GOOD Magazine | Members - le_baron

response to Patrick James's post How I Spent My Winter Vacation

Cigarettes and Condoms (Take this stocking and stuff it)

It all started Sunday with a room full of recording equipment and a fever of 103. When I'm that sick you can usually find me wrapped in flannel sipping hot toddies, but with Consumermas breathing down my neck I had to get to work. Seven hours later seven songs were recorded and I wouldn't be able to speak for two days. Fortunately, there isn't much to say when you spend your holiday with the family in Sacramento. They did the talking and the screaming, I did the gorging and the reading.
It was a good two days.

I went home and my flat was deserted. Santa had kidnapped four of my favorite people and probably has them slaving away morphing manna and gas into plastic crap and surly sentiments, getting ready for next year's delivery. The fat man at least had the decency to leave me a pack of smokes and a condom in my stocking. He is getting pragmatic and twisted in his old age.

The next thing I knew Interstate 5 was swirling around me. My best friend and his best friend and I were all belting out the best 1001 songs of all time as we dodged listing semis and swerving sedans. I remember every yard of pavement, every inch of yellow paint, and every expression of every jerk in every obstructionist car in my way.

The state seemed to ooze by; jellied valleys on the left, molasses mountains on the right. And you a mile closer but no closer at all. (Sometimes as I fall asleep at the wheel I forget all about Cauchy and Lagrange and I know Zeno was right because no matter how fast I go or how far I come I will always be too far from you. In the limit, I can only touch your face.) I remember every wrong turn, all the backtracking, and the house on the hill with a view of the embers of hell.

When we pulled into your driveway I couldn't leave the car. We sang: "I don't need you to worry for me cause I'm alright. I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home." He and I were bosom buddies on the same wavelength, light beams emanating from the same star...

Suddenly and all at once I was in your arms, and you were in my eyes, and I was in your kitchen making all kinds of messes and drinks and friends with the strangers in your house. (Keep in mind that you and I were still strange to one another, even after all our other times.) And that's how it went.

It's not that we lived all that fast for the next five days: Morning coffee on porches, evening concerts with Peaches (who??), and cocky contests 'tween pooches. It's just that the details escape me.

Was the first sip of wine the sweetest, or was the last? Did you laugh once or the whole time? Was that your voice softly singing as I dreamt about April in the car? What little fires ignited when the white toes of our grey converses met while we waited on line? Was your hello as perfectly intimate as your goodbye?

Why do I remember the wrong turns and not the right ones...

These questions are cerebral static when I come to. The sign says we are 199 miles from home. "Neither here nor there" makes me smile. I slide into the passenger seat and prepare to burst. Driving down your street I thought I would turn around and say goodbye one last time. Driving down your highway I was sure I'd turn around and say goodbye one last time. Fleeing down the north slope of the Tehachapis I was sure...and so on. But I made it to this spot where your state ends and mine begins. And I look to the east where the steely storm cloud is meeting the darkness of the night and I know that I will never turn around. And as I tend my garden I'll plant your last goodbye next to the peppers and cardamom. What strange fruit will a goodbye tree bear? I don't yet know. Best of all possible worlds if its flowers are "Hello".

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Commented on January 8, 2008 by - le_baron_rogue