A drive into the city where I came of age; I know every street and alley of this lower class white town, with its depressed economics and vain attempt to be just like the rest of america. So many scenes and people flood around my memories of this place, so much context spent on the wrong side, sometimes forgetting and sometimes knowing what I must inevitably do. Have now done, and just now revisiting all the ways I would have liked it to be. Some things are too far gone, never will I truly capture what was then in my heart only, and only just now are real, far far too late.
This trip of course brings me to my oldest friend, a woman who has been around me for 20 years, who watched me be that struggle all this time. Who is overjoyed to see me happy and whole, at last. We smoked and caught up a little more on the last couple years of lifes adventure, then I drove her son to a friends house on my way home. Another slightly better neighborhood of working class suburbs where I have spent more of my previous lifes memories stuggling to be the american dream on the other team. Every road leads to somewhere Ive been, to someone I used to know, to someone who only knew the way I used to be.
The price I pay to be near my son, who is still caught up in the average american life with his mother, and now, stepfather. The kid in my truck is exactly his age, they used to play together, back when we were all normal suburban families. He tells me about things he remembers about me, but not in any gender context, its just stuff. I know hes thinking about it, but by some unspoken agreement its just not cool to talk about it. I drop him off, and the radio is playing old songs that make me think about the old days, when it was much simpler to live the lies.
As I get off the freeway, I see an old vw bus chugging along in the slow lane. The radio is playing a song I havent heard before, but the words are arrowing into my heart:
The litebrite's now black and white
Cause you took apart a picture that wasn't right
Pitch burning on a shining sheet
The only maker that you'd want to meet
The dying man in a living room
Who's shadow paces the floor
Who'll take you out in the open door
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
He said really I just wanna dance
Good and evil matched perfect it's a great romance
I can deal with some physic pain
If it'll slow down my higher brain
Veins full of disappearing ink
Vomiting in the kitchen sink
Disconnecting from the missing link
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy
The cold comfort of the in between
A little less than a human being
A little less than a happy high
A little less than a suicide
The only things that you really tried
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
My mind is a huge morass of conflicting thoughts, my heart tossed and torn in the hurricane. I want to run away, I cant believe Im here again in the land of my past, the land of Everyone Knows. I cant believe Ive traded a bus for a business suit, but I cant deny that I am seduced by the dream again. This is the context in which I wished to be a woman, to be successful in the world defined by common culture. If I could only redefine the past, the memories of those mulditudes who unavoidably knew me before, that would be real success.
Lily
