Drinking a bit of Jack, writing, listening to songs from my "black" library. Rolling Stones, Doors, Rob Zombie, Metric, Depeche Mode, Annie Lennox, Black Sabbath, NIN.
Just discovered it's putting me in something of a mood.
You let me violate you, you let me desecrate you
You let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you
Help me I broke apart my insides, help me I’ve got no soul to sell
Help me the only thing that works for me, help me get away from myself
...
Through every forest, above the trees
Within my stomach, scraped off my knees
I drink the honey inside your hive
You are the reason I stay alive
Closer (Nine Inch Nails)
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Swimming in dangerous currents there, the undertow dragging me into drowning places. I should really do something else. So:
Near Death
Was out and about on my bike today. Well, yesterday, now.
Great day, great ride. Great mood. Got down to the end of the day and stopped for fuel, then pulled out onto a main street to go home. About a block down the road, a car suddenly broke out of a motel parking lot to my left, across four lanes of traffic, sliding in a giant, smoking arc into a travel lane, accelerating hard, fishtailing across both my lanes. It took some pretty fancy driving, but I managed to get around him/brake/turn nearly lay the bike down. Very exciting. In the end, he missed me by about 18".
I was a bit annoyed, so as I was sweeping around him I flipped him off and called him a useless motherfucker, which he apparently took personally. This resulted in him getting behind me with about 24" clearance trying to bump me, which of course would have put me down on the road and, most likely, under him.
Keep in mind, all this is occurring at about 50 MPH. Got up to around 65 trying to accelerate away from him, then realized he was going to get me after all, and it was pretty clear that's what he was trying to do.
"Well, this sucks. This fucker's going to kill me right when everything's going good. Figures." The thought was as clear as if someone were speaking in my ear. I made a high-speed turn at a large intersection, leaning hard, running hot enough that my footpegs were digging asphalt, and he stayed right on me.
I realized that he was close enough on me so that his reaction time wouldn't be able to account for everything, so I took the only chance I had and jerked right and braked hard, and as his front bumper passed my rear wheel, laid into a driveway into an industrial area parking lot, making a tight spiral u-turn and struggling to stay on it as I dropped to a dead stop, keeping the brakes right on the edge of locking up - locking them would be bad, as a skidding bike in a turn is an out of control bike and you WILL go down. He'd been unable to keep up with the maneuver and was trying to recover, finally sliding into the second driveway in the same lot about 50 yards away.
By this time, I was off my bike and waiting for him to come make another pass, the main difference being that I had a locked and loaded .40 cal Glock in my hand, hidden behind my leg. I was gritting my teeth, trying to control my breathing, trying to not do what I wanted to do, which was to fill the air with lead to keep him away from me. No. The rational non-animal part of me climbed back into charge and willed me to relax, willed me into patience, waiting for him to come to me. I wanted him to get close enough that I could kill him outright without shooting his car to pieces and maybe missing him.
I only carry 15 rounds.
But then he decided to break it off, and suddenly tore off down the street and disappeared. Long ride home from there, waiting for him to turn up again, but he was gone for good. I don't know whether he just realized what he was doing, or got tired of the game, or saw the gun I was trying to hide. Doesn't matter. He was gone. Needless to say by the time I got to the house, I was raging, leaking adrenaline from under my fingernails.
Hah! Just occurred to me - the asshole had scared the shit out of me. Wow. Been a long time since I've had THAT particular emotion. I remember now. I hate it. It's why I don't do it anymore.
I was grateful I was alive, but...of course, I have no one else to tell but you guys, so I had to just swallow it all and wait for my body to dump all the chemistry and work through the pharmacological depression, anger, yadda yadda yadda that come with it. All while smiling and being "fine."
Then I got on the internet and began dealing with family and people I love and my day REALLY went to shit.
I probably handled it badly.
Great day, great ride. Great mood. Got down to the end of the day and stopped for fuel, then pulled out onto a main street to go home. About a block down the road, a car suddenly broke out of a motel parking lot to my left, across four lanes of traffic, sliding in a giant, smoking arc into a travel lane, accelerating hard, fishtailing across both my lanes. It took some pretty fancy driving, but I managed to get around him/brake/turn nearly lay the bike down. Very exciting. In the end, he missed me by about 18".
I was a bit annoyed, so as I was sweeping around him I flipped him off and called him a useless motherfucker, which he apparently took personally. This resulted in him getting behind me with about 24" clearance trying to bump me, which of course would have put me down on the road and, most likely, under him.
Keep in mind, all this is occurring at about 50 MPH. Got up to around 65 trying to accelerate away from him, then realized he was going to get me after all, and it was pretty clear that's what he was trying to do.
"Well, this sucks. This fucker's going to kill me right when everything's going good. Figures." The thought was as clear as if someone were speaking in my ear. I made a high-speed turn at a large intersection, leaning hard, running hot enough that my footpegs were digging asphalt, and he stayed right on me.
I realized that he was close enough on me so that his reaction time wouldn't be able to account for everything, so I took the only chance I had and jerked right and braked hard, and as his front bumper passed my rear wheel, laid into a driveway into an industrial area parking lot, making a tight spiral u-turn and struggling to stay on it as I dropped to a dead stop, keeping the brakes right on the edge of locking up - locking them would be bad, as a skidding bike in a turn is an out of control bike and you WILL go down. He'd been unable to keep up with the maneuver and was trying to recover, finally sliding into the second driveway in the same lot about 50 yards away.
By this time, I was off my bike and waiting for him to come make another pass, the main difference being that I had a locked and loaded .40 cal Glock in my hand, hidden behind my leg. I was gritting my teeth, trying to control my breathing, trying to not do what I wanted to do, which was to fill the air with lead to keep him away from me. No. The rational non-animal part of me climbed back into charge and willed me to relax, willed me into patience, waiting for him to come to me. I wanted him to get close enough that I could kill him outright without shooting his car to pieces and maybe missing him.
I only carry 15 rounds.
But then he decided to break it off, and suddenly tore off down the street and disappeared. Long ride home from there, waiting for him to turn up again, but he was gone for good. I don't know whether he just realized what he was doing, or got tired of the game, or saw the gun I was trying to hide. Doesn't matter. He was gone. Needless to say by the time I got to the house, I was raging, leaking adrenaline from under my fingernails.
Hah! Just occurred to me - the asshole had scared the shit out of me. Wow. Been a long time since I've had THAT particular emotion. I remember now. I hate it. It's why I don't do it anymore.
I was grateful I was alive, but...of course, I have no one else to tell but you guys, so I had to just swallow it all and wait for my body to dump all the chemistry and work through the pharmacological depression, anger, yadda yadda yadda that come with it. All while smiling and being "fine."
Then I got on the internet and began dealing with family and people I love and my day REALLY went to shit.
I probably handled it badly.
See? That old 'Dust is just there. Just beneath the surface. You'll never lose him.
ReplyDeleteHugs. Big, tight, squeezy Burner-style hugs.
Thanks for the hugs. Needed, appreciated, accepted with gratitude.
ReplyDeleteAs for AD - not sure, doubt it. It was more a reaction dredged up out of my past, from those years when it was necessary to clamp everything down but the problem-solving and tactical part.
It was a pain in the ass when I was younger, and I'm still paying much of that price. Now I'm old enough that it takes so much time to recover it's practically not worth it. But it's geared in, and I can't keep it from happening sometimes. It's almost easier to just live in that space than it is to drop into it and then have to drag-ass back out again.
There's a lie. I'm getting better at THAT.
Damn, I realize that's the "right" ending, but I wish he had turned around so you could have killed him. I KNOW THAT'S WRONG. But I hate people like him. I hate that they're out there, people who double-down on their mistakes, who can't ever see that they're wrong. OK, expecting an apology is too much, but he could have just crept off the first time, knowing he'd fucked up. I've made driving errors (who hasn't?) and thought oh shit what a dumbass, and driven away hoping that person didn't remember me. Gah. Anyway. GLAD YOU ARE OK!!
ReplyDeleteHe probably realized what he was doing, now that the need for vengeance at being flipped off had percolated a few minutes, and drove away, pissed off that whatever compelled him to fishtail into the street in the first place still needed to be dealt with, while a tough old bird waiting for him to try again wasn't going to help anything.
ReplyDeleteYou have a good dark list. Rob Zombie did the second stage at an Ozzfest I went to and out angry-rocked everyone else there. That NIN song will never go away either.
And yes, most of all, I'm very glad you wrote this, rather than winding up in a state where you couldn't. But now we know a little more about the possibilities should D-Slash go silent. (Not that those possibilities don't dog us all. I saw two or three multi-ambulance flipped-car accidents on the freeways yesterday as I made my rounds between Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose.)