The Jersey Shore Drive

In typical Laura Marie fashion, I decided to leave for a three hour drive to the New Jersey shore line at 1:00 PM, even thought I knew I'd have to be back by 10Pm that night.

I stopped and got gas, and got on the road, and all of those other small getting started details I don't recall. It was an extremely hot day. Hell Hot. The kind where your mascara melts off into your eyeballs and turns them bright red and your skin starts to peel off from the solar abuse it's been taking from you all summer.

Where was I going? To a friend's graduation party. It wasn't going to be held at her house, however. It was a wealthy friend of a family's. Wealthy, I thought. Hmm. Probably an in ground pool, perhaps a tennis court, a pool house, a pony?

The drive was relatively easy. A bumpy pass through the Bronx, an exciting thrill going over the George Washington Bridge. The under side. Martha.

I hit some traffic about an hour away from the house. But only on one side of the median. You see in New Jersey they have two highways going in the same direction separated by the "Jersey Barrier." Of course, on my side, there had been a major accident, and so I watched my fellow travelers to my left drive by with ease, some making "nana nana boo boo" faces at me as they drove by. Sound effects and all.

Soon I reached the point of the accident. Nothing left except one cop car and a glass canopy spread across the freeway. I drove through it nonchalantly, hoping no small piece would pop my already damaged tires.

And so on. I took the exit and drove down a long long long long American road. There were plenty of family own ice cream shops and teenage girls with ripe tans and beach blond highlights driving red mustangs. There were fruit stands, gas stations with attendants, seafood shacks, and quaint little raised ranch houses. No New England Salt boxes, no white New England fences. Just raw tri-state America.

I crossed a bridge. It was a white bridge with people fishing on either side. Fishing with perfectly painted toe-nails (perhaps with rhinestones on them?) and people driving around in their motor boats, spewing oil into the already polluted ocean. Ocean? Sound? River? I don't quite know what the water source in New Jersey is.

Past the Bridge I reached my turn into the neighborhood of a popular New Jersey Senator where the party would be held. His house was the last on a small street. I drove down that street with my mouth WIDE OPEN. Gasping. My childhood home could fit four times into any of these homes, and by God, these were only SUMMER HOMES. I decided right then I needed to get over my prejudice against rich people, but when you grow up in a working class family, where your heart breaks on Christmas and you have to open your presents in the freezing cold, it never fails to shock you when you see how the other half lives.

I stop in front of my destination. I am afraid to go any closer. Will they even let me in such a place? Am I dressed appropriately. I don't know. I walk in the front door, even though there is clearly a sign that says go around back. I walk in.

This is not a summer home. There are marble tiled floors, and a large wrap around staircases leading up to multiple bedrooms. There is a fucking hole in the ceiling to let in the moon and the sun and the stars. There is a living room and a dining room and a sitting room and dieing room!
There is a SMOKING ROOM! where no smoke can exit from. There is an indoor bar, and outside, I see my friends. They are dancing. And swimming. Swimming in a perfect swimming pool that is surrounded by the real ocean around them, a few fire pits, and a tiki bar. There is music playing from speakers that look like rocks. Everyone was smiling. I begin to cry.

I get over it quickly. And walk outside. I greet my friends, whom make me feel a little bit more human, but I can't help but think the whole time that no one should live like this. Not when there are whole families sleeping in small dirt filled rooms on the other side of the planet. Or maybe even down the street.

The senator, a robust man with a greesey tan and small black swim trucks ask me what my plants are for the year.

"I'm going to do a year of service." I sweetly answer.

"Ohhhhhh, I did service too, but it was a differen kind!" he laught at himself.

I am sure he is the nicest man, a tall glass of something resting in his well accomplished hand.

There is one girl that makes me feel most human. She is sitting alone, spreading her toes wide in the clorinate pool. She has a t-shirt on over a bright blue speedo style bathing suit, and she has shorts on too. Her legs aren't shave. Her hair isn't brushed. She is smiling at me. She is doing o.k.

She's a friend from school, younger by three years, and I offer to drive her home, back to where she's staying, three hours away from our accidental paradise (which for the record, took me five hours to reach.)

And so we say goodbye to our friends, to the perfect paradise house on the New Jersey Shore, we drive home. She is now bundled up in a man's flannel shirt ,and I put the top down on my beaten up convertible so we can take in the American air.

We drive back down the long road. There are families riding their bikes with bright reflectors, and lobster dinners smelting on outside grills. There are left over fireworks blasting in our ears, and big muscle cars zooming down side streets, races between the locals.

I feel at peace. I feel American. I feel like there are a hunder million trillion human stories brewing all about me, and the most interesting one, brewing right next to me.

She is quiet for most of the ride. We listen to 90's rock music. She belts it out into the air, bouncing off the low riding stars. She sings with a low low low voice. She tells me how she felt alone this year at school. She tells me how she always feels so different. She tells me her mother thinks she is a lesbian.

Then , without warning at all, she tells me some awful things about her past, that make me want to stop the car.

My heart has slightly stopped inside.

"No, don't feel bad," she smiles. "Everyone has a tough life." "Don't feel bad!"

No one has a life like this. I want to vomit.
We find ourselves in New York stuck in back to back traffic. She sits next to me beautiful, drawing in a notebook.

I look around at my fellow travelrs. They all look entirely miserable. Miserable. They look as though they will drive off the bridge we are traveling on in any moment. I look at her. She is smiling. I lose it.
WHY AREN'T THEY SMILING!
Maybe they have reason to not be smiling. Maybe their lives are horrible and lost. Maybe all our lives are.

I search the radio. I find an upbeat techno beat. I can't help but dance to it. She begins to dance as well. We dance. in the night. and we decide to recruit others.

So we make eye contact with those around us. If there windows are down they can hear our music too. Some of the miserable ones, smile. Some of the men begin to bop in their seats. Some, who had been leaning over their steering wheels, finally sit back and relax.

I feel better. I feel like I have done something. I feel like she is some sort of angel and I have no reason to complain. I feel like maybe I do. But I shouldn't. We shuoldn't.

We are all in this together. No matter how rich, or poor, or happy, or miserable. No matter how cookie cutter our life has been, or how absolutely tragic. We are all in this together, and we can all feel the beat of a drum. We can all dance.

Compassion

I am thinking about a few of my friends who left a few days ago to travel to the Philippines on a service trip.


I am thinking it's the first few days of uncertainty, wondering if there may be another typhoon coming there way, wondering what the hell they got themselves into, wondering if at the end of the month, their lives will actually be changed.



And then I am thinking, these kids are fucking great.

Because, they are getting on a plane, traveling twenty four hours away, to help children, they have never met.


And these same kids, my friends, are the types of people who question compassion on a daily basis: not whether or not they should give it, but why more people are not?


Have we begun to live our lives afraid to reach out to the people right next to us, let alone, half way across the world?

Has being nice become creepy, or annoying?

It takes .7777 seconds to look someone in the eyes when you address them. to acknowledge their hummanity.

it takes but a few moments to remember someone's name.

these things REALLY MATTER.

At the end of our lives we will not be remembered by what we did, or what we said, but rather, how we made others feel.

When I say things like that, people tell me I am crazy, impractical, and full of nonsense.

I do not think that treating others with dignity and patience and love is nonsense.

I think this is the only way to exist.

This World.

I think that sometimes the most sincere of angels, watched by all, are the ones who suffer the greatest.



I'd like to encourage you to continue you to put your heart out on the line, every chance you get.

I'd like to encourage you to tell people how beautiful, and wonderful, and lost, and dark, and human they really are.

I'd like to encourage you to live instead of pretending to, to think that we all are equal, on the same level, ready to explode, or make babies, or trust and die.


But after the first day of Kindergarten, the first broken heart, the first situation where being you isn't good enough....


It starts to get tough to make you believe that these things are going to work.