roadside attractions.

“I’m sorry I am not better,” he says to me as if i had asked him to be. “You would think that age brings better…it doesnt”

i know why a person would think that, but that doesn’t mean i understand it. plenty of people get old doing the same shit they did young. eventually their knees hurt while they’re doing it.

better, worse. i’m not doing that. i don’t have a scale for a whole person and i’m not borrowing his.

all i can confidently measure is age. what we have gotten is old. not wise. not weathered. not becoming. old. rot with a birthday.

he is mid forties. you are mid thirties. i am forty.

he hasn’t moved an inch in decades. not forward, not backward. whether from the drinking, the apathy, i don’t know where one stops and the other starts anymore. i could fuck off for years and come back without needing much catching up.

same conversations, a little more mileage on his face. sometimes i want to ask what he does with all the time, but i know what he does with it. we’ve talked about it. we could have the conversation again right now and i could do both parts.

he laments it from the dent he never climbed out of. never made much of an attempt, either, though he’s had plenty to say about being in it. he’s arranged things within reach. the apology travels further than he does, and now i have it, and he is still sitting there.

as for you, you gained ground. i will give you that. limited. tethered to trauma, you were never going to keep it, but the leash you ran with gave you enough distance to look like headway if you squinted. your past does not even need to hunt you. it ties off and waits.

but you got far enough to be convincing. that’s what i resent. there was actual ground between you and where you started. you could point to it. i could see it. you stood out there talking to me like a man who had left, and i believed i was dealing with someone who could keep walking.

you’d changed some things, paid some dues, wandered far enough out that the rope wasn’t dragging across everything you did. plenty of room to get comfortable. you could even bring somebody out there with you and let them start thinking about where else you might go.

and then the slightest trigger yanks, and there you are again, right back at the spawn point, holding that limp little length of rope like it was a journey. the distance was never yours. it was slack. it was always slack. you’d been living on whatever leeway it gave you, and we’d both gotten a little carried away about how far that was.

and then there’s me.

i’ve gone far. i can produce evidence. there are miles behind me, entire stretches of my life spent getting the fuck away from wherever i began, and i did get away. occasionally i remember a whole stretch of my life i’d left out. oh, right. did that too. i could leave out several years and it would still be a lot.

so fucking what? it was a lot. i was there for it.

i went everywhere and all i got were these lousy souvenirs. should have bought the t-shirt. at least that’s something i could wear. instead there’s all this stuff i’ve accumulated that mostly establishes where i’ve been. yes, that one’s from there. that was a whole fucking thing, actually.

it’s about all i can point to, apart from how tired i am, how much my feet hurt. i’m still going. more places, more shit to bring back. i haven’t looked at half of what i already have.

so, here we are.

he can get another decade out of that barstool. could have his mail sent to the place. they mop around him after last call. he lifts his feet for that, then puts them back.

you’ve got the yard, the little pulley rattling along the wire overhead while you run. enough room to get up some speed, get somebody running alongside you before the cable catches and jerks you back by the fucking neck.

i’m behind the wheel. crossed the whole goddamn country, might traverse the globe before I break down. there’s a receipt on the floor from the other coast. whatever’s wrong with this car, the tank refuses to run out of gas. all those exits for places i’ve been or could go. i don’t particularly consider any of them a destination. i shift around in the seat. everything hurts a little.

every so often his name lights up the infotainment display on the dash. i can hear the bar before he says anything. he asks where i am and i read him the next sign. we talk for a while. somebody at his end asks if he wants another. i lose the signal somewhere between towns. he’ll call again.

you’re still in the rearview. the ashtray’s full of old lives, and every time i lower the window, a little of that shit blows back in. the baggage is in the trunk. i had to sit on the lid to get it shut last time, so it can just go ahead and stay shut this time.

there’s a sign for a scenic overlook a few miles ahead. haven’t been to that one. could get out, stretch my legs, see whatever the fuck they thought was worth putting a sign up for. i'm not exactly late for anything.

i put the blinker on.