All I remember about the last two months is giving a guest lecture at Villanova... or maybe it was a street corner.

- Barney Gumble

"Jezzzuzz... fuhhh... blurry... blurry... You. Take the... wheel." Harris's head was nodding forward, his pupils rolling north, staring into the sun visor. His mind was on a five second delay. He had no idea I already had the wheel. "Keep your foot on the gas," I whispered in a Mr. Rogers tone. No use exciting him. If he moved his foot six inches to the left... If he spasmed and slammed the brake down... If he jerked his arm and thrust the car into reverse, we were Done. The nose would lurch to one side, we'd fishtail for moment, then we'd go end over end, sprayed across the highway - a comet of metal, glass and tan leather upholstery.

Interstate 95 outside New York is no place to lose control at 80 miles per hour. The road's as wide as a football field and straight as a runway, but around you, barreling through the four or five lanes of traffic at any given moment on a Saturday afternoon are hundreds of four wheeled projectiles. Gel-headed Jersey hipsters headed for the clubs; yuppies with sushi reservations; pimps in low riding, gold-package Lexi; buses packed with geriatrics headed for a dog show at the Javits Center - all screaming down the artery, racing to be first to wait in line outside the Tunnels.

I watched Harris' foot. Where he'd be in the next 20 seconds was anyone's guess. The reaction's wildly unpredictable. I'd seen people go limp, seize and shake like epileptics. I'd seen them drop cigarettes in their laps and pour drinks over themselves. Sometimes their eyes roll back and their mouths open, a near agonal death convulsion in their chest. Harris looked alright. He was conscious, communicating... Infantile, slurring gibberish, but tethered to the moment, processing the stimulae. He'd be fine. We'd be fine. He was stuttering back to life. "Ohhh... the lines... so blurry..." Harris was right; the middle lane was terrible under the circumstances. An 18 wheel truck roared by on the left. A bread truck eclipsed the view of Manhattan coming up on the right. We were in a tunnel of industrial machinery - walls of gears and wheels passing on either side. To Harris, in that moment, it was probably a poor man's version of the canyons the fighters roared through at the end of Star Wars. "Exactly, but we're here already. Just stay steady." I'd had my elbow cocked in front of his neck, to choke him if he lurched suddenly. It wasn't necessary. Just standard risk management.

I stared at my hands on the wheel, framed by the hulk of the passing tractor trailer in the background. I was juiced on a fight or flight high, but I was calm. The moment had a sense of déjà vu to it. Another weekend afternoon...

The year was 1996, and Harris, Martin and I were each in a drought. I'd just stumbled out of law school; Harris worked in a bank (when he worked) and Martin shook down debtors for a credit card operation in town. Harris had recently been dumped out of the blue by a spectacularly hot girlfriend, Martin had broken up with his and I'd been degraded to chasing an ex-fuck buddy, Candace, who was now screwing a senior associate at the law firm where she worked. We were still friends, and I knew she wanted to fuck me more than him. She said so several times. She also said I had no goals. He had crisp white shirts and George Will's hair.

I'd have drinks with Candace from time to time. She'd stare at me, running her teeth over her lower lip. We'd pause outside the bar. I'd grin and shake my head. She'd drive off to Senior Associate's house. I'd take the train to my place in ____________, just off a block of high end chotchky shops where Suburban mommies whittled away Prozac afternoons. I'd saunter through a maze of leased Range Rovers in the parking lot and walk into ___________________, a local Williams-Sonoma knock-off. The white haired biddies in $300 scarves behind the counter knew me well. I'd slap the briefcase on the counter, smile and order. "One box of N2O cartridges please." Whitebread suburbs are wonderful. They'd never think to ask what a young man in perfectly tailored suit, carrying a leather monogrammed briefcase would want with a box of nitrous cartridges. Asking such a thing's insulting. I was wearing a suit. I had Episcopalian features. It was None. Of. Their. Business.

I'd go home, spark a Camel Light, pour myself five fingers of Oban scotch and start sucking down those heavy rubber balloons. Candace, blue balls, the boredom of having to sit at a desk and pretend to be doing something 8 hours a day - gone, fried to bits of carbon and hosed out through my ears. Nothing left but the sound of ice cubes in a glass, smoke leaving my lips and a screen full of pretty colors. Killswitch engaged, grey matter Off.

I don't know how Harris and Martin made it through 1996, but I imagine it wasn't much different. Harris would call me buzzed on a Thursday afternoon, somewhere in the third hour of his lunch. Martin didn't have the luxury of escape. The debt collectors he toiled for tethered him to a desk. He'd stare at the clock, praying for 5:00. When it hit, he'd race to the parking lot, pull his dope dugout out of the center console of his truck and suck down bat hits until he got home - his parents' home. He'd race to his attic apartment, turn on whatever Phillies, Sixers or college game was on, mute the sound, put on "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" and Forget.

Twenty six is a rotten year. You're not an adult by any stretch, but you're way past college jackass. None of the things you really want to say, think or do are acceptable. Every day's another exercise in suffocating what you'd been for the last decade. For some it works; for others it's futile - the live wire of adrenaline you lived on since Junior High can't be unplugged, boxed and stuffed on a shelf. The current in your head builds, relentless, voracious, demanding to be fed. It pitches tantrums while you sit silent, staring at off-white walls and monitors, the low hum of florescent bulbs hissing through your ears. Adjusting's futile; it's too clinical, antiseptic, mechanized - the photographic negative of everything your body's craving. The mind rolls to where you ought to be... On a speedboat rolling through a jungle river, taking notes for a National Geographic article on Nigerian warlords... Driving cross-country in a beaten up Volvo, warm air in your face, stealing a drag from the cigarette of an impossibly built brunette in the passenger seat... Sipping a Heineken and eating crackers, watching the buildings disappear under the wing of a plane to Anywhere But Here. That Ben Harper tune's on repeat in your head... "I believe there's a better way..." Flight, movement, some sort of juice - blessed stimulation of any kind. Is that too much to ask?

Millions of people everywhere sit in cubicles all day, demons clawing up and sliding down and down the half-pipe walls of their skulls, tortured adrenaline junkies trapped by the same thing that had Harris, Martin and me by the balls - short term cash flow. For most of us, the money comes when you're least able to use it the way it ought to be... Twenty years of cash when the old lady's tits are at her knees and you're too tired to fuck anyway. Florida. Golf. A car with heated seats. Then the Big Sleep. The only cure for the pain of twenty six is pussy. A woman's as necessary as water. You don't have to love her. You don't even have to like her. But you need her there, under you, above you, in front of you, grounding the live wire of adrenaline and testosterone. When you're young, losing your mind in an office and not getting any action, you're an unpinned grenade. There's really no reason to live and you don't give a shit about anything. People say college is the chapter in your life where you build the stories you cringe recalling 20 years later. Twenty six and involuntarily celibate kills college... and nearly kills you.

The bender started months earlier, in Baltimore, in Fells Point, a sliver of bars and souvenir shops in the city's DMZ. I sensed ugliness when Martin started ordering bourbon shots for us at Three O'clock. Three's an odd hour for shots. You're past the early morning Bloody Mary breakfast hours, through the brunch Champagne hour and outside the Luncheon Wine Window. Three's dead smack in the center of the Beer Hours. If you're heading home early to lay on the couch, Sierra Nevada, Anchor Steam or Guinness is proper. If you're heading out for a serious drinking night, Amstel or Miller Light's the call.

We were heading out that night, but we were drinking whiskey anyway. And we weren't just having an occasional shot. We had rounds of double shots, following hours of beer and vodka. I was numb, maintenance-drinking to keep the buzz. The day had started with a morning bake - nothing fancy, a couple of hits to kill the hangover from the night before. That led to vodka and Sprites, which led to the brilliant idea that drinking in a house in the suburbs wasn't enough. We needed women, bars, action... something to watch - the promise that maybe, if the stars aligned right, we'd get laid.

Harris called an ex-girlfriend, Karen, and asked her to meet us at Fells Point that night. The idea was she'd bring the friends she was staying with in some nearby suburb for the weekend. If things went right we'd all hook up. If they went wrong, we'd have three different people to talk to. The former was a hope; the latter necessity. At 4:00 Martin was calling me "Hollywood," and "pretty boy," spitting through his words and "yeah yeah... whatever"-ing anything I said back in disgust. By 5:00 he was openly telling Harris what an ashole I was... in front of me. By 6:00 he'd half-seriously swung at me, nearly falling over in the process, grasping a table to hold balance. By the time Karen met up with us, the tab - in a dive bar - was well into triple digits. The table was littered with shot glasses, empty beers, remnants of club sandwiches and French fries. I chain smoked to say awake. Martin sat in the end of a huge wooden booth, pondering his watch. "I've had, like, ten fucking shots. Fuck." Fuck indeed. Karen came alone, without a car...

Remember how I described women grounding a man's mid-20s adrenaline angst? Karen wasn't one of them. She was a spitfire Czech brunette who cursed like a convict and only knew to binge drink. The idea of mild banter and a slow night out wasn't in her menu. Harris and Karen had a long sordid history of getting blind drunk, fucking and running from one another the next morning. Karen knew why Harris had called her and she had bad news for him - she had a boyfriend. Harris got the Heisman early. The drinking moved from 3 to 5th gear. By 8:00 we were shaking Martin awake, ordering him one Coke after another and feeding him cigarettes to jumpstart his corpse from the booth where he'd fallen asleep. Martin didn't smoke.

By 9:00, Martin somehow miraculously revived. "Jim Beam and Coke please," he bellied up to the bar next to us. "You're alive. We thought you were done." I wished he were done. The last rounds of the night, the rounds Martin demanded, were a pointless stress test for organs. My stomach was in knots; I could taste acid in my mouth. The cigarettes and hours of screaming over bar music and crowds had left me with laryngitis. Nobody had anything to say, and nobody could hear anything over Karen if he did. She was a hyena, screaming, swinging in circles, barking and laughing in our faces, spilling drinks in every direction and burning us with her smokes. She'd taken over Martin's place as group drunkard and crushed his performance. I looked at Harris. He was past wasted; tired and drunk for so long he'd become sober again on a different level - acclimated - blackout loaded to a teetotaler, but lucid, sharp even, to people on our level. I pulled out a wad of crumpled bills for the check and waved it at him. He nodded and asked Karen if she had her purse.

"Where are we going?" Karen bleated through a spout of cigarette smoke.

"Back to your friends' place."

A mid-90s Jeep Cherokee with high miles on it is a bag of bolts. I've owned trucks of all shapes and sizes since I was old enough to drive, and I'd never own a Jeep. They're built of recycled beer cans and plastic milk jugs, North Korean pleather and balsa wood. At 80,000 miles, they creak and rattle through turns like a motor home on a dirt track. At 80 miles per hour, where most trucks have a little play in the front end, the wheel of a weatherbeaten Cherokee might as well be a paint shaker.

"This sucks," Harris repeated over and over. He had a bull rider's grip on the wheel. I could feel the truck bouncing over grooves in the pavement, swaying with the wind and the drafts from passing trucks. A Ramones tape filled in the background, a sloppy baseline over which Karen laid down a vocal track of grating commentary.

"Do you have a lighter? I need a lighter." Her hand was on my shoulder, her saliva on the side of my face. I grabbed the lighter from the center console. "I don't want to go home. Let's hit another bar. I need another--"

"No. No more bars." Martin was imprisoned with her in the back seat.

"I need another drink! Vodka and cranberry!" She pulled at Martin's shirt, yanking him sideways into the center of the bench seats.

Harris turned up the music and stepped on the gas. I used to joke to friends leaving bars that if they were going to drive loaded, they ought to drive fast... "Less time on the road is less chance of hurting others! It's statistical!" In practice, when you're approaching C-Student status on a breathalyzer and there's a rabid drunken lunatic in your back seat smoking the car into a cloud of Camel Light tar and screaming for a Cape Cod, standing on the gas is entirely rational. The road's long and straight. If you stay in your lane, you're alright. The tired old V-6 wheezed. I felt the truck jump into the next gear. We bucked forward in sync with the needle. I stared out the window as the lights of the city clipped by. The seatbelt was tight.

"We need to get some food," Martin leaned in, between the seats.

"Lets get her home fi--" Harris snapped, popping a dip into his lip.

"Do you have any water?" Karen's hoarse howl roared out of the back seat.

"Are you going to fuck her?" Martin quipped.

"I can't think about that right now," Harris blinked and stared ahead, squinting to make out an exit sign hundreds of yards up the road.

"Motherfuuuhhhh!" Martin's voice pierced the noise of the wind and grinding guitars. I'd normally ignore an errant "motherfucker," assuming someone had spilled something or dropped a lit cigarette on the upholstery. This had that high pitched squeal of distress in it. And the lights had come on in the truck. I turned to face the back seat...

There are those moments in life when you realize, Where I am, What I will be doing, My happiness - My future - depends on how a how an event taking place in front of my eyes, that I have no control over, plays out. I'm not talking about the SAT or a job interview. Those are minor moments with endless second chances we're usually too naïve and brainwashed to see at the time. What I'm talking about is unexpected and random in every regard, a queer incident that catapults you from routine to a life-and-death flashpoint in seconds. The gravity of the thing registers. The mind processes all the potential outcomes, most dire and nauseating, but all seen with clarity, objectively, in that moment. When I was 16, I spun a truck at 75 on black ice driving home from a day of skiing. The truck lurched right and I looked over a massive embankment rolling at least 100 yards down, into a pile of trees, at 60 degrees. The truck lurched left and I saw oncoming traffic in the opposing lane. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Projectiles - skis, ski boots, ski poles - littered the car. The equation was quick and easy; I either got back into my lane or I was Done. I got lucky; the truck did a perfect 360. I tapped the gas and drove on like nothing happened.

This was one of those moments. Martin was leaping to grab Karen's ass as she pushed the door open with one hand and tried to jump from the truck. The why of it I'll never know, but she was fully committed to the project. By the time I turned my head to look, she was leaning out of the truck, aiming toward the pavement. In the background, the lights of the cars on the other side of the concrete divider fired by like lasers. Gravel at 75 skins a person. She'd bounce like a ragdoll and flail along a road at the speed of a major league change-up. The physics of the thing were ugly from every angle. If Martin didn't catch her, she was Meat... pulled pork strewn across the lanes.

I didn't yell. I didn't say a word. I looked at Harris for a millisecond. He knew the door was open. Processing the situation was beyond him. He was the driver - nothing less, nothing more. His eyes never left the road, as though looking forward put him in another universe, a place far away from the backseat, far away from Martin lunging for Karen's ass and yanking her back from the brink of the front page of tomorrow's Baltimore Sun. Thankfully, Martin was an athlete. The rush of fear flushed the booze out of his head. The grab was gymnastic. In an instant, he had her saddlebags in his hands and was dragging her back into the car. She squealed about getting another drink then set about fixing her hair. I turned the rear view mirror to look at her. A mop of black hair rummaging through her purse and cursing under her breath, she had no idea how close she'd come to being roadkill. Martin was white, but smiling. Harris clicked the automatic lock button. No one said a word for the rest of the ride. Harris's place was 20 minutes from Karen's friends' apartment. We stayed with Karen's friends.

We all thanked Martin for the quick save, but looking back, he got lucky... we all got lucky. Martin had a lot to work with. Karen had an ample backyard. Not a fat, flabby ass, but a round, thick one... What Sir Mix A Lot would call "back." Martin palmed it like a pair of rugby balls. A smaller ass would have been through his hands and out the door.

I asked Karen why she tried to jump out of a speeding truck. She didn't recall.

Anything.

To be continued...

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 11:01 AM

Print Friendly · Digg it · del.icio.us · StumbleUpon · Netscape

Comment Policy:

Anonymous comments are allowed. All anonymous comments and comments from those not registered with TypeKey are moderated. They WILL NOT appear until they are read and approved by a moderator.

It is strongly encouraged that you sign up and login with a TypeKey account. Once you do that, your comments will be immediately posted.

Comments

Posted by: Ze Cacetudo at March 2, 2007 02:35 PM

Posted by: Clitoris Rex at March 2, 2007 03:10 PM

Posted by: doctornine at March 2, 2007 05:39 PM

Posted by: anonymous22 at March 3, 2007 09:35 AM

Posted by: Rosie Palmer at March 9, 2007 05:21 PM

Posted by: anon at March 12, 2007 07:14 PM

Posted by: Mark at March 14, 2007 06:10 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments:

Please type the phrase 'philalawyer' in the box below (required):