the hill

The girl is a good human. This is not to say that others aren’t, rather that there is a natural goodness to a person that is apparent in the way they hold themselves. Her goodness has not saved her from hate. She spent years being beaten by her boyfriend. Fucker would wound her with fists until blood or a scream broke the spell. That’s how it went down, that’s what she put up with for a few years. Then practicality set in and the girl left and the man stopped beating her because she was gone. Otherwise the beatings would continue. Simple. Like most things except when they aren’t. They often aren’t. It’s confusing this way.
The man I’m standing with in this picture, his father died of complications arising from heroine use. He hit it hard and died young. His mother was beaten, beaten down, thrown through windows, dragged down. She escaped with the boy to our safe, or seemingly safe, suburban shithole. We walked this mountain daily, wailed on our boyish flesh with all the righteous rage of youth and aggression. The top is a sea of homes, each locked to its own televisual whacked living room looptronics. The bottom was the refuge of flood plane and garbage and a sweet golf course and excellent friendships, the kind that last decades, lifetimes even.
Mom was on her third glass of white wine. She lost her job again. In her fifty ninth year, facing unemployment, she’s back to the job market, back to cigarettes, back to double time wine and back to all that she can do to celebrate the success of her sons. Sister having moved back in to the family home, to consolidate the debt and escape the uncertainty of a relationship outside of marriage, with no one to lead and no lead to follow, what else is there to do?
I check the machine for news. The television gawkers look on with judgment. “There he goes again?” I find. Pete loads a few from the west coast – messaging from trailer lands:

> a drunk moment of stoned purity...
> the street, the gang, the syndico-anarchist unit...
> i miss my friends.
> i hate nearly everyone that's left tho that's my problem...
> today they were dancing & singing their latin love songs while i slept.
> i heard them though, in my stuppor, longing for community.

I thought, “he’s the only sane man I’ve heard from today.” I wanted nothing more than to walk the boiling caldera and drink booze by the river once the distance had burned out the air of failure and exhaustion had set the tune to what we knew was right. Distance is a grand celebration.