Harmless Joyride

Mark White felt free and independent driving his father’s Lincoln PS for the first time. He knew it wasn’t right, but didn’t really care. His parents would kill him if they ever found out he took the car, but they were both out in the station wagon and didn’t have to know. He'd be so cool driving his friends around town and that was worth the risk. Plus he wanted to impress his girlfriend Christy.

Christy Armstrong was waiting on the bus stop bench two blocks from her house. She didn’t want her parents to see her getting into a car. “Where the heck are we going anyhow?” Christy asked, annoyed.

“We’re picking up Steve and Tracy and just going out for a bit. Maybe we’ll stop at the drive in and stay awhile.” Mark shot back very cocky, not letting on that he was entirely nervous.

They stopped and picked up Steve Hill and Tracy Grubbs from another bus stop five blocks over. The plan had been rehearsed through dossier-esque notes that were passed in various classes of little to no importance to the fourteen and fifteen year old joy-riders. Mark was going to pick them each up at the closest bus stops to their houses, take a spin around the block to show off the wheels, and be back in less than an hour. Nobody would know, and nobody would tell. It was an entirely faulty, faultless plan.

At least it was faultless until Mark found himself in the middle of a busy intersection with the stop signal and drivers honking on both sides. His pores erupted with sweat and his heart started racing as he realized the danger he was in. He managed to just squeeze through the intersection and decided he’d turn around at the next one. The entire posse was nervous about the scene that had been created at the last stop light.

Then the ever-so-terrible sigh of damnation came over them. The kind of sigh where they all know they’re in for some serious trouble, if not death sentences. Flashing lights signaled Mark to stop or run, and he stopped.

Officer Hezekiah Walker approached the beige, sun-worn Lincoln PS like he had approached so many other vehicles before, with a stout intimidating stride. He spoke, however, with a terribly southern drag, “License and registration please.” He said it in a demanding tone, almost condescending.

“Uh, Officer I have a license, but it’s at home.” Mark replied, slightly impressed with his wit at the moment.

“Ya not going to check your pockets?” the weathered officer replied. Mark didn’t have a license, neither did any of the scared-as-hell gang in the car. “Follow my car to the station and we’ll get this straightened out son.”

“Damn it!” Mark silently shouted inside his mind while getting back into his father’s Lincoln PS. “I’m dead.”

“What’d he say?” asked Steve

“He said we’ve gotta follow him back to the station, said he’s gonna get it all straightened out.” Mark had a film of sweat over his face now, but a dry tone to his voice.

They followed the officer’s standard issue black-and-white back to the Verona Police Department. Inside, Officer Walker took Mark into an office and shut the door.

“Well I think ya lied about having a license son. There aint no registration for ya in the database.” Though Mark was standing, it seemed as if he were sinking lower and lower. “Come clean and tell me about it.”

Mark burst out into a confession with nervously quickened breath, “I was just driving my dad’s car around for fun. Me and Steve and Tracy and Christy. We didn’t mean to do nothing.”

Officer Walker picked up an envelope and walked around his desk to Mark, “Give me the keys son.”

“What for?” Mark asked.

“For grand auto theft son, now give me the keys.” Walker was being sarcastic. He only intended to write Mark a ticket for driving without a license.

Mark handed over the keys to the officer and cried a little bit. The officer let him soak it up before they went back into the lobby.

With red puffy eyes Mark walked out, “Steve, do you know anybody with a license who can come pick you up?”

“My brother could but he wouldn’t leave work to come pick us up from jail.”

“Call him anyway.” Officer Walker said as he crossed between the boys and walked over to Tracy and Christy who were seated in the corner. “I’m gointa take you girls home now. And ya’ll shouldn’t hang around boys like this from now on. They’ll get ya in some real trouble one day, bad influences.” The officer turned around and issued to Mark and Steve as he exited the door, “and ya’ll just sit tight in the waiting room. I’ll be back for yuh after awhile.”

Mark sunk back in his chair after having leaned his elbows on his legs. Red circles appeared on his kneecaps and he started gazing at them. Almost monotone he said, “Christy’s dad won’t let me see her anymore after this. He already doesn’t like me.”

To this Steve replied, “I’m sure it’ll be alright. Everyone’s been in some trouble before.”

“Not like this man. We broke the law Steve. I mean the cops pulled us over and we’re in the police station getting tickets and phone calls. This is the real thing. We’re in some real trouble this time.”

“Lighten up dude. It’s not like we killed someone. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“No man. I’d rather kill myself than have to deal with whatever my parents put me through for this.”

“What? Don’t say that man.”

“I’m just kidding. That wouldn’t help.” Mark replied now covered in sweat, “but what are we going to do man?”

“Go home, and take whatever they throw at us. That’s about all we can do.”

Officer Walker came in the front door and escorted the two boys outside. Steve brother stared him down and didn’t even have to tell him to get in the car. Steve sulked over, dragging his feet and hunched into the car. He waved at Mark as they pulled out of the parking lot and into the street.

“Where do ya live boy?” asked the officer “I called your parents and they asked me to take ya home.”

“My house is on Palmetto. I live close by the park.” The officer seated Mark in the back seat of his cruiser and then took him home. Mark sobbed for the first few blocks of the drive but sucked it up as they got closer to his house.

“Thank you sir.” He said to the officer. He didn’t really entirely know why he was thanking him.

“Your parents asked me to tell ya to stay inside the house until they get home. Don’t go getting in anymore trouble now ya hear?”

“Yes sir.” Mark replied. The officer waited until Mark had closed the front door behind him.

‘That boy learned a lesson today. I hope his folks don’t beat him up too bad though’ thought Officer Walker as he arrived at the station. Just as he started in the door, his radio blared “Gunshots fired! Palmetto Road! Area units respond!” He ran back out to his cruiser and slung gravel as he exited the parking lot. It only took him three minutes to get to the scene. He met the neighbors outside their house and they pointed to the house where he had just dropped off Mark.

He waited until a second cruiser pulled in the driveway and he motioned his comrade to back him up. Walker kicked the door in and shouted “POLICE!” to an empty living room. The second officer went left into an empty kitchen and then fell into place behind Walker who was climbing the stairs. Blood started trickling off the top step and Walker picked up his pace. He pointed his gun down and ran up the stairs to find Mark dead with a gun in his right hand.

Speaking My Mind: A Soliloquy of Sorts

I want write this like a soliloquy, like you are not here and are not reading this, but I know that it will be impossible because I care too much about my readers. I will try to be completely objective and omniscient of myself though, so that you, the nonexistent reader, will understand everything. The terrible error in doing this is that I will probably write at horrible length about myself. In any soliloquy though, that’s the point. I just wanted to make it clear so that I’m not mistaken for a self-centered narcissist before I even get into my real point which brings about another error that is made by my writing this in soliloquy-style – that I will write more personal things that I need to make known. I hope that writing those wont be a huge error for me, but I'm unsure. Know this: That I am very scared that reproach may come upon me for writing this. The backspace key is staring me down and most of me wants to smash it in until every bit of type goes away.

I like to write. I like to write crazy, illegibly, and with a great bit of mental absence. This piece, and the previous pieces should reflect that. The previous pieces were a little less directed, but this piece is intended to take some aim at a specific point. I hope to dilly-dally around that point until I have just expended and drawn out every ounce of information I have.

I wrote a several pieces recently that I collectively call the “Bios”. They’re about several different people, a dancer, a writer, a musician, and a student. They’re all true pieces about real people that I know. I don’t need to reiterate every point I made in those for you to understand the point of this, but I want to talk about one of them in particular. (Cue the dilly-dallying)

I wrote about the communication patterns I share with the Dancer, about how they were awkward and barely existent. I don’t think I told you the true reason why I couldn’t talk to her though. I gave the reasons that we were on separate rungs of the social ladder, and we hadn’t anything to talk about. I also said that I have an inferiority complex. Those are both true, I didn’t lie. I just neglected to tell the entire story. There’s two final reasons why I have trouble talking to her. I am afraid of her (not like a child that runs from the boogey man, and not like a prisoner thrown into the Minotaur’s pit), and I have feelings for her.* I didn't dilly-dally very much did I?*

Now to write more about myself. I don’t want a flood of rash messages in my inbox telling me I’m crazy for not saying anything to the girl, and I don’t want a flood of rash messages telling me how crazy I am for actually publishing this. I want to say that this piece is a terrible avoidance on my part. I can write embarrassing, personal things about myself all day long (for instance, I cry in sad movies, during sad songs, and most funerals). I can write paragraphs upon paragraphs of personal information. I may even get up the gumption every now and then to publish some of my personal writing. BUT! But, my chief problem in the matter is that I almost never, ever get up the gumption to say anything about it in person.* I feel as if my time on this is just a big waste of energy and willingness to expose myself. Take this bundle of grammatically incorrect, functionally unsound, and personally crazy piece of writing for what you want though. I just ask that you don’t bother me about it with deconstructive criticism. Please, if you cared enough to begin reading it, then you care enough to respect it and me for having the ability to overcome my fear and post it.

Thank you.


P.S. – Don’t be surprised if I take this down after only a few days. If you like it, save it to your computer because I can’t be trusted to leave things like this out in the open.

Footnotes

*(I think she's beautiful, and it seems like an awkward place but here in this footnote I must state my definition of beauty. Beauty is a collaboration of several criteria. Beauty is the once-in-a-lifetime miraculous moment when physical beauty, meets Christian beauty, meets talent, meets kindness. Though each of those elements may have different levels in different people, if each are present, the person can be considered beautiful.)


*(Upon writing this, I intended to do some dilly-dallying, but I never really did get around to it.)


*(My gumption is really strong today because it’s overpowering every ounce of the rest of my body telling me to hit the backspace key until this goes away.)

Sanity (Continued Again)

The Writer and Student

I know the Dancer and the Musician better because I've known them longer. It's a lame excuse for the huge rip-off I'm writing here. What I mean to say is I don't have enough information to write extravagantly on the Writer or the Student. I just don't know enough about them yet. Maybe next semester I will take this piece into an overhaul because I should know them better by then. I apologize for the brevity of these two pieces. No doubt some of you will examine the length of each of these and use that as a clue to their identities. Don't waste you're time. I'll admit that the length is directly connected to how well I know the person and how much I care about them.




The Writer

She's stout. The writer writes firm and true. She writes on a complex level and entirely perfect in grammar. She writes on a level I haven't written on just yet. You might tell me that I write nicely and that I am a good writer, but you all know that everyone is outdone by someone. Her correctness bothered me for awhile, but it has become perfectly clear that she isn't really haughty about it. She may brag some, but so do I. Everyone is entitled to an aloud "go me!" once in awhile.

Someone who read my initial post said "You must hate the writer." I do not hate the writer, but she isn't necessarily my friend. She is annoying in a way.



The Student

He's older, in his forties or so. His age makes him a place I go to for help. The mere fact that he's seen what I'm seeing makes me turn to him when I need something. He's a student though; a teacher, but a student too. In everything he does he learns and I love it. I'm repeating myself from the original post here, and I apologize. Maybe we never stop learning. That upsets me and makes me happy both at the same time.

Sanity (Continued)

The Musician

The musician only looks quiet. There's something about pale skin that makes someone seem so quiet. She's not though. I've talked with her less awkwardly than the dancer. She's not picky about her topics and makes good observations. She is like the dancer in the fact that she is smarter than I am. Which makes my side of the conversations lack more than hers? I really should work on getting over my complex.

Akin to the dancer, she is beautiful. (I realize how creepy that may seem, but I assure you I am not a creeper.) There are two different ways to see beauty in my opinion. Or at least I see it two different ways. There's a type of beautiful that makes someone fall in love, and there's a type that makes them admire. I've seen both kinds and to say one is more beautiful than the other would be false. I don't want anyone thinking that the group to admire is less beautiful than the one to fall in love with. The only difference is unseen. It's largely unknown to me. In summation there is a type of girl to fall in love with and a type to watch someone fall in love with, and there's nothing wrong with that.

You are wondering which the musician is? I couldn't fall in love with the musician, but I suspect she'll have a most awesome prince charming. No doubt it will be someone with clout in society and with a good upstanding name. Should I go any further? I think it would be extremely creepy of me to write anymore musings on this person's future. Especially considering some of you have certainly figured out who my characters are by now.

I don't really know why I'm writing these anymore. Maybe someone who is studying psychology could examine this and let me know what my purpose is. I really have no clue what these bios mean to me and why I am writing them. I'll continue though. The remaining two deserve to have theirs.

Sanity: A Disambiguation

"Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to
count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes,
and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs
be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count
half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this
chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands
and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he
would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead
reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify,
simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead
of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion."

The intro to this was written by Henry David Thoreau in his book “Walden”. I do not entirely know why I want to start off with that, other than the fact I am trying to separate the small paragraphs I wrote about the dancer, the writer, the musician, and the student. Here I suppose I will write more on each character as an individual, rather than lump together their bios into one incomplete mess. I must keep my accounts on my thumbnail here for my sanity. By the end of this, some of their identities may be revealed but it is not like I didn’t plan for them to be discovered at some point in time or another. I know that there is no way to keep it a secret forever. My readers are too smart. And they know me too well.

If you have not read my previous post “I’m Going Crazy” then you should go back and read it first.


The Dancer

Interspersed throughout the semester, there were times when I would bump into the dancer in the halls or on the street. Since we both have a complex about speaking to people we do not know that well, it was awkward. It was not awkward in a bad way. Neither of us had any clue what to say to the other person. Sometimes it is still that way...awkward.

In situations like that, both persons have a thought process which is, for the most part, unexplainable. It is hard when two people, whose rungs on the social ladder have never collided, try to converse. Neither of them have any real information to give the other that is really worth wasting breath for. I know I have the most trouble finding something to say to her. I have the will to talk to her all day, but I never have the words to say. Maybe the weather, but it changes daily and there is really only so much one can say about it. It is either good or bad. Maybe sports, but I do not follow sports very much and it does not seem like she is the tailgating type either. I am not much for politics. School seems to be the popular subject. We are both in it at least. I should take up a more active role in the campus society, maybe dance lessons (that is laughable), or maybe writing this will be enough to jar my own subconscious into talking to her without a prompt more often.

Being as I do not talk with her too much, it is obvious that I cannot know too much about her. I feel the need to fill in some space here by making a confession. I confess that I have a huge inferiority complex when I am around someone who I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is smarter. The dancer is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, smarter than I am. This has something to do with our lack of conversation. I am certain. Because I do not know anymore to insert here that will explain her and still hide her name, I will have to end this soon.

One day I will be someplace nice and I will see her face in an advertisement. It won’t be some sleazy sideshow. It will be a big production. I’d say exactly what kind of production, but that would ruin her anonymity a little too much. All that needs to be known is that I will see her face in the ad and her name in print. I will go to see the show and be amazed by it. I will come up to her after the show and certainly will have no solid conversational grounds to stand on, but I will come up with some petty excuse for a topic, something no one thinks to talk about like the theatres eating or her advertisement perhaps, and I will push and shove that meaningless conversation until she absolutely has to go.

I'm Going Crazy

"Please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming
parentheses: (((()))). I suppose, most unflorally, I truly mean them to be
taken, first off, as bowlegged -- buckle-legged -- omens of my state of mind and
body at this writing."

The intro to this spiel was written by J.D. Salinger in his book "Seymour - An Introduction". It serves a purpose because it's how I feel I should apologize to my readers before I delve into the subject at hand. The subject will be discussed shortly (by the end of this you will have redefined the word 'shortly') but first I must give a small bit of insight as to what kind of psychopathic writer you're dealing with. I have tried several times at defining my view at the rest of the world and for the most part I have failed. I'll take another shot at it here but no promises as to my accuracy. I hate the masses. I generally wish that large groups of people around me were non-existent. I distrust most every person I don't know and some of whom I am slightly acquainted with. The only people I don't know who, in my opinion, are worthy of trust are those that I watch. No, I do not stalk, I watch. I observe, rather, these people daily, or most days, and I enjoy doing so. (You'll also learn through due process that I am a firm believer in the misuse of the comma and a wednesday-night-service-attender of the church of misused parenthesis and semicolons. I belong to a national organization against the proper use of punctuation)

Now of those people there are a select few that gain my interest most. These, and not my other observees, have obtained my interest because I see in them a certain finesse or quality that will bring them, and possibly others, some bit of fame or reputation. I guess the ambiguity and lack of grammatical concern in the preceding text has probably thrown off many of those who cling tightly to their composition books screaming at the improper placement of a preposition - something or other. The ambiguity and lack of grammatical concern has also definitely taken away from any sense of plot or prose to my story. This is good because I have no intent to write a story. There is no prompt to the madness. I am simply putting into words what is in my head.

The point here is I like these people. They're dancers, writers, musicians, students, and each invariably has absolutely no idea that I care enough about their lives to pay them any attention. For one, the dancer, she was a painfully quiet type at one time. She seriously never spoke up and when she did it sounded like the television does when one turns it all the way down, and haggles with the up button until only one or two clicks sound from it and, from the almost deafening silence, protrudes a small squeak of a voice. I watch her, yes with great expectations you might say. It is with the same style of great expectations that I watch anyone in particular. I must make it obviously clear in a sort of disclaimer here that I do not watch these people in the perverted sense. Their private lives are just that and I have done nothing to merit any legal action against myself. I should probably refer to my 'watching' as 'paying attention to' for the remaining duration of this text. All breakaways aside, the dancer has something about her. When I see her dance there is some sort of cosmic change in the way I perceive her countenance that makes me believe she'll get the hell out of Mississippi. Maybe it's the fact that all true dancers supposedly go into some sort of stage trance and elicit a notorious expression that seems somewhat un-worldly, though it could just be ecstasy. You are wondering by now what relevance all this has, and why you should read any further. Well there is no relevance. There is no point other than my being enthused at the idea of writing all this down.

The writer is mostly unknown to me at the moment. I only just recently began to pay attention to her because of a change in her writing. Beforehand, I took her to be an arrogant pain in the ass type who had not the slightest idea what common sense was and had no intent to pursue it. However, recently I noticed something in her writing. She's not always right. She's wrong sometimes but not genuinely so. Her errors before this were always correct errors, or wrongs that were right but so right they were wrong. From reading these one could say that she had book smarts but not street smarts. She couldn't appeal to her reader's need for familiarity and be entirely 100% correct by the book. Now I realize that nobody is really like that, no right-minded person who was born on or after 1988 at least. We're all liturgically and grammatically lazy by nature. It's of ease to attend the services at our church of misused parenthesis and semicolons, because attending our services really only consists of sleeping in rather than attending your normal English Composition class. Mission work with us is quite simple as well; one simply goes to that composition class but ignores every word the teacher says so as to plant the seed of grammatical laziness in others. Our generation is, for the most part, the mass in attendance with this great institution. Back to the story, where was I, She's a writer who is not always right, though I once thought her to be mistakenly so. I cannot really expound upon the reason why I pay her any attention because to do so would include samples of her work, or possibly other defining features and the identities of these people are really supposed to remain anonymous. In writing about people who read what I write, anonymity has always been the best policy.

I’ll refer to the musician by two different names. Firstly and most obviously, she is the musician, and secondly she is the governor’s daughter. Don’t ask me why I call her that. It just seems to me that she’s very refined, even tempered, and eloquent like a governor’s daughter would be. She is paler than the moon with dark brown hair that definitely pulls the eyes in her direction. She’s a lady who wears clothes that fit without exposing her body for the world to see. Like I said, she’s much akin to a governor’s daughter. She plays music so well that I could sit in on a practice for hours if permitted. She is right all the time, but, unlike the writer, she is neither haughty about it nor boldly outspoken. She states her truth either silently or by her course of action. I cannot lie; she and the dancer have very close places in my heart that they will probably never know about. I can only say that if either of them should come upon misfortune or sickness that it would sadden me much to the same extent as it would their families.

The most ambiguous of them all is obviously the student. My readers should know that I’m in school at the time of this writing, so when I say I’m writing about a student it could be absolutely anyone. I’ll narrow it down somewhat but not to an identifiable level. He is twice as old as any of the people I have described already. He in fact should be teaching by this point and not learning. He does though. He learns everyday and it is amazing to watch. Someone is learning with kids and a wife and a house (and probably a mortgage in these critical financial times). It teaches me that I will still be a student at forty. I will still have much to learn after marriage and after my children have grown a little. I’m happy to know this. I’d include more about the student, but you already know that I cannot get too personal with these biographies. Anonymity is the best policy.

These people play silent roles in the back story of my freshman year. Maybe no one will know who I’m talking about. I urge everyone to hold their guesses because I will not respond to them. If you think you’re one of the few described here then examine it closer and closer until you rule yourself out. As someone who pays attention to these folks, I will probably write more in the future. I may include every detail I observe about these real-life characters. Don’t put labels on these people other than the nickname handle’s I’ve already assigned them.

From Between the Pages

The ring leader, the twenty three year old, bought alcohol for the younguns. They've been getting 'there' all night, and I think I'll say that they are definitely 'THERE!' by now. In fact I think they've already past 'there' and now they're all 'out of it'. The older boy can hold his own, but a few of these peeps don't understand the laws of intoxication. It's 2:41a.m. between the pages and before I sleep I must endure the QWERTY for awhile before I forget all that transpired.
I stayed up with Beverly, our hotel liason, again tonight. She's really a nice broad. She brought back 'Catch Phrase' the game tonight. I played with a nice gentleman whose name I never got. He was a writer who has had a few songs hit it big. One of them was "I Know She Still Loves Me." I know, he actually wrote the song and sold it to George Strait's writers. His original title was "I Know She Still Loves Me, But I Don't Think She Likes Me". He got paid five-thousand dollars for that song and was asked to write another which he didn't expound on.
I played 'Catch Phrase' with the writer and my friend Butter until 1:30 a.m.
When the elevator doors opened on our floor, Butter and I were greeted by a crowd of our own people who were 'THERE!' Singing, dancing, running, and falling around. It was hilarious, yet embarassing at the same time. I tried to stay up with them, but it was just too much for me. My voice was gone for playing too many rounds of 'Catch Phrase' so I couldn't harmonize at all. I left when the shy soprano broke the sound barrier with a solo and touched the ceiling -- literally! I mean some of the hotel ceiling actually crusted away and landed on me. I brushed the white flakes off my new shirt and proceeded to my room.
I just exited the most refreshing shower I've had in awhile. As I type, I can still hear some of the crowd getting 'There' and some going way past. It's loud in the hotel. I'm certain inhabitants of the surrounding rooms have a deep rooted hate for all college students right now.
Avoir, adieu, goodnight from between the pages ~ JB