https://www.angelfire.com/art/crazee/index.html
illustrious2002@hotmail.com
Rebecca A. Barrington
Last week she wouldn't look at me twice. But on Tuesday night she strolled into the diner. I was sitting there in a corner booth cradling the third cup of Canadian-strong coffee in my big paws when she slid into the corner booth next to mine, facing directly at me for God's sakes. I was put on the spot.
"Hey." I said to her, actually I was trying to take some of the uncomfortable heat off of me.
"Hey." she said back. Then she stretched her arm into her black backpack and brought out a copy of Doctor Sax and thumbed it open to a page marked by a long black feather.
Nikki, the waitress with the vine tattoo running the length of her arm, took her order for a coffee, au lait.
"I need lots of cream," she said smiling. "Add a side order of macaroni and cheese.”
"Like Kerouac, eh?" I blurted out.
She looked straight at me, held out the book, cover facing me and said, "Well, yeah...doesn't everyone?"
It wasn't really a question, more of a statement, making me feel like an ignorant ass. Damn, damn, wrong approach.
"I'm doing a Kerouac kind of road trip soon." I said as she set the book aside to take a sip of the coffee Nikki had just set down on the table.
Her head rose swiftly like a buck catching the scent of a doe. Ah-ha! I had her attention and if I played my cards right she could be mine!
The Creature had come to town only two weeks earlier. My friend Katie told me she saw the her signing up for classes at Northwestern.
"I think she's an art history major. Out of your league Mensa boy," Katie said, smirkingly. "A little rich girl not interested in poor boys like you handsome."
I had watched the Creature. The way her tits bounced beneath her belly shirts, so firm and erect with nipples facing upward like sipper cups. She liked to wear the kind of skirts with one piece of opaque flowered cloth underneath and this sheer see-through overlayer thing. Oh my God, the way her ass moved in a rhythm so tantalizing. I salivated every time I saw her. To say I wanted her was too trivial. I looked at a hundred women a day...yes, yes, yes, no, yes...within seconds I knew whether I wanted them or not. But this, this Creature, she is THE ONE. She is the one I want to capture. She makes my body go electric. I must have her! I must!
"Yeah, I'm heading out east. I want to visit Kerouac's grave, see Lowell, get a taste of the town." I was trying to be so cool. Hell, I was making up shit.
The Creature took my bait.
"Are you kidding?" she asked, her eyes opening wide.
"Nah, I've been planning this for two years. I read On The Road when I was 17 and now it's time for me to see the steles."
"Steles?" she asked.
"Oh yeah, in Lowell, on Kearney Square. I heard the city did four triangular monuments to Kerouac's works. Parts of his books are inscribed in the stones." I got that straight out of Subterranean Kerouac, page 377. Damn it sounded good.
"Oh my God." she gasped, "I've never even heard of them." she paused, "When are you leaving?" Damn when could I leave, let's see, think quick. "Well, on Friday, 3 in the morning. Want to beat the rush hour traffic out of Chicago".
"Who's going with you?" she asked.
"I'm going alone, all of my buds are working or getting ready to start school. It starts in two weeks ya know." I gave her a window.
"For how long would you be gone?" She had a distinct crisp edge to her voice. I would guess she was from southern Wisconsin the way she drew out certain syllables and sharply clipped others. Her voice wasn't polluted by Chicago dah-hey-dere like mine was.
"For a week, want to spin out there and back again. I have a few other things to do out there too.”
"Looking for company on your road trip?" She did her seduction face all coy and mischievous, eyes turned slightly downward, like she was offering me something.
"Hey if you want to ride along it's okay with me." I said it cool, not caring, but really praying so hard that she'd say "take me!"
We walked out of the diner together making plans. We talked everyday, about the trip of course. Oh, to hear her sweet voice over the phone. If I tell you I was touching it while she talked you will think I am some sort of pervert so I won't tell you that part. But the days flashed by until Thursday night. I was so hyped I was running naked through my house trying to remember everything...clothes, flashlight, plastic cups, paper towels, toilet paper, book bag, case of Beck's, condoms, big bag of Jay's potato chips, notebook, extra socks...
At 2 I fell out. At 4 the phone rang numbers. "Hey are we still on for this Kerouac trip"? She sounded quizzical and a little miffed.
"Yeah, yeah, umm..." God think here..."umm yeah, I'll be over in fifteen minutes. Trucks all packed. Let's go!"
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Day One:
The Creature stood in the morning mist like a nymph out of Mallarme's poem, one of them not ruffled yet by Pan, all virginal and waiting for my touch. She tossed her fancy forest green travel bag in the silver diamond-quilted truck box I had just purchased for the trip. "Watch this one." she said as she tucked an overstuffed black portfolio beside the green bag, "It has my art stuff-painting boards, brushes, books, the important stuff." Then she winked. Fuck when was the last time a woman winked at me? Never. I'm sure I would remember that!
She slid her ass up into the seat and strapped the seat belt across her left breast. Oh, how I would love to be that seat belt caressing that tit. Her long legs bare, she's wearing little white shorts....fill the cab. As we pull out of the drive, windows closed, I can smell her-freshly washed hair with one of those woman-fruit scents, maybe mango or strawberry, wait something coconut, and a hint of citrusy orangy grapefruit, damn sensory overload. With my nose slightly upward I strain for a smell of her pussy but it eludes me. Maybe later as the perfumey scents wear away it will be revealed. Please.
The first leg of this trip ripped through the heart of Chicago, up on the Skyway and spit out into Indiana. Do it all of the time.
She chatters away but I am only half listening I am more interested in watching her, the way her body moves, the way she arches her head back and laughs, her throat revealed to me. How I want to lick it all of the way up to her sensuous mouth and suck on those lips. Her hands move as if she is creating some elaborate tapestry. A story quilt that will fill the cab with us, her and me, naked under it.
I am trying to drive through Indiana and Ohio but she is distracting me, not her talk, her body, the way her skin trembles at every little bump in the road. I glimpse at her constantly from the corner of my eye. She is teetering the Rand McNally on her lap checking the route.
"White Castle! White Castle!" I yell as we close in on the familiar blue-and-white sign. "You like White Castle?"
"Not really," she answers "but yeah, lets stop I'm hungry."
I grab a six-pack of the bite-size perforated burgers and she orders a chicken dinner thing. It doesn't feel right inside, so we step outside and eat on the hood of the pick-up. Her lips, those lips, blessings of a cherub, bite gently into the chicken meat. How I wish those lips were on me. Damn. Even to watch her eat...
"This sucks!" Her face screws up tight.
"Oh no.”...sigh. I wanted her to love it to keep eating to use those lips again and again. "Here want one of these?"
"No, I don't like them." She pulls the plastic cap off a Styrofoam container revealing mac cheese. The fork grabs a small glob and whoosh! it slips between those lips into her wet and waiting mouth.
God! Get hold of yourself.
"Any better?"
"Mmmmmmm yes. This is tasty." A macaroni and cheese girl, a noodle girl. I liked it.
"Detroit's just ahead, then we'll swing into Canada."
"K." she says licking the spoon.
Thirty-five minutes later we pull into a side lane and see the bridge to Canada. Semis and cars packed tight, honking, yelling. This should be fun.
After exchanging $300.00 into loonies, two bears, and Canadian five dollar bills at the last Detroit stop, we feed into the trail of gasoline vapors up onto the bridge.
"I don't feel good." she says "My country...I'm feeling...disconnected." She retracts her long legs back into her body. Protecting herself from ?
Welcome to Canada.
Going through the border crossing, she leans out the window. Arret. Stop. "Look at the signs! she giggles. "Both red octagons, in two languages. A new world." She clicked twice to make certain she captured the image. We wormed up to the booth in lane six of the ten lanes of traffic flowing into the north country. "No pictures." says the guard. "I should confiscate your camera." He looks inside the truck, his eyes tracing her from toetip to that glorious mane of golden brown hair. "Oh it's okay. Next time no pictures."
A few hours later as the sun begins to turn a brilliant orange we pull into a motel in London, Ontario.
"Two rooms?" I ask her.
"Why?" she says back.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.
"Two beds." she adds.
She throws her bags on the bed and leaves to see the pool. "I love swimming!" she says, "I grew up on a lake."
Minutes later she returns frowning as if someone just stole her best friend, "I want to swim, but it's too cold".
"Let's eat," I say "See the town."
Huddled into the noisy Hungry Lawyer we move close to talk. I feel her breath.
Two bookstores later, with copies of Ginsberg, Corso, Klimt, and Klee tucked under our arms, we head back to...THE BED.
Oh yeah baby.
An HBO movie mumbles out of the TV and she is in the bathroom changing.
The Creature enters, golden, glowing, in an oversized T-shirt her thighs still damp from the shower, her hair lapped over a white towel.
She takes a big large-toothed red comb and slices it through her hair, over and over. I'm looking from the sides of my eyes. Don't want to stare. Don't want to frighten the colt.
She pulls back the covers and slides her body in. "Night."
Phew.
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Day Two:
I wake early and find her body wrapped tightly in blankets, her feet sticking out, her face toward me, that mouth slightly open, wanting me. Her eyes gently flutter as she sees me. "Morning". Her voice is buttery sweet with a scratchy undertone. I imagine it belongs to a girl who would start slowly in bed, then tear my flesh to pieces. Ah, one can dream.
After a quick breakfast at an interstate diner we are off.
"Look at that cement truck!” she smiles brightly "now that's it.” I look at her and wonder what in the hell she is talking about. She picks it up. "The rolling part: it's painted with polka dots! All bright scarlet red with brilliant white dots...ooooooooo" she smiles. "Now that would make road trips more interesting. They should paint murals on the sides of semis."
Well, at this point, she could tell me the stars were purple and the sun was green.
The landscape outside was boring, ratty-ass scrub. But here inside the cab of this truck, her landscape, oh yes. Her legs are crossed, her sandal, made of strips of burnished brown leather is dangling, her foot, is bouncing with the rhythm of the road.
Now I will say Canadians know how to drive. Fast. They pass and stay to the right. Making time. Getting closer.
"Have you read Kerouac's new book, Sitting Atop an Underwood?" she says squarely.
"Umm, no. On the Road, Vanity of Dulouz, and some of Doctor Sax...that one is very experimental, it reads like jazz."
"Underwood is about his early years when he was our age. He even had it then." She looked out of the side window and turned back to me. "You really are a Kerouac fan, aren't you?"
"Hell ya." I answered.
"Want to stop at one of those?" I'm pointing to a Tim Horton sign. Tasty donuts and Delicious Soups. How Canadian, soup and a donut. "Yes" she answers crispy. "I need to pee."
Back on the road. 35,60,83...there. The signs say 100 kph. Well, that translates to 63mph or something like that. Signs keep reminding us so we don't play that tourist trick of gee, the signs say 100. Haha. They are onto us!
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Day Three:
"I need a Walkman." she says. "The quality of the music from your speakers suck. I can't hear it. It flattens out when it hits my ears." In Hamilton we stop at an interstate mall and she buys a Walkman and three cassettes: Macy Gray's “On How Life Is”, Counting Crow's “This Desert Life”, and “Jack Kerouac Reads On The Road”
She slips the headset on over her ears pulling back her golden brown hair. The hairtips brush her erect nipples. Why are they erect I wonder? Could the tickle of her hair make them come alive? Are they that sensitive?
All of a sudden she begins to sing. Loud. But she doesn't know all of the words. Humming, then singing off-key again. I laugh inside. She sucks. And then it happens. I see her wiggle her foot. The sandal claps to the floor and she extends her leg up onto the dash. Oh My God. She's off, lost in a song... “why didn't cha call me again/I thought you'd be my humhum, my lover, my friend/”...and her leg, feet to the window, curved to the side, legs apart, oh yes, now, now, now, I capture the faint scent of her in my nostrils. They flare opening to her smell. I am in heaven. I am frustrated as hell.
As we drive into Niagara Falls the traffic halts stalling to a crab crawl. Narrow streets clustered with old, old buildings turned into nightmare palaces and souvenir shops selling Canada maple leaf T-shirts. She is amused. Smiling, but still singing those songs. Over and over and over. Right over the bridge back to the U.S., right next to the rushing water of Niagara Falls. "Kerouac." she says giving the thumbs up sign. I don't know if she means the tape or return to the motherland. But I am ready to bust my ass. All I want to do is drive.
Hours later, after dragging from town to town, and picking up a six-pack of Busch we find a vacancy in some shitty little mom-and-pop motel. We don't bother to bring the bags in. She is tired and I am an asshole.
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Day Four:
Freshly showered and ready to drive, drive ,drive. The nights are maddening. Long, restless, wanting. So today I am adjusting the rearview mirror back into position. I can no longer be tempted by her charms. She thinks she has me wrapped around her pinkie, the one with the silver Egyptian cartouche on it. No. Nope. No way.
My sights are set on seeing the steles. Looking down the barrel...heading to Lowell. There she goes again throwing her legs up on the dash, singing the songs, at least now it's Kerouac...a dirge..."baaaaaaaalloooooons, baaaallooooons, baaaallooooons, baallooons." Okay, so the smoothness of her skin is attractive. I don't care. And so what if I even want her toes in my mouth. Kerouac...Kerouac...Kerouac I keep telling myself.
We come into Lowell, hill-high, midmorning. I must have been maniac driving.
Can't remember.
It looks as if we have wandered into an old people's home. People fill the streets, but they are ancient, bent on canes, wheeling oxygen tanks, baby-stepping. The town is old, colonial as you would expect. Three-story bricks side-by-side, wide sidewalks. The Kearney Square Cafe....hey must be close. The steles are on Kearney Square. We buzz up two blocks to get gas next to the Club Diner, the sign says “Great American Food since 38.”
The Creature gets out to do the windows. She took that job up right at the beginning of the trip. Stretching across to reach the middle of the window. She doesn't even know the men behind her at every stop are watching her perform. She returns to the truck. "No washer" she says somewhat pissed. "A gas station with no damn washer" she pauses, "and the guy in there never heard of Kerouac." She slams the door like we have entered Twilight Zone instead of Lowell.
We swing back down the main street. No signs. "It has to be near the cafe." she says, "Let's just park. We'll find it."
On a back street next to a college bookstore we grab a spot just vacated by a Nissan. A black parking-ticket-lady rounds the corner and the girl asks her. "Oh, I think they are two blocks that way," she says pointing east.
We see the steles and the girl gets all stimulated, "There they are! Oh My God! It's real!" She is half skipping and I am starting to laugh.
As we close in on them, the sun brilliant high noon, we separate. Quietly we wander among the nine-feet-tall triangular monuments. They're all a rosy pink polished granite so smooth to the touch, and each four are etched with the opening lines of the representative book: Lonesome Traveler, Doctor Sax, Mexico City Blues, The Town and the City, Book of Dreams, Visions of Gerard, Maggie Cassidy.
The Creature is stuck on the one etched Vanity of Duluoz. I can hear her reading aloud, very loud, relishing the words: "All RIGHT, WIFEY, MAYBE I'M A BIG PAIN in the you-know-what but after I've given you a recitation of the troubles I had to go through to make good in America between 1935 and more or less, 1967, although I also know everybody in the world's had his own troubles, you'll understand that my particular form of anguish came from being too sensitive to all the lunkheads I had to deal with just so I could be a high school football star, a college student pouring coffee and washing dishes and scrimmaging till dark and reading Homer's Illiad in three days all at the same time, and God help me, a W R I T E R, whose very “success,” far from being a happy triumph as of old, was a sign of doom Himself. (Insofar as nobody loves my dashes anyway, Ill use regular punctuation for the new illiterate generation.)”
I am quiet, reverent, feeling the power of Kerouac's words as I read these words carved into stone forever. The Creature is now taking pictures weaving back and forth through the stones. The backdrop of the town of Lowell reflects back from the gleaming stone. Reading. Now I see her over by a guy sitting on a bench. He is staring at one of the steles: On The Road.
I see the Creature bathed in light a pink glow emanating from the stele pointing towards me. The guy around our age with a shiv glinting out of his sock, is nodding in my direction. He rises. Together they walk toward me.
"Hey," she says to me, "this guy is from Lowell. What was the name of the cemetery again?"
"Edson"
"No shit." says the guy "That's where Kerouac's buried?"
"Ya." I say back to him.
"I just found out about Kerouac. I'm halfway through On The Road. I'd like to get out of here." His voice curls around the work "road" so it sounds like "woad." Short and clipped, yet hollow.
He gives me the directions and we head off to the cafe at the girl's request.
Pushing through the glass-face door we enter a tiny cafe with a six-seat counter and four booths, The hostess-cum-waitress is at least sixty, dressed in pink and ruffles, her bleached blonde hair done in Shirley Temple curls. We order grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee. "I love this place" the girl says, "I love the way it feels." The way she says it, if I could only grasp what she is seeing, feeling. I have no idea what she is talking about.
Two miles south is the vast Edson cemetery, quite ordinary, We park and go different directions. The grave, near the larger Eisenstatt grave, is simply a flat gray granite stone decorated with two forgotten geraniums, one red, one white, trying to stay alive in a weed patch. The marker says: "Ti Jean" John L. Kerouac, Mar 12, 1922-Oct 25, 1969. Pieces of paper, notes from admirers lay at the corners trapped in place by small chunks of road asphalt. Someone has left a black BIC. I opened a miniature of Jack and pour it over his grave.
He died a drunk. Maybe I will too.
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Day Five:
How much longer can I take this? At night, alone, in a motel room with her. By day she moves, her skin trembles echoing the movement of the truck, her sweet voice twirling in my head, those cherry lips doing many erotic things. She even, occasionally throughout the day, will pull out a red lipstick and pull it across them, refixing, making me imagine.
At an Connecticut interstate McDonald's she orders a lobster sandwich. She is throwing her head back laughing and when we get back to the pickup she places the black plastic tray holding the sandwich on her lap and takes a picture. "No one back home will be believe this."
Here we are in New York buckle-to-ankle with vehicles on the George Washington Bridge and truck drivers are playing with her. One, the 50 year old in the Viking Transport, has a finger puppet. She is laughing at his antics. I am pissed.
We crawl back and forth missing the exit and have to take the George Washington bridge to get back into Manhattan, another 4 bucks. We find a spot down at the tip on Park Row near the World Financial Center.
“Hey our cows." I point to three life-size Fiberglas figures that look like paintings. "They have our cows."
"Yes." she says, "They took the Chicago art cow idea and did it here this year. And now we have ping pong tables on our sidewalks and gondola rides on the Chicago River." She starts to laugh, "Venice in Chicago and we are here."
After a walk through the park to catch a glance at The Statue of Liberty and a quick stop at a deli we are back on the road. Checking the map, we have to go through Holland Tunnel. It is miles long, runs under the Hudson River, but as we near and read the "No Hazmat" signs the Creature rears up. "No, Please no. I heard about an incident that happened here. An accident, the tunnel turned into a ball of fire and a woman was cremated right inside of her car. No tunnels." So back up the length of Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge we cross into the wasteland called New Jersey.
It is starting to rain. The first bad weather we have encountered. As afternoon turns to night we race through a water-stained Philadelphia, the top stem of Delaware, have dinner in Baltimore and fly right past our nation's capitol. Once out of the blistering traffic, lights smearing the wet pavement, we stop at a cafe.
Neither of us is talking. I say "What time is it?" she shrugs her shoulders. After a few moments I ask "What town is this?" The road has run us up. We are vacant.
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Day Six:
Manassas. We wake up in Manassas, Virginia.
"Let's not drive today." she says brushing out her hair. "We need a break from the road." I agree.
"How about a battlefield?" History class, umm Manassas I remember.
"K." she says quietly.
We do a historical walkabout at the Battle of Bull Run and learn what a great general Stonewall Jackson was. He held off the Union troops.
We are Northerners and the grits served with our breakfast strikes us as peculiar. What the hell are grits? White paste? Tastes like...nothing.
We decide to go on. Get back on the road. The landscape is starting to change. Hills grow and the road starts to roll and curve.
"This town." she says as we enter Front Royal. "Let's stay here."
We find a little yellow brick place called the Twi-Lite Motel. It has a pool. She has been waiting to take a swim. After I sign in and pay the East Indian manager $65.00 we enter red door number 8. Two beds, one table, three lamps, two inoffensively pale floral watercolor prints framed and placed above each bed, and one luggage rack. The same damn room over and over again.
Immediately she strips right in front of me. I only have so much self-control. What does she expect of me? But as fast as she shed her khaki shorts and red tank top she has pulled on a blue-and-white flowered bikini.
"Get your suit on!" she says as she runs out the door.
"Hell yeah."
Tonight she is at the pool. I am watching that body. I am hard.
In the water she comes alive swimming back and forth, diving, moving, floating, splashing me, pulling me close to her.
"Let's go back." she says laughing dreams into the air.
And as soon as door number 8 closes she is naked. I am staring. She moves toward me and I toward her. Our mouths meet. She wants me. Me. Tonight we collide. Tonight. This is it. I take her into my arms, squeeze her, hold her close. She too is absorbing me into her. Slowly we dance, sweet and forever, ravenously hungry. Glistening skin and gasping breaths...kissing...licking...touching...squeezing...feeling...waiting...openi ng...sucking...wanting...needing...surrendering...plunging...moving...leaving. ..reentering...stroking...cupping...grasping...loving...licking...kissing...ca ressing...
"Good night my darling."
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Day Seven:
I wake up fresh. The world is new. The Creature. Oh, the Creature. I slip out of the covers and head off to the motel lobby to grab some coffee for us. Us, how I dig that thought.
Warm, steamy heat hits my skin when I open the door. A better day. A new morning. Warmer. And suddenly my eyes focus on an image by the pool. I hear a splash. A Creature. A Creature all wet emerging from the water. Long black hair. Lips of shimmering gold. Her body a sculpture. A Venus de Milo with arms. Her breasts, the way they move beneath the bikini top. I salivate. I must have her. I must.
Control. Self-control.
Back at the room, fresh coffee in hand. Our lips meet. "You are incredible," she says. "You too," I say back to those cherriest of lips. I hand her a cup. My traveling companion says, "No. No thanks. No coffee today. I saw a Laundromat down the street. I am out of clothes. Could you find something to do for an hour or so? So boring. I'll go alone". She grabs the truck keys, tosses a pillowcase of clothes over her shoulder and begins dissolving into the morning light.
"No prob," I say as she disappears through the doorway. "I'm going to take a dip."