Breadcrumb #109
ZACHARY LENNON-SIMON
There is nothing like the feeling of accelerated motion while fully intoxicated. You are the only one left in control of 2,500 pounds of metal and steel moving at a rate of over 65 miles per hour, yet your own two feet wouldn’t even flow straight down the boulevard. All other types of feelings can go home because back in 2011, I found my favorite mode of transportation. Reckless abandon is better done behind the wheel of your parent’s 2007 Dodge Minivan because if you’re gonna destroy a life you feel is worth destroying then let’s do it with some semblance of scale, shall we?
It’s not that my home was so terrible or that my life was so awful. It was just that every once in a while, you look up.
You look outward.
And what you see just doesn’t do it for you anymore.
It is four years ago, and I am driving home. It is four years ago, and I have just dropped off my girlfriend at her parents' house. That night, I finally decided to try to be in love with her. We had been having sex in a broom closet for over a month, and I felt that now was the right time to make things official. After two drinks, I felt dizzy enough to pretend to have the courage to say, “I love you.” A three-word sentence that can sometimes be worse than anything a judge can utter to a criminal. She looked at me, then looked away, then made sure her gin and tonic was a double. I would leave her if I weren’t so afraid that there would never be anyone else for me but her. It is four years ago, and I am a complete and utter train wreck of an individual. Bartender, I’d like another double whiskey, coke, no ice, when you get a chance.
It is four years ago, and I just talked my friend out of committing suicide. He’s younger than me, so what gives him the right? The reason he’s on the roof is because he made out with a friend of ours at a party. And at the next party, she made out with another friend of ours instead of him. So because of this, he thinks it best to hurl his body off the top of the building. I convince him otherwise, citing that, number one, the building isn’t tall enough, but mostly because number two, the girl isn’t worth his life. He cries as we hug, and although I know I just did him a huge favor, I still resent him from keeping me away from the bottle I stored underneath the desk at the party.
It is four years ago, and I am driving home and trying my best to stay in the right lane, in any lane, and my mp3 player decides to play this song "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by The National. And I roll down the windows, and I yell out the lyrics as if they were a call to arms. As if this were my last chance to show the world that I was alive. I make it home without injury. No ticket, no reprimanding from my parents, no consequences whatsoever. I feel invincible. I feel hollow. I feel the need for another whiskey, coke, no ice.
“As if this were my last chance to show the world that I was alive.”
So you drink two bottles of eight-dollar pinot noir, and you stand on a table shout-crying the lyrics to “Bloodbuzz Ohio” by The National because you don’t know how else you’re going to make it to the next day. You drive down Coney Island Avenue with the very clear idea of not stopping for anything but an end.
You do everything you can to either live or die, nothing in between. You never think about love when you think about home.
It is today. It is today, and I am remembering all of this. I am remembering feeling like life could never get any better than this and how when you are four years younger, you are definitely four years younger. I am remembering thinking whether it was possible for me to make it past year 21. It is today, and I am wishing I could go back to that moment and say, “Take a cab home, you fucking idiot."
The days pass. You stay alive. There have been bigger miracles in this world, but for you, this one will do.