just as long as I remember who's wearing the trousers

I'm taking a ride with my best friend

Driving home, and just as I turned onto the freeway, Depeche Mode comes on, and there I am with the window rolled down so that my hands are freezing. I'm the only car for a mile or so, gliding to the sounds and the light is so bright. I can feel, inside my black clothes and boots, under my winter coat and hat, the diamond kernel of myself. It's such a strange thing to know, despite the madness and fumbling, buried in a thousand and one gestures and layers and choices, that I am there underneath it all and I just have to work on pulling that part of myself further out until it is all that I am.

There was another song, name forgotten, but tune and words recognized that took me home, through lights, over the lines and around the curve.

it leads you on
despite your desperation
under the milky way tonight

I know who I want to take me home

Every new beginning comes at some other beginning's end

If this was the movie of my life, we would have the moments in Metro, where they were playing the newest David Bowie album, and I managed to go down and out on the second play of our card game. I was singing along to his cover of "Cactus" and happy in my winter clothes.

The transition came at Mopac, where waiting at the light the dead pan DJ Max Power put on Skinny Puppy's "Revenge of Nature," a song I have only ever heard in a certain room and in a certain car. Followed by the Pixies. "Where Is My Mind" never came at a better moment.

If I moved to Europe, or even somewhere like New York, it would be hard to give up these moments, driving home at night, when I have the window down and the pedal pushed to propel a ton of metal and glass at a speed the human body is not meant to move on its own. The acceleration, the sloping curve, the long downhill from the ramp, and all the lights moving around me, swallowed up in a night sky. I always remember the skies.

black coat
and my wrists cold to the bone
if I scream, or cry, or laugh right now
it could mean everything to me
and if I was scared before I remember
what it was that made me come to this