The Unity (© Bryan Way)
Page 2
It takes a few
discreet bends in the road until I’m finally on the main street of my little
town, West Chester Pike (PA Rt. 3), and from there it’s only a few more miles
to get to the blue route, which in turn leads to the PA turnpike, which takes
me directly into Allentown.
The volume on the stereo is turned up to the maximum, which shakes the review
mirror, creating wispy trails of light out of anything in my wake, including
the flashing lights of an ambulance as it screams past me into the night.
Travel on the
roads seems kind of light. I’m a night owl, the kind of person who sleeps from
seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, and normally traffic is this
light only at three in the morning, just before that perfect balance between people
getting home on weekends and the early morning rush getting started. It’s kind
of ominous, but perhaps it’s rendered that way by the music I’m listening to.
At the appropriate time, I turn left onto the blue route (PA Rt. 476 North).
It’s actually
quite astonishing that I’ve never been in an accident, my brain is always in a
rigid state of autopilot when I’m driving; usually because I’m thinking of
something. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s girls, but none of it is ever
relevant to driving, unless I have no idea where I’m going. Road trips are
usually therapeutic for me. Often times I talk out a lot of issues I’m having
with myself. There’s nothing quite like having an interesting night somewhere
and having to drive home, and I find almost everything interesting. I guess it
can be described by having to drive an hour to get home after losing one’s
virginity. Road signs, radio, stop lights; nothing matters. The mind is abuzz
of what has just happened, thinking about what the future holds, what this
event could end up meaning. Well, I just happen to think that way about
everything, and this trip is no exception.
This trip will
be reserved for thinking about Alice, this I can feel after being on the highway for less than a
minute. I can’t help but think of the little things she’s changed in me, none
of which were done forcefully, thank God. She has an infectious sort of
generosity, the sort where money ceases to be an object even when she has
limited income. That generosity is compounded by her keen awareness for gifts,
as she will pick up on the slightest mention of something hard to find or
expensive and go to great lengths to hunt it down for someone. That’s rubbed
off on me, and as a result I’ve started giving gifts to people even when I
don’t expect something in return.
She’s probably
craves contact more than anyone else I’ve known, and not simply in a sexual
sense. She needs to be hugged and kissed, and more than anything else held.
When I embrace her, I can feel her security radiating out, I can actually feel
her become more at ease. It’s made me very receptive and attentive to her
needs, and whereas in the past I’ve been at times cold to my mother, I’ve
started to warm up more to giving her hugs and even kisses with regularity because
I’ve become so comfortable with it.
I could spend
years touching her body. My hands usually find my way to the small of her back
and end up working their way up and around to her neck, down her arms and back,
across her breasts, and down to her thighs over and over again. I feel like a
child with a newly opened Christmas gift, running my hands over the surface to
reaffirm that what I have before me is actually real.
I take notice of
the snow that wisps into little vortexes in the wake of the few cars on the
road; it seems to be so light that will never actually touch the ground. To my
good fortune, the people on the road are going uncharacteristically fast, which
allows me to use them as my driving guinea pigs. Usually these people don’t
kiss 90 miles an hour, but tonight they’re making out with it and stepping up
to more dangerous speeds. Not that I mind, but usually people like this look
more like they’re trying to get away from something than get somewhere.
As if on cue
with my thought process, the people in front of me slow down rather quickly.
As I step on the breaks I peer past them to see what the holdup is about.
There seems to be rather dense lines at the tollbooths to get on the turnpike.
It makes me wonder if the tollbooth workers have gone on strike again. It’s no
matter to me, however. Since the advent of EZ-Pass, my traveling has been
quite simple. It’s rather ingenious, a simple box with encoded metal strips
that are detected by infrared beams above the toll plaza, and your account is
charged with a discount of whatever the actual toll is supposed to be. Lucky
for me my father travels a lot, and that’s why I have one. [ Continue to page 3 ] |