Been Real
With Nothingman
The driver pulled up half an hour late in a mustard yellow taxi held together with hope and legends. Together and in almost complete silence we loaded my luggage, everything I allowed myself to own in plastic bags. The driver was a short heavyset man that smelled of long car trips and wisdom locked up tight behind sunglasses and muscle. He knew so much, and I wanted to ask him about the places he’d been and I could tell he wanted to tell me about them but it just didn’t seem appropriate. From one man to another, we had recognized this as a time to shut the hell up. He opened my door, nodded at me to take my time, and walked round the back of the car to shut the trunk, then slid in behind the wheel. The taxi did not start. He was giving me time. I took a slow steady breath to pull myself together, then turned around and stepped back far enough into the street to see the place. The fire escape where I’d met her in the rain during a block party, she shared my umbrella and two beers and eventually our first kiss. The kitchen window we’d open just a bit to let the smell of fresh baked brownie out into the street. It became kind of the official signal to the smoke-heads next door to visit and trade their wares for ours. The last of three paintjobs that could have probably been done by professionals, but why pay someone to do something you could complain about having done yourself? The heavy front door she slammed on her way out after finally recognizing me for what I was. She brought down pictures and a shelf that had hung for months. That was the least of the strength in her and the last time I’d feel it.
I couldn’t blame her. Not really, I didn’t blame any of them. Fire’s hot, Ice is cold and I’m a bastard. It’s just a thing that is. I don’t go out of my way to be an ass, and for as long as I could I truly, deeply loved her. I suppose it wasn’t enough. Not the way she needed. Whatever cliché happens to fit. I glance up across the porch railing to see Carlos, his Rasta beanie brim hung low over his eyes, surprisingly awake at this early hour leaning out the window between his place and ours. He didn’t say anything either, he just watched me watching him for a time, taking long slow drags on a cigarette and then magically ashing just to the left of a dingy chipped coffee mug in front of him in a neat little pile. Carlos I could count on. He’d keep the animals from wrecking the house when we were gone, keep squatters out of the place until our landlady got the message we’d gone and came to take proper care of the place. The neighborhood, or at least the parts of it that mattered, respected Carlos. And he respected me. Of all our neighbors, the potheads included- even the old lady across the street, Carlos knew me for what I was and kept it to himself. ‘Nobody’s business but yours,’ he told me once. ‘and my finding out is nobody’s business but ours.’ So. Between Carlos and me and Driver and the rain I looked a last goodbye at where I’d spent the last few years of my journey. I wanted to cry, but that didn’t seem appropriate either. I took another step back, two, down onto the street and looked back over to Carlos who had stood up, coffee mug in hand and his head out of frame. He started away, but paused, and leaned so that I could see his head again. ‘Be Real.’ A statement. And later, muted, ‘…shut up. You don’ wanna be stepped on stop sleepin’ in the middle of the floor…no you’re an asshat’ as he moved farther into the house and beyond my sight.
‘Be Real.’
Driver, having more wisdom than I, or less patience now that the rain was coming in, started the motor in the old yellow taxi of hope and legend. I climbed into the backseat with my messenger bag dingy beyond all time and reckoning slung loose around my neck, my own hat helping me hide tears we all knew were there already. But who cries from climbing into the backseat of an old car?
‘Away?’ he asked as I shut the heavy door solid in it’s frame and settled back into seats that were more comfortable than they had any business being. These were ‘mothers arms after I skinned my knee’ comfortable. ‘Fathers hand on my shoulder after I fucked up’ comfortable. Whatever that felt like. ‘Away.’ I confirmed, and away we went. Off down the street at a slow roll down a tunnel of oak tree branches and the absence of sunlight. Driver glanced at me through the rearview. ‘Eventually youre going to need to give me a little more of a direction, but how about I give you a couple minutes till youre done choking back goodbye? My gift to a strange boy with a nice hat. ’ I couldn’t respond right then but we went anyway. Travelers. Lost dogs together wandering streets Id grown attached to these last few years. At the big brick and mortar column that announced our neighborhood, mine no longer, I took a mental picture. I don’t expect ill pass this way again.
Isnt there a song that goes like that?