Friday 6 March 2020

Fucking up birthdays, part two.

The small Jeep is much like driving a roller coaster, as I've said, with it's incredible level of death-wobble that is perfectly normal and readily fixed by simply relaxing a bit. I'm so used to luxury trucks and super-tight sports cars that I forget these things. 

I took Caleb out in it last night and we drove up the highway in the dark and the rain, windows down, blasting The Gorillaz' Clint Eastwood on the stereo because I keep forgetting to bring my own music out and there's no blueteeth in sight with this thing. The song was announced on the radio, and after listening for a few minutes I found it somewhat hilarious.

Now picture it on the beach, I told him when he finally unwound enough to smile, instead of hanging onto the bar strap for dear life while staring at me as if I were a stranger.

I mean, I am sometimes. Right?

He nodded, picturing me as a stranger, picturing us in the Jeep on the beach maybe, as I had asked him too and now I think he gets it. Or at least I hope he does. Either way it's fun. Either way it makes me feel like me and not some sugar baby rolled in edible glitter.

He asked repeatedly if he could buy me a new phone, new Jeep, new life, whathaveyou, refusing to acknowledge the answer that I'm good, thank you. Money can't fix twelve hours of your life setting up a busy personal phone for use, unless you pay someone to do it for you. Money can't make you feel like you're driving in the dunes, alive for the first time in years, it seems.

Sure it can, he interjects.

Money can't stop the rain. 

Oh, but that's where you're wrong. 

It can't make your birthdays what you want them to be, I say ever so gently, fearing a rage that could just eat the stereo, rip the top off the Jeep and throw me off the side of the cliff into the water.

Sorry, what was that? God, this thing is loud, Caleb says, sitting back and shaking his head.

 I think he likes it.

I think he'll come around.