Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-08-16- 5:31 a.m.

A Quarter Moon In A Ten-Cent Town

There’s a feeling I get sometimes that I wish I could explain. I’m in a strange bar, and the jukebox plays a snippet of a song long out of my mind, and it takes me away to places I haven’t been in forever. Perhaps it takes me further than that; I soar off towards places that only inhabit my subconscious, memories of daydream vacations I never had the courage to take. And then I get a feeling that nearly overwhelms me; a need to go away, to get lost in the world, to take a trip, to get free. This feeling, like most of the ones I have during the day, gets summarily executed without hearing, and my life goes on. But every once in a while, I can’t quite silence the little bloke on my shoulder who suggests that change isn’t always bad.
Sometimes, in spite of my intense efforts to do nothing, things happen. This is the story of my first vacation in three years.
8.11.02 – 1:17 a.m.
Here on Cape Cod, I find myself standing outside smoking a cigarette in a gravel driveway, looking up at the clearest sky filled with stars that I have seen in recent memory. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw so many stars. College, perhaps. The moon is new, a mere sliver of burnished platinum in the night sky, and it is so clear and bright that I can see the rest of her concealed in shadow. The air is crisp and cool, with a brisk wind, and I find myself wishing for the jacket I dragged along, despite Rachel’s insistence that I wouldn’t need it. It is a wonderful night.
It is a fine end to a good day. I’ve felt this good all day. My iced coffee in the morning tasted cool and welcoming. As I first sat behind the wheel of my Rent-A-Wreck, I remembered the feeling of my first evening out with my parents’ car when I was sixteen; that feeling of kinship to the American pioneers, the freedom and the limitless possibilities that metal and wheels can offer you to take you away to a new place and a new life. Even if only for a little while. When I picked up Rachel, I looked at the way her bags and mine melded together in the trunk, and then watched her rearrange my things so that it all made better use of the space. I love that, if for nothing but its very femininity, the subtle reproach and indulgence for my own masculine lack of care.
Despite the traffic, which is wall-to-wall (the first fifteen miles out of Manhattan took an entire hour), it feels good to be on the road. I’d forgotten how it gets, the long road trips, with nothing but a map and the road signs to follow. I’d forgotten how you meld first with the car, then with the road, as your whole world becomes nothing more than you and the other drivers and the disembodied sounds of the stereo. My Rent-A-Wreck lacks a CD player, and the handful of tapes I grabbed from my ancient collection forces me to reach back into adolescence as I find myself driving along to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, listening to the odd chords and feedback, remembering how this album made me fall in love with the band and the person I was as a teenager.
“We can’t see clear, but what we see is alright.
We make up what we can’t hear, and then we sing all night…”
The teenager that I was quells the fears inside me about this trip. He is like my shadow self now; more sullen and quicker to anger, but more confident and brave. He’d love this trip. He wouldn’t worry about what he was leaving behind or where he was going. He’d just want to get there and see. I sneak a momentary glimpse over at Rachel, and see her, so beautiful looking out the window with a small smile upon her face. A second later, when my eyes are back on the road, I feel the soft skin of her hand caressing the back of my neck as I drive. For only five seconds, maybe ten, I feel her touch, and they pass wordlessly, and then her hand is back on her lap and my senses back on the road. And right then I remember why it is we all want girlfriends and boyfriends and spouses. It is the special gesture, the act of being singled out. No drug yet on the market can quite approach the sensation of being the primary object of someone else’s affections.
After nine hours on the road, we arrive, and we celebrate with dinner and wine and pot, and I’m living in one of those barroom daydreams, where I drown a good glass of shiraz to chase a blackened swordfish steak on the outdoor deck of a beach restaurant, and the moment that I put my glass down, a beautiful girl reaches out to hold my hand. We ensconce ourselves in the bedroom of our first ever bed & breakfast, and in between bouts of urgent sex, we have one of those early relationship talks that you know sound ridiculous once you’ve had a few of them, but that seem revenant while you’re having it. We talk about how we’ve missed each other having spent the last two days apart. We talk in awkward circles about how we’d like to start talking about the other as “my boyfriend” and its reciprocate. We shyly admit that we don’t want even the freedom to see other people. We look at each other and our eyes shine like they contain flashlights. We fall asleep naked under the covers, with her upper body draped over my chest. I would swear in a court of law that as I fell asleep, she weighed nothing more than a feather.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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