DON'T YOU FORGET ME DOWN HERE, LORD. [PART ONE OF TWO]

When I was 19 life suddenly became a joke. Before that everything was very serious. I had plans and desires. I had wanted to be chronically well-dressed, envied and overpaid. I wanted everyone in America to know my name and the face that went along with it-- beautiful, careless and unattainable. I wanted to be a myth, smothered in heavy, old-fashioned glamour. I wanted everything surrounding my immediate environment to be pure luxury-- so much luxury that I would consider it downright annoying at times.
Well, once hope was completely lost of any of the above disasters befalling me, things became alright. I found that I no longer had a ten-foot pole up my ass. I wasn’t frantic anymore; nothing mattered, the world seemed laid back and easy. I began to spend my days sitting peacefully in the park, staring. I never wore anything other than jogging pants and old t-shirts and began to hate everything I loved and love everything I hated.
In this over-baked unhappiness I was thoroughly content. My parents didn’t mind. They were well-off and oblivious. The only thing my mother sometimes said was, “Why don’t you ever wear your pretty dresses anymore?”
“Because my pretty dresses are evil,” I said.
How much of that was true didn’t interest me. I wanted to be comfortable and sit around in the shade of trees. That was all.
All of life’s complications fell away completely. I could sit for hours and hours in the public park. Sometimes I tried to meditate, but I only fell asleep. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I did nothing. I felt comfortable and relaxed. Like a bum. I ate, slept and sat-- and that was the full extent of my life. Nothing to be proud of, of course, but pride was nothing I was striving for at the time. You see, to know that one was nothing-- that one was out of the race and that there was nothing left to prove and no one left to compete against-- that really hit the spot. Life was stagnant, boring and great. I had no future and felt safe-- until one day, when the man who left me in the desert came walking along.
“Ever wanted to go to New York City?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, wanna come along? I’m going there.”
“I live here.”
“Everyone needs New York.”
“All I need is some peace of mind.”
“At your age?”
“I’m ancient. I’ve skipped life and went right into retirement.”
“Not a good idea, honey.”
“The last thing I need is New York City.”
He was dressed in an old fashioned suit with a hat and a silk tie, but you could tell he wasn’t rich enough to afford that kind of stuff. His clothes bore little imperfections, and his face was ridden with sweat. He looked like a farmer out to tackle the world. Or some news agent cashier-guy.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“With me? Nothing. What’s wrong with you? You think you can just pick up any girl from the park and expect her to come to New York with you? You’ll probably rape me before we even get to the airport.”
“I’m driving to New York. I’m scared of flying.”
“Really?” Driving, eh? All the way to New York City? “Alright. I’m coming with you.”
“What if I rape you?” he asked seriously.
“Well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Sitting there on the torn-up seat of an old truck, bouncing over the dusty roads with a well-dressed stranger, suddenly brought me out of my ten-month reverie. For ten months I had been sitting in the park, living in my jogging suit, staring. I hadn’t even taken drugs-- I was too lazy. Too uninspired. But I had often thought about it, and decided upon heroin if the chance should ever roll along. I wasn’t impressed by the promises of LSD or cocaine, and smoking pot seemed about as useless as felling a tree with a cucumber. I thought heroin might float my boat, but it just never “came ‘round,” as they say. I figured I was never meant to take drugs. Period.
Raymond and I got on well enough for the first 24 hours. That was his name. He was a well-behaved, sullen type of man. Never made an attempt to rape me-- not even a single dirty glance at my legs (not that it would have been that exciting with my jogging pants). I guess I really wasn’t that attractive. I looked at myself in the little mirror and observed my dirty face unhappily. Then I looked abruptly away and wondered since when did I care about my looks. Still, I’m going to be honest with you. I couldn’t get over the fact that he seemed to be more sexually attracted to his goddamn cigarettes than me. Jesus, and he wasn’t bad looking either. I decided he was an asshole, and wondered why in the hell had he ever picked me up in the first place.
The hours slipped by quietly and depressingly. I told nothing of myself and he told me nothing of his life either. Occasionally I wondered what I was doing. Where was I going? God, I had really put an axe through all my parents’ plans.
“I was supposed to go to The University in September, you know,” I suddenly said to him. “My parents are going to be so embarrassed. I was going to be a lawyer. And now what the hell am I going to be?”
“You’ll be just fine.”
Damn, he had a soothing philosophy. And the way he said it made it sound great.
“What are you anyway?” I asked.
“I was a tobacconist, but I’m starting a new life now.”
Yeah, we got on well enough. The only problem was that we couldn’t agree on any music-- all he liked was freestyle jazz. And I can tell you one thing, sitting in a car without air-conditioning, in the merciless heat, with a jogging suit that hasn’t been washed in a week and freestyle jazz is enough to kill a soul. At first, I thought it was amusing. That people actually listened to this stuff stunned me more than the fact that it was unbearable. I laughed and let him listen to it. I looked out at the passing farms with that ever-consistent screeching, doodling and plinkering mess of music. He had about ten tapes, all labeled and sorted in alphabetical order in the glove compartment. I let him. As soon as one tape came to an end, he would push in the next one. I let him. After all, he was driving, he was paying for every goddamn coffee we had and all the greasy meals. I wasn’t going to make a scene about his music. What did I care? Life ran so much deeper than that. Life was too good.
But right about noon the second day, all my hard-earned contentment vanished into thin air. I decided that life was not good. At least, that it wasn’t worth it with freestyle jazz as a soundtrack. For the last ten months, I had been satisfied as no woman had ever been before. Giving up everything was contentment after all. Being able to love the fact that nothing was right. I just didn’t give a shit. And now, suddenly, I gave one again.
“Stop the car!” I screamed. In fact it’s safe to say that I was hysterical.
He slammed his foot on the break while I ripped open the door and jumped out before he had even come to a stop.
“Are you ok?” he asked, watching me get up from the ground. “What’s the matter?”
I started walking away and told him to drive on to New York by himself.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, leaning out the window.
“Your fucking obsession with this music!”
He sat there silently for a while and watched me make my way down the abandoned highway.
“Hey, come on!” he said, rolling along besides me. “Get back in, you haven’t got a dollar on you.”
“Forget it.”
“Look, you’re going to die out here. Who knows when the next car will come along-- and who knows what sort of a pervert might be driving that car? Come on, get in.”
I ignored him and walked stubbornly on. This must have continued for about an hour. Me walking while he was driving slowly beside me, pleading with me to get back in the truck. I said nothing. I didn’t mean to be some kind of a unique asshole, but for one thing, he hadn’t turned that music off yet-- he hadn’t even turned it down-- and for another thing, I suddenly had an uncontrollable, never-before-known temper. I felt ugly, undesirable and obnoxious.
“Do you realize how far we could have driven by now?” he asked after a while.
“Well, I didn’t ask you to drive along beside me, blasting your music, did I?” I said.
“Honey, I don’t want to leave you here. Can’t you understand that?”
“Don’t give me that, Raymond. Go drive off into the sunset with your cigarettes and your music.”
He murmured some swear word that I wasn’t familiar with and drove off.
CLICK HERE TO READ PART TWO OF DON'T YOU FORGET ME DOWN HERE, LORD.