A few months ago I couldn’t sleep. We were in Monkey Bay to celebrate Dirty’s birthday and we went big the previous night, pig roast and all. Shingles slept in until late into the morning, but I lay watching the sunrise over the lake through the straw covered windows. When she stirred awake she saw me lying, staring at the space in front of my eyes. She put a concerned hand on my chest and asked “what’re you thinking about?” I told her my mind was wandering, disconcertedly drifting through the past from one thought to the next memory. I always rein it in, but this morning I let it wander. “Do you like thinking about the past?” “No,” I lied. I do like the past, it is in a way comforting and soothing to see your life pieced together from today. The future is frightening in its unpredictability, which only provokes my need to plan and plan. The warmth of memories keeps me sane and I find solace in them during gray days. I only restrain them because I’m afraid. Some memories still have a singe of pain and a mere flash image, a millisecond of thought, can trigger the degradation of all thought and I fear my naïve memory may slip in to such an abyss. What I did not tell her was that that morning I wasn’t afraid, because she was there and the safety of arms were only a glance away.
Wind
The Killers came on, All These Things That I’ve Done, from the Hot Fuss album, if I remember correctly. KISS 108 promised all the latest hits commercial free and was the most popular station in New England. I can’t remember what month it was, but it was cold out. We sprinted out of the movie theatre and took shelter in her car, blasted the heating and huddled until the dry air warmed the interior. What movie was it? The memory has holes. It was sophomore year, must’ve been near winter. She was using her family’s car, a big Toyota SUV that took some time to warm up. She made me laugh and I enjoyed her company. We pulled out on to Rt. 9E to drop me off at Bentley first and then she would head back to Wellesley. I remember the roar of the engine as she accelerated down the highway. It was late and the lights from the dashboard illuminated our faces and she was dancing while driving. When the song came on she turned up the volume dial and began singing along. She looked at me smiling the words and I laughed. We never really spoke after that and had awkward interactions. We both needed something that night, the companionship of someone outside of our worlds, yet someone not entirely unfamiliar. She never called and I never bothered to write. I will always remember her singing in that car:
“Help me out. You know you gotta help me out. Don’t you put me on the backburner.”
Almost three years later she was working in San Francisco and I foolishly stayed in Boston. We began emailing each other from work; casually discussing life after school, building what I realize now was a kind of relationship that stems from loneliness. New graduates living and working in a city; on our own for the first time. But I’ll never understand why we took comfort in each other, why not someone else? We were both close to our families and had plenty of friends nearby. Why reach out across a continent? Perhaps we were trying to prove we could handle this growing up business and wanted to show our family and friends we were independent. Emails became letters. Letters often became phone calls, a little after midnight when I got out of work and she was still up. I used to look forward to those phone calls exhausted from work, having no personal interactions for weeks, walking out into a dark empty city, walking into an empty apartment. Her cheeriness and humor were lined with sadness, but it was enough, we didn’t feel alone and fell asleep happy with our phones by the pillow. Then it just stopped. I don’t remember how or when, but I guess we both got what we needed and didn’t need it anymore.
We haven’t talked since. I think she’s married now.
Water
I dubbed her the Little Navigator. She sat in the passenger seat fumbling with a giant map unfolding New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and fringes of the surrounding states. We were somewhere in Edison searching for parking so we could eat. We were on the hunt for a particularly large and delicious masala dosa, along with an order of chaat masala and two glasses of falooda. Having received a speeding ticket weeks earlier, I was quite content idling in the back lot of a strip mall. She was getting hungry. We did this a lot that summer, driving around together for food, picnics, IKEA, movies, malls, more food. By some chance of fate we ended up at the same firm and later that summer another turn of fate prematurely ended the lease on my sublet in Trumbull. I had no place to live and another month and a half remained on my internship. She happen to start her job that week and so I moved to Stamford. I remember how nervous I was asking.
“Hey, so my sublet for the summer ended, they finished rotations early so they’re leaving.”
“Did she ever give you back the money?”
“No, won’t return calls or emails, I think she’s gone. But I was wondering if…if it’s alright if I stay with you for a little while? I have no…”
“Dooks! Of course you can stay. I was hoping you would stay.”
“Thanks, it’ll just be till the end of the summer.”
“So...I was going to ask you anyway. Didn’t know how you’d feel.”
I immediately handed the keys back to my parents when I opened the box. However, they would not have it. This was a gift to their son, the first in the family to graduate from college in America, the result of more opportunities than they ever had. We drove around in it all summer, at least until her father made a snarky comment about how parents shouldn’t give expensive gifts to children. She defended my family arguing that they gave it out of love and a want to provide all the best things for their children. I was furious. My parents had nothing growing up and now, in America, they still have little, but provide the world to us. Even if we refuse. And we always refuse. Who was this shmuck to criticize my family? I eventually convinced my parents to take the car, claiming high fuel costs shuttling back and forth from Randolph to Stamford to Shrewsbury. I took the old Corolla and we still took road trips. Scenic drives down CT-15, connecting I-84 to I-90, and coming home to Stamford. Coming home. A home we made together for a brief moment of existence.
It’s was a strange realization the other night. To think that some of my fondest memories, some of my happiest moments, took place in cars, buses, vans, trains, planes with girls. Transient places where thoughts fall in order, where, according to Alain de Botton, thought is clearest and truly free. Though my friends ridicule me, these modes of transport are where I feel safe, comfortable and at home. That is why I sleep so deeply and so instantly in vehicles. Perhaps it’s the result of growing up always moving and now home is movement. And beyond the mere purr of the engine or the rhythm of the tracks, it’s also a false sense of stopping time. The world moves past you, yet you remain stationary in a capsule, safe and carefree. She makes it all the more precious, for not only have you stopped time, but you aren’t alone, vanquishing both time and solitude: our two greatest foes. Free of obligations of place or time, you are in movement not belonging to any singular place or falling victim to the effects and sense of time. A keen awareness of physical movement but unaware of direction or minutes expended. Like chasing the sun in a plane without a clock. Isn’t that what we all want? To find the love of our lives and once found to stop time for eternity? And if not eternity, at least for the length of a bus ride.
Wind
The Killers came on, All These Things That I’ve Done, from the Hot Fuss album, if I remember correctly. KISS 108 promised all the latest hits commercial free and was the most popular station in New England. I can’t remember what month it was, but it was cold out. We sprinted out of the movie theatre and took shelter in her car, blasted the heating and huddled until the dry air warmed the interior. What movie was it? The memory has holes. It was sophomore year, must’ve been near winter. She was using her family’s car, a big Toyota SUV that took some time to warm up. She made me laugh and I enjoyed her company. We pulled out on to Rt. 9E to drop me off at Bentley first and then she would head back to Wellesley. I remember the roar of the engine as she accelerated down the highway. It was late and the lights from the dashboard illuminated our faces and she was dancing while driving. When the song came on she turned up the volume dial and began singing along. She looked at me smiling the words and I laughed. We never really spoke after that and had awkward interactions. We both needed something that night, the companionship of someone outside of our worlds, yet someone not entirely unfamiliar. She never called and I never bothered to write. I will always remember her singing in that car:
“Help me out. You know you gotta help me out. Don’t you put me on the backburner.”
Almost three years later she was working in San Francisco and I foolishly stayed in Boston. We began emailing each other from work; casually discussing life after school, building what I realize now was a kind of relationship that stems from loneliness. New graduates living and working in a city; on our own for the first time. But I’ll never understand why we took comfort in each other, why not someone else? We were both close to our families and had plenty of friends nearby. Why reach out across a continent? Perhaps we were trying to prove we could handle this growing up business and wanted to show our family and friends we were independent. Emails became letters. Letters often became phone calls, a little after midnight when I got out of work and she was still up. I used to look forward to those phone calls exhausted from work, having no personal interactions for weeks, walking out into a dark empty city, walking into an empty apartment. Her cheeriness and humor were lined with sadness, but it was enough, we didn’t feel alone and fell asleep happy with our phones by the pillow. Then it just stopped. I don’t remember how or when, but I guess we both got what we needed and didn’t need it anymore.
We haven’t talked since. I think she’s married now.
Water
I dubbed her the Little Navigator. She sat in the passenger seat fumbling with a giant map unfolding New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and fringes of the surrounding states. We were somewhere in Edison searching for parking so we could eat. We were on the hunt for a particularly large and delicious masala dosa, along with an order of chaat masala and two glasses of falooda. Having received a speeding ticket weeks earlier, I was quite content idling in the back lot of a strip mall. She was getting hungry. We did this a lot that summer, driving around together for food, picnics, IKEA, movies, malls, more food. By some chance of fate we ended up at the same firm and later that summer another turn of fate prematurely ended the lease on my sublet in Trumbull. I had no place to live and another month and a half remained on my internship. She happen to start her job that week and so I moved to Stamford. I remember how nervous I was asking.
“Hey, so my sublet for the summer ended, they finished rotations early so they’re leaving.”
“Did she ever give you back the money?”
“No, won’t return calls or emails, I think she’s gone. But I was wondering if…if it’s alright if I stay with you for a little while? I have no…”
“Dooks! Of course you can stay. I was hoping you would stay.”
“Thanks, it’ll just be till the end of the summer.”
“So...I was going to ask you anyway. Didn’t know how you’d feel.”
I immediately handed the keys back to my parents when I opened the box. However, they would not have it. This was a gift to their son, the first in the family to graduate from college in America, the result of more opportunities than they ever had. We drove around in it all summer, at least until her father made a snarky comment about how parents shouldn’t give expensive gifts to children. She defended my family arguing that they gave it out of love and a want to provide all the best things for their children. I was furious. My parents had nothing growing up and now, in America, they still have little, but provide the world to us. Even if we refuse. And we always refuse. Who was this shmuck to criticize my family? I eventually convinced my parents to take the car, claiming high fuel costs shuttling back and forth from Randolph to Stamford to Shrewsbury. I took the old Corolla and we still took road trips. Scenic drives down CT-15, connecting I-84 to I-90, and coming home to Stamford. Coming home. A home we made together for a brief moment of existence.
It’s was a strange realization the other night. To think that some of my fondest memories, some of my happiest moments, took place in cars, buses, vans, trains, planes with girls. Transient places where thoughts fall in order, where, according to Alain de Botton, thought is clearest and truly free. Though my friends ridicule me, these modes of transport are where I feel safe, comfortable and at home. That is why I sleep so deeply and so instantly in vehicles. Perhaps it’s the result of growing up always moving and now home is movement. And beyond the mere purr of the engine or the rhythm of the tracks, it’s also a false sense of stopping time. The world moves past you, yet you remain stationary in a capsule, safe and carefree. She makes it all the more precious, for not only have you stopped time, but you aren’t alone, vanquishing both time and solitude: our two greatest foes. Free of obligations of place or time, you are in movement not belonging to any singular place or falling victim to the effects and sense of time. A keen awareness of physical movement but unaware of direction or minutes expended. Like chasing the sun in a plane without a clock. Isn’t that what we all want? To find the love of our lives and once found to stop time for eternity? And if not eternity, at least for the length of a bus ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment