The Art of Directing Traffic
We like bookends, don’t we?
Us, humans.
We want a clean wrap.
A bow on it all.
I’ve spent all my life chasing bows—
hell, maybe there is one somewhere out there for me.
I don’t really know if I want a bookend anyway.
I haven’t gotten one, that’s for sure.
I didn’t get it when daddy found me in the briars.
I certainly didn’t get it with the boy.
I’m writing this from my balcony, where I sit in the nude.
No, this is not some voyeurism thing.
But my balcony is angled in such a way that I can sit here like this.
With my gin and tonic.
My favorite thing.
And just—be.
It’s been a night.
I directed traffic on Spring St. after the Bruno Mars concert let out.
Hence my desire to just be.
That damn gun belt rubs my hips raw.
I want to be touched by nothing.
Well—almost nothing. (wink)
It was a bird patch side gig.
The traffic directing was a shit shoe.
I typoed that earlier—but isn’t it better than “shit show?” I mean who wants a “shit shoe?” Ew.
There were cars everywhere.
Spring St. was a parking lot.
Someone in the line didn’t know how to pull traffic.
That’s an art, you know?
Knowing how to send the cars—to blade your body as they pass by.
They didn’t know.
And it was a disaster.
A real, "shit shoe."
I was in the intersection at 3rd Street and Spring, where I met both the best of humanity and the less than that—those I wasn’t "overly fond of."
But still, there was an undoubted prom queen leaving for the highway in her Mom’s SUV.
“Hey officer!” she said.
“You look gorgeous. Did you win?” I asked through her rolled-down car window—whistle in my teeth.
None of us were going anywhere. Least of all me.
“It wasn’t that kind of event,” she said waving her nails like a good Judy, “but I have won.”
“I’m sure you have, darling,” I grinned.
As we were talking, a tee-shirt poacher was walking in the road flashing his $2 tee shirts marked up to $30.
“Hey! Get out of my intersection!” I yelled.
“You betta’ get out! Outta the whole thing!” the prom queen yelled after me.
Then an Uber Eats driver yelled at me because I asked him to move his car.
“Sir, all of Atlanta doesn’t care that you have a delivery, move your car out of my lane,” I requested—not very politely, but I’m human too.
“What do you want from me?!” he yelled. “I’m a delivery driver! What do you want?!”
“Sir,” I yelled back, “to move your car. It’s not that deep. Just move.”
Meanwhile hundreds of people were snaking down Spring Street by foot, by scooter, and by car.
And there we were.
All thrust together.
I was stuck—like when that briar grabbed me.
(We’ll talk about that sometime.)
This time in the road.
And now—
naked on the balcony,
with sore hips,
and a G&T,
and a chill from the post rain breeze that’s cooled the A—
Well…
now I’m not stuck.
My cup is full—
despite the negatives.
Life’s really not about the bookends we chase.
I know, “philosophical and indulgent.”
That’s what the cruel editor would say—
And I’m sure he's right.
But still—
“Let the reader find it, Trey.”
I guess we do find that connection—
On briars in the woods,
and in the intersections of my A—
my darling, A.
There—
bookend.