Be My Neal Cassady by Lilly Penhall
I want you to be my Neal Cassady . . . someone who will feel the wind in their hair, someone to chase chase chase the edge of the horizon, someone who has the perfect road soundtrack, someone who will talk to me and listen back, someone who will stop on the side of the road in the mountains and dance. I need a Neal Cassady - someone to drive a hundred and fifty miles an hour across the long curling pavement with your dog’s head hangin out the back window droolin down the side of the door…someone who can drink whiskey from the bottle and smoke a cigarette and sing with the radio and get fingerfucked behind the wheel and keep it straight on til dawn…someone who will sleep half naked in the backseat, won’t wake up when I turn up The Electro-Magnetics but instead incorporate into their fishnet road dream while I sunburn my left arm hanging out the window smoking a cigarette. Someone who wants sunglasses on their face at all times - someone who will stop at 4am in whatever time zone we’re in beside a glowing open field dyed turquoise in the moonlight stare at the stars not outshined and make up constellations about our own mad mythology - That formation is called the JohnnyO . . . can’t you see, he’s blowing up an air mattress - and these two red stars I’ll name Hilgers Eyes. We’ll map out City Lights in our stratosphere and aim ourselves in tomorrow’s direction. Someone to talk about what it all means, someone to pass fat joints back and forth blowing out volcano smoke from the earth. Someone not afraid to get out there and do it. Someone who will be my Neal Cassady and dream dream dream and fuck fuck fuck and live live live and lead me to a life worth talking about, someone who will take me on adventures that legends are made of. I want a partner in crime and I’m a great driver but an even better passenger. Baby I’ll light your cigarettes and unwrap your cheeseburgers so you can keep that lead foot on the pedal and just ride on, til we find somewhere to get a few shots of whiskey and get into some trouble and get a free place to sleep for the night - you’ll be wearin your cowgirl hat and blue jean miniskirt making friends with the locals and charming the pants off every blue eyed American boy that makes eye contact. Someone who will kick some honkey ass if they even think about fucking with us. Someone who can adapt to wherever we land and always scrape something together that’s not too dangerous or uncomfortable, and then again, so what if it is? I need a Neal Cassady, someone who doesn’t give a shit about where we’ll get the money or I won’t have health insurance or I’d rather have air conditioning or my mattress is the only place I can sleep . . . I need someone who’s adaptable and authoritative because I’m never the leader, I’m the supporter - I’m the best little girl if you just tell me what to do - I need someone who’s not tied down and who will take advantage of that freedom to get away from the same concrete I’ve been looking at for too long . . . I love this city but there’s so much more to see and so much more to experience, so many more faces to examine and so many bathrooms to use and so many bookstores to peruse and so many streetlights to pass and so many hole in the wall local restaurants to eat at - and there are millions of leaves on seas of trees to drive past and count by the acres . . . there are hours of songs to listen to, days of words to be volleyed back and forth inside the six glass panes surrounding us, there are oceans to float and beaches to burn one, there are fields to frolic and raindrops to feel…there are mushrooms growing right now waiting for someone to pick them so they can someday be sold to us by some hippies in a Winnebago somewhere in the western half of America. I need Neal Cassady, I need my co-conspirator, my comrade, a friend who I can share a brand new life every day with, someone who aint afraid to break the law all day every day - and not because there’s anything wrong with the laws, but just because that’s the life we’re choosing to lead - we’re exempt from following the rules of the common man, because we’re not common men - we’re extraordinary holy fantastical women, the leaders of a generation of people who want to sit in their comfortable lives with their comfortable people and never step outside the boundaries that they’re afraid will bounce them back to their miserable existence or shatter their illusions of what life really is - because life isn’t what’s on TV or what’s showing at the movie theater - and our suburban problems will be a thing of the past because we’ll be starving and sleeping on uncomfortable sofas in dirty living rooms with other beatniks passed out on the floors all around us, we’ll be camping on beaches and shitting in the woods . . . but we’ll be free from the weight of the technology and the media and this sad sad society that is ready to be told what to believe by electronic signals. And we’ll write write write spilling out our minds and dreams onto spiral bound pages, write down conversations and haiku about the people we meet and the trucks we pass and the sights and the lights and the darkness and the loneliness . . . it’ll be blue blue blue cerulean American skies as far as our dilated eyes can see . . . we’ll make love and make art and live and die in orgasms of winged flowerpetal bliss . . . Be my Neal Cassady, before it’s too late and we’re finding more grey hairs in our temples and our breasts sag any lower, Be my Neal Cassady, let’s start today, let’s get our things distributed to storage or charity and buy a car with a little money we can scrape together . . . Let’s make it happen, let’s do it, let’s go - I’m ready and I know that Neal has been haunting your dreams like Jack has been haunting mine, they’re waiting to take us over and infuse us with their voracious appetites for truly experiencing life . . . it’s all waiting, it’s all out there waiting for us, waiting for us to go go go, so let’s ball that jack, let’s go . . . let’s go mama, let’s go -