Season's over...

My window's only partway down and when I get in the car and get going, my wheels are smooth on the pavement and my ride feels so at one with the road that it makes me want to drive for a long straight shot through some farm country in some random central America land hundreds of miles away. Somewhere unknown with stars like crazy and flowing grain. Common is on, I downloaded tons of hiphop today and I've been listening to him for hours. At the stop light I switch over to Badu.

The hurricane isn't here yet. The air is balmy, the wind is definitely starting to pick up. Hours ago, before I left Ocean Pines to go out, the satellite showed it was already above us. Town is dead. It's 3:30 in the morning and there's no one at all on the road.

The guys in the car in front of me in the drive thru try to pick me up--it's been like that all night--some nights just are. They are from Jersey and actually get out of the car to holla. It feels good, I feel good, and Badu and me are jammin for sure. The guy at the window gives me an extra large soda for free.

When we got home from the second club she changed immediately and kept making that pouty thing she does with her face, what I always chop her balls about but what actually is the thing about her I most love. We walked arm in arm to the pizza joint but it's closed and this adds to her bummer. She's annoyed she keeps saying. At her man, at the fact that all her friends have left now, and because she has to work so much now that everyone at the restaurant have also gone home. Season's over is all I can think, and I secretly love this, this time of respite and pause. Time of in-between. It's the first time all summer just me and her have kicked it on our own and I am enjoying the hell out it, have all night. She's 21, gorgeous like a model is and hands down the most outstanding player I have ever seen, guy or girl. The whole room bows to her wherever she's at without even thinking about it, and she can easily take home any single man she wants strictly by virtue of the fact that she knows she can. Sometimes I just watch her go, it's unreal like you see in a movie or something.

It was fun tonight. We picked up a set of brothers for a while and she got drunk on shots and I cracked up at my guy's moves and then was struck by how much we had in common. I asked him a version of my standard set of get to know yous and was wowed, totally wowed by his answers. I told him so, and then felt bad later when we went from the bar on the beach back in to the club and lost him on the dance floor. The guy I wanted to talk to from earlier in the night was back in there creeping again but there were too many meatheads dancing up on us for me to make any kind of second move. In the end we danced a whole lot together, me and her, and I left smiling and so happy and ready to listen to hiphop on the ride back to her pad.

I read this article in Vogue last week about a woman in arrested development because she was going out with a much, much younger man. She is non-committal to the idea, as to whether or not it really is something about her psychology she is trying to work out by having such a young live-in lover. All she knows is that she is happy and her needs are met, and she long ago quit judging herself so it's just a passing thought that she bats at for a moment. My mom said something similar to me in the middle of the summer, asked what it was I was attempting to work through by hanging out all night every night like I was 22 again. I was unsure, and still am, though I must say it's made the subject matter in my novel much easier to delve inside of and write from the inside out. The real truth is I love my friends, I love my job here, I love my life.

Where I work is like a family and I haven't been surrounded by such intimate connections in a resteraunt since years ago at the pizza shop before Eddie died. I am fiercly loyal now towards my crew of young friends. The seventeen-year-old whose folks just split up, the other seventeen-year-old all the guys in the kitchen pick on for trying so hard. The big guy with the soft heart that I've never ever heard raise his voice or mutter a harsh word. The twenty-four year-old cutie with worlds inside of him that he ignores who's totally confused and uncertain about his next move in life. The 20 year-old who just said goodbye to his summer love, a nineteen year-old wilen ass girl who speaks in funny moosh mouth tongues and goes to raves except their not called that anymore and who loves her drugs. The fourteen year-old with the cruel stepdad who wears the flourescent shoes and knows too much. The suntouched highschool senior who never ever doesn't smile. The recent college graduate who works way too much and complains about it but never says no and who wants me to take her shopping for sophisticated clothes. The gorgeous mom going through a divorce re-finding her self much as I am, too. The nineteen year-old blonde bombshell who was like a little sis to me before she left to go back to school...They all are, like little brothers and sisters to me. It started with Eddie and Timmy Mac, my cous's, and hanging with them and then I got tight with all the others, too. When we go out at night I always drive so that everyone gets in safe, and also because I think it matters that they see someone in her thirties hot, still down, and chillin without any lick of drugs or booze. They are funny and loud and mellow, very mellow, and bitch alot and also show one another so much love. I am so, so blessed to get to be a part of the lives of each one of them I've gotten to know, if only for this minor fleeting moment.

And also, because it is fun, why shouldn't I live it up? On our walk back to her house tonight once we realized the pizza shop was closed she was talking about her last year and her different men and mentioned a point when her heart was vulnerable.

And I thought, when are they not?

When are we ever so lucky enough to not have them out and hungry, our fierce little hearts openmouthed to the world? And would that even be luck, to not have the awful and glorious misery of being here alive, showing up day after day to the fresh new world? No, it would be terrible. To miss out. Life is awful and it is beautiful. It is the calm eye of the hurricane and the whippin winds on the edge and the blue skies or rain in between. It is waiting, that still and silent waiting before the storm hits and changes the landscape again. It is full of greasy stale food and overtime and complaining retirees. And hunger and love and fucking and pain and laughing, and dancing and feeling sexy and beautiful and totally alive. It is going to bed alone or with another breathing, confused body next to your side. It is it is it is...

And oh, some nights, it just feels so good to ride.