Yeah, I'm a patient boy, but it's not like I have many options. I doze off in the backseat as Mom merges onto the highway, waking up twenty minutes later to one of those evangelical billboards. You've probably seen them somewhere: red letters on a piss-yellow background, Forgive My Sins Jesus Save My Soul. My post-nap bleariness blurs out the lettering till our car gets right under it. I read it all. Now, soul-saving has got to be a new level of patience. Cradle to grave. Let's just say I'm still working up to it. But now, in the car, in the world, is a better time than any.
My Mom, after reading the Times' newest South Carolina COVID estimate, told me about our road trip preparations. We'd have a tube of hand sanitizer packed in our lunch bags (scrub with two good squirts before eating, she said). Moreover, we'd have a paper bag of N95s stashed next to my feet if we had to stop for gas. Had to, I remember, was the operative phrase.
We're heading to my uncle's house in Charlotte, a three hour drive. It's the first time I've seen my extended family in nearly a year. Early on, in the first two months, we thought it'd be over by Christmas. Two months later we were talking about how historic our current moment was, two more months and we started following vaccine news. Now, on most days, my family wakes up late and types silently in our rooms, parents answering emails, kids logging onto Zoom calls. On most days, we only talk when we pass each other in the hallways.
"And function!" blares my Airpods. "Function is the key!"
Hell is this? I give a quick, forceful tap to my phone's screen. "Waiting Room" is halfway through an instrumental buildup. Oh, yeah.
It's all coming back. Last night I watched a forty minute Fugazi documentary while laying in my bed. It had a whole segment on "Waiting Room" and how it's their big hit and how they play it at every show and so on and so forth. There's this one bit, though, where they talk about the breakup of Ian Mackaye's emocore band, his multi-summer sojourn into side projects and guest features. Two years later, he's yelling "come on and get up!" at a DC rock club to a packed house of pogoing punks. The archival footage shows audience members crowding the side of the stage, flailing their arms to the crescendoing guitars, ad-libbing the lyrics.
When the documentary was over I clicked on my NPR bookmark. No new headlines. Neither were there any new Discord messages from my friends, or summer reading updates from my school. Then, and only then, I opened up my Spotify app and downloaded the song on my phone. Then, I went to bed.
I hit pause. The white noise of asphalt overtakes the guitars. Outside, passing trees fuzz together. Another billboard advertises a sex shop on the next exit. I wipe my eyes, bringing back the bleariness. From my window I see multiple North Carolina license plates.
I have a habit of getting disoriented when I sleep, especially when I travel. Once, in a Savannah hotel a few months before the pandemic, I woke Mom up in the middle of the night.
"Who are you?" I said. "And where is this?"
"I'm your mom. We're on vacation in Georgia," she mumbled before I fell back asleep.
I don't remember any of it, but how could I? Believe me, my subconscious makes me say some stupid shit. Before I watched the documentary that night, I scrolled through my news sites for a good hour and a half. Read nearly every article there: the features on families split by quarantine, the bleak stock market forecasts, the photo galleries with the deer taking back town squares in northern Massachusetts, fish swimming in Venice's channels, goats trotting down Welsh streets. Who are you? Where is this?
But if "Waiting Room" was on when I woke up, then it must have been playing while I was asleep. I imagine Ian Mackaye from the footage, shirtless and twig-skinny, screaming sense into that stupid shit as the punks bounce in my brain.
"Everybody's moving! Everybody's moving! Everybody's moving, moving, moving, moving!"
The punks morph into the profile pictures of Discord friends, journalist headshots, high school classmates, drivers in the passing cars. A crush of patient boys.
