A Short Story
Please give me criticism if you have time.
I am in a mournful sort of mood tonight. Earlier, I had put Nick Drake into the dashboard and was rolling around my suburb-city at twelve-twenty AM and I had this thought. Well, it was more of a feeling, and the feeling was curious and awake and even a bit resolute. I wanted to have an adventure. Which was all well and good, but I was very, very alone at that moment and I'm not so sure one can have adventures alone. But, oh, the night was so dark and the streets were so smooth and all the citizens of this suburb-city were so in bed. I rolled up to the Bernal-Foothill intersection and, instead of turning right to go home, I turned left.
My friends Biran and Arjun had driven to the end of this road recently, in their ridiculous quest to stay awake until eight AM. My friend Alex had poked around here over break as well. As I was turning I thought about tsunamis and patriots and starving children and fat Americans and this suburban teen melancholia that can be cured with long, meaningless, gas-wasting drives. Because, as they say, when one drives alone in a car, one drives with Osama Bin Laden. The world will be okay if I take this drive, I say to myself. I'll make up for this bad karma by going at or below the posted speed limits during the trip.
The first time I had been to the end of this road I was with my friend Alex in a junky tin can of a car that might have been older than both our ages combined. I think our excitement at the new road was some kind of projected delight at our discovery of each other. I remember feeling giddy, I remember sitting indian-style, I remember craning my neck to see the stars outside the window. He tried to make the car whip around the turns as best he could, which had frightened me more than impressed me. There was a lot of joking and laughing and singing. When we got to the end, we were in awe of having gotten to the end. You think you know a place because you live there for years, but you really don't, we realize. He did, I think, a seven-point turn and began to drive back. I was nervous. I didn't know what to do. I thought that maybe some sort of touch would be appropriate, so I reached out my left hand and placed it on the back of his neck for the rest of the way home. It was dark and I couldn't see, but I bet he was smiling and trying not to smile. We were silent because the moment was too tender for words.
This was in senior year. We had both been dumped by our exes. No way were we going to be hurt again. No, no sir. No, thank you. This was going to be a brand new colony. We had given ourselves new names, and had our identities erased, to quote Prophet Postal Service. To help me be new he would try to confront me about things like swearing or drowning puppies in a sack and I would smile and try not to smile and instead look repentant. And I don't remember really wanting to change him, except maybe to get him to kiss me (which didn't work, by the way) but I'm sure I nagged a lot. We also played some kind of word game which put us both in the clear romantically, because, you see, I wasn't his girlfriend and he wasn't my boyfriend because we're just good friends that stay up talking until two AM and give each other fifteen-minute hugs. My religious girlfriends thought we were sweet to wait and my pagan ones were frustrated that Alex and I didn't get it on. I felt both things at the same time. I don't think Alex's friends thought anything because it takes him about five years to open up to anyone, and even if he had told someone he probably wouldn't have told it right and messed up the meaning.
A little over a year passed, and the summer after my first year in college I'm in his car again. It's newer, more sturdy, and has these seatbelts that slide over your head when you close the door. At the beginning of freshman year we had begun that painful process of untangling ourselves once distance and time [read: college] had allowed us to see that we were inappropriately entangled. I was in agreement with everything Alex had decided for us: that it was best to let go, move on, find God/ourselves and maybe save the world, or at least date other people. My head was nodding yes the whole time he was deciding things, but when it came time to sever I lay down and closed my eyes and he stood over me with pinking shears, looking at his cellphone and tapping his foot. The pulling apart was so painful that even as I think about how to write this sentence, I walk over to the freezer to pull out a pint of Rocky Road so I can eat it out of the box with a spoon instead of using a bowl, like they do in the movies.
Anyway, it's the summer and we're in his car and he's crossing over to that nether-side of Foothill Rd. because he just got back from Colombia and wants to tell me something important and is (I think) banking on those silly, sweet road-memories to provide some tender backdrop for what he has to say. And I see right through him and fear is stabbing me all over because I'm still nursing these parts of me that used to be attached to him. He is jabbering on and I am silent. It is getting darker and suddenly I touch his arm and say "I don't want this. Turn around please." He brakes suddenly and does these swift starts and stops to head back. The ride is jolty and jerky even though the car is newer and bigger and he is angry or embarrassed. I am instantly sorry he has felt anything other than comfort when with me. That summer turned out to be filled with more car rides and songs and new activities like cooking and swimming, but in the end they were all just the finishing touches to our new separateness. Some kind of send off we were giving ourselves.
So tonight, this winter break, about two years after the first time we took that road, I turn left on Foothill by myself. The road had been paved over. I am driving my new car. Instead of an evangelical rock band, I listen to folk music; instead of giddy, I feel very dull. I am lonely. I am driving so slow and legal, and I love how the trees look as they stand on both sides of the road and seem to salute me. I see the rich gated community, I see the country club. I cross over into Sunol. The road gets narrow and twisty and the trucks on the sidewalks get old and dirty. I see a playground and signs; there is a hidden school. I go higher and higher and the dividing lines disappear and so do the houses and I am finally at the end. I try to retrace the moves Alex's car made as he turned, backed out, turned again. I drive over the mud and sticks and stones and I am amazed at how faithful my re-enactment is.
I think about how Alex made the drive out here too, a couple of weeks ago, although not as far. I think he parked at the country club. It comforts me to know that he did this alone as well. Maybe we are reminding ourselves about how it happened so that we can say goodbye to the right thing. On the way home, Nick Drake is crooning to me and I am already thinking about how I will start and fill and end this story later on tonight, and my heart is busy being thankful to God while admitting defeat at the same time. Oh, oh, I am not ready; I do not want to let him go. But I'm alone in my car on this road, and he was alone in his car on this road, which means we are already let go, that it has already happened. It's a startling thought, and one I kind of don't like, which probably means it is true or good for me. I am amazed and I am sad and I think I will mourn this thing a little bit more, if you don't mind.
I am in a mournful sort of mood tonight. Earlier, I had put Nick Drake into the dashboard and was rolling around my suburb-city at twelve-twenty AM and I had this thought. Well, it was more of a feeling, and the feeling was curious and awake and even a bit resolute. I wanted to have an adventure. Which was all well and good, but I was very, very alone at that moment and I'm not so sure one can have adventures alone. But, oh, the night was so dark and the streets were so smooth and all the citizens of this suburb-city were so in bed. I rolled up to the Bernal-Foothill intersection and, instead of turning right to go home, I turned left.
My friends Biran and Arjun had driven to the end of this road recently, in their ridiculous quest to stay awake until eight AM. My friend Alex had poked around here over break as well. As I was turning I thought about tsunamis and patriots and starving children and fat Americans and this suburban teen melancholia that can be cured with long, meaningless, gas-wasting drives. Because, as they say, when one drives alone in a car, one drives with Osama Bin Laden. The world will be okay if I take this drive, I say to myself. I'll make up for this bad karma by going at or below the posted speed limits during the trip.
The first time I had been to the end of this road I was with my friend Alex in a junky tin can of a car that might have been older than both our ages combined. I think our excitement at the new road was some kind of projected delight at our discovery of each other. I remember feeling giddy, I remember sitting indian-style, I remember craning my neck to see the stars outside the window. He tried to make the car whip around the turns as best he could, which had frightened me more than impressed me. There was a lot of joking and laughing and singing. When we got to the end, we were in awe of having gotten to the end. You think you know a place because you live there for years, but you really don't, we realize. He did, I think, a seven-point turn and began to drive back. I was nervous. I didn't know what to do. I thought that maybe some sort of touch would be appropriate, so I reached out my left hand and placed it on the back of his neck for the rest of the way home. It was dark and I couldn't see, but I bet he was smiling and trying not to smile. We were silent because the moment was too tender for words.
This was in senior year. We had both been dumped by our exes. No way were we going to be hurt again. No, no sir. No, thank you. This was going to be a brand new colony. We had given ourselves new names, and had our identities erased, to quote Prophet Postal Service. To help me be new he would try to confront me about things like swearing or drowning puppies in a sack and I would smile and try not to smile and instead look repentant. And I don't remember really wanting to change him, except maybe to get him to kiss me (which didn't work, by the way) but I'm sure I nagged a lot. We also played some kind of word game which put us both in the clear romantically, because, you see, I wasn't his girlfriend and he wasn't my boyfriend because we're just good friends that stay up talking until two AM and give each other fifteen-minute hugs. My religious girlfriends thought we were sweet to wait and my pagan ones were frustrated that Alex and I didn't get it on. I felt both things at the same time. I don't think Alex's friends thought anything because it takes him about five years to open up to anyone, and even if he had told someone he probably wouldn't have told it right and messed up the meaning.
A little over a year passed, and the summer after my first year in college I'm in his car again. It's newer, more sturdy, and has these seatbelts that slide over your head when you close the door. At the beginning of freshman year we had begun that painful process of untangling ourselves once distance and time [read: college] had allowed us to see that we were inappropriately entangled. I was in agreement with everything Alex had decided for us: that it was best to let go, move on, find God/ourselves and maybe save the world, or at least date other people. My head was nodding yes the whole time he was deciding things, but when it came time to sever I lay down and closed my eyes and he stood over me with pinking shears, looking at his cellphone and tapping his foot. The pulling apart was so painful that even as I think about how to write this sentence, I walk over to the freezer to pull out a pint of Rocky Road so I can eat it out of the box with a spoon instead of using a bowl, like they do in the movies.
Anyway, it's the summer and we're in his car and he's crossing over to that nether-side of Foothill Rd. because he just got back from Colombia and wants to tell me something important and is (I think) banking on those silly, sweet road-memories to provide some tender backdrop for what he has to say. And I see right through him and fear is stabbing me all over because I'm still nursing these parts of me that used to be attached to him. He is jabbering on and I am silent. It is getting darker and suddenly I touch his arm and say "I don't want this. Turn around please." He brakes suddenly and does these swift starts and stops to head back. The ride is jolty and jerky even though the car is newer and bigger and he is angry or embarrassed. I am instantly sorry he has felt anything other than comfort when with me. That summer turned out to be filled with more car rides and songs and new activities like cooking and swimming, but in the end they were all just the finishing touches to our new separateness. Some kind of send off we were giving ourselves.
So tonight, this winter break, about two years after the first time we took that road, I turn left on Foothill by myself. The road had been paved over. I am driving my new car. Instead of an evangelical rock band, I listen to folk music; instead of giddy, I feel very dull. I am lonely. I am driving so slow and legal, and I love how the trees look as they stand on both sides of the road and seem to salute me. I see the rich gated community, I see the country club. I cross over into Sunol. The road gets narrow and twisty and the trucks on the sidewalks get old and dirty. I see a playground and signs; there is a hidden school. I go higher and higher and the dividing lines disappear and so do the houses and I am finally at the end. I try to retrace the moves Alex's car made as he turned, backed out, turned again. I drive over the mud and sticks and stones and I am amazed at how faithful my re-enactment is.
I think about how Alex made the drive out here too, a couple of weeks ago, although not as far. I think he parked at the country club. It comforts me to know that he did this alone as well. Maybe we are reminding ourselves about how it happened so that we can say goodbye to the right thing. On the way home, Nick Drake is crooning to me and I am already thinking about how I will start and fill and end this story later on tonight, and my heart is busy being thankful to God while admitting defeat at the same time. Oh, oh, I am not ready; I do not want to let him go. But I'm alone in my car on this road, and he was alone in his car on this road, which means we are already let go, that it has already happened. It's a startling thought, and one I kind of don't like, which probably means it is true or good for me. I am amazed and I am sad and I think I will mourn this thing a little bit more, if you don't mind.