To escape the Inevitable

I am running up the ramps of a parking garage at full speed but I'm not wearing running shoes. If I had known today was a running day I would have packed them in the car, but this morning has unfolded all wrong. It could be worse. I could be dead on the pavement outside the noodle bar where everything went down. I could be choking on my own blood and gasping. 

I’m wearing black and white Converse. They’re holding up okay despite being seventeen years old. How old am I? It's been so long since I was born that I often forget who I’ve become and where I’m going. At this moment I'm making my way to the top of the garage hoping to God that I get there before they catch me. I’m running the fastest I have ever run in my entire life, sweating under fluorescent lights wondering, what sort of shoes are they wearing? 

I pull open the door to the bright orange ‘87 Lotus Esprit. I start the car and reach for a pair of sunglasses and the whole world turns sepia. 

Going down into the lot the growl and whine of the engine radiates off the concrete while hip hop plays lightly from the speakers. There are no pursuers in sight but I know it couldn't be this easy. I roll down the driver side window and the sound of the engine fills me with testosterone. My eyes grow sharper and my tongue wets with possibility, my heart and veins charge with primal energy. And still there is no one, but I’m not stupid and just as I thought, there they are, but not as individuals pursuing in Nike Airs, but as silhouettes hidden in high powered sedans and two seater sports cars unflashy in their appearance but fierce under the hood. And then it's on. 

The time is 11:59am as I speed past the cars with their daytime headlights snapping on and I go bursting through the exit into summer sun and clear skies. The afternoon crowds are forming on the street and I’m set on evading these pursuers behind me, these enders of life, killers of dreams, takers of possibility. And for what? For what? For an opportunity gone wrong. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. All that damn planning and weeks of negotiation on time, place, purpose, only to have some greedy stupid fuck ruin everything for me. And now here we are, running red lights and flirting with near collisions, watching people with their phones recording a chase scene. 

Converse aren’t so bad at pushing the gas. The traffic this afternoon is thick and navigating the streets isn’t easy. The cars behind me follow in the wake that I make and my eyes bounce back and forth between the rearview mirror and the chaos in front of me: yellow-red lights, stop signs ignored, and shrieking brakes. Hip hop jams have become jazz with horns and gentle melody. The juxtaposition feels absurd, I feel the wind rushing into the car and the sound of the engine ricochets off the buildings and I hear a woman yelling to “slow the fuck down!” But I can’t. I keep calm-cool-collected. My eyes dart to the side mirror and there is a Lexus riding on my ass. 

Throughout my entire life people have always asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question flashes across my mind as I pull the handbrake around a corner and someone screams as a silver BMW sideswipes into someone's dog and it disappears underneath. The BMW skids out and I swear I see a spray of blood before it goes nose first into a movie theatre. In the commotion I catch my own eyes in the rearview and In my head I’m asking, “who do you want to be?” 

I pass by the police station and the Lexus is still right behind me and behind the Lexus is a deep black Mercedes with all black rims and tinted glass so dark you can’t make out the driver. There are others too but they are lost behind the last turn and suddenly there is a flash of lights and a police car screeches into pursuit. A long drawn siren like a wail of warning adds to the orchestra of sound. My heart is pumping the testosterone through my body and I become like a razor cutting into the world. I am man. I am solo. I am fear driven into the hearts of other men. 

My life is my own and no one can tell me how it should be. Not even my own mother who my whole life has told me how I should live. I declined entry into schools of thought because I felt they would make me weak, just as I declined to talk to my father when he called from jail. 

“I don’t want to hear his voice. He’s a fool who thinks he loves me but he loves no one but himself.” 

The sun is shining deep into the glass and I feel my whole body. At every corner the Lotus and it’s 80’s frame cringes at the uncertainty. Is today my last day? Will I be stopped and caught? How far can we go into something before there is nothing we can do to prevent the inevitable? How long until the chase ends in a crash? 

Colored lights of red and blue flash across my eyes in all three mirrors. My life is my own and I own up to it all, the good, the bad, the unforeseen. I am a man. I am solo. I am myself and no one can tell me different.  

Excitement is the counterbalance to dread. 

My foot presses the gas and the Esprit goes whipping around a corner and I lose the Lexus which skids out and slides against a building, the patrol car careens next to it and all that I can see behind me is the screaming road and for a second it seems that I have escaped. But to my surprise there is another patrol car and I watch it appear as if it were rising from the very asphalt like a mirage coming to life. The whole world around me is shouting with energy that seems to match what is rising inside of me. The force of the world manifested in blood and reality. The exploding birth of the universe with its long colored tendrils pushing all that has happened and that has led ultimately to this moment in my life. And whatever lies ahead is because of what happened before and I can't stop what has been set into motion. The only other possibility if there is one, is to make a different turn, but every turn is because of the turn before, and so I drive into the burning day toward the next bend chasing the moment when I can break free. I turn and I turn and it feels like I have a choice but I never actually had one. The turn I take is the turn I had to make.

A helicopter hovers overhead and I try to track it as it disappears and reappears behind the tall buildings of downtown. Several feet behind me the patrol car is making maneuvers to target my rear bumper. My path through the streets is influenced by the flood of chemicals coursing through my body accompanied by the result of stardust-thought-control of supernova blast history. Ahead of me is another turn and I slow down allowing the cop just enough space to nearly clip me and I give a fake to the left but wheel to the right and the cop goes plowing into a street light as I go skidding off in the other direction and to my surprise even the helicopter has made an error and banks incorrectly giving me just enough time to speed ahead and turn, turn, turn until I find myself at a familiar looking place, yet another parking garage and I take a chance and pull into the lot and hit the gas up to the middle levels pulling into a spot with my heart pounding. 

I duck down catching my breath. I listen and hear multiple sirens blaring further away and the chopper flies overhead but it doesn’t stop to hover and goes off into the distance and becomes a subdued drone and I recline in my seat thinking of what to do next. After some time I get out and lock the door and walk as calmly as possible to the stairwell and descend down to the lowest level. I walk out of the garage and jam my hands into my blue jeans and move briskly as a police siren rises in the street and a patrol car goes whizzing by followed by another. I can feel my heart in my throat and do my best to calm myself by focusing on the pulse against my tongue. My ears are ringing and I seem to forget how to walk and I feel like I must look drunk and paranoia is blaring inside of my head. As I come around a local brewery people stand outside smoking and looking after the cop cars and some look into the sky and they wonder aloud about what has happened. Rounding the next corner there is a man the opposite end and he sees me and I stop. He reaches into his waistband but I break off to the right smashing through an iron gate and go running as fast as I can, running toward uncertainty and confusion. Running without the proper shoes toward a turn that will lead me to the next one and so on until I finally find my final place. Where will I go? What will I find? Who will I become?