Im-Leaving-It by Paul Dore

Author:Paul Dore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature
Published: 2021-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

TRAGIC OPTIMISM

The sound of the car slamming into bones bounced off the street. An empty skateboard rolled past me as people ran on to the road, and other cars stopped with a screech.

Heading up Castro Street, I took a hard right onto Market. I was walking uphill towards the water when I saw the skateboarder rolling fast downhill towards the intersection. I don't want to blame the victim, but he was clearly out of control and going full speed into traffic. I mean, what the hell else did he think was going to happen?

With impeccable timing, a car approached perpendicularly, smoking the skateboarder. There was no time to warn the guy, and I don't think it would've even mattered, he had made his decision. And so, on my second day away in the middle of a sunny afternoon, I watched a man go flying over the hood of a car as his skateboard made the rest of the trek downhill.

Welcome to San Francisco.

Maybe it was because I was getting older, but I started booking flights as early as I could get them. It meant takeoffs at ridiculous times like seven in the morning. Which meant getting to the airport in the middle of the night. Which meant trying to figure out a way to actually get to the airport in the middle of the night. Instead — and trust me, I never would have considered this before turning forty — I take the last train to the airport the night before and hang out in the airport until the gates open. It's fun, in a sadistic sort of way.

Have you ever been in an airport overnight? The first time I did this, I thought it might be exciting. I pretended that I was on the run, maybe like in an action movie or something, and I had to sneak out of the city. Bad guys were on the lookout, and I had to slip by them and escape to some exotic international location. My girlfriend arrived at the exotic international location via a different route, we didn't know if we'd make it, didn't know when we parted ways days earlier whether we'd see each other again. But we made it. Credits rolled as we strolled along the beach.

It was actually really boring because nobody cared that you were there. It was just kind of sad. Nobody really wanted to be there, and people were trying to sleep in all manner of uncomfortable ways. I liked it because if I was ever good at something, it was being in one place for long periods. I knew how to entertain myself because my stupid brain never stopped working.

Whenever I passed through customs, I usually had the feeling like I was going to be invited into some side room and interrogated for several hours. I have two passports, which at times made me feel like an actual person on the run, and figured someone was going to put an end to all this.

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