He knows he is leaving only to come back only to leave once again only to wake-up once again, the overall thrill of the fall is all... Oct 20th 1996 (c)

"Did you watch the plane take off?” I ask her, a year and a half later.

 

                                                                         ***

 

The moment I find my seat on the plane I explode into a welt of tears. I have the window seat again. My view is facing opposite that of the airport.  I loll my head down  to my lower right. I am a sentimental blister. I am a scabbed over failure.  It seems like the only reason I trekked up to Appleton was simply to initiate the blood of my own wound.

  My entire face continues to burn. My chest feels as if it has been stunned, tears smilingly skid  in wild rivulets  forming twin-tassels of salt and moisture descend down the side of my face. Outside it is still the apical autumnal afternoon. Golden. I wonder if Megan is waiting inside, just waiting to watch the airplane take off. I can feel several of the passengers’ looking at me. Briefly I think about Kitty Pekowski back in East Peoria and wonder what she is doing this afternoon.

 The plane is stranded on the runway, huffing, make sounds reminiscent of a fresh battery vibrator.

I will not arrive home for another six hours.  Light seems to stretch and break into the side plexiglas of the window.  Somehow I realize that I have a napkin stowed in my side pocket probably filched from Peggy’s last night and I hold it up and blow. Tears  just seem to be kicking out of my face. The stewardess looks at me and inquires if I am alright and I nod. I look out the side window again. It feels as if we have been waiting on the tarmac for an inordinate amount of time.  I pad the sides of my cheeks.  Next to me an overweight middle-aged man wearing a purple caricatured hat and glasses sits down. He straddles the seat  as if using an outhouse stool for a medieval coronation ceremony. It seems to take him a minute to get comfortable.  Like everyone else on the plane  I can feel him looking in my direction and pretending not to look.  There is an empty row of seats behind me and an empty row of seats ahead. I wonder why he feels compelled to sit directly next to me.

He buckles up. His girth and purple hat is blocking the view of the opposite window where from I was trying to look out to see if I could espy Megan’s eyes looking back at me one last time.

 

I offer several snorts.  The fat man is wearing a fanny pack. He is looking at the safety-instructions brochure for Unites Airways as if he is perusing a dessert menu.

  I take several sniffs. For reasons I can’t even explain I feel compelled to talk to the overweight middle-aged man seated next to me blocking my view out the opposite window.  I have been seated on the plane for what feels like forty-five minutes.  I clear my throat. I push my sunglasses up into the center of my forehead. For some reason I feel compelled to convey to him that I am okay.

"Boy it really is a beautiful autumnal day." I say, before asking if he had a nice weekend in Appleton.

He tells me he is from Osh Kosh. I look at his hat again. It is the pear-shaped obese creature from McDonald's named Grimace.

I ask him what he is doing in Chicago. He tells me he works as a chef-consultant for McDonald's and is headed towards the McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, IL. Judging by his girth it looks like he has been spoon fed Mcnuggets ever since his mom wedged his fat-ass from the contours of his high-chair. He asks me if I realize that McDonald's is the largest purveyor of fast-food on this planet. He asks me if I realize that they serve almost 70 millions inhabitants a day. I'm pissed off as it is. I tell him no.

"Back home we call McDonald's  McMuck for propagating childhood obesity and paying their employees McShit in terms of wages. "

The portly man turns the opposite direction. The captain warbles static overhead.  In five minutes we are scheduled for takeoff.  I am still seated on the antipodal side facing the purple caricature on the portly man's hat.

I want to see Megan one last time through the Plexiglas only my view remains obstructed by a McFucking idiot.

I vow never to eat at McDonald's again.
 

  

                                                                          ***

 

“VAH—RHONA!!!” The barista with black skin and ruddy Buddha like cheeks says to me as I inquire what coffee is on tap. I nod my head and order a venti. I think about the letter my mother sent me, telling me that if my flight arrives early on Sunday there’s a chance I could grab the five o’clock charter back to P-town.  I can taste the salt of my moisture curl out from the sockets of my face. My sunglasses are still blocking any slice of wished for autumnal sunshine that might reflect a puddle of prism beneath the dirty upside down dirty rainbow of my eyes.

If I hurry I can make the bus, but for some reason I just want to be alone for a couple of hours and skirt through the almost papal-linoleum of the terminal and look at people, watching where they are going, watching the blinking pulse of departure and arrivals, wondering if people realize where they are going, wondering if people realize where they have been.


 

                                                    ***

 

                               
 

 

 

Hard tufts of exhaust smoke and luggage slapped over shoulder blades, a look of emptiness falling down from beneath his pupils, casting, downtrodden, oval penumbra’s under the lids of his eyes. He will amble on the bus, he will alight the Peoria Charter, his heart still cached in a red sports bag his own father used for tennis outings. His velvet suede Doc Martens purchased in Europe, the ones Kitty Pekowski inadvertently cracked an egg on last summer in an endeavor to create a shoelace soufflé, he is going back home to everything he has ever left. Everything which is seminally important to him which he seems not give a fuck about any more- he can sniff the salt, exited through his tear ducts, having evaporated, having descended in twin rivulets down the contours of his once gaunt countenance-his hair, slightly sprayed, but even less so. The can-a-day fetish he spritzed over a four year failed high school campaign has now all been exhumed, his hair has arched a proud upper-lip buoyancy on its own, and he no longer has to squint as much, although his eyes continue to burn. He continues to lumber down the airport corridor, salivating for Starbucks, frisking his pockets for the pack of Marlboro Lights they smoked together over the weekend. But all he comes up with is lint, a crumpled five spot, and a heart that feels that it is pocket change and ten pin heavy. His bag swung over his shoulder with no regard for the passengers floating on either side of him. He continues to jaunt, stops in the Mens to remove one of his contacts, he continues to jaunt. The smell of Nicotine in airports and Bus stops is one that will soon be all to familiar to him, on the precipice of his second decade on this solar pupil sparsely riddled with continental glaucoma hovering in the fabric of eternal galactic bed spread ; buoyed like Christmas ornaments. He continues to walk, thinking of the way her neck jilted back as they communed together with her family earlier that morning. Thinking of her, not wanting to bathe, not wanting to loose her ashed-apricot scent anchored inside of his bones. He knows he is leaving only to come back only to leave once again, only to wake-up once again, only to love once again and dream once again, knowing full well, even in his nineteen year old short-haircut, premature sideburns and unblemished skin that this time he will drive faster, dream harder, will hammer shut the lids of his eyes tight enough so that when, upon flapping them ajar, he will come into her face once again, see her eyes folded hushed like a dinner napkins, her lips inside of his lips, her tongue massaging the inside of his mouth, everything frozen, forever.

 

 

                                                       

                                                               
                                                                                       *

 

            His father picks him up at the bus station. He has been waiting. The October air hits hard and heavy into his lungs spawning little cauliflower patches of moisture exhaling in between each of his steps as he hoists his dream fraught duffel bag over his shoulder. He has returned home. His father is there to welcome him. The car is warm and the front cement steps of his house seem to push up against the soles of his Doc Martens. His mother will inquire. His sisters will inquire. His friend Kyle will, after firing up another cigarette, inquire if I had brought something back home with me from up North. Everyone will inquire. Everyone will wonder. Everyone will ask. He will sit all alone, his head pensive and heavy, his thoughts constipated, dripping out of his lobes. He writes, he writes poems. He writes about being close to someone and then having to leave them right away. He wonders at all moments of the day how she is doing. He wonders if she just so happens to be thinking about him. He wonders if she has gone to Minnesota to see her boyfriend. He is wondering all of this and he has no place left to wander. The parabolic curves of the hallway inside I.C.C., curving around, student’s hackeying bean-sac-volleying them between ankles and foot-he leaves. Walking, he leaves his class. Every Friday after that is a golden stem spooled from imperial sunsets. Golden. The color of the leaves. And he is walking, smoking cigarettes, wondering out loud where he is supposed to go from here. Wondering what sign life will point at him. Intrigued by the whole purpose, the whole reason.

Wondering simply, what is to come next.



                                                                                  ***

                                      

“Yes,” I say. My head still a piñata of tears waiting to be delicately released by the gentlest stab at the heart.

 "I had a great time. It was really good to see Meg again after all these months." I tell my mom when she inquires

            I wait until everyone has gone to bed. I wait. The contents of my duffel bag spread across my bed as if it has just been shot. I wait. Wondering if I left the package of Marlboro lights down in the basement of Beechwood court. Almost immediately she picks up and says hello.

 

“Hi,” I say. “I got home okay.” There is a long pause. I remember her standing next to me in line and then leaving. I remember the obese gentlemen in the Grimace cap staring at me as I inhale tears, cross my legs and try to have a professional conversation with him. I remember my reflection in the plexi-glass, warm tears sliding down my upper lip as the plane took off. I remember how the weather that weekend was perfect autumnal weather I had always imagined. I remember the how, from above, Appleton and Wisconsin looked like a giant golf course at a country club. I remember the minister requesting that we move the chairs and then we just standing in the room and holding them. I remember feeling released, coming to the conclusion that Megan didn’t love me, thinking that the overall thrill of the fall was all, remembered how loose my shoulders felt, like every emotion indicative of romantic yearning and autumnal sunsets had momentarily been released and I had been granted emotional amnesty before she appeared before me again. Her voice, asking me simply if I wanted to talk.

 

 I remember her telling me that she thought that during Before Sunrise, that she thought that I was going to kiss her. I remember the two of us trying on hats in Daytons, after I had excused myself to the restroom to sop up my own tears. I remember Peef and the church service and how I grabbed her hand at communion. I remembered all of that in the space separating feeling from actuality. The moment before she responded. The moment before her voice told me how she felt.

 

            “That’s good,” Is all she says.

 

            Another pause. Do I mention the plane ride? Do I mention anything else. Do I mention that I spent all afternoon clad in an veil of tears. Do I mention the guy in the grimace cap or that I feel like I have failed?

 Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that  I got home alright and everything.

I want Megan to say thanks for calling and letting her know that, only she refrains. I want Megan to say that she had a good weekend and to thank me for making the trek up there, only she refrains.

"Just promise you won't forget me." I say.

"I promise I won't forget you, David." Megan amends.

I can hear her shake her head and smile on the other end.
 

 

I hang up the phone in a subtle click and wait for the rest of my life to begin.