Rest Area

So we're flying down the interstate in a tore up '72 Vista Cruiser; Cheryl's driving
barefooted, singing "Rebel Yell;" and I'm knocking back a box of Lucky Charms
with a pint of hot Crown Royal. I observe the .38 is still on the front seat.

Last night's still a blur. The fumes from the manifold, and her yeast infection
contribute to my reluctance for reality. I look out at a field of corn, and think
I might like to shoot my goddamned soul across it, like a common bottle rocket.
Or maybe into the jet overhead.

I'm reminded that everyone I have ever known has eventually had the same effect
on me: that is, the desire to get the hell away from them.

So I crank the window down and study the breeze for metaphysical possibilities,
all the while engaged in a post-mod dialogue with the old existential angst.

While Cheryl briefs me on the next phase of our tri-state-murder-spree-thingy,
I pop in two yellow moons.

She says she's inclined to blow the head off the Irish Setter that belongs
to our target suburbanites, and that she's been toying around with the idea of
nailing their children's hands and feet to the floor. For an encore, I suggest
sticking pencils into their parakeets (this, of course, in addendum to the
general carnage, and unspeakable horror that form the core of our operations).
Suddenly, the door on the glove compartment falls open, and a Gideon's bible
lands at my feet.

My very first heretical thought ought to have at least
elicited the proper response of being cerebrally-penetrated by a thin sheet of hot
lightening, or sheet metal.



I notice a long row of orange traffic cones ahead, and reach for my dad's deer
rifle. I make a notch on the stock for every kill. On our last run through Arizona,
I bagged 68 cones, 4 iron deer, 6 pink flamingoes (Phoenicopterus ruper plasticus),
1 concrete Jesus, and numerous other mass-production lawn ornaments people stick
in their yards thinking they'll impress somebody with their cutting-edge aesthetic
sensibilities.

I’ve even shot up that big-headed burger boy, the guy in red and white
checkered overalls. He's got about ten different names, this slick son of a bitch.
Two or three states over, he's suddenly somebody else - "Bob," or "Rick," or "Chip,"
or something. I always call him, "Big Boy," because no matter where you go, he's got
"Big Boy" printed on his shirt.

Well, all I can say is, "Bring it on! Big Boy!"

"You may think you're taking over the whole fucking country with your Bottomless Breakfast Bar Bullshittery, but that's where I come in."

Any 12 ft. tall roadside cultural icon resembling T.V. evangelists, or Elvis (as a bloated,
pill-popping astrologer hawking hamburgers) always pisses me to the gristle.
That's why I like shooting him in the hair.



I admit to being somewhat irrational, from time to time. The other night, for instance, we trashed a 4-star hotel room,
threw all the faux-international furniture straightoff the balcony into the swimming pool below.
We pretended it was a Clearance Sale, and everything had to go. We'd already sloshed back about
8,000 margaritas, and so we took turns shooting things in the pool, french-kissing between shots.

I know the thought of shooting things at random offends the delicate sensibilities of many people
who think they know more than I do about "life," but to me it ranks as legitimate as any other
contemporary cultural indicator by which to measure ones "manhood." Sure, slam-dunking
a basketball, breaking your ass bone on a skateboard, or getting your head kicked-in at a rodeo
is good enough for some. But I like taking my violent inclinations cross-country, as free and chaotic as the weather.
Whatever you do is always serving the purposes of progressive evolution anyway, something everyone, at least tacitly, believes in.
If you do not yet appreciate the inherent necessity of both creation and destruction, you would not understand me anyway. You've probably never felt the
spiritual intensity of increasing acceleration while someone is chasing you. You've probably never
acknowledged the fact that you have lied to everyone you think you know. You probably can't appreciate
the simultaneity of horror and wonder because you still fear your own contradictions.
And that's why, every single time you stand up and say that you are THIS, or that you are THAT...
we all think you mean just the opposite.

For me, I'm only fulfilling my dreams.
Where the conventions of "right and wrong" have no particular authority.

In other words, De gustibus non est disputandum.



Anyway, I tell Cheryl to stop weaving so much so I can get a bead on these cones, but she nearly gets
us killed by cutting off a gasoline truck in order to make the exit ramp for a Rest Area.
She says she has to "Drop the kids off".

So we pull up to the Information Center, and she bolts for the women's room. Meanwhile, I'm separating
the diamonds from the moons, stars, clovers...
All of a sudden, I look up and see a man standing in the parking lot, about 30 yards away, with a cloud of yellow butterflies flying around his head. He smiles, and reaches up to touch them like a curious child. I thought it was charming. After a minute or so, the butterflies begin flying into his eyes and mouth. He gets perturbed, and proceeds across the parking lot to his car.
The butterflies follow.
Then the man stops again; lingers, with an in-tact rational mind suddenly mystified by reality. He looks at himself, slowly up, slowly down...like maybe he can't remember putting on a lemon-yellow sport coat that morning. The weird thing was the more he tried to brush the butterfiles off, the more excited they became. I was thinking they'd gone into some kind of swarm mode (possibly in reaction to some ingredient in his cologne).

In my estimation the whole event took on a decidedly indignant quality when the man began spinning in circles, and thrashing the air like a madman. Finally he swats so violently he loses his glasses, and then crunches them beneath his feet on the asphalt. Having no glasses, with butterflies tearing at his eyes, he can't even see far enough to find his car. So what does he do?
He backs directly into the path of a 1981 Winnebago coming off the exit ramp at about 45 mph. I watched him disappear under the front end of that R.V. so fast, it was like watching a department store mannequin disappear into a chipper truck. You could hear the tires barking on the asphalt.

Finally, the Winnebago stopped, and the guy driving stepped out wearing blue Bermuda shorts and a big straw hat. He adjusts himself, and proceeds to the front of the vehicle to assess damages, if any. I was thinking he probably thought he'd hit a deer, or a log.
All of a sudden people were screaming like their goddamn hair had caught fire. While Bermuda was checking out the front, a couple of old women had been checking out the back. It was probably then that Bermuda realized he'd actually run over something more significant than a fucking speed bump.

Anyway, Bermuda gets totally frenetic, and wrings his hands like a praying mantis. I felt sorry for him. I mean, here's a guy (I’m guessing) who'd probably only intended to take the wife and kids to blow some money at Disney World, but instead, he winds up killing someone along the way. That's gotta suck. For him. Shit like that usually hits you when you least expect it. I guess right about now he’s wondering what he did to piss off God.

Anyway, he suddenly, almost automatically, takes up a position of authority (maybe for the first time in his life), and starts running around telling other people what to do.
It was about then that Bermuda became someone I considered shooting.

Anyway, after the dead man's head stopped smoking, people were running from everywhere to see what a real severe head trauma looked like. Suddenly, all these kids begin piling out of the R.V., scattering all over the place. Two of them rip around to the back of the vehicle and immediately start vomiting what appeared to be tacos. A little girl with an bright orange pop-cicle pops out, and skips across the parking lot towards some monkey bars in the park. Then, an older kid with a club foot lumbers out, and begins to play Frisbee with the family Lab in the parking lot. Last but not least, a 300+ lb. woman comes out with a first-aid kit, a litre of Diet Coke, and a roll of Bounty (the Quicker-Picker-Upper) paper towels. While ambulating through her immediate trajectory (with the finesse of a large land animal fighting off narcotics from a dart gun),
I take a swig off the Crown.
Finally, Cheryl returns from the women's room and asks what all the commotion's about. I said that while she had been "...indisposed, the whole damned Rest Area had fallen headlong through a rip in the fabric of the universe, no doubt leading into some hitherto undetermined order of magnitude, the precise space/time configuration of which, though vague, may conceivably exist in a state of infinite reverse."

Then I then told her what really happened.

She never flinched. She knows that I was, am (and in all likelihood) will always be a goddamned liar. She starts the car, turns toward the ON ramp (which for me was an EXIT ramp), and while gobbling a fresh, grape-flavored jaw-breaker said,

"Wahwa wahhwa mawawama ma waba mamambawama mahma ba mah wah."