Starlight Journey
I haven’t published here in quite some time. I’m overdue. Plus, this story has been forming in my mind for months. It was time to put it together and let it out. Enjoy…
1.
My boyfriend, Jason, and I sat around our apartment in typical coconut style. We had been railing out lines all night long and were chatting amicably in blow nirvana. We looked at each other with glistening eyes, smiling, noting each nuance with remarkable clarity. We were smart, witty, alive. Swiffering coke did this to us and we did it often.
Jason suggested we go out for a drive in his 1967 Cadillac convertible. Being young and invincible our coked state held no influence. I was all for it and said sure. He grabbed the key, I, a light sweater, and we headed out the door.
We hopped into the gold Cadi that was parked on the street outside our apartment. The weather was nice so Jason put the top down as soon as he started the engine. Naturally I looked up into the sky above. The skies were clear and there was no moon, so even awash in the city’s glow, several stars were making an appearance.
As we cruised out of the city the stars multiplied, the sky a blanket of black velvet studded with diamonds. But it was nothing compared to the stars we would see later that night. We drove further into the country, stopping only to top off our heads on a piece of broken rearview mirror. The night was getting darker along the way, the stars brighter and more plentiful.
We had driven for miles when a a detour sign caught our eye. The sign was no longer in the road, through-traffic was allowed, but we wondered, high as we were, where the detour had taken the travelers before us. With a sudden turn of the wheel Jason had decided for both of us we would find out and we swerved onto the nondescript once-detour side road.
The road onto which we turned was broken macadam, crumbling from the seasons and lack of upkeep. The Cadi absorbed it all, though, and we floated right along, unjostled, high still intact. We drove for quite some time. We were leaving dying cornfields continuously in our wake. There was not much else to look at. Just Jason and I and a multitude of stars.
The road eventually turned to gravel, but the Cadi shrugged it off and carried us softly through the starry night. It was September so it wasn’t hot, the night was actually edging towards cool. The heater in the Cadi, however, was on bathing us in warm air. It was luxurious. Exquisite. Divine. We stopped for more coke. To make it more luxurious. More exquisite. More divine.
We laid down over a gram at that particular pit stop. Jason had killed the big v8 under the hood and the heater died with the motor. The silence was immediate, but then as we sat there, breathing, snorting and sniffling the coke trapped in our noses and making its way down our throats, we began hearing sounds of nature as the night came alive around us. Jason killed the headlights. The night was black. Really, out here amid the cornfields, it was blacker than black.
The only light was from the stars and there seemed to be billions of them. Jason and I talked about going to visit them, floating through them, seeing them whiz by. We often got into “universe on the head of a pin” discussions when doing blow. This night was no different. The Cadi, Jason declared, would make one hell of a starship. I agreed, and we laughed. Jason started the engine and we peeled out spewing out a short roostertail of gravel with one rear wheel, back on our journey.
We had driven on for a little, passing a few small side roads off of the gravel road we were on. We started wondering about our detour. We weren’t really scared or anything, but we didn’t want to get lost out in the middle of nowhere for the night. The pain in the ass factor was looming large. There were no more detour signs after the turned one on the main road. Jason decided to make a loop back to the main road stating that farm roads were always made in squares. I had no opinion. I was just feeling luxurious. Exquisite. Divine.
We made a few more turns and might have been lost, but we stopped thinking about it. It was too nice a night to ruin it dwelling on losing one’s way. We decided to snort some more coke so we turned into yet another road and parked. As we pulled in a sign caught our attention but we were either going too fast, it was too dark, or we were too coked out to read what it said. We didn’t care. It was time to use the piece of mirror again.
The road we were on was very straight, as far as we could see cutting the night with the Cadi’s high beam headlights. When we restarted the engine and pulled ahead Jason suddenly decided to turn off the Cadi’s headlights. He said our eyes would adjust and that he would go slow on the very straight road. I went along, scared at first, then excited. Soon I was giddy with delight over the sensation of the Cadi picking up speed. We floated along without a care.
Jason and I raced through the night. Him laughing like a madman, me tittering, my long hair whipping around my head. Both of us ecstatic. Like magic we stayed in the farm road’s ruts, enjoying the invisible motion and utter blackness punctuated only by a trillion stars. Our eyes did adjust as Jason had promised. We could see more stars all around us as we floated along in our steel shadow. We fantasized that we were in Jason’s starship.
The luxury ride was fantastic in the Cadillac. Even on these rutted back roads. It was like flying. I closed my eyes and imagined flying. Jason said he was doing the same. We laughed and soon felt a weightlessness. The road went quiet as we flew in Jason’s starship. We laughed. This was a very good eight ball of coke, the evening was magical.
Stars were all around us as we sailed in the Cadi, Above us, to either side, even below us as we soared through the heavens of endless stars. Then there was an explosion of stars as the world erupted into nothing but stars and blackness. And that’s all I can remember. It was luxurious. Exquisite. Divine.
2.
The next day a local newspaper printed this blurb on page 16:
Crashed Cadi Comes to Rest in Quarry
Backforty, IA — The quarry on the Old Farm Rd #4 became the final resting place of two out-of-towners sometime Sunday night. Based on evidence found at the scene the two young people (names withheld until next-of-kin are notified) were out joyriding at night with their lights off and apparently using cocaine. The investigating officer noted “the two were wearing smiles on their otherwise lifeless faces.” More details will follow once we hear from the county coroner.
– The End –
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