21 July, 1996 4:09:30 AM
So, look at how late it really is.
I'm home. It's a beautiful night out there.
I was coming home, and in the back seat
of the car I opened the window and let
the wind blow over me. The wind starts
quiet and damp, but it starts to feel like
a fist; not a fist that holds or hurts you.
Just something forcing itself into your
face, maybe grabbing it like a basketball
and trying to wad your face up like trash.

It was on Madison Avenue, but that kind
of wind coming through the car window
over my face transports me back to Florida,
to the late-night drives over remote highways
and interstates, and the happiness I felt in just
driving my car, ripping across 4 empty lanes
and then ripping right back across them
again with no other cars in sight.

Yes, it's a beautiful night.
And I should be asleep soon,
or else the night becoming
morning will make me panic,
and I'll be awake for many
more hours.

I unplugged the modem;
so I am completely alone in here,
with just the sounds of me typing
and the faucet leaking in the
bathroom behind me.
There's the air conditioner
blowing over me, with a breeze
less earthy than what I felt in the
car coming home; right now I feel
what I guess would be called
windburn on my face,
it feels like I might have
spent the evening making love.

Once I was driving out and
away from Tampa with a friend,
and the smells coming in from the
farmland were uncommonly vivid.
One moment the smell was clearly
cowshit; the next it was
unquestionably polecat. Then sod.
Then fertilizer.
My friend and I commented at
length on the dazzling scope of
aromas that the pasture gave off.

We were 18 years old,
and on our way to Elfers.
Elfers is a retirement
community somewhere
outside of Tampa;
I see it in my mind
and breathe its air for
an instant when I sit
down to do word
puzzles and read my
horoscope.

I don't know why, but we were
captivated by the place.
We drove through all the
suburban neighborhoods
and subdevelopments, driving
after mysteries we could
not define, with row after
row of house after house
looking the same as the
last row of houses. I thought
of Elfers in 1991, when I and
a friend were having breakfast
at Westside Restaurant on
Broadway and 68th Street.
We had been out of college
for less than a year, and already
we were exhausted from life.
I told my friend "I'm just so
fucking tired already,"
unintentionally paraphrasing a
bad line from St. Elmo's Fire,
a movie I always hated but which
makes me sad nonetheless.

The highway had seemed
endless to us, and the
appearance through the
spindled windshield of my
'69 Dodge Dart of a diner
or a gas station or a sign
saying "Welcome to Elfers"
was like a voice, miraculously
recorded, out of a future century.

There were no remarkable scents
of burning sulfer or raw horseshit
in Elfers; only sprawling sidewalks
tramped by placid-walking elderly
couples staring suspiciously at me
and the person tolerant enough to
be with me in my car.
(my car: Years before giving it to
me m'Dad once said to the guy at
the recycling plant: "Thing's almost
as old as m'boy here," and he slapped
the hood of the Dart. "I wouldn't be
afraid to drive this thing to California."
The sound of thousands of aluminum
cans being recycled plowed away
behind us.)

My friends and I spent endless
southern nights driving our cars
in spirals through the suburbs.
Was it simply the thickness of
thieves, or was there some special
communication going on among us,
the sleepy silence, and those
strengthening breezes that filled the
windows and wrapped around me,
coming on like a hostile, desperate
kiss shoving itself down my face
like it did on Madison Avenue
tonight?