Truesday: From There To Here. And Back. Maybe.

The irony of course being that eventually Clarksville would be the bleaching target for some of the most dramatic and brutal gentrification ever experienced in Austin.

But the paranoid assumptions of racial injustice through street name assignation weren’t what really bothered me about it all. Certainly not for me, back then. It was the memory issue. Numbers are simply much easier to remember for me than words, and the simplicity of it is sadly soiled when I’m forced to memorize not only a number, but its flowery lettered counterpart as well.

Just as I was, as a much younger child, deeply troubled by the complications rained down upon basic mathematic principles with the seemingly random introduction of algebraic letters.

In the case of these damned street names, it was double the effort, if not multiplicative in that they’re two completely different varieties of memorization for me. As if I was being forced to memorize the same item, in this case: a street, but from two completely different points in time. Like Istanbul and Constantinople. In my mind, it needed to be one or the other, preferably the numbered variety.

Initially I lamented the inconvenience of it all, protesting the additional effort. Why the hell should I have to bother with such an obnoxious dual-reference? Can’t we just have a vote to distill this down into a single moniker and move on with our simplified lives? Screw the past if necessary. It’s all pointless nostalgia anyhow.

Who needs it?

About a year after the initial touch-down, and the birth of my search for enlightened something-or-other, three friends and I had made our way from the Far West area, down Mopac and into downtown for a Friday evening of liver abuse. We were mere babes in those days, so it is likely that we spent our time in sawdust-floored booze-caves right off sixth, drinking the cheapest whiskies and sugary-est shots of femme-drink.

And wondering aloud, leaning against some sticky bar as we coddled some fruity-punch-red concoction, “why these ladies just don’t seem to be impressed by us and our manliness?” Lips stained red with some awful booze confection, blatantly indicating to anyone remotely female: hello there ladies, it is highly likely that I have no functioning testicles.

Eventually we gave up the ghost and weaved our way back to Mopac, headed home.

The onset of the trip was relatively uneventful. We recast the evening’s events between ourselves, laughing, still oblivious as to why women weren’t throwing themselves at a shifty foursome who were sipping koolaid booze purchased with high-interest credit.

Then we passed those streets. Those stupid two-named streets with their odd nods in different directions, as if Mopac were some sort of fissure in the time-space continuum, and we were just flying along its rim, unimpressed with the contrasting view. Unimpressed with the socio-temporal implications of it all. Unaware of where or how we fit into the broader scheme of the thing. We were simply gliding, listless and unencumbered by the tethers of our own history.

Right around Enfield, a little red Dodge Neon, complete with a silly collection extraneous wings and irreverently chromed details, blew in from blind right and cut us off.

Our jocular banter quickly melted into fierce contempt.

In Austin, these types of yahoo-competitions happen on a daily basis. It’s a college town, so everyone living here is subjected, at one point or another, to the brazen antics of chemically maladjusted college boys, recently released from the grips of their parents’ households, who are looking to over-extend themselves to “prove a point” to their fellow bro-hams; to garner some hearty high-fives. It’s just idiocy for the sake of pushing envelopes and testing waters, but entirely misplaced and never meant to be personal.

However, we were a tad too close to our recent past, and I in particular was incapable of simply letting bygones go their separates. You see, right or wrong, back in Houston, this particular variety of freeway horseplay would undoubtedly spark a series of raging ego-fires which would eventually involve the brandishing/sky-firing of a weapon, loudly ranted mother-taunts, and perhaps some outpatient visits. Maybe even a duct-tape home-invasion. Who knows.

But it certainly wouldn’t be pretty. If nothing else, Houstonians are violently protective of the health of their automobiles, and do not take kindly to any variety of threat aimed at them. Even after over a year of clean Austin livin’, I had yet to leave that mindset completely behind me.

Call it poor judgment, poor instinct, or just garden variety assholism, but I had to return the Neon’s ill-timed favor. I punched it up to a hundred or so, caught the Neon, and passed him on his left with but a fistful of hairs between our bumpers.

It was a complete and total Houston dick-hole move, meant to belittle and emasculate. Looking back, I realize that. But at the time, it was my tit for his tat. Justice: done.

But no.

If human history can testify to anything, it is that there is no seemingly egregious wrong which cannot be made more so by the rage-driven pursuit of “justice”.

I kept the speed up near the triple digits in order to insure that he would be too far back to bother with a fair retort. We were weaving through the other inebriated automobiles sharing the expressway, checking the rear-view every second or so, just in case I caught a glimpse of his approach.

By poor luck or poor eyesight, I did not see his approach in the far right hand lane.

By the time he reached us, he had to have been topped out, speed-wise. Somewhere north of 115, but not much more. Like the genius I had already shown myself to be, I downshifted to fourth and tore up to 120 in order to avoid being passed.

“Tore” may be too strong a word. My car had four cylinders. BOTH of our cars had four cylinders.

It was a mule race.

Around 45th, he inched in front of me and slid over into my lane, cutting me off at high speed. With maybe ten feet between us, at about 120 mph, I was actually benefiting from some NASCAR-type draft, and was able to close that gap even further, but I wasn’t sure how I would get around him.

We were both floored, and without any laughing gas, I wouldn’t be finding any bursts of power to get around him. All he needed to do was keep in front of me, and I would have no choice but to concede to his superiority.

But fuck that noise. I was a MAN, damnit. A man with a four cylinder car and three young lives in my care. Witnesses! I had to WIN.

So in a fit of furthered genius, I decided that I would “fake” the Neon to my left, but then immediately go right. At 120 mph. Because that’s the speed where most automobiles… are the most…

Nimble?

No.

But that was my plan, and it went into immediate effect.

I faked a slight jog to my left, but then quickly pulled back to my right. The Neon, perhaps trying to find a way out of the competition, or in a final fuck you for having totally read my telegraphed strategy, didn’t take the bait at all.

When I busted right, he was right there with me, unfettered and unfazed by my shoddy juke-move. In order to avoid ramming his rear-end, and likely sending that ridiculous trunk-wing through my windshield, I jerked the wheel further to the right.

And that sent us into a spin, just before the overpass for 2222.

Actually, to label it a “spin” is a bit misleading. Children spin in place when they get bored. Dancers spin each other to look fancy. Politicians spin their endless follies to make them look more heroic.

This was no spin, in any of those contexts. This was an all-out, complete loss of control. One where life flashes before one’s eyes, in a slumbering sort of slow-motion. Lights blurred all together. The sound of the now-balding tires as they screeched across the pavement, begging to grip something, was harmonizing with the thunderous moaning of the car’s frame as it strained to keep itself intact, yelling at me with concerted contempt for allowing such an inconsiderate bush-league situation to go down. I kept the brakes punched and the wheel locked in counter-steer, but the momentum involved was far greater than the will of my pathetic attempts at driving technique. We were beyond the help of elementary autocross skills.

Wanting desperately to stop, but deftly noting that the brakes were, quite ironically, not actually helping toward that end, I decided to let up on the pads and try to straighten back up with the soon-to-be curving spine of Mopac.

Through the burning cyclone of smoke that built around us as we finally whirled out of a second 360 and were flying straight. But unfortunately, we were movingbackwards. I caught misted glimpses of automobiles STOPPED on Mopac, pointed at us, obviously waiting to see how my horrific mistake would pan out.

The car continued its physics-driven, backward ascent of the 2222 overpass, pulling the cloud of evaporated rubber with it. Sensing that we were still going far too fast to hit anything and survive, my speed-pumping adrenaline and I made one final attempt to bring the impending disaster under control.

I reached down and pulled the emergency brake, not thinking quite clearly about how that might be interpreted by the front-heavy automobile. If it weren’t for my rear passengers and their weight-evening effects, I really could not tell you how it would have gone.

The locking of the parking brake threw us into yet another whirl, though at a speed approximately half of our initial dance with the devil. The car pulled violently to the left, wildly spinning us toward the barrier overlooking the 2222 underpass. The car continued to cry against the pavement, screaming for mercy, cursing my soul. 405 degrees later and we were stopped, staring straight forward through a thick grey cloud of smoke. The inside of the car was thick with the scent of burning tar, maybe even some hair. Echoes of every known sound but screams did runs through the hypertensive air in the cabin. Everyone’s brain needed a moment to settle back into their own soup.

Once that reeking tire smoke cleared, the headlights of the car indicated that we were approximately two feet from the barrier, overlooking that drop down to 2222. To our right, the number of stopped cars on Mopac had easily doubled, their headlights cutting through the thinning, drifting remnants of my Pirelli P6s like light skewers through a waterfall of fear-squeezed piss water.

We sat there for several seconds. Silently deliberating to ourselves. Unsure of what should be taken from the whole thing. Not quite convinced that there was a real lesson to be culled from the experience.

Was it that “justice” found its way to being properly served for someone else, if not for us? Was that a micro-occurrence of dreadful emotion-fueled mistakes of the future? An omen, highlighting our collective tendency to react with swift irreverence long before we’re capable of a calm and considered approach? Is there a point to keeping the past close to oneself, but still aware of the need for measured advancement? Seriously, why the fuck do these goddamn streets all need to have more than one fucking name? Who ARE these assholes and why are they insisting on ruining my life? Is it me?! Holy shit, ARE THEY ME?!!

But before anyone had enough time to do any meaningful soul-searching, we all erupted into an adrenaline-fed fury of excited “WHOO HOO!”s and “HOLY FUCK YEAH!”s. I threw the car into reverse, pulled back onto Mopac, and continued heading north as my nerves quickly deflated back down to a non-vibrating state. All appeared well, and I preferred to simply leave it all at that.

Sometimes it’s just easier to gloss it over in your mind, and make nice with our own selves rather than submit to the honest results of such temporary insanities. Such irreverence. Such Id-driven indulgence.

We immediately went to Taco Cabana and ate like the little emotionally retarded princes of the imaginary land of credit acceptance and immediate gratification that we were. I guess learning was just too damn hard for us at the time. Me especially.

But seriously, fuck those dual street names. It was, and probably still is, simply too much to be bothered with.