Don't Tell Teenagers This

I gingerly lowered myself until I felt the rushing street buzz my feet alive, as well as my heart. I watched , mystified, while my shoes seemed almost to float against a surface of streaming road.

     Like all teenagers, I was invincible. My friends and I were thrill seekers, and scoffers of anything that sounded suspiciously like fear. Obeying laws, morals, and rules in general reeked of cowardice, and it was easy to imagine that such things were invented by cowards and existed for no other reason than to impede our fun. Lawyers, doctors, and priests were accomplices in a grand conspiracy aimed at tricking us into fearing pleasure and joining their cult of cowardice. Consequently, I have few recollections of suicidal stupidity.

            I was, however, dominated by one supreme fear. Not dying, but dying a virgin. I imagined that my gravestone would read:

 

“[Epipsychologist], 1990-2006

Virgin”

 

            This of course would have been set in a cemetery reserved for virgins, tucked off in the woods so that the other dead people wouldn’t have to be associated with them.

            Despite desperately wanting to lose my virginity, I realized that I wasn’t very good at seducing women. Like most men, especially high schoolers, I gave up and resigned myself to being awesome in a way that my friends could appreciate, with the hope that eventually for no reason women would just like me. So I followed my friends into the world of anti-law, anti-god, anti-rule. Like scientists true to a cause, we made case studies of ourselves, methodically breaking all of the rules to find out why people cared to make them.  
            Don’t tell teenagers this, but at the right speed, and on the right road, it’s possible to hang out of a moving vehicle and allow your shoes to skid along the street with almost no drag. This was a favorite activity of mine. My friend Cody would drive his bright yellow, tinted-out Ford Focus around suburban “lanes,” “drives,” and “places.” At about 35 mph I would open the door, and suspend myself over the black top, using the inner door handle and the handle attached to the roof. Imagine a child with his father’s power tools sadistically holding a beetle above a reeling power-sander. I was the beetle, and the child too, in a way. I’d gingerly lower myself until I felt the rushing street buzz my feet alive, as well as my heart. I’d watch, mystified, while my shoes seemed almost to float against a surface of streaming road.

            A pitfall of street surfing, as we called it, was that any tick or tack in the road could snag your foot, or feet, sending you rolling much slower than the car, but all too fast for human limbs and noses. One of the times we were out driving around we had girls in the car. I was eager to impress them, and thought that they might find an insane disregard for my soulful existence and an outright offence to the sanctity and security of my human body attractive. It was around dusk, and the streets were clear enough that, as we drove hastily down a picturesque town road, with hilly kinds of curves and a church, I set my feet to the road flowing beneath.

            In my defense the girls egged me on, saying things like, “get back in the car,” and “[Epipsychologist], you’re crazy!” (Yeah. Crazy sexy). For about ten seconds this went well, until, alas, some flaw in the street caught my foot and fed it under the rear wheel. I blacked out, but this experience is a testament to man’s capabilities when animalistic emotions throttle his brain, and the pure instinct overrides him. How also, in those moments, we are reminded that at our core, we are not what we think we are? That there is an alien in us, hidden in and from our own actions and desires, only evincing itself when that true Other (that is to say, the person whom we believe we are) has failed to such an epic degree that the inner soul must rise from depths of shame and fear, must rise to commandeer the body. That stranger you meet, when everything else about you becomes irrelevant, is Character. It is what will always be true about you. It isn’t above self interest, but under it. While the raucous and the righteous contend for your soul, it is what’s there, saying “yes,” “no,” forever “no!” and molding you from the very heat and grit of your hammering heart.

            Anyway, my hands apparently clenched with the intensity of a women in labor to their supports while my foot was pounded and pressed out by the weight of the car. I managed to come to, still mostly out of a car and watching blacktop fly beneath me, but holding myself above it. My ankles and feet kept hitting the ground, over which I bobbed up and down like I was being pulled under. I flung myself into the back seat, which was occupied by screaming teenage girls who moments earlier thought they were watching me die. A numbing pain swelled to something round in my throat and I fought the urge to vomit violently, because there were girls in the car, and that would have been awkward. 

Author's Note

Review me and I'll check out your work.

Reviews

[Peter Regal Whittam]

Ah, a brilliant story! I loved the narration, the plot, everything. And as a teenager myself, I can see why street surfing can be so appealing. You'll forgive me if I go try this, despite the danger that came after!

Just one issue with the whole thing: the ending. The ending of the story was slightly abrupt. Instead of just finishing off with the feeling of nausea and abruptly signing off, tapering off by saying something about your feelings at that moment, or what you new thoughts about rule-breaking had spawned in your head, would have been a better idea.

Other than that, I loved the story. Great work.

[Baby Ricochet]

Yeah. You don't want to die a virgin around these parts. That would blow. Fun story

[Epipsychologist]

Thanks Baby

[Marie]

But I'll bet they admired you. I would have.

[Epipsychologist]

I fell in love with one, briefly, and remain friends with the other. I guess they admired me, in the way that you admire the suspect in a high speed police chase.

[Marie]

I'only seen high speed police chases in movies, but yeah, I sort of admire the suspects...

[Epipsychologist]

Cops is fun to watch for that. It always ends terribly, of course, but you find yourself rooting for the underdog/villain.

[Walter Sagace]

Very nice read, the character is really well developed and his actions are quite rational, even if they aren't rational in the usual sense of the word. My interpretation of the story is that it's a metaphor for the risks we take in life which, while on some level necessary to our own eyes, are blatantly stupid to the eyes of everyone else.

The ending comes at the right moment, but it is also quite sudden. While I suck at endings myself - it's the part I get most criticism on every single time - I think this story begs for expansion. Of course it's up to you, but I saw several options:

1. You could add a conversation between the protagonist (I take it Mike Corey is an exclamation, since the protagonist is previously you; see gravestone) and the girls while you're being driven to the hospital in which some touchy issues surface - and maybe something touching happens
2. You could describe the aftermath of the event: crippled/full recovery, girl/no girl.
3. You could describe how the moment affects his further personal development.

Finally, I've listed some textual issues which could imho be improved or fixed:

(yeas, desperately) is potentially intended, but maybe not?
Fourth paragraph, 'my mine', remove my.
In the most eventful paragraph where his foot gets caught, there's a grammatical error that took me out of the story for a minute and forced me to reread the sentence: "How also, in those moments, are (sic) we reminded that" and so on. Just swap 'are' and 'we' around.

Just to end on a positive note, what I've said so far is pure nitpicking which I hope might be helpful. The story is brilliant as it is :)

[Epipsychologist]

Thanks for your feedback, Walter. I wrote this for an open mic, and knew that the abrupt ending would receive a laugh. That said, in retrospect it feels kind of like pandering, and I think the audience also felt a little jilted by the sudden ending. i'll take care of the grammar shortly. Thanks for reviewing!

[David Scott]

It is amazing we survived our won stupidity... I understand this story. All too well, you describe the mindset of so may of us and our children. We need to remember how we thought, or did not think, when we were teens. Maybe we could cut the kids a little slack for their behavior and at the same time get their attention by validating what they are actually afraid of...
I see layers beyond the thrilling ride, but your name tells me you intend fro the reader to see and think beyond the words.
Well done.

[Epipsychologist]

Thanks David, I think that on some level the same things that cause us to sow wild oats and disregard safety when we're young mature into the things that enable us to make brave decisions that are more subtle when we're older. Maybe this is the long way of saying that experience breeds wisdom. At any rate, thanks for the review.

[TL Boehm]

That there is an alien in us, hidden in and from our own actions and desires, only evincing itself when that true Other (that is to say, the person whom we believe we are) has failed to such an epic degree that the inner soul must rise from depths of shame and fear, must rise to commandeer the body. That stranger you meet, when everything else about you becomes irrelevant, is Character. It is what will always be true about you. It isn’t above self interest, but under it. While the raucous and the righteous contend for your soul, it is what’s there, saying “yes,” “no,” forever “no!” and molding you from the very heat and grit of your hammering heart.
Now THAT is writing. - love the tone in this - the anecdotal format - I was a teen once so I related to this easily - and although its probably rude of me - I laughed at the 'almost brush with death' or possible mangling - when we were kids we truly thought we were invincible. Great story

[Epipsychologist]

Thanks TL, and I'm glad that you laughed. What's the point of living if you can't laugh at death, sometimes anyway?