Dream Another Dream

The Holiday Inn Express in Heartland is a Shangri-La in a shithole.  I had to get back to the hotel to bed down, wake up and grind out another 11-hour day tomorrow.  We were taking golf course owners out for rides in the new Golfquick LE Pro, deep in the dumb heart of suburban Texas.  I had one more day on this job and I’d be free.  I hated life, and rush hour in Heartland is a good reason to die.

Broadway loomed up ahead.  Fuck that.  There was a sign to the right, at Telephone Road.  It read:   ”road closed-under construction”, shut-down like everything else in this smile less town.  The road looked fine to me and I was street-legal.  I heeded none.

I cranked it down Telephone Road.   The signs fell as if they understood.  I opened it up when I realized what I’d done.  I’d found a new way and the road was mine.  35-45-55-60, 65-70-75-80.  It was at this speed and in this elevated state of optimism that I saw him and thought twice about leaving him behind me like all the other redneck scumfuc denizens of Heartland, back to front in rush hour traffic and going nowhere.

“You don’t got weed, you don’t ride.”

He kind of looked at me sideways.  He knew I was serious.  He could clearly tell I was street-legal.  He picked up his shit and he threw it in the back.

“My name is G.Razas”

We burned down our new road through the wasteland.  G just got back from the equator and he had the black gold.  Pure hash.  Pure speed.  Being fearless allows one to be found by the miracle.  Before long, we’d be back on the Beltway with its purple Evac-Route road signs.  Now we were back on the high road of life.  And if we got caught-who cares?  I was street-legal and an employee of Golfquick.  It’s good to be king, even in a town with the combined I.Q. of piss.

G. regaled in stories of foreign lands, girls, black-gold hash, late nights on white beaches where you could get away with anything and the Police are your friends when you’ve got a wallet full of weak American dollars.  I envied him.  I’d been to every state in the continental U.S. except South Dakota in some quest to somehow be better than my old man.  My father lived and died in the town where he was born.  All the man did was work except for some lost weekends in Houston when our front yard in Friendswood flooded and we couldn’t get him on the phone.

I was in awe of G.  Although I envied him, I felt good, high. We were blowing through the Blackgums with a cloud of gravel  behind us.

Then G asked, “You ever read Kerouac?”

“Bastard!”, I screamed.  The hash was really taking hold, making me paranoid.

Who didn’t?

On the Road was like some Nike commercial to my generation.  It blew my mind that endless summer up north, and into fall, dropping acid and raking leaves in my mom’s backyard while attending community college.  The thing that struck me most about his work:  romanticism was still alive.  It was out there, somewhere, waiting.  But, when my mom kicked me out one Christmas Eve I had to sleep in Crowell park until I got a room at the “Travel Lodge” in Darby.  Romanticism was out there, somewhere, waiting while I was in Sharon Hill, PA pulling carpet for $45 a day.

I was getting cold-shaking, a bad sign.  The paranoia had set in.  I rolled up mine and G’s window.

“You know Kerouac was through here, right?” I looked unblinking into G.Razas’ eyes.

“No!”

“Sure he was.  Remember when he was in Fredericksburg, and it was snowing?  You know him and Ginsburg were killing it down this very same road.”

I pulled off the beltway.  The sign for BJ’s Bar&Grill was blazing like bullshit in the oil black sky.

“Go in there, ask for Sarah.  Get yourself a Po’Boy and a Piranha Pale.  And pick up a newspaper once in a while, those beat writers will turn your brain into erectile tissue.”

G was gracious.  If he only knew.  The game was on and he’d be surrounded by teabaggers in cowboy boots by nightfall.  No one rides for free and I was doing him a favor.  Stranded in the 31^st fastest growing suburb in America and up to his eyeballs in deerhunter caps with only a knapsack and a copy of Dharma Bums ought to wake him to the realities of life.

I got back to the hotel, and back on schedule.  Back to where the dream isn’t dead yet but dies a little more each day.   Back to the room armed only with a quart of Famaliar and a pack of American Spirit Orange.  I flick on the TV.  Something stupid was happening and people laughed.  A Viagra commercial came on and you could hear Howling Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightnin” being used in the background.  Rock and roll is dead.  The news comes on and the chances of rain for tomorrow are 100%.  I crack the quart and rip the smoke detector off the wall.

Then I shut off the TV and pick up the phone.

“Hey gorgeous.”

“Hi Jim Trainer.”

“Baby-when I get this rig unwound we’ll be sipping Irish Coffee under the palms in Westheimer.  Fuck the world, eat the rich.”

The last conversation I had with my Dad was about work.  I’ll finish the job.  Then I think I’ll get lost in Houston a while.