Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch’Intrate

[Eh.  I’ve been such a monumental douche when it comes to noting.  I’ve been reading, and I’ve been intending to note for weeks, now, but I am in an awful mood.  I want to leave happy notes.  I’ll be back, I swear it:)]

Could it be, as you trip over your tongue in eagerness to confess, that waiting til you meet the Boatman was waiting too long?  Charon was never one for listening.  Perhaps he can’t hear.  The ride is pleasant if you’re deaf; it not, heaven help you, because the journey won’t.  Alighieri was well-served by fainting.  There is something to be said for sleeping through the brutal and boring, but I won’t repeat them.  They aren’t pretty, and better left to the melancholy.

These clothes don’t fit and my head hurts, you might think, as the prow of the ferry neatly divides the piping waves.  These lights are too bright and the screams too loud.  The water fetid and the ferryman somber.  That’s too bad.  Just shut the fuck up and ride; soon enough, you’ll be there, and you’ll wish the ride had never ended.

I should have gone down with the ship.

I borrowed my mother’s car, because I don’t trust mine for long distances.  It’s a Nissan Altima.  I like Nissans–not for handling, or safety, or comfortable seats, but because Bose stereos are factory-installed in every one.  They deliver a pristine sound; a more credulous man might tear off the dash, convinced they’d find Ben Gibbard or Ben Bridwell imprisoned beneath it.  Nice company for a quick jaunt to Madison up I-90, then over to Milwaukee on I-94, and then home on I-43.  It’s the particulars of the journey, though, that fill the shell of its soul.

"Where’d she go?" he asked me, his voice slurred through a slurry of whiskey.  She’d just stumbled by out of the bathroom, intent upon the door against the far wall.  Alcohol had distended her belly; while she had lost weight since her breakup, she wasn’t as skinny as when I met her.  Even so, her full breasts pulled the thin fabric of her shirt taut, and her round, violet eyes popped from the dark mascara against the olive of her skin.  If her eyes could focus, and cease their ballistic bouncing in their sockets, she would have been mighty attractive.  "I don’t know," I told him, the words not much stronger than his, "but I’m certainly glad that I don’t have to deal with it."  Wrong, you fucking fool.

As I merged onto the Interstate, traffic grudgingly gave way.  I’ll confess to occasional aggressive driving.  A habit I’ve accrued over years of delivering pizza, sometimes I imagine a hurry where none exists.  Today, though, one did exist.  I’d anticipated the day for awhile, and now that it had finally arrived, it had begun disastrously.  Madison was not an original stop on my itinerary, and now that it was, my entire schedule had been thoroughly destroyed.  Knowing that my irritation was cresting and threatening to crash, I popped in the CD I’d bought some months back.  Passion Pit, a concert I went to a few weeks ago, and music infused with a wealth of effervescent and positive emotion.

You always pay for cheap whiskey twice.  The sun paid me few favors as I staggered through the early morning chill to the driveway.  While I hadn’t driven the night before, of course, I had forgotten my phone in the tray between the seats.  The screen was blurred; vision was difficult in the bright light with a blistering headache.  Several missed calls, and a couple of texts.  As I listened to the voice mail messages and skimmed the long text, I groaned audibly.  Naturally, the one night I’m not the babysitter, this stupid shit happens.  Just a few minutes later, as if on cue, she called.

I-90 West through southern Wisconsin isn’t exactly scenic, but it is certainly natural.  Agrarian and lightly forested, hills lazily somersault on both sides, interrupted only by the occasional weigh station or off-ramp to a sparse hamlet.  Some people find driving soothing, or exhilarating, or even incredibly stressful.  To me, though, driving is work.  Onerous and bland.  I drive all day delivering pizzas, bobbing and weaving through the pratfalls of depending upon tips.  I am so fucking tired of being tipped a percentage.  What the hell does it matter to me if you order three pizzas or one?  It’s the same address, the same traffic, the same bumbling through the dark peering futilely out of my fogged window because someone didn’t turn on their porch light.  Or because some genius put black cast iron numbers against a brown facade.  Or because I was given an address that didn’t exist in the worst part of town.

He knew exactly where he was going.  He never forgets.  It’s entirely possible that the ferry hadn’t forgotten, either; as if honing on to the far shore, that clumsy little craft could have piloted me in itself.  I traced old words in an old language in an old plank of an old boat: Sanza speme vivemo in disio.  They always say to enjoy the ride.  How the fuck can you enjoy a ride while paralyzed by fear of the goddamn destination?  I should have punched a hole in the bottom of that goddamn boat.  I should have gone down with the ship, shouting defiance, wearing my haphazard fight like a bugle on my lips.  It was the foolish / hope that the destination might have changed; perhaps that looming gate across the expanse of filthy water might be something other than what was written all the fuck over it.  I should have gone down with the ship.  Now I’m the patsy, the stooge, the fool.  Pride-hurt and heartbroken, my fingers on the switch that lead to my own chair.  A ticket for a boat ride.  There’s a difference between regretful and regrettable, and I’ve the suspicion that I’m it.

I should have gone down with the ship.

I was raised on notions of my own brilliance.  There is a famous story in my family of being held back a year from entering Kindergarten due to my perceived immaturity, and by the end of that year, I was dividing.  Soon thereafter, in many subject areas, I was given breathtaking latitude to explore the scholastic world.  Fattened on these ideas of talent and self-satisfied with privilege, like a fool, I became enchanted by a sense of predestination; assuredly, I thought, that if I simply live my life, day-to-day, events would dump me on the doorstep of greatness.  It would be a simple feat, then, to push open the door.  These thoughts are thin blankets in October; they feel nice against your skin, but when December comes, one must find other means of keeping warm.

I’m cold right now.  I scrolled the air to warm and kept driving.  She was in detox, if only because sleeping in random yards is generally frowned upon by most of the world’spolice forces.  It’s rush hour in Madison when I arrive.  One of the cruel aspects of my misfortune, that.  Instead of getting to the game early, to tailgate, to toss back a beer and devour a brat, I have to hit both major rush hours in the entire state of Wisconsin.  Little did I know, by that time, in true form, my friends had drank half of a keg of beer, and the concussion count was at four.  I exit on the right off-ramp, but I can’t find the facility.  I’m lost, and traffic is too brisk and thick to comfortably figure it all out.

Lies.  It was all a pack of lies, and they’re the type that move too quickly to be outrun.  Like I love you to the naked woman you barely know, or I’ll see you soon to the college friend never meant to be seen again.  Oh, there’s always another, but it’s never the same.  That bag is cat-less; she knows that this hacksaw is kissing the hawsers with growling teeth.  That horse won’t drink; I always knew she’d do what she wanted.  Or, at the very least, she’d operate within the constraints she perceived, and the mind leads when the body won’t.  Fear leads when courage won’t; all courage is vainglorious in the face of the inevitable.  In sharp, angular words, I scribbled around a smashed spider upon my bedroom wall.  I was in love, once, and it protected me from everything but itself.  I pushed the air conditioner unit out of the window and howled obscenities on the moon.  Hope is a sweet drug, and withdrawal from it is excruciating.  Hope and foolishness share a border.  Forlorn and feral, stomping about in a silly little ferry, remembering the fool gets wise last.  Hope gets wise last, then, if only by proxy.  Last, last, last, floundering slowly through traffic, foundering pathetically in a stupid little boat.  Foundering: better get to hole-making, then.  Celui qui a bon coeur n’est jamais sot, from somewhere undefined.  Shut up, Sand.  I fucking hate you.

The name is Charon, he told me as we docked, proving he could hear.  Welcome home.

I should have gone down with the ship.