Dustin grew up in rural Pennsylvania, watching the concrete boxes and plastic suburbs takeover the cornfields where he used to go sledding. After school, he worked in the century-old family auto shop, nestled first in the center of Allentown and later in the suburbs. His father taught him how to turn a wrench and drive a nail. He showed him the value of hard-work and the complex struggles of what appears to be a life devoid of meaning.
From the setting of his blue-collar background, he grew up looking for answers in the new infinity of the internet, harnessing computers early on to build websites and connect him to distant friends in the underground spaces of a fresh, digital universe.
When I close my eyes it’s not dark but light. Nothing’s there, but everything’s moving.
The boats and planes in my mobile all agreed that they should head somewhere together.
At least this horrid acolyte robe could make me feel less fat-kid conscious.
“Charge me two more broccoli crowns, he eats them riding in cart.”
“Wow… how did you do that?”
His face wrinkles with giddy laughter at me as the wrinkly organist repeats herself, “Let us now, try this section… again please.”
That silvery, salt taste of a sourdough pretzel.
I’m back in the maroon S10 snowplow with dad at a time of night I only just learned to exist. The street lights spray the flakes down in cones atop the warehouse parking lot. The snow gathers what’s left of the light on planet earth into perfect grey-white noise.
Mother points us to a red felt board with oblique caricatures less compelling than the upstairs classroom of a rural Lutheran church.
Life is too delicate to tend fertile ground with a heavy hand.
Not even a bully could rob me of the security and freedom I feel in the echo of my parent’s game-night laughter.
I used the secret side-door on Maundy Thursday.
For two boys with sticks for swords, the forest is a spiritual place.
I held a guitar for the first time in my sister’s third floor, Germantown apartment where the ceilings were high enough for to let imaginations breath.
A guitar is my familiar.
“Dustin, I got another call from the neighbor—please go take the keys out the tractor and the front loader and put them in the junk drawer. Pop-pop is joy-riding the Cub Cadet up and down the street.”
“Imagine goosebumps are your spirit trying to break out and drag you back home.”
One hour pickup bed ride outside the Amazon—a drunk with a box a wine served us communion in front of our hostel.
“Son, I know we have different ways of seeing things. I’ll never understand all the choices you make.” This is shitty pizza.
One fourteen hour flight: personal detachment, complacent. Then a cramped two hour puddle jumper: the stuffy scent of humanity in a corner pizza parlor. “You can have this sauce, this one,” finger moving, “not this one—too hot for you—not this one.”
I uncovered unsterile humanity in a dark mortal alley. We ate and drank the holy sacraments on a concrete stoop; profanity and consecration collapsing in to bury our heads.
The cold, Canadian sun spilled thick honey on the rolling swathes of green reeds where the lake twisted around a small island. I set out alone in a canoe. As I approached the middle of the lake, the now unobstructed breeze heaved the water. The water frightened me with the black complex shade of its own depth. The worst part was that paradise was lackluster. Yeah, its just you and me now. Yeah, just you and me forever. A greasy coin in a thieve pocket.
Maybe going nowhere isn’t so bad.
Occasionally, I’d buy a bagel in the café at the bottom of the hill, pull my hood up and cry as I stuffed my face between classes.
Take me back to the unlit alley.
“How’d you get here?” asked the demon, surprised.
Dodge the live-in res-admins, I woke up each day by and hour-forty-five after the time when the two-hour parking clock started ticking to shuffle my car around. “Do you have a car this weekend? Can you give us a ride to the south-side?” A pinch of social clout is a nice window dressing for my ugly teal-blue hatchback even though I still hate this prick.
“I need to withdraw. I don’t belong here.” Oddly, the dean was the most sympathetic part of the whole process. It was almost like she wanted me to leave.
I counted all 17 slats suspending my overweight roommate and his mattress above my head just about every night, only 90-something minutes from the shoreline.
Now I’m standing on the edge of the world. In the middle of the moonless night, the dark, dense, depth smiles back. I’d reach out, touch death, hold hands with life—feel the salty chill alight the tips of my ears. I left my socks and shoes in the car. The wind wants to push me back to the street as I slide into the dunes. I go only only far enough to let the cold surge wash over my feet and watch waves crash in the liquid void.
The saleswoman says to me, “hun, this is a ring for anniversary celebrations,” but I tear up and tell her, “that’s okay, it’s the one.”
This isn’t working out.
“The brown ale and a bourbon, please and thank you.”
“I know you expected it to happen, but its still got to be hard. I mean, your dad’s dead.”
“…graduate with distinction,” they said. The advisor who failed to hide his reluctance caught me outside: “At least, well, your instincts are very good.”
“What’s your name?” “Dustin.” “We figured it was something exotic like Noah.”
“He asked, ‘lemme get your artist’s name and number, I got a mural for him’ so I gave him your number.”
“So tell us Dustin, where do you see yourself in five to ten years?”
“Well, to be a rockstar.”
Pristine timing.
He walks the unlit Dublin alley / lit cigarette in hand / his suspension and protection. / Who protects him from himself?
“It’s two-nil Scotland, come on then we’re watching the match upstairs. Do ye smoke?”
“No, no, I’ll get tested. Thank you.”
“Damn, your man’s a real killer!”
“What’s your name?”
“Dustin.”
“Like the Turkey, classic American name.”
He sits behind the bar, smokers cough and all, with that soft cocaine face and scars. He has drunk the pint in maybe one too many bars.
“Man, your name again?”
“Dustin.”
“Want a line then? It’s Hogmanay all mine is yours.”
“No, thanks. I have a paper needs submitted by midnight ET.”
“You’re very insightful Dustin, you can’t just drift into obscurity, people need to hear what you have to offer.”
A mind may be a terrible thing to waste, but a nimble mind is a pain in the neck.
“Yeah, with Dustin it’s always like restaurant quality food.”
Why does the world feel like cotton candy?
“Everybody knows Dustin loves anything ‘Dutchie.’”
Let me massage your mind.
“I always had this feeling, we were kids you know? And Dustin just knew how to do stuff.”
What starts wrong, stays wrong.
“You will do well,” the Sicilian sent cool words right through the steam coming off the hot, lighted pool. “Dustin, I have seen your work. You can do well for yourself.”
Pretty soon spaceship earth will run out of rocket fuel.
“I see you as a tastemaker.”
“What do you mean by ‘rugged urbane?'”
I’d prefer the world drain me of my blood and water than watch the cartoon world on repeat any longer.
“Dustin, all this time I believed my thoughts meant something.”
“So, this stuff really gets you down and dark, eh?”