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"You're back, baby. You're back."

###

### Free Bird

"OK," said Bernard, with a big Pall Mall exhale, "we can get moving now."

He looked as if he'd just had sex; I almost felt I could smell the musky aftermath, feeling under my skirt along my thigh in the dazed expectation that I'd find some unwelcome slick. Hauling him in, DNA tests, him saying, "But I never touched her!" And he'd be right. He never touched me. But those 11 minutes and 30 seconds on the side of the road waiting for his song to end... Now I laugh at the remembrance with a mixture of knowledge and the kind of lingering longing you almost always associate with a pleasing sexual encounter.

"So, you a college girl or something?" he'd said, the trucker whose name was Bernard.

The retort, "Woman!" rose to my lips and died before it reached my Midnight Ochre lips. Seated with my knees super-glued together as far away from Bernard as I could possibly be without actually exiting the truck. A mini, a chenille top showing off my black, thirty-dollar bra. All of me, perched atop a pile of ripped atlas pages and Jack-in-the-Box tray liners (Bernard's suggestion, "to keep the cooties off.") I was trying to imagine what sort of things I'd have stuck to my ass by the time Bernard let me off.

If he let me off.

He'd let me off.

Technically, I cannot operate a motor vehicle because my license is suspended, my 1983 AMC Eagle is uninsured and unregistered, and I have this unfortunate habit of bumping into things when I drive. I really shouldn't drive, it overly complicates my life. I shouldn't have driven tonight, except that Sherry's beater Honda wouldn't start, which meant that I'd either drive or we'd both sit out this black-and-blue party. This "theme" party. But it would take some doing. The Eagle needed a jump start, gas, oil, you name it.

Sherry lived 20 miles from me off the Interstate; the party was another 10 from me, in the opposite direction. Fifty miles to drive to get to some stupid party in some ranch house in a suburb in a part of the country people in planes fly over remarking, "boy, can you imagine living _there_?"

I could see everything so clearly, as clearly as the people flying over Ohiowa could see the roads and farms laid out like some kind of monstrous board game. Go around the squares long enough and you'll find some guy with a pickup or a hopped-up F-250 to marry you. You can get drunk together and smoke menthol cigarettes and watch bad television. You can try to look small on the soiled couch while the cops question your husband about the noise, the broken lamp, the bong on the coffee table... and your black eye. I'm the protagonist in a country song, you see; all of this will happen. Especially showing up at parties dressed like this, like the kind of chick who wants a ride in a huge F-250.

I'd been in an 18-wheeler before, so when Bernard pulled up in his Freightliner, all hissing and popping hydraulic sounds, I wasn't that impressed. Bernard thought my flaming Eagle was the best thing he'd ever seen; he wanted to stick around to watch the whole show. Listen, I told him, I've got no insurance, no license, no insurance and this car is a complete piece of shit that's probably worth about a hundred bucks. I found the plates in someone's trash and the only thing of value in there is probably a hair brush and a half-pack of Juicy Fruit. So if you want to give me a ride, let's get the hell out of here NOW!

I said it with a vaguely disguised hint that, were he to get me out of there, he might get a piece of this fancy brassiere. Bernard was quiet as we pulled away from the Eagle, which by this time had vast plumes of black smoke pouring out of its windows.

Ever seen a vinyl fire? I once burned a section of a naugahyde couch with an unplanned union between a Marlboro and a shooter of Jack Daniels. Later, mom kept whipping away the towel I'd put over the burn to exclaim, "I can't _believe_ you did this! _How_ did you do this again?" Dad's only comment was to put his arm over my shoulder and say solemnly, "You know, Shandra, they killed a lot of naugas to make that couch."

Looking at the Eagle out of Bernard's right-side mirror, I was kind of hoping it would explode, but I knew it probably wouldn't. We all know where cars really explode, and it's not in Ohiowa. My car would just be this stinking, moldering hunk of junk some poor highway department guys would have to haul away. Dripping wet from when the fire guys hosed it down. I know some of those guys. They have not-so-great jobs, and the last thing they need... well, it couldn't be helped. Like I said, I shouldn't be driving anyway. Being relieved of the Eagle was like having a bottle of booze taken away from you when you know you shouldn't be drinking. Plus, its demise gave me a good story to tell. I started forming some of the sentences in my mind in preparation for the party — if I ever got there.

"And THEN, the DAMNED thing BURST into FLAMES, and me sitting there in my goddamned MINI wondering what the HELL I was going to do when this TRUCKER pulls up and..."

This is what I was thinking about — the silver lining of my experience — when Bernard suddenly hit the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. "Free Bird!" he yelled, turning up the radio.

"What?!" I said.

"Free Bird!" he said, gesturing at the radio. "It's Free Bird!"

"I _know_ it's Free Bird," I said, "but why are we stopping?"

"I always pull over for Free Bird," Bernard told me. "It's eleven minutes and thirty seconds in heaven!"

I just looked at him. Not mean, but sort of questioning.

"That's the live version, of course. The studio version is only about eight minutes or so."

I knew this and, soon, much more about the song, because Bernard would yell another piece of Free Bird trivia at me every 30 seconds or so. He didn't seem to be listening to the song at all, occupied as he was with coming up with new factoids for me to think about.

"THE LIVE VERSION WAS RECORDED AT THE FOX THEATRE IN ATLANTA IN 1976," Bernard yelled to me."

"OH!" I said back. Then he'd lean back in his seat and close his eyes, occasionally taking long drags from a Pall Mall before he'd suddenly open his eyes, pop upright and deliver another.

"DID YOU KNOW THAT RONNIE VAN ZANDT PERFORMED BARE FOOT?"

"NO, I DIDN'T" I screamed back. "CAN WE GO NOW?"

"HE SAID HE WANTED TO FEEL THAT STAGE BURN!"

I also found out through Bernard that when Lynyrd Skynyrd first started playing Free Bird in bars, they were booed because people wanted music they could dance to, not protracted guitar anthems.

Even if you couldn't dance to it, I felt that it was certainly music you could _drive_ to. I thought about yelling this observation over to Bernard, but he was out of factoids and leaning back with his eyes closed. Pure pleasure, I thought. Why bother him? One thing I surely wasn't going to tell him was how I felt about Free Bird. I used to like Free Bird as much as the next girl. At least enough to tolerate it when, occasionally during high school some boys would put it on the stereo in their basement, smoke some bongs and turn out the lights to listen. They'd act like they were all into it for about 30 seconds, then you'd feel that hand snaking around your waist and that breath on your ear. Clocking in at nearly 12 minutes, Free Bird was THE makeout song for guys, although my friends and I were more into whole sides of Pink Floyd. It was mellower.

One year I visited a friend in New York City. She knew some guys who were piano students at some fancy school, and I wound up sort of half hooking-up with one of them. He wore a scarf and a blazer, kind of just like I pictured a music student looking, and he kept looking me in the eyes and saying, "I canNOT _believe_ I'm kissing a girl from Ohiowa!" Maybe he was smart, but he smelled like Drum tobacco and this strong coffee he got from some Egyptian deli, and he wouldn't eat hot dogs. He made fun of them. Prime rib, too. I told him I grew up on a pig farm, and he added that information to his kissing exclamation. I can't even remember his name, or his friend's name, but I do remember sitting around their apartment playing cribbage (yes, cribbage) with the radio on. The friend started flipping the dial and he landed on Free Bird, which was in mid-jam. And an amazing thing happened:

They mocked Free Bird.

They stood up and air-guitared the riffs, pointing out to me by making noises with their tongues that the Free Bird riffs, those sacred riffs, were simple and repetitive. In the space of about 20 seconds, they reduced Free Bird from an anthem to a laughing stock, an object of ridicule. A little while later, they did the same for the Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," laughing hysterically as they mocked the fiddle playing. Then they told me about some famous pianist named Glenn Gould and played some of his records. And they theorized what Glenn Gould might do with a song like Free Bird. They called it "The Skynyrd Variations" and thought that was pretty damn funny.

So I sat in Bernard's truck listening to Free Bird that night, my Eagle probably still in flames just a few miles back, and I thought about those Juilliard students. The one I was with couldn't get it up, and it's just as well. The two of them standing there in that room yukking it up at the expense of Southern rock. Looking over at Bernard and the grin of pleasure imprinted on his face, I felt a stab of pain for him as I thought of the Juilliard boys. I laughed a little: Bernard would kill those two guys if they mocked Free Bird in his presence. He would drive his Freightliner over their pianos. He would tie them to chairs and make them listen to Free Bird for 36 hours. He would read aloud to them the liner notes from the live double album.

Free Bird, as you may know, takes a long time to wind down. With each false ending, I'd wiggle in my seat a bit more, thinking about Sherry waiting for me (this was the days before cellphones). I sat there wondering if we would have to hear the very last note and the sound of the crowd before he'd say "OK" and we'd get going again.

"You know, it seems kinda silly, but it just gives me an excuse to take an unexpected, unscheduled break once in a while," Bernard told me after we'd gotten underway again. He'd been shifting about a little and acting like he wanted to say something. He wasn't a bad guy; he cared whether I thought he was a nut or not. I tried to think of something to say.

"We've all got our little pet songs we love to hear," I told him. "I stop whatever I'm doing whenever I hear that Foreigner song Cold as Ice."

"REALLY?" said Bernard, shooting me a pleased look. "Cold as Ice?" I like Cold as Ice. I don't know if I'd pull over for it, but..." he paused for a moment. "If you were in the truck, I'd pull over for you if it came on."

I felt my face go up a few degrees and a little tremor run up my back. Who is this nice man that I'm sitting so far away from? I scooted over on the seat a little — thank god he couldn't see my tears in the dark — and said, "Thank you very much, Bernard. If I were driving and Free Bird came on, I'd stop for you."

The lie was worth it to see the look on his face, half-illuminated by a Village Inn sign off the highway. I thought he was going to propose to me right then and there. He tried to say something, but he just smiled.

Bernard let me off right in front of Sherry's house. She came out in time to watch in wonder as I climbed up next to his door and kissed him on the cheek. As the Freightliner moved jerkily up the street, Sherry demanded 17 different answers. She bitched about the time, she wanted to know where my car was, who the guy in the truck was, why I was kissing him, why I'd worn Midnight Ochre instead of the Red Satin lipstick she wanted me to try.

"Sherry, we're not going to any party," I told her. "You got any Jack Daniels? Let's go crank up your stereo... I think I'm in the mood for a little Skynyrd."

###

### Seltenberger's Syndrome

I don't remember exactly when it was that I first experience drifting, nor do I recall whether it came on suddenly or gradually grew until it became this regular thing in my life.

I finally went to someone about it, expecting full well that they'd shrug their shoulders, ask a lot of questions about my life like depression or drug use or whatever, then maybe suggest I go to some kind of real doctor and get an MRI, or a CAT scan.

While that's more or less what happened, the person, a Roberta Someone-or-Other, did do one good thing: She asked me to write down what drifting felt like. It read as such:

"Have you ever heard the expression about whether someone is comfortable or not in their own skin? It's obvious when someone isn't, isn't it? Or when you look at someone on stage, a veteran performer, and that person is so at ease up there, they could be in front of thousands of people and they are just completely on, totally themselves. Or at least seem to be.

So, in drifting, I'm like the opposite of that. And mostly it happens when facing a group or I'm with someone senior to me either at work or just in age or status. I suddenly feel very self-conscious about what I'm saying, and the more I think about it, the worse it gets. And that's just dumb anxiety, or insecurity, right? Everyone, or at least most people, know what that feels like. But the drifting is something beyond that. So I'll be sitting there, say, in the publisher's office (I work at a magazine as an editor), and I get highly, acutely aware of the fact that I should be speaking intelligently or creatively about something, and the self-consciousness starts and then... I drift.

It feels like an out-of-body experience, like maybe a little one. Not an epiphany, a big journey to some metaphysical place, but maybe just a short trip. And I have to reel myself back in. But that's not always easy, and sometimes it's impossible. A drift can last for hours, sometimes days, I'm not even always sure when it begins, or ends.

I know at this point I'm supposed to offer some caveat that I know this sounds nuts or I don't believe in out-of-body experiences or something, but since you're a shrink, I imagine you can handle that. Plus, I read a New York Times story not too long ago where they figured out some of the physiology to the out-of-body experience, and also how there's a brain explanation for how people lose themselves and speak in tongues. I imagine it's something like that, this drifting. But more low-key. I mean, I don't speak in tongues.

Another way to describe it is this: Have you ever seen like in a film or a commercial where they use a special effect to make a person appear as if he or she is splitting into two people? And then one of them, usually a little on the diaphanous side, drifts away from the other, and then the two mirror images sort of regard each other with this curious expression? That's also kind of what drifting feels like, although I don't really see that mirror image so much as feel it. I could be sitting still, but it feels like my body has shifted an inch to the left. Or maybe it's just part of my consciousness that's shifted.

So that's drifting. There's some other elements to it, like visual weirdness sometimes, but those are the basics."

I emailed this to the shrink before my second and final visit. I'd spent a fair amount of time on it, trying to describe it, so I was anticipating that she would have spent a commensurate amount of time studying it, perhaps doing some research to see if my description matched anything anyone else knew about. The way I see it, people may all be different, but we're made out of the same stuff and go through a lot of the same experiences, so it stood to reason that someone had identified drifting before. It probably had some other name, like Seltenberger's Syndrome or something. I don't know; I just made that up.

But it seemed apparent to me that Roberta had hastily read the note just after her last appointment left, and she didn't have any insight or information. She asked me more questions about it, like how drifting made me feel, how long it lasted, things like that. I was keenly aware that she was trying to be all professional and smart, but that it wasn't going to help. When I left, I resolved not to return. If she couldn't be bothered to read my assignment more thoroughly and follow up in some way... that's not going to work for me.

The reality is, I think I know where my Seltenberger's Syndrome comes from. I'm recently divorced, separated from my three kids except for two weekends a month, broke from all the lawyers and child support payments, and I typically sleep only four or five hours a night, if I'm lucky. Am I depressed? Of course I'm depressed, who wouldn't be? But I've pored over pages and pages of information online about depression, and drifting, or anything like SS, is not implied anywhere that I could find. I have a new symptom of depression, one might be led to believe, but as I've already said, I doubt that's the case. I wanted to find a chat room or a support group filled with other drifters, maybe get some tips on how to cope.

But I never found one, although I continue to look. Instead, I started making up chat room chatter, featuring drifters who wanted to find ways to return to what they call "Real Space" — or "RS." (I was quite proud of creating my own imaginary piece of jargon.) A typical exchange would look like this:

"Ted123 writes: Whenever I'm in church, sitting there in the pew, I start to drift. It's not simple inattention, because I can feel myself shifting somewhat corporeally. And no, it's not religious fervor or anything. Anyone have any suggs on how to deal, get back to RS?"

"Gina456 responds: I have the same problem in this reading group I'm in. When I feel myself start 2 drift, I find it's helpful to move. I'll stand up, tell the other folks my leg is cramping or something, and I'll stand behind the couch a few minutes. That really helps put me back in Real Space."

I liked Gina456's advice so much that I tried it at our last staff meeting. It was about 15 minutes into it, and I started to feel like my brain was moving outside my skull, like a lump of dough sitting in a bowl on a space ship, floating away in zero gravity. It was when I was in this place that I dreaded questions or any attention directed at me. I'd be afraid I would open my mouth and nothing would come out; or what would come out might be a high-pitched wail, or an animal sound – like that of a whale , or a marmot. And drifting is often paired with a stiff neck, like my head is stuck atop a steel pole that can't move. So if the person talking to me is in a place that required me to turn my head to face them, I had to sort of move my whole upper body, which had the effect (I imagined) of making me look like a guy in a neck brace.

I should point out that, so far as I can tell, my Seltenberger's Syndrome is not noticeable to others. No one has ever said anything to me about what seems to me like aberrant behavior. But, then, the strange behavior of many people is probably not described back to them; they never know. Or maybe they do, but they can't stop it and figure people will get used to it.

The publisher is the kind of woman who hates anything interrupting our meetings, cellphone calls or bathroom breaks and the like. So I tried to move very slowly, thinking she wouldn't notice. My goal was to move to the corner over by the coffee machine. I could get a cup, then remain there, maybe for five minutes. If anyone asked, I'd use Gina456's cramped leg excuse. I was set.

As soon as I stood up, I felt the publisher's eyes on me. When it became clear that the coffee machine was my destination, her eyes resumed their usual course of targeting everyone in the room in a random order: questioning, seeking, accusing.

I don't typically drink coffee, so I went through the steps as casually as I could, feeling all the while as if I were performing a delicate brain operation with a dozen observers looking on. My greatest fear was making any kind of noise or otherwise drawing attention to myself, so I lifted the pot of coffee very carefully, filled a paper cup about halfway, replaced the pot, then eyed the condiments: three different types of sweetener, powdered cream, plus a small cardboard box filled with red plastic stirrers.

What kind of coffee drinker might I be if I were a coffee drinker? Not black, I decided, reaching for a packet of creamer stuff. I knew it was just some kind of powdered fat, and likely no good for you, but its presence near the coffee machine told me that others used it, and I was all about fitting in at the moment. I tore the top off and poured the powder into the coffee, expecting it to somehow dissolve. But it didn't; it just sort of sat there in a pile, not moving. I reached for a stirrer, feeling pre-guilt about the fact that I would soon use a small piece of plastic – an essentially non-renewable resource – for about five seconds before consigning it to the landfill. What a waste. But what were the options? This most definitely wasn't the time to make some kind of statement by stirring with my finger, or with a pencil.

It was at that precise moment, reaching for the stirrer, that Laura, the publisher, said my name, sharply. The steel post holding up my head swiftly descended, like a downward periscope, to the base of my spine, and the hand reaching for the stirrer stopped as if frozen. It was then that I realized that Laura had stopped speaking, perhaps some moments before, and that the room was silent.

"Ken, that coffee is from our last staff meeting a week ago. Allison's on vacation, so nobody made a new pot this morning."

At any other office, someone might at this point crack a joke at my expense, and life would go on. But the magazine I work for is an insurance trade publication, and it may well be the most humorless office I've ever worked in. We work in silence, mostly, and we hardly know each other. I'd only been there six months, but I was already looking for other jobs. I just couldn't bear continuing to work in such a joyless place, not when my own life was such an unhappy thing.

So, with Laura confronting me on the coffee and the eyes of six or seven other people on me, I had some critical decisions to make, and I needed to make them rather quickly. And you see, that's one of the other things about SS: Time slows down. The lump of dough was still floating outside the bowl, even if my coffee-procurement activities had slowed it down somewhat. A typical person in this situation would turn around, say something like "Oh, crap! I didn't notice," then dump out the coffee, throw out the cup and resume his seat.

Another option might have been to make some ridiculous, face-saving gesture like "I like my coffee old and cold," and start drinking it. Could maybe get a laugh there, too, if you played it right. That's not really me, though, if you want to know the truth.

The other thing I was thinking about was how I could have been so out of it as to not have noticed that the coffee was old, cold. Surely there would have been a little red light on to indicate something; steam would have come off the liquid sitting there in the cup and, of course, the powdered fat would have dissolved instantly, I see that now. I should have recognized it when it just sat there, that I was holding a non-viable cup of coffee.

So, while I was considering my options and chiding myself for my cluelessness and feeling as stiff as a shellacked fish hanging on a wall, I made an odd and sudden choice: I sat down, right there on the floor in front of the coffee maker. First, though, I grabbed a red stirrer stick.

More than anything, I wanted to vanish, which is an odd feeling, too, but one with which you might be familiar. Probably there was a time in your life, maybe as a kid, when you were so embarrassed or humiliated that you just wanted to either die or disappear. As we grow older, our ability to handle these moments with more grace makes the urge to die go away (unless, of course, you're suicidal, but that's another affliction altogether).

I supposed I could also have walked briskly from the room, but that would have seemed like admitting complete and utter defeat. In this instance, the reptilian part of my brain chose a course of action for me that my higher brain rejected outright – just a nanosecond or two too late. And now that I was sitting, with my higher brain ready to resume command, it seemed like it would have been worse to suddenly stand back up, admitting my faux pas, and return to my chair.

So I stayed there, facing a cabinet door that instantly assumed a preeminent place in my here-and-now. There was a handle, a simple pull knob, the door itself a dark wood. There was a horizontal scratch about two inches long just a few inches above the carpet – a wound no doubt inflicted by a vacuum cleaner at some point, I reasoned. I had the cold coffee in one hand and the stirrer stick in the other, and I was sitting cross-legged, facing away from my colleagues.

Observing people confronted with a highly unusual event or action is something that's consumed the time of a great many psychological researchers, not to mention the producers of various television shows where marks are set up to be shocked, baffled or scared for the amusement of the audience. In this case, although I couldn't see the looks on the faces of Laura and the other editors, I could tell from the silence that they, too, were now confronting some difficult choices. These might have included:

1. Laura saying "Ken, what the hell are you doing?"

2. Ignoring me and going on with the meeting as if nothing were amiss.

3. The person who felt most friendly toward me, Alan maybe, getting up, coming over to me, putting his hand on my shoulder and saying "Ken, buddy, let's go get some air" or something like that.

4. Remaining still and silent until such time as I moved, spoke or died.

In fact, they chose none of the above. It was mostly No.2, though: They acted as if nothing were amiss but still included me in the meeting. I actually answered several questions and gave a rundown of my section's content budget for the following month, all addressed to the pull knob on the cabinet. When the meeting was over, they filed out, saying nothing to me while I continued to sit there. (Although Chelsea, who handles AD&D policy topics, dropped a handout in my lap on the way out.)

As soon as I was alone, the dough returned, albeit slowly, to the bowl and I stood up. I did some of that typical soul-searching stuff, like looking out the window and contemplating all the people out there going from one place to another and wondering what the hell it was all about. Then I slipped out the back stair and walked the 17 flights down, where I grabbed a bagel from the lobby deli and headed out for what would turn out to be a four-hour walk all the way back to my apartment.

There's no better place in the world to be weird and alone than in Manhattan, and as I made my way up 10th Avenue, I imagined I felt a kinship with some of the homeless folks I came across. I wasn't too different from them, I thought, and no doubt many of these men were husbands, fathers, employees at some point; guys who'd perhaps suffered a Seltenberger's Syndrome episode of their own, and who sat down on the floor at a meeting one day and then never went back.

The disdain I used to feel for the panhandlers on the street morphed into a new-found respect when it occurred to me that I lacked the ability to pull the plug on my life like that. Yes, they're weak, awful men who left their families for a bottle or a needle or because they couldn't handle mortgages and health care co-pays. But you've got to hand it to them: They removed themselves from it, those painful situations. And now here they are, free from it all.

But I wasn't one of them. I went back to work, the next day. I needed the job and the money, for sure, but I was also intensely curious as to what kind of reaction I would get. I got some averted eyes, certainly, but mostly people acted as if nothing happened. At one point, halfway through the day, the publisher popped into my office and said this: "Let's stick to the chair for our next meeting, 'K Ted?" I nodded and she left and that was the last I ever heard about it.

Isn't that amazing? That you could pull off a completely bizarre act like that and, well, get away with it? Shouldn't I have been fired, or sent to counseling or reprimanded by some crone from HR?

And what happened was, after the coffee episode, my bouts of SS started to decline. Eventually, all the divorce stuff was behind me, the lawyers got paid off and I slipped into the unfair, unfulfilling yet inevitable routine of being with my kids every other weekend, with a week at Christmas, half the summer and alternating spring breaks and Thanksgivings. I still do feel SS sometimes, though, especially when I'm putting the kids on the No. 1 train to go back uptown to their mother. I'll be standing there on the platform, and the train slides away and the dough starts to float and it becomes impossible for me to tell whether it's the platform or the train that's doing the moving. Relativity.

But I figure that, if you're going to drift, that's the place to do it. That way, if you start acting all wiggy, you're just another freak in the subway, and people just walk around you. Chances are, though, they won't even notice.

###

In the Desert

Monday, 6:30 a.m.

The alarm clock goes off and I drag my protesting ass out of bed. Even though I've no time for coffee or shower, I still get to work 20 minutes late. The boss looks at his watch and slaps me – hard – then orders me to clean the meatloaf and gizzards room. That afternoon I get my sleeve caught in the drill press and the fire department must come rescue me. As I stand there trapped, my boss circles the drill press, yelling at me and occasionally whipping the backs of my thighs with a piece of rebar. Go home, miserable, still haven't eaten so I pawn my watch and go to the diner. Sandy flings some slop at me and slides the coffee on the counter too briskly, some splashes in my eye and I fall from the stool breaking my collarbone in the process. I drag my sorry ass home and flop onto the couch. I go to turn on the television but remote is somehow missing and the thing won't do anything without it. I open a book but all the pages have been ripped out by Gilford, my ex-girlfriend's dog. I go for a walk but it's dark and I slip in a ravine and break my legs. I crawl to the highway, pulling myself along with my hands, and try to flag down a car. One pulls over and runs over my head, squashing it like a grapefruit. The people in the car don't even know what they've done. One gets out and pisses on my head and throws a cigarette butt on my shirt which bursts into flames as they pull away. All around, a bad day. I make it home by 4 a.m. Good, I'll get 2 hours sleep.

Tuesday 6:30 a.m.

The alarm clock goes off and I drag my protesting ass out of bed. I manage to get my ass into the shower and I'm sitting there on the floor with the hair and the scum letting the water run over me as I read the instructions on the shampoo bottle: Squeeze out crap into your hand, rub it on your melon, rinse, repeat if necessary. Squeeze out crap into your hand, rub it on your melon, rinse, repeat if necessary. Squeeze out crap into your hand, rub it on your melon, rinse, repeat if necessary. After three times I figure my head is clean but I can't rise. I'm stuck in the lotus position, with the plastic drapes around me I feel like I'm safe, like nothing bad can happen. As soon as I stand up, I know, everything will turn to shit. I think about just staying there, and even though every cell in my body wants to do just that, I somehow manage to get up. I lather up my bony chest, my skinny arms, I take a dull disposable razor and shave my pointy chin and the hairy union between my beady eyes. I lather up my poor old shriveled dick, scrub my hideous feet, rinse off and open the plastic drapes to greet the day. I dry off with a piece of burlap standing in the corner and climb into my soiled clothes. I have some sort of filth for breakfast and feed my shitty old cat a piece of green bologna I find in the back of the fridge. I climb into my piece of shit AMC Matador and roll it down the hill, pop starting it because the starter shit the bed a few months ago. I drive to the 7-Eleven and get a pack of Winstons and a coffee. The sun is shining like a mother fucker and I put on my cheap, shitty shades that say "Porsche" on them and pull out of the parking lot. Some guy yells out his window at me about something I guess I did and then I'm next to him at the stoplight and he's in a bad mood, I guess, because he just keeps yelling at me as I try to torch up one of these Winstons. It's a hot day and in the parking lot it takes a bit to get my thighs unstuck from the plastic seat. I walk into work and the boss rips both my arms off and tells me I can work with my fucking feet for all he cares. Jimmy tells me a joke about Iraqi women and Gilbert tells me about how the company insurance policy doesn't cover his alcoholism treatment because they say it's a pre-existing condition. Donny chews on cloves to quit smoking, Wayne talks about his brother the F-14 pilot, Sam says his old lady threw a rod in their washing machine. Nobody mentions my broken figure, everybody has their own problems to think about. At lunch I go to the 7-Eleven for nachos and the old crone at the counter yells at me because you're only allowed two pumps of cheese shit on your chips. I buy a lottery ticket and drive to the parking lot at Sears where I eat my nachos and smoke Winstons, all the while looking at the bank clock. I can get to work in seven minutes, I know, and as I drive back I keep looking at all the bridges and cliffs and shit and how easy it would be to just jerk the wheel and be done with it. The guy on the radio keeps me going. He talks in a non-stop sort of joking kind of thing and he makes it seem like life is just kind of fun amusement park ride or something. Even the songs, the happy pop songs that he plays, don't seem too important according to him. He talks through the part of the song in the beginning where nobody's singing and then he starts talking again when the song nears the end. He just doesn't care. The weather report is always the same here in the desert so he sort of glosses over that, always making the same joke about how the weather's always the same. But he always does the joke just a little bit different, which I like. By the time I get back to work, I feel okay from having listened to him but then I get all tense when I punch in and put on my apron. The boss takes one look at me and accuses me of being drunk. I wish I was. He says I can't operate the machines and makes me clean the meatloaf and gizzards room again. As I turn, he sucker-punches me in the kidney and laughs. I laugh, too. Jimmy needs a jump start after work and I get the wires mixed up I guess and my battery explodes, acid spraying all over my eyes. I laugh and drive home blind, which is okay because I'd always said I could do this trip blindfolded so I figured this is my big chance to do something I said I could do. I put the nose of the Matador into the front of the trailer and hit the propane tanks, which blow up magnificently. As my vision comes back, I sit in my chaise lounge smoking Winstons as the fire department pours water on the smoking remains of my home. One of the cops who shows up finds a pot seed in my ashtray and hauls me off to the pokey on drug charges. I think my ex-girlfriend used to smoke pot, so I guess that's where it came from. I call up Jimmy and he says he's in bed and all but he comes down and bails me out and lets me sleep on the sofa at his trailer, which is kind of nice of him. His wife gives me a hot dog and a bowl of mac and cheese and says how it's good to see me and that she hopes I won't be staying long because she's expecting a baby and the neighbors were complaining about their dog, Hammond. I say okay and walk into the desert, never to be seen again.

Wednesday, 6:30 a.m.

But I show up at work again the next day, even though it took me forever to start my car because there's no hill to roll the Matador down and Jimmy has a baby seat in his car and there's no room for me. I point out that the baby isn't around yet but he says he's 'practicing' and he is, too, with a little doll in there just like it was his own kid. Jimmy will make a good dad, I think later, drilling holes in pieces of metal. For some reason, after six years of doing this, it suddenly occurs to me to ask the boss exactly what the hell it is I'm doing. He gets all soft on me all of the sudden and talks a lot about the important function of these pieces of metal. Then he makes me go clean the meatloaf and gizzards room. At the 7-Eleven again, I compare my lottery number to the winning numbers and discover that, had I chosen "24" and "35" for my third and fourth numbers instead of "16" and "29," I would have won $34 million. That makes me feel pretty good. I drive by the insurance place to see about my trailer and the guy tells me that the remains of my trailer have been confiscated by the police because I'd bought it with all of the money I made from selling pot. He says they won't pay for anything because of this. He says they'll confiscate my car, too, and laughs, pointing out the window at a wrecker hooking up my poor old Matador. I laugh and shake his hand and tell him I've had better days. He wishes me luck and as I shake his hand, I look at his tie and think about asking him if it's hard to tie those things, what it's like to own them, how he decides which one to wear each day, what they _mean_. He looks at me and asks if there's anything else he can help me with but I just say no and walk back to work. The boss looks at his watch and just points to the crucifix. I've been up there before and so I don't need any help getting strapped in. As I hang up there watching everyone at work, I suddenly feel all peaceful, and I realize this is the first real rest I've had in a long time. The boss visits me now and again, talking about dipping me in the acid tank, talking about getting some carrion birds in to pluck at my eyeballs. Gilbert comes by and hands me a drink of water and before you know it they're taking me down and putting him up in my place. I go back to work for about five minutes but then the whistle blows and I head out, nodding to Gilbert as I pass. I walk for about five minutes towards the trailer park and then realize I don't have anything to walk home to. I sort of stand there in the dirt as the cars whiz by, not knowing what to do, what direction to head in. I think of how it doesn't matter, I think of my parents sitting down to dinner, I think of Wanda, my ex-girlfriend and her dog, Gilford. Then my mind kind of goes blank and I close my eyes and the only thing I'm aware of is the Doppler shifts of the cars as they approach, pass me and rush on. I think about the people in the cars and wonder where they're going, how they're going home, probably. I know about Doppler shifts from an intro to astronomy class I took at the community college last year. I think how probably my boss doesn't know about Doppler shifts, how most people probably don't know about them. I try to think about other things I know that maybe nobody else does, like how our closest galaxy is Andromeda, 2.2 million light years away. How it's called M31. I start feeling all airy and light-headed. I open my eyes and I'm drifting high above the highway looking down on my body standing there next to the road. I notice I still have my apron on and ... but I can't take it off now. I keep rising, higher and higher and I see my body far below me topple over in the dirt, like its plug was pulled or something. Then whatever I am now starts kind of blending into the air around me as I go higher and higher and higher. I hear the diffused laughter of my radio DJ all around me, like the world is a big amusement park or something.

###

### Hank's Tuba