A. Could we get the air conditioner up please? B. I need to pee! In which the reply will be, "We don't need gas yet..." And that is when it gets really bad, being bothered by everything, everyone. Look at the guy, yeah, that guy in the corner, grey socks up to his ankles, expensive but awfully tacky belt buckle. How dare he eat that sub that way! That is when you think that you might be losing your marbles just a bit. That is when you wanna jump out of the van and say, "Goodbye to everything and everyone! Goodbye awful smelling perfume, and goodbye lotion that makes me smell like rotten grapefruit. Goodbye everyone! I am taking my Charles Dickens, you can have my social security number. I am taking the Steinbeck, you can have my dress that I am ashamed to mention how much it cost and how little I wear it. Take it all."

Thumbs out. Oh, desert highway, cactus-like coat hangers wrenching and twisting up, framing the postcard-worthy frame in my mind, come to me closer now! And cacti cannot sway in the wind, can they? I must be just thirsty, or delusional, or I might be making this all up. Yeah, they do not swing in the wind. Their branches feel like human skin, it can really get ya, all eerie and fleshy and thick and careful. No. They do not sway. No. My thumb is not out, yet. But it's got this crazy itching, I tell ya, this dream that never goes away. I mean, I swear I sleep with my thumbs out, and when I wake up they are tense, but languid from being held so all night. This haunting in my mind is a malady, a circus to a child, but you can't stay in the dream all day. When my cup comes to my mouth, my hand holds it tight, but my thumb is, again, out, strong and waiting.

I'm full of it, I tell ya, and that's the honest truth. I won't go hitchhiking anywhere. I will stay in my house, and talk about it a lot, to a lot of people that I don't really like very much.

But if you do see someone on the side of the road, who probably won't have a lot of luggage, if any at all, and that maybe, just maybe, happens to be around 5 feet, 7 inches, coincidentally half-Asian, long-ish brown hair, awkward hand movements. I mean, maybe you could be a little generous to that hypothetical stranger. I mean, maybe you could take them at least to the next city, or even further, and maybe you could give them your address and say, "Hey, drop a line once you get to Juno." Maybe you could even offer to buy them coffee, and maybe they would say, "Yeah. That'd be real nice." Maybe that person you picked up was just bluffing about Juno. Maybe that person just wants to get somewhere closer to Los Angeles. I mean, they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

'Til next time,