The Birth of Dean Moriarty

The travel bug got me early, boyo, and it itched and itched and screamed for me to scratch it ‘til I couldn’t ignore it, so trapped inside my mother, my arms and legs and brain and inside stuff still growin’, I hitched around the only thing I could, my mother’s body, and what a trip, boyo, what a way to start explorin’, I hopped onto a raft in the red-tinged superhighway, and I let it carry me wherever it wanted, I didn’t care where I was goin’, boyo, I just wanted to get up and go, so I rode on top of that raft zippin’ along, at lightnin’ speed, feelin’ the rush of life, seein’ in a blur all her blood had to offer, like barrelin’ down a spiralin’ mountain road in an old Pontiac Torpedo, until I jumped off and found myself in her right foot, where I just had to take a look around, so I swam around her big toes, felt the rubber of her worn soles, spread myself out over the entire breadth of her foot, felt her take step by step, smelled the dead skin as it peeled off her heel, and I digged the feel of it, boyo, but her steps, they were jarrin’ like the pot-hole back roads of Mexico, and it shook my growin’ brain, so I hopped back onto a raft and was zippin’ through her veins again, the speed dizzin’ and incredible and found myself soon in her stomach, her muscles churnin’ the bubblin’, viscous mess, and it smelled, smelled like the gutters I knew in Denver, puke and piss and shit of the hobos, the rail riders, and it stung my tiny nose and burned, and even though I knew I had to get out of there, that was no place for me, I could dig it, boyo, I could dig the sensation, but I had to leave it so I tripped down to her intestines where the bits of food were smaller, mostly syrup, and the smell not so bad, my growin’ nose didn’t shrivel, and it turned out to be a maze, boyo, a maze of dead-end turns, folds, pockets—I could dig bein’ lost in every crevice, and every new tunnel led into five others, and while I was down there I grew some new fingers and could feel around better, pokin’ and proddin’ the curious, soft flesh, busy at some work that I couldn’t understand, but could still dig, until I was sucked up by her small intestine back into her bloodstream and went skyrocketin’ to her liver, then kidneys, and all around me were hundreds of millions of soldiers at work, workin’ in a line, workin’ in tandem, workin’ for some greater good that I just couldn’t get, but boyo I could dig, no doubt, I could dig it, and all around me, wherever I looked was beauty and intricacy and complexity and my brain couldn’t get it man, but my heart was about to explode, I loved it boyo, I loved it, and while I looked around I could see it was all disappearin’, slowly, even as I looked at it and I knew it wouldn’t last forever, and that made my heart almost explode again, ‘cause it was all so ridiculous and beautiful and crazy, I could dig it without gettin’ a fill! and when I thought I couldn’t get any more, I found myself in the rooms of her heart, big, thick walled rooms, sloshin’ around in blue blood, then red blood, then blue blood and I followed her blood out to her lungs, the blood changin’ colours right in front of my own eyes! and the tiny, tiny air sacs, so fragile, I tried pushin’ up against them, I could see outside of them, they were covered in lines of blue and red, constantly movin’, before I was rushed back to the heart then shot like a human canon ball through the whole body, gettin’ the whole, royal tour, only lookin’ forward, waitin’ for a blind corner to shoot me back into a room in the heart, until finally, thud, I landed at the bottom of her brain, and it seemed like a crazy dessert to me, grey and mush and quiet, bare like Nevada in December, but the air was charged, boyo, it was electric, so I crawled over, through or under every valley, every peak and I could dig the smell, the taste, the feel and above me was a dark, rich purple and all the horizons were alive with white bolts of electricity, flashin’, branchin’, blindin’,  the whole terrain was writhin’ with energy and hairs sprouted on my arms and stood straight up, until I crawled down her spine, through the mass of cables and wires, bundled and alive, until I was back again in her heart, and I went to all these places a million times ‘till I knew every cell inside my mother and I was lovin’ it and reelin’ from it and it was all so ridiculous, but something started getting’ to me, one thing I didn’t like, one thing just rubbed me, oh, how I don’t like to be rubbed, was her heart, how it just beat, the same beat, whump-thump, whump-thump, whump-thump, all day, the same way, and I didn’t want to hear it anymore, boyo, it was making me looney, so I went into one of the rooms and pushed up against the walls with all of my new fingers, and even with my new toes, they were all there now, and I tried to fill up one whole room of her heart just to make it stop, to stop the beatin’, to stop the reminder, and for a second or two it worked, there was a silence, beautiful, fillin’, satisfyin’, deafenin’ silence!  but then a thud, thud, and a jarrin’ sent me hurtlin’ back down into the womb so I stayed there and tried to ignore it, but oh how I hated that heart, how I wanted it to stop, but I was tired, boyo, I was tired, so I slept and slept and slept. 

* * * * * * * * * *

When I woke up, her heart still beating, still thudding inside my head like a hammer, I could hear sounds from outside, there was something outside my mother’s body, I was inside a cage, a container, so I floated there for a while, just listening and diggin’ all the feelin’s, floatin’, suspended, muffled sounds, vibrations, everything was so foggy though, and I wanted to hear it better, feel it better, so I tried getting out, I punched and kicked and screamed, but I just swallowed stuff, and my arms and legs were still too small, but then I found a hole, I found a hole to the outside, right through my mother’s nipple, on her left side, I had to leave my body behind, but I could go out and look around, so I did, I floated out of her left nipple, took a few spins around the room then turned around to have a look at my mother—and she was a cat!—her soft, liquid eyes brown like Arizona sand and green like the foamin’ coast of California, intelligence sparked from them like lightnin’ and they were big and round and full—they bulged like a negro’s does when he’s blowin’ his horn into the electric, stifled air of a San Francisco night—but she was frail, delicate, her ivory skin, almost transparent, did all it could to contain the blood and muscle and sinew that squirmed underneath and I could see in her eyes she was willin’ that skin to keep her contained, to keep her bones sturdy, her muscles taut, her heart inside her chest, and all this while she sat beside a bed, hunched over the bed, where a guy lay, sick and thin, with raspin’ breath that sounded like an old car, a Studebaker that needed a tune-up and my mom was sittin’ there, sad, her shoulders shakin’ softly because she was cryin’ and I couldn’t get that, man, I couldn’t get that, because this man, anyone could see, this man was ready to burst out of his body, streams of his life, his ghost, his spirit were racin’ out in every direction, through the roof of the hospital, around the whole world, but the streams were stuck, anchored, tied to this body lyin’ sick, weak, fadin’ in this ultra-clean bed: he was dyin’ to get out of there and my mother, boyo, was she dumb, was tryin’ to fight time, like time could be fought, tryin’ to brace its weight with her back, like movin’ an old, rickety piano up some old, rickety stairs, and she couldn’t see God sittin’ at the top of those stairs throwin’ marbles and anvils and insults and taunts and time just ignored her, man, kept movin’ on at the speed of light, pluggin’ ahead like a transport trailer wailin’ down the highways of Nebraska, and I couldn’t get her man, what a dolt, I didn’t want to get her, so I floated over to take a look at the remains of the guy who was about to vanish down the drain of time, and I could see he was sick, sicker than a dog, sicker than Fever Sal with dysentery, he was a pile of wanin’ flesh, ready to be vaporized into tiny pieces and float out with the night breeze, but boyo I envied him because he was bein’ loosened from the shackles of TIME and he knew it, and he craved it, he had been sittin’ on the edge of a black hole his entire life, glued to the edge by gravity and TIME and he was about to be pushed over the edge, and he jived for that man, he jived for that, because in the center of that glitterin’, shinin’ black hole was his freedom, and all along that black hole was tryin’ to free him from TIME and gravity, it was suckin’ the flesh right out from under his skin, the marrow out of his bones, strands of his flesh were bein’ pulled by the black hole, his skin, elastic, stretched without lettin’ him move—if it weren’t for TIME! if it weren’t for TIME!— but I decided something then and there, I decided I would live my life like this man was right at that moment, that I wouldn’t give a shit about TIME, that I wouldn’t let time glue me down to one spot, one life, one body, one mind, that TIME meant nothin’, that black hole meant everythin’, I was goin’ to look for that black hole and jump right into it, and it’d be worth it, boyo, I knew it’d be worth it, the second before that black hole tore me limb from limb, squeezed my body into the size of a pin head, it’d be worth it, boyo, it’d be euphoric! and I knew it would be but I was reelin’, boyo, and I didn’t know what to do, so I popped myself back into my mom’s belly, back through her nipple, and took one long, mighty nap. 

* * * * * * * * * *

When I woke this time the travel bug got me worse than it had before, because I couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t stop remembering, especially the sounds, the sounds that struck the chords in my mother’s heart, they vibrated through her womb, the liquid around me vibrating and tingling my spine until my spine vibrated with the liquid, like they were one, and every time she sang the blues or heard the blues or took me bumpin and grindin to some Jazzy nightclub—I bumped right back with her, clenchin’ my fists, ridin’ the bumps like a surfer, cruisin’ the jolts like a yacht, and I loved it, boyo, I loved it! and I wanted to dig that from the outside, I wanted to hear those rhythms, those tunes with my own ears, I wanted to see those guys wailin’ on their horns, I wanted to see those gals callin’ out to the dead, lonely air in those sultry tones only they knew how to tickle, and I wanted everythin’, boyo, I wanted it all, I wanted to get out of here and couldn’t wait no more so I started diggin’ my way out of my mom’s belly, and I wasn’t fully grown, my toes and fingers and ears and eyes were there, but my insides, my insides weren’t all in order yet, but I didn’t care, boyo, I didn’t care! and my teeth weren’t very strong yet, and the nails on my fingers were soft and elastic but I used them all the same to scratch and gnash at my mother’s skin until my mouth was full of blood and flesh and behind my fingernails was packed with sinew and muscle, and it was hard work, boyo, it was slow goin’ at first, but I kept at it, boyo, I was determined, so I kept on goin’ and soon my safe pouch wasn’t so safe anymore, it filled up with blood and I had close to my eyes because it was all so red and murky and thick and during it all I could feel and hear my mother screamin’, cryin’, but I knew what she didn’t know, I knew that her time was up, that it was my turn, and that she was no closer to jumpin’ in that black hole than the moment she was born, so I kept diggin’, I couldn’t stop, I could only see what was ahead of me, drinkin’ in where I was, still marvelin’ at all the crevices and folds and intricacies I had visited so many times and soon I could see light, boyo, right through my mother’s belly and that really got me goin’, even though the light was dim at first, shapes movin’ around, behind a veil of networkin’ veins like a mess of turnpikes, the shapes were foggy but once I saw that light, I kicked into extra high gear, I just knew I had to get out, cuttin’ through everythin’, stoppin’ to empty my mouth or clean my fingernails—boyo!—I was almost through, I could see and hear and even smell, yes smell! things that were outside were suddenly close to me, closer than they’d ever been and I was crazy with the fumes and delusions of it all!  and I tapped on the thin layer of skin that separated me from that world, and the skin wasn’t that tight anymore, a saggin’ thud, like a bass drum when I tapped my fingers on it, and before I clawed my way through that last bit I looked behind me and saw the mess of all that I had done, torn, tattered, red, pulp lay in my wake, but what could I do about it, boyo, what could I do?! so I grabbed onto the last layer of skin with my tiny mouth and bit through my mother’s stomach, right above her navel, a perfect circle, sweet and plump and innocent, and then I was fallin’, air, cold, light, smells rushin’ past me, and I landed with blood, tissue, skin, inside juices and a plop on the floor and that’s how I was born and I knew everything was only about to begin.