I wanted for once to tell a story that doesn't have any problems in it. We aren't built to think about stories outside of the idea of problems. I mean, maybe not "problems", but something along the lines of change and development, often overcoming. That's just how narrative tends to work for us. But doesn't that seem like a pale idea about life? Always a battle against something or someone, only the rest you've earned by working for it—against something. And when you're thinking about love and joy and the beauty that emerges from out it? How terrible to be always putting it in terms of adversity and challenge. How vexed are we that we can only enjoy such a thing if we've earned it?
So I've tried to tell this story without all that. And I'm sure I've failed, or will fail, cause I'm not sure it's even possible to pull yourself out of that mindset. But I'm trying. I just want you to see the world as I've seen it, to experience the things that love makes possible without undercutting it as a drug or a dream, but as the everyday. Gods I wish there were another word than love that hadn't been so mulched. Maybe I'll say communion or friendly relations. I guess it really is that vexed. But like I say, I'll just keep trying.
A & I were together before I even remember meeting her. And why the hell not? I was me before I remember becoming me. Certainly I can point to some big historical moments when I changed or had things that effected my personality, like when I was four maybe and a rooster squabbled after me at my grandparents' farm and ever since I've felt like they were my spirit animal in a perverse way, not of course knowing at the time anything about perversity and only knowing that the motherfucker was scary as all hell. But there are plenty more things about myself that seem pretty set in stone that come well before I remember a damned thing. And just so with A right? I remember some big moments—first kiss and those sundries, big fights that we got past, calm nights when things clarified—and those make up the bulk of the stories we ever tell people or tell each other. But that isn't it and it would be silly of us to really pretend it. She and I were she and I at some point regardless and it backfilled the rest. Life acts to look like fate, modeling our memories of the past on our known future. And bully for that. Because our thing, A & I is a real thing that really came into being as real as any other thing that's stitched together in the unknown of a million experiences.
And that's why I can't tell you where it came from and whatever turmoils got us here. And why I won't be telling you anything about tugging at the seams. Cause the seams are stitched and disappeared at this point. Just like me is me, we're us. So we won't be fucking with that. Sure we could existentialize til the cows came home. I'm sure I could stop feeling like me, but what the hell good will that do? It isn't any more true when you really think about it. Real effects people. Maybe worth questioning and working over at some point, but real effects.
Anyway, A and I had this one turmoil that doesn't matter now, but sort of establishes things the way they are now. We had to run away together. But maybe we didn't really have to, we just thought to.
[day's worth of writing disappears. things about their leaving town and going out with their friends. just the need to be somewhere new.]
A & I had both grown up in the city, were truly city kids for what all that's worth. And at some point it just died for us. We were unintelligible to ourselves and the world around us. We had all these gutter punk kids we were friends with, kids with shaved and dyed bits of hair, kids with studded leather and ripped lace, kids who had nice suburban home not more than thirty miles away, but couldn't stand the thought of them. We were sort of idolized by then since we came from the city. We seemed truer and harder to them, not tainted by having had some sort of make shift opulence to trap us. Of course if you ever went into either of our parents' houses you'd just see all the same crap modulated to the appropriate city style. The fantasy of urban living dies at the street and stoop.
But anyway, when A & I realized when needed to go we knew we couldn't go to another city. They just couldn't hold the appeal for us that they did for these kids. Everything seemed so overwrought with other people's intentions. And so I guess we might have flipped too far the other way and ended up in somebody else's fantasy. We thought to go to some small town where we could hole up in some sort of home like thing. Where the main street might be just all square brick buildings and maybe the occasional open construction two story grange hall or mayors office. So sure, yeah, fantasy. But the funny thing was that we both just sort of knew it was time. We looked at each other and nodded our heads and that was that. We were packing to go that very night. So, yeah, I guess it wasn't really a turmoil at all, just sort of a big thing that needed to happen, but that we were both prepared for. Maybe I can rethink that turmoil thing more later and try to dig something more dramatic up. But for now I'm telling about how we moved out and resettled ourselves.
So that night anyway we had all of our things packed and stacked in the side yard. Mostly boxes and that sort of what not, all set up to go in a big pile. But we wanted to really see the town on the last night, so we gathered up all of our street punky friends and had them pile into our boat of a car. The thing had bench seats, which the conversation to bucket seats really seems to mark some serious loss for mankind. Not only does the bench seat allow you to get up close with your love, but it let's you determine how many people you wanna cram in next you, instead of being told how much room there is in your car. That night there were four of us across the front. In the back seat there were five, but really a couple of those were tiny type punk girls and really the two at the far sides were propped halfway up the door so they hardly give a fair picture. In the back—it was a big old station wagon—a couple had been given reign to roll around making out and took full advantage.
We bumped through the streets and poured out into various parks, split into various cliques, drank, smoked, tripped or fucked as was appropriate. A & I just sort of sat on park benches and occasionally stomped around through the grasses. It was a big gloomy night of low cloud all lit up by the city lights and the occasional mist shower. The night ended up somewhere in the crazy empty morning hours. Maybe it was four, but there wasn't even the hint of morning yet. Just that quiet lost middle time when nobody but you and the cops and the taxis are out anymore.
When we got home we just sat in the car. A says to me, there's no way I can sleep right now or enough. We should just pack up and hit the road. And so we did. We just grabbed everything from the big stack and bit by bit the car climbed with it all. By the time we were done the neighbor was shambling all zombie into his car and heading out to his too damn early work. It must have been five, but the streets were still dead. And we took off right after him.
The quiet predawn morning was wet, but done with raining. The few cars and us went by with the hizzing of tires on wet streets, letting out the little persistent wakes of water behind. The city was sort of sad as we went. A big lonely beast of so many people, but them all tucked away. Anyway we were done with it for a time and we weren't too worried. Weren't angry or nothing. Just needed our own space and time. And so we were on our away.
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We're smart young kids yeah? I think at that moment we were on the border crossing, she 19, me 20. But most of the rest of the year we were the same. We had, despite all else, that city savvy about us. So what we really wanted was to actually arrive in some town and start living there. We didn't want anybody thinking we were coming in to study them or play at small town life or anything like that. But there really is this first moment in small towns when you come from a big city where you wonder why don't at least some of the people get up and out and into a city where there is something going on. Just on some pure statistical level there were bound to be some dissatisfied people who felt trapped and stilted there. And didn't they know it wasn't that long a drive to a nice big city and that there really was some work to be had there of pretty much any and every stripe. Not that this was our primary thought or anything. Just that first moment where the space of the open country gives onto a town, but the town doesn't seem much different from that open space around it, just like a delicate toe hold on civilization, like not wanting to disturb too much or anger something in that open country. Just that that first moment seems like, how are you certain that you're even here when the anchor seems so light? I suppose you could look at it like a blessing too and that is eventually why we were here and what we wanted. But that first moment is a bit of a shock, like being lifted off the ground just a tic by a hand full of balloon, like a little spacewalk. Anyway we didn't want to be tourists, but somehow we'd always have at least a piece of that by being outsiders.
In town, I think we got there around midday, there was an information office always staffed by this one woman. All the buildings by the way were two stories and the streets weren't all straight lines like they had been in my head, but were twisted around a couple of hills and rock gullies and cut through by a curving train track. This women was a peach. She was older and dressed up like a relator, which I guess she was along with being the tourist guide and the social center of the town. She was older looking and professional, name of Janice. She sort of thought of us as kids I could tell, but treated us like young marrieds anyway and was gentle about us. Like she was playing along with our dreams, but respected that we thought them serious. She knew places for rent and could run our credit for us and was actually a notary too. Got a guy on the phone and we had a place out of town in the unincorporated county land within two hours. Just like that. We'd figure out work when we could, but had saved enough to sit and adjust a bit. All in a day. All in a day.
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So here we are in this brand new town right? A brand new state even. And we don't think often enough about state I don't think. And how great it is that I can just run on over and land in this new place with a whole new set of rules and ideas about what you can and can't do, with a whole new culture. And I can just live there, just like that. I don't even have to tell anybody. Or, I guess, if I have to tell somebody like the post office or the tax man or what not, nobody can tell me no. It's just a new fact of the world. I live in Wyoming. And there you have it.
A & I drive up to the place in the late afternoon. Its north of town at the edge of this broad shallow valley with little swales that can't seem to decide whether they're rolling hills or rocky gullies. They're part and part. And our house is up the hill part way with little rivulets and ravines cutting back into the hills, a little exposed rock decorating the hillside.
We have the keys and its just this old odd shaped ranch house sort of thing, but pretty. Someone took the time to get the architecture a little dolled up. We're parked up the top of this rambling drive and we just sit and look at each other a minute. Like, we woke up yesterday morning in a big city and had a big city night with our big city pals and now we're in a new town, in a new state, in a new home and we're alone here. And we're tired from not having slept, but we don't have much stuff, so we haul it all in. Of course we don't have any furniture so we sort of lay out a nest for ourselves in the center of the big wood floored living room, boxes all around us and a twilight sun slashing red-orange through the windows. And we just pass right out.
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But I haven't told you a thing about A, which has just got to seem silly. But she's just part of my life in a way that I forget needs describing. And its not like I forget or neglect her. Just her actions seem like mine and I haven't taken the time to describe myself either. Seems worth not much to look in a mirror all day telling yourself what you look like. What A is is a firebrand. A gods damned devil. A killer even. I mellowed her some I imagine, not cause of anything particular, just that I'm always sort of cow-eyed moving along and the pace can either be frustrating or infectious. Luckily I think she's fine with it. Doesn't slow her down none. Suppose that is how we got out here, at least in one night. Her passion is thought if you can call it that. She's always trying to fight and debate everyone about thinking. I guess she's a philosophy you might say. But like a people's philosopher? I think she imagine herself in the ancient Greek world like Diogenes and his barrel maybe it is? It has something to do with a town square, or a town forum. She reads a lot of Mark Twain and listens to comedy records. Claims that is where this particular activity has drifted off to. In this town too, she has some big plans about how to go about being a public philosopher. She's one to hold court.
With me tho, she's sweet as daisies. She's not a critic either, just a thinker. We're a real pair is all. We're just quietly eye to eye and I can't really say more than that.
Me, I'm a tinkerer or an inventor or something of the sort. The only way to have it make money is to call it art, or something of the kind. But I think up things to make and I make them. Or we could just take care of our house and put food on the table, really it doesn't matter what we are or think we are. We do happen to be these things, but now we've got this new place and a new life here and we're set on living it.
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