Against the wind

(Cut-up from burned journals, motel receipts and brain-rot cassette tapes found on a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha, while listening to the engine moaning out his one-note song)

It felt like yesterday — but then, yesterday was a lie.

Janey’s eyes were transmission errors from a forgotten satellite — blue static through nicotine fog — she danced on motel ceilings with a loaded pistol in her mouth, saying, “I love you, I love you, I will not survive you.” I believed her. Idiot. I would have let her shoot an apple off my thick numskull cranial vault.

Time slurred. Shot full of holes. Bent backward like a cockroach on meth. Janey was real, or at least the idea of her was. Queen of the 3 a.m. chaos, draped in sweat and radio static, all cheekbones and trembling cigarette ash. I remember the way she moved through motel rooms like a loaded syringe — full of fire, full of poison, full of something too raw to name without your teeth falling out.

The radio was whispering threats, and the walls were bleeding jazz.

We made love like twin comets screaming through an electrical storm at the climax of the Perseid meteor shower, tearing holes in time, chewing through each other like gasoline and teeth. Smashed reality into a dozen illegal angles with nothing but our hands, our hips and whatever narcotics were clinging to the nightstand. The candles burned at both ends. The secrets were thick and wet, crawling things. They clung to our skin while the room spun counterclockwise and the world outside burned like a napalmed circus.

The bed was a crime scene. The room smelled like ozone, menthols and something Biblical.

She said it would never end. Whispered it into my ear like a benediction. Held me like I was a lifeboat and she was drowning in her own bloodstream.

— She said it would never end —

IT DID.

BURNED OUT. ASHES AND RECEIPTS. GOODNIGHT MRS. CALABASH, WHEREVER YOU ARE. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends. It gave a lovely light.

I found the highway in my chest. I drove it. I drove until the map folded in on itself and vomited black birds. Janey was gone — replaced by shadows with her voice, selling promises in strip-club parking lots at 4 a.m.

I kept running. Running like a diseased dog into the teeth of the wind. The wind is notoriously short on irony.

(CUT-UP FRAGMENT: STOLEN DIARY PAGE – LODI, CALIFORNIA)

“… woke up with plastic flowers stapled to my fingers and a note that said ‘you owe more than you can carry.’ I was 800 miles away from forgiveness and still bleeding interest …”

I took up with strangers. Phantom men in truck stops and casinos, faces like grease smudges on a funhouse mirror. They had names like Lucky and Tombstone and Jesus Jr. and sold pills shaped like baby teeth. I called them my friends. Men who laughed too loud and women with dead eyes and warm mouths.

They called me The Cowboy Who Forgot to Die.

I ran to live. Lived to run. Motion was the only lie I could afford. I was the American Dream with a blown-out knee and a head full of amphetamines, barrelling down the highway at a hundred miles per hour, screaming that it wasn’t fast enough.

“Never stop. Never think. That’s how they catch you. That’s when the devils climb into your mouth and build churches.”

Cities blurred. Borders dissolved. I was searching for shelter and always finding mirrors.

You don’t sleep against the wind. You clench your jaw and push into it until your teeth crack.

(CODE-SPLICE: THE SHELTER SEQUENCE)

… pinned to the floor of a Greyhound lavatory ...

… a woman with elk eyes offers you absolution in exchange for your molars ...

… room key 237, blood under the plastic plant, voice from the air vent saying “you were never born” …

… you reach for her, but it’s just a reflection on the windshield of a stolen ambulance …

Now the years wear suits and talk about taxes. There are clocks now. Appointments. The steady cough of a real life trying to wrap its greasy hands around my throat. A dog that hates me but won’t leave. I sit and wonder: What do I keep? What do I burn?

Janey is static now on the transistor radio I had in 1961. Gnawing. Laughing. A flame draped in midnight. Pushing back with fists made of rusted promises and desert heat.

Me: I’m older. Slower. My bones click when I walk. But the direction never changed. I’m still moving.

(Against the wind) see the young man run (Against the wind) watch the young man run (Against the wind) watch the young man runnin’ (Against the wind) he’ll be runnin’ against the wind (Against the wind) let the cowboys ride (Against the wind) aah (Against the wind) let the cowboys ride (Against the wind) they’ll be ridin’ against the wind (Against the wind) against the wind (Against the wind) ridin’ against the wind …

Somewhere ahead, the sky breaks open. Maybe God. Maybe another motel with thin walls and bad wiring. Doesn’t matter.

(Last scribbled lines from the found notebook, written in lipstick on an airline barf bag):

Watch the young man run. Watch the old man follow. The wind don’t care who you are — it just wants your skin. Your candle will not last the night.