Previously: We meet Jackson Hoffman, who is looking in the mirror, not liking what he sees.
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
America, have you ever driven east out of Chicago along Interstate 90, across northern Indiana and northern Ohio? By the time you leave Chicago, you’ve had your fill of rust and crumble. Once in Indiana, you pass through East Chicago, Hammond, and Gary. If you leave the expressway and enter one of these cities and touch one of the smoke- stacks or gentlemen’s clubs or crumbling warehouses, or set foot on one of the post-apocalyptic streets and walk down it like a lone survivor, there’s a chance the sorrow will be overwhelming and you’ll want to find a burned-out house and pry the plywood from the windows and crawl inside and sink into a final despair. If you are steadfast, and you make it to the other side of Gary, you’ll find yourself in a live action Hannah Barbara cartoon, the same background scrolling past again and again and again: cornfield, silo, sky, sign for Hardees, cornfield, silo, sky, sign for Hardees.
The movement I see is a shadow, or some trick of the light bouncing off the mirror or flickering off the shower curtain, and that presence I feel next to me is the wind coming in through the window. The voice I hear is just an old tape in my head, and it sounds so real because I got my ass kicked, or, more accurately, I got my head kicked. Repeatedly. At least I think that’s what happened. The last thing I remember is getting kicked. But that was on the porch, wasn’t it?
This is not so different than most of my life, having conversations in my head. I’m usually not bleeding out, I’m usually in front of the television, or on the bus, or meandering along a side street, but I’m in my head, remembering and ruminating in unhelpful ways about what has been and what never will be. Sometimes I’m talking to my mom, or some- times my brother, sometimes an old teacher, but sometimes my audience isn’t specific, or, rather, not a specific person; sometimes I’m talking to America the way the TV gets to talk to America, or the radio. When I talk to America, I picture a man in a suit on a cable news station. America is twenty-four hour news, nice suits, predictable haircuts, and lots of makeup. America is also blood and tears and cracked ribs on the floor of a bathroom. America is talking to itself.
I’ve pissed myself, America, and I wish I hadn’t done that. As soon as I can stand, I’ll look for new pants, until then, let me try to sort this all out. There was a phone call, a boy, I was on a road trip with Ana, and now I’m beat to hell, I don’t know about the boy, and Ana is gone.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
I was living in Logan Square, on Kedzie, in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store. Gangsters had given way to hipsters, while a few old Norwegian ladies still went to the Lutheran church on the square; when taco places called Gloria’s or Margarita’s were turning into cafés called GREAT, or NEAT, or some class of interjection.
Then Jackson gets phone call.