Australian Pursuit

Get into the car
We'll be the passenger
We'll ride through the city tonight
We'll see the city's ripped backsides
We'll see the bright and hollow sky
We'll see the stars that shine so bright
The sky was made for us tonight

(Iggy Pop, "The Passenger")

So you jump up and down on that big hotel mattress you call your life. You leave the blinds open so you can see your reflection, up and down, up and down, the twilight purples and maroons behind the northern California mountains out your window.

It's something you've always done, this jumping. Every hotel room since Painesville at age 8, at the Holiday Inn, on what Dad called a vacation, a weekend trip to a 1/4 mile dirt track 45 minutes away from your house. They had a pool at the hotel, and your brothers and you made a show of folding your arms across your chests and falling backwards into the water. The Saturday night show at the Speedway featured Australian Pursuit: A staggered start, and when a car was passed, it was eliminated. You got to have soda and popcorn.

You didn't jump on the bed to test its sturdiness, but it always ended up being a pretty good indication of the quality of the hotel itself. Extended Stay in Des Moines was like sleeping on the floor of a tent. They gave you some eggshell foam to make it better, and you laughed, remembering the camping trip to Hocking Hills with F., and the eggshell foam, and your silhouettes in furtive movements caught by the firelight, and how you yelped and wilted and giggled uncontrollably when the raccoons showed up unexpectedly. Naked, sweaty in the humid August, rolling in the grass with laughter, her and you. Your last summer hurrah, the marriage was over 7 months after that night-- Lightning and quicksand at the same time. It was nobody's fault. You still laugh every time raccoons are mentioned.

Hyatt had the best beds, and sleeping kits: Earphones, some New Agey music CD, some flameless scented candle. The way to a traveler's heart. You jumped on their beds because you had to, it was a rule by now. The one on Navy Pier in Chicago, the one you stayed at on the first contract job right after you moved away-- not so much away from her, but from your whole life up to that point-- at that one, you had the bellman run to the liquor store and bring you a $30 bottle of Maker's Mark. You drank most of it over the course of the 5 nights, staring out your window at Chicago in December, warm holiday lights and harsh winds off the Lake. You walked Michigan Avenue like it was a white sand beach. You weren't happy, but you weren't despondent either. Back in the room, in front of the window again, you caught your reflection again, cocked your head sideways, thought yourself older, wiser, sipping thoughtfully at the bourbon. Most people didn't understand the little things, why the right amount of ice in straight bourbon mattered, why the right type of glass mattered: Heavy at the bottom. It felt good in your hand. It felt right.

Now you're in San Jose. You leave your 4th floor window cracked, to hear the light rail running all night. Its soft warning bell, the hmm of the tracks, this is what it must have been like to live near train tracks, before all the dissonance, before the psychic noise of the internet and all its nasty little tentacles started gradually warping our attention spans. You find yourself turning off the TV in the hotel more often. It's not denial, you think, it's self preservation. Dad never would have lived this life, couldn't have survived it.

So you force yourself to finally turn off the lights, to lay there and listen. You wonder about her, waiting for you back home, or waiting for... something..? What did she find out about herself, with her therapist? You refused to let the relationship lay in statis anymore during your travel weeks. You still find her eager to change the subject on the phone, when you bring up anything deeper than the weather and How Was Your Day. Her declarative tone grows mousy, distant, the receiver-- like so many things-- held at arm's length.

Lately though, you've started picturing both of you as tender children, and you marvel, thinking back, on how she responded to your openness. Just one day, last Saturday, the day before you left again, when you decided to forget the knee scrapes and ego scrapes the way a child would, and just touch her and love her and say nice things to her because it seemed like the right thing to do. Because it was good for you, above all else. Because Australian Pursuit wasn't as fun as it used to be.

Turns out it does make a difference, just like your shrink said. You always hate when she's right. She has that degree, she's a serious counselor, but she always laughs when you tell her about your internal dialogue during the sessions: "I told myself you were full of shit," you tell her, "but it turns out you were right because..."

In the last session, she asked if you were giving to the relationship expecting to get something back, or because you wanted to. So you test-drove giving just to give. And you kept laying there in the dark, certainty no closer, but not a desperate goal anymore either. For just a minute, you pictured the two of you jumping on the bed together, sometimes both landing at the same time, sometimes in a you-then-me-then-you rhythm. You thought maybe for that Christmas trip-- the vacation one, not a business one for a change-- you could get her to do that with you. Sure, you're just testing the bed. As you drift off, it seems like you've been doing a lot of that kind of thing lately.