That time we went west.

In the summer before I graduated college I went west. At a time when every chemical in every part of my body was right where it should be. A number of culminating circumstances brought me back to "the gang". The OLD gang, really. My three best friends from highshool and I set off for southern california, LA, though endless desert to meet our fourth best friend who was living and working there, lucky bastard. At least I thought so. I think I had an idea about LA that wasn't accurate prior to actually being there. Maybe I didnt give it a fair shake, but bottom line is i found the drive there much more interesting. The four of us, Armin, Gaynor, Nate, and myself departed roughly 3 pm central time, Dallas, TX due west.
What posessed us to do this? I guess i can only claim temporary insanity due to the heat, life long friendship, the need to escape heartache rooted in waco, and morbid curiosity of seeing if we could make it across lifeless highway in time for me to graduate. We had exaclty one week. We drove twenty six hours straight, not stopping, not even to eat, only to pee. There was a bag of banana chocolate chip muffins, clementines, and unsalted organic popcorn in the back. We took a candy apple red chrysler sebring. It was one of the best times of my life, and the strangest. We were all there for different reasons, in all really different places in life, not to mention were all jus incredibly different people to begin with. Bizzare is the only work i can think to describe it right now, but thats not sufficent. It was, nauseating and intrigueing at the same time. Like i'd imagine LSD would affect someone, or the way you feel when you have a fever, and you wake from a fever induced nightmare and that disorientation scares you. This trip was a way for me to explore, and a way for me to make peace with long gone issues i ever had with my old friends, a way for me to suppress my mounting anxiety about post grad, and a way to just say fuck it. Ive heard the best way to deal with your fears is to surround yourself with barrenness followed by wanton decadence. In case you didnt catch the sarcasm, I mean just the opposite. So its funny that this trip came at the time it did, with the people it did through the desert that it did, right into lala land. LA came and went, I went spent two or three whole days there, i cant remember which, it was such a daze. A daze i was happy to be a part of.
Like i said, the drive was the best. Nothing like a great american road trip to bring out deep seated issues in people. We were all stripped down into awkward silence. There was fighting, there was laughing, there was teeth brushing and gum smacking, deliriousness, and damn honest answers to personal questions. We came out of those 26 hours, 26 back knowing each other differently that we had before. Dallas, San Angelo, Alpine I wished, El paso, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Mojave maybe, Flagstaff maybe, Coast. Gas station, switch, gas station, switch, endlessness, gas station, cacti, gas station, drug wars, switch, sun, switch, pee, taco, 20 questions, gas station.
We saw windmills in west texas. I recalled the last time I was in car with these three on the way to the airport in atlanta. I rejoiced in the fact that i was deflowering this side of the country. Never had my body been past this point on the map, i couldn't wait to devour it. Every second i was covering more ground, i was making more progress. This is my moby dick i thought, and every other literary allegory that seems applicable.
I remember, midland, and the massive windmills, and feeling like don quixote. Slicing through uknown, uncut territory, the untread highay. Like a fresh cheesecake highway, or a new tub of butter, but linear and never ending.The car seems uncomfortable and ill fitting and somewhere around hour ten my inner turmoil subsides, and i sink into the leather, and the cage becomes my home. i break it in, like a good pair of shoes, like your footprints when you stand in the ebb and flow of the surf too long until you are burried.
I am Learning about you three, letting our ideas swim around in a small place, forcing us to interact profoundly.
I remember Staring into the night sky near alpine, and the beauty i couldn't see because the sun would not illuminate it for me. It was incredibly frustrating. If we had only been there an hour earlier, maybe on the way back i thought. Wait, I know, I'll press my forehead to the glass pane. Ill force my face through the darkness, I let my night vision adjust by staring and concentrating, and giving myself a headache. I can see everything. I can see through the earth, I can even see the turbines now, they blink red at night for the pilots. I feel like Don Quixote.
We broke down in New Mexico, and i started to worry maybe i really wouldn't make it to graduation. How would i explain this to my parents who thought i was in texas, and expected to meet me there in a day? Sidewalk, books, word games, heat, mechanics, heat, 300 dollars, heat, oil change, heat, heat, heat, heat the engine turns over.
It starts raining.
We drive. Water, we drive, darkness, we drive, sheets, still, we drive. ETA 2 am.
Theres water, theres laughter, theres music, theres the beach boys, over and over again theres the beach boys. Theres laughter, theres water, water, water, water. Lights.
There are police lights.
My head turns, my eyes adjust at the same moment that two women drenched and barefoot from the rain come into focus in the left two lanes of this four lane highway, so does the still dark horizontal outline of a human about 20 feet from a demolished car on the cement guardrail. It obvious these women are distraught, its obvious the police car has just arrived. Its understood in a split second, we have witness something profound.
Everything goes silent and slow motioned in sync with the turning of my head as my jaw rubber necks so far behind left shoulder i think it may pop out of place, but i wouldn't have noticed if it did. Time stopping, that is the closest thing to time stopping that I will ever experience. My mind is blank and void, only fixed and frozen. I snap out of what seemed like 5 minutes but was really only about half a second to sudden jerking of the vehicle. Nathan swerves to avoid hitting the body. "Holy shit that was a dead body!" armin shouts almost reflexively. We all react different. Nathan contemplates going back, Gaynor gets angry at the absence of somberness, Armin is in disbelief and awe. I am sick to my stomach. We decide to drive on, deciding there is nothing we can do to help even if we do go back, the cops are already there. And none of us have any medical resources, or the frame of mind to use them.
We all encounter death and the idea of our own mortality as it pertains to one another.
We all secretly realize that the accident was so recent, There wasn't much from keeping that car from being us.
We are silent.
No one knows what to say.
We each work out internally our own confrontation with death.
We discuss how perhaps the body was alive, insisting that there is a chance to make each other feel better, we all know we are lying.
Nathan awkwardly digresses the discomfort in the car with a factoid about how Jeff Buckley once witnessed and accident involving multiple deaths of illegal immigrants on a highway and how it affected him the rest of his life.
We drive on, cautiously.
Gaynor pops a Valium, he just had oral surgery and has been taking them periodically throughout the trip for pain.
I tell myself the last one wasn't medicinal.
We drive.
I think, Everyone is so afraid of death. I'm not afraid of death, I'm only afraid of not living. Ive got two hands, two eyes, two feet, a decent brain, a deep desire, i need to live.

There was something very defining in that car about life, about your twenties and about discovery.
Dallas 3 am, we pass out on various couches.
I made it to graduation.
We never talked about the body again.