Imaginary roads

Hidden in the backseat of the 49 Hudson, zooming from NY to North Carolina, I listened in awe to what those two men were talking about. I couldn’t make sense of most of it, and in order to do so I would have to stop daydreaming and actually hit the road with the first soul that would take me away from this corner in Leeds and head south – penniless and with no plan whatsoever. It is much easier to sit under the warm sunshine and imagine myself crossing highways in a freezing December night with Neal and Jack. Will I ever experience the same kind of madness? I very much doubt it. The world has grown a little scared, and I with it.

***

The warm breeze blows my hair on my face and brings me the smell of burnt gas from the scooters that have just driven by. It reminds me of my teenage summers and how back then I feared everything was so damn perfect that it couldn’t possibly get any better. It did. It does. Will it ever be larger than life, worth telling the rest of the world? I don’t know. But I agree with Neal when he tells Jack that ‘Everything is fine, God exists, we know time (…) And not only that but we both understand that I couldn’t have time to explain why I know and you know that God exists’.

Not your God, not anyone’s, but my own. Invented by me. And today it brought me here to this cafe, in the company of this book, to watch the most dazzling sunset I’ve seen in age, reminisce about the past, and dream of the road ahead.

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What a load of fucking bullocks. Why did it have to be her? Five bloody women in the house and she is the one that finds me crying like a baby in the backyard with a pint of Guinness in one hand and my life going down the drain with the rain that hasn’t stopped falling all day. ‘D’you need a hug?’ she asks. I don’t need no fucking hug. She can go to hell with her sympathy, her easy smile and those worried eyes. As if she cares. She could shag me, that’d do the trick, I tell you. For the moment being, at least. Ever since she slipped out that she is writing a book about me I feel like a stupid rat lab around her. An experiment. Every time she comes around for a chat I’m sure she’s only doing it because she’s run out of ‘material’. Ill give her some material. But someone should tell the girl that fat diabetics dropouts don’t make the best heroes.

‘Fuck off!’, I say, facing the other side. I’ve decided to test her. How far would she go with this? How much of my life she’d be able to handle? Worst part is that I don’t even have to make things up. Although I could. I’m in control now. If she wants to borrow my life she’ll get only what I decide to give her. And when I do. But still, a part of me just wants to hug her and tell her how fucked up I am. How I’m in such a complete mess and how I’ve been drinking so much for so long to try to avoid it that most of the day I’m not even sure what I’m doing. I’m fucking pathetic.

Still, it’s turned out to be an unbelievably gorgeous evening; orange and purple, like that weird movie…Tom Cruise innit? And that hot blonde. Only place in the world where this sort of thing happens, England. Pissing it down the entire day and suddenly it all brightens up. She is now sitting in one of the benches right in between the kitchen and the backyard, smoking a fag and pretending I'm not even there. The kettle starts frantically whistling and I go inside to fetch my cup of tea. Because the light is coming from the outside she looks like a shadow, an outline. Suits her well. I don’t have a clue what’s going on behind those brown eyes. I’m afraid she’s reading me. But somehow I want her to. It’s like my fears start and end where she begins.

‘You alright?’

‘Yep. you?

‘I don’t get you sometimes.’

‘You’re not supposed to’.