THUNDER ROAD

I pick up a handful of sand and let it run through my fingers. I dont draw
a metaphorical conclusion about it. I dont focus on the macro represented by
the micro. Sand is in itself a beautiful sight beneath a microscope. Each piece
a tiny rock, or a minuscule shell, or any assortment of wonderfully colored
particles drifting in the sea, landing on the beach. I dont think about this. Sand
is ugly and bland. For the most part. A beach full of sand is boring, and aside
from a difference in hue, sand here is sand there is sand everywhere and theres
no amazing symmetry in how wonderful it all is. While the granules fall from my
sideways palm I dont think how life is the same way. How this whole human
race is the same way. This thought doesnt cross my mind. This is the wonder
of this moment. Absolute calm. No catharsis; no struggle. Just sand through
my hand as the sun beats down on the chest and back of me.
Its the anticlimax of it all: the counterclimax.
I thought about grabbing a guitar and busking once. I thought about
cross country travel On The Road. I had big plans. Plans built like the Tower of
Babel to some happiness. Now my day is filled with splintered shards of ideas
wrapped up in various tongues that I cant make sense of.
So I stand ankle deep in gray sand, letting it pour from my fist, and try
not to imagine it being the kidney stones through lifes urethra. Then a seagull
lands, clamoring for a boardwalk fry and ruins the illusion for me.
My hand opens and the sand drops and I start walking toward the
convention center to meet my friend. I pass through the darkness and loud
music and empty space and see my friend has already reserved a bench. Hes
watching the ocean seam into the sky on a straight horizon and I know that hes
applying this symmetry to a larger picture in his head and steel myself before
sitting next to him.
We start the conversation up. The tone is the same as it always is and
even though the topics are different, the topics are the same. The discussion is
ostensibly a conversation about meaning but we both know somehow that
theres no meaning to be had from it. Its talking about meaning that gives the
conversation meaning and I muse that I finally found the perpetual motion
machine in two bloated egos waiting for a sunset or a whale sighting
I fade out.
A girl I used to know pops into my mind and I wonder whatever happened
to her. Our meaning was less absurd and more powerful because of it. Our
conversations were less about epistemological concerns and more centered

around whether or not I would stay hard while trying to lace up my rubber. I
figure she laughs to herself about how terrible I was in all things, including not
getting attached despite warnings. How she cant help but snicker about every
time Id go soft while trying to penetrate her and the way that Id focus so hard
that Id stop kissing and just mash my face against hers and sweat and grunt
and all the embarrassing things that never happen in movies. She doesnt think
about me at all. And I know that and even though I tell myself Im okay with that
I decide to stop thinking about it.
I fade in.
I dont want to talk about hypothetical science with my friend but I opt to
anyhow and regale him with my impression of the top three scientific inventions
in the last 100 years. I make reference to antiseptics because I heard that on
TV or in a movie once and dont know which and wouldnt cite the source
anyhow because Im sure he hasnt seen it. Im sure because I know if he did
he would have not-cited it first and I wouldnt have called bullshit on him
because I try not to be a hypocrite. I spew something about the detonation of
the atomic bomb, or in a more general sense, the atomic bomb as the biggest
probably because it shaped our culture from BeaverCleaverville into a police
state. I heard that in a postmodern class in college that he didnt take and then
tack on something about JFKs assassination as the next biggest event. He
doesnt call bullshit on me for using something that isnt a scientific
advancement, but I backpedal anyhow and mention that maybe it is more about
the notion of instantaneous media on loop. A very DeLillian conceit, no doubt.
$80k at work so I can have a conversation I dont want to have and come out on
top.
I try to change the subject to music but all he wants to talk about is some
new jazz funk movement and all I want to talk about is Bruce Springsteen and
Tom Waits and suddenly I realize that I dont want to talk to him because I dont
want to talk to myself and so I close my mouth and wait for the ever dreaded
moment where he says whelp that was a great conversation we need to do it
again some time. He extends his hand and even as Im shaking it I remember
when he told me that even at 23 hes still too ashamed to masturbate without
feeling like hes sinning.
Does she remember the time she made me cum so hard I felt like I was
sinking through wet concrete for ten minutes afterwards while she was brushing
her teeth?

This is to be a memoir then. An inaudible void.

I contemplate a beer but opt instead to play pinball. Theres something
odd about the affair that unsettles me, though. In this open building I stand with
almost a hundred pinball machines and think not really about playing for fun but
playing for the sake of playing. Playing for the aesthetic of what I believe to be
why others have played pinball in the past. Except the context is so far removed
from my own that I cant help but stare directly at the monument and see it only
for the sake of taking pictures. I cant hit the flipper with honesty because there
is nothing honest about the way my hips are pressed to the wooden front. There
is nothing honest about the way these machines are lined up, row after row, and
are paid with a cover like a cheap night out at the bar.
I walk the rows and see machines from all eras. I see the original
marble rollers. I see the noisy flashy machines. I see the Demolition Man
machine with two gun handles for flipper buttons. The history is almost stifling
so I pick a 70s science fiction theme machine and crack the silver ball up the
tube, across the rail, and watch it helplessly plinko towards me. Lights flash and
rubberbands push out, shooting the ball higher and away from my paddles. I
watch all of this with no real idea of the point of this particular machine. I hit the
ball occasionally and watch its path, but I have no idea what objectives are
available or really how the points are supposed to stack. I know only that its not
a good idea to let the ball sneak past the flippers. My only goal is to keep it
airborne, sort of, and even thats a job I find myself failing at.
I kill forty five minutes, migrating from machine to machine trying to find
one that speaks to me. I run my hand across the polished glass and hope
somehow that Ill feel a tingle in my fingertips that will alert me to the machine. I
end up, in this way, on one that has a cowboy hiding behind a cactus while a
saloon whore is aiming a peashooter at a bandit. This is all painted to look like
such a regular event. Even the whore looks bored in what I would assume to be
the most exciting moment of her life. Or maybe just of mine.
A couple comes in the front door, quietly whispering over how much time
they think theyll spend in the museum. They get bracelets, marked in sharpie
with the time at which their payment expires, and the guy pays cash out of his
wallet. They walk through the turnstiles and start looking almost excitedly and
almost vacantly at all of the different pinball machines. At first I find it funny
because they play on adjacent machines. Theyre having a conversation with
snippets floating near me.
Oh man, look at this picture on this one s probably something Id
like to see dammit, I swear these flippers just arent working. They are

sharing a lemonade out of a cup and I watch as they pass it back and forth. He
sets it on the ground, being careful to keep it out of the aisle when hes done
with it. After a while, the two split up and meander around to various machines.
Theres something articulate in his movements. Every arm swing is
accidentally perfect for whatever hes trying to say. This is the best I can put it.
Hes probably not aware anymore of this, but in his gait I can tell hes well
studied and at some point was very self conscious about how he was perceived.
Theres just something about that. Its apparent most in the way he places his
cup on the floor. Its a consideration, but not of the machines or those around
him. Its a consideration that I cant quite grasp. I want to talk to him but he
seems a little aloof. Even when his girl was by his side he wasnt quite in the
same room with her.
There was a time when this was much like me. In a way, this was
probably me and he will most likely become me.
After I become familiar with his cadence, I begin to get comfortable
knowing who he is. The way he picks his machines tells a lot about him. He
runs his hands on the chrome and looks at each backlit image. He wanders
around and stays shy of the modern machines. He stops and reads each
placard relating the history of each, and even when he doesnt play the machine,
he nods his head. Hes standing in a sanctic place. Hes looking at fallen gods,
and in a way, I think he feels bad for them. Their wings were torn from their
backs and they somehow ended up in a boardwalk shop to be pointed at like
circus freaks. Hes the kind of guy that wants to take Mini Mollie for a beer after
the carnival closes up because it reminds him that even the most abased
deserve the same treatment as everyone else. In the way that he doesnt make
a big deal about these things, I can see that theyre completely honest and
completely a part of him.
He rounds the row and sees his girl playing a funny looking machine.
He brushes up to her, gently caresses the small of her back. She turns, smiles,
and takes the cup from him. He glides down a machine or two and without
choosing and without reading the placard haphazardly plays a game. From the
corner of his eye he watches her set the cup on top of the machine next to her.
His prayer has been interrupted. Halfway through the game, he moves to the
machine next to her, takes a sip, a perfunctory sip, and slowly places the cup on
the floor between the two of them. He wipes the glass with the bottom of his
shirt, pushes the start button, and plays a few balls on that machine.
They migrate away from each other once again. They coalesce. They
separate. They converge. Time and again. Always his move, slowly rounding
corners, occasionally eyeing an aisle to see if shes close. Each time, the cup

ceremony. Each time, he wipes the glass. She looks up only when he comes
near. She doesnt search him out. She doesnt notice the cup.
His pursuit isnt jealousy. Of that I am sure. In the same way he picks
pinball machines internally, he chooses to find her. The same way she chooses
the machines, she opts to be found.
I wonder if theyre happy.
When their time is up, they pick up the cup, he throws it away in a
garbage can, and hand in hand, they go through the turnstile. She stops to pick
up a brochure or two. He says something to her. She replies. He shrugs. Off
they go.
I guess that shes searching for happiness and he isnt sure happiness
exists and in that way I decide the two are perfect for each other.
I remember smoking cigarettes on her fire escape while she waited for a
friend to drop off a blunt. I remember smoking a cigarette on the fire escape
while she put her pajamas on inside. Smoking a cigarette there while she
douched herself.
Lonely cigarettes can be the best cigarettes.
I remember smoking a cigarette walking down her driveway the last time.
Even though I didnt know it was the last time, I still feel like it was the only way
to never see her again: drag, exhale, ash. Drag, exhale, ash. The smell of rain
on the pavement made the spring air smell like chalk.
Its a few days later and Im standing on the fifth floor of the MoMA and
Im trying to look at Starry Night. I want to get in close, look at it sidelong, study
the goopy brushstrokes. I want to have the blue fill my vision. I want this
moment to be one where years of art textbooks come together in this single
instant of tying what Ive read into a real moment.
Instead Im elbowed by a skinny Chinese man with a dslr camera and an
equally skinny chip off the old block clamoring for a picture of the painting. All of
them are. Im standing four people deep, surrounded by cameras, and watching
people feel exasperated that they cant get that perfect head on shot. That they
cant frame the painting perfectly in their little LCD screen.
Eh, I guess I can crop it when I get home.
These arent moments of discovery and wonderment. I cant decide what they
are, but I know they arent those. They take this wonderful moment and shit on
it. Thats what I think while I realize that this is happening at almost every
painting with a recognizable artist: Matisse, Monet, Warhol.

I sit on a crowded bench in front of one of the panels of Water Lillies and
rest my feet.
One time we were walking back from Subway. It was a Saturday and I
had spent the night tossing and turning and trying not to fight for a blanket.
Were getting to know each other differently. I ask about her favorite movie,
careful to avoid the snowbanks, and try to figure out why were holding hands if
were just supposed to be no strings attached. By all rights I shouldnt even be
alongside of her sober at 2pm. She says Labyrinth, and explains how it pretty
much defined her childhood.
So your childhood was defined by an allegory to a Spanish war? She
laughs and agrees and the conversation continues. It wasnt until later I realized
that I had confused David Bowie with Pans Labyrinth and wonder why she didnt
call me on it.
After I stand up from the bench I decide that theres nothing really
inherently wrong with the way these people want to take pictures of pictures to
put in an album somewhere. Im the one thats being out of place by trying to
get a close view. Only the skinny Chinese amateur photographer has got to go
and for a minute I imagine impaling him on the piece of modern art that is just a
red and white stick standing vertically.
In the courtyard they have a sculpture exhibit. The centerpiece is a
brightly painted set of life sized plastic royalty figures. They almost look like
chess pieces of face cards from a pinochle deck. I see a few people stand in
front of them and get their pictures. Along the outer border of the walkway there
are bronze sculptures. As I meander slowly in the sweltering sun, I get caught
up behind two girls walking. The brunette stops to take pictures of the colorful
pieces and the big centerpieces that everyone is taking pictures of, and her
blonde friend is standing in front of this insane looking bronze goat. Its utters
are flopping out, its stomach emaciated, and its face is comical in its absurdity.
She hails her friend and points at its nipples and laughs. The brunette looks at
the piece suspiciously.
Thats an ugly weird looking sculpture. She says.
The blonde is still looking at it. Yeah, its weird. But theres something
just really cool about it.
The brunette starts edging her feet like shes ready to sneak off until the
placard catches her eye.
Oh, wait! Its a Picasso. Here, move over, I want to get a picture of
this.

I decide its time to leave.

The gift shop downstairs is probably worse than the actual exhibits are.
No ones taking pictures but by god when I see the price of the replica posters I
understand all of the digital cameras.
She tells me one day that she has two fantasies. The first is to have sex
while smoking a blunt. The other is a public hookup fantasy where she has
decided on the campus library. I cant really help with the former, but we end up
taking a walk to the top floor of the library. There are people studying in cubicles
around the stacks and we walk until she decided how great it would be to do it
right in front of Shakespeare and all of the other great English playwrights. I
know were not going to have sex in the library, but I go along with it anyhow.
We end up making out for a few minutes. I lick her neck and steal an over the
sweater second while Hamlet coughs up blood in the hardcover near my ear.
She moans and puts her hand down my pants but doesnt do much else
besides flick her fingers a few times. She has a drama class in five minutes, so
she quickly adjusts her sweater, pats down her hair, and we walk out together.
She barely says bye because were back in the bright mid-afternoon public sun.
My last day in town, I stand in front of The Stone Pony and cant believe I
forgot how close to the beach water it is. A piece of piety slides down my throat
and I stand quietly next to the stage entrance. The early morning sun scrubs
away whatever debauchery this piece of sidewalk once held. Bruce held this
door handle while he schlepped his amps into the little backstage area. Bon
Jovi probably smoked a cigarette right where I was standing.
I walk under the funeral awning and its dark inside. Walls painted black,
floor made up in gray concrete. A bored bartender is sitting at the center bar
texting and drinking out of a plastic cup. Next to the coat check and ticket booth
theres a picture of Bruce cheesing it up. His guitar is probably hanging on the
wall but itd be like Wheres Waldo at this point and Im getting worn out from my
long weekend. Just knowing its there among the fifty or so others is a prayer in
itself.
A couple of middle-aged women come ambling in smelling of out-of-state
tourism.
Sokay if we look around?
The bartender sprays a little more coke in her cup and mumbles a bored
consent. The women are wearing black t-shirts and lesbian haircuts. They
amble around, camera out, and stand on the stage, looking sidelong at the
bartender to see if theyll get yelled at. The black velvet white pony emblem of

broken heroes and revved up motorcycles frame them perfectly while they pose
for a shot, changing spots and handing off the camera for their respective taste
of night time drives and making out in some wooded hollow in northern
Pennsylvania.
Would you mind taking a picture of the both of us? The butchier one
has her point and click extended towards me.
I met her in a poetry class. She had a reputation for being easy. Not slutty,
necessarily, she just liked to make out a lot. Every poem was written about her.
All the ups and downs and inbetweens and unknowing were recorded in free
verse and read aloud for the class to hear. Shrouded in ambiguity and fickle
word choice, it was my secret.
Afterward, in the comfort of her apartment where our indiscretions went
unnoticed, shed ask if the weeks poem was about her. I usually lied. I wasnt
supposed to write poems. Even when I read the poem she asked me to write
for her I knew it was wrong. It was a selfish act, the entire hookup, the months
of it, and self-serving poems were really the only kind I could write. Angsty,
guilt-ridden. Untouchable.
They got shorter as I ran out of things to say:
Nobody burns me down quite like you do.
I cant help but remember:
I gave you the goddamn matches.
I agree to take a picture of the women. Were all worshipping the same
thing. Alone they stood with their hands in their pockets, kind of smiling, kind of
not. These were for their personal collection. Together, on stage, washed out
by the overhead lights, they gripped made up guitars and stuck out their rock
and roll tongues and in that moment truly realized the meaning of their psalms.
I took a handful of pictures to make sure they had one they could show
to all of their friends and smiled briefly while I handed the camera back over. A
moment fully lived, the bartender bored, and years and years of similar
pilgrimages. Each one special. None of them mundane.
In the back of the bar theres a wall-sized painting of a postcard, the
postcard, reading Greetings From Asbury Park. The wall all the more iconic for
the dents and pockmarks from god can only imagine how many bar fights and
mosh pits. I walk out the front door, the two women talking about going into the
bathroom to see what other treasures might await them. Outside, I cant believe
its light again. I cant even believe I remember what light is.

I begin the long drive home.

One day she stopped talking to me. No more secret corner whispers
about how long it would be before I was knocking on her door. No more leering
glances across the long wooden table. The poetry dried up so I stole someone
elses voice, paid homage to the greats, and rattled on about mermaids and
coffin nails and scuttling across the seafloor.
I got hammered for about a week straight. I couldnt admit even to
myself that I was upset. No strings attached is supposed to be no strings
attached. Id begin to catch errant whiffs of her perfume. She was the ghost
around every corner. She was every unfinished story I never told.
She was sand through the hourglass.
Theres something about the landscape in New Jersey that catches me
off guard each time I plod through. The trees, the tucked away spotted towns.
The 18 wheelers headed to The City with Chinese characters painted on the
trailers and no indication of what is inside. The heartbeat of Tony Soprano
pounding away in various outcroppings.
An hour from home, I stop at a florist and purchase a bouquet.
My only tourist trinket.
I pull into a gas station and stop myself from getting out of the car to
pump. A scraggly man asks me how much and I tell him to top it off. I wait
while he pumps.
Two nights before she leaves for good she calls me and asks if she can
see me one last time. Im already in the area, so I excuse myself from my
friends and take a walk in the drizzling rain, through the side alley, and up her
metal fire escape. Shes already smoking a cigarette when I get there, but she
quickly snubs it.
I told you not to fall in love with me.
I didnt.
Do you want to go inside?
No. I dont think I can.
She throws her arms around my neck and starts apologizing. I have no
idea what shes saying but cant really imagine it matters much. I tell her its
fine. She didnt hurt me. Not to get worked up over it. She tells me to shut up.
To listen. To just let her have this one. I let her berate herself.
We end up making out violently. Her back arcs against the brick. Im
half-stooped to reach her 52 frame. Its like the first time, before she whispered

that she wanted to fuck me. Right after I commented about how white her walls
were and she told me she had to pee but I could wait for her in her room if I
wanted to. Drunk on Valentines Day.
She invites me in one more time and I again tell her that I dont want to.
Its time for me to get going anyway. She has an early morning ahead of her. I
wish her happy travels, take the rain-slicked fire escape two at a time, and have
a smoke lit up before I reach the pavement. I exhale my way out of her life.
Its mid-afternoon when I finally make it to the driveway. I take the
bouquet out of the car and walk to the front door. I knock. My breath catches.
Its been a long weekend away. My girl opens the door. Shes still in her sleep
sweatpants. Her eyes are puffy from crying. Its been a long weekend away.