‘Where would we be, without women to fuck us up?’ Sugar’s words always ring in my head.
Mostly I just drove around at night. I needed the solitude in motion, if that makes sense? I often had a semi load on, too, having slammed a few whiskeys neat beforehand… Jim Beam or Maker’s Mark, it didn’t really matter to me. I never met a Bourbon I didn’t like.
The driving was never planned. I’d just end up somewhere, tears filling my eyes. My camera view distorted like a flashback scene from the cable drama that has been my love life, edges of past reality ‘lens babied’ into blurry pained romanticism. The night time world looks amazing when your heart is on fire and your skin is crawling to be touched by one you either can’t have, or had and lost. The song on the car stereo always the same:
‘There are things,
I have done.
There’s a place, I have gone.
There’s a beast,
And I let it run.
Now it’s runnin’ my way.’
I’d often stop off and get another drink somewhere else. Taking in the varieties of the brokenhearted and disavowed, perfumed in stale sweat and desperation, that frequent basement dives and broken down gin-joints. Stay for one of two more, then move on.
‘There are things,
I regret.
That you can’t forgive.
You can’t forget.
There’s a gift,
That you sent.
You sent it my way.’
The highway at night, lit only by my headlamps, is like the road of my life – darkened, unknown. When I get like this, full to my seething walls with ‘what if?’ and ‘the path not taken’ that’s when I feel the urge to do violence – to others or to myself. Some kind of twisted effort to purge myself of one pain by replacing it with a visceral other.
‘There’s a game,
That I played.
There are rules,
I had to break.
There’s mistakes,
That are made.
But I made ’em my way.’
I like physical pain. I like getting hit. It reminds my I’m not in the box, just yet. It also leaves a bruise or a scar. Trophies to be proud of that others can see. The internal scaring is worse, but if no one takes the time to try and see through your eyes into your soul and get at what drives you, then at least battered to fuck is instantly visible.
‘So, take this night.
Wrap it around me like a sheet.
I know I’m not forgiven,
But I need a place to sleep.
So, take this night.
Lay me down on the street.
I know I’m not forgiven,
But I hope that I’ll be given
Some peace.’
Darkgingerbread 