You'll Miss Your Destiny If You Are Shy

I said, “Carol, Carol, hold on tight,” and down we went. We were going down through the trees beside the highway in Palos Hills. It was cold out, and bumpy, and very dangerous. But the wine kept us warm. But that would be our last night. It was New Year's Eve, and we were going to both try to come at the exact stroke of midnight in my bedroom at home, because I was leaving the next day to go to school out in California. I would be driving the Southern route down through Texas to avoid the snowstorms up north. I was driving out there with a guy named Kenny whom I knew from the near North side in Chicago, from the neighborhood of my dad's gas station, near Humboldt Park.

            Part way along Highway 66, not far from Bloomington, I think, we flagged down two girls in their car, and parked next to a quarry filled with ice, and Kenny had sex with the girl in the back seat, but he came so fast I didn't have time to even get it inside the girl lying on her back in the front seat with me, because it had taken me so long to get her clothes off. Then her girlfriend suddenly wanted to get out of the car and run.

            Okay, you want the truth? I was never that good with strange. It takes me a while to warm up. And I've got to be attracted, somehow. Like with your eyes. It's not just because it's there. Even though I was once told, You'll miss your destiny if you are shy. One day I saw a woman in pajamas running in the rain, hugging a small child, and I remember thinking, I may have missed my destiny.