Suburban Kids Coming Home From Bonnaroo
Last Sunday a couple thousand kids packed their belongings into parents’ cars and vans bought on the cheap in college towns, driving through the night into whatever else the summer held for them.
One kid got in as the sun was rising and briefly forgot his garage’s security code and then remembered it and entered his house where his parents were sitting wide awake stern faced in a way that reminded him of ’50s sitcoms he’d caught brief glimpses of as a kid when nothing else was on Nickelodeon. They said they wanted to talk to him, they were worried about him, they’d found a bong made out of a tiny garbage can in his bedroom and also maybe this wasn’t the best time to be telling him this but then really when ever would be a good time we’re getting a divorce. And the kid, who at this point was still rolling on MDMA, took the whole thing as reasonably as anyone could be expected to, then went into his room and listened to the new My Morning Jacket record front to back, feeling real good.
Another kid in another state was asleep on the shoulder of a girl he did not love and would not see again for (he said) three months if not (he knew) ever, and when the car pulled up to his house he got out and she got out and his friends didn’t make any noises or anything, they were tired and besides we’re all older now, and he gave her a deceptively passionate kiss before turning to enter his home.
At six in the morning another kid got into the house he shared with a speed dealer and an environmental science student. He watched Seinfeld on DVD in his boxers but couldn’t fall asleep to it like he could to a normal Seinfeld rerun, because in the latter scenario you’re connected however loosely to late night Seinfeld watchers all over the globe (or at least the area that your local Seinfeld syndicate broadcasts to) and in the former scenario you are totally alone but for the sounds of your speed dealer roommate’s annoying-but-all-told-considerately-quiet sex with a girl who you once actually wrote a fucking poem about, and you never write poems.
One girl had to go straight to her summer job working the morning shift at a McDonalds drive through in Tenafly, New Jersey. A man drove through asking for a McGriddle with no cheese and the girl asked him if he ever got the feeling that there was no unique singular him, you know, just a variety of poses and personalities tailored to whoever you’re talking to at any given moment and the guy said no and on second thought I’ll have the cheese.
One kid tried reading the New Yorker Summer Fiction issue in the car but it was too dark so for an hour the blue light of his cell phone illuminated the Aleksander Hemon’s story about his infant daughter dying from cancer, and for maybe the second time in his life the kid registered both the very real prospect of death and also the idea that he’d never before experienced real pain but almost certainly would, if not soon then eventually. And then his cell phone battery died which sucked because he really wanted to read that George Saunders story and was kind of saving it for that part of the car ride where everyone is asleep save for whoever’s driving.
One girl stuck her head out the window and screamed in a way that anyone who’s seen that “endless abyss” scene in Garden State would be familiar with, and while she registered the notion that what she was doing could be interpreted as lame or cheesy she did not in that moment give one single fuck, because she realized as her vocal chords gave out that life is not meant to be lived at an ironic distance. Then her friend who writes about music on the internet made a joke like “what is this, fuckin’ Garden State?” and she got really embarrassed and put her headphones on.
Another kid pulled into a rest stop at like six am and nobody’s really heard from him since.
