I jump into the red Chevrolet Chevelle and we’re off. The heroic villain Jack has come to see me all the way from the West Coast for a day or two. Slurping on his milkshake, the ones that have more sugar than that sketchy cotton candy they have at sixth flags in New York. He hands me a coffee suggesting we get one kick or another.  We’re back and we’re toxic. Sunshine and chocolate bars, Jack and Roxy. 

”It was May” he says mockingly and the rock and roll from the road was undeniable. 

”And how can the Strip, with its neon signs and obesity minds and midnight blues- the place where dads went digging the gold way to Mexico- produce a precious soul like Roxy Day? TELL ME HOW O SAD AMERICAN NIGHT!” He yells out of the window. Ha Ha you’re so funny Jack. We’re leaving everything behind us, the years and troubles and kicks. ”You ready to kick it?”  I am always ready to kick it. The car speeds up. We are driving past the stores that market burgers with boobs, the family owned restaurants, the crying wives and cheating husbands, the pool table hangouts and the sinners at the church. Then, we are out in the desert with no car or light for fifty miles across the flats. On the road there is only beat, no sinners, no heat, no meat to eat, no greet and meet.  No nothing. Behind us is only, construction, reduction, destruction. RIP originality, RIP authenticity. They say the city is the transformation to the civil society, but we’re all beasts. If we don’t let the beast free, this town is all we’ll ever be.  But Jack has fire in his eyes, and I follow him everywhere on the road. The miles in front of us hold promises of the softest air and a place to breath, and we’ll be in Mexico by dawn. We stop by a gas stop, I always need chocolate and I buy a postcard for 2 USD that I wont write or post and Jack laughs but says nothing. He knows that I won’t send it and he understands,  Jack is a no question asked guy. The gas station is smelly from bad food and old frozen turkeys in the bottom of the ice cream refrigerator. Is there ever any nice gas stops?  I look at the postcard and he ignores my afternoon blues and does jazz moves past the dairy shelves and then buys two of those stupid tourist t-shirts and caps that say, ” I heart CA” and more beer than we can carry. We get on The Old Pacific Highway but I don’t know how cause I fall asleep to the music we used to make love to.  Baby baby, remember when we were so good.  The wind begin to hit us, and Jack is asking me to drive instead. He opens a beer in the passenger seat and spills it over himself when falling asleep. The 1 takes us to the 101 highway and then we’re in San Onofre, being greeted by the destructive boobs, the abandon nuclear station, and I wonder how many times on the road I’ve exploded without any weapons of mass destruction.  The moon is light in the grey night and feeling blue I look at Jack who’s escaping to the places he never told me about.  The night is soft, and the big bad blue ocean is keeping me company in the night. Hitchhikers are walking on the side of the road, and mountains bigger than their dreams and the American failure is on my left. The ocean lures me in, high on the smell of saltwater I’m dying to dive in.  Taking a left to get off the freeway, parking the car in such hurried way I wake Jack up, I am running, sliding, climbing to get down the cliffs to the secluded beach.  The NO SURF beach has always been my favorite, all the surfers, locals and valley girls mock it but I thought it was beautiful in a giraffe-wanting-to-live-in-the-arctic-kind-of-way.  When back in the car, soaking wet and cold from the water, Jack hands me his stupid T-shirt and cap with a devilish smile on his face, ”dig it kid”.  I try not to laugh but can’t help cracking up ” you’ve been a butt your whole life” but I love him. And we get high. Joint jokes and he’s a hoot and half. And through the smoke I see him. No face to compare to Jacks he has a face of every person you’ve seen on Times Square or the Strip. Everyone looks the same on the Strip- the consumer slaves, the bohemian nightmare, eunuch sluts, the decades change but the people have the same backbones, age old gender roles and washed out t-shirts.  Jack has an ordinary face for an extraordinary person. His hair is long and pants ragged and his eyes are lazy and careless but tender, reflecting the disposition he had before the road made him harsh and edgy.

I put on the radio and the speedy music sounds slow and feels intense in my marijuana filled veins.  The radio sings ” Boom clap sound of my heartBEAT. BEAT the beat goes on and on”. We jump in the car and continue our journey towards Mexico and we hit the border at dawn. Jack and I, we’ve been back and forth across the country several of times in cars, trains busses and cycles but soon our adventures are over. He is here now but soon I will watch him walk off alone, as the last time I saw him three years ago when he was wandering around the corner of 7th avenue and then he was gone- gone.  And one day soon, any day now, when the sun goes down in America, and I am alone breathing in the air of LALALA promises, I think of him,  I think of ol' Jack.  Jack, the one I love, the one I lost and the one I never fully got to know.  I think of him, and it is so hard to love him when he is so far away. We’re still great friends but we have to go to later phases of our lives.  As I hear of children crying, wives kissing their husbands goodnight or waves hitting the shore, I think of Jack. Wishing he was that one post card, that I not only bought but also sent. But now, Mexico is beautiful in the dawn, and him and I are as toxic as the tequila we have for breakfast. 

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F.E.W 7th of December 2015.

Ps. This text is fiction... kinda.