Austin Nights

by Herocious

in Austin?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, “but I like the way she always backs her car in when she parks.”

  0

  The thing about the road is it gets me dirty. Even though I don’t do much in the way of sweating, the road makes me oily, a result of overly productive sebaceous glands.

  If I go more than sixteen hours without rubbing my face into a pillow, or showering, my skin gets especially shiny. It starts with my nose, which sweats sebum minutes after I shower, and spreads from there.

  Sometimes, on really long drives, the oil gets so bad my eyes sting. I can picture the oil oozing down the slopes of my eyelids and coating my myopic lenses. But Houston is close enough my eyes don’t sting when we pass Chimney Rock, where everything is familiar.

  You see, I’ve lived about eight years of my life in Houston. I love Houston. Houston is a lot of my heart. I wouldn’t say I agree with everything Houston does or stands for, but I have friends there, good friends, the kind that mean something because they know a part of me no one else can possibly know.

  Another thing about Houston: my father, also Michael, still lives there.

  When we pass the Bunker Hill Sylvan Learning Center, I tell Bridget, “That’s where I worked. In between those buildings right there, tutoring kids in math.”

  Once we get out of Houston, wildflowers guide the way through the bulge and roll of the land. Livestock get fat off hills. The Colorado River coils, a symbol of confusion. I wonder why so serpentine. It seems like too much effort in design, too much snaking around to put water through, but this is how nature settled in central Texas, looping back in on itself, a tortuous waterway that defies efficiency precisely because it can. Nature and the universe run according to the same clock, one that isn’t preoccupied with concepts like efficiency and progress and accomplishment. No hurry, no rush to get out the door.

  If I must run according to a clock, I want to run on this clock, not the one created by man, with its seconds and minutes, hours and days, milliseconds and nanoseconds, but the one of shifting tectonic plates, creeping oceans, imploding stars, and winding rivers.

  “When we come through here again,” says Bridget, “remind me to pick some of these wildflowers and take them home with us. I want some on our coffee table.”

  “I’m down,” I say, one eye on the radio dial and the other on the road. “I think that’s the state flower right there. Bluebonnets.”

  “Maybe we should take some back to Florida with us, too?” she suggests.

  “I think your dad would like that.”

  Bridget is happy with her plan. She folds her palms in her lap, squints through the strong sunrays, and smiles. The passing scenery blurs into a thing like expressionism. I admire the reds and oranges and whites and yellows and blues and purples as we roll up and down the green bosoms of central Texas.

  Then, we get somewhere.

  First, there’s the Austin City Limits sign, brown and rectangular with white letters, it’s hanging out on a pole by the side of Route 71, all unassuming like.

  Next, there’s 311 covering Love Song on Austin radio, which has a reputation for its independent sound.

  Although we know we’ll be driving this road back toward Houston in a few days, and from there east to Florida, our initial impression of Austin isn’t anticlimactic.

  Instead of navigating straight to our new home, Bridget wants to show me where at University of Texas she’ll be studying for the next five years. She doesn’t know how to get there, but the iPhone guides us with its GPS and Google maps. I, however, have trouble merging on I-35 after driving from the Sabine River, where the Texas Welcome Center sits, all the way to Austin on little sleep and a double shot of espresso in a can.

  The sudden onslaught of slow cars makes me cantankerous. I curse Austin drivers, curse Austin infrastructure, curse stoplights and bikers, and all I want is to park the Silverado and be done.

  Yet even in my belligerent delirium we somehow find an intersection Bridget positively identifies as Dean Keeton St and Guadalupe St.

  “Make a left here,” she says.

  I curse at some pedestrian on a crosswalk. Bridget points to the psychology building, where she’ll soon become pedigreed with a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. I see the burnt-orange structure made of brick and ask, “Where’s the Golden Ratio?”

  “It’s in the middle,” she says, picturing her future, “in the courtyard.”

  2

  “Is that a man with a camera I see there?” asks Abe, sitting in the shade of his balcony, smoking a cancer stick, his hair moist from sweat along the top of his ear. He speaks to me only after I’ve waved, and his question is rhetorical, since it’s very obvious I’m a man with a camera.

  “Yep,” I say. “I’m just getting back from taking photos.”

  “Yeah?” he asks, “Did you get any good ones?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “I haven’t seen them yet.”

  Abe sparks another cancer stick and talks prolifically on a wide array of stuff. Today I learn one of Austin’s drawbacks is an overabundance of individuals. Abe says people in Austin can be persnickety about their individualism. Everyone is keen on the whole idea of showing off their individuality, and this is apparent in the way they keep their homes, in their tattoos, and also the way bands play their music.

  “For Cinco de Mayo,” I say, “Bridget and I went to the 2nd St block party. We saw a band called Brownout.”

  “Did they blow you away?” asks Abe, dragging cancer.

  I look up at a cut of the whitest sky and reflect.

  “No,” I say, “I wasn’t blown away.”

  Abe laughs. His voice is very deep and circular and very full of phlegm.

  “That’s the problem with a lot of these Austin bands,” he says, “in terms of ability, they have what it takes and then some, but very few of them can blow you away, very few can move you.”

  Abe says Austin is full of mediocre bands that stay together for about ten minutes before breaking up and joining or starting another band.

  “Their problem is they’re full of themselves,” says Abe. “If you watch them closely, each member of the band won’t bother interacting with the other guys in the band. They’ll look straight ahead into their own world. Every person in the typical Austin band is too consumed by their own individualism. They’re there for themselves, and they are themselves. The band means little to them. I like to watch bands that interact with each other. I like it when the drummer laughs and engages the guitarist and they play fucking good. It’s more fun that way, to see them having fun being a band.”

  Abe also tells me James Michener, the author of Texas, said people in Austin are highly interested in the things most people find ordinary. He then drops the name of another Texas writer who said, “Austin isn’t part of the Republic of Texas. It’s the People’s Republic of Austin.”

  “I need to drink some water,” I say, drawing out a resolution to our talk.

  Abe snuffs his cancer stick and says, “It’s a scorcher, man.” He stands, “See you around.”

  8

  Shaggy is a glorious pothead, smoking the dankest since the sixth grade. He got his GED and valets cars in Miami Beach. But he won’t do this for the rest of his life. He’ll do whatever he wants whenever he wants to try something new. He’s still young and eager for adventure, for experience, for trying on this giant boot that is The World.

  What I like about Shaggy, or at least one of the things I like about Shaggy other than calling me Coz, he isn’t stingy. He’s very generous with his stash even though he has no moral qualms about smoking alone. He enjoys the act of spreading happiness. The whole idea of the Peace Pipe goes where he goes.

  Shaggy spreads peace. How many people can you say that about?

  Although we enjoy hearty mirth inside the sealed bedroom in Miami Beach, there’s a dollop of sadness. We’re keenly aware of what this baking session stands for in our history as cousins. Shortly after today, the
boxes in the living room will be packed in the Silverado, the bed I’m sitting on will be sold, the bureau from the early 20th century that belonged to my great-grandmother will be stored at Jon’s – I’ll be moving to Austin with Bridget.

  Shortly after today, Shaggy and I will be lost. Maybe we’ll talk once or twice over the phone in the next five years, maybe we’ll visit each other on holidays, but no matter how much we stay in touch, we will grow separately.

  This is the last time, I think. This is the last time, I repeat to think. Then I look up from the old wooden floors. I say, “Let’s go throw the football on the beach. It’s nice out.”

  We look out the window at a cut of the bluest sky. A propeller plane flies over with a vodka advertisement hanging off its ass. I think of the beach. It’s always there, one of the few things in life that are always there: the beach, and Bridget’s tasteful tater tot.

  Shaggy grinds the rest of the joint gingerly into the elephant ashtray. Orange embers turn into gray smoke signals that curl into the ceiling. He leaves the clip for me, for when I feel like doing some stone philosophizing in Austin.

  I’m grateful. It’s a gift, a peaceful gift.

  We take turns carrying the football to paradise. Bridget is with us. She wears her bikini underneath her jean shorts and halter-top. Her reddish gold hair blows in the ocean wind.

  “You know, Coz,” announces Shaggy, “my arm’s a canon. It’s been a little while since I last threw the ball, but you