colin spoelman

The fifth of July was hot enough for sure, but despite the heat, I had a pleasant enough day thinking of you and America. I was driving north from Nashville through the farmland of Kentucky by myself in the heat of the day in a small car that had no air conditioning. I remember turning on to the highway and the shadows cast by the supports between the windows flowed through the car and over the seat as I made the turn as if the day were condensed into the span of a few minutes, like a time compression movie. There was a message spray painted into the overpass north of Bowling Green that said “please forgive me” in white paint against the gray concrete. And on this drive, I couldn’t help but remember you despite myself.

And I thought of you and last night’s concert in the park. We watched the fireworks shoot from behind the trees up over into the canopy of the July sky. Each colored, sputtering rocket left a dull gray trail behind it weaving a network of slowly-expanding smoke signals slowly drifting with the wind. And you pressed against me, but I didn’t trust you even then.

I remember the last time you told me to forgive you and we were in your sister’s apartment in Nashville just south of downtown where the streets get close together and the houses are the kind that family people won’t live in now that they built the bypass around I 265. She lived on the second floor of an old Victorian house which had since become a triplex for post-college people with gray walls and peeling white trim. And we were all there in the common room where the air conditioning could reach.

That was almost two years ago today. You came in after your trip to New York and told me that you had been with someone else, someone nameless, but we both knew was significant nonetheless and instead of saying “I’m sorry” you said, “please forgive me” and we both went into my brothers bedroom and you kissed my face which was sweaty from the heat and I knew I wouldn’t forgive this trespass any more than any of the others. And I became tired of your explanations and excuses for stepping on toes which weren’t really ever yours to step on. Two years ago last Tuesday. I remember because it was your mother’s birthday and she wanted you to come back up to Boston for the fourth and you told me how much you liked the fireworks there on the river and I wasn’t listening and now it’s one of the only things I remember about that whole night.

And, on this highway, I am reminded of so many things which flow together in my mind as the other cars and I run down the highway away from loved ones and the comfortable humidity of the South. I stopped at a rest area and ate hot-dogs and potato chips and some of the barbecue that my brother’s girlfriend made. I wanted to stop off the road somewhere, but I didn’t think I had the time or the money to get too far away. So I just pulled over, ate sitting on a picnic table right in front of the car, and then kept going.

I remember when my mom and I drove into Indiana every summer to visit grandparents in South Bend. We’d sit on the porch there and eat Grandma’s pies even though Mom didn’t have too much to say to them anymore and the whole weekend was always quieter than it should have been (now that I have hindsight). Even so, I knew how much my mother looked forward to being there despite how awkward it must have been for her. And though she believed they looked down on her for it, I know that although they loved quietly and without the usual fuss; they loved her unconditionally. I would fall asleep with Mom on the porch swing oblivious to the tossing and turning of her soul, lulled to sleep by the fan on the ceiling of the porch—painted blue for obvious reasons, if you were grandma and grandpa.

When Mom and I would drive, she would take the inner city highways which would run through the hearts of the downtowns instead of the three digit bypass highways around the cities. We drove through Birmingham, Chattanooga, Nashville, Louisville (those were the main ones). I would get so excited by the tall buildings and bridges and all those mysterious boxes full of people cooking, drinking, watching television, kissing. And she would tell me all about the restaurants that she’d been to, and her favorite bookstore in those places that she used to go to when she traveled all the time, back when she was wild. As we drove I pressed my little nose up against the passenger window and see the steel and glass marching down to the river front like chess pieces late in a long game.

I saw all those cities again. But in the places between the cities, there were hints of you, too. I drove past a barn painted red with an old, peeling sign reading See Rock City. Do you remember when we saw Rock City? Looking out together over seven states? So easy to feel confident, there with the South at your feet, away down the Lover’s Leap. I loved it when you told me that those things made you feel powerful and universal just like me. I could have jumped of with you and fallen down away into the valley and considered my life good and full. But before we had a chance, there was fat man’s squeeze and the fairyland caverns with the mechanical gnomes and everything seemed too ridiculous. Sometimes I get away from myself with you and I see you notice it and turn away.

Then my mind rode on and next I remembered when you told me about your fascination with the West and how you wished you ran that Texaco station out where the road dived away into the desert beyond the edge of the prairie. And I told you how I wanted to live out on a vineyard and you thought that would be OK too, but I knew you thought that was a pretentious thing to say and how did I know what you were talking about at all. But I did, I swear to you now that I did. If you can believe it. And I laughed at you and you didn’t laugh with me and I suppose that should have been a sign, but I didn’t read it. It made sense to a part of me that I would never show you because it wasn’t my place. And since then I’ve thought of you out there under the American Sky with the clouds humming over your little gas station where you would walk out in tight pants under the flourescent light tubes and greet the Jacks and Jimmys and Eds of the world on their way to California. But you have wouldn’t own up to that part of yourself now. And that is the part of you that I hold on to even though the important parts of you have passed out of my memory.