We are in quarantine in America, and perhaps it is dystopian but wow what a bourgeoisie dystopia, nothing like ‘70s and ‘80s movies led me to believe. A long day of pretending to work from home was psychically exhausting so I fell asleep, and woke up and it was already dark, so drove through the abandoned streets to pick up take out from the Afghan place across town. The city was dead, not literally, just vacant for 8:30 on a Friday night, creepily so, no burning cars or warlords or really anything. Just a well behaved quiet. After picking up my order (actually my girlfriend’s order), thanking the nice woman giving me my food at the Afghan spot, including a mint doogh (always a mint doogh), I navigated my way out the parking lot, having to turn left, but the light never changed. It let the mainstream of traffic keep doing, like twice, and never let me go left. I could’ve turned right, gone down a bit, and done a U-turn to go left, although not even sure you can U-turn there, might’ve ended up going halfway to Maryland by the time I could’ve turned around. Fuckin’ light didn’t want me to go left at all, so finally I just made sure no cars were coming and just went fucking left. The system gets in the way sometimes.
I realized as I was sniffing the smell of my jasmine rice and lamb kebab float through the Toyota Corolla air, that this was all metaphor for politics in America. But I also realized I didn’t give a fuck to get everybody to turn left. I was just trying to get the fuck out of the way of everybody else and go live my life in peace. Y’all can stay stuck at the fuckin’ stoplights for the next nine generations if you want, telling me, “THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STOPLIGHT EVER! IF YOU JUST TURN LEFT WHEN IT’S RED YOU’VE ESSENTIALLY GIVEN UP ON EVER ACTUALLY TURNING LEFT LEGALLY, IN INCREMENTAL STEPS!” I know, right?
1 comment:
This is a well written story. Sometimes, just talking is a well written story that makes you wonder "Who wrote this?" I've been stuck at lights before too, no matter how I try to be on the little supposed censors, not alone in the car & I'm like, "We're just going" and others are like, "Nooo! They have cameras." Sometimes you gotta get past. I've also been stuck on a mountain road going the wrong way where I had to drive to another state to find a turn around. Life, right? Life, left on red if it forces you. This was on point kid.
Post a Comment