Roadsigns- The Introduction

To tell someone the exact moment that I knew my breath was not just another waste of precious air would be a difficult thing to do. Life seems to hand you these moments, these exquisite fractures of time where the seconds  drip together, the lights brighten, and tastes tingle a bit more on the tongue. Every sense is heightened, every emotion more profound, and every smile looks more like the shimmer of a foreign city’s skyscraper. I’ve always had a name for these kinds of moments-- Roadsigns.

I’ve had a fascination with highways ever since I could remember. Maybe that's because I have spent most of my life on one. Everyone on the highway is driving for a purpose. To run away from something, to find their way back to something, but either way, the cars are all headed in the same direction. One person’s heaven could be another person’s hell. And, I can remember staring out the tour bus window when I was little, drowning out the lackluster love of my Roses of Godchild father with the whisking noise of the highway, realizing that I wanted to experience life through conversations.

The stories of these journeying drivers intrigued me more than anything my childhood curiosity had ever come across before. I wanted to drive with them. I wanted to camp behind truck stops with them and talk to them and know where they are headed and how important constellations are to them and their opinion on cherry pie because I always thought it tasted god awful.

Roses of Godchild was the “biggest rock band with the word rose in its name since Guns N’ Roses” according to Rolling Stone magazine, and according to my father’s boasting mouth, the greatest rock band to ever record under the Gallantry record label. I grew up around it all: the drugs, the parties until dawn, the drunken lyrics he wrote that groupies somehow convinced themselves were “words of a leather-clad angel”.

As a seventeen year old girl living in a tour bus, moving to new cities night after night, I became thoroughly convinced that if I looked into a dictionary, the name Nevada would be placed under the definition of lonely. Nevada was my father’s attempt at a creative name, so he says, but I’m convinced it was just the state my long gone mother happened to be in when I finally came into the picture. I always asked about my mother. He always acted as though he hadn’t heard a thing. 

Dad was never actually on the tour bus to spend time with me, and when travel was necessary and he was, it usually involved “just one more sip of whiskey stop telling me what to do” and him passing out on the pull out couch. So, it always came down to me, my ukulele that one of my dad’s five-day girlfriends gave me as a peace treaty, and my journal I bought at a truck stop in Georgia.

I remember one night perfectly well, and it was the night I was convinced that I needed leave the pathetic life and love my father had given me and set out to fulfill my destiny with those glorious interstate highways. I craved to build bonds, and connect with anyone and everyone I came across while I was on the road. My dad got one thing right about the way he raised me-- I never wanted to settle down in one place. I wanted to move, to see every place there is to see, and notice how skies differentiate as you go from one state line to another. People were my home. Highways were my home. A sunset setting over the rolling hills of a mountain road, wind jumping through my tumbleweed hair and heart. That's the existence I envisioned for myself. 

The night I knew I needed to get the hell out of my father's life was the night I finally found the truth out about my mother. It was a letter, thats all it was. While he was finishing up the second encore of his show in Dallas, I decided to rummage through the fan mail he has his agent, Tammy, throw out in the nearest dumpster stop most days. There was only one letter I truly saw.

  The envelope was stained with something, cheap coffee maybe. But, written in angry letters, scratched with a pen, were the words:

         I WANT TO MEET MY DAUGHTER.

My heart pounded like the old drum set my dad's band used during their rehearsals. Loud, banging, in not quite the right pitch. It was my mom. She was writing to my father. About me. I opened that letter like it was the first Christmas present ever given to me. (My real first Christmas present was Roses of Godchild's sophomore album and a $5 certificate to 7-11).

There were a lot of sentences I saw in that letter. She had beautiful handwriting, not like she was trying too hard to be neat, but not the kind that was pretentiously messy. 

I didn't notice I was crying. 

Marc, 

     I know I have written to you more times than you can count. And, although I hate your guts and everything you stand for, to be precise, I need you to listen to me. I think about our daughter every single day. I know that you left, and you took her, and you're a goddamn celebrity, you're in that goddamn band I can't escape from hearing about, and there's no way I could ever win custody of our child... but I have something I need to tell her. It's so important to me. I need you to just let me talk to her. Please. Unlike you, who stole her away from me as a publicity stunt, as a way to give yourself a good image (your image is pretty much the worst image in the legend of images, by the way) I care about her. Let me talk to her, Marc. Let me talk to her. I'll do whatever it takes. And by the way, your new single is horrific. 

      -Jett

I was frozen. I was packing up my bags before my mind could catch up with what I was doing. He knew she had been writing. Her name was Jett. I could have had a life with her. I hated him, I hated him for taking her away from me. 

She was strong, she was witty. 

She sounded  just like me. 

I had to find her. And that meant stepping the sole of my shoe onto the highway concrete right that second. 

My life, the one I knew I was always meant to be living, started the day I packed up my clothes, ukelele and journal, laced up my Chuck Taylors, and ran away from the hell on wheels to a life filled with more than words could describe. A life with bruises, sweaty tears, and relationships worth more than the sea is worth to a rusty ship rope, more than the stars are worth to an empty runway of flight. 

Author's Note

My introduction to the story :)

Reviews

[Olivia]

Just from reading the introduction I am hooked on wanting to read more. Your writing is so clear and precise Excellent work!

[Wolfwind]

---silence--- Wow! ---silence---

This introduction, this tale, the plot and this premise that you have crafted so gently and beautifully... It has captured my soul within it's ink. It's energy of the traveler is so powerful. The highways, the bi-ways, the truckstops and the multitude of varying types of people. That aspect realed me in to what you have writen. Having spent 8 years as a big rig driver in the past, I can realate to that wanderlust.

I think you have created a fantastic beginning to something and I wish to read every line that comes forth down the journey.

Great Ink!
Aaron - Wolfwind