’m pretty fucking surprised.

I don’t know where she hit me, not my head, but I’m flat on my back now, looking up.

“I’m sorry.”  I think that’s me talking now.

I feel sorta cold and warm at the same time.  I can hear the rain and I notice the dents in the corrugated tin awning.  Huh.

“You know, I always loved you and I’m sorry I left.  I am.”

She looks at me and smiles.

“Me too.”

I close my eyes.

When they open, I feel different and I realize that I’m laying in the back of my pickup truck, the one I had in high school, on an old quilt my grandma made me.  I’m looking up at the rafters and I feel this leg over mine.

Cindy.

She’s young again.  I think I am too.

“Do you love me, Alan?”

Yes Cindy, I really fucking do.

“I swear to shit, Cindy, I will never ever leave you.”

And somewhere, somehow, I can hear “Alternative Ulster”.

In a bit of a departure from my usual sort of post, this is a text conversation I had with Mr Chris Huth.  I transcribed it because it turned out to be very entertaining.  I pray that it’s just as funny now as it was then (and if it is not, have a few cocktails and it will losen up your funny bone… god, that was corny).

Background: Huth and I have talked about “crashing” the Warped Tour to see a reunited Face to Face.  The Warped Tour has sucked for some time (if you’re old and crotchety and maybe it always sucked a bit… sort of odd to have a “huge underground” music festival not associated with that one group of fine young men from Detroit) and I haven’t been in nearly ten years.  This is a conversation that happened after I inquired as to when we might meet up.

EZ (me): When should we gear up for eyeliner warfare?

I'll race you to the top, you bastard.

CH (Chris Huth): 7am SHARP!

EZ: Let’s make it 5:30 am.

CH: Ten mile run at 4am unless you’re a little girl about it.

EZ: Marathon at one am.  Unless you can’t handle the “man pants”.

CH: I’m doing pull ups while sending this text, sissy.

EZ: I’m packing my bags and doing lunges right now.  Ready for a run up Long’s Peak?  Meet me in five.

CH: I’m actually already at base camp, doing the pull ups whilst texting.

EZ: Sorry, I would have been there sooner, but I just saved a bus of kids on fire.  Needed to stop to roll the fire out.

CH: Yeah, I started the fire with friction as I ran past it like a champion.  I figured you would stop to put it out like a loser.

EZ: Well, I couldn’t run faster.  My giant balls keep getting caught on my Lou Ferigno thighs.  I figured some broad lit the fire when her boyfriend wouldn’t go with her to see Brokencyde.  Guess I was right.

CH: Ouch.

Not pictured: me.

EZ: Do you mind if I run with this make a wish foundation kid on my back?  His dying wish is to see what a woman crying in anguish on a mountainside looks like.

It sounds like I “won”, but you would be wrong if you thought that.  Way dead wrong.

CH: Wow!  I got nothing on that.  You bested me fair and square.  Nice work.

EZ:  That’s how I do.  You’re missing all the crying and fetal position rocking.

CH: No, I’ve got plenty over here.

EZ:  Well, did I mention the pants wetting?  Or the Lunchable consuming? (I am not sure how I thought that was funny.)

CH: I assumed.

EZ: I’m about to sob eat my way through some Chunky Monkey and Flaming Hot “Chester’s Fries” as soon as I finish watching Beaches.

(I’m out drinking at this martini bar in the Oxford Hotel.  Usually a classy place, tonight there are some bros here. I foolishly posted a picture on Facebook.  Huth chastised me.)

CH: Oxford Hotel?  Are you at a birthday party?

EZ: Your mom invited me.  Sorry, she thought it would be awkward.

CH:  (Something about coming down there maybe… it’s a bit garbled)

EZ:  The Cruise Room in the Oxford is an old school martini bar.  Ish.  It’s pretty dope.  You should come down.  If you’re man enough.

CH: (Something else about coming down)

Pictured: Huth's favorite band. This is the poster above his bed.

EZ: Well I’m just sitting in the bar.  Marko (name changed to protect the guilty) said you weren’t man enough to hang with us.  I guess he’s right.

CH: Why don’t you guys kiss for a while, if you’re so upset about it.  Maybe the caress of another man will fill the emptiness in your hearts that I have left.

EZ: I’m saving all my loving for a real man: your mom.  I like it when her mustache tickles my lips.

CH: Yeah, she’s been working on her Magnum PI impression.  That Ferarri will really blow your skirt up.

EZ: It’s about time something blew my skirt up.  It’s been down for some time.  Tell her to bring TC and the chopper or I’ll tell Higgins. (This was not really funny… I think I was doing something else and half-assed it.  Probably telling an equally unfunny joke to my lovely girlfriend.)

CH: Maybe another “Twizzlertini” will lube the lock on that chastity belt and you and Marko (name changed to protect the guilty) can finally consumate this thing.  I think putting the image of Tom Selleck in your heads probably didn’t hurt either.

EZ: You only wish you were manly enough to toss back a few “Skittletinis”.  I’ll leave you to the Bartles and James.  (Sorry ’bout the next bit… it’s the opposite of subtle.) I know the thought of two hairy old balls sacks making your fuzzy naval keeps you lubed up.

(We continue in the “crude and unusual” department for a bit here… sorry)

Our love can never die.

CH: I’m sure Bartles and James isn’t the only BJ you have gotten excited about having in your mouth.  What do you know about hairy balls?  I am sure you shave yours daily to cut down on wind resistance while jerking off to interviews of Alberto Contador.

EZ:  I can’t even text back.  I’m too busy crying and waxing.  Whenever he “finger bangs”, I know he’s thinking of me and that night with the “special” biscotti.

CH: It’s okay sweet heart, you’ll find someone to hold your hair when you vomit up all that blue Curacao and diet pills and then you’ll know he’s the one that’s going to leave you and take your tv in the night.  Everything a girl ever wanted.

EZ:  But when?  Am I Jazzercising for no one?

CH: You’re Jazzercisig for you, but you really should work more on upper body.  Nobody wants to date Cyldesdale thighs.  Are those cut offs or did the bottoms of your jeans just fall off from lack of circulation.  I’ve never seen denim get stretch marks.

EZ:  You know that’s my problem area!  I bought the thigh master, I’ve used the Gazelle.  You do P90X for a week and talk to me.

CH: I can do all 90 days of P90X in two weeks, pussy.

EZ: By “P90X” I didn’t mean your high school varsity lacrosse team.  Get a blood test.  Devin’s dirty.

CH: You would bring that up.  Don’t be bitter because you wanted Devin.

EZ:  You only know that because you stole my Lisa Frank dream journal.

The Gazelle is a tasteful way to get into shape. Don't I look happy? Not at all crying about my shitty pony tail or anything. Not at all.

CH: You have a lot of time dedicated to dairy substitutes and feet in that thing.  All the sparkly dolphins on the cover really look disgusted.

EZ: I know you said that the purple kitten climbing out of the moon represented my “pussiness finally clawing it’s way to the surface”, but I think it’s about my inner voice of timidity.  And the rainbow zebra?  Well, I love Fruit Stripe gum.

-FIN-

That’s it.  I’m not sure when we got so off track, but it was pretty rapid fire and thus, quite quite funny.

“I just want to ask, right now, I want to ask god to change the hearts of Americans.  I want god to change the heart of the president.  I want people everywhere to turn from their wicked ways and to seek god’s forgiveness.”

Murmurs of “Yes” and “Amen” went through the crowd.

“Lord it isn’t as simple as a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, we know this.  There are those that struggle through a lifetime of confusion, confusion about who and what to love.”

He paused.  They were kids in Abercrombie t-shirts and cargo shorts, flip-flops, and backwards baseball caps.  He breathed in.

“Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman, we know this.  It’s an echo of Christ, who is the bridegroom of the church.  We are your bride Lord.  Marriage is your symbol, not man’s.  We want you to take it back, we know you can take it back.”

Louder “yes” and “I believe” comments fill the air with a type of static.

“It’s not enough, Jesus, that we seek you first, it’s not enough. I am sorry that I only have so much to give.  But I give it all.  I give it all.  Amen.”

After the meeting, he reached down for his bag when his pocket began to vibrate.  He was already exhausted from his preaching and though the youth conference was continuing, he just wanted to get back to his brother’s house and sleep in the guest bedroom.  If he could just make it to his car.

“Dr Zhara, I just want to say thank you.”  A young man in distressed denim jeans and a slim fitting yellow polo shirt with a tiny white eagle embroidered on the breast walked up to him.

“You’re so right about the state of America.”

“I’m glad you think so, I just hope I could reach you guys.  Not me… I mean, that god could reach you, that I could be a worthy vessel for his message.  Sorry, I know that sounds a little cheesy.”

He let the phone go through to voicemail as he shook the young man’s hand.

“I like the way you tied in stuff from The Matrix and the bond between Frodo and Sam.  It’s cool how you can use pop culture to convey so much meaning.  It works.”

“Yes, god’s message is in so many things, we just fail to see it.  It helps to reach people, to really speak to them.  I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Yeah, I did.  I am going to buy your book too, can I get an autograph?”

“That’s wonderful, I hope you enjoy it.  I don’t sign autographs, though.  It would detract from the Lord’s message.  I don’t want to be famous, I just want to be a worthy messenger when I can be.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“It’s about Christ and not me.  I want everyone in the world to know his love firsthand.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want too.”

“Here is my email address.  Feel free to send me your thoughts, we can talk more.  Nice to meet you, what did you say your name was?”

“Oh, sorry, Ron.  Yeah, thanks!”

He handed Ron his business card and then reached into his pocket to pull out his phone.  It had taken him thirty minutes to get out through the hallway and he hoped Ron was the last well wisher he encountered.  Not that he wouldn’t talk to anyone.

He walked through the remaining crowds on the sidewalks between the conference center and the parking garage where he had parked his rented two thousand something Chevrolet Malibu.  People milled about, not the kids he had just spoken to, but normal denizens of the city.  He imagined many of them were headed to bars or to various liasons.  With friends and lovers and he shook his head.  Such a waste.  God could do so much more with these people.

But that was what he was praying for.  Every day.

He felt the weight of his attache case dig into his shoulder as he picked up his pace slightly: he needed to rest.  It had been a long weekend already and now he was regretting not booking a room in the hotel, but as his brother had just gone through such a messy divorce, he felt it only proper that he stay with him and minister to him as he could.  His brother was hurting and his brother did not really seem to care about the things of god.  He had spurned god when their father died and now that his wife had been cheating on him and his son had died two years prior, it was very hard for Dr Richard Zhara to bring his brother to the light of Jesus.

“He knows you, Lord, he just doesn’t want to anymore.  Open his heart.” Dr Zhara prayed as he waited for the elevator to take him to his car.

Getting out of the city seemed to take forever.  Each light seemed bent on turning red just as he cleared the last.  Something kept rattling in the vents of the rental car and one of the speakers in the right side of the car rattled with every bassy voice on the AM talk radio station he was tuned to.  He didn’t agree with the right wing pundits, but there were times when something they said rang true and he had thought that though she was controversial, the ex-governor of Tennessee Wendy Winthrop, would have made an excellent president.

“She certainly isn’t afraid of offending the liberal types.”

It was this sound of distorted speaker and rattling vents that slowly lulled him into slumber as he drove.  Each light beside the rural state highway drifted by and the white lines beat out a visual pattern that hypnotized him with their regularity.

White line.

White line.

White… line…

Jerk awake, snapping neck and head into place.

Into the ditch, the nose of the car diving and plowing into dirt.

Airbag.

Jerk of the seatbelt.

He felt okay as he stepped out of the car.  Dazed for a moment, dizzy and a bit light headed.  He didn’t think he was bleeding, but the way the hood buckled on the car and the way the rear wheels spun freely in the air and slowed to a stop were sure signs of a no longer living vehicle.  The post mortem would read “done”.  He laughed and imagined a giant toe tag affixed to the spinning rear wheel.

As he collected himself he prayed out loud,

“Thank you Jesus, for keeping me safe.”

He carefully opened the trunk and pulled out his attache case in the red glow of the brakelights, which seemed like they would stay on until the battery died.  He needed to call the rental company, and started fishing through his case for the paperwork.  After finding it, he read the number off by the comparatively white glow from his phone and repeated it to himself and then punched it into his phone.

No service.

Zero bars.

He sighed.

“Lord, which way is closest to help?”

He felt that he hadn’t seen much of a town in a while and that continuing in the direction he was headed was his best bet.  He began walking and immediately wondered why he hadn’t replaced his Rockford moc-toed shoes recently.  The sole was nearly worn through and he felt a blister begin to form on his heel where the plastic cup poked through the once padded leather.

A blister.  A headache.  A long walk in the dark.

He began to sing to himself.  Alternately humming and saying the lyrics to hymns old and new: How Great Thou Art, The Old Rugged Cross, Take My Life, I Want To Know You, Ancient of Days, and on.  He was into a rousing chorus of Famous One when he saw the headlights and his own silhouette suddenly cast across the brown grasses in front of him.

The car, a 1983 white Toyota Land Cruiser with little spots of rust stopped and a short, thin young man in skinny black jeans and with a somewhat loose fitting red gingham western shirt stepped out.  He was wearing thick horn rimmed glasses in a yellow and brown jacquard pattern and his straight black hair was short in the front and longer in the back.  It looked very angular and modern, in contrast with his old fashioned shirt and his broken in caramel colored cowboy boots.

“Hey man, you need a ride?”

Dr Zhara prayed quickly.

“Thank you, Lord.” and then more loudly added, “Yes, yes, or just the use of your phone.”

“Good luck with that, man, there is hardly any cell service down in the valley, but my place is only about twenty minutes away and you’re we’ve got a micro cell.”

“What?”

“Haha, your phone will magically work again, or you can use our voice over IP phone.”

“Ah… gotcha.  Yes, that would be fine.”

Dr Zhara climbed into the front passenger seat and put his attache between his legs.  He noticed the pack of Camel cigarettes in the center console and a plain white Bic lighter.  He once smoked and it brought back memories of his youth and his own father.

The young man hopped back in the seat.

“My name’s Nick, by the way.  I’m guessing that was your car back there?”

“Yeah, Dr Zhara, er… Rich.  Richard.  You can call me Rich.  And sadly that is my car.  I was far more tired than I thought.  My brother lives about an hour from here and I’m staying with him.”

“Oh, that’s cool.  You’re not from around here then?”

Nick started the Land Cruiser and the stereo began playing an oddly dissonant, wildly howling guitar just as a sort of rumbling, dancey bassline and the open/close splash of very rhythmic drums kicked in.  Nick quickly turned the knob on the glowing Pioneer stereo down.

“Sorry.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, just, uh.. .well this band, Gang of Four.  It’s a song called ‘To Hell With Poverty’.  I sort of have this thing right now for late seventies post-punk.  My boyfriend hates it.”

Dr Zhara suddenly felt his stomach clench and the blood drain from his head.  This young man who was helping him was gay.  He prayed internally for strength.  This was an opportunity to witness to this young man.

“It’s interesting.”  Dr Zhara cleared his throat and scrambled for something to say.  ”Late seventies you say?  Really?”

“Yeah… older folks are always shocked that it’s older than me.  My dad grew up on album oriented and prog rock.  He didn’t know there was anything but Yes and ELO or Bachmann Turner Overdrive in the late seventies.  Maybe Pink Floyd.”

“Huh.  So you have a good relationship with your father?”

“Yeah, he’s a good guy.  He’s got his ways, but he and my mom are always eager to call us about any old thing.  Some of the shit they get into, haha.  They’re working on a drip irrigation system for their garden.  Trying to do it from recycled materials.  It’s a trip to visit their ‘earth ship’ out in Oregon.”

Dr Zhara thought for a moment… okay so they’re sort of hippies.  That explains it.  Why else would a boy think it was okay to be gay.

“I should tell you, I’m… I’m speaking at this conference ‘Life Call’ back in the city.  It’s a… ”

Nick fished out a cigarette from the pack as he kept one hand on the wheel and reached for the lighter.

“Oh I’m sorry, you don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

“No… it’s… the conference is a Christian youth conference.  I’m speaking about the message of marriage as a Christian institution.”

“Huh.”  Nick drew deeply, sucking the flame into the cigarette and creating a tiny orange red cherry before letting out a plume of smoke, just after he cracked his window.

“So you’re against gay marriage, I guess, right?”

“I am.  But I understand you’re life better than you think.  I’m not a right wing nut job who just wants guns in the hands of every school child.”

“Right… I didn’t think you were.  You seem too normally dressed for that sort of thing.  I mean a brown corduroy blazer over a plaid shirt with khakis and those Rockports makes you look a good deal like my dad, sorry.”

“No, haha, no, that’s fine.  Fair too, I have a son of my own, probably about your age.”

“But you say you understand me?”

“I do… I mean, I know that you didn’t just say one day ‘I’m gay’ and go that route.”

“I know.  I’ve been to church before, believe it or not.”

“Right, but your parents…”

“Oh they’re religious.  We went to more mainstream protestant churches growing up.  We skipped around.  Pentecostal churches, to reformed churches, to those modern churches where kids wear flip flops and baseball caps and sway their arms to some pseudo rock band singing songs vaguely about some lover named, ‘Jesus’… haha, I’m kidding about that.”

“Ah.  Well then you know that Paul has things to say about sexual impurity and that marriage is a model of Christ and the Church.  I mean it’s in Paul’s epistle to the church at Ephesus.”

“Sure… if you think that’s what he was talking about in, what is it… shit… first Corinithians.  I’m not sure that’s what was actually meant.  I mean you’re translating from another language and things get lost.”

“Right, but…”

“Look.  You think that I had a bad father or experiences that led me to like men because I was lacking something.”

“Well, yes…”

“That’s unfair.  My father was excellent.  It’s just the way I am.  Let me ask you something, what was the first memory you have  of masturbating?”

Dr Zhara was speechless, but remembered a picture of Cheryl Tiegs that clearly showed the dark outline of her nipples through a white bathing suit and a moment where…

“I am sorry, Nick, but I don’t do those things.  Not anymore.  I avoid sexual impurity.  I save myself for my wife.”

“Fine, but you’re an adult male and I’m sure you’ve dirtied a sock or stained a bed sheet in a bout of, to keep it biblical ‘Onanism’.  You don’t have to admit it.  But…”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Nick, but I’d rather we talk about something else.”

“Let me just make my point.  The first time I got an erection and… well, remember my first bout of ‘Onanism’, it was to, of all things, a black and white picture of Jean-Paul Belmando from the set of some movie my grandmother had at her house, in her spare bedroom.”

“Okay, but…”

“No, it was a man, it was his eyes and his chest and the line of his thighs that ‘did the trick’, if you will.  It was never breasts or the folds of a vagina that aroused me.  That’s just the way it was.  I never liked girls.”

“Okay, but there must be something else going on Nick.  God didn’t make you that way.  Marriage was to, at least from a secular perspective, provide a stable home for children.”

“Sure.  I agree with that.  But how many people get married don’t have kids?  It’s not an insignificant number.”

“Okay, that’s true, but you and your boyfriend cannot have children.”

“Of course not, but we could raise one.  We’ve been together for five years.  I’ve never had anonymous sex with some guy in a gym or a bath house.  I’ve been faithful.  He’s been faithful.  If it weren’t for our parents recognizing our sexuality, if it had been repressed, we would have engaged in the promiscuous behavior you all are so afraid of.”

“I wasn’t going to say that… I know that some of you do that sort of thing, but…”

“Dr Zhara, I have to be honest.  I’m not even sure I believe in a god anymore.  People like you, who think that you are ‘modern Christians’ who make references to the failings of humanism and the need for morality really just want a Christian nation.  A nation ‘under god’ and you have no room there for people to disagree with you.”

“That’s not true, but if there is a god and you know him and you’re convinced that he’s telling you what to do, then why wouldn’t you want everyone to know the truth.”

Nick threw his cigarette butt out the window.

“That’s bullshit.  That’s not ‘god’, that’s you.  That’s your id vs ego, or whatever you want to call it.  But that isn’t god.  I know that feeling.  It’s just you.”

Dr Zhara sat quietly and prayed for strength.

“Nick, god loves you, even if you don’t acknowledge him….”

“Dr Zhara, Rich, you think that you’re in contact with god and he’s giving you strength to ‘witness’ to me?  How lucky for me, then, that you crashed your car and I helped you.  Must be god’s hand, because it’s not like I do anything else good…”

“No, Nick, it’s that this is god’s way of bringing me to you.”

“I feel so blessed.  Dr Zhara, this is what I’m talking about.  If you say ‘you talk to god’ you’re always going to know ‘deeply and truly’ that you’re right.  But that’s just so much shit.  You’re a human being and you can be wrong.  Your idea of talking with god could be wrong.  I get those same damn feelings and I found out, after I gave up on church, that it wasn’t god.”

“Nick…”

“Wait, let’s not make this about my loss of faith.  Let’s be more objective.”

Dr Zhara waited.

“Do you think freedom of speech and ideals are important?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Well, that really means ‘freedom of speech’ for things you don’t like, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not sure I follow.  I mean we can disagree about the flavor of ice cream, but there are some things…”

“No, there aren’t.  Who would decide what I can and cannot say?  And I’m not talking about libel or slander or snuff films, everyone knows that isn’t the same thing.  I mean what if I think I talk to god and my god disagrees with yours?  And it’s not something big and obvious like differences in beliefs over infant baptism or something?”

“I think that’s not god.”

“But the other guy thinks that about you too!  That you aren’t really talking to god.”

“Okay, well I have faith in god that it would not happen like that.  That one of us would be wrong and through prayer and mediation and earnest study, we would each see where we were right or wrong.”

“The other guy thinks that too.  It happens, it happens all the time.”

“What’s your point?”

“That’s freedom of speech.  That’s freedom of expression, that’s freedom of religion.”

“I’m losing you here.”

“Marriage is a legal institution.  It governs taxes and adoption, death rights and health insurance.  Those things should have nothing to do with what god I think I do or do not believe in.  You folks making it a ‘Christian’ issue are saying that you’re right and everyone else is wrong is just stupid.”

Nick was visibly agitated now, grabbing another cigarette and not focusing as much as he should be on driving.

“Nick, shouldn’t you look at the road?”

“Dr Zhara, I’m telling you that you are saying that you and your friends talk to god and that you can do anything because he is the ultimate authority to you.  It doesn’t matter if it may be a shared hallucination or if it is real or if you’re all just fooling yourself.  You are operating under the belief that it is real and that is precisely the thing that caused the splitting of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the founding of Rhode Island and thousands of other rifts between the devout.  You’re just doing the same fucking thing over again, only worse, you’re doing it in a way that actually affects us.  It’s not like we can make a splinter ‘US’ where we have real freedom to believe what we want, instead we have to live in your fucking ridiculous theocracy and it’s not fucking fair.”

The Land Cruiser jerked suddenly.  Nick hadn’t been paying attention and it veered sharply into an oncoming Greyhound Bus.

Dr Zhara closed his eyes.

He awoke with a start.  His face was in the airbag of… of the Malibu?  It all felt so real.  He hadn’t heard of Nick’s band and it sounded so real.  He had never been in a Land Cruiser before… he, how would he have imagined it?

Dr Zhara stumbled out of the car, still in the ditch, and fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone.

Then he stopped.

Was it possible that god had given him this vision?  What did that mean?  It’s the only thing that made sense to Dr Zhara, but then… then it was the same thing that Nick had talked about.  It was god or something insisting it was right.

A white Land Cruiser pulled up and the same young man in skinny black jeans stepped out of the car.

“Are you okay?”

Dr Zhara looked at his cellphone, the screen had cracked in the accident and he looked back up at the guy in the red gingham shirt.

“Can I borrow your cell phone?”

“Sure, come on in the truck.”

Dr Zhara sat down and the same song that was playing before belted from the stereo, only he could make out words now ‘we’ll get drunk on cheap wine’.  The young man lit a cigarette and handed him an iPhone.

“My name is Nick, by the way.  Hey, why don’t you come over to our place?  I mean my boyfriend and I.  He’s been making this amazing lime cake and you could rest.  After a wreck like that, I think a slice of cake and a cup of coffee might do you some good.  Hell, I’m shaky just looking at it.”

Dr Zhara nodded dumbly as he punched in the number for the conference’s director.  He got her voicemail.

“Sarah, I… I have to tell you this now, I can’t return to speak tomorrow.  I’ve had… I’ve had an experience and I just don’t believe it anymore.  I’m sorry.  This is Rich, I mean, Dr Zhara, I hope you understand.”

He pushed end and looked at his hand for a moment.

“Are you alright, man?”

“Yeah… I think… I think I am now.  So, what… what does your boyfriend do for a living?”

“Well, it’s a funny story, he used to be a post-doc economics grad and now he’s…”

Dr Zhara lost interest in the conversation and stared out into the dark and felt a warmth grow in his chest and a smile come to his face.  He suddenly did not feel like praying.

How I came to this goddamn town.

My breath feels heavy.  There is a burning in my lungs and my legs.  I sort of skip up, quickly standing up and pulling up the back wheel of my bike as I struggle to keep up.  It’s not news to me.  What looks easy to the others is harder than it should be for me, but a steep climb and thirty extra pounds means I’m no longer the leg shaving, VO2 max obsessed rider I once was.

It’s okay.

There are those times when the hum of pavement and the rhythm of my pedaling is hypnotic.  Even if I feel the sweat beading up on the small of my back, each droplet pooling under the weight of my back pack, I can still get lost in the moment.

Well, the sweat is probably half the result of being out of shape and that feeling that half of it was beer probably didn’t help things.  (Does beer sweat smell?  Is it like those rather large kids you know in elementary school that seem to smell like stale corn chips?  Sorry, memories.  I’m a dick even in those.)

There is a good chance this is one of those things I learned to do alone, to escape feeling like the misfit amongst the misfits.  When I was in school, I was the nerd who cared about sneakers and Victory Style samplers (and really, what is studying in the library if you can’t listen to Refused?).  When I was at shows, I cared about L’Hospital’s rule and Noam Chomsky (since I never talked to anyone this was probably a good thing… weird little fucker I was).  That was fine.  Sometimes, though, it was rolling hills and sweaty climbs past abandoned farm buildings, and old stone structures.  Mining equipment and broken, rusted steel cables.  It was escape and exploring and then, not so long ago, no one expected a guy in spandex to pull out a can of Montana and draw a four eyed smiling face.

Memories.

Happy birthday, Roberto.

But when I got to this point, or that point rather, I was new to the city.  My social skills were underdeveloped, and always will be… thus is the cross to bear of an introvert.  What did I know?  I knew computer science and math (sure you did, you little arrogant bastard).  I knew literature and art (or thought I did, perhaps not).  I knew music (sweet shit like Goldfinger, Sick of It All, and Enya) and… I knew bicycles.

I won’t pretend I am cool or was cool (I’m a goddamn geek, no matter what the geneticists say).  Meeting new people makes me nervous.  I worry that I’m too fat (goddamnit you heifer) or that my pants don’t look the way I want them to, or that my hair is just not “there” yet (I just can’t leave the relaxer in long enough).  I wonder about my breath or how smooth my palms feel.  Do they feel too soft or too hard?  Do the rough yellow callouses under the base of each finger from years of cycling seem gross (yeah… from cycling… not anything else)?  Am I too sweaty (answer: yes)?  What stupid thing will I do?  Will I use the restroom in some bar and lean against the counter, gaining a line of water across my pants?

You know, insecurities.

And then… I work in an office.  I sit at a desk.  I’m not a full time musician working around my band or an artist waiting for a commission.  Maybe I’m too much of a suit to ever be cool (I have become “the man” and I just put sod in my tiny fucking yard).

Yeah bitch, this is your goddamn "thank you". Quit looking at me like that. God, you're always like this.

Okay, I don’t think like the latter, but in retrospect I always wonder.

So I had found out about this Tuesday night bike ride.  I had lived in the city a month and outside of work, I hadn’t met many people.  But I knew of this ride.

That’s the point of this post.

I went on this ride every Tuesday night, without fail, for nine months.  In the bitter cold when only a few of us would show up.  In the ice and snow.  We rode around the city and through it’s parks and drank watery cans of cheap domestic lager and hid out in bars to cool down.  Of course, I was probably drinking too much, but in the moment, it was grand.

That would be reason enough to express gratitude, but that isn’t really the point either.

By going on this ride, I finally made some friends I actually had more in common with than nearly anyone I had known in my first twenty seven years of life.  And that’s it.

You slip it on in.

I wouldn’t be where I am today, if a few chaps hadn’t started a little bike ride we call Loops.  I don’t go that often anymore, but I’m glad it’s still going.  I hope it never stops, even if I never go again.

So this is all to say: thanks Broox, Josh, Noah, and… well you know who you all are.  I am not proud and I don’t forget things (and shit).

If you do happen to be an insecure nerd with an expressive feminine personality (and yes if you pay lots of attention to design and your “look” you probably are, sorry to break it to you, it has nothing to do with sexuality) who digs stone cold grooves (is this fucking Rob Base?  OMG, this is the only hip hop I understand please turn it up) and rides cruiser bikes you should think of attending Loops.  Even if  I don’t see it.

Now with more sex appeal. Check out that package!

We sit down at a white formica topped table in a diner.  I don’t know where it is, but the glass straw holder and the tiny jukebox on our table makes it the sort of diner that a young Bruce Springsteen may have sat down at in Asbury Park, New Jersey after a show.  There is tension between us, as we haven’t talked in some time, and of course, of course I want to talk about what I’ve been doing and what you’re doing, but instead, as soon as the aging waitress with the yellow teeth of a life long smoker leaves to bring us a pot of coffe, you come out and simply say:

“Let’s talk about distance, you stupid ugly shit head.”

Right, like “shit head” is anything except funny.  I don’t think you can call someone “shit head” and mean it.  It sounds crass and bold and loud, but it also makes no sense and, for that and other reasons, doesn’t even seem insulting.

“Fuck you, shit head!”

Oh, because that is much better.  You can put “fuck” and “you” into a sentence.  You must be the first person to have that insight.  Like the folks in the old Reese’s peanut butter cup ads who “invent” chocolate and peanut butter.

We could argue more, but you’re right… distance has been on my mind.  It started with a dream that felt like a montage of the past.

It was nearly impossible to keep the back windows of our battered minivan clear of frost in the chill Montana wind.  Leaning my head against the frosted glass resulted in individual hairs sticking to the icy surface as I stared off into the horizon.  Brown fields and farm houses.  Dark gray brown boards that were once a house staring back with empty windows like the eye sockets of skulls.  Score one for trite, cliched observation.

And then it was summer.

The wind whipping down from the massive brown boulder known as Castle Rock and the green fields and grasses swirling with the patterns of wind, white light flashing for a moment and then gone.  Climbing hills, the strain of the engine and the contest to turn up the current song above the whine.

The weight of distance was on me in a way that a large bill for services rendered hits you when you sit down in the car after a doctor’s appointment.  This is real and this is happening.

My coffee tastes acrid and the hashbrowns have an orangish yellow oil on them that clashes with the buttermilk pancakes and bacon and eggs I have managed to put onto my fork.  I want to stop talking about this, because it feels both wasteful and wistful: things we can’t change that have already passed and my inability to prevent from tearing up over things I did or did not do.

“Stop crying and keep talking to me.”

It’s a command and though I’m tired, and aching, I continue.

Hari kari with a Smith-Corona.

Things are not as close as they are on maps.  It’s true, but it’s hard to see it or feel it or know it until you’ve travelled those distances on the ground.  Airplanes make light of the journey and even cars allow this disconnect.  A hundred miles in a car, that’s an afternoon cruise, but a hundred miles on a bike or, even, on foot, and that’s something else entirely.  At some point, perhaps when he was drinking wine in Southern Europe and dreaming of his semi-autobiographical work A Farewell to Arms, Hemmingway made the observation that “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.  Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”

“Don’t bring bikes into this discussion.”

Right, but if anything it’s about patience and it bleeds into everything.

“Trust me, I’m being patient or I would have asked you what the goddamn point was about five minutes ago.”

If you don’t have patience, the world needs to be more immediate.  Distances need to be shorter, food needs to taste simpler but not too strong, music needs to be easy to digest, and art and movies and… well… everything, has to be more present.  It has to look good, but “good” is subjective and it’s more about polish than depth.

Your jokes better be crass and large and loud with phallus and sex and feces playing the characters of setup, delivery, punchline.  Your food better be delivered in branded plastic packaging with vaguely ethnic flavors and lots of garlic.  Your online pictures had better be salacious and your pose had better show off your abs/breasts/ass/profile (I like the cut of your jib, and by “jib” I mean sexual organs).  Movies need more explosions and voice over exposition.

“Sex jokes are easy, because the topic is taught to us as taboo.  Does my jib show through these pants?”

My god, that's racy.

Well, I’m not saying that’s a problem, but I can say that cheap and sleazy isn’t really different if it came from Motley Crue (or the last track of Boy Sets Fire’s first album, where Live Wire is sung with the aid of helium… the way it should be done) or if it came from sexed up pop tarts like Britney Spears.  And when the dominant voice of pop music has songs about not getting cell phone service “in da club”, it’s sort of shocking.  There is no hidden meaning, no deeper truth and in a way, maybe there never is.

“She may as well be singing about bowel movements, though I’d rather visit the water closet than listen to her.  One of those things is a relief, the other… is a chore.”

Fair enough, but let me continue.

Distance says something about patience and it sometimes adds meaning where it didn’t exist or wasn’t obvious.  Those little things that change when time has passed: the “back in the day” bragging and reflection that happens over warming beers on bar tops and in booths.  Because then it was just “a bike ride where your seat post broke” or “that Fugazi show that we didn’t make it to because your stupid car broke down” and what was tragedy or comedic mistiming turns out to be that story that bonds you, and without time, without distance, it would have just been that stupid thing you may have done.

“Did you miss a Fugazi show when you were younger?”

Yes.  It’s an anecdote, but it wasn’t because of a car.

Oh, sorry... I said "sex appeal" and what I meant was "abstinence appeal". I hope that's clear now.

I think, or I’m coming to the conclusion that it matters to me, for some reason, this notion of distance.  Appreciating the details in distance, appreciating that which isn’t obvious and easy.

“Is that the anglo-protestant work ethic?”

I used to think so.  But I’ve meet quite a few older Americans who are not curious about the world.  They can grind away at their career for eons and never bother to look up or around themselves.  They don’t flip over rocks to see what’s on the other side, or cut open a Stretch Armstrong doll to see what’s inside.

“Okay, is this it, is that all you have to say?”

Well, not hardly, but that’s my only point now.  Distance.  It’s bad in a lover, but good for so many other things.

“Fine.  Now let me tell you about this new band I’m joining.”

Whatever, I still don’t have a head made of human waste.

The scene of us, drinking coffee at the diner ends with a long pan, the camera rolls back and we fade out of view as a little known 70s punk band from New Zealand plays a song that is sure to have folks snapping up copies of their records in the same way that Juno made Kimya Dawson famous or Garden State put The Shins into the heads of every lonely nerd who fantasized about Natalie Portman, even if they sounded like a less talented version of The Wrens.  In a nod to Jim Jarmusch, it ends in black and white and we smoke while Bill Murray buses a table.

It’s not often that a shirtless native American stares you down through a crowd of sweaty, dancing pseudo-children.

He was clad in denim, the only article draping his torso was a worn denim vest and his arms were thick and mahogany in color.  His hair was long and graying and he stood with his legs shoulder width apart and his hands on his belt buckle.  It was so cliche and alarming that I wanted to ask him if he was an extra or a sort of in-character actor one might see on the sorts of low-brow syndicated action shows that Lorenzo Lamas starred in.  Maybe a movie of the week.

Yet, I was drawn by his gaze.  I pushed around and through the skinny pale youths until I was in front of him.

I suddenly felt my mouth dry up and my lips felt cracked and split and I grew lightheaded.  Still he maintained his gaze, though he turned his head in a way that he was looking at me from the lower corners of his eyes.  Did he think I was beneath him?

In that instant before we spoke I imagined that he was perhaps the fabled god Coyote, come to play a trick on me.  Did he know I did not care for the band that was assembling on stage, did he recognize the forced enthusiasm in my posture?  Perhaps this was one of those events that, unlike an alien abduction or paying your taxes, was real and concrete and still fantastical.

Maybe I was crazy.

“Ummm… hello?”

My voice didn’t sound real.  Were these words coming out of my mouth?  He turned his head to face me, still not saying anything.  I imagined his voice as being gravelly and sage, his words being deliberate and his diction slower than my ADD bursts of nonsense, my stream of consciousness way of conversing.

I spoke again, not sure if he had heard me.

“It’s weird to see you here… I mean, you seem like a mirage in this waste of youth, hipster infested… uh… well shindig, I guess.”

He stepped towards me and place his hands on my shoulders.  I expected him to chastise me for bringing “the white man’s neurosis” to bear on a man who merely enjoyed music and a drink or two.  That’s not what I got.

“What did you say, friend?”

He indeed sounded comforting, but this hiccup in our dialog bothered me.  This made our interaction less poetic and more day to day.

“Why are you in this stupid hipster bar?”

He frowned for a moment, then took a deep breath and asked,

“What is a hipster?”

What should I tell him?  I felt myself leave my body for a moment and I seemed to pass out as the room spun around me.

Darkness.

Awake.

I was at home, sitting on my couch, in front of the television where the Instrument DVD sat on the menu screen and I sat in my underwear and a faded Jawbreaker t-shirt amidst empty bottles of High Life, the gold label contrasting comically with my bare legs.  What had happened?

My mind raced through possibilities.  Did I kiss the Indian man?  We were standing close and I can’t say I was attracted to him, but…  Did someone slip me rohypnol?  The precedent for all of this was just a wild imagination.  Did I take something?  I did not feel hungover as I normally did on a night of bottomless whiskey and ginger ale highballs.  What time was it?

My phone buzzed on the table.

The message read “From the Indian: you should tell me what a hipster is.”

I wanted to ask him what happened, what did we do, am I… no.  Instead the question pressed upon my mind, the question was heavier than my immediate concerns.

What was a hipster?

Where to start?

I looked at the books lining my shelves: Hemingway, Kerouac, Ginsberg, David Sedaris, a book on skateboard art, a copy of Beautiful Losers, stacks of Juxtapoz and Vice magazine.  If I were to die today, and if the contents of my bookcases were to be discovered by a future archaeologist, what would she or he say about me?

I stroked the stubble on my chin and walked to the fridge, where after purloining it of another High Life, I made my way to my desk and began typing.

I needed to know the answer to this question.

After the first beer and a fit of frantic web searching it became apparent that this term had entered the lexicon, at least in it’s current incarnation, from the mint of baby boomer and generation x journalists who sought to say something profound, or at least to draw readers in, about this “new youth culture”.  They pointed at the subculture’s preference for traditionally working class lager, v-neck t-shirts, flannel, and destroyed boat shoes as an attempt to reject some of the materialism of previous generations or, more elaborately, as an attempt to find solidarity with the working class.

It didn’t ring true.  Somehow the chord they struck was all wrong and sounded, to me, atonal and dissonant and not in a good, Steve Albini way… it was a stupid stroke and a term that seemed to have as much relevance as “sexting” or any other media coined word.

The word, of course, existed long before we were born.  It’s criticism is even older… dating back to Norman Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro” which, itself, served only as piece of analysis that went back further starting with a snippet of snide hipster criticism written by Carolyn Bird that, even then called the “hipster” derivative and claimed that they contributed nothing to society.

Mailer, ever the whipping boy or perhaps, perhaps the Judas of the beats claimed that World War Two was not only the catalyst for the hipster, but that this new “wholly American Existentialist” was a reaction against the War, which was a man made creation that reflected the hate and war withing mankind itself, the natural byproduct of a warped mind.  Then again, what was this standard for mind and what made it seem so wrong and disturbed?  Enter, in effect, the hipster.

And Mr Mailer claimed that the hipster, at essence was not the one that rebelled against society, but turned into self.  Introspection to the extreme.

Maybe he was right.

I didn’t know what to tell the Indian.

Was I a hipster?  I was critical, perhaps, cynical of all I surveyed, but I had an appetite and do have an appetite for all manner of knowledge and somehow, in that bleeding, screaming place that most fear to tread, I revelled.  Not literally in sickness and gore, more, more perhaps in this place where introspection was painful.  Where I, as a product and a participant, in society was criticized.

Maybe it’s being a cynic and turning the lens inward.

Why did these kids that were labelled hipsters like Miller High Life and Pabst Blue Ribbon?  I know that I grew a fondness for Pabst when an article in Thrasher, some fourteen years earlier extolled the virtues of the drink.  The label was classic and iconic, the taste was simple and easy to understand.  It wasn’t because it was “working class” or somehow “ironic”.  It was because it did not cater to modern advertising whims and existed in a time that now seemed, to my twenty first century perceptions, timeless.  There were no “Pabst beer girls” in skimpy bikinis showing the shape and size of their nipples to horny, sex crazed, testerone fueld wanna be “he-men”…

Wait.

I opened another beer.

Perhaps that was it.  These hipsters, at least the men, had strong feminine personality traits, this not being a sexuality issue, but a personality issue.  Instead of war and violence and proving the worth of ones genitalia, it was about questioning and feelings and a non-academic existentialism.  Why am I here?  And… more importantly, do I matter?

And if I’m just a human, one of millions, who will die and be forgotten and whose words will not be remembered, than that is the answer.  There is no point, not really.  There is a need and a want of morality and right and wrong and that, that is good and should be nurtured merely because we so feel it to be necessary (and thereby it is).  So yes, good and bad…  right and wrong.  But beyond that, what is there?  Nothing, perhaps.

It’s more about endless appetites for culture and then, then a jadedness towards new for the sake of “new”.

Because “new” that was just “new” and “hip” seemed more trite and soul-less.

What could a pop-radio star say that was not said in the sweaty hands of James Brown or Otis Redding or Syl Johnson or Eddie Kendricks?  What did they have to say that was truly backed by experience and pain?

Maybe being a hipster was having that pop-culture Occom’s Razor.  The ability to distinguish soul-less from soulful and while not being able to possess, per se, that soul, you understood it deeply and truly.

It was wishful thinking.

I knew that my sense of style and eschewing the silliness of the mainstream was just as much influence by Gavin McInnes as it was by Vivienne Westwood.  Perhaps it always would be.

And there was the music too.

I had been the child in the mid nineties who thought grunge was shitty metal and jocks were singing Pearl Jam songs when I was discovering hardcore and telling myself to “get that PMA”.  It mutated and grew and I sucked up Guided By Voices records and Jawbreaker and the Wrens and my vinyl collection grew into an unwieldy beast.

These thoughts flew through my brain and I typed as fast as I could, the cadence and clacking sound of the keys were like a slave chant that spurred me on.  It was all I knew.

Then I fell asleep on my desk.

I awoke with a start.

I was still at the show.  He still had his hands on my shoulders.

“So, what is a hipster?”

I looked around at the crowd in their American Appareal hoodies and vintage Hermes ties and tailored slacks.

“It doesn’t matter.  Not really.”

I was in the moment, I was Mailer’s subject.  I did not see tomorrow or the day after, I saw today and what had come before.

I remembered the “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and this seemed to smack of that… my story was cut short by this dream of waking and I wanted to ask the man if that was all real.

“Shhh… you’ve done well, Jimmy.  You’ve done… well, okay.  How about I buy you an Olympia?”

Damn you, coyote.  Damn you.

His fading gray t-shirt read “All Star Triple Track”, whatever that meant, but the round disc shaped logo with the green and red contrails drifting off to the right, was mostly obscured by the straps and the front flap of the overalls.

“Jesse, where are you?”

His aunt called after him and he could hear her coming up the stairs.  He imagined that each footstep made dust shake off of the rafters.  He hated spiders and dust, but hiding up here in the attic meant he was less bothered by his aunt or his grandmother, who wouldn’t admit they were afraid of the mildewy attic and instead claimed it was “too hot for a sane person”.

The door creaked open.

“Jesse, you’ve got to go.  You need to play with some other boys, I’m worried about you.”

He looked up at his face and smiled, he had a few more baby teeth to lose and had been in the process of losing one not too long ago, which is why there were gaps in his grin now.

“Aunt Mary Lee, I like Halloween.  I like the stories of monsters.”

“That is nonsense, Jesse.  If your father was here he would straighten you out.  It is an evil day that bodes no man well.  The Lord Jesus did not come to save your skin from the devil just to have you taunt him.  Besides, all you’d do otherwise is eat candy which would rot the few teeth you have in your head.”

Jesse said nothing and slumped his shoulders.

“Now, brush your teeth and I will take you to the church.”

“But… I read that it’s all-hallow’s eve and that isn’t…”

“Hushup, Jesse.  Brush your teeth.”

He quickly squeezed out a bit of sparkly blue toothpaste onto his toothbrush and generated copious amounts of sickly sweet foam.  It dripped down his chin and he began humming a song he had heard in an old cartoon.  It was called “Minnie the Moocher”, he thought and something about it stuck with him.  It was on a video cassette he had found at the ARC thrift store and he watched it whenever he could.  They didn’t get good television reception so this and the library were his sole sources of media.

Well, that and his grandmother, who listened to talk radio at full volume throughout the day.  He would sneak out of the house during nap time and could always tell when she awoke.  It made her punishments less severe.  Like the time he was grounded for falling asleep during the evening devotion or when his cousin, Joey and he had thrown the little brown pillows on the chairs in the sitting room at each other, while his grandmother continued one of her hour long prayers and his aunt had caught them.

He would sneak out to the shed and read old copies of Consumer Reports from the seventies, with their brown and lack and white illustrations, and imagine his grandfather, shooting down Japanese fighters in the Pacific.  As soon as the blare from the radio would echo over the yard, he would scramble to climb back through his window and onto his bed.

His grandmother had forgotten that people under the age of seventy don’t really need a nap in the middle of the day, but there was no reminding her.

“Don’t you sass, me Jesse.  ‘Of all the children that I find, the happiest ones are those that mind’.”

She would wake him, every morning without fail, playing and singing a song she had devised on the piano in his room, “Good morning, good morning, good morning to you.  Good morning, good morning, we have lots to do.  Good morning, good morning, the day is anew.  Good morning, good morning, good morning to you.”  Her voice warbled like an old record as she did this.

He climbed into his aunt’s car, a tan little Volkswagen Beetle that smelled like old vinyl and dust.  It was always dirty, somehow, despite his aunt’s insistence on cleanliness.  He leaned his head against the window and saw, for a moment, his own reflection.  Then he focused on the rows of pine trees and the fields of wheat and cotton.  He imagined being chased by German soldiers after stealing a kiss from a beautiful French girl and in his hand, instead of the rifle he left at her family’s farmhouse, he carried a bottle of wine and a wheel of cheese.

“… so I told the reverend that you would be perfectly willing to help with the collection plate next Sunday… Jesse, have you heard a word I’ve said.”

“Yes mam.”

“Jesse, if you are lying to me, I won’t take you to the library tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.  I wasn’t listening.”

“Jesse, I swear, I don’t know why you are always day dreaming.  Every time I try to have a conversation with you, you seem to drift off into nowhere and I can’t get into that little head of yours.”

They pulled into the white gravel parking lot of the red brick church.  Kids had already begun to show up.

“Okay, Jesse, I will be back in two hours to pick you up.  Don’t sass Mr Green tonight, and don’t eat too much candy.”

She paused for a second as he got out of the car.  Then, just before he shut the door, she spoke:

“Don’t tell your grandma I gave you this.”

She pressed into his hand, a tiny wad.

She smiled as she did this and gave him a tiny hug, as much as she could before she shut the door and drove away, the white dust rising behind the car.

In his hands, she had pressed a twenty dollar bill.

He clambered up the steps and began his usual ritual, as he waited for the session to start.  He would wander the hallways and climb up over the door that led to the lost and found where he would look through the boxes of “lost” detritus.  He could barely make the climb, having to brace himself against the wall and the aging oak frame of the door, but he always made it up and through the little window above the door, scraping his ribs and leaving read marks all over his sides as he did so.

He didn’t want to go and talk to the other boys.  It would be the same thing as it always was.  All the girls like Sarah and Michelle would be interested in what Jon Marshall’s week had been like and if he had scored any goals for his soccer team and what movies he had seen.  He and his friend, Mark, would talk about the latest music videos or a new video game they had just acquired and the girls would fawn over him and talk about his cute haircut and how cool his dad was for letting them order pizza.

It would make Jesse feel red in the face and he could imagine them all looking at him.  He didn’t want to be jealous, but he wished that they would pay attention to him.

None of the other kids cared about what new books Jesse had just read or what Jesse dreamed about or how Jesse was modifying his jeans to have a secret pocket on the inside.  They laughed at him when he showed them the cool red watch he got at the thrift store, with it’s checkered background and the big sweeping red hands.

“Jesse, you little baby, that’s a girls watch.”

“Yeah, Jesse, I’d want that watch if I wanted to put a stupid girls watch on and go to a tea party.”

It wasn’t worth it and it made Jesse feel sad.  Sad that he didn’t have nice things and that he didn’t have many friends.

Tonight was “Hallelujah Night” or the night they pretended Halloween didn’t exist and instead shouted out bible verses for crappy candy or cheap plastic toys.  The parachute men that didn’t survive more than a few falls.  The plastic tops with the cardboard discs on top that had swirly patterns that were supposed to hypnotize you or something.  Tiny wax bottles filled with sugary water in yellow and orange colors that were more fun to chew on than drink.  You had to listen to them go on about Jesus and god and all of this other stuff that Jesse thought was silly and boring.

He found a red pen and a single, black and white batter’s glove in the lost and found box that just fit his hand.  He put it on and flexed his fist.  He didn’t like baseball, or he thought he didn’t.  Every time he tried to play, he was the last boy picked and then just ended up in the outfield.  But he didn’t terribly mind.  It seemed sort of silly.  Beating someone at something.  What did it prove?  Was it fun?  It didn’t seem fun.  He had more fun looking at the bats and the gloves and seeing how the leather was stitched and woven together.  But the game itself… he’d rather be building a fort in the woods.

He left the glove on and climbed out of the room where the lost and found box was and made his way to the basement.

The basement was yellowish orange pine paneling and an overhead projector, dented brown metal folding chairs in rows.  Mr Green had a white and brown plaid shirt on and his large cowboy belt buckle.  His flattop and that silly looking little mustache and his red face and over energetic demeanor made it seem to Jesse like he was always trying to hard.  Like he was forcing himself to be excited about everything.

“Hey hey, kids, who’s excited about Jesus!”

The kids left their alcoves in the back of the room or turned around and the chit chat died down.

Jesse noticed that Jon’s older brother, Rick was hanging out in the back and remained there.  While Jon seemed cool to Jesse, Rick was at least nice to him, even offering him cigarettes that he hid in his army surplus jacket.  He rode a dirt bike and rumor had it that he had been expelled from his school for shooting the principal with a pellet gun.

Rick noticed Jesse looking at him and smiled slightly, before pushing his hands further into the pockets of his jacket.

“Let’s sing some songs, how bout it?”

They opened their hymnals and sang the same songs they always did.  The Old Rugged Cross.  Amazing Grace.  Jesse only pretended to sing along, standing near the back of the room.

When it was done, Jesse sat down and noticed Jon looking at him, with a puzzled look on his face.  Jon tapped another boy on the shoulder and they both laughed at Jesse quietly from the front rows.

“All right, kids, I know it’s Hallelujah Night and we’ve got bags of candy for everyone, but tonight we are going to do something a little different.”

Mr Green smiled enough to show all of his bright white teeth.

“Put the lights down, Judy.”

Mr Green cleared his throat and spooky music began to play from the old sound system.  It crackled and popped from the speakers that stood on the edge of the low stage, their once dark gray foam covers now tinged with brown.

The music was spooky and dismal, like something from an old silent film, all organ… it made Jesse think of his tape.

“The devil would have you believe that tonight is a night for foolishness.  It’s a clever game, because the world wants you to take delight in the candy and the movies that it flaunts.  We are here tonight to celebrate something else, we are here to celebrate Jesus.  Jesus wants to save all of those boys and girls, all of your friends at school, all of the people you just see at the store.  He wants all of them and you, to go to heaven.  But, the devil is strong and he will taunt you.  He will tempt you to disobey your parents, to fight with kids in your school, to be mean and worldly… he wants you to go to hell, so he can win his war against Jesus!  But tonight… tonight we are going to see that you are well prepared.”

Jesse had begun to tune out Mr Green, instead thinking of how he would spend his Saturday.  If his aunt would drive him to the library, he could get a new stack of books, and maybe he could even start building his fort.  He knew there were good boards behind the old shed, he had always been afraid of spiders and snakes living under the boards.  It hadn’t helped that the last church lock-in that his aunt made him attend, involved watching all of the Indiana Jones films and that scene in “Temple of Doom” where Indy had to put his hands through that narrow brick tunnel, filled with millipedes and tarantulas and all sorts of disgusting insects, always stuck in his mind as he thought of pulling the boards he wanted out.

“Fifty dollars!”

Jesse was startled and looked up.

“That’s right, boys and girls, if you have listened to anything I’ve said to you, you will remember the apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus.  He says ‘put on the armor of God’ and the armor of God is his word.  So tonight, as a special Hallelujah Night treat, we are going to have a bible verse contest.  Raise your hand if you want to compete.  Then I come up with bible verses and whoever raises their hand first and answers correctly, will get a point.  I will ask you ten verses and when I’m done, the winner gets fifty whole dollars and, this is the best part, a half pound chocolate bar.  Now… who wants to try their armor out?”

Jesse felt odd.  He’d never bothered to memorize the verses, but he never had much pocket money.  He didn’t know why his aunt had pressed the twenty dollar bill into his hand, but it sure would be nice to come home with more.  The chocolate was less appealing.  He didn’t really like chocolate, especially if it didn’t have nuts in it.  But he and five other kids raised their hands.

“Alright, the first verse is… Romans 3:23, an easy one!”

Hands shot up.

The first two girls got it wrong, and Jesse vaguely remembered the verse.

His hand went up automatically.

“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of god.”

“By gum, Jesse, you are on the board!”

The kids shuffled and mumbled amongst themselves.

“Okay, Romans 6:23!”

Jesse didn’t know why, but his hand shot up again and the words just came to him.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Jesse, you are right again!”

Jesse’s arm kept shooting up, and the black and white batter’s glove kept getting more points.

“Well, kids… I don’t know what to say, but Jesse here knew every verse I had and he has won the prize.  Come up here Jesse!”

A few kids clapped as Jesse squeezed past knees and walked up the two steps to the top of the stage.  He wasn’t sure if it was the foot steps or his heart that was so loud in his ears, but he shook Mr Green’s sweaty hand and accepted the fifty dollar bill and the large bar of chocolate.  A few people clapped in the darkened room.

He felt light headed as he made his way back to the back of the room.

Mr Green continued.

“All right kids, now it’s time to break up into small groups and play some Hallelujah Night games!  We’ve got bible twister, bobbing for verses, and all sorts of other games setup in the dinning hall.”

Jesse leaned back against the wall, in the relative darkness and felt the label on the giant Hershey bar.

Rick walked over to him.

“Hey, let’s get out of here.  I want to show you something.”

Rick was the first person, aside from Mr Green to speak to Jesse face to face all night.  Rick seemed to be the kind of guy who the adults didn’t like and only put up with because his father was a deacon in the church.

Jesse felt compelled though, by Rick… his long hair and his beat up sneakers.  His weird army surplus jacket and the rumors surrounding him.  Jesse also felt intimidated, as if he was not cool enough to hang out with Rick.

Rick walked out of the basement and up into the sanctuary, fiddling with the lock on the door to the balcony for a moment before it cracked and he swung the door open.

Jesse followed him up the stairs to the balcony where old pews sat covered with drop cloths and a fine layer of dust.

“Good job, beating all those little shits like that.”

“Umm… Thanks.”

“Seriously, those kids are all cunts, including my brother.”

Jesse didn’t know what “cunt” meant, but was afraid to ask.

“You know what ‘cunt’ means right?”

“Uhh… yeah.  Yeah.”

“Yeah.  Well, it’s a term for a girl’s pussy.  But it’s like ‘dick’.  When I say he’s a ‘cunt’, it means he’s a ‘dick’, but in a cooler, European way.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, I forget how you live out on that old farm with your grandmother.  You probably don’t know what ‘dick’ is either?”

But Jesse did know both of those words, when he thought about it.  He had read it in a book, a few, in fact.  In one book it was derogatory and in the other… it was part of a love scene that made Jesse’s ears burn and caused him to hide the book in his mattress for fear his grandmother would find it and he would never hear the end of how he was “going to hell”.

“How old are you Jesse?”

“Ten.”

“Wow, and you still don’t have all your adult teeth?  Weird.  You are small, sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Well, I figured you would want to get out of there because those other kids would hound you for your prize money and the chocolate.  God, what a bunch of fucks.”

“I guess so.  I don’t want the chocolate.”

“Really?  I mean, I’ll take it if you don’t want it.  You don’t have to give it to me, I’m just saying.”

“No, you can have it.  My grandmother wouldn’t let me eat it anyway.”

“No way, that’s sucky.  You can’t have candy?”

“No, no candy.  I sometimes get some from the vending machine in the library, when my aunt drops me off on Saturday morning.  She even takes me to McDonalds, sometimes.”

“Wow, I didn’t realize you were so cut off from everyone.  You don’t have any hobbies?”

Jesse shrugged his shoulders.

“Huh.  Well, I have an idea.  I want to give you something.  Think you can stand a dirt bike ride?”

“I need to be back at the church when Hallelujah Night is over.”

“No sweat, little man.”

Jesse followed Rick down the steps and into the parking lot of the church.  Rick walked behind the shed where the mowers and lawn maintenance equipment was stored and wheeled out his yellow and black Honda dirt bike.  It wasn’t in the best shape, but it was a dirt bike and Jesse certainly didn’t have one.

“Hop on, Jess.”

Jesse held onto Rick’s waist and as the sun was setting, they sped off.

A dirt path led through the woods and to the Marshall’s house.  They rolled down the hill, just in sight of the pool in their back yard.

“Hang on a minute.”

The Marshalls lived on a fairly large property, with woods all around.  There was an old farmhouse on the front of the property that Jesse remembered seeing the first time he went there, when the Marshalls invited him to Jon’s ninth birthday party.  That was the first and last time he had been here.

Rick cut through part of the yard and rode over a rise.

Just when it seemed darkest and the weak, often dimming light from the dirt bike seemed most inadequate, Jesse noticed a little shed.

Rick drove up to the shed and as they got off, leaned his bike against the wall.

He fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

“This is my hideout.  My dad thinks we are storing old tools out here, but I decided to add a little something to it.”

As the shut the door behind them, Rick light a match and turned on an old Coleman lantern.  There were old tools in the shed, but there was another door, which looked like it led to a large closet.  The handle looked old and rusted and it didn’t seem like it would turn.  It didn’t.  Instead, Rick pushed against the door and picked it up, with the palms of his hands.

There, in the back room, was something else.

There was a tiny gas generator and a few battery powered lights, a guitar amplifier and a stack of magazines with scantily clad women on the covers.  There was also two bikes.

“Don’t tell anyone I showed you this.”

Rick handed Jesse a slightly warm can of root beer and began to wrestle with the bikes, which were tangled up in each other and looked like they hadn’t been ridden in some time.

“I don’t use these anymore and I think one of them would fit you.”

Jesse looked at the bikes.  One was black and yellow, with yellow plastic wheels.  The tires were low, but the brake levers and the chain were a gold color.  The other, was mostly unremarkable, it was silver, with normal wheels and a white and red checkered saddle.

“I like the bike with the red seat.”

“Ah, you want to take the one with the red saddle?  You sure?”

Something about the less flashy bike appealed to Jesse, who didn’t know much about bikes.  It just looked like the lines were cleaner and though it seemed plainer, it seemed to be better built.

“Good choice, haha.  That one is a Haro Master and it’s worth about five times what the Mongoose is.  I don’t ride these things anymore, but if you promise to keep it locked up and take care of it, you can borrow it for as long as you want.  I won’t even ask for it back.  It’s just if I tell my dad I gave you my bike, he will get pissed at me, but if I say you’re borrowing it, he will not care.  But it will be yours.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I don’t know.  You seem like a really cool kid, and I know you don’t get along with the other kids in town.  Maybe they don’t get along with you, but that sucks.  I also know that your grandma is pretty weird and wouldn’t buy you a bike.  It’ll help you get around.  You’ll be able to go to the library by yourself.  You only live a mile away from it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what do you say, Jess?  You want to take care of this bike for me?”

He was almost less shocked over the offer of a permanent loan of the bicycle than he was over Rick’s friendliness.  Rick was cool, for some reason, in a way the other kids weren’t.  And here he was, being nice to Jesse.  Even giving him a nickname he liked better.  “Jess”.

“Yeah, but I don’t have a lock.”

Rick smiled and finished fishing out the bike.  He turned around and opened a beat up metal ammo box that had probably held bullets for an M50 or something.  He handed Jesse a length of chain, a key, and a padlock.

“There you go, Jess.  It won’t keep it safe from everything, but it will be enough for this town.”

They had trouble figuring out how to carry the bike and eventually settled on just holding onto it.  It was scary and several times Jesse thought he would lose the bike, it falling and being smashed and bent underneath Rick’s Honda.

But they made it back, before the meeting let out and just before Jesse’s aunt came rolling up in her little VW.

“Jesse, where did you get that bicycle?”

“Rick Marshall said I could borrow it.”

“Won’t his father be mad at you?  Doesn’t his brother need it?”

“I don’t think so.  He said it was okay, really.”

“I hope so, Jesse.  I don’t want to be explaining to your grandmother how you’re a bike thief.”

Jesse’s face got all red.

“Aunt Mary Lee, I have never stolen anything, ever.  Stealing is wrong.”

“Okay, okay.  Well, how are we going to get it home?”

“We don’t live far away, I can ride it.”

“No you cannot.  It is dark outside and it is at least two miles to home.”

“Really, I can.”

There seemed to be no other option, as the car was far too small to fit his bike as it was.

That’s when Rick appeared from out of nowhere, with a wrench in his hand.

“Oh I can help you, Jess.  If we take off the wheels, it will fit in.”

Jesse’s aunt spoke up, “Is it true that he can borrow it?  When do you need it back?  You sure your father won’t be sore?”

“No mam, it’s fine.  Jon has a newer bike and I don’t use this one anymore.  I haven’t ridden it in two years.  Jess will be fine.  He can even go to the library on his own now.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

But that was that.

They drove home and Jesse’s aunt helped him hide the bike in the tool shed.

Grandmother always went to bed early and with Hallelujah Night, Jesse had (thankfully) missed another two hour devotional and prayer session.  Instead, Jesse crawled into his bed, and with a smile on his face, went to sleep.

He dreamed that he was riding his new bike and the other kids just looked on at him in awe as he jumped over curbs and felt the rush of wind through his hair.  He rode to the moon and collected moon rocks.  He rode to Egypt and rode down the pyramids.  Everywhere he went kids would sit down and listen to him tell his stories and he would build forts for them.

He wouldn’t have to listen to his grandmother praying to the air.  He wouldn’t have to pretend to be interested in church and the kids who didn’t seem like him would no longer bother him.  He’d be the famous cyclist, Jess.  He’d use his powers for good, but he would be famous.  More importantly, he could be free.

The next morning, he could barely contain himself as he ate breakfast.  He even woke before his grandmother could sing that horrible song.  He packed up his little knapsack with the lock Rick had given him, his books from last week, and a sweatshirt.

Soon, he was flying down the empty dirt roads and feeling the wind in his hair.

Freedom is a bicycle.

The siren call of fixed gear riding in the city is not the arrival of a pacific rim manufactured, low end potential “fixed gear bike”.  It is not the rise in popularity of so called “trick bikes”.  There will always be kids out there, somewhere, racing their bikes through alleyways, through steam and the shrill blare of car horns.

To that end, I’ve reposted these scans linked to by Mr John Watson (aka Prolly), that tell the tale of bike messengers on track bikes, even before Quicksilver.

Enjoy.