Honky Tonk

The throttle is twisted back to the stop. Screaming demons are at work under me, and a strung out angel is doing her best to hang on. Life is a commodity I do not appreciate fully, and Vulcan, angry angels of death are breathing chemicals in my blood. The four horseman of the apocalypse spin at thousands of revolutions in one of our earth minutes, propelling me at speeds beyond unsafe and beyond unreasonable. Suicidal and stupid would be more accurate. I'm 18.

Back then I had a few good timing friends who were pretty much worthless human beings. Andrew was one of them. The only reason I think we were such friends is that we had a tendency to get expelled from school together. We attended, to horribly abuse that word, a local alternative high school. They didn't like us, and we didn't like them. Eventually, I got in enough trouble that there was no use going back. Andrew met me in the parking lot and we drove off.

We shared several dead end jobs and untold cases of PBR. Our lives were simple and pointless. In retrospect, I don't even understand why we even hung out together in the first place. On the other hand, when you're going nowhere in life, you don't expect your friends to be beneficial to you. We worked the odd construction and landscaping jobs and threw away our paychecks in the bars and pool halls that didn't bother carding us. What was left over of our wrecked economies, I wasted on books and he wasted on swords and knives and other crap.

One summer, we discovered speed. Our lives changed drastically.

I was working a few nights a week throwing freight in a disreputable warehouse and he was selling wire work and bullshit little crafts at renaissance fairs. We were still partying out in the deserts outside of town, souping up our old Ford trucks, and swapping the kinds of girls that go for old Fords and desert parties. One night, we ran into a bonfire party with a warm keg of beer and some seriously interested women. The strung out angel was there, fucked up and dancing to Lyrnrd Skynrd's Simple Man in front of the diesel and pallet holocaust. Our beers were spiked with the strange new stuff and we enjoyed the effects immensely. I have always been told the dangers of drugs, but no one bothered calling the little pills speed, so I didn't know what I was getting into.

Besides blueberries and auburn women, I have no addictions. I never developed an addiction that summer, either. I just used the pills to stay awake or make the party last longer. When I got tired of them and figured out what they were, I quit. Andrew didn't make it out as clean.

The summer ended when Andrew had his picture on the news and a reward for information leading to his arrest. He borrowed my tent and some of my gear and stayed out in the desert with his girlfriend. I would bring him out some hamburger and bread and canned stuff and he would ask if they were still looking for him. We would sit out in the cold desert nights and drink cheap beer and Ten-High whiskey until the sun came up and I had to go to work. That summer, we had found ourselves wrapped up in the cash economy of drugs and parties, and he had went too far and got caught. I had bought a motorcycle. We were just kids, but that winter got cold and hard.

Later, I would memorize those constellations we were staring at and learn many more as I saw a greater selection of the Earth's available view of the universe from the world ocean, the cathedral of father time. But that night, the last I ever saw him or his slack-jawed girlfriend, all I knew is that the stars were beautiful. The strung out angel I had brought with me was inside the tent girl talking with Andrew's slack-jawed girlfriend.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," he said over the top of his can of beer. His face was softly lit by the portable propane grill I had lent him.

"Where you headed?"

"Nevada. I got a friend works the mines out there said he could get me on."

"Think you'll ever be back?"

"I don't know, dude, depends what they'll (he gestured to the glowing city in the distance) want me to do."

I was leaving town, too, but I didn't know when. I didn't know how or even why, but I knew. I predestined myself to leaving. Selah.

I stood and brushed off my pants and smiled, "Well, alright buddy, been fun."

He smiled back, "Sure has."

The strung-out came up out of the tent and shivered.

It ain't something you control. I waved to his girlfriend and jumped on to the red demon. My temporary life-guest crawled on behind me and put on the helmet. I put the bike in neutral and pressed the starter. The four horseman leaped up into a whine.

Stratocaster hearts and hard wired souls. On the interstate now, going home from that desert, I have the throttle twisted back until it wrenches my wrist. De Beque canyon screams by and I'm going way too fast. The speedometer goes up to 140 and it has been buried for six miles. The foot pegs leave a valkrye train of sparks behind me when I cut into the corners. Her head is nestled into my back out of the wind, she's too fucked up and in love to be scared. I won't ever hear from Andrew again, because he wouldn't make it through the next five years.

It's live and die rock and roll.

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Ray Wylie Hubbard, Live and Die Rock And Roll