American surreal

I was driving — and I was thinking about Borscht. The meaty kind. You were the hot blond-ish chick decoy in the passenger seat – you had called shotgun! because we had the entire Mississippi Bones thing playing on the shitty car stereo the whole time and you needed your hands free to shuffle – you kept wanting to listen to the lot but, in all reality, you only wanted to hear that one song and you were in the midst of this internal battle about whether you shouldn’t still give the lot a go…

Before we’d jumped in the car (you slid over the bonnet) you’d grabbed 12 decks of cards — each deck heterogeneous — and simply chucked them down in the middle of the road then scooped up a couple from each — I dunno, they’re mixed up and a little dusty and stone-scraped now, and then the ones you do pick up — a few from each deck… They shouldn’t go together but they do.

They completely do, and that is what I’m thinking about when you play ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ for the 5th time — I think ‘How the hell does that all go together? But it does… Why aren’t these guys more well known than they are? More popular? More green hearted?’.

None of this hindered my driving technique but, rather, improved it — when you’ve got people chasing you and all you can think about is the fact that being popular is less important than being good but knowing in your stones that, even then, it’s no fun being the best looking sheep at the abbatoir, you tend to take a more laissez-faire attitude toward staying in your lane.

‘Oliver’.

You’re deep in thought and don’t hear me. I’m not looking at the road anymore — I’m looking at you — but it’s ok — it’s not dangerous — it’s a car chase dream sequence. You say something about ‘Tartar’ and I think of the Borscht again. The meaty kind.

‘Oi — Oliver — pass me that emotion you just dropped on the seat beside you — I want to have a closer look at it’.

You don’t respond straight away but you do look at me after a particularly well-taken corner (partially airborne) and you suddenly sing ‘I’ll tell you somethin’, you ain’t seen nothin’ ‘til you’ve seen an android weep’, but you sing it at the top of your range and I nod a couple of times at that because — well — it’s quite impressive — quite pleasing — and then you nod a couple of times too because — well — you agree that, yes, it is.

As the final strum in the song fades to black, you, Oliver, kick the mutherfucken door open and, as I’m pulling the handbrake with one hand, and shoulder-hand-combo opening the door with the other in a really slick, fluid movement which is impressive on anyone’s songsheet, we slide to a stop and I fleetingly think —

‘Yep… looks like the beautiful unique snowflake’s found his feet — and they’re wearing Alice Cooper’s golf shoes.’