Roads Overused
September 7, 2003
9:45 P.M.

Have you ever traveled down your roads…you know the roads you knew growing up? The roads you travel every day, and have traveled every day since you were old enough to remember anything at all?

Have you ever wondered what lies down those roads if you turn right instead of left? Or, how about if you go straight on a road you usually turn off of after only a few blocks…

I do this sometimes. When I’m bored. When I’m lonely. When I have little else to do (and I have had little else to do for quite some time now).

Then, there are times when loneliness and boredom are so intolerable that I can’t take it anymore, and I take that right instead of a left. I go straight, for miles and miles, on roads I usually only travel on for a few hundred yards.

Sometimes I end up going through small towns that I vaguely remember my parents taking me through on Sunday drives. Sometimes, I go farther than even they took me on those Sunday drives oh so long ago.

I take a state highway…one with a number that I can follow…and go on it ‘til I get tired of driving and come back home along the interstate.

I haven’t done that in a while. Last time I did it was in the fall of ’94…after I lost Amy…before the current ex came into the picture…and after I flunked out of college for the first time. It was at a time when I felt my life was completely empty.

Like I feel right now.

The last time I drove like that, I bought a disposable camera, picked up an old High School friend of mine, and I went down U.S. 60 two thirds of the way from home to West Virginia. It was a three hour trip one way.

My friend and I took turns cracking each other up. Every time I would pass someone who was going too slow, my friend would say “You took him to the hole!”

I was afraid for many, many miles to even ask him what that meant. As with many times with this guy, I finally worked up my nerve and asked him what it meant, and the explanation was, at the time, even funnier than the actual phrase.

“It’s what they say in basketball when a player gets dunked on.”

And, he was saying this whenever I passed anyone. Like many other times, I thought to myself, “This guy’s totally nuts, and I’m really enjoying myself!”

I’ve thought about taking that drive again. The best part of it is the companionship, the camaraderie…those laughs shared at life’s expense.

But, that friend is no longer in my life.

No, It’s not D’s ex-boyfriend. This is a different friend…one who is lost all the same.

While he was in High School, he started drinking alcohol pretty heavily. (Some say drinking alcohol in any amount in High School is considered drinking heavily).

I noticed during the stretch of time immediately after High School and up to when I flunked out of college…some of his friends and I had formed an impromptu all night bowling team…that their consumption of alcohol kept getting heavier. I didn’t mind, though. It was their choice to make, and so long as I had bowling buddies, I didn’t care how much they drank. I was their designated driver. (I wouldn’t touch alcohol for about three more years when my mother offered me a glass of White Zinfandel. I, however, will not drink enough to get rip roarin’ drunk. I do get slight buzzes every once and a while off of some paltry amount of beer.)

But, their adventures didn’t end with alcohol.

They went on to marijuana. Again, their choice, but one thing I noticed…as they, one by one, started smoking, they also, one by one, stopped coming to the all night bowling games.

I would still hang out with them…hoping that one or more of them would decide that smoking and hanging out in one of their parents’ basements wasn’t for them, and the bowling would start back up in earnest.

I waited one, two, three years. Then I stopped going around them. In those years I spent waiting for them to come back around, I noticed more and more sinister people coming around them. They themselves had started becoming more and more sinister. As these guys started hitting their twenties, they were picking up 16 year old girlfriends…who would smoke and drink with them. One of those girlfriends, one night, brought out some blotter papers….I left that night and never returned.

This whole time…this entire time…I would not indulge in any of their folly…but, to their credit, I can say they never invited me to join in their indulgences.

I still respect them for that.

I asked one of them why they hadn’t tried to get me into their drug realm. That person said, “I know it’s not your thing, man.”

All hope has faded from that front. I no longer expect any of them to call me up and say, “Hey, man, we’re all clean now…come and pick us up, and we’ll all go on another photo safari like you did 9 years ago.”

But, I’m still waiting….