back to jail. Erases everything.
Flying down the mountain, I’m free.
I whip down the moonscape of granite, zigzag into the trees, pass the spot where the mountain lion slept. Down, down, down, down. Seven miles goes fast like that. I’m sweating, teeth jarring, still in control.
I’m going too fast around a narrow switchback when I hit a fucking root. The bike goes left, I go right, slamming into the ground, skidding down the hill on one shoulder, feeling skin come off my arm. My face hits a rock and I see stars as I tumble backward, trying to halt the roll. Brain clicks on picture-words, bright and loud: cliff ! Tree! Rock !
I plow into a boulder and come to a teeth-jarring stop. Everything goes still. I’m seeing stars, then the blackness clears and I’m staring at a ladybug crawling through a pickup stix arrangement of pine needles. Dirt and blood fill my mouth. Adrenaline buzzes through my body, numbing the pain that will crawl in under it, but nothing is broken. I can feel road rash that prickly open sting of skin scraped away along the front of my lower left arm where the shirt was ripped away, maybe more on my knee. Definitely face, maybe eye. I roll over and sit up, probe my nose. Not broken, but it forms the center of an octopus of pain spreading outward. Jeans are torn to shit, showing thigh and raw skin and ground in dirt. Mouth is bleeding. I touch it with my tongue, find the cut. Not too bad. Arm is scrapped raw from elbow to wrist, open and stinging, littered with dirt and pebbles, bleeding enough to wash out the worst of it.
I limp up the hill and retrieve the bike and my water bottle, pouring some into my mouth, some over the arm. I swish water through my mouth and spit out blood just as a pair of older hikers round the bend. “Oh my God,” the lady says. “You all right?”
“Yeah, fine. Thanks.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist. “Always looks worse than it is.”
She shakes her head. “You boys and your toys.”
I take another swig of water, give her a half-grin. They pass me, and I put the bike back on the downward trail and get moving.
I haven’t thought about Jess in nearly ten minutes. Yeehaw.
––––––––
I n the middle of the night, I’m painting. My arm is hot and irritated and keeps waking me up; painting is a good companion in the loneliness of three am. Music playing, smell of acrylics, darkness outside the windows, far away lights of the city shining in the valley.
The paintings are all Jess, of course. I keep my back to the bed in the studio where she fell asleep one night, watching me paint, where we spooned when she came over to tell me she was going to New Zealand after I fucked everything up in my ever so expert way. The emptiness in the room makes a noise, so loud I have to put on headphones. I’ve made about 900 playlists, some hard guitar, some blues, some Hendrix and Joplin, classical but no fucking piano. My mother plays piano, and let me tell you, you wouldn’t like it either.
Dabbing eggplant and white into the shadow of her elbow, I think—again—that I’ve gotta get my act together. The past seven years have been like something out of a manual on how to fuck up your life. The injury was outside my control, but the rest of it—the drugs, the fighting, the mindless, mostly anonymous sex—have been all up to me. Trying to fill the hollowness left by a dream turned to ashes.
Everything is a substitute for snowboarding. The cooking, the painting, the mountain biking. Definitely the women. I skateboard, which can be like flying sometimes, on the streets in Manitou, the steep hills. There are always some kids around to do tricks with. They sleep in the park, runaways from who knows where. I don’t ask. We smoke a little dope, skate, and I buy sandwiches.
Painting is the only thing that feels as real as snowboarding. Middle of the night, headphones, the canvas and the darkness. That’s what I’m doing the night before I have to
Flying down the mountain, I’m free.
I whip down the moonscape of granite, zigzag into the trees, pass the spot where the mountain lion slept. Down, down, down, down. Seven miles goes fast like that. I’m sweating, teeth jarring, still in control.
I’m going too fast around a narrow switchback when I hit a fucking root. The bike goes left, I go right, slamming into the ground, skidding down the hill on one shoulder, feeling skin come off my arm. My face hits a rock and I see stars as I tumble backward, trying to halt the roll. Brain clicks on picture-words, bright and loud: cliff ! Tree! Rock !
I plow into a boulder and come to a teeth-jarring stop. Everything goes still. I’m seeing stars, then the blackness clears and I’m staring at a ladybug crawling through a pickup stix arrangement of pine needles. Dirt and blood fill my mouth. Adrenaline buzzes through my body, numbing the pain that will crawl in under it, but nothing is broken. I can feel road rash that prickly open sting of skin scraped away along the front of my lower left arm where the shirt was ripped away, maybe more on my knee. Definitely face, maybe eye. I roll over and sit up, probe my nose. Not broken, but it forms the center of an octopus of pain spreading outward. Jeans are torn to shit, showing thigh and raw skin and ground in dirt. Mouth is bleeding. I touch it with my tongue, find the cut. Not too bad. Arm is scrapped raw from elbow to wrist, open and stinging, littered with dirt and pebbles, bleeding enough to wash out the worst of it.
I limp up the hill and retrieve the bike and my water bottle, pouring some into my mouth, some over the arm. I swish water through my mouth and spit out blood just as a pair of older hikers round the bend. “Oh my God,” the lady says. “You all right?”
“Yeah, fine. Thanks.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist. “Always looks worse than it is.”
She shakes her head. “You boys and your toys.”
I take another swig of water, give her a half-grin. They pass me, and I put the bike back on the downward trail and get moving.
I haven’t thought about Jess in nearly ten minutes. Yeehaw.
––––––––
I n the middle of the night, I’m painting. My arm is hot and irritated and keeps waking me up; painting is a good companion in the loneliness of three am. Music playing, smell of acrylics, darkness outside the windows, far away lights of the city shining in the valley.
The paintings are all Jess, of course. I keep my back to the bed in the studio where she fell asleep one night, watching me paint, where we spooned when she came over to tell me she was going to New Zealand after I fucked everything up in my ever so expert way. The emptiness in the room makes a noise, so loud I have to put on headphones. I’ve made about 900 playlists, some hard guitar, some blues, some Hendrix and Joplin, classical but no fucking piano. My mother plays piano, and let me tell you, you wouldn’t like it either.
Dabbing eggplant and white into the shadow of her elbow, I think—again—that I’ve gotta get my act together. The past seven years have been like something out of a manual on how to fuck up your life. The injury was outside my control, but the rest of it—the drugs, the fighting, the mindless, mostly anonymous sex—have been all up to me. Trying to fill the hollowness left by a dream turned to ashes.
Everything is a substitute for snowboarding. The cooking, the painting, the mountain biking. Definitely the women. I skateboard, which can be like flying sometimes, on the streets in Manitou, the steep hills. There are always some kids around to do tricks with. They sleep in the park, runaways from who knows where. I don’t ask. We smoke a little dope, skate, and I buy sandwiches.
Painting is the only thing that feels as real as snowboarding. Middle of the night, headphones, the canvas and the darkness. That’s what I’m doing the night before I have to
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