On the Road

I have been getting strange, anonymous messages on my answering machine. “Dwarf planet, my ass!” the outraged caller says and then hangs up. David Sylvester has told me that he has been getting the same message. I miss Rob. I also miss the road. And even though Rob and I never traveled together, the two are connected for me. Rob taught me about Kerouac. I read about Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty and their journeys to the west coast. We also loved watching Matt Dillon’s Rusty James ride to the west coast against Stewart Copeland’s brilliant, but spare percussive soundtrack in Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish. Years later, I would ride all the way to the west coast, too – not with Rob, but to see him. And after he moved, I drove all the way to the east coast to see him again. Another epic road trip, this time to Mexico, began and ended in Rob’s apartment. Even though he couldn’t always be with me, Rob was somehow always at the end of my journey.

Yesterday, I was thinking about Rob when I purchased the audiobook of On The Road, read by Rusty James himself – Matt Dillon. I listened to it early this morning, as I drove east into town, the convertible top down, exposing a vibrant pink and blue sky, looking like the wall of a baby’s room freshly painted by parents hedging their bet against the unknown sex of their unborn child. The air was cool for the first time in months. Dillon’s voice would fade into the roar of the wind on the fast stretches of road and then emerge again when I slowed for traffic. The reading is good and my mind wanders to far away places…

Speaking of Stewart Copeland, after a night of listening to music from his band The Police, my wife named my car Zenyatta Miata.

Rob and I used to get drunk and listen to Paul’s Boutique a lot, too.

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