America: A Black and White Dream

“I have to get out of here,” I said to myself as I slowly put one foot in front of the

other. I didn’t realize it but as I walked my legs swung out sideways from underneath

me. I walked like a drunk. As was my habit I put my hand on my forehead and slowly

rubbed my temples, one side with my thumb and the other side with my middle and index

fingers. I moved my fingers over the bumps and zits on my forehead reading my skin

like brail. My skin absorbed the oils of my day and grew a readable response. My zits

showed the world how I felt. When I stepped into the street, I observed only the black

gum stained pavement.

As my body tumbled, a loud screeching echoed through the streets and neon lights

circled my sight. The driver pumped the breaks, but the car screeched forward. My

wobbly knees cracked sideways, my feet remained cemented to the ground, and the rest

of my body contorted into flesh mold of the car’s bumper. My shoulder smashed the cold

red hood of the car. In an instant I was away, watching my body like it was on T.V., on a

reality T.V. show where the announcer would say something like: “What we are about to

show you is disturbing, but the events are real.” Everything was cold. As I watched

from afar, the traffic light clicked from green to yellow. My head planted into the

windshield and spider webbed the glass. My ear was the epicenter of the carnage and all

I heard was the sound of cracking, like a glacier shattering into the sea, and then silence.

Blood from my skull melted into the cracks glass. The car’s bouncing tires continued

sliding forward. The car’s rushed momentum change whipped my body from the hood to

the street. A chunk hair and scalp ripped from my head and stuck to the blood infused
glass. Striking the pavement, my skull shattered, spewing splinters of bone across the

street. A small mass of gray matter oozed out my head and my eyes stared blankly into

blackness. The stink of decay chocked my nostrils, like a gangrenous and festering

wound. It hurt, badly—the car accident. Blood tricked from my mouth and flooded into

a pool. I felt, physically felt, a piece of skull penetrate into my brain, like shard of glass

stuck underneath the skin, but the skull didn’t penetrate just my flesh—the skull

penetrated my soul. The accident cut me free. I watched from above. I was dead, but

the pain made me feel, not alive, but something. It felt awesome and dangerous, like I

flirted with the idea of the forbidden.

I stepped up out of the street and continued on my way. I was walking home from

work and dreaming. The car accident was not the dream I desired. I desired the

American dream, perhaps not the white picket fence, for I wasn’t that conventional, but

desired my personal version of the American dream. I desired a wife and I already had

her picked out. I desired a great job, to be a great an American writer, and I already had

written a book. But when I walked home from work every night, my eyes never left the

cement, I never looked both ways, and I counted the streets home with different versions

of cars slaughtering my flesh. I didn’t care that I wasn’t careful, as mom warned when

crossing the street, I was too fucking tired, and besides, it was too late at night for

anybody else to be on the streets in Berkeley.

The next street it was truck.

A truck with a chrome grill and big wheels raced out of control and when it hit

me, my body exploded into a million pieces. I rained down onto the street with little

pieces of me landed all over. Somehow clothing never contained my exploding pieces, as
if all my clothing magically vanished and the truck exploded a naked version of me. In

the morning, the people on their way to work didn’t notice the explosion, despite the

stench, and pieces of me became stuck in the crevasses of their boots. I figured that way

a part of me went to every job and I learned from the bottom of the shoe that all jobs—

postman, anchorman, waiter, sales manager, banker, computer programmer, carpenter,

and politician—sucked. I took comfort in the thought that everybody’s job sucked as

much as mine. “There is something about humans that bind us in tragedy and as we all

know comedy is nothing more than tragedy made absurd.” A woman told me that fact at

work, while she scraped something off the bottom of her shoe. At the time I thought it

was gum.

I imagined a group of people standing around my exploded body. They walked

down the street, listened to their music, did their thing, and then—stopped, eyes turned

big, mouths dropped, bags spilled, and sometimes even vomit splattered on the street

mixing itself into the gutter with my puddling blood creating a stench similar to that of a

road kill skunk.

“Holy Shit what happened here,” a young black woman yelled breaking the

silence. She wore dread locks wrapped in a gray bandana, the skinny type of dread locks

that whipped around her face when she turned her head. She wore gray sweat pants and

all her nails were three inches long with intricate mini-paintings. Once she yelled,

everybody stopped looking at me and started looking at her, their eyes accusing of

blaspheming the unfortunate dead.

“U-all better get hell out of my way, because that ain’t right… Shit foos,” she said

raising her hand to cover her eyes so that she couldn’t see the pieces of me. Looking
from a television helicopter my body formed the shape of a moist comet on the street. It

appeared as if somebody threw a water balloon and it exploded forming a water circle

with trails of splashed water in the direction of the inertia, but it wasn’t water, it was my

blood, hair, and small pieces of my bones, and never clothing. When I dreamed of my

detonation I could only imagine myself naked. There was something wrong—impure—

about a clothed human combustion.

“I have to get out of here,” I said the words out loud so that I could here them;

somehow, that made them more real, but I wasn’t sure if ‘here’ was my skin or Berkeley.

As I walked home appearing drunk, words that I read while at work echoed through my

mind: “I wasn’t any longer afraid of the rats. I was discovering a thing in myself that I

thought I had never possessed: a love of life.” Graham Green said that when he trekked

through Africa, A Journey Without Maps. I also thought that: “Your home is only as far

as you can reach,” words spoken by anonymous. Well, I liked the rats, because any time

I read something about Africa the most interesting part was about how either ants or rats

invaded the writer until they became companions.

“I have to get out of here,” I said to myself as I walked up the hill to my brother’s

house. I worked two jobs, and they lived underneath my skin—ants and rats. I was tired.

I walked in the door and nodded my head to my poor brother. I had ants and rats; he had

mosquitoes and piranhas and no desire to leave—to me he seemed like food; he had made

companions. By the age of twenty-seven my brother owned his own home in the

Berkeley Hills, worked sixty hours a week in a cubicle, and was a self-proclaimed

libertarian, opting to support both social, and, particularly, economic freedom from

government. “Let me spend how I want,” was his credo and as a joke, he was even know
to proclaim, “lets greed together.” Despite our differences, I loved my brother, he let me

stay cheaply at a place I couldn’t afford, and nobody in the world knew me as well as

him.

I opened the door to my bedroom, turned to the left, and fell on the mattress that

sat on the floor.

I closed my eyes but sleep did not come. I rolled off the bed, onto the floor, and

over to my desk. I reached and switched the alarm clock back to ‘on.’ It was set for five

thirty in the morning; it now read twelve thirty in the morning. I rolled back to my bed

and closed my eyes. I breathed heavily in order to calm the pumping adrenaline. I was in

survival mode, but I needed sleep. I folded my hands like a praying Mary and lifted my

arms. I breathed again and my heart slowed. I eventually fell asleep and blackness

descended.

“Beep! Beep!” the darkness didn’t last.

“Fucking shit,” I said under my breath, as I rolled over to the alarm clock and

switched it off. I dressed and headed for work.

I walked to my other job. I worked for what will remain anonymous, yet

incredibly large, coffee company. At this job I spent the first two hours sleeping, so I

don’t know what happened, but I know something happened because I got paid for it. As

I hovered over the machine that made coffee, I felt eyes had a film over them, like a

reptile. I was there, but my mind was still asleep. I didn’t need a mind to serve coffee.

Two hours later I scooped coffee. I scooped a lot of coffee. I held a white plastic

spoon, raised my arm, stuck the spoon into a vat of coffee, scooped, moved my arm, and

finally I measured the ground coffee into filters.

 Wow, I thought.

As I scooped the coffee I watched the ground beans form little mounds on my

white plastic spoon. The coffee was rich and black and the smell awoke me like I was in

the middle of a Folder’s commercial.

Mounds—I liked mounds, I thought. Why did I like mounds?

I continued to scoop.

There were mountains. Those were really fun to climb. I wished I could climb

mountains instead of scoop coffee. The view, I liked the view, and the rocks were cool.

Did I just have that thought; rocks were cool? Was I educated or not? Well any smart

person would never scoop coffee so I decided I was not educated.

I dumped the coffee, but I missed the coffee filter, and blackness, like sand,

scattered the table.

Mounds, I continued thinking. You know the word mound reminded me of,

breasts. I liked breasts. Wow, I was fucking brilliant, a man that liked breasts. Thoughts

of breasts would make my day go by faster.

I created in my mind an image of the perfect breast. It was a B cup, not to big,

but not to small. It was perfectly white and appeared almost dusted with baby powder.

As the girl lay on her stomach, the firmness of the breast held the it above her chest, but

the size the breast allowed it to slope ever so slightly toward her arm. The nipple was the

size of quarter. The flat circular part of the nipple was bright pink and areola was half a

fingernail high and a lighter shade of pink than the rest of the nipple. The nipple was

erect. I captured this imagine in my mind and tried hard to concentrate on the white

breast, like a meditative exercise.

 I lifted the spoon, scooped the black coffee, and dumped.

That was just like any breast. There needed to be a test so that I knew that it was

the perfect breast. Another employee walked by carrying a gallon of milk. Milk, oh shit,

I didn’t want to think about milk. I had to get that out of my mind. The perfect breast

test, I believed I had it. I lifted the breast by the nipple, with tender hands of course, and

then allowed it drop. The breast bounced and jiggled. As it oscillated, the amount of

jiggle should be half as much form one bounce to the next bounce. It could only

oscillate, three, no, that was not enough, four times before it returned to its ‘at rest’

position.

I smiled as dumped the mounds of coffee.

“What are you doing?” I was asked faster than I could hear.

“Um… what?”

“What are you doing?” my boss asked leaning into toward me.

“I… am… scooping coffee.”

“You should be done with that by now.”

“Ok… but I am not… so…”

“I need you to finish that right away. I have something else for you to do,” she

turned and left.

My boss had a large ass. All boss at these large corporate coffees places were the

same. They were women with big asses, and too highly caffeinated.

Again, I stuck the spoon in the coffee, lifted the mound, and dumped it into the

coffee filter.
 “Look at her go,” I mumbled to myself. My boss scooted around from one

employee to the next, from one job to the next. She moved very quickly. As she flew

from one thing to the next, I couldn’t take my eyes off the jiggle of her ass. It was like

she had jets attached to that ass. That must have been why her ass was so big, to store her

jets, but since her pants were so tight I thought I should be able to see the jets, but I

couldn’t, just the jiggle. She sucked; in general, bosses sucked. Maybe it was just the

coffee. She drank too much coffee, but coffee didn’t fuel jets—alcohol did. I knew she

drank. I knew she drank a lot. I imagined her apartment with bottles of vodka rolling

around underneath her couch, and cat dolls lining the shelves.

My boss stopped and her ass was no longer to me. My eyes were still in her

general vicinity. I slowly panned up and she smiled at me. I quickly smiled back. I

stuck the spoon into the coffee, lifted the spoon out, and dumped the coffee. I looked out

the corner of my eye to see if my boss still smiled. She had moved on to the next thing.

Shit. What if she thinks I am attracted to her, I thought? She smiled and it was

that cute I saw you checking out my ass smile. Now I had to be nice to her. Well, I

could just continue to pretend to be shy.

“Are you done with that yet?” she said. She spoke so rapidly that there was

hardly a pause between words.

“Almost,” I said.

“Well come see me when you are done,” she turned and headed into the back

room.

There were just some people that seriously needed an S. D. D.—a serious deep

dicking. I should ask her out and just get her super drunk. She would say ‘yes’ too, and
she would out drink me within ten minutes. Then I should take her sloppy ass home. “Do

you want to come up for coffee,” she would definitely ask. We would go up stairs and

there would be the cat pictures plastering the walls. She would sit me down on the couch

next to her, smile, twirl her hair, and lean her legs toward me. The next thing I would

hear is: ‘More, more’ barking in a high voice. There would be a smacking sound and the

cats’ eyes would watch with an odd sense of pleasure and guilt while her big ass jiggled

back and forth. In the middle I know I would find time to lean under the couch and see

not vodka, but a three quarters empty bottle of Southern Comfort rolling around as the

couch creaked back and forth. Then I wouldn’t call her. At work I would sit on the

counter and do whatever I wanted. I would smile her way, and watch her cower, as she

knows we had good time, but can’t understand why I won’t call. That’s kind of evil, I

thought.

I lifted my arm, stuck it in the coffee, and dumped it.

If I wasn’t so repulsed by her, or such a damn chicken—I might even ask her.

Probably, I would discover that I completely misread her that she was happy, funny, and

instead of cats, her apartment was covered with pictures of family, friends, ski trips, and

dancing trophies. But probably, the truth was more a mixture of the two ideas.

“Are you done?”

“Yes,” I answered.

Eventually the day ended and I made it home. It was two in the afternoon. I

opened the side door and immediately stood in the kitchen. The first thing I did was open

the door to the liquor cabinet and pour myself a coffee mug of scotch. Then I opened up

the refrigerator. Our refrigerator had two main shelves, one for my brother and one for
me. My brother’s shelve teamed with eggs, bread, apples, mushrooms, carrots, and he

had a thing for Kim chow so sat three jars. On my shelf sat martini olives and maple

syrup. I ate an olive, and considered pouring syrup down my throat.

I walked over to the couch and sat down. I never turned on the TV in the middle

of the day, because shows like Sally Jessy were both as repulse as alluring as having sex

with my boss. I would get sucked in and even thought I knew it was horrible, I wouldn’t

be able to stop. I pulled my work shirt and tossed it on the floor in the direction of my

bedroom. I needed to sleep these two hour, but sleep was mixed blessing. It rested me,

but I couldn’t rest because I had another eight hours ahead of me. I needed something

else and I sipped it.

I got up and popped a video into the machine. It was video with no markings and

I kept it hidden so my brother couldn’t find it. I slouched down in the couch and rested

my coffee mug of scotch on my stomach. I picked up the remote control and hit the play

button. Female buttocks and a large penis came up onto the screen.

“Um… Um…” she moaned and smiled over her back. Her white butt positioned

itself hungrily. I turned off the volume on the television and switched on the cd player.

A compilation cd that I had made started to play. I didn’t like the fake moans of the

pornography actresses. AC/DC’s Back in Black started to play. As I listened to the fact

that he was back, but this time in black, I grew slightly erect watching her white buttocks.

The guy on the screen rolled his lip, and I saw the words, “your all mine baby”, in his

humping hips. Reality began to seep into my escape.

 At that moment I realized I hadn’t had sex in along time. I didn’t really, realize it,

like a light bulb switching on, as it was a thought that constantly lingered in the back of

my mind that surged forward about twice every half an hour.

I wonder why? I thought swirling the scotch on my stomach. The last time I had

sex it was because of desire. I continued to think, as the white flesh moved back and

forth. I was afraid of women for such a long time, afraid of hurting them and afraid that

they would say no and hurt me. Eventually I lost that fear by blaming them. I got angry

at everything. The sex was bad. Now I blamed myself and there was no sex—and I

honestly didn’t need to wonder why, except to excuse myself.

There happened to be a mirror in my brother’s living room. I saw myself. My

skin looked sickly, pale white and I had grown an ape like black forest of chest hair.

I am fucking gross, I thought to myself. I saw myself sitting there listening to

Back in Black, limp dick in hand, porno on the screen, with two hours in between my two

crappy jobs. My black forest heaved in laughter. The scotch spilled and filled my belly

button. I wanted to lean down and suck it up, but I wasn’t that flexible.

“I have to get out of here.”

I went to my other job at a bookstore. I went to the back of the store and picked

up a giant two-wheeler of books. I got the job because I thought I would be able read

while on the job. Get paid to have fun, I thought when I applied. Reality checked in

again. All I did was walk around and shelve books. The one advantage to this job was

its location, the bad part of Berkeley. The bookstore was down the street for the People’s

Park of the sixties fame. In the sixties, a bunch of hippie radicals commandeered the

park, hoping to create a free place to hold rallies, to grow fruits and marijuana, and to
establish a headquarters for planning their mean pranks on squares. The problem with

the hippies was that they were as controlling as the conservatives. “No music too loud.’

“If you don’t recycle than you deserve HELL.” “Legalize Hemp.” “Impeach **insert

name here.**” “My bike is my other car.” “Make Berkeley Red.” “I eat only things that

grow in organic dirt.” The Hippies had as many rules as the religious right (atheism

being one of the rules) and enforced them as stringently as the religions right. These

Hippies now controlled Berkeley and they drove all-terrain trucks that at the time most

prominently displayed “No War On Iraq” stickers.

The homeless overtook The People’s Park and often wondered into the bookstore

and became my source of entertainment.

The bookstore interested me because the patrons were an eclectic group of

homeless, ex-hippies, students, professors, and Berkeley’s large populace of weirdoes.

One man, who never combed his hair, would call the bookstore, order ten to twenty out

of print books, come in one day to pick up several of these orders, and return the whole

pile in a few days. He claimed to be some kind of professional researcher, but with his

list of books spanning from the original text of the Treaty of Versailles, to Football for

Dummies, it was hard to imagine that he was researching anything other than

Armageddon.

Except for the smell of urine, the homeless were the most entertaining. There was

one very odd homeless man named Edgar. He dressed like a professor in a teed jacket

with leather elbow patches.

“I understand there is a problem with social security. I understand your

generation won’t be seeing any. I understand that as a problem because you are paying
for it right now while you stand there working, as I understand it,” Edgar said to me. He

spoke very deeply and rambled slightly.

“Yeah,” I said. “You are right.”

“I am on an all butter diet.”

“Is that so.”

“Doctors are saying it is good for the arteries these days, but yesterday they said

something different. So I decided I should go on an all butter diet so that I know for

sure.”

“You look thinner,”

He farted and his stomach started to make noises. I think he controlled his bodily

functions. Farting was a part of the conversation with Edgar. You bore it or ended the

conversation. You saw him either as man who farted or as dirty homeless. He left me

standing alone reeling in the smells he left behind.

At the bookstore the self-improvement section was the most jumbled. People tore

through the shelves looking for ways to better themselves. I often stopped and flipped

through the books. My favorite two titles were Excuse Me Your Life is Waiting, and God

is my CEO. The first title caught my attention because I never thought that my life

waited but I certainty wanted something else, so maybe it waited. The title made me

wonder what my life waited for and who excused me? I flipped to the end and it turned I

was the answer to both of those questions. I excused myself because I waited for me—

whoa. I nodded my head and looked up and down the aisles at the other people who were

experiencing the same level of self-awareness. The men searching through the self-

improvement section wore lots of rings, and the women looked slightly sad. I wanted to
show it to everybody—self-improvement—in a book. Another one of my favorite titles,

Seven Minutes to Happiness, I knew was not far away. My hand flipped over the spins of

the books searching, but I couldn’t find it. The second book, God is my CEO, just blew

my mind. The titled evoked an image: Moses drabbed in an American flag standing on

the Empire State Building, like King Kong, with two giant stone tablets that God gave

him. God was white, wore a white beard and white robe, and lived in white clouds. In

my imagination the tablets were blacked out, like the ‘who shot John F. Kennedy’

reports. I imagined that the tablets had a new set of rules, so that God would restructure

human happiness, corporate style. God was the CEO, of course, and there was a

marketing department with the function of making sure that the soul smiled even while

depressed, so that the body advertised happiness to the world. The blacked out words

were the secrets of the corporation that nobody but the ‘high ups with white tops’ would

know; the secrets were things like the body chemistry wasn’t actually designed to support

consistency, and logic doesn’t dictate emotions.

The day wore on and my mind eventually turned into the same mush as in the

morning. I simply didn’t have the strength to continue. I stood in front of the travel

section at the bookstore for a long time. I sort of hovered there leaning back and forth.

This was my favorite section of the store. I can go anywhere, I thought, as if it would

change my life. Where would I go?

Prague. That was where I would go. Of all the places in the world why would I

pick Prague, I asked? Ideology. Prague was located smack dap in the middle of Europe.

To its right were the failed and poor communist block countries. When I was a teenager

and I first read the philosophy of communism I signed up. I wanted to be a communist.
It wasn’t until I was several years old that I realized the folly of the system. The

communists were like the hippies, they forced people to change at gunpoint and the Reds

feared not exploding pieces of brain and skull all over the world. On the map to the left

of Prague stood what I thought were the Americanized Western Democracies of Europe,

countries that modeled themselves after and chased the greenback. I often thought of

Great Britain as fifty-first super state. In a very British way I was sure the people of that

country denied this fact, thumbing their nose in some direction that blinded them, just

like the people of Texas did in a very Texas way. It was winter of 2003 and America and

Iraq were staging for the final showdown, and the only country of military substance that

agreed with the U.S. was the British, this seemed to me not an isolated coalition of a

coalition of pattern.

Prague was in the middle. Looking for the distance Prague seemed to survive both

world wars untouched and stood proud against Stalin, Hitler, and Washington.

Prague appealed to me on another level as well. I was a failed writer. Faulkner

said, “All writers are failures, that is why they write. Every written page is a failure.”

The most influential writer of the modern era lived in Prague. I wanted to camp on

Kafka’s grave and experience a true metamorphosis. Let black sleep take me while I lay

in the white snow next to the most important literary man. Kafka once said: “I want all

my work destroyed upon my death.” I thought about that for a minute and it was a

sentiment with black beauty—he was gone, why should he want or care what others

thought of him after, time for him was gone, why not let his moment pass in its entirety.

My favorite living writer Paul Theroux once wrote something like “I wanted to catch and

eat Moby Dick, turn the great whale into dinner.” Today Moby Dick would be canned. I
wanted my plate to have the white and black stirred, not in gray, but mixed, insect and

whale.

“I should get out of here. I should go to Prague,” I said as I caught myself from

falling over with exhaustion.

Midnight struck and I walked home. The car raced down the street, coming to

crack my knees around its fender, but a giant gray brick wall appeared out of nowhere

and the car, instead of striking me, crashed into the wall. I crossed the street and stepped

up the curb. The truck stood pushing angrily against the same gray brick wall. As smoke

filled the air, the truck’s tires screeched and burned. It fiercely pushed its grill into the

wall, and looked angry. The white light from its left headlight followed me when I

crossed the street. For the first time I saw that the tuck was dump truck and it carried

mounds of finely ground black coffee. It looked frustrated but the wall couldn’t be

broken. I skipped across the street. The black woman in gray sweatpants didn’t stop on

her way to work the next morning. I reached home, went inside, and headed for my bed.

I lay in my bed and left the white light switched ‘on.’ I closed my eyes,

blackness. I opened my eyes, the white ceiling.

I live in a bubble, I thought. I thought that was how I made myself happy. I

surrounded myself in a wall. I put it up for protection against everything that wasn’t me.

I closed me eyes. Inside it was black and there was nothing inside my wall. I opened my

eyes. Outside was white. Everything was there except for me. I closed my eyes. Inside

I felt warm and happy. I opened my eyes. Outside, I felt cold. Everyone has said

happiness comes from within—they say it from without. I closed my eyes. I searched

the blackness of the inside of my wall. I blindly grouped the crevasses and felt the seams
of the cement. I thought there should be a light switch and I would see that the inside of

my wall was white, that my wall was white. I didn’t find a light switch. I found a

keyhole.

I crouched down and looked out the key whole. I saw a key sitting on the ground

not far outside the door to my wall. A woman walked by. She smiled in my direction.

She had black hair and pale white skin. In one motion she tossed her hip to the left, put

her right hand on her right hip, smiled, and threw her ponytailed hair. Her hair swung

back and forth as she stood perfectly curved. She smiled out of the right side of her pale

white face. My eyes went over her curved body and ended on her black eyes. I knew

her. She was the girl that I had chosen for my wife.

“Pick up the key,” I said pushing my pimpled forehead against the wall. I wanted

to push myself out the keyhole. She straightened her body posture. She turned and left,

as if she didn’t hear me.

“I have to get out here.”

The next day I didn’t get up at five thirty in the morning. I didn’t go to work. I

woke up at noon. I switched on my computer and wrote an email:

Dear friends and family,

I am writing this letter to this small group of people because I know that you will
understand what I am about to say. I am done. I am buying a ticket to Prague
today and I leaving. I don’t really care about anything else anymore. I have to do
this. I am never coming back. I think you all understand what I mean by this.
Well I hope you do. I just don’t get it and I don’t understand why I was doing
something I don’t get…. I know that sounds confusing, perhaps, it is simply
because I am the one that is confused. I think only an idiot denies the confusion
of life, Socrates said that, or was it Bill S. Preston Esquire. Well you are all
invited to come. I will check my emails as I go, so maybe we can meet up
somewhere. I am done, and I am never coming back. I know when people say
 this everyone cringes at their youthful blindness, well, how do you get past that
but to simply do it and figure out how. So please don’t cringe, or do. I love you
all and I wouldn’t be where I am without you, but I mean that in a good way. I
can’t think of decision in my life that feels better. I see you all laughing as you
read this. Good. Love J.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to hit ‘send.’ I reread the email about twenty-five times

trying to edit away my true emotions, trying not to advertise myself as someone who was

desperate, but as someone who wanted a fun companion, or as someone who was making

a calculated decision. I didn’t matter. The thing I wanted most was to leave.

I hit ‘send.’ I sent it to six people, my two sisters, and four friends.

Next, I went to the travel agent and tried to buy a ticket to Prague, but going to

Eastern Europe was too expensive. I would have had to fly a small local plane after

landing in Paris. I bought a ticket to Berlin instead. I left the next day.

I shared my bedroom with my brother’s cat. It was humiliating because the fat cat

fondly left the stench of shit and cat litter everywhere it went. The cat was entirely black.

“I am leaving in tomorrow,” I said to my brother that evening.

“Did you finally get a job?”

“I have two.”

“I mean did you get one that matters?”

“No, I am just leaving.”

“That kind of sucks. Where are you going?”

“I think I am going to go to Europe.”

“That’s a big trip, when did you decide this?”

“Earlier today.”
 “How are you going to pay for this…”

That was one question I didn’t want to answer, because I couldn’t answer it.

“…Well I think good luck. I hope it all works out.”

My brother would miss my constant presence more than he could reveal, and I

knew that, but I also knew my presence was a nest for both of us, and that my leaving

would toss him upon a journey that he knew he must one day undertake. He lived alone

in his, by California standards, roomy condominium and when I came to live with him I

offered an ear and a reprieve from his slavish routine, when I left he would be alone

again.

I started to give away all my possession. I don’t know why. Perhaps, I didn’t

have any place of my own to store them, or perhaps, I felt that I truly wouldn’t return at

least to Berkeley, or perhaps, I felt some cosmic force pushing me toward generosity.

One of my friends had told me only go to Europe with the attitude of a gypsy, meaning

carefree, open, and transient. No matter what my actual reality was the process of casting

off proved much harder than I imagined. I picked up the phone and called my friends.

“Hey Ed you want my cds?”

“Nah, your cds suck. Why you giving them away anyway.”

“I am casting off all my possession.”

“Oh yeah… How is that working out for you?”

“I don’t know yet. Nobody wants anything.”

“Did you find to Jesus?”

I sat in my room and looked around. Ed was right, my cds sucked. What was

more as I sat in my cat shit scented room I realized that owned virtually nothing. I owned
a computer, a mattress, a lamp, half a closet full of clothing, cds, a cd player, and stacks

of books shelved in milk crates. I was twenty-six years old and I accumulated nothing.

When I was fifteen years old I took my first turn at the go-carts. It was my first

time behind the wheel. I was very excited. As we sat line waiting for the race to start, I

held down the black gas pedal and pushed the car in front of me. I am never wanted to

take my foot off the gas. The race started. I leaned into the turns and accelerated around

the slopes. I had a good cart. It was fast and I was able to catch and pass people. I

dragged behind them, lessening the wind resistance, and then whipped the steering wheel

to the side, so that my faster cart crept up beside, and then I passed my competitor on the

high turn. In my first time I mastered the most difficult maneuver in go-cart racing. The

race finished and I was excited. I jumped with both arms raised and joined my friends to

high-fives and down-lows. In my mind I won the black and white checkered flag.

A little girl of five years old walked slowly from the go-cart exit. She wore a red

dress with white dots spread over it. She had bright blonde hair, big brown eyes, and a

pale white face. Her hair was tied back with one green and one blue butterfly clips. Her

black shoes strapped over white shocks. She walked slowly. She stopped and faced my

group of friends and me. She waited patiently for us to notice her. She stood,

nonmoving, for several moments. Then one of my friends noticed her. We all stopped

and down looked at her. She stared me dead in the eyes.

“You suck at life.”

Apparently in my enthusiasm to pass my fellow go-cart racers, I bumped into her

car and caused her to spin into the wall of tires. She got her revenge; she scared me for

life.
 Looking over my possessions reminded me of that greatest insult I had received.

I smiled. I sucked at life. And now I was leaving. I closed my eyes to the blackness.

I needed solace so I headed to my two best friends house, Daniel and Anastia. I

checked my email for the last time before I left. My friends and family all sent either

concerned or encouraging emails, all except for my sister Cathy.

Dear John,

I know exactly how you feel. I am going to buy a ticket too. I will meet you
where ever you want. I just have to get out of here. I am desperate. I don’t know
where to begin. There was this guy and I completely just got swept away, but it
was different, I don’t know. I was working as a bartender and I was drinking a lot
and you know Yisiptuckey, it’s a shitty little town, and I was thinking of dropping
out of school or at least changing my major again. I saw your letter, and you are
right, lets just go, ok. Yeah, lets just go. I will tell you more when we get there,
but I have some many ideas and dreams, but just can’t, well I have it figured, but I
can’t do it. It is like I know what to do, but I can’t do it. I know that may sound
weird to you. But I am ok, it is nothing to be too concerned about. See you soon
luv cathy. Call me.

The cat knocked over my lamp and it started to fall toward. I snapped my hand

out and caught it. The light shined directly in my eyes and blinded me white. I placed

the lamp back and let my pupils dilate. I looked back at the words on the computer

screen, and the black and white words blinked back at me.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I closed my eyes, and put my hand on the pillow next

to me. Oh yeah, I wish you were there, I thought as I moved my hand on the pillow. I

wish who was there? The girl—the one that I could let inside, the one who would pick

up the key—she would pick up the key and be safe inside my black wall with me. I

smiled as I opened my eyes to the white pillow next to me. It is a good dream, a warm

dream. I closed my eyes again. Everything was black and there was one dot of light,
the keyhole. I pushed my face against the keyhole. She tossed her hip and smiled

while her black ponytailed hair swayed back and forth. The white key was at her feet.

Pick it up. Pick up the key. You know you want to. You are so beautiful, you are

perfect; I would love you with a depth you couldn’t touch. I started to kiss the keyhole.

Please it so nice in here. She straightened, turned, and left.

I closed my eyes to the keyhole and pushed my head against the door. I slammed

my head against the door. I have to get on that side so she can see me, I thought, that is

the answer. I ran my fingers across the black walling searching for a key or doorknob.

The cement was cold and jagged. There was no key. I screamed and pounded my body

against the wall. I slammed my shoulder time and again, but the cement would not

give. I reared my fist back and punched. My knuckles cracked on the wall and turned

bloody.

“I have to get out of here.”

I opened my eyes and looked at my ticket to Berlin.

“I am getting out of here.”

I took a deep breath and slowly walked into the wall. The wall was moist and

mushy. It felt constructed of devil food cake. I consumed the wall and it crumbled

around me. I simply pushed myself through and fell asleep.

The BART train clinked steal as it flew across the tracks. I was free. I was

flying. The wall was gone. I took a step away. I was free.

San Francisco passed under my feet as the train sped toward the airport. The sun

began to set. The sun set three in San Francisco. The orange sun slowly descended

reflecting blue off the bright ocean, but it also reflected pink through the gentle mist
that rolled across the bay while the heat of day slowly faded. The gray and the beige of

the city stood erect defying the rays of the three sun while the green and the brown of

rolling mountains bowed in subservience—connected by the golden bridge.

The United States invaded Iraq two days latter. The President was often pictured

at his ranch in Texas wearing a white hat.

My odyssey had begun.