ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PLACES IN BETWEEN

A note to my readers:

Right now I am drunk as a lord. This is probably the closest you will get to having an unguarded moment from me. Because though my comportment may often seem to indicate otherwise, typically I am in full control of my faculties and carefully articulate what I convey to others.

Actually, the above is untrue. I am a significant step away from the level of intoxication required for full unabashed disclosure, because I am still actively editing my sentences for syntax and rhythm even as I write this. In order to achieve full access to my unvarnished self, I have to be almost falling-down drunk.

But here are a few insights from my half-naked id. They are unified by a theme that has haunted me for several years now. I cannot tell it in its entirety, but here are a few vignettes:

Every time I drove to St. Louis from Chicago or vice versa during college, I would encounter a moment or scenario that broke my heart.

I remember eating at the Steak 'n Shake in Springfield and falling in love with the beautiful, utterly sweet African-American girl who waited on me there, so much so that I wanted to take her with me, take her out of that place, to rescue her from a life of tragic obscurity. But... was I really just looking to rescue myself?

I remember when a red meteor flashed low across the sky amid the heat lightening at 2 in the morning just south of Bloomington, and I wondered whether my mind was playing tricks on me. Or whether I was possibly witnessing the Second Coming, and soon all this driving and studying was gonna be moot.

I remember driving past exits for White City, Funks Grove, Towanda, and a hundred other small towns in Illinois that exist in my mind only in potential, places that lack the grounding of experiential reality, and thus in my mind are a thousand times more thrilling than they are in real life.

I remember being frightened more than once by the power of nature: by snowstorms that made the roads impossibly treacherous and thunderstorms so violent that threatened to drive me off the road.

I remember the crazy-hot summer day when I witnessed, from far off, a large object by the roadside, and then staring with slack-jawed wonder as that object proved to be an emu, standing alongside the highway, scarcely perturbed by my presence as I whizzed past.

I remember being utterly intrigued by a sign for a strip club that offered a full t-bone steak dinner for $9.95, lapdance included. (I'm exaggerating about the lapdance, of course. As the sign plainly stated, that cost extra.)

I remember driving friends and lovers across the state of Illinois from the great cosmopolitan metropolis of Chicago to the fragile, workaday, parochial city of St. Louis.

My friends, there have been nights on the road when I listened to country and western music that made me cry so hard I couldn't see the road through my tears; also nights when I was so tired I had to bite my lip until it bled so as not to fall asleep at the wheel.

I once pushed a Volvo to 125 miles per hour and it shook so hard I was afraid we would careen off the road; another time I drove 50 miles per hour for half an hour with a cop on my bumper, sweating bullets, waiting to be pulled over, until for some strange reason he decided I wasn't worth his time.

I have puked, shat, pissed, and passed out in truck stop parking lots where anonymity enveloped me like a comforting blanket. And then there was the time when, as I drove from St. Louis to Chicago after breaking up with my longtime gilfriend, I pulled over at a rest stop in the midst of the cornfields to look out over a vista devoid of people and felt so alone that I dropped to my knees and shook for minutes on end with mournfulness and longing.

I know every twist of that road like an old friend's laugh. It would never betray me, and though it is still possible that I might die on that road some day it would be death at the hands of a trusted companion, a stalwart ally, a true comfort in times of trouble. A friend who would look me in the eyes as he stabbed me.

I hope it seems not too romantic to say that I learnt more about myself, and learnt better to love myself, on the road between Chicago and St. Louis than I ever did in either of those two places.

I miss that road, and someday soon I will travel it again.