This was a piece I wrote back in college. It’s heavily influenced by the great Beat writer Jack Kerouac, and one of my best friends from high school. Most of all though it is a good portrait of the moment.

I saw him with his torn and faded jeans coming upon me with the brightness of a sneaky smile and his radiant charm already traversing upon me like warmness in the breeze, I was doomed to loose it from that very day. Since then we’ve become, changed, loved, and ran all the dreams we spoke that day on the railroad rails of South Chicago. He’s been writing me, telling me about a million girls and strange books about strange thoughts, all a guiding light I thought. I received a picture of him once, all daring and young in black with chains and beads on his chest, newly reborn into the angel running once again. I thought of stopping him once, but now he speaks so wildly and flying that even I can’t compete.

He use to think he was me and told me how to go about changing it back and forth to produce a better thing, but I was too lazy and I only wanted sex and the thought of being cared for, and he longed freedom from it all with dreams to spin and throw him around, so that he could be for all time the stranger who is freedom and forever. He told me once, he had been out walking down to South Deering and had begun to loose his head and imagined beasts out from the trees and things around; he said that they would never leave him alone, for once he was with Amy and he saw them again staring to touch him and he ran cold and frightened and stumbled. I told him it was all cool and believable, but he was crying their on the bed with his feelings all closing him up and he wanted to jump from the tower and scream the word, but he knew he wasn’t the messiah so he stayed there as long as the darkness staked his eyes and he dreamed colors again. I didn’t know what to say to him.

Three afterwards and he was in Iowa with his girl and thinking he’d changed and was all better now, but he was still carrying the music thing and he wasn’t much more than lonely I thought. He was praying in a room with a cross on his neck and silence to help him believe the word again. The room must’ve frightened him after a few days, turned the monsters in his head into dreams and passion was turning back into the wave of sadness washing over him and drowning him with bleakness. But maybe he was stronger and the drugs a little better I thought, since he only walked now and played the guitar.

It wasn’t until August that he returned, wearing black and carrying on about Neal Cassady like a young Jack Kerouac, all writing and beliefs. He wanted to talk forever about how it all was and where it was going and using all these words to make it there, dreaming and running to find it was what it was for him. And the loneliness dug into him like love does to us all. All the while I thought: my friend, the American Hipster strolling the night in search of blues songs, what a life, what a story, maybe the greatest novel ever! And then he said, “Fuck” maybe I was thinking the wrong story, I wonder if he’ll really write about his girl now?