Faces on the Highway

I was driving south. on 99. it's one of my least favorite roads. uncooperative stop lights every other block, ugly strip mall, giant corporate stores set a half mile from the road with a large sea of parking lot concrete between us. Utter hell.

it was way too early. i wasn't meeting my friend for over an hour. but i had left so as to have the nicer car. If my mom got home before I left, I'd be stuck with the kid ruined camry.

I had been driving hurriedly earlier today, driving late to pick up my sister, driving urgently to get home to do nothing important: check my email for the millionth time. Waiting, waiting, waiting. I've been waiting so hard. But for nothing. Hurrying to wait.

But now. Now. I had time to kill. Now. I had time to think, besides worrying and fretting and asking out loud where that email could be? Now. Damn it, now I needed to stop grinding my teeth. An old habit back for a visit. I put my whole row of teeth on my tongue. Which, makes me nervous, I just know I'll hit a bump and bite it. But it's the only way to stop them from grinding.

Luckily, there isn't much traffic at 9pm on a Wednesday. So i coast. Aggravated by the insidious drivers earlier on (once you've driven in Europe or LA everywhere else becomes torture) I know languished and joined their ranks. Plodding along at 5 under, dazed outta my mind. The reddish orange dash lights on the Mazda lulling me into some sort of non-computer screen reverie. My thoughts, returned to me. My mind returned to me. My left wrist draped over the leather wheel. The radio, turned down low (normally I'm a full throttle loud music here we go-er) but Now. Now, the radio is barely audible over the engine and the incessant mindless chatter filling the airwaves in between "low rider" and "winding road" floats in and out of the front of my vision. Is that? nevermind. The silhouetted drivers beside me have ghoulish faces partially lit by reds, whites, greens and blues of dashboard fairies. Excited they're not. Sullen, drone faces gloomily staring off into the darkness ahead of them. With their northwestern mustaches and dangling earrings reflecting the treasure in front of their wrists.

9:15. Long ways to go. thank god I'm not in front of that damn computer. Thank god I don't feel like I have to check my empty, perpetually empty inbox. God I'm going mad. Driving aimlessly has given me more inspiration than I've had in days. i don't mind the Yellow light. Stop.

What was I saying? Wasteland, just look at this stuff, auto shops, erotica stores, a Sam's Club. I drive past a drive thru Krispy Kreme. Nah, you've eaten enough today without working out. Damn. I wish I had been working out. in the bowels south of the city, by the water, by the docks, by the industrial vomit that a metro area is required to have, I pull a U-ey on an empty highway. There in the beam of my headlights illuminated out from a block of corrugated iron by shitty florescent lights. An adult indoor soccer match. I wonder, how large of a circle it draws. Here, this group of men, in the colon of Seattle, getting together late, on a Wednesday evening to kick a small ball around an oval patch of Astroturf. i'd like to do that I thought. God, I'm old came next.

dont stand so close to me. as if I could feel crowded here. but the radio wasn't loud enough to protest. feebly telling me to give it space. it'd be nice to have someone I thought, and the rest of the evening just sort of floated away...