1965
And so we put the top down and were off… chasing the Sun and the wheat was high and the crickets were singing in the summer heat over the hills with the fields stretching for miles to the sky and the radio played nothing but beautiful music until we were suspended between the road and the sky…
1975
So I dragged myself into the bathroom for another nine to five SPLASH day and oh the monotony and frustration of hoping that maybe things will change Lord if only I didn’t think it would, it wouldn’t be so bad. But if I have so many options why am I stuck here? SPLASH a house, a wife, two kids, one on the way and enough bills to keep me working twenty years after I’m dead if I’m not dead already. Oh but who’s complaining – I must have more life in me – why else would I be so strung out? I mean what else could strike more to the quick than what I’m doing. SPLASH! Gotta be alive! SPLASH! I know that. SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH! This job’s kept me in a state of suspended animation for years, like that motorcycle out there in the garage that just sits there.. and I’m still twenty years old and I get in that car cruising down that highway radio blaring I’m really gone forever nineteen Sharon – you beautiful wise mouth girl – I’m coming home those beautiful swimmer’s shoulders and how I remember that summer’s day out in the prairie cruising down that Highway and thinking how beautiful how beautiful – life could hold no more than to enjoy that day and you and those golden green fields and that brilliant sunshine sitting there in that convertible and oh the fleetingness of it all…
1985
All I could think of was this story I once heard on the radio station about this guy when he was young taking the girl of his dreams for a long ride in the country, golden wheat fields brilliant sunshine stopping for Cokes the whole bit sitting with the top down toasting life and oh so high on everything the sun in the bottle reflecting through the glass and the Coke and the flies… the flies. Flies! – in the bottom of the bottle?! – an inch thick!! aaa-YEECHH!!! – Leaping out of the seat and running into the restroom gagging and vomiting and ohh it was gone it was all gone the beauty the magic of the moment Sharon gone “Gus”… the flies in the ointment “Gus” and Oh Sharon I wonder if you’d’ve still been beautiful “Gus”… sometimes I wonder if you really were beautiful… “GUS”… and if I were really handsome… or I just thought we were “GUS??” I even wonder what you really even looked like “GUS!!”
“WHAT?”
“did you take the garbage out yet?”
“What?”
“did you take the garbage out YET – Where are you?… where are you anyway?”
“I’m out in the garage.”
“Where out in the garage?”
“the garage-garage.”
“What are you doing out there?” As she came through the door. “You looking at that motorcycle again?.. oh boy.. Some men never grow up.”
“Yeah some never do…”
“So did you take the garbage out?”
1995
There’s a Far Side cartoon where the lady’s speaking to her dog and then her cat. In the first one it shows what the dog hears: in the bubble you see “blah blah blah Fido blah blah blah Fido…” In the cat’s you see just a blank space. Mine’s going from “blah blah blah Gus blah blah blah motorcycle” to just that blank space.
“Did you hear me?”
“huh?”
“Oh God – you see! That’s why I don’t talk to you! – you never listen!”
2005