SO THERE ARE NO STOPS SIGNS ON THESE BLOCKS

By Tom Lee

I firstly apologize for the mess. There is no resolution.

You sit down to write, but your attempts are broken, easily, by trips to the bathroom to blow your nose and spit. The third time you make the trip you get heavily distracted by the weather outside, and get feverish seeing the trees move from the wind, but you can’t feel any wind so you have to go outside.

Last night you watched Angel Island burn, but most of the fire seemed to punch and dance on the other side, the Marin side, those lucky bastards. There's no more wind, and the ocean is lying down still. Still lying down. You listen to your friend get a call, and he laughs, hangs up, says it was John, says he asked if we were watching mount fucking doom. Angel island is now Mount fucking Doom. You watched Mount fucking Doom with your friends and let your conversations spit and curse and fuck, watching them grow like babies, and you become a proud parent of a beautiful, little, spitting, cursing, fucking son of a bitch.

Its dark, except for your face, silhouetted by the burning island. That doesn’t seem to happen too often. Romantic maybe. Baby, lets watch the island burn. You are only thinking this. You Talk to Eli, about what you’re thinking. Maybe, you say, that the fire will reach the shore, where there's a navy base, someone says, and then you hear three more chime in. It’ll blow up. It’ll blow up. It’ll blow the fuck up! You’re caught chanting. The island’s got to be a light show, gone wrong maybe. Or someone was smoking weed and they dropped the blunt. Or maybe it’s God’s blunt. That’s how it looked at least. You are not projecting. Someone says that monkeys live on the island, and you forget to disagree, instead adding that they’re fire monkeys now, and you become completely convinced it’s the end of the world. Atleast tonight. Then, Fire zombies! someone yells, and zombies grab hold of the conversation, screaming brains! brains! You tell Max to shut up about the brains. Caleb starts talking, and you’re told about a movie called the signal, where you hear this radio signal and it takes you over, and you become mechanically and incredibly violent, and you don’t know it, and you go up to your buddy and say hey, buddy, what’s going on, and you give him a pat on the back, and you like it, and give him another one, buddy, and it feels so good, and you do it again, a little harder, and then you start hitting him and there's a hammer in your hand, and then you feel so good, buddy.

And so Caleb comes up to you, tells you he’s having a great time watching Mount Fucking Doom and he pats you on the back and you look up, and he pats you again, a little harder, and you start chuckling and say cut it out man, and he doesn’t know you’re talking about, man, and pats you harder, and then he starts to beat the living shit out of you, but stops, obviously, because isn’t he just a great comedian, a joker, he’s just swell. You listen to everyone talking around you, speaking through their teeth, breathing their words. You spit

Doesn’t matt have a boat? Yeah, Matt, you got a boat! True, I do. Lets go get it. We got no lights. That's no problem, lets just get some beer. What and sit on the boat and drink? No, dude, and sail out there. Yeah, man, get drunk and sail the boat into the fire. And you swear that’s the best idea ever. But Pauly asks one of you to go back to the car and you know he wants to kill one of you, that he’s heard the signal! Caleb begins to describe all the ways Pauly could kill him, and he swears he’ll swing at Pauly if he makes any moves. And so you spit and curse and start another conversation, letting it stagger off, dancing, with that really cute convo in the high hemmed dress. Pauly walks to the car alone.

You slip into thought.

It’s like this:

I remember baby-sitters. My role models. The older brothers of the families my parents were close to, and that I became close to. They were Berkeley high kids. They were what I looked up to, aspired to act and sound like, as all kids seemed to find someone to act and sound like. And I never understood anything they talked about. But they were funny. Funnier than the Simpsons.

Peter was the funniest person I knew. Sisco, too. They both told stories, made jokes. Man, could they tell stories. Peter told me about christmas. His friend Yohanis would, each year, dress up in a santa costume, and at nine, even eight in the morning, you would hear his car screech and stop outside of the house, and the door would slam open, always being unlocked. Yohanis would run through the house yelling it’s christmas, and throw his gifts from a bag at the awakening family, and then run in his santa outfit back to his rusted broken down mustang and screech away just as fast as he braked. He lived around the corner. This is the first instance I can remember where I began to realize the beauty of story telling, the beauty of conversation. A good story was a good joke was a good laugh. There was meaning to it.

I was never a good story teller. I botched the facts, I relied too much on the context. I couldn’t get the feeling across, and I made the story sound like I was making fun of a dying dog. No one thinks dying dogs are funny. If they do then they tell horrible stories. I told horrible stories regardless. Because I didn’t get it. I tried to get it, when I thought about every person I liked, every memory I enjoyed, every patched up story. It was all about the actuality. The specific guidelines. So I was that one legged kid at the fucking three legged race. Some joke.

How could I ever be happy if I couldn't understand the art of story telling, the basic unit that held together human relation, human experience. I tried to think about my baby-sitters, think if they had taken some class, or knew the trick to it all. It made me sit up at night, scared of what would come to me in the silence. No, I’m kidding. I slept like a fucking baby.

My mouth opens slightly as I stare squinting at the dropping sun. I wipe my mouth as spit forms. The sun slips between the mountains and golden orange fingers grope along the city, against the buildings and the bay, curl outward to Pacifica and Marin, palming the bay. Clouds lay against the peeling sky, bruising purple and pink along with the sunset. There’s not much in that. It ends with that period. I find it pretty, empty. Pretty empty.

How does one make a story whole, make it pretty and make it whole. How do baby-sitters come up with the stories they tell. Obviously you need to recount amazing adventures with amazing insights and amazing realizations. Not every one is amazing. I could talk about pretty things, but you get nothing from that, nothing like full things. I want to give you something full. Angel Island has nothing in it except the beauty and friendship. It is a story between friends. It is not amazing.

So here, I am not your friend. I want to tell you stories so full of meaning, too full of meaning, spitting meaning, vomiting meaning.

Listen:

He sits, drawing. He loves tattoos, loves seeing them, loves drawing them, wants them himself. He says he wishes he could be a tattoo artist. Another boy scoffs, asks him why he isn’t trying to be one then. He says he doesn’t know. The other boy tells him do it. He says it’s harder than that. The other boy says what’s harder than trying for something you love. He says there's more to it than that, there’s complications. The other boy says complications will always be part of life, deal with it. He says that’s mushy bullshit, he cant follow an absurd passion. The other boy says atleast he has passion.

So it goes:

I feel guilty. You want something different. I feel the sweat. Maybe you can’t see, or maybe you can’t read. Either way I can’t capture it. There are sunspots in my eyes and so I can’t see exactly how you’re reacting. I feel like I’m leading you on. Let me try again, I feel guilty.

“Dude, let’s call people up, see what they’re doing,” Will says.

“Yeah, before we get back,” Tyler answers.

“You do it, My phone’s way too quiet,” I say, because my phone is way too quiet.

“Turn the music down then, I can’t hear at all,” Tyler says.

I turn down the volume knob, because that is what it was put there for. Minutes seem to pass, Tyler is talking to someone, I’m not sure who. I want to have a good night, do something social. Tyler hangs up, says there’s a party. Everyone is going.

“Yeah? All right, let’s go, I’m down.” It’s hard to discern who said that.

The freeway is calming, being carried forward on a constant speed. The sky hangs awkwardly around the white jeep we sit in, moving forward with a consistency similar to our own. I tap my fingers slightly, always anxious. It’s like I’m supposed to be answering a question but just haven’t for years.

“Dude, change the song!” interrupts Tyler.

“Right, my bad. I’m so glad water polo is over for tonight, I’m down to party.” I mean it.

“Yeah, but I’m fucking tired.”

“Hey, can we stop by my house? I’m trying to change clothes,” I say.

“Sike, nah, fuck that,” Will says.

“Fuck, dude, it’s on the way” I say

“Yeah, I know, I know, it’s fine.” The freeway exit appears and its’ dive leads us to slower, thicker streets. You go through the motions with these streets.

“So there are no stop signs on these blocks,” I tell Will.

“Fuck that, Jesus Christ.”

We slip past these blocks up to my house, and I run inside, say hi to mom and change my shirt, grab another layer, head back out the door, telling mom I’ll call her later.

“That wasn’t as long as it normally was, did you not check yourself out in the mirror this time?” Tyler says. “You’re poor. No, I had to talk to my mom,” I tell him.

The car steps forward, towards the Berkeley Hills. They curve around my house like a bowl, and it reminds me of a cheek bone. Albany hill is a mole on the cheeks skin. Fog rubs against the hills and down towards this mole, touching, curious as to how it feels. It could be a gigantic turtle, that has been sleeping for over a thousand years, its’ shell covered by growth.

“What the fuck are you staring at?”

“Oh, shit, I don’t know. Who’s at the party?”

“Most of our friends, it sounds cool.”

“All right, I’m down, drink some beers, chill, sounds good.”

We piercingly drive up into the hills, crossing Colousa and heading up to the Arlington, towards the Marin circle. Seems like a trip I’ve taken over and over. Marin has always been a steep hill but we don’t have to travel far. We turn the corner, as the corner is usually used for turning and find a parking spot, music still playing, changed from one song to another, frantically. No patience.

It’s easy to over dramatize anything. It’s just as easy to feel complete indifference to anything. Emotion and the lack of emotion seem to zig zag between each other.

Sometimes it feels forced. Sometimes I don’t let my self react because I want to have the right reaction for some one to see. Within that is a reaction. I react how people want me to. So I’m not reacting the wrong way. Everything must be right. Perfect. A Crisp, flawless image, utterly relaxed and of the best moods.

“All right, close the door, dumb ass.”

“Right.”

“And stop spitting on my car, what the fuck.”

Inside is indescribable. Completely out of this world. Captivating, passionate, heartbreakingly, staggeringly incredible. I’m lying. Inside is what you see at every high school party. Inside is every high school party. Inside is monotony. Inside is a description of a high school party being like every high school party. Inside is a description already described and understood by so many people so much more deeply then I could describe. Why should I even describe it. But I’m probably the only one thinking really, seeing as no one would actually want to put time into thinking deeply about a high school party. A waste of time. So I push past the first group of kids surrounding the door. It’s a little hot, and smells like sweat, lust, beer. It makes me want a beer, it makes me sweat.

“Hey, aw! Dude! Hey! I said Hey! Where. Have. You. Been?”

“Man, I was at water polo, where are the beers?”

“Aw man, I don’t know, fuck, let me get a few dollars”

“Shit, I’ll pay you later, don’t worry.”
 ”Man, fine, sure, all right, you mooch fuck, let me grab you one.”

Weed smears itself across the air of the room. It’s nice. I start to look around me. Faces I know, clothing I recognize, have even worn myself. It’s similar, I’ve been here before, with these people. I decide maybe it has to do with safety. The fact that it never changes. Not that you are yourself with this gathering, just that it’s a constant, a known. Why do I always go to these things. I go outside, I spit.

I begin to forget dialogue. It doesn’t matter. It’s so full of substance and intellectual superiority, trying to recapture it would only water-down the magnificent speech with which it was delivered so eloquently from tongues of the most well thought, reasonable, rational human beings. The night was filled to the point of spilling with un-tellable adventures and partying, not a single eye holding within itself sleep until the graying of dawn.

Bullshit. I forget the dialogue because it’s forgettable. I forget the night because there is nothing to remember.

: Here:

There’s a high school party, because I feel guilty. I wanted to give you a concrete story. Maybe it told you more then you realized. Or maybe it was about nothing

Angel Island could be the same exact thing. It seems to have the same components, it really does. The lack of direction, it sounds like an account of nothing really at all. It’s a story between friends. There’s meaning. It’s patchable. It’s all a continuation, floating along with me until I stop telling stories. It’s mushy bullshit, it’s baby-sitters, it’s Angel Island sitting in the bay, burning. It’s passion. Maybe it tells you more then you realize. Or maybe it tells you nothing

Still, There is no resolution.