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An anonymous post from a man who would like to be known as Voldemort.
MAX
I’m standing outside the Thai place
When my Brother’s new girlfriend asks if I know Max
It takes a minute, then a big grin hits my face
We blitzkrieged bumper cars
Max’s broad freckled face bright red
Under his howling mop of hair
Sparks raining from the roof
Rock and roll blasting
Metal slamming
A pair of screaming girls with too much make-up
And too much hair
Busting into our cherry-red hotrod
Every chance they got
At sixteen Max bailed out on his drunken old man
and showed up on his brother’s doorstep
We were the new kids in town
He crushed cardboard behind the liquor store
I took the night shift at the burger joint
We’d work late, meet on the beach, get high
Eat beef jerky, talk about girls:
Max was in love with juicy-lips Yvonne
Who looked like Carly Simon
When his grades started sliding
His brother threatened to kick him back to his old man
Getting caught tossing Schlitz 40s in the liquor store dumpster
Got Max mailed all the way back to a ratty trailer
In a forgotten corner of Washington
I missed his howling happiness so much
I had holes in my heart
I draped around the high school halls like a ghost
When the first day of summer split the school open
Like a ripe pomegranate
I was the first red seed that hit the 101
With a pocketful of burger joint money
I hitchhiked up to see him
One youth-mad soul looking for another
Our third night
We were laughing like madmen
Gorging on chips and beer
When his old man
Face red as a taillight
Threw open the door
Called Max dog shit
Threatened to beat the hell out of him
And then told me to Get the fuck back under whatever rock it was
I’d crawled out from under
He kicked the dog
And passed out in the yard
When dawn bit the edges of the sky with ragged teeth
Max snagged his old man’s keys
We slipped past his snoring corpse
Tossed my ratty backpack in the truck bed
And careened down miles of two-lane roads
To the summer hotspot
A thick green lazy river
Where girls in cut-offs listened to Heart and The Boss
And whip-thin boys took a last puff, flicked their butts into the blue
And toppled from a soaring railroad trestle
Like they’d been shot
When the day dropped down to shadows
Max cranked up the truck
And dropped me on the dirty diesel edge of I-5
I got my pack out of the rusty bed
And the interstate roared by my shoes
A hot river of melted chrome and smashed tail lights
Max leaned out the window, hit my shoulder, looked at me hard, said,
“Fuck, man, I love you.”
Then he tipped his head back, yelled, “Fuck ‘em all!”
Wolf-howled out a last rebel yell
Hit the gas
And shot off down a two-lane hole
Of hope, dust and hot red twilight
…and far down the road, so far he was almost a ghost,
his fist shot out of the truck window
and he gave the world the finger
I’m outside the Thai place
Old and beat to shit by all the usual suspects
That plunder the starry vaults of youth
And my Brother’s new honey won’t leave it alone
I find out Max has been a plumber for twenty years
His kid’s on drugs
And then the girlfriend outdoes herself:
I’m afraid I have some really bad news
He’s paralyzed from a motorcycle accident
I’m stuck in the cement of the dirty parking lot
Like an old brush stuck in a can of drying paint
Way down under my dusty ribs
My heart stands up; kick starts the dirt bike of hurt
Hops on and goes hunting for Max
My brother sees my face
And drags his new honey away before she can do any more damage
I stand there a long time
I remember a gap-toothed kid
Who toppled off soaring railway trestles
into rivers so green
they hurt your eyes
