pull
what are some other places you would like to go, ones from your personal history?
well there are a lot. i was stranded in beaufort with my dad on halloween night, 1999, after the two-seater plane we were piloting back to chapel hill blew out a front tire on takeoff from the tiny airport by the coast we'd been visiting. that was a pretty fun night.
i would go back to one of the many afternoons i wandered around vancouver sober and numb from the events of that summer just listening to the same cassette tape in my busted old walkman over and over again. you had to hold down the play button to get it to work. by the end of the summer i had a big blister on my thumb; i guess i was too aloof to think to use tape. i should have brought more cassettes, too.
what about that day in the summer of 2000 when my best friend and i sat on my back porch and got my dog high? everything was a slowly spinning blur of leaves and sun and somehow we managed to drive over to that amphitheatre where he was to direct a bunch of 10 year olds in a production of macbeth (or something like that). how vigorously nervewracking it was to see cyndi after all those years and give her a hug and oh man she probably smelled it all over me, how embarrassing. you can make mistakes like that when you're 19 years old and it is summertime.
but if i were to go anywhere now it would probably be that day in autumn, 1999, when i had just entered college and was simply a 6 foot tall vessel of meat and bones that went around spending my student loan money and inhaling whatever came my way. sarah and i were driving on market street and listening to "marketplace" on npr. as i got to the light for walker ave i pressed the brakes but lo and behold the car wasn't stopping very well. almost creamed into the back of one of the 1,039,940 buick station wagons driven by little old ladies at any given moment in the city of greensboro.
when we got back to the apartment i threw the keys down on the dining room table and said "well those brakes need to be fixed". then i chugged a beer and had a smoke with my roommate and picked the keys up from the table, saying "well i'm off to midas". no one felt like going to the repair shop with me so i strolled out into the sunny afternoon on my own, enjoying the leaves slowly changing their colors like old men preparing to go to bed. got to midas and spent the next 2.5 hours sitting in their tiny little waiting room, nursing a cold can of pepsi and watching judje mills lane on mute as the sounds of air wrenches and car engines wafted in from nearby.
finally they gave me my receipt and my car back and i headed home. by now it was dark and when i got to the apartment the lights were all off. raul was laying on the sofa in the blue glow of the tv. he was asleep. sarah was asleep, a book opened at the foot of the bed. i was wide awake and i wanted to tell someone how nice it had been, sitting there by myself for a couple of hours in the midas waiting room. i thought about going back there the next day with a few beers for the mechanics to see if they'd let me sit some more. but then i realized that too much of a good thing always ruins it.
so that's where i'd go if anywhere. back to that midas waiting room, back to that apartment, back to that age, just for a taste.
well there are a lot. i was stranded in beaufort with my dad on halloween night, 1999, after the two-seater plane we were piloting back to chapel hill blew out a front tire on takeoff from the tiny airport by the coast we'd been visiting. that was a pretty fun night.
i would go back to one of the many afternoons i wandered around vancouver sober and numb from the events of that summer just listening to the same cassette tape in my busted old walkman over and over again. you had to hold down the play button to get it to work. by the end of the summer i had a big blister on my thumb; i guess i was too aloof to think to use tape. i should have brought more cassettes, too.
what about that day in the summer of 2000 when my best friend and i sat on my back porch and got my dog high? everything was a slowly spinning blur of leaves and sun and somehow we managed to drive over to that amphitheatre where he was to direct a bunch of 10 year olds in a production of macbeth (or something like that). how vigorously nervewracking it was to see cyndi after all those years and give her a hug and oh man she probably smelled it all over me, how embarrassing. you can make mistakes like that when you're 19 years old and it is summertime.
but if i were to go anywhere now it would probably be that day in autumn, 1999, when i had just entered college and was simply a 6 foot tall vessel of meat and bones that went around spending my student loan money and inhaling whatever came my way. sarah and i were driving on market street and listening to "marketplace" on npr. as i got to the light for walker ave i pressed the brakes but lo and behold the car wasn't stopping very well. almost creamed into the back of one of the 1,039,940 buick station wagons driven by little old ladies at any given moment in the city of greensboro.
when we got back to the apartment i threw the keys down on the dining room table and said "well those brakes need to be fixed". then i chugged a beer and had a smoke with my roommate and picked the keys up from the table, saying "well i'm off to midas". no one felt like going to the repair shop with me so i strolled out into the sunny afternoon on my own, enjoying the leaves slowly changing their colors like old men preparing to go to bed. got to midas and spent the next 2.5 hours sitting in their tiny little waiting room, nursing a cold can of pepsi and watching judje mills lane on mute as the sounds of air wrenches and car engines wafted in from nearby.
finally they gave me my receipt and my car back and i headed home. by now it was dark and when i got to the apartment the lights were all off. raul was laying on the sofa in the blue glow of the tv. he was asleep. sarah was asleep, a book opened at the foot of the bed. i was wide awake and i wanted to tell someone how nice it had been, sitting there by myself for a couple of hours in the midas waiting room. i thought about going back there the next day with a few beers for the mechanics to see if they'd let me sit some more. but then i realized that too much of a good thing always ruins it.
so that's where i'd go if anywhere. back to that midas waiting room, back to that apartment, back to that age, just for a taste.
posted by TID Staff at 2:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home