Near-Life Experience

During one of the evening hours on a day just before Halloween I was turning onto my street. Traffic was thick in the oncoming direction but some cooperative soul had paused to let me pass, as people in Chicago are wont to do. I put my foot on the gas and gracefully guided my vehicle left through the gap, relieved of the fact that the days distractions were over. It had been a long, tiring day. I was a mere sixty feet from the alley and just that much closer to being home, that much closer to taking off my shoes, putting on some music, maybe cleaning something, maybe jerking off, watching the news, having an orange... whatever it is people do when they get home.

Then, mid-turn, I saw a girl and a bike, a girl on a bike, a girl on a bike moving really fast, a girl on a bike moving really fast right for me! A girl on a bike about to slam her head right fucking hard into the side of my car!

Reflex, most experts agree, is how quickly a person reacts to a sudden stimulus, but I've come to believe in a different definition. Reflex is the ability to quickly predict where something is going to be and to do so with little time to be wrong. Imagine a wine cork rolling off a table. Good reflexes does not mean reaching for the cork. Good reflexes means placing your hand where the cork is going to fall, catching it and returning it safely to the table and then reveling in the admiring stares of those around you.

Good reflexes means getting your car out of the path of the speeding girl. My foot slammed on the gas. In response the engine snarled like a woke dog but the old beast just didn't have the oomph she once did. She's old, loyal and hard-working but her quick-sprint days are in the past. The car leapt forward just enough that I was able to avoid the worst, which was having her head penetrate one of the passenger side windows of my car, or worse: having her head NOT penetrate one of those windows, the way a paintball hurts more when it doesn't break.

Every nerve in my body was suddenly on alert as blood raced through sleeping capillaries, driven by a frantic heart. A gentle click-tap near the back bumper pulsed through the car. For a moment it seemed as if nothing had occurred, the click-tap was so gentle, so subtle that maybe I had imagined it. But the rear view mirror was a widescreen shot of a girl with black hair somersaulting off a turquoise bike. I pulled over. The engine returned to calm but my heart did not. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.... I've got band-aids. I've got water... Oh shit... I could drive off. I can't. I couldn't. Could I? No, fuck, I can't. I have to help her.

I hit the blinkers and stepped out of the car, uncertain where the days twist had taken me or to which hospital I'd be accompanying her or of what awkward conversations I'd be having with her parents. The girl and her bike lay on the ground. A round, ethnic woman in a purple coat approached with obvious concern, but she quickly made herself scarce once she realized I had purchased ownership of the situation. She was a caring raisin but she obviously had other vines to worry about.

The girl stood up, dazed and brave. "Are you ok?" was all I could stammer out. "I am so sorry. I saw you before it was too late."

"No. I -- I'm okay, " she said with detectable uncertainty. I looked her over and have never been more relieved NOT to see bones protruding through a person's torn skin. She actually looked ok.

"Lets go over here," I said, grabbing her bike off the ground and guiding her to a nearby curb. Behind us traffic ebbed and flowed. One car after another passed the scene, a bike, a guy, a girl. Gas and brake, gas and brake -- feet controlled by tired minds, each one full of shit and sunshine.

"I'm gonna sit. I need a cigarette," she said. I kneeled down next to her, still processing the raw data of the previous two minutes, my neurons conducting an orchestra of bolts from each out-stretched dendrite. These were two minutes I wouldn't easily forget.

Her knee had been skinned a little, tearing further the hole in her pants. She had thick dark hair, white skin and a modest piercing just above her lip. She was probably twenty-two or twenty-three years old, one of those hipsters that populate various neighborhoods in Chicago, the more hurried ones transporting themselves on vintage ten-speeds. I offered her water and bandaids -- even neosporin -- but she refused. All in all she had come through in good shape, a little shaken up, a skinned knee and a tear in already torn jeans. Even her bike escaped injury. I put the chain back on and spun the wheels. No wobbles. It was good to go.

She told me her Dad had bought her that bike several years ago. It was old and he had fixed it up. She spoke of it as something cared for and needed, something she loved her father not for providing but because it was a piece of love from him. I was glad it still had some miles left in it, that my impatience wasn't the weapon to remove it (or her) from existence.

I sat with her until she finished her cigarette. We chatted. I tried to be funny. Her name was Liz. She had a plastic bag of make-up she had just purchased, which she'd planned to use to turn herself into a zombie for a party later that night. Even the jeans she was wearing were to be a part of the costume because of its pre-existing holes. Always the optimist, I commented that she would be a great zombie because now she had a sore knee, a large hole in her jeans and a great story about how she nearly escaped death on the streets of Chicago. She seemed to agree, although a part of me suspected that she probably would rather just be a regular zombie, one without the near-death experience.

Picky, picky.

The Abominable Snow Fan

Snow has fallen for seven hours and the world will sleep tonight under a blanket of water five inches thick. In the morning scarves will be found, gloves will be matched, boots will be stomped. Winter is here.

From my third-floor apartment I am among the trees. I wander from window to window, peering from each at a different winter postcard. Everything has been whited out, each frosted branch a pixel on the lens of Adams, each car an annoyed commuter wondering where the ice scraper is stashed, each sidewalk a stream of supple cotton. I'm reminded of a table-top model, those intricate recreations of towns, buildings and trees, stoplights and roads, children and mailboxes, winterized by a glittery chemical snow from a can. Foam snow covering foam grass.

I am compelled to go outside though I have no rational reason to do so. Most people wouldn't choose to go outside in weather like this and more often than not neither would I. Call it the wild, call me crazy, call me impulsive or maybe ordinary, but some circuit in my brain seems insistent on being a creature in the haze, a participant of the night, a stomper in the snow. I decide to walk to a nearby gas station to buy a bottle of milk.

On snowy nights, especially the first of the season there is a tangible peace to be found by being out of doors. This peace is fleeting, not unlike the first few minutes of a new pair of socks. At some point during minute four, the socks become used. Before the plow trucks and salt spreaders rumble through, belching destruction upon the tender surface of snow I must join the fray. Slush, grime and slippery reality have a persistent way of overwhelming such halcyon winterscapes. Shovels and footprints and shivering pits of cooled dog shit counteract the effect. Admittedly though, there's something unimpeachable about a single set of Man prints alongside a Dog's happy traipse. Leather shoes and light steppers beware. But during the first few hours of a snowstorm there is perverse safety and perfect silence, the kind of thing that can't be bottled or sold, only presented by Nature for those simple and indulgent enough to enjoy. So for that reason I put on my coat, hat and gloves and step outside. Plus I am out of milk.

My boots are on a shelf in the garage, next to a can of stain and a milk crate of softballs. They fit well. They are familiar. Whatever memory my feet carry these boots elicit. After a quick footwear exchange I make my way down the alley. Save for the crunching of snow beneath my feet there is complete and utter silence. The kind of silence that can only be heard. So rarely achieved or observed. Every surface softened. Rooftops shimmer. A tire track curves into a garage. A woman laughs. The buildings doze.

I am a lone figure marching happily among the chaos of peace.

Fat flakes of snow fall silently from the sky. An uncountable chorus of vertical lines, not a sliver of wind exists to disrupt their descent, their long fall from dark ethereal clouds above. Grace defined, as much as tired minds are allowed. Bushes and trees support ribbons of stacked snow seven, eight times the height of the branches themselves. Each twig confidently sporting a mohawk of white. Occasionally a chunk will break loose and fall to the ground -- absurd flakes that penetrate the surface of the blanket. Nature's unnoticed divots.

The gas station has a line, an oddity at tenpee'em although not unexpected. While in line I grab a red-bull. I am not in need of it but the small child in me is. I need a slight change of consciousness and I'd rather not spin around in a circle in order to achieve it. A hefty shot of caffeine will have to do.

Walking home the street lamps, headlights and windows cast their beams upon the airbound flakes but it is from the blanket of snow on the ground that a mystical Earth has emerged. Instead of the dreary shadow of a late-fall night there is a soft orange glow, not unlike the final seconds of a dying flashlight. There is peace in the air, falling one frozen molecule at a time. It is a fool's paradise. I am given the gift of night-vision, modernized, sure, by many pools of light pollution, but just as pupil-dilating as the moon-driven night travels of the past. I imagine with sadness and comfort that there are still places where pine trees cast shadows at night.

Flights of Fancy

Going through security at the airport this redhead gets in line behind me. She’s noticeably attractive, and roughly my age. A side glance is all it takes to activate the Single Man’s hottie-dar. Bogey! Bogey! Sudden and exciting such bogeys are also familiar and forgettable. And horrible – horrible in the way sunshine is horrible. Our radar screen is clouded daily by blips and beeps, some deserving of more attention than others but each a primitive calculation of want, need, desire, ego and frivolous but urgent sexual aspiration.

Of the millions just a precious few come in for a landing. The control tower remains eternally vigilant, alert and over-worked but all too often the ground crew sits bored and idle. So goes the airport metaphor.

Anyway, I’m collecting my coat, bag and shoes from the bin. Her items roll through right behind me. I look up at her. She’s already looking at me.

We smile. Both of us. At each other.

A good, healthy, eyes-first-lips-second smile, the real kind of smile. I get a better look at her. She’s beautiful. Warm, brown eyes, smooth skin, radiant red hair. She's beautiful in every cliché way. She's beautiful as defined in the hungry minds of poets and artists and soldiers. She's beautiful in the way a hand is warm. She's beautiful in the way water reflects light. She's probably beautiful when she cries. The moment ends as such moments always do: too soon, nothing said. Awkward but utterly delightful.

I’m putting my shoes back on, as is she. We're sharing a squat. “You always gotta wear your good socks to the airport,” I say.

She laughs, genuinely. She actually found my lame-ish joke funny. “Yeah, I never thought of it that way. No holes in these.” More friendly laughter. Her smile is like candy.

We stand. More banter. It's fantastic.

Then I violate every worthwhile instinct in my body. I put my coat on, grab my bag and walk away.

Why? Why? Why? Why didn’t I chat her up a bit? Why? I’d already done the hard part, the ice breaking. There was at least enough there for further conversation. There was at least enough to say “Hi, where are you going?” Fuck! She was hot. She laughed. She seemed intelligent. Maybe I could have gotten her email or her number or maybe a date or two or maybe sex or maybe one of the versions of love people seem to settle for. Or maybe the kind of love we all deserve.

Or at least another one of those honey smiles. One more smile.

I paused at the bank of arrival/departure TV’s not far from the security checkpoint. I stood there, my best “relaxed” posture on display, gazing upon the rack of screens listing the comings and goings of the entire building, comprising the collective energies of the day's herd of Traveler Sapien. I vaguely remembered where I was or where I was heading but within my swarming head I obsessed over an entirely different purpose. I stood there in front of the those blue TV’s hoping she might do the same, thereby giving me another opportunity to say something.

Or maybe I’ll catch her heading for her gate, I surmised. Or maybe after I'm sitting at my gate she'll walk by and I'll summon boldness and hurry to intercept her, perhaps even on the moving walkway, I'll walk along while she stands upon the conveyor. In 50 years that will be our meeting story, how I chased like a fool after a flower. I'll get her attention, hold her gaze, say something charming, swim in her smile and drown in her laugh. Maybe she'll miraculously be on the same plane as me and she'll sit next to me and we'll converse about every wayward subject on Earth for the full four-and-a-half hours to California, ending with a hug and a promise to call. For her I was willing to shed a million extra heartbeats. At least.

But then she went off in a different direction. For a moment I pondered chasing after her, casually bumping back into her and making some confident comment about how I wouldn’t let her escape so easily or how I needed her email in order to board my flight or about how gorgeous she was and how I absolutely had to introduce myself and say hello. But no. I stood still and watched her disappear behind a wall. The opportunity was gone for good.

Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!

Reality reared its logical head. Settle boy, settle. All in all it was a minor moment. It was pedestrian, ordinary, quotidian, and she might have filed it away as such, forgetting the friendly chatter at the security gate as easily as the price of her pre-flight bottle of water. Stop obsessing you freak; you're on vacation!

But what if that wasn't the case? It was minor, yes, but what if it was minor the way a seed is minor? A life of great moments between two people is usually sparked by a small one. Each and every great love of the world started with a smile. Fire needs kindling.

All I had to do was take the slightest bit of initiative and I would have found out. Instead I walked. I stood. I watched. She went.

Loneliness is a choice, I guess.

Goddamnit.