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Jays Onedwards drove south on highway 101 between the 10th street and Bernal road exits, a five mile stretch, at 3:00 in the morning on a Sunday in March in the New Minnelium in the rain alone with the smell of the maiden in his nose and thoughts of the matron in his heart in his parents' minivan at exactly 70 miles per. Jays could no more tell you what 70 em pee aitche looked like, felt like, tasted like smell liked or sounded like than he could tell you the capital of Baghdad was Sri Lanka or that the name of that food where they stuff fish in a chicken in a turkey in a lamb in a goat in a cow in a camel in an elephant and cook the lot for five week is called Magooladesh. His own car was a world wise Honda Civic 87 gray four door second engine, with the odometer stopped at 157,000 miles because when they dropped in the second engine they broke the speedometer cable and so he neither knew how far he'd been or how fast he was taking it. But and although he was unable to read the rpms and deduce from the gear setting which speed he was at, nor glance at the passing landscape to do so, nor access that part of his semi-circular canals and investigate the tiny hairs within to judge from the acceleration what he was doing 'long there, he nevertheless ended up instinctively going exactly seventy miles to the hour. So he was not in the habit of checking the speedometer as he drove and even though this one worked mighty fine it didn't occur to him to look at it. Jays wants access to his emotions but every time he sits down and tries to connect to http://www.jays.real.emo/deep.html he gets either a network socket connection error, a report that the server does not exist, or the dreaded 404: file not found error. The network socket connection error used to frighten him until he realized that it was not his emotions or lack thereof that were at fault but his web browser, and so he tweaked his self-consciousness up whenever that occurred and then usually got the server does not exist error, which just meant his consciousness was tweaked up too high, but even then he always, having established that there is a server www.jays.rea'.emo, found that there was no file deep.html. The index file was accessible, but the hierarchy of folders and parent folders and sub recursive folders was a logistical nightmare and as navigable as Cairo in summer in damp clothes made of khaki on a stubborn camel on a Saturday after camel-dinner-time. One way in which he was attempting to access these emotions was by not sleeping much. It was almost working. In any case it was surreal. It was a few days earlier. It was a considerable amount of alcohol on the part of the maid and still more on the part of the matron, and what may have been even more on the gentleman's part but as the gentleman weighed more than either it seemed to be having less effect. The hot tub, she bubbled. The passion in the air, she boiled. And on a tiny bench beneath edge-of-the-city-stars, California things happened as far as the married one was comfortable letting them. And Jays had been so happy because for the first time he wasn't stepping away from his happiness to remark to himself how happy he had been. The next day, work. And then a wander over to the maiden's to see if she was home. She was. They talked, and loved each other by letting each other be themself, easy for her to do, nearly impossible for him. Who was he trying to impress? At any moment he felt compelled to say something, to say something impressive, amazing, endearing. He loved that girl with as much heart as assumed he had and wanted to tell her so in a litany of prayer to the God who invented them the way they were, but she let him let himself not let himself say anything for stretches of time, and then she fell asleep, and he watched her, and then he fell asleep, and her roommate came home, and he hugged her and left. She was so soft. He was trying to impress himself. He was always thinking. The three, they were a trichotomy, and his role was the sacrificial thinker, to sacrifice chaste sanity for the dangerous potentiality of infinite thoughts. And the reason he had to think so much is because it was the only way he was sure he was; he had no access to his emotions to help confirm his beingness. Why was that needed, the emotional awareness? Because beingness was not in and of itself necessarily justified by its own having-happenedness. And emotions, God love 'em, good or bad, made life life. Jays wanted life to be life, God damn it, wanted life to be life. And now the drive home. To listen to the radio, one must turn it on. One must listen to the sad sad song. One must listen to the man singing, the one who sings sadly, about life and sadness. One must allow the lump to rise in the throat, the tears to build up hot behind the eyes, the nose runs, the breathe comes in hitches. One must imagine one writing all this down as one drives from 10th street to Bernal on highway 101 because until one objectively observes oneself crying in this form this fictional form one does not cry. One wants to cry because nothing is as beautiful as finding oneself deep within the uniqueness of two others, the matron and the maiden, and one wants to cry because all tears are releases of sadness, and loneliness has been the rule for self-awareness for so long that to finally find oneself deep within the beauties even if it is on a small bench a few feet away from the hot tub throught he skin-tingling action of California things means one is, one should be, and one will be for a while yet, God be praised, all other things unaware of themself be damned. A few tears, not many, rode the edge of Jays Onedwards' eyes between Blossom Hill and Bernal, the last mile, not enough to have accomplished full synthesis between emotion and intellect, but enough to suggest that deep.html was indeed in there somewhere; it was only a matter of believing. For finally, one isn't unless one believes it enough to invent it so. After he wrote it all down, another exercise in making reality a kind of fiction, to come to understand things through the act of writing about them, he made a small prayer to God, whom he respected. Dear God: Let me dream of them tonight, and every night, but especially tonight, let their laughter fill my head and their beauty fill my heart and their wisdom fill my soul. Let me see myself reflected in their blinding brilliance, let their infinite grace touch and caress my weary being, let my two perfect friends be with me and I with them and we with us forever and ever and always, amen.
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