I think I’m getting into this now. I just reread yesterday’s entry, and it made me want to continue writing. Old English majors don’t die?

It’s Friday. I’m naming this journal “twig,” because it’s a little log. I’m locking it with the password “woodpeck,” cause that’s the closest I can take an 8-character name to an invader of logs, and because the word reminds me of my generative organ, especially when I think of Jane.

Last night’s rain passed, so we all gathered at the wall as usual today. When I showed up, Joe and Janie were together, talking about Ike’s new tattoo. As usual, I asked her to party (I see her, I blurt); as usual, she shined me on. Joe watched with obvious contempt. I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I moved over to the chess game for a smoke.

I’d like to say that acting the sleazy old asshole is my cover, and maybe I can justify a little bit of it that way, but it’s really my social ineptitude. Fuck, I never even understood what went wrong with Jenny and me (and I really expected some kind of clarity to emerge in the last 17 years); how can I begin to figure Jane?

Joe got a call and left right away, but Janie and I, Ike and Bert, Minna, Keith and Spot hung out most of the morning. I told a few jokes (all politically un, apparently) and then retreated to watching from the wall. The sun felt great on my face. I looked at Jane from behind my shades. She was wearing super short cut-offs over biking shorts. The front pockets of the cut-offs extended below their frayed leg openings; without the bike shorts, she would have been almost exposed. It was grungy provocative. She has big legs, and the calf girth is emphasized with her red-and-green tattoos, but I like those legs. They’re sturdy, like her soul. They’d make a fine embrace around me. Anyway, I did learn that most of them were going to meet at Carlos’s place to work on their ‘zine. I figured I could be there too.

It’s 1 in the morning now. I spent from 6 till 10 with them, and then I went for a few beers with Joe. Not bad for a day’s work.

I broke the ice with anecdotes of mischief.

“It’s corny, I know,” I started, after I poured the Negro Modelo into my glass and watched it foam, gold on brown, “but I’ve always thought it’s elegant to lace the gasoline with sugar. After all, one of the big offenses is the damn internal combustion engine, which is powered off the violent combustion of fossil fuel, so gumming up the works with carbon seems like a fitting consequence. But it has been overdone.”

Joe chuckled. He sipped his Beck’s, and said, “I hate cars. No, that’s not accurate. Actually, I kind of love them. But I hate what they’re doing to us. People get in these metal things, and they stop being people. They become creatures in the metal things. And their world is filled with other creatures in the metal things, and most of them are kind of enemies. You know what I mean?” I nodded and he continued. “I’m into individualism, but cars lead to the most insidious form of isolationism…So I’m all for a bit of sabotage. But I don’t want to start sniping at them or anything.”

“No, no. Sniping is stupid. It’s uncontrolled, violent, and ineffective. The drivers aren’t the problem. They’re a symptom. I mean, their behavior is a symptom. Not a cause.”

Right then, I recollected the adventure of the car keys. Before Joe responded, I resumed. “But the most satisfying little number I ever did, I did to a driver,” I said. “I was bike commuting one spring day, and a guy who looked like a Marin commuter started bothering me. First he honked at me unnecessarily. Then he passed me fast and close, only to slow down just ahead of me before he made a right turn. I had to jump the sidewalk, narrowly missing a collision with some startled then angry pedestrians. I ended up passing him again, and again he honked! I flipped him off. He pulled ahead of me, stopped, and wanted to hassle me. Out of shape rude dude. I got to fulfill a fantasy. I reached into his crate, grabbed his keys, and took off on my bike. He actually tried to waddle after me, but he didn’t last long. I think he saw me throw his keys into the grate, but it didn’t matter. I could hear the storm creek below and knew they’d be irretrievable.”

Joe was sitting back, grinning as I narrated the story. He told me one, about kicking a big dent in the passenger-side door of an orange Toyota pickup. The driver hopped out and demanded ID and insurance, and Joey (then a freshman at Cal) got to explain that, in America, pedestrians don’t have to carry ID. Joe walked away from the guy, who was really upset because it was his brother-in-law’s truck after all, and who was helpless to follow Joe through his pedestrian escape, because the guy couldn’t abandon the truck.

About then, Janie and Spot joined us. Maybe something’s starting to happen there. I was telling Joe how my anti-car bias seems to go way back. I remember detesting my high school driver ed teacher. He was a prototypical macho military-type, cop-type asshole, but he particularly irritated me by mispronouncing the word ‘vehicle.’ The moron didn’t seem to get the silent ‘h’ concept, so he kept saying ‘vee-híc-kul,’ with the accent on the ‘híc.’ It drove me nuts.”

Jane spoke up. She looked at me with her hard face and said with her soft voice, “I don’t know, Jake. Maybe the guy had a speech impediment?” I gave her some kind of facial expression, because she said, “No wait. Listen. I had a best friend in high school, named Nora, who was the brightest girl I’d ever met. But she had a weird speech impediment; strangers often thought it was some kind of eastern accent. She couldn’t say ‘r’ unless it was at the beginning of a word or a syllable. She couldn’t even say her own name right. She’d either say ‘Naw-wa’ or ‘No-Ra.’ I remember once, she had to give a report on the Delphic oracle. I helped her prepare. We got absolutely giddy about saying ‘o-Ríc-kul’ to get in that ‘r.’

“So maybe your driver ed teacher had an impediment? Maybe ‘vehicle’ would come out of his mouth a mess if he didn’t pause and put in that ‘h.’ It’s an idea, anyway.”

I looked at her and said, “It’s a generous idea, but that asshole does not deserve your generosity, Jane. He could have just said ‘car.’”

I don’t think Jane realized until then that I know what a generous idea is. I think she looked at me like I might be human.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, talking after decades of silence. But it does feel right.