London Calling, pt. 2: When The Man Comes Around

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world!
- Casablanca

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too.
- Tom Joad, John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"

Dulles is horrible for trying to sleep off whatever troubles see fit to chase you across continents, oceans, and memories.

I've paced the terminal at this sweeping monolithic testament to hope of the early 1960s more than I care to admit. Partly due to nervous anxiety, partly due to drunken urges that never seem to pipe down, but mostly due to just a sense of boredom in light of the sudden evaporation of Michelle and that maelstrom on the other side of the Atlantic. When something as omnipresent and burdensome as that is suddenly gone, the freedom is an alienating and unforgiving feeling that borders on hysterical fear. I actual find myself wishing I were back in that mess, just for the sick familiarity I grew so quickly accustomed to. Instead, it seems that certain aspects of breakups do obey internationally-agreed-upon statutes concerning the law of the sea. Leave the 200 mile exclusive economic zone of any nation that has provided a home to any sort of ill emotion, and I guarantee you'll feel like a million bucks.

(I wonder if she's in his arms right now...)

Dulles is, more than anything else, a wonderful tombstone to the idea of building anything with the future in mind when it comes to architecture stylings. It soars and swoops into the air on the promise that Kennedy's Camelot would make a bright, secure future for all Americans. In a way, it seems fitting that I should stare at the white concave expanse hovering above me and try and make it not-so-obvious that I'm crying as I think about what I just fucking destroyed on the other side of the Pond.

I wonder if my tears taste more like pale ale or champagne.

My flight leaves at 6 AM, bound for Atlanta. From there, it goes straight into that little town that launched the man who helped define the 1990s for most Americans. But first, I have to handle that phoenix of the South. When my flight leaves, it's easily taken care of. All it takes is a few more beers to get buzzed, and I silently sit next to a Hassidic Jew heading to Little Rock with me.

(I wish she were here with me more than anything else)

Sitting there, in Hartsfield-Jackson, made me think about myself. For some damn reason, I thought of Tom Joad and Waylon Jennings. I don't know why, of all the people I could attempt to sympathize with or turn into some sort of exemplar for my peculiar situation, I would come to a country legend lacking a left foot and a murdering character from a Steinbeck book. Maybe it was because I didn't want to do myself the oh-so-white-boy bullshit course of trying to make myself out to be a Thích Quảng Ðức or Mother Theresa. More than likely, it was because a strange convoluted mixture of jet planes, travel while feeling down, calamity, and a sense for a rebirth in the face of crisis brought these two to mind. I love these men. I'll call myself Tom Joad from now on.

(Why....what have I done?)

Somewhere over Tennessee, I wrote this out in my mind:

WHEREAS the Olympian gods of ancient Greece saw fit to punish Prometheus, bringer of light and hope to mankind, by periodically destroying his liver by way of raptor

WHEREAS the liver continues to stay out of line with previously agreed-upon limitations on the cessation of organ growth and regeneration

WHEREAS the liver, having been previously linked to hope and fire and continues to grow, makes itself an easy target for punishment in these dark times

It is RESOLVED that a State of War exists between any sort of fermented beverage and the liver of Tom Joad.

I fly into Little Rock with no problem at all. Marcus, my old roommate, shows up to pick me up from the terminal. Seeing him and my car make me want to weep. It's as if this is truly all I need to feel welcome and at home here. Why wouldn't it, either? On the one hand, I have camaraderie and trust and love and intelligence in Marcus. On the other, I have absolute freedom and power to choose my location in the world in my car. It's no wonder Americans have so many cars, so many highways. We love our freedom, our power to choose no matter how trite or insignificant a matter it may be, and we love this country of ours that spans a continent and holds within deserts, mountains, prairies, and the most amazing people in the world. Hence, my car is my escape. I plan to utilize it in the next few days as much as I can.

First thing is first. I stop by Mary's to take a shower, and chat up her mom about Chicago, built on the ashes of Ft. Dearborn (Christ, everything I find and love seems to be built upon or within the destruction of itself. Amazing how our circumstances shapes our perception). I don't know what I do for the next few hours. I relapse into the sort of automaton daze I was in along the Thames, only now I stroll along the roiling Arkansas River through grass pocked with various memorials to conquering Spaniards and a Polish calvary commander who deemed our struggle for independence worth his efforts. At some point I revisit Marcus, immaculately dressed as he is, at his job and chat for a bit there. I think I did, anyways. I made phone calls at some point. Talked to Jack. Mary.

(Fuck, what is the deal? Can I redeem myself to her in any way, whatsoever?)

That's when I got a call from Keith.

Keith had gone to Memphis a semester (year? I lose track of time so easily) earlier and I had heard very little from him except by way of Facebook message. He had been one of those friends who, while we could go weeks without having a substantial conversation sometimes, one night would more than make up for that as we talked about everything from metal to Wendy's to the Honors God Squad to politics to the Fonz. In short, Keith was a fucking honest friend who did cause a bit of an acute aching in terms of missing a fun guy, but not so much as some of my other friends; after all, how could I miss someone who easily made any leave of absence worth all the while within 10 minutes of conversation or after 3 minutes of singing Prince.

That night, my war began on the banks of the Arkansas River with Mary, Keith, Jack, and a surprise visit by our friend Salvador.* President Clinton Avenue was our front line. The enemy was soundly defeated.

(I wish, more than anything else, she were here right now. I need her.)

Somehow that night, I found myself in an apartment that was once familiar to me but now had the visage of some kind of bombed out abandoned villa. I don't remember driving there. I don't remember walking in. I don't remember laying down on....a futon. Yeah, a futon. I don't remember driving? Jesus! Is it the drinks, or is it the trauma? Maybe I just went on autopilot while I decided to torture myself over everything I ever did to Michelle and over what I just lost in her and showed up here. I see myself in the mirror for the first time, wondering why I'm there and how long I've been staring into the glass slab without seeing myself.

For a second I see her. I feel her hands holding me. I, for a split second, have deluded myself into seeing the one thing that I neither want nor need yet do, yet I can't admit to either. I suddenly find myself weeping. Not crying, not that sort of bawling you do when your face contorts and hurts from the physical effort of crying. No, weeping. The kind where your hands do things that exacerbate your pain yet try and alleviate it at the same time on their own will (My scalp hurt for days). The kind where your entire abdomen contracts and rips and pulses like some kind of crazed zydeco band following an epileptic conductor, the kind that exhausts you to the point where you don't mind passing out on a bathroom floor you just saw cockroaches on.

Flying across the goddamn Atlantic didn't help a single thing. That delicate rose, that twisted, thorny beautiful splash of vibrant color and passion that nature plants in our hears that has been named "Heartbreak" has taken root here, in my home away from home. I have to run. I have to flee. I have to escape. The war on Tom Joad, the penitence I have taken upon myself for my crimes and my emotions running wild must be taken to a new front.

There's another river I have to cross.

(Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?)

*Salvador, Mary, Jack, and I went to Governor's School. For those who didn't go, you can't even comprehend the bond that place instills