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One Woman’s Trash Is Another’s Commute

Stella Raedeker

    SURFACE STREETS
    Mama always told me, “only good news is news,” and in later years I’d reply with a stunning first-generation-college smirk. Daddy always said, “don’t cry.” Don’t feel, because you’re lucky and beautiful. And my dear friend and would-be lover Ron Stevens, the front man of a marginal, uncategorized spiritual cult in San Diego, taught me that stories themselves are bullshit, and feelings too. But he couldn’t have meant it because he really got off on the Bhagavad Gita.
    As for me, I always liked stories and always wanted to learn how to tell them. In middle school, there was a brief window of time where writing was cool because of the Twilight series. I wrote then, voluminously, in purple spiral notebooks. But then there was high school, tennis, boys, and scholarship applications. It was only last year that I revisited the idea.
    I stop in the middle of my street to wipe the dew from my left side mirror. Upsy daisy, better check the rearview. Yes. Recently, I read this Huff Post article by an annoying thirty-something white lady (me in ten years) about how worklife balance doesn’t exist anymore and how she copes by doing her writing in the car while driving to work. She doesn’t actually write in the car, but she thinks very deeply about characters and situations whilst blasting Vivaldi, and then she documents all this in her notebook.
    My wrist cracks again as I turn, gliding down this familiar and windy road in Fallbrook, Ca. Fallbrook is my home and has been for a long time. The destination is class at UCSD, about fifty miles away.
    After all those creative writing classes, I still don’t know how to begin a story. I know that stakes and tension are good. And I know that I’m no Tolstoy, and no one wants a quaint character sketch. But if I were to do it, I’d have to start three years ago, at the time I met Thaddeus.
    It was my first year at UCSD. Tiffany Phan was my roommate. The first time I saw her, she was having a heated argument with her mother in Chinese about a shower mat. Her parents and the grandmother who pays her tuition had driven out from Anaheim to help her move. I supposed that was sweet. My mom peaced out after we got all my boxes through the door.
    Those were the happy times. I had my best clothes, a new baby blue beach cruiser (all the rage at the time), and my precious Lilo and Stich dolls from home. Tiff and I got along. She was a poli sci major. I was management science. She liked Blink 182, but I was more partial to Greenday. Still, she was just like a sister. Of all my housemates, Tiff was the best at doing parties. She also had a curious habit of corrupting unassuming computer science majors.
    I was at one of these weird gatherings, bored and pretending to text. I observed one of Tiff’s unsuspecting victims. The boy was five-foot-eleven, built like a post, just straight up and down. He had a handsome face, messy brown hair, and horn-rimmed glasses. He seemed uncomfortable with people who were different from him. And with people in general.
    Later on, I found him standing alone in the kitchen. Tiff had sent me there for more tequila. I found a small bottle behind a bag of flour in the cabinet. Tiff was a sneaky one. I’d find out all about that one day.
    “Looking for something?” I asked.
    “Oh, no,” he said, and looked away.
    “Are you sure?” I asked.
    “Do you have any crackers?”
    “Crackers?”
    “Or like bread. The pizza’s all gone.”
    I studied. He did not appear drunk to me.
    “Sorry, I’m a little slow. I guess I just don’t drink much anymore and I don’t think about these things,” I blurted.
    Yes, I realized how uppity and confused that sounded, but instead of thinking of something else to say, I just started rummaging around.
    “How intelligent of you,” he said, glancing around as if helping me.
    “Gosh, I’m sorry. Tiffany’s such a health nut. She does most of the shopping around here. All I’ve got are some bag noodles. Do you want one?”
    “Oh, no. I really don’t mean to be a bother. I should be getting home. I never seem to know when to leave parties. I just stand around until it gets too awkward.”
    “I know what you mean,” I said.
    “Well, thanks anyway. I’m Thaddeus, by the way. And I’m not usually like this.”
    “Thaddeus. That is such a cool name. I’m McKenna.”
    He gave a little nod, which was about as expressive as I’d seen him.
    “I hope you’ll come again soon. Next time, I’ll have a giant box of Triscuits just for you.”
    “I’m counting on it,” he said, smiling, as he walked out the kitchen.
    CA 76 E
    At the T-intersection where I’m to turn onto the 76, I imagine being flattened by an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. I wait. And then play a very safe trick on the slow-moving Wrangler in the distance. I make a tight turn onto the left lane of the eastbound side. I didn’t used to make tight turns, but would often cut the lines. But since, I’ve learned the pleasure of a tight turn. Ron Stevens understood the value of such things. He always said that meditation had infinite value in it of itself. There was no need for it to lower your blood pressure or improve your work or sex. Maybe Indian gurus felt the same way, but Ron had a special way of emphasizing that point.
    I realize that I’m not listening to NPR like a good girl. I turn up the sound. I then decide to take advantage of Dad’s Sirius XM. I seem to be good at sponging off other people’s subscriptions. I leave it at preset number 2, a classic rock station.
    Thaddeus Philmore-Hiyashi I did see again. I found out that Tiff met him in her intro ethnic studies class. She always smiled at him as if he were a very cute dog.
    Thadd and I started hanging out alone at a boba tea shop. We had Connect Four tournaments. He convinced me that I needed to watch Star Trek. I sat through the first few episodes and made jabs at Mr. Spock’s face and the ridiculous miniskirts. Thadd proclaimed that I was hopeless and probably immature.
    He was right.
    I-15 S
    Growing up, I never believed much in God or fate. I make a controlled merge onto the freeway because it’s stacked up. After all, it’s 7:15 AM and too late for cruising. I was having a time with Dad’s fancy-ass coffee maker this morning. You’ve got to manually change the water volume on the screen.
    What a bitch needs is some perspective, and to get that, you’ve got to get out.
    I turn on the news.
    Anyway, I never believed much in that other stuff, even though my parents did take me to church. Like every other Easter. I just always thought it was weird that pious people were just like regular people. They talked about money problems and sports just like anyone else. Well, I got older and became more indifferent than puzzled.
    I just liked Thadd. He was a creature of the times. Mixed-race, mixed-family, anxiously conscientious, and too smart for his own good. The substrate of neo-misogyny meets metoo.
    He was funny, though. And he was nice.
    The traffic slows out of the blue. I give that final rough push to the brake to avoid ploughing into a white Prius. My lunch bag shoots from the passenger seat to the floor. I feel dirty. Only a fool lets ex-thoughts nearly kill her.
    So, I liked him. I watch the lines of cars up ahead, rounding the bend, and I keep an eye on the Prius too. There were oil strikes. Trump smells Iran. Yes, I liked how he wanted me and never reconciled the Catholic guilt. I could feel it in the intervals.
    I was a good girl for a while. Not crying, I mean. When Thadd and I broke up, it was all business. I continued with the LSAT prep books, the bag noodles, visits to my parents, and ironing my shirts for my law firm internship on Sundays. I knew so many friends through Thadd or Tiff, and I had to let them go. I pleaded with the eucalyptus trees every morning, that they would take me with them.
    The traffic begins to loosen up. I speed up to sixty and hold it there.
    I thought I was going somewhere. I tap on the brakes in step with the black Suburban. White Prius is long gone. I ended up with a 155 on the LSAT. It was a high enough score to seem like an accurate reflection of my competence, but not high enough to get me into any good school. It was really pretty mediocre, and I didn’t feel good about a retake. I just threw away my books and let it poison me.
    It was not long after that I left my internship. On my last day, I received a thank-you card and a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card. The card said: “McKenna, thank you for your efforts.” It was signed by everyone at the firm. Very sweet and subtly insulting. I was going to take the hint. I remember driving home after that, whizzing by green Rancho Bernardo at around 6:00, the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man” inexplicably playing on the radio. I realized then that my law school push, my education, and perhaps even my relationship, had all been a pretense, and it was very much like the ending of an episode of Madmen.
    I should have known that I was in for it. Emotional posturing is dangerous. After I dropped that internship like it was of a high, high temperature, I changed my major from economics to literature, bailed on my sublease, and reunited Lilo and Stich with Woody. When I told my folks that I was going to wait on law school, I got the usual vague disappointment from Mom.
    I slow down as we near the 78 interchange. Ambitious mergers and general chaos abound here. I glance right. This is the stuff of speed limits and Springsteen songs. This is the precise intersection of familiarity and contempt in my ever-contracting universe.
    My inaugural story was a political thriller tinged with magical realism, but at heart it was just an insufferable breakup tale. It was like the novel version of a rom-com where there’s a couple arguing and weird, inquisitive-sounding background music filling up the pauses. So much for living out my truth.
    I brake for the Tacoma that’s burst through the double yellow. I wonder if “Mindfulness on the Road” would be a better title for a self-help book or a hippie manifesto.
    There has been another vaping death. I hope Thadd has quit by now. I’ve never understood the appeal of a plume of cinnamon nicotine. The most boring yet deadly drug ever. I don’t know why I care. He should know better.

    CA 56 W
    This is the looping road that goes to the coast. It is a beautiful place to be careful. If you’re pushing 80, you may not see the stopped cars at the other side of the bend and boom! I turn off the news. It’s pretty clear today, but I’m holding at a conservative 68 and tentatively twirling hair with my left hand.
    Anyway, there I was, with a broken heart and a crappy novel. Jesus, I couldn’t even hold a major. I was strung out from shrimp-flavored bag noodles. My nose was dry from crying and my head ached. I was on Library Walk headed to class. Without thinking, I picked up a flyer from a man. I often did that just to be nice, and then I’d throw the flyer away. Well, I searched for the recycling and glanced at the flyer. It had no color and a Times font. Not exaggerating. It said this:

    COME BE WITH US.
    MEDITATION GROUP
    3/29/18, 7 PM
    Center Hall, 209

    You could call it God or stupidity, but I didn’t throw the flyer away. I stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. The flyer went through the wash, and I found it stiff, frumpy, but tragically readable a few days later. And I thought, what the heck. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.
    That night, I saw Ron Stevens, the same dude who passed me the flyer. He was a tall white man with bad posture and sad, discerning blue eyes. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved palm tree button down. Ron stood at the blackboard of the small, odd classroom he’d reserved for this allegedly restorative event. There were about fifteen of us.
    “Hey,” he said, “My name’s Ron. I notice some new faces so I’ll introduce myself a bit. I was born in Michigan in 1979. The point is I’m really old. [Obligatory laughter]. I got my PhD when I was twenty-three and worked as an engineer for about ten years. Long hours and never had much of a life. One day, I was driving to work and was almost there, and then I just turned around and went back home. I quit my job, did some travelling. I read the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, lots of religious texts. And I learned a lot of really interesting things, but something still wasn’t setting well with me. So, I decided to just start with a blank slate and meet up with others like yourselves, just meditating and being together. No dogmas, no judgment, no little fucking tracts. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. You’re always getting passed tracts. So that’s what this is. We don’t really even have a name for ourselves.”
    “The Ron Squad,” said a girl to my left in a green and blue scarf.
    “The Ron Squad,” Ron agreed, laughing with the crowd, “Is a silly name that we throw around. I didn’t come up with it, I swear.”
    More laughter.
    “I’m not Jesus,” he said, making little defensive gestures with his hands, showing his bottom teeth in a display of sheepishness. The crowd of fifteen was right there with him.
    And meditate we did. We laid on the ground or sat in a chair, silent for thirty minutes. Afterward, we broke for socializing. It was then that I met Missy, the unusually enthusiastic girl in the scarf. She was a psychology major and had been going to this thing for about a year.
    I kept going. Ron told us that there likely wasn’t any heaven or hell or sin. There was only now, and there was no need to feel guilt or fear, but only to improve. There was no absolute truth. Only things that served us and things that did not.
    I started sitting next to Missy. She liked to curl up under the podium. I would lay near her in shavasana on the linoleum, and then roll over to smile at her at the end of the thirty minutes.
    “There’s no narrative,” he told us once. “There are actions and events, but no story. No beginning, no end, no moral. I’ll start the clock now.”
    My real friends told me it was a cult. I understood where they were coming from, but I just didn’t see how it could be a cult if there were no dogmas, no rules, and no animal sacrifices. We didn’t even do chants! He wasn’t L. Ron Hubbard. This wasn’t Rajneeshpuram. But I didn’t like the shit he said about stories. I confronted him after our class.
    “Why would you tell us to pretend that stories don’t exist?” I asked.
    “It’s an exercise,” he said.
    “It doesn’t make sense. You tell stories all the time. They’re everywhere.”
    “Of course. But stories are restrictive. They’re sad. Or they’re biased. Or they’re untrue. That’s why we should be free from them.”
    “But how is that possible when they’re so pervasive?”
    “You don’t have to agree with me,” he said sternly.
    “I’m sorry. I just want to understand.”
    “You will.”
    “I thought there wasn’t any dogma here.”
    “Is it only dogma if you don’t like it?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “You’re a smart young woman. You don’t need me to figure it out.”
    And he picked up his laptop satchel and walked out.

***

    Driving through Carmel Valley, I always feel as if I’m home. It’s an unabashedly suburban place.
    Ron grew on me. We started having coffee together to argue. He gave me recommended readings, such as the Apocrypha. Which is like the never-before-released version of the Bible. He told me more about his views, some too controversial to share with the group. He thought that homosexuality was degrading (but he welcomed all members, of course). Yet, he was markedly pro-psychedelic and fine with feminism. And a Trekkie! I told him that my ex was a Trekkie and that I was learning the ropes. His eyes lit up. I always told him too much.
    Ron knew something about everything. He mentioned acupressure, and I looked it up. My favorite pressure point is the one along the tendons below and between the big toe and second toe. I could rub circles there and feel something almost sexual, a tingling running up my foot and even a stirring around in my groin. It was a thing to be careful with, as it dealt with fluids and neurotransmitters, but it made me respect my body more.
    My friends kept insisting it was a cult, a sex cult, and Ron wanted to have sex with me. They didn’t know anything about my special footrubs, but maybe they could see it in my eyes.
    I looked forward to meditation on Fridays.
    Missy I also saw more often. I found out that she was an ex-Christian. It seemed that many members were. Missy was a rugged kind of girl who was always wearing her hair in a braid and one of two North Face jackets.
    “What does it feel like being a writer?” she once asked me when we were sitting at a brewery in OB. “I mean, do you feel a kind of tension between crafting these literary, sociopolitical narratives while also pursuing mindfulness in your personal life?”
    The question struck me as passive aggressive. I also doubted the wisdom of our getting a second flight.
    “Well, do you feel tension between being a psychology major and sitting quietly in a room for thirty minutes?” I asked.
    Missy smiled.
    “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry if that came out wrong.”
    “No, it’s really a good question. I just wasn’t prepared for it. You know, for a while I didn’t understand why I wasn’t having any success with my writing. And now I can see that the way that I was going about it was so misguided. It was an escape for me and it was fun, but really nothing else. The thing is, writing feels so much like living, but it’s just playing at living, and it takes away maybe more than it gives. At least, that’s how I felt about it. But something tells me that there’s a way to do it right. Maybe it’s just a matter of being able to switch gears.”
    Later, we watched SNL cold opens in my car until I felt better. I drove her home to PB, stopping on her driveway.
    “Kenna,” she said. “There’s something I should tell you. I never told anyone this. I don’t know what to do, I’m so scared. Ron and I had sex a few weeks ago, and he said that we didn’t need a condom for what we were doing.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Please don’t judge me.”
    “I just don’t understand. Why would you let him get away with that?” I asked.
    “I don’t fucking know all these things like you,” she snapped, tears coming down.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that how it sounds. It’s just that, I’ve had such a repressed life. And there wasn’t penetration, per se,” she continued, wiping her face.
    “Did you miss your period?” I asked.
    “No, not yet,” she sobbed, “I’ve just been so tired lately, and I think my fallopian tubes hurt.”
    I started to feel bad for her, so I told her I’d drive her to CVS or wherever she needed to go. I believed her, except the part about fallopian tubes hurting. That was just silly.
    “I’m so sorry. I know you like him,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Well, you never told me, but one day you were making fun of his Hawaiian shirts and giggling, and I just put it all together. Am I wrong?”
    I wanted her out of my car.
    “Yeah, he has a certain quality. What can I say? I can’t believe that he did that to you.”
    “I’m sorry. You’ve been so nice to me.”
    “You don’t need to apologize to me,” I said.
    I went home and cried in bed. I never spoke to anyone involved with the Ron Squad ever again. I never told anyone about Missy either.
    Now the 56 ends and I speed up for straight ramp that runs alongside the 5 freeway.
    Leaving that cult was a trip. There wasn’t any fun to be had breaking religious rules. It just gave me this eerie, empty feeling. Since leaving, I still meditate, but now it makes me feel dirty, but I know it shouldn’t.
    I still don’t quite believe that Ron was nothing more than a sociopathic creep with an unoriginal philosophy. Maybe I’m just a tool. Maybe I should have tried to help Missy. I don’t know. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t statutory rape. Was it really worse than the average family, office, or congregation? I don’t think there is any healthy way for humans to associate with one another. Some are worse than others.
    I keep left, avoiding the 805.
    It’s true that I was jealous of Missy. I was jealous like the time that Thadd cheated on me with Tiff. She’d lured him away with easy sex and fun and Star Trek trivia nights. All the things I couldn’t give him at the time because I had two LSAT prep books up my butt. And I let him go with her because I didn’t want to be controlling. And then, he broke up with me at the same boba tea shop where we used to play board games.
    Thadd graduated last year. He’s a big success, according to LinkedIn, working in Sorrento Valley. Still with Tiff, says Facebook. If I could tell him one thing, I’d tell him I forgive him. And that I’ve been having the most lurid dreams about Lt. Data. I’d tell him that vaping is stupid. And then he’d probably say that I’m such a Philistine.
    I-5 S
    Maybe what Ron meant is that a story has to be thorough, or it does more harm than good. Or maybe he didn’t mean anything, and he was just thinking of Missy’s legs the whole time.
    I don’t think I’ll ever be as stupid as I once was.
    I mumble out loud, as if that will conjure up the human decency required for me to ease into the exit-only lane. I’m so close now.
    That Huff Post writer is probably a horrible driver. I’ll bet she goes through tons of brake pads on account of the distraction.
    A VW bug in the exit lane hesitates as the traffic loosens up. I come in for the kill and brake hard into the lane. Maybe it’s not so much a matter of skill as luck.
    What a bitch ought to do is listen to the news. And the eucalyptus trees.

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