December 17, 2009
Fifteen minutes
When I escaped…
It was one of those clear crisp bluebird days that you never want to end. The mountains stood out in stark white contrast to the deep blue of the midmorning sky, the frozen trees covered in snow sparkled like diamonds, wood smoke curled from the stove pipes in Camelot as she finished packing the car. Breathing hard and starting to sweat from too much too early, she plopped down in the driver’s seat and turned the key. Sadie had her bed in the passenger seat with Felipe the stuffed koala on the floor, waiting anxiously for this next adventure. As labs do, her head lolled on the window ledge sniffing madly. They were ready to leave twenty years behind and start over 3,000 miles away. It was something she had thought about often, driving away from this town at the end of the road and now crunching down the dirt of her subdivision she mentally waved to her neighbors, to the tall spruce trees, D-O-G the corner husky, the wood guy living powerless down King Arthur’s court, and Ginger the busybody town gossip who knew everyone’s business up here. Out past Salmon creek and the junk yard and the conflicting smells that that area always produced in the summer. Turning onto the highway she paused for just a second, wondering if this was the right thing to do. Looking south she saw the bay, the rising mountains, the love and hope she had felt twenty years ago seeing it for the first time. A tear slid down her cheek. Sadie smiled. Heading north she had one last obstacle to climb over before freedom…the Showcase. The bar that was her home away from home, that saw her at her best and her worst, carrying her through good times and bad. She had to stop. And then she had to leave. Leave it behind.

Fifteen minutes
I wanted to…
Leave. I needed to escape from where I was from. To push it to the back of my mind and tidy it up into a neat little package and bury it with my past. As hard as I tried though the knot on my package kept coming undone and something or someone would slip out and bite me in the ass. Last week it was a girl. Last month it was an old job. And for the past two years it has been cocaine. Slipping through the cracks, that nasty white powder would infiltrate my nights, fill my waking dreams and tear down my carefully constructed walls. Five days without would strengthen me. Two weeks without would drive my hunger for it through the roof. Once I made it a month and felt the bricks of my clean foundation start to solidify, to become something I could rely on. And the, almost by accident I found myself in a bathroom in a seedy bar with one of my old seedy friends I hadn’t seen in a long time and he offered me a blast. It wasn’t a big deal, I told myself at the time, but then I needed more and the sleeping animal inside me woke and started its incessant demand to be fed. That’s the trouble with addiction; it is insatiable, undeniable and ruthless. It will consume me in the end unless I can beat it into submission with a shovel and a spade. Bury cocaine like I’m trying to bury my past, pushing it back into its box and underground. Leaving this town, these friends, those bars is what I want to do.


Five minutes
The paper machine…
Everyday I get splashed. Everyday I get fed. Everyday I get kicked or slapped or jostled. I get changed, emptied, and refilled, cursed, blessed and muttered to. I stand alone sometimes, chained to a bus stop pole, guarding disposable information. I look out my clear window and see cars passing or people walking and wish I could walk to a busier or slower spot depending on my mood. I get hungriest and most bloated at the end of the week.

Eight minutes
The gas station…
In the middle of the desert sat swathed in fluorescent light, buzzing with the electricity of nothing. Stars sprinkled across the fabric of velvety night lay outside the glowing station’s reach. A lonely man wearing flannel and oiled overalls with “harv” printed on the breast pocket smoked a cigarette behind the dusty window. We could see him plainly but wondered if he was alive. Smoke curled from his hanging rudi as we stepped out of our crusty Dodge to stretch, fill up and beat it. I wondered if the gas here was good, if this was a twilight zone setting, if Harv was dead or just waiting to kill. Nothing moved, not even the still summer air that hung cleanly but limply over us. After the pump broke the deafening silence by its movement, we looked at each other, then back at Harv’s window to see him gone…no sign. No sound. No smoke. And no Harv. Again the quiet engulfed us until the pump shut off with a loud click and 32.60 on the meter. Nobody wanted our money as we stood waiting, afraid of the station and what was behind its doors.

Ten minutes
Sleeping it off…
Was more of a task than he had thought, given the past three days that he had been up driving from Chapel Hill west to Santa Cruz. He had pushed through the bluegrass mountains with only coffee, swaggered into Louisiana and Texas with the last bit of speed he had, stumbled through the desert and traffic of Arizona and caught himself from drowning in the Pacific by attaching himself to his trusty comrade in arms, Blue the dipsy heeler he had adopted from the pound a few winters back. The water had slapped freshness into his eyes and rejuvenated his brain, keeping it from crossing wires for the last twelve hours up the coast. Along East Cliff drive stood his girl’s house, a beat up surf shack inhabited by artists and musicians, which nobody actually lived in but in which everybody lived. He collapsed on the old leather couch, speeding along on adrenaline and insomnia, staring wildly at the TV and feeling his nerves twitch and jangle with every movement. If he shut his eyes his head was assaulted with colors, sounds, images from nowhere in particular but from everywhere all at once. He was not comfortable and sleeping it off was not an option.