Roadmap to nowhere

Another glorious spring day in Carrboro, North Carolina. A few hours ago I strolled these familiar streets as I have countless times over the past dozen or so years. A lot has changed. I seem to tire more quickly, to head home a little sooner, to withdraw into myself with less resistance. Most times I still pass by the Open Eye Café, but these days I rarely stay for more than a few minutes. In the year 2000, I was approaching 30 without a clue as to where I was heading, just a dull ache in my chest from the extraction that had recently taken place. She was gone, just as I had always suspected she would be, eventually. I was raw, alone, and craving connection. I would sit in the café for hours, waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Anything, really. In truth, I was hoping to be rescued by another she. Hoping to be salvaged, saved, shaken up. Woken up. I waited for a long time, but no one came. Nothing much happened. I read a few books. Wrote a few poems. Exchanged a few furtive glances with many a would-be savior. But I never initiated a single conversation with someone I didn’t already know. Never reached out or took a daring step on behalf of my deepest desires. I just waited.

On November 18, 2000, I sat in my familiar spot on the far end of the big, comfy, filthy sofa. This was my pathetic way of courting destiny. Someone, anyone, might sit down next to me. Right next to me–without a barrier between us. I wrote the following little poem, hoping someone might subconsciously pick up on my creative vibe:

Time folding back on itself like a roadmap to nowhere.
The colors in this room are soft, warm, lulling me into a dreamy haze.
I feel as if I might suddenly begin floating up from the sofa.
How wonderful to stretch out, spread-eagle against the ceiling,
feeling the gentle pull of weightlessness.
Outside it is dark and the cold is biting.
It numbs the bones.

Turns out that I did turn up on someone’s radar, and that someone was Robert, a.k.a. “The Colonel” — a mentally disabled man with tobacco juice always running down the corners of his mouth, who usually brought with him the faint smell of pee-pee and an inexhaustible drive to talk my fucking ears off for as long as it took to run me out of the place. I would sigh audibly whenever I saw him enter the tiny café, knowing that I would have to be going soon whether I was ready to or not. The Colonel did not respond to social cues, to firm redirection, or even to straight-up telling him “Dude, it was nice talking to you, but I really need to finish reading this chapter!”

One day I heard that The Colonel was hit by a car right outside the café while crossing the street. I was sorry to hear that he was badly injured, but also secretly relieved he wouldn’t be sitting next to me on the sofa anytime soon. That seat was reserved for the one. Months went by. Maybe even a year or more. Of course, a beautiful woman never did sit down beside me and say something like, “Hey, I’ve been secretly admiring you from the corner of the room, and was wondering if you’d like to go back to my apartment and make love for the rest of our lives.”

One day, out of the blue, The Colonel came gimping through the front door. He had always gimped, even before the accident. He picked up right where he left off as if nothing had happened. Despite how truly annoying the guy was, I grew fond of Robert. I came in to the café one day a couple of years later to put up a poster for my band’s next show. I was about to move out of state, so this was to be my last performance. The poster was a blurry, xeroxed image of me rocking out at a previous show. I showed it to Robert and he (very loudly) exclaimed, “This is you! You look like a nigger!” I wanted to run out the door I was so embarrassed, but no one seemed to register any offense or pay Robert one bit of mind. “That’s just Robert” they silently conveyed. “His brain is not like yours and mine.” Most people seemed to regard him as they would a squirrel, or a breeze blowing though the room. He was part of the natural order of things.

When I returned to Carrboro years later, in 2008, I was surprised to see that the café had changed locations. It was now a few doors down, in a much, much bigger space. It no longer had that cozy charm, but the place was still packed with people at all hours. As I looked around at the new surroundings I felt a tap at my shoulder. It was Robert. He looked exactly the same, asked me where I had been, and then he used his sleeve to wipe the tobacco juice that was dripping from the corner of his nearly toothless mouth. This was 2008 mind you. I have since been back to the café, including today, at least thirty times, and each time Robert has been there or else arrived there at some point shortly after me. I’m talking every single mother-fucking time. It’s uncanny. I just take it for granted now that he will be there. And he is. Every time.

So Robert is still there, and the same owners still run the place, but everything else, like the location, has that “familiar but different” feel. The café is still swarming with twenty and thirty-something scenesters exchanging furtive glances from behind their respective partitions. Ten years ago we would hide behind a beat-up copy of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, or (in my case) Henry Miller’s The Rosy Crucifixion. Today people hide behind their MacBook laptops, or between a pair of headphones or earbuds, plugged in to something going on somewhere, but not here. Today I spent my twenty minutes or so hiding behind a copy of the Independent Weekly. A familiar fortress. Today, however, I’m 40 years old–a place I never, ever really thought I’d be. Today I glance at the cute girl in the corner and think, “I’m old enough to be her father!” I don’t enjoy thoughts like this. I hate that for the past year or so I see everything through the lens of aging. Hopefully, this will pass soon.

“Time folding back on itself like a roadmap to nowhere.” Those words came back to me today as I headed home, haunting me like the ghost of that thirty year old who waited all that time for someone to come along and live his life for him, that guy who skulked in the corner like a thirsty vampire without fangs, who sat in a cage he knew deep down was unlocked, dreaming of a freedom that required only that he wake the fuck up and get off his ass.

Forty years old. A banana with brown spots. A rose starting to wilt around the edges. A mere century ago, forty years was as long as one could expect to be breathing and prancing around on God’s green earth. Forty years was the end of the road, or close to it. As it stands, I’ve probably got another forty ahead me. The second half. Act two. I hear it goes by fast, so it’s best not to sleep-walk through too much of it. Robert from the café, that son of a gun, he told me the other day that he’s 72 years old. He bragged about his thick head of hair, hardly a gray strand to be found. When I first met him, over ten years ago mind you, he told me the same thing: that he was 72 years old. He also told me he’s a millionaire; that he owns his own airplane; that he was shot in the head in Vietnam; that he used to jam with Elvis Presley. Who knows what might be true. At the very least, he may have been shot in the head. Whatever the case may be, I’m sure as shit that The Colonel never waited for someone to come sit beside him, or for someone to take him to where he wanted to go.

It’s time for me to move on, again. I may never again set foot in that café, may never see Robert gimping toward me with tobacco-stained fingers outstretched to grab my hand with a firm shake. Soon he’ll be just another ghost floating around whenever I dream of this perfect little town, of my breezy strolls on these perfect spring days. He’s sure to be there, every time. There on that filthy sofa in that cozy little café, in the smaller place before the move. He’ll be there next to that perfect thirty year old. That perfectly ripe banana. That rose in full bloom. Two men, side by side, and not a gray hair between them. One, not a thought in his head, just a bullet and a wad of chew. The other, his hands not on the wheel but instead, half-knowingly, around his own neck, keeping his voice down, as ever.