Crossing the Street

I walk down the sidewalk, light wind whipping my hair. The sound of passing cars and buzzing neon signs, the faint call of distant voices speaking surround me. The sky is dark, pitch black, but lights emanating from the city illuminate the clouds, wraithlike.

A busy street ahead. Heavy traffic, fast cars, chaos. I don't even pause as I step into it. I don't have to look to know the cars are slowing down. And why?

Not because of some innate, psychic bond between all humans, or love for fellow men. No, I know they won't hit me because I know they don't want to deal with filling out an accident report.

But if I'm safe, why do I feel the adrenaline?

Because I know. Deep down, buried in my throbbing, primordial animal brain, I know there's that one-in-a-thousand. Some rage-infused driver behind the wheel, who seeing me, will swerve, just right, hoping perhaps to break both legs before speeding off, maybe in some unidentifiable yellow cab. A state of war. And as I cross, I turn to my right, and stare down each driver, straight faced, are you the one? I dare you.

I woke up this morning and looked around. Was this me? My safe life, my comfortable house? My fucking silk pajamas? As if rising from a dream, I wondered how this came to be--the well decorated room, curtains matching the carpet, art on the walls, an antique dresser(empire mahogany and bird's eye maple, rose inlay. Inset brass escutcheon on top drawer, gilded hardware), the woman, my wife, still asleep next to me.

As if I had forgotten risk, foregone the days of wandering, my body now soft, my mind weakened by routine. The open bay window beckoned, yet beyond was nothing but a neatly manicured lawn, a well-kept garden, a stone fountain. Bougainvillea. My gilded cage, wrought by my own hands. What happened to the danger? The passion?

Needless to say, I skipped work today. Didn't even bother calling in sick. Wandered the city, places I've never gone before. Places I'd never go. Places I wouldn't be caught dead. Places I was sure I'd be found dead. Like a child looking for ill-defined adventure. To feel alive again.

And here I am, in the middle of the street, walking across antagonizingly slow as half the city shows me one finger in particular. But I don't give a shit--they're cowards, all of them. I want to pull them out of their cars, throw them to the ground. Let them know, viscerally: If our positions were switched, I wouldn't have even slowed down.

And why? Just to get a taste of that risk. Not the safe risk, not the weighed risk, not the kind with a possibility of a payoff at the end. A laugh at the consequences, a leap into the unknown, a certainty of disaster, a welcoming of pain. Hell, without the chance of some benefit, it's not even a risk--let's call it what it is: Sheer, stupid, ludicrous danger. Pressing a nerve, squeezing the adrenal gland, just to feel something. I want to feel something.

But all there is here are a bunch of scared sheep in cars. Sheep in metal clothing. Fire under the hood but blank stares in their eyes. And I realize there is no way to get that rush. That glamorous danger I seek isn't real, the passion nothing more than a lying promise bottled for my consumption by the media whores who want me to buy buy buy to fill my manufactured emptiness. I know I'm defeated before I ever began. This me that I am... This is the real me. Whatever vision I used to have is long since gone. I'll go to work tomorrow, explain away my absence, spend 8 hours alienating myself, then go home to my HDTV. It'll be like today never happened.

I make it to the other sidewalk. Traffic resumes behind me, a motorcycle roars by. I step around a pile of dogshit, and start walking home.