Dying Listening To The Kinks (NSFW)

This is something from the summer I was supposed to submit to an anthology—I ended up not submitting it, because if you knew the confines of the requirements, it would seem really forced. For that reason, I'm not going to tell you. Anyway, it has some bad language, so shy away if you're a way shy.

We've already driven five hours and every time she asks me if I would like her to drive I tell her no, I am fine, because when I say it like that I know it pisses her off. Neither of us has acknowledged it but her cousin's wedding was a complete disaster and I should have known that sticking to the plan and carrying on was just going to make things worse. “It'll be nice to get away with you.” I remember I nodded, like an idiot. Even then I could see the faint outline of our future, the next few days reflected in her brown eyes that always looked gaudy with her fake blonde hair. I saw my knuckles on the wheel, her fingernails drumming on the passenger window, us arguing over a radio station. The first time I met her, I told her I liked her eyes.

“Are you sure?” she asks, like my mother might ask. “Yes,” I sigh. “I'm fine,” and because I say it like that she grinds her teeth and cracks her knuckles because once, in a lighting sharp pang of weakness I once told her I hated it. Her peach tinted dress blows in the air conditioner's simulated breeze and she looks at herself in the fold-down mirror. She is sharply pretty, features pointed, her eyebrows tamed into matching deliberate slices. She will never be cute, but she is pretty. I glance at my own eyes in the mirror, and decide today the word I will use is “green,” though I can never really be sure. I am not handsome, but I have learned to trim my facial hair and ensure I brush my teeth, which I understand, for a man, is better than most, and as a result although I am not handsome I am occasionally thought of as charming. At best, my face has character.

“Why don't you dance with me?” she says, her feet tapping sandal-less on the dashboard , the dark Pennsylvanian hills rising behind her. I'm too busy picturing them as massive black elephants to remember to answer so she asks again, this time with more emphasis on the word “dance,” curling the residual hard 'e' as if, to make her point, she has to bend the word with her teeth. “I dance with you all the time,” I say, watching oncoming traffic through the wipers' rhythm and grey spittle. I roll my eyes at a pair of personalized license plates, and am about to make a joke when she tells me that I am incorrect, and that I do not, in fact, dance with her. “What did you call what we were doing last night?” I ask, with genuine interest and rising irritation. My calf muscles are sore and my left hip feels as if I have bashed it against something, feelings I can only attribute to three or four hours of intoxicated movement. “You don't dance with me like you mean it,” she says, and sighs, and reaches for a soda in the collapsible cooler. I am silent, because I have no goddamned clue what she is talking about and sometimes it is better to just be confused than to have an argument I know I am going to lose.

“Did you drink all the Diet Sprite?”

Oh Christ. I know that I have, in fact, finished the Diet Sprite and there is absolutely no way out of this truth. Instead of acting like a man and admitting my mistake, I act according to instinct and lie. I tell her that I could not have possibly drank all the Sprite, because I have been driving like, all this time, and like, and she would have seen me, and I realize even before I finish that this is a shitty lie. “Mike, you always do this,” she says. “You know I only like the Diet, if you wanted Diet too then why the hell did you buy the regular stuff? Now we have this, this high fructose corn syrup crap, and I'm thirsty, and you're actually denying it? You can be such an asshole sometimes.” I tell her I don't remember being an asshole, and she sighs hoarsely and tells me that makes it worse. 

Half an hour later, she says “We should have gone to New York,” and privately I absolutely lose it. Inside my head, there is a miniature version of myself in a padded room, screaming and coughing up blood and throwing himself against the walls pleading  “I love New York, you know I love New York, why the hell did you decide this before we booked DC? When I suggested it five thousand times? Lying in bed? Eating breakfast? Shopping for hotels online? Do you want me to lose my deposit? We have to cancel before four, and if you think I'm calling I'd like to--” and I abandon this thought because while lost listening to my inner self wail, I almost steer us into the path of a clattering lumber truck.

She screams, and because she screams I scream, which in turn makes her scream harder. I swerve the blue rental hard to the right and I see fragments of bark float in front of the windshield and hear the chains struggle to hold the unprocessed tree trunks captive. A minivan behind us applies the brakes, and wants to stay the hell out of the situation. The keychain, bearing the tri colour logo of the rental company, as well as the plate number, colour, and model of the vehicle (E4P2V8, Ocean, Explorer) sways disapprovingly. We continue to scream after the truck has passed and for a fleeting moment I picture what we must look like, but I don't dare laugh. After we have calmed slightly I lick my lips and say “Next time,” and she says nothing, probably because since our conversation has been bisected by near death, my words are now haunting instead of placating. I regret this, but stay quiet instead of elaborating or apologizing. She cracks her knuckles, and clinks her teeth together, and I suspect that I am actually in hell.

There is nothing to hear but the AC and the hollow slippery thud of the wiper blades. “I love you,” I say, because that is what you are supposed to say after you are almost crushed to death. “Yeah,” she says, and turns the radio on to a talk show where they are discussing the the presentation, tonight, live, of the first successfully cloned prehistoric animals. They will be unveiled on television, in Santa Monica of all places. They are six months old. Everyone is very excited about this. “It's amazing...” she says dryly. “Yeah, dinosaurs? I know right?” I smile. “No...” she replies. “That I've been driving with you for three years now and I'm still alive.” The small man inside my head crawls down into my mouth and tries to pry my lips open and escape and unleash his own passive aggression but I snap my teeth and frighten him and he retreats.

Soon it is discovered that I have taken the 81 when I could have gone from the 68 to the 70, which she informs me, has added half an hour to our trip. “Maybe this will be more scenic?” I suggest, and she tells me we have to stop, and when I ask why, she says “Guess,” and begins counting out change. “What do you mean, I never dance with you,” I say, feeling confident enough again that belligerence seems like a worthwhile way to pass the time. “We danced all night to that horrible wedding DJ bullshit. I did YMCA. I got in that line thing. Everyone loved it. I even danced with your cousin as a break because I didn't want your family to think I was possessive. How can you say I never dance with you when I did it for four hours?” She looks at me, and tells me that if I don't get it than there is no point explaining it. I continue to have no idea what this means, so I pull off the highway without protest or enthusiasm.

While she is in the washroom I chat with the clerk and when I do so I nervously touch my face a lot because I find her unbearably attractive, but do not want anyone, anyone to know it. She is probably three and a half years younger than I am and has a large obnoxious earrings and a small nose, and speaks with a Midwestern amble. The clerk tells me about the weather, the state of health care, and asks if I have heard about the dinosaurs. I laugh, and say yes, that I am excited, and she says CNN has a countdown on the ticker. I say they always have that, CNN has a countdown to when Larry King takes a shit, and instead of raising her hand to her mouth and looking at me like I am a vulgar adolescent, she laughs. I blame the tie, which I decide in that moment, makes my sometimes green eyes pop and the cologne I am wearing, and when she laughs at me, I instantly feel good. I hear the washroom door close behind me. Not open, only close. I realize that I have been discovered and I have no idea what this might mean for me, and I become terrified until I realized that she cannot read my thoughts. I think.

She walks over to me with a can of Fresca. I look at directly at her, trying to be as adorable as possible and hold up two bottles of Diet Sprite. “I don't want that,” she says, and pushes past me to place the can on the counter, and as the clerk blushes, for some ridiculous reason I blush too. The man inside my head cowers in the corner of his padded room and sobs quietly. I fill the room with water and drown him, just to be on the safe side.

When we're back in the car, she asks how much longer we are going to be, and I say I suspect an hour and I put in a CD. Track number nine is an Old 97's song called “Time Bomb” and I begin drumming on the wheel, aggressively. “Ugh,” she says, and I ignore her. When the song reaches the chorus and I begin to sing along in falsetto she reaches over and turns off the radio, looking like she is about to cry. “That's what I'm talking about, that's what you don't do when we're dancing.” I tell her that I'm not even dancing. “That, that thing that you're doing. You do it when you drive the car, you do it when you ride down a big hill on your bike, you do it when you're playing bass with your friends. That's what I'm talking about. That's what you don't do when you dance with me.” I tell her that I still don't get what she means, and that I don't mean to do those things, that I sometimes have no control over it, and just sort of lose my mind temporarily when I get really into something. She just looks at me for a long moment, and then turns and stares out the window. “Most people,” she says, “enjoy themselves when they dance with me.” “I love you,” I say, cautiously. “Yeah,” she says.

We arrive at the hotel as the sun is setting and she says she's hungry and I say I'm not. I frown at the carpet sticky and coarse through my socks. She says she's going to get something, and tells me I should too because even if I'm not hungry now, I will be later. I tell her I want a baked potato and toss her the keys and I have a shower that lasts thirty five minutes, and the entire time I stand under the hot steaming water pellets I just ask myself over and over again, why, why would I ever agree drive eight hours to DC. I don't even vote.

I am sitting on the couch in a robe tied tightly when she comes back in, and she says they didn't have any baked potatoes but she's brought me a chili. I watch the countdown on the CNN ticker and I say “Thank you,” and empty a foil packet of oily hot sauce into the Styrofoam cup.

Thousands of miles away in California, the world's cameras are pointed at a stage decorated in ferns and fiberglass rocks. A team of scientists are wearing newly purchased Armani and trying to look comfortable amid the thunderstorm strobes. Behind them, a large dark blue curtain waves slowly and towers nearly a hundred feet high. It looks humid.

“I'm sorry they didn't have a potato,” she says. “It's alright,” I answer. “I'm sorry about today. Just, with the way the wedding ended and everything. Anyway, I didn't mean to be so grumpy the whole way. Thank you for driving. I love you.” I look back at her, smile, and kiss her on the cheek. “I really am sorry about the chili though.” I turn back to the scientists and roll my eyes. “It's fine.”

The numbers reach 00:00 and the head researcher with a brand new $200 haircut begins to talk about achievement, history, the future, the benchmarks, the children who have been allowed to stay up past their bedtime to be here, and the difficulty. CNN provides illustrative graphics. He tells us that the animals we are about to see are nearly fully matured, and that we would be amazed at how much they had learned. He has written a book, which he plugs, and tugs at the cuffs of his shirt. He says that in the future, it is not out of the question that these specimens could breed, and that we may be on the precipice of a new age, the age of the giant lizard. He is hyperbolic, but I forgive him because he cloned a goddamn dinosaur. The camera cuts to a second grade class in the first row. I feel her hand on my exposed knee but ignore it, not out of spite but it probably seems that way. She takes it away.

The scientist tugs on a golden rope and the curtain parts. There is a sound like the air being let out of 10,000 tires. Instead of posing there, majestic and proud, the dinosaurs are on top of each other, thrusting and breathing heavily. The children in the crowd are confused. The creatures are huge, the long necked kind, which is unfortunate because they are sort of wrapped around each other and making gutteral noises like horses trying to escape quicksand. The head researcher says “Uhmmmmm.”

Now the children are crying.

This should be something. This may be the most absurd thing that has every happened in the history of live media. Old women are covering their eyes and camera men are doubled over hysterically. The scientists are giggling but trying to conceal it and struggling to get the curtain closed, but it will not comply. Corporate sponsors are laughing so hard they are gasping for air. We, though, are just too tired.

“Is that a brontosaurus,” she says, unflinching. “No,” I say. “Those don't really exist. They found out that they just put the wrong skull bone on another one with a big neck. Like ten years ago. Brontosaurus is imaginary.” “Oh,” she says. “It looks like brontosaurus.”

I look down at her plastic cup and see clear liquid through the translucent lid, with the white 'Diet' dimple depressed, concave and crackled. She holds the drink in her right hand, while her left reaches for the remote and mine sit folded in my lap, while the last truant drops from my shower drip down the back of my neck.

The first time I met her, I told her I liked her eyes. Now, we are alone, sitting on the couch together, watching dinosaurs fucking on television, fucking for all of America to see, fucking like they shouldn't exist, fucking because honestly, it was clear they had no reason not to. 

Comments

[andrew]

stop summing up all my relationships!