I spent a year in Kentucky one week...
A free trip somewhere I’ve never been, no rules, no parents and five good friends of mine, and I complain about it. Like any good American.
We think about it and we talk about it sometimes. Anyone can say anything, but all you hear is it was boring, or it sucked. Mostly it didn’t go anywhere like an anticlimax doesn’t go anywhere. The only events happen far away from the competition we came to see.
Collectively we do nothing.
It’s six friends and we talk about nothing because there isn’t anywhere to go. We talk about sex. We talk about philosophy. We talk about evolution and religion. We decide that Logan is the cynical one of the group. We watch video of car and boat accidents, shown in slow motion again and again, on TV. We decide that Cliff is the nice one who is slightly cynical. I’m a vegetarian at this point, so I eat french fries and an apple pie. They eat hamburgers and french fries. Avery is the only one brave enough to try the Big Mac soup. We decide that Peter is the cynical one of the group. We talk about Kurt Vonnegut books. We talk about the economic state of the 1970’s and the 1930’s and then we talk about girls. We decide that I’m the cynical one of the group.
Mike is just racist and Avery is only a jock who has pecks that look like boobs. And Billy could be cynical one day, but he’s younger right now.
We walk around town one day and now it’s a weekday. There are no shops, and the few still around are closed. There are no movie theaters.
These are the roles we play for the week. Before that curfew we even argue about what it means to be cynical and assign terms, saying you’re a cynical bastard and I’m just a cynical asshole.
It’s Saturday and already dark. Mike and Avery leave for a dance. (Mike and Avery are the ones that the rest of us know are not as intelligent but we never say so out loud.) The four of us left talk about the past. Peter’s been in something like this, and he tells us about how you never do as well as you should in the competitions. He says it always feels like something’s left unfinished, even when you’re stuck on a nowhere campus or in a nowhere town.
None of us talk about the competition much after this. We talk about the stupid, racist things Mike says. How he either doesn’t realize he’s is racist but how he is racist, or how he pretends he doesn’t realize he’s racist but how he is racist. We laugh when Billy tells us about Jack maybe masturbating, or something, in the middle of the night, in the bed they’re sharing. “And I wake up and the bed is, like, shaking.” At the end of the week we’re telling stories about the trip like it’s a reunion: our lives already separate with only the past in common.
Nobody wins anything. We get on a plane, we fly home.
I decide to write a story about it six months later. Once it’s in the past and it feels like a different life of mine.
The writer talks to Peter and Logan and Mike, saying how he wants to write a story about the whole trip. He needs to ask them about Kentucky. Try to figure out what they think it meant, he says, if anything. He always asks them for that meaning in one sentence or less, to be used creatively in a short story; a gimmick. All three say something, but no one is satisfied by what they tell the writer. Maybe they will get back to him with something better tomorrow, or whenever they think of it.
After that Logan sends the writer a three-page e-mail where he tries to interpret the trip. The email is about what it could have meant to other people. What it should have meant in our lives. “Had we won the competition, that is.” Mike doesn’t say much. He denies being racist. “At least we had a cool group of kids because otherwise it would have been even more pucking (sic) awful”. Peter doesn’t seem to be able to talk about the trip in the positive or as an answer and not a question. “What wasn’t wrong with Kentucky? What didn’t suck?”
No one can figure out the lesson.
The writer imagines the six of them at a reunion. They talk about how Jack maybe masturbated on the bed. Avery's implants. Big Mac soup. Not the competition.
Kentucky is an odd memory. The writer tries to make up a line too. Instead there are three thousand words where the writer describes things other people said and stretches the truth to make the story have a plot. There was also one quote the writer kept around – his rainy day fund – that fits the anticlimactic story with no resolution. So he used it. And it’s not his.
“The book says, ‘We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.’”
And maybe years later the writer will revise the story so it makes more sense. Or less.
We think about it and we talk about it sometimes. Anyone can say anything, but all you hear is it was boring, or it sucked. Mostly it didn’t go anywhere like an anticlimax doesn’t go anywhere. The only events happen far away from the competition we came to see.
Collectively we do nothing.
It’s six friends and we talk about nothing because there isn’t anywhere to go. We talk about sex. We talk about philosophy. We talk about evolution and religion. We decide that Logan is the cynical one of the group. We watch video of car and boat accidents, shown in slow motion again and again, on TV. We decide that Cliff is the nice one who is slightly cynical. I’m a vegetarian at this point, so I eat french fries and an apple pie. They eat hamburgers and french fries. Avery is the only one brave enough to try the Big Mac soup. We decide that Peter is the cynical one of the group. We talk about Kurt Vonnegut books. We talk about the economic state of the 1970’s and the 1930’s and then we talk about girls. We decide that I’m the cynical one of the group.
Mike is just racist and Avery is only a jock who has pecks that look like boobs. And Billy could be cynical one day, but he’s younger right now.
We walk around town one day and now it’s a weekday. There are no shops, and the few still around are closed. There are no movie theaters.
These are the roles we play for the week. Before that curfew we even argue about what it means to be cynical and assign terms, saying you’re a cynical bastard and I’m just a cynical asshole.
It’s Saturday and already dark. Mike and Avery leave for a dance. (Mike and Avery are the ones that the rest of us know are not as intelligent but we never say so out loud.) The four of us left talk about the past. Peter’s been in something like this, and he tells us about how you never do as well as you should in the competitions. He says it always feels like something’s left unfinished, even when you’re stuck on a nowhere campus or in a nowhere town.
None of us talk about the competition much after this. We talk about the stupid, racist things Mike says. How he either doesn’t realize he’s is racist but how he is racist, or how he pretends he doesn’t realize he’s racist but how he is racist. We laugh when Billy tells us about Jack maybe masturbating, or something, in the middle of the night, in the bed they’re sharing. “And I wake up and the bed is, like, shaking.” At the end of the week we’re telling stories about the trip like it’s a reunion: our lives already separate with only the past in common.
Nobody wins anything. We get on a plane, we fly home.
I decide to write a story about it six months later. Once it’s in the past and it feels like a different life of mine.
The writer talks to Peter and Logan and Mike, saying how he wants to write a story about the whole trip. He needs to ask them about Kentucky. Try to figure out what they think it meant, he says, if anything. He always asks them for that meaning in one sentence or less, to be used creatively in a short story; a gimmick. All three say something, but no one is satisfied by what they tell the writer. Maybe they will get back to him with something better tomorrow, or whenever they think of it.
After that Logan sends the writer a three-page e-mail where he tries to interpret the trip. The email is about what it could have meant to other people. What it should have meant in our lives. “Had we won the competition, that is.” Mike doesn’t say much. He denies being racist. “At least we had a cool group of kids because otherwise it would have been even more pucking (sic) awful”. Peter doesn’t seem to be able to talk about the trip in the positive or as an answer and not a question. “What wasn’t wrong with Kentucky? What didn’t suck?”
No one can figure out the lesson.
The writer imagines the six of them at a reunion. They talk about how Jack maybe masturbated on the bed. Avery's implants. Big Mac soup. Not the competition.
Kentucky is an odd memory. The writer tries to make up a line too. Instead there are three thousand words where the writer describes things other people said and stretches the truth to make the story have a plot. There was also one quote the writer kept around – his rainy day fund – that fits the anticlimactic story with no resolution. So he used it. And it’s not his.
“The book says, ‘We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.’”
And maybe years later the writer will revise the story so it makes more sense. Or less.
Labels: Mark
posted by M S Martinez at 2/28/2006 09:16:00 PM
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