Back Seat Driving
The days are heavy. Sleep comes easily, drowning me each night, exhausted without reason. I do not dream – but for you, I labour over dreams, constructing them like epic novels, struggling to find the perfect scenes. Sleep comes easily, but my dream work is drawn out and tiresome. Sleep itself suffocates me, and I wake up an insomniac’s double.
*
You lock eyes with yourself in the mirror while your hands absently knot your tie in their mechanical way, the way they have tied it so many times. Standing next to you and behind I watch as your eyes glance ever so briefly at my face.
“You look like shit. With so much work you have to do, you’re just wasting time by going out.” It hardly matters what I say – you ignore me on principle. Tonight’s different to other nights though, and you and I both know it. I can see the tiny sweat beads, like diamonds, just below your hairline, waiting patiently for their time to travel over the landscape of your pores down towards your eyebrows – but not yet. They stay buoyant on your brow. For now, you are calm, floating – calm enough to tie your tie smoothly, beautifully, as if it were a work of art: over, under, over, under, over, through and pull.
“You should stay home,” I say with a sigh, knowing it’s my last futile attempt as you turn away from the mirror and silently walk to the bathroom. With a sense of defiance you splash a tiny spit of cologne on your neck and comb your hair. And in a moment you, we, are out: wallet, phone, shoes, jacket, car keys and all.
In the morning light our car door slams echo around the street. As you pull out, we don’t speak and I don’t mind, I guess, staring in half-consciousness through fog-clouds. You won’t turn the radio on so the silence fills up the car, like carbon monoxide fills up cars of businessmen committing suicide; like a leather upholstered fish tank. Today you are a careful driver, full of nerves; your gaze stays locked on the road as mine on the mist, gazing comatose out the passenger window.
We approach a tunnel. There are a lot of tunnels around here. They say this one goes under the river, but I’ve never understood how that works. They seem to gradually descend and apparently, in the middle, the passage is completely submerged. At any moment, I expect a flood to pour through a weak spot, pressing and pressing until suddenly the pressure is too much and the rounded ceiling collapses in, opening onto invincible steel and glass machines its fury.
Minutes pass, catastrophic minutes in white froth and bent metal. And the suddenly, things are still, as the water envelops what is left of the tunnel and a surge of air bubbles rush to the surface. On all sides, the interior lights at the bottom of the walls still survive, lighting the marine scene mysteriously orange as shoals of silver fishes and lone eels gradually approach the sunken traffic. Those whose windows have not cracked yet wait patiently for their sudden and violent exit, like goldfish waiting to exit their plastic bags.
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” you say. “It’s a fucking stupid idea.”
In the tunnel we are slowed down, as if the air has thickened with smog. What seems like hundreds, a crowd of cars move close to each other, packed tightly in. I blink, watching for a moment as a shark swims between four wheel drives and convertibles, its streamlined fin poking over tops of rooves two lanes over. Faster than cars, it’s gone as soon as it came, weaving between shining, glimmering bonnets.
As we move ever slightly forward giant trucks, like slow motion dinosaurs, loom ahead. Dwarfing the tiny cars, they move like whales on a migration, their giant tops almost brushing the tunnel roof. Their mechanisms groan and echo in the confined space. The orange lights in the tunnel reflect off hundreds of windscreens and as we move to a stop, a sea of flashing red stop blinker eyes fade into a slow humming haze. I let my eyes fall out of focus, watching the blurred shapes and colours gradually darken. I don’t know where we are going.
*
You say I am your dreams – are you then, mine? I dream only of control, The shadow of a figure drapes behind it, each step guided by the figure’s foot, attached as if by puppeteer’s strings. And then imperceptibly, the image is reversed. The shadow now pulls the figure, elongating at each step as if to tug slightly at the heels.
For a sply second I see myself behind the wheel.
*
When I awake, we are just exiting a tunnel. Our clock is broken, and I have no idea how much time has passed, but I am sure this is a different tunnel because the sky outside is grey from a different angle. The day has all but passed me by, escaping my wakefulness and disappearing into darkness, and I glance back through the rear windscreen to watch a frothy wave recede back in to the black hole.
Soon we are driving on the freeway, and it is definitely night-time. I lean over and find a water bottle in the back seat, and I drunk some, thirsty after the carbon monoxide sleep, my face patterned by dynamic headlight patterns that flash through the car. It’s slightly warm – you have some as well, and then we both wind down the windows, even though the air is colder than expected. I breathe it deep, and remember how you used toh old your breath through tunnels as a child.
“So?” you ask, incredulously. The road here goes straight on for kilometres, market out only by an endless stream of streetlights majestically towering over the snaking roadway and the ever disappearing tails of lone cars in the distance ahead. “Just let me drive, for once.” I lean further out and let the wind blow my hair around my face.
We pass through a village where tiny houses are recognisable only by the glowing or flickering lights from their front windows. Through some you can see television sets and their eerie projection of reflected light onto walls. There are more streetlights and I can see now that you look exhausted, your eyes pulling your face downwards, so I suggest pulling over.
“You think you’re a god?” I ask, throwing the water bottle between my hands. “You think you can make it? That’ll work well when we’re a flickering TV news statistic.”
You only murmur to yourself something about the time. I glance at the clock.
“Oh Mighty One, divine for us the time.”
*
It take an hour and two other anonymous townships until you finally stop the car. I am freezing, the wind has picked up and finally, it seems, you are no longer invincible.
Mortal but power mad, we are walking down the street like kings. Trees, cars, streetlights all bow down to us and we stride over asphalt sidewalks like royalty. At least, you do. Your tight grip on the box of chocolates clutched in your claw-like hand betrays your nervous denial.
“Work to do. Should go home.” I say blankly, lagging a couple of steps behind you. Too proud to admit I’m right, you fly forward with the horsepower of ego to prove just how much yo uare willing to ignore me, and I can tell that you are in the mood to do something irrational.
“She lives down there,” I say, quietly, stopping at the corner. Six angry power steps later, you stop and turn, now on the other side of the road, practically leaving a wake behind you of sweat and stomach born butterflies. I’m not dressed for visiting and you’re trying to lose me, which is fair enough, because I only came out with you to try and convince you to go back, a pleading toddler attached to your leg.
You, dashing, sleek, slim and sweating, straighten your tie obsessive-compulsively and jog up to the front stairs to rap on the door like a detective. I wait at the gate, leaning nonchalantly. What the fuck are you doing? Why have we come here again? I watch you embrace her, your vulgar hands slipping around her back, snaking around her neck. I decide to go back to the car.
*
At daybreak I wander back to find you speaking to her in the next room outside. The café is small and smells like your grandmother’s kitchen. Maybe that is why you took us here. I know that’s a lie. Your coffee is bitter and the waitress smiles at you. She looks pretty in the morning light, like all the others, incarnations of your fantasises and nothing less than bass note wet porn star dreams to you. She looks like a girl we went to school with, but I suspect that she sees in you the sweat soaked pinstripe peepshow in your mind.
“She knows you,” I suggest. You slam down your coffee cup.
*
WE don’t go through the tunnel on the way home. You must have found a different way, I guess, but then, I know you better.
“Sometimes, when there is so much traffic, the longer way takes a shorter time,” you explain, patronisingly. We pass over a wide river and I wonder how many cars lie underneath us, underneath the water, each travelling to its own destination.
You decide to listen to some music in the car, so you put on Revolver. We have the same discussion every time; you believe George wrote the best music, and I say John and Paul did. We speak as if we have authority, each knowing more than the other, claiming knowledge of musicians we weren’t alive to hear. Eventually you turn away from me, again locked to the road. I am saying, quietly,
“Listen to me,” but you are far away. I raise my voice, “For God’s sake listen to me,” but you are a shark, weaving down the highway ahead of the car, and I am a fish in a steel and glass fishbowl, in a plastic pet shop bag, and I am screaming, listen to me, listen you bastard here I am. Here I always am, always by your side, always on your road trips, watching your infidelities, listening to your moans, keeping track of your drug habit, your money spent, your racist assumptions, your embarrassing childhood, your unwanted recollections, your awkward lingering silences, your every waking moment of truth. You think you’re a fucking God? You think you’re infallible? The only reason you’re not jumping off cliff tops is me, me! I’m your only rationality and all you repay me with is silence and a cold shoulder, well fuck you man, fuck you and your God-complex. Listen to me, for once in your life – I’m your conscience, your fucking conscience, I’m trying to drown you and you’ve taken the wrong fucking way home.
Back Seat Driving
The days are heavy. Sleep comes easily, drowning me each night, exhausted without reason. I do not dream – but for you, I labour over dreams, constructing them like epic novels, struggling to find the perfect scenes. Sleep comes easily, but my dream work is drawn out and tiresome. Sleep itself suffocates me, and I wake up an insomniac’s double.
*
You lock eyes with yourself in the mirror while your hands absently knot your tie in their mechanical way, the way they have tied it so many times. Standing next to you and behind I watch as your eyes glance ever so briefly at my face.
“You look like shit. With so much work you have to do, you’re just wasting time by going out.” It hardly matters what I say – you ignore me on principle. Tonight’s different to other nights though, and you and I both know it. I can see the tiny sweat beads, like diamonds, just below your hairline, waiting patiently for their time to travel over the landscape of your pores down towards your eyebrows – but not yet. They stay buoyant on your brow. For now, you are calm, floating – calm enough to tie your tie smoothly, beautifully, as if it were a work of art: over, under, over, under, over, through and pull.
“You should stay home,” I say with a sigh, knowing it’s my last futile attempt as you turn away from the mirror and silently walk to the bathroom. With a sense of defiance you splash a tiny spit of cologne on your neck and comb your hair. And in a moment you, we, are out: wallet, phone, shoes, jacket, car keys and all.
In the morning light our car door slams echo around the street. As you pull out, we don’t speak and I don’t mind, I guess, staring in half-consciousness through fog-clouds. You won’t turn the radio on so the silence fills up the car, like carbon monoxide fills up cars of businessmen committing suicide; like a leather upholstered fish tank. Today you are a careful driver, full of nerves; your gaze stays locked on the road as mine on the mist, gazing comatose out the passenger window.
We approach a tunnel. There are a lot of tunnels around here. They say this one goes under the river, but I’ve never understood how that works. They seem to gradually descend and apparently, in the middle, the passage is completely submerged. At any moment, I expect a flood to pour through a weak spot, pressing and pressing until suddenly the pressure is too much and the rounded ceiling collapses in, opening onto invincible steel and glass machines its fury.
Minutes pass, catastrophic minutes in white froth and bent metal. And the suddenly, things are still, as the water envelops what is left of the tunnel and a surge of air bubbles rush to the surface. On all sides, the interior lights at the bottom of the walls still survive, lighting the marine scene mysteriously orange as shoals of silver fishes and lone eels gradually approach the sunken traffic. Those whose windows have not cracked yet wait patiently for their sudden and violent exit, like goldfish waiting to exit their plastic bags.
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” you say. “It’s a fucking stupid idea.”
In the tunnel we are slowed down, as if the air has thickened with smog. What seems like hundreds, a crowd of cars move close to each other, packed tightly in. I blink, watching for a moment as a shark swims between four wheel drives and convertibles, its streamlined fin poking over tops of rooves two lanes over. Faster than cars, it’s gone as soon as it came, weaving between shining, glimmering bonnets.
As we move ever slightly forward giant trucks, like slow motion dinosaurs, loom ahead. Dwarfing the tiny cars, they move like whales on a migration, their giant tops almost brushing the tunnel roof. Their mechanisms groan and echo in the confined space. The orange lights in the tunnel reflect off hundreds of windscreens and as we move to a stop, a sea of flashing red stop blinker eyes fade into a slow humming haze. I let my eyes fall out of focus, watching the blurred shapes and colours gradually darken. I don’t know where we are going.
*
You say I am your dreams – are you then, mine? I dream only of control, The shadow of a figure drapes behind it, each step guided by the figure’s foot, attached as if by puppeteer’s strings. And then imperceptibly, the image is reversed. The shadow now pulls the figure, elongating at each step as if to tug slightly at the heels.
For a sply second I see myself behind the wheel.
*
When I awake, we are just exiting a tunnel. Our clock is broken, and I have no idea how much time has passed, but I am sure this is a different tunnel because the sky outside is grey from a different angle. The day has all but passed me by, escaping my wakefulness and disappearing into darkness, and I glance back through the rear windscreen to watch a frothy wave recede back in to the black hole.
Soon we are driving on the freeway, and it is definitely night-time. I lean over and find a water bottle in the back seat, and I drunk some, thirsty after the carbon monoxide sleep, my face patterned by dynamic headlight patterns that flash through the car. It’s slightly warm – you have some as well, and then we both wind down the windows, even though the air is colder than expected. I breathe it deep, and remember how you used toh old your breath through tunnels as a child.
“So?” you ask, incredulously. The road here goes straight on for kilometres, market out only by an endless stream of streetlights majestically towering over the snaking roadway and the ever disappearing tails of lone cars in the distance ahead. “Just let me drive, for once.” I lean further out and let the wind blow my hair around my face.
We pass through a village where tiny houses are recognisable only by the glowing or flickering lights from their front windows. Through some you can see television sets and their eerie projection of reflected light onto walls. There are more streetlights and I can see now that you look exhausted, your eyes pulling your face downwards, so I suggest pulling over.
“You think you’re a god?” I ask, throwing the water bottle between my hands. “You think you can make it? That’ll work well when we’re a flickering TV news statistic.”
You only murmur to yourself something about the time. I glance at the clock.
“Oh Mighty One, divine for us the time.”
*
It take an hour and two other anonymous townships until you finally stop the car. I am freezing, the wind has picked up and finally, it seems, you are no longer invincible.
Mortal but power mad, we are walking down the street like kings. Trees, cars, streetlights all bow down to us and we stride over asphalt sidewalks like royalty. At least, you do. Your tight grip on the box of chocolates clutched in your claw-like hand betrays your nervous denial.
“Work to do. Should go home.” I say blankly, lagging a couple of steps behind you. Too proud to admit I’m right, you fly forward with the horsepower of ego to prove just how much yo uare willing to ignore me, and I can tell that you are in the mood to do something irrational.
“She lives down there,” I say, quietly, stopping at the corner. Six angry power steps later, you stop and turn, now on the other side of the road, practically leaving a wake behind you of sweat and stomach born butterflies. I’m not dressed for visiting and you’re trying to lose me, which is fair enough, because I only came out with you to try and convince you to go back, a pleading toddler attached to your leg.
You, dashing, sleek, slim and sweating, straighten your tie obsessive-compulsively and jog up to the front stairs to rap on the door like a detective. I wait at the gate, leaning nonchalantly. What the fuck are you doing? Why have we come here again? I watch you embrace her, your vulgar hands slipping around her back, snaking around her neck. I decide to go back to the car.
*
At daybreak I wander back to find you speaking to her in the next room outside. The café is small and smells like your grandmother’s kitchen. Maybe that is why you took us here. I know that’s a lie. Your coffee is bitter and the waitress smiles at you. She looks pretty in the morning light, like all the others, incarnations of your fantasises and nothing less than bass note wet porn star dreams to you. She looks like a girl we went to school with, but I suspect that she sees in you the sweat soaked pinstripe peepshow in your mind.
“She knows you,” I suggest. You slam down your coffee cup.
*
WE don’t go through the tunnel on the way home. You must have found a different way, I guess, but then, I know you better.
“Sometimes, when there is so much traffic, the longer way takes a shorter time,” you explain, patronisingly. We pass over a wide river and I wonder how many cars lie underneath us, underneath the water, each travelling to its own destination.
You decide to listen to some music in the car, so you put on Revolver. We have the same discussion every time; you believe George wrote the best music, and I say John and Paul did. We speak as if we have authority, each knowing more than the other, claiming knowledge of musicians we weren’t alive to hear. Eventually you turn away from me, again locked to the road. I am saying, quietly,
“Listen to me,” but you are far away. I raise my voice, “For God’s sake listen to me,” but you are a shark, weaving down the highway ahead of the car, and I am a fish in a steel and glass fishbowl, in a plastic pet shop bag, and I am screaming, listen to me, listen you bastard here I am. Here I always am, always by your side, always on your road trips, watching your infidelities, listening to your moans, keeping track of your drug habit, your money spent, your racist assumptions, your embarrassing childhood, your unwanted recollections, your awkward lingering silences, your every waking moment of truth. You think you’re a fucking God? You think you’re infallible? The only reason you’re not jumping off cliff tops is me, me! I’m your only rationality and all you repay me with is silence and a cold shoulder, well fuck you man, fuck you and your God-complex. Listen to me, for once in your life – I’m your conscience, your fucking conscience, I’m trying to drown you and you’ve taken the wrong fucking way home.
Posted 2 years ago
