Carrying trays of steaming hot food, Damien kicked the door of the diner with his foot, made a swift turn on his axis like a circus acrobat and strutted to our table. He had grown a mustache over the course of our trip and was obsessed with combing it into shape. Setting the plates down on the table, he perched on the plastic seat. While I said grace I caught him through trembling lids producing a small green comb and sliding it through his mustache. His face was the image of self-importance and glee.
“…Lord, bless our food and gives us eyes to see and ears to hear…” my eyelids fluttered open again after a clinking sound caught my attention. Damien was preening himself in the reflection of his glass. The end of his comb poked into the glass and made a clinking sound. “...align us with your perfect, divine will for our lives, and direct our path so we can walk in perfect peace, joy and harmony with your creation. Amen.”
I opened my eyes. Damien quickly put the comb back in his pocket and folded his hands in prayer. The food tasted okay, but I couldn’t get the memory of that hamburger stand in the desert out of my mind. I was more curious than anything and I was also annoyed that Damien had interrupted a potential adventure by his refusal to indulge in paying the vendor. In my fantastically inclined mind those desert hamburgers had turned into magical manna from heaven designed to open my senses to the higher realms. My contrary nature and rebellious streak poked at me with vicious insistence which I found harder and harder to resist.
“Why do you go on trips, Damien?” I asked, dipping a fry into the ketchup. He looked up at me nonplussed. “Why does anyone go on trips? To get somewhere nice and have a good time.” He huffed and swallowed a big bite of his hamburger. His eyes were focused on me, but his mind was a million miles away, I could see it by the way the light flickered in his pupils, as if it reflected someone standing far off in the distance. “But I didn’t ask about other people, I asked about you. Why do YOU go on trips?” I took a bite from my burger. It tasted okay. But it was nothing compared to what the desert burger might have tasted like in my imagination.
Damien glared at me. This time his presence drew into the moment. Anger and condescension pointed his lips into an upside down smile. “Like I already told you, I go on trips to get somewhere to have a good time, or, if its work, to get somewhere for a specific purpose at a specific time. What kind of question is that? Why do you always ask these types of strange questions?”
“Well, I go on trips, especially leisure trips, because of the unexpected adventure of it. I love road trips because I want to meet people I would never run into otherwise, experience things I could never plan for, do things I might never have the guts or gumption to do otherwise.” I shoved another fry into my mouth. It was not salty enough, but the consistency was good. Damien swallowed the last of his burger and was eyeing my fries. He didn’t seem interested in my exposition. In fact, his face was so entirely placid, so utterly devoid of emotion and thought he looked like he was sleeping with his eyes open. I leaned back and shoved my plate towards him. He eagerly lunged at my fries without a word from me.
“I’m going back.” I said when he swiped his mouth with a napkin and dropped it on the empty plate. He glared at me with surprised eyebrows. Then he furrowed his brow, but the thoughts behind his forehead slogged lazily across the canopy of his conscious mind. I wanted to get beneath that layer of clouds, get to the real person beneath those scudding thoughts occupied by past and future events, always worried, always occupied by survival.
But what if there was none, nothing behind it? What if the instinct was all there was? What if pure consciousness didn’t exist anymore – swallowed up by this artifice of a persona, programmed to function in this artificial world?
“Back where?” Damien asked, his eyes focused in the distance, but not really perceiving the beautifully haunting mountain ridges rising up in the distance, only seeing his inner world.
“Back to the food stand in the desert.” I said and got up. I carried our plates back inside. Damien still sat in the same spot when I returned. He narrowed his dark eyes at me; they almost looked black in the sun, black marbles with white veins. “You’re crazy, why would you want to go back there? We just ate!” Anger was rising in his voice, anger and annoyance. “We have to be at the vocational rental by noon tomorrow. We won’t make it if we drive back.”
I shrugged. “So what? We are on vacation, we make our own schedule!”
Damien got up and angrily pulled on the dogs’ leashes. Edgar and Wallace lolled their tongues and lapped up the water from the canister he was pouring out for them. “You always have to make things difficult. You always have to be so eccentric.”
I huffed. “What is the point of life if you don’t live eccentrically once in a while and go off schedule? Life is meant to be lived, not planned out and followed like it was a sure thing. Don’t you want to be surprised once in a while? Don’t you want to be awed and stunned once in a while? Don’t you want to be taken for a ride once in a while?”
Damien stood up and stretched his back. “If I want that I go to the amusement park and book a roller coaster ride.” I glared at him in disbelief. “Again, that’s something you control, a controlled loss of control, a preplanned journey on a man-made adventure. You’re never really letting go and letting God, and allowing life to take you places. You’re so afraid to just live, and let God surprise you with what he has in store for you.”
Damien chuckled and looked down at me from underneath his aviator shades. “I make my own destiny. I decide what happens to me, not chance, or providence.” He said the last word as if it was a cussword.
“And that’s why you miss your own life. Because you are so busy and occupied with planning the next steps you are not even able to live each moment. Your mind is constantly occupied with the future; you have no capacity to live your life, live in the moment. Your life just passes you by while you’re busy planning the future.”
Damien yawned and pulled on the dogs’ leashes. He wandered toward the car. I had the keys still in my pocket. I was going to drive back, I held fast to my resolution. Damien seemed to think the discussion was over, because he shook his head as if he was laughing at a crazy person’s ideas. I’ll show him crazy, I’ll show him just how crazy real, raw unfiltered and unplanned life can be. … I put the car in gear and turned back south. Damien was too busy thinking about the future, he didn’t notice we were heading back until we passed the 20 mile marker. I heard him suck in the air with indignation when he noticed.
Losing control for a man of the world is a threat to his very existence,…and to a woman no less… Here we go… what was he going to do now?
