LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

By Rob Rosen

Life in the fast lane surely makes you lose your mind.

But fuck it, slow lanes are hard to come by in San Francisco.

It’s no wonder there are so many mindless people in the heart of this cold, cold city.

Still, I’m sure I’m no better or worse than the average person you might meet.  No less ruthless, no less crude.  It’s just, well, sometimes I’d like to escape from it all.  You know, pretend not to notice or get caught up in the race, like I usually do.  But that’s kinda hard to do when your smack dab in the middle of it each and every day.  The middle of the race, that is.

But though it’s kinda hard to escape, it’s not impossible.

Sometimes the fast lane veers a little to the left.  Sometimes you can stumble into something better.  Something… slower.  And sometimes, just sometimes, you can fall asleep on MUNI.

Not that this is an easy thing to have happen to you either.  But it happened to me… once.

One night, not that long ago, I was at this outrageous party.  It lasted way into the night.  Into the night and through to the next morning, until it was light.  What a fuckin’ blast.  All the right people were there.  And we took all the right pills.  But my body paid for it.  My head ached.  I wasn’t ready for the day.  For the light.  And no sunglasses in my jacket, like normal.  But nothing was normal that day.  So I walked the few short blocks to Market Street and escaped the light.

It was nice and dim down in the subway.  MUNI was the perfect refuge for the worn out.  For the ragged.  For those of us who lived life in the fast lane.

I didn’t see what car I got onto.  It didn’t much matter anyway.  I’d only be going to the Castro and then walk the rest of the way home.  To bed.  Under the covers.  Back into the darkness of my life.  To the disturbing stillness of it all.

I sat somewhere in the middle of the car, away from everyone else; though there were few people riding MUNI so early on a Sunday morning, especially in that direction. Churches and farmers’ markets downtown, escape uptown.  And with my head propped up against the cool, hard glass, I shut my eyes and waited for the click, click of the subway car.  For the rattle and hum I had grown accustomed to from so many similar journeys previous to that one.  The fast lane does indeed allow for multiple, frequent trips.

But MUNI was busted.  No click, click.  No hum to lull me into a much-needed, brief stupor.  I listened, but I couldn’t hear the engine rev.  I couldn’t hear a goddamn thing.  I waited for what seemed like forever.  I waited, as my head lurched forward.  I waited, as my eyelids grew heavy.  And I waited until I forgot to wait.  I waited until my brain shut off, until there was no more light.  Until… until the fast lane slowed just enough to let me off.

I awoke sometime later.  I have no idea how long.  Again, it was light.  I had gone past Castro.  But how far?  I wasn’t accustomed to visiting the areas beyond my world.  There were no fast lanes out in the suburbs.  No paths for the likes of me out there.  Just endless peaceful, monotony.

I squinted into the light to try and get my bearings, but how does one get one’s bearings in a strange place?  When we reached the end of the line, the man in brown came back to my car and said I’d have to get off.  I said I wanted to keep going, but back the other way, back to the fast lane.  To the only life I knew.  But he said no way.  The end of the line was the end of the line.  I sat there and pondered on that.  What he said made sense, at least in my present state of mind.  Besides, I was too tired to fight about it.

I messed around.  I got lost.  Seemed like an appropriate consequence.  And lost was strangely nice.  Calmly peaceful.  Slow.

So I nodded to the man, who had already started his return up the car, back to the place where the fast lane takes form, and I hopped off that car and onto a different lane.  And you know what?  I didn’t care; I was just dying to get off.  Dying to get off the fast lane.  I had been rushing down the freeway for so long, and now it was time to slow down.  To move off.  To stop, however briefly, someplace else.

I sat there, along the side of the rusted, red rail line.

I sat and breathed in the calm.  Breathed in the light.  Breathed in the otherness of this place that was no longer the fast lane.  No longer what I knew.  No longer what I was.  And I stared.

The jagged motion of the passing scenery I was accustomed to was now at rest.  Easier to take in.  To comprehend.  There was form and function and seemingly no race.  The few people I could see were at play or walking slowly by.  One or two even smiled down at me.  How strange.  Did this reality really exist?  Had I been speeding along for so long that I had forgotten about this place?

Perhaps.

Maybe I’d even take a long, slow walk down this new lane for a while, I thought to myself.

And then, for the first time in a long time, I smiled. I laughed. I wept.

And I sang.

Life in the fast lane.

Surely makes you lose your mind.