Never the Same #43 Kirk’s Deliberations

Did Kirk’s avoidant personality lead him to suffer solipsism syndrome? Well, Kirk might not be “right,” but we shouldn’t go that far.

 

So, there Kirk ended up: aimless, jobless, money-less, challenge less, and ambition-less. The racing season ended with not too much to say for Kirk except he gained some valuable race driving experience. He had a couple guys he would talk to at the track, namely the slowpokes like him, but no lasting friendships developed from his time racing. The fact that no one in his home realm even cared that he raced consistently all summer simmered within his soul.

Without any drive or direction, his stock car sat there on the trailer for a week or two until one day Mike requested the trailer back. Yeah, with Mike’s used car renovations, Kirk should have known he would need the trailer.  

When Kirk took the trailer and his car over to the garage, he found that another stock car sat in his slot in the garage. Chad Gonzales was a Late Model racer from the nearby town. Kirk had known about him but never spoke to him. Didn’t have a reason to. Now Chad’s car occupied the garage along with Mike’s silver coupe. Maybe Mike had visions of grandeur in racing Late Model stock cars. Who knows, but it stung Kirk just that little bit. Maybe more than just a little bit, you know? Since putting the Chevy engine in his car and painting over the sponsorship advertisement, Kirk hadn’t talked to Mike. Their paths didn’t seem to intersect of did Kirk plan that situation? Did Kirk’s actions piss off Mike? Why would Mike care because he wasn’t even racing for the second half of the season. Kirk wondered that perhaps Mike took offense that Kirk ended up with a higher standing in points than Mike. The apprentice shouldn’t outshine the master, right? Especially in the first year, but there were more factors in play. Too much to analyze. Kirk wasn’t into any kind of deep philosophical interpersonal relations assessment.

Turning his rig around with stock car still loaded, Kirk hightailed back to the farmstead.  He backed the trailer up to the old garage and unloaded HIS stock car. Right then, Kirk decided to take full custody of HIS stock car, seeing he had raced it, serviced it, and modified it, he would just go ahead and keep it. Yeah, Mike will get his trailer back and that would be it! Kirk put the car in the ramshackle garage, but what would, what could he do with it there? Kirk didn’t think about it, he just left it there. Kirk returned Mike’s trailer and there were no other words exchanged about the car. Maybe Kirk wanted to keep his future options open, but he had no plans for the car because he was no planner. He just didn’t think too far ahead.

Kirk didn’t know what to do with his newfound free time and discontinuation of his connection with Mike. Every day and night were free times for him. Kirk had frequented Mike’s garage for six years and even though Mike couldn’t really be called a mentor for Kirk, he existed one of sorts just by Kirk’s gaining knowledge and skills by watching and being exposed to things mechanical in generally atmospheric osmosis. Kirk had gone solo racing even though never thought of it that way. He felt like he had always gone solo since venturing about the farm, and even in the presence of others whether participating in school, sports events or on the race track, Kirk had always felt he existed solo by himself, all by his lonesome and other, well... He remained one of those few people who believed that he only existed alone and everything and everyone else were there just to back-fill the world around him! Yeah, that must be a mental disorder like Solipsism Syndrome. But doesn’t everyone kind of believe that they’re the center of the universe? Let’s not study Kirk’s psychiatric condition any further.

Moving on, Kirk broke ties with his dealership job, the so-called sponsorship, and now he broke ties with Mike. Maybe Mike didn’t intend on “throwing” Kirk out of the garage when he took up with the Late Model racer, but Kirk sure took it hard that way. That was the way with Kirk, so what would Kirk do now? Would he go back to sitting in his bedroom, stare at the walls, and reminisce over his lost loves of Babe, Dee, Bonnie, Linda, and Farah? He didn’t really lose Farah, so he felt just drifting apart or so while Sarah Elizabeth, he just left her hanging more or less, so he could cruise over there any time and make up with her, but he just didn’t feel like it. Ya’ know? Kirk lived relatively okay and normal when he kept busy, but he sure wasn’t too busy right now. This went on for a few days until his father leaned on him.

“When you getting a job, boy?” Kirk’s father abruptly asked.

“Oh, I dunno.”

“You DO need to pay your rent you remember?”

“Yeah, I’m constantly made aware of that.”

“Have you asked around anywhere about a job? Openings and such? How about the John Deere shop? I paid a lot for you to go to that tractor college course.”

“You know that I checked there before and they didn’t even want to consider me, remember?” Kirk said, with his voice raising an octave.

“Well, you could try at the gyp plant,” his father said, meaning the Georgia Pacific drywall plant where he worked.

“I sure wouldn’t want to work there,” Kirk mumbled.

“What? Why not? They’re hiring off and on all the time so you should check with them. They pay well and the pay increases all the time. Won’t hurt to apply.”

“What’ll I do there? They don’t need a vehicle mechanic there. Doesn’t make any sense for me to even check.”

“You’d never know without checking and applying.”

“I dunno, I can’t think about it right now,” Kirk said loudly, as he walked out of the kitchen where most of their interfaces took place. He just didn’t want to talk about it, obviously.

“You can’t just keep freeloading here, you know,” Kirk’s father said in a load voice to Kirk’s back. 

Kirk didn’t respond, but he knew his father was right, but paying rent for a room where he grew up just grated on his psyche. With his mental condition going from depression over his situation to irritated after his chat with his father, Kirk’s head spun. He went outside to wander as he did as a child. He walked past his van, Firebird, and eyed the stock car sitting in the dilapidated garage. Kirk couldn’t leave it sit there because with no doors on the garage he’d never be able to work on it over the winter and the rain and snow would blow in on it. Kirk continued on down the tractor lane that he had walked and had driven the tractor down a thousand times. He took in green bushes and weeds and listened to birdsong. A cool breeze blew his longish hair about as a harbinger of autumn. 

He kept walking towards the distant plot of woods which was situated at the rear of the farm property taking up maybe seven acres. Kirk liked the solitude the quiet woods provided him. In his teen years late in the autumns, he often accompanied his father back there with the old putting John Deere tractor. His father searched out dead standing trees, cut them down and they dragged them out of the woods with a heavy log chain often when wet snow covered the ground.

As a teen, Kirk thought the logging, dragging, chunking, and splitting the wood up was a rather macho activity. But now, his father had a hot water heating system in the old farmhouse negating the need to burn firewood in the big hungry basement furnace. Maybe Kirk’s father got a little timorous from the multiple chimney fires that occurred. Yeah, unseasoned wood when burned creates a lot of creosote in the chimneys and when heated to a certain temperature ignites and burns like gasoline. Yeah, when you hear flames roaring up the chimney and heavy white smoke pouring out the top, you would better call the fire department pronto and head outside because your chances aren’t good. Apparently, luck favored the Biscuit Family! Once again, I digress.

So Kirk sat down on an old damp rotting log to ponder life. He had no idea where his life headed. The racing season kept him busy and engaged as did his job at the dealership, but both of those extinguished, one permanently the other one until next summer, but then again, Kirk didn’t even think or plan on racing next year. A couple years ago when he attended college, he thought that being on his own away from home seemed rather all right. The caveat with his life on his own was that he was financed by his father, and he had steady sexy Bonnie to keep him warm at night. So not really on his own. Kirk thought about all this. Where would he go/do now? He had given the mechanic job a good try over a year try in fact, though maybe not his complete commitment, but he put in his time and ended up not enjoying it. All those years of interested in all things cars and automotive, going to BOCES and college mechanical classes. A job was a basic requirement, something he had to get if he was to continue on his present way of life, as ascetic as it was.

All Kirk could think of in way of jobs for him were department stores, fast food joints, and maybe auto parts stores which he thought that he could be sort of qualified for. He paused at the thought of being a janitor seeing he had experience stripping and re-waxing in department stores, but as a day-to-day job? Kirk just could not conceive the total drudgery, the overall boredom, the many menial tasks he’d have to perform. Worse than the dealership for sure. One of his high school chums actually was hired on to be a janitor at the same school they attended. Kirk just couldn’t imagine the utter horribleness and dire hopelessness of that. He just didn’t know what to think as he watched a few leaves flutter down from the highest trees in the cool gentle breeze.  He basically sat there contemplating life his path forward with a blank mind, which as you can imagine, leads nowhere.

***

  After a while, Kirk got up and wandered back to the farmstead. No one had missed Kirk, no one knew he had disappeared because he often just took off as he did as a child. Taking his time getting to the farmstead’s backyard, Kirk spied his stock car sitting there in the open door of the old garage all lonely and despondent. He stopped and looked at the competition car. With a sudden inclination, Kirk went into his van and grabbed a straight-bladed screwdriver. He returned to the silver car, climbed up on a side nerf bar and went to work, slowly but surely, he began removing the self-tapping metal screws that Mike had installed to attach that highly offensive fake vinyl top at least to Kirk. Yeah, there were a lot of screws put in maybe at least fifty. What Mike thought when he put the top on, Kirk hadn’t a clue, but the top was going away and right at that moment. Well, after many moments. After reaching as many screws as he could from one side, he switched sides, his pocket filling up with the screws. After maybe thirty minutes with his hand and wrists cramping up, he took the last screw out. He grabbed the black vinyl top to slide it off but no, one more screw he had missed was keeping him from the total removal, a complete departure from the weirdness. He grabbed the vinyl and layer of foam rubber underneath it in a fistful bunch and slid the top off, tossing it to the ground. He thought the car already appeared much better, at least more normal for a stock car notwithstanding the silverness of the car now with a bald pate with over fifty tiny holes puncturing it.

Yeah, maybe this simple act equated to a further separation from the past season set something off in Kirk, maybe a whisper of an idea, though we’ll have to see if anything develops.

For now, Kirk just stays the same.