Stationary Wheels

I couldn’t believe he had actually hit me. Sure, he had been threatening it for hours as the empty bottles piled up…and I frankly deserved it, but still. I was insisting that I didn’t “buy” the whole “we’re made from carbon” thing. And I was saying this to an honest to god scientist: a biologist by trade who held a masters degree. I told this learned man that I rejected one of the most fundamental facts of being. So he smacked me. (I think he meant to actually punch me but the booze hadn’t let a fist form.) Maybe it was to force some sense into my melon, maybe it was just to shut me up. Here’s what I do know: I was 23. I was drunk (too). I was getting drunker. A friend I had known for years just hit me. We were directed to the nearest exit. I recall - to at least I think I recall - asking why we both had to leave when I was on the receiving end. The answer didn’t make sense right away: he was my ride.

We came together. Right? I drove? Maybe? I did! But only because he scooted over to the passenger seat when I walked up to the car. Well shit. I guess I was his ride. Good thing I was the more sober of us.

Soberer.

Soberish.

Word choice doesn’t really matter. Semantics be damned he slid into the driver’s seat of this Dodge. The make of the car was possibly the most ironic thing to happen since a carbon based life form insisted that life forms were not made of carbon. It had done a very poor job of dodging anything. Beat to hell but only a couple of years old, the car almost screamed LOOK AT ME! to every townie cop within a three mile radius.

“We need weed.” His declaration was the first full sentence he directed at me since the toned down MMA fight at the bar. Unfortunately at this time and place weed was a luxury. Pills were abundant (and almost overflowing from my pockets) but weed was tricky. Maybe it was glut of middle and high schools in the area, I can’t say. But finding good quality, easy pulling, seed free weed was a science. A lot of theory testing went into it. In our circles hypothesis was as apt to he heard as stifled coughing fits. Thankfully I happened to be riding with a scientist. He had already run all the tests, tested the conditions. He always found the best. We know it to be true but I would be doing a disservice to the scientific community were I to not peer review the results. Obviously. And peer review I did.

I pushed him over to the passenger side and lit up the ignition as he lit up the cigarette shaped hitter he produced from god knows where. He made no offer to share so, yeah, we’d still need weed. This is where things get a bit…hazy.

I shifted the car into reverse and he shockingly passed me the hitter. I inhaled hard. I shifted into drive. I pointed the car in the direction of - well, I didn’t know exactly. But I saw what I thought was a cop in the opposite direction so it seemed a good idea to go the other way. Stop lights flashed. Stop signs were blown. We didn’t stop. Or I didn’t. I inhaled every time the little metal cylinder found its way, unbidden, into my hand. All that thinking about pot was apparently for nothing as my friend - assailant? - produced more from seemingly nowhere.

There is a surprising variation of landscapes in midwestern suburban towns. This fact may not seem like a fact if you’re never driven around one at two AM, high, while a random bootleg of a popular jam band blared from the speakers of a late 90s Dodge while the alcohol from an hour ago takes another run through your bloodstream, transported by the various compounds in marijuana smoke, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Or maybe it was all the pot and booze fucking with me.

They’ll do that.

Regardless the pot was smoked. The terrain leveled and became a series of copy/paste strip malls and tract houses. I was smacked back to reality enough to get my bearings and take a right at Boughton Road. I had to get home.

Not that I wanted to. “Home” had morphed into little more than the place I kept my stuff. My shirts were there right next to my lowered expectations of women and relationships. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I got from that right turn to my apartment but I couldn’t begin to tell you how. I’m fairly certain now, with almost two decades of hindsight, that the car was shifted into park with a ding on the left front fender and at least a dented rim.

“You good to get yourself home?” I asked my friend without a hint of irony. I knew he wasn’t but that struck me as a “him problem” as far as I could see. In lieu of a response he simply belched.

“Cool. Thanks for the insight.” I hope I said. I don’t know what I said but this seems witty and paints me in a little less harsh light so I’m going with it.

We attempted a screwy half hug thing across the center console. I had a fleeting thought regarding the logistics of a passenger giving a driver oral sex, something not attempted by yours truly since high school. Yeah. It was time to go.

I jumped out and slammed the door at the same instant he peeled out. I let my eyes come to rest on the middle window of the building. Behind that window lay the woman I was with. I hesitate to call it dating. It wasn’t that. Not exactly. We were just…with one another. She was there and I could only hope alone. But had she been all night? I’m not a gambling man but even I would put all my chips on “no”. The odds were always good in that respect. The score never changed and showed no sign of changing unless I made that change. After the year and half we’d been together I had yet to make that change. Instead I would change my environment (usually by hitting a new bar or at least new liquor store). And that’s what I did then.

I had nowhere to go. I had no money to go anywhere anyway. My car would have to suffice. I fished my keys from my pocket and stumbled to the drivers side of my 97 Chevy. You wouldn’t think it but a late model Chevy makes a lot more noise in the middle of the night than it does in the daytime. I wonder if she heard that.

I click on the radio. AM talk? Maybe NPR? Either way my attention was grabbed by a blurry movement in my rearview. The light is on in the window but that’s all I see. Then the building door flys open and two amorphous forms giggle and fall over one another. Guess that answers that.

The smaller of the two stands on tiptoes to kiss the taller one. Their hands go low, then high, then front, back, squeeze….

The only thing I squeeze is my eyes shut. When I open my eyes they will be gone.

They were not.

I closed my eyes again. When I opened them the stabbing light of day reminded me that I was still alive. My brain ached but not too much that it didn’t feel compelled to replay everything I had witnessed just before passing out through a gauzy lens. My nose told me something bad had happened to my engine, which makes sense if you leave it idling for five hours.

I got out of the car, stretched my legs, and walked toward my apartment. I knew what was in there. Luckily for her and our immutable one year lease I knew I had nowhere else to go.