But we survived the shooting, Billy and I. It took us a while to get back on our feet, and when we did, things had changed. Oh, yeah. The sixties were gone, man. It was now 1971, and we had ditched our bikes in favor of something with four wheels: a flat gray ’55 Chevy. We rode it across the country, racing other lost souls along the highway for a few hundred bucks at a time. The shooting had changed us, though. We hardly spoke anymore. We kept our conversation down to a bare minimum. To the outside world, we were simply known as the Driver and the Mechanic. When we did talk, it was almost always about the car. There was nothing else left to talk about. These were the early seventies, man. Bleak. Depressed. Hungover, one might say. Getting to grips with the failed reality of the sixties. Or not. Maybe we’ll just drive, you know? Drive forever.
Performance and image—that’s what it’s all about, man. Say, which way we going? East? That’s cool. I’ve never been east. Well, here we are on the road. Yup, that’s where we are, all right. I’d put some work into it, and now I have myself a real street sweeper. Because you can never go fast enough! Although, if I’m not grounded pretty soon, I’m gonna go into orbit… Everything fell apart on me, you know? My job, my family, everything. I had this job as a television producer, and one day I walked into the office, and I… But you’re right, that’s not your problem. But believe me, man, if I wanted to bother, I could suck you right up my tailpipe! Yeah, I could! I don’t like being crowded by a couple of punk road hogs clear across two states; I don’t! What’s that? You’ve never seen me? And you think my car looks and performs about the same as all those other factory standards? Fuck you, man! Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we’ll have an auto-MO-bile race!
And so we do. We race. Sometimes we lose, but we win a little more often. Just enough to keep us afloat, you know? To check in to some sleazy motel and have a beer with a shot of rye in a bar: just a bare room, fluorescent tubes overhead, tiles under your boots, and cheap, flat wooden panels on the walls. More of a canteen than a bar, really. And then you get to watch how the dude you raced (and beat) earlier gets into a very banal fight with his chick, who throws a beer in his face and then leaves, after which he just sits there. Staring.
And we drive. The road goes on. We drift from one place to the next, never staying anywhere longer than a few days. Sometimes, when we get back to our car, there’s a girl in the back. She just drifted in, getting out of a Volkswagen Hippievan and into the Chevy. She rides along for a while. Maybe we’ll have sex with her, maybe we won’t. It doesn’t matter, man. Nothing does anymore.
And we drive. We met G.T.O., another failed example of our doomed species. We decided to race. For pinks, you know. We put them both in an envelope and send them ahead to New York or whatever, and whoever gets there first wins. Simple. And although I do remember making that bet, I can’t really remember what happened to him. He’s probably still driving, somewhere out there in the desert, telling his story in a million different ways to whoever is around to listen. And if no one is, he’ll just talk to the stars.
Yeah, man. And then the reel of the movie just sort of runs out, and then it’s over. But that’s okay, man. It’s all pointless, anyway. Life is devoid of all meaning. We might as well drive ourselves into oblivion. Happy fucking Holidays.
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