October 4, 2011
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The Daily News
Night terrors: Another tale, told by an idiot.
1 Love the rain. And I'm a white guy.
2 We white guys stereotypically like the sun, the surf, the Beach Boys, and tanning.
3 Uh...yeahno.
4 When I was young I loved all that stuff, because I bought into all of that stuff because I was young.
5 Now I enjoy being comfortable, and the rain seemed so cleansing and nice yesterday.
6 Driving home through the east hills made me smile. I took all back roads yesterday because I stupidly left my wallet home.
7 I completely wanted to avoid all traffic and get the newly undented T000000NDRA safely in my driveway.
8 By the time I was done at school, the rain had let up. The wet and the coolness surrounded and embraced me. I almost fell into a daydream. Nobody drove the back roads home. Jazz played on the radio station, and I even cracked my window open for a taste of the damp air.
9 I came over the top of one small hill, and began a smooth roll down when a pickup truck pulled in front of me.
10 Suddenly the guy went into a three-sixty sideshow.
11 This was somewhere three miles north of the school in an area that has circular skidmarks all over it. I remember wondering about a week ago how those marks got there.
12 I had heard about "sideshows" in the news, but never thought much about them, and here was a guy literally going around in circles around two-hundred feet in front of me. I slowed down. The guy completely stopped in the other lane and just stood still. facing me.
13 I wasn't sure what to make of it. I wanted to get out to see if he was okay, because that happened to me a few years ago during a drizzle. I was merging onto north 280 right around Tully, and almost got sideswiped by a madman. I had pulled my steering wheel to the right to avoid a collision and wound up going up the embankment, back down, and then doing a three-sixty.
14 I found myself facing oncoming traffic, and just stared for a second. One motorist pulled in front of me to ask if I was okay.
15 I felt a little like Bruce Willis. Was I dead? Was I being given a second chance?
16 All that Hollywood boushit danced through my head. I had a religious experience, punctuated by a devilish thought of grabbing the guy who ran me off the road by the neck and throttling him.
17 Yesterday this other guy just stopped right in the middle of the road. I drove slowly past, realizing that he seemed okay. I rolled down my window to ask if he needed any help, and he gave me a look that could freeze beer.
18 He gave a second look like, "Who are you staring into my space?" and drove off, ungrateful bastid.
19 I proceeded to relax my shoulders and get on my merry way, all the time wondering if this idiot had done that on purpose. It occurred to me that he was right in the middle of a quiet neighborhood where people walk dogs, children play, and old people go for walks during the quiet rains.
20 I couldn't fathom a person doing something that stupid on purpose, but this guy gave a look that seemed to tell me he had.
21 Like anyone else nowadays, I dwelled on it for about three seconds and moved on down the road.
22 For a brief second I became a comic book hero, with thought bubbles and a re-enactment of the incident spinning through my head.
23 I even had blue hair, like Superman.
34 At this point in life, I'll take any sort of hair. In my reverie, it was pretty sleek and handsome.
35 I also thought that if I had decided to leave work around thirty seconds earlier, I might have T-boned that guy.
36 I'm pretty superstitious about things like that. For example, if I decide I'm going to get into a right lane, I go with my initial instincts, never a second-guess. I absolutely abhor detours, because they take me to an area against my better will.
37 Anyway, I got home, and didn't really give any of it a second thought.
38 We do that in life. But when I awakened at around 1 a.m. it lurked huge, like a dark overcoat and hat hanging on a hook. I saw shadowy figures and mailer-daemons haunting their way through my dreams, and awakened abruptly to the wispy sounds of whirring fans, and the glowing green starry weirdness of LCD lights, of comfy socks, of closing walls and ticking clocks.
39 I'm okay now, but I still wonder a little if I'm dead. My fingers glow over the keyboard keys with a moony backlight. They seem to be alive. My right hip has this quirky pain, indicating aliveness. And I have this immense craving to drink cold milk out the bottle, which to me leans a little towards the dead side.
40 But alas!
41 I'm okay.
42 My feet cracked when I got up to pour myself a glass of milk. My nerves steadied, so I pulled back on all that. I saw the face of the sideshow guy playing out on the inside of my eyelids, and then blinked again, closed my eyes but the screen turned bright, with strange designs vibratingly alive.
43 Bad craziness.
44 The milk helped, thank the goodness.
43 I hopped back to sleep, eyes like saucers staring out over the slanted darkness.
44 It was going to take a while.
45 But I eventually got back to sleep.
46 God bless the rain. Or Joe-the-Bear bless the rain. Or whoevs. Just thanks for giving me life.
47 Peace.
~H~
