flights offer ample time to “dig”

Kerouac’s starting to get to me. Reading about his ragged bums running around getting blitzed and “digging” everything makes me want to dig everything too. I try digging the ride to the airport.

I dig the takeoff, that sensation of your ass being planted into your seat because the plane is suddenly in the air. I read and then look out the window and there’s Catalina Island. Can you imagine how I dig it?

Time to get off the plane. I’m in no mood to battle off, so I sit and watch everyone jump to their feet and rush past each other and to hell with that seatbelt ding the pilots make.

Two hours to kill before the flight I’ll probably miss. I stroll up and down this puny terminal and decide to waste time usefully by taking a crap. It feels a little urgent even. I waltz into the handicapped cubicle and feel bad about it, guilty like for wanting the luxurious space. I can see a vet in a wheelchair punching on the door and saying (drunkenly) I defended your freedom and got my legs blasted off NOT for you to shit in my stall you lazy greedy bastard, all furious and me left with no choice but to laugh because what the hell this is the penthouse of the bathroom and the chances of some cripple hounding me are slim to none and if it comes down to fisticuffs I can probably just push him over.

On the shitter I read about Kerouac throwing a drunken blast of a party including a beach bonfire near his cabin in Big Sur and how Cody is digging everything to death and I want to dig too. So I put down the book and watch three successive pairs of loafers shuffle into the stall next to mine for a spell. The same suit pants, the same rich leather loafers. Business bastards, polite restroomers. None of them grunted or farted much even. Still, the sight of the same shoes replacing one another in a bathroom in the middle of an airport boggles my mind, and at last I have the feeling that I’m digging something. It makes me feel lost, amazed, lonely, giddy. Taking shits three feet apart from another in this chemically polished sanctuary. A roll of single-ply toilet paper about the size of four hundred rolls rolled into one, for everyone’s use, what a collection of asses this thing sees before its day is done.

Also, the toilets have minds. When I get up the thing flushes itself, and I hurry to look if my effort will give it at least a little trouble going down, in truth I hope to flood the joint, but this toilet knows better than to dick with plungers, it flushes with the crazy enthusiasm of an airplane, suction so powerful if I was unfortunate enough to be wearing a tie I’d tuck it back.

On to Starbucks, a good place to dig people. Everybody on their cell phones. Calling as if to say What did I just catch you at you bastards, see, even if I’m not there I’ll still catch you because I’m there in spirit. That’s the problem I’m digging. Everyone is everywhere except where they are. Nobody digs anything. But I am.

this hat puts me in a contemplative mood

This black guy next to me has the biggest bottom lip I’ve ever seen. Like a bee stung him. He can barely eat his bigass  salad around his lip. He starts talking to me. He never looks even vaguely in my direction, and I only know he’s talking to me because nobody else is around. I ask him Hey where’d you get that bigass salad? He says Right here, he works at Starbucks, and to prove it he eyeballs this cute Latina and says Maria, when are we gonna go out? Ya know, night on the town and all? He says it suave-like but his lip is in the way, and she responds Shut up. About then I decide to dig back into Kerouac. I want to be left alone, to repel people, but maybe even dullards can tell instinctually from the look of me that I’m digging life, maybe they want to learn how to dig it too.

That would be cool, exuding some sort of bizarre Dhali Lama allure.