I can’t stop checking my phone.
On the tourist-littered sidewalk we banter with drunk, middle-aged couples, feeding them elaborate lies about the deaths and trysts of country music stars “on this very f-in’ spot, y’all.” I am terrified we will never do this again. And the back of every blond head in this town is hers, and love is a veggie skin scraper-offer. And flat-screen televisions deliver the sports news above us, in every bar corner, muted. And sports and death and brass and wood and pool balls crack, glasses fall to shatter. We drive, we drive, we drink, we drive, we zip past ads on coasters, ads in stalls, ads on walls on TV on streets on girls on cab roofs on radio on billboards on stadiums. We slap down the plastic for two more shots, a toast of Bud Light and American Spirit as sidekick while we post up and play Spot the Black Guy. Because rarely in this growth-industry city, in these bars of brick-and-barn-wood, and fusiony kitchens and midtown art studios and progressive, boutique, bottle-tree enclaves are there ever any real live Black Guys to know — though the majority of new urbanites spew their love of diversity. (I have no BFs but I swear I would if they were around here; my recruiter was African-American, ex-DB at UT.) Neither of us scores a point. And Randall talks to smiling belles in designer clothes; he flirts but then falters when they determine he’s not from the South, that he doesn’t have the requisite pedigree to match his requisite money. We curse this predetermination as we storm out the door, into the car, stabbing farther into the city, and do not talk about me. Cops block the arteries, so we cut through the alleys, past cats darting and tourists pissing in shadow, chain link binding the job sites beside us, massive wounds of rebar and churned mud and crane and more crane, and we’re sweat-soaked so thirsty as we hit the touristy honky-tonks of Lower Broadway, where tourists in new denim call for Top 4 °Country, earning scowls from the finely tuned rockabilly yips who still pilgrim downtown for a swing on the dance floor. The den so drunken, the burgers spit on the grill. Telecaster, Telecaster, the registers rattle credit slips while two-steppers slip on beer-splattered linoleum.
Closing time, hoo-ah! I looked everywhere but did not see her. These had been our bars and our closing times and always our last dances. Our drunken public make-outs and slurred-word squabbles. I wanted so bad just to tell her that tonight was the last night. To see her face when I told her I was GONE after this, I mean GONE. Surely, that would bump the needle. Make her miss me just a little bit.
Surely, for sure I would matter to her again.
We drive on. Randall works the radio while I think through an encyclopedia of the ways I would tell her; she always begs me, No, don’t go. Last Call behind us, we race to the convenience store, get there in the nick for a battery of 40-ounce bottles. Our redneck clerk is clad in a red-white-and-blue-blaring Tennessee Titans jersey. He watches a tummy-tuck teevee show, locks the door behind us and bids us, Be careful, y’all. And on to the drive-thru, to millions of tiny, steamed sliders, to mini chili dogs, all bite-sized but with biggie fry, as served by a navy-blue-vest-wearing, middle-aged Latina. Her first-generation accent and bright blond streaks, and wonderful smile. Her front teeth edged in dull gold, she is plump and headsetted and a goddamn late-night nobody for seven-two-five an hour, and whom Randall laughs at, so pissy drunk he is, throwing his request of, “More. . uh. . ketchup, por fay-vor,” hee hee, before skidding off, before he and I inhale malt liquor while carving the one-way downtown streets, back, forth, back, forth, side street to side, silent save for the sound of hot wind through cracked windows, the sound of the car lighter popping, the sound of our latching like babies to gold lager bottles until, somehow, at last, amazingly, we end up atop the tallest downtown hill. Randall cuts the motor and we get out and wobble, clutching food bags and 40s at the foot of the white, ionic columns of the massive Tennessee State Capitol, Greek Revival, 1859, judging our fair southern town from on high. Who knew we had such unguarded access to this place? Where do these people get off feeling safe?
“Man, look at that,” Randall slurs.
A gasping view of nude America, asleep and dreaming. So quiet, so pure. Ad-free and lovely, sexless and serene. Our capitol is skirted by fine landscape architecture. By granite and bronze memorial. By a sweeping, grassy mall that flows downhill like an emerald gown-train, stitched at the periphery by bulbs of antique lamplight. The space honors President Polk (Congress at age twenty-nine), Sergeant Alvin York (Medal of Honor at thirty-one), Sam Davis, Boy Hero of the Confederacy (martyred at twenty-one). All represented in statue, all soundtracked by third-shifters in beater cars whose hanger-hung mufflers reverberate up and around the massive statehouse. Every single bit of this place is a remembrance to, or declaration of, cataclysm. To wins and losses by warrior men — with a nod of course to the Women of the Confederacy Monument.
We stand atop a hill of government and history, gorging on McShit and drinking our 40s. And Randall asks, What the hell, man? when I shoot snot on the historic marker, and take a piss on the presidential tomb. He curses when I smear ketchup and cow meat on the Senate door handles, then fling pickles on the fanlight windows.
“Andrew Jack-son, Indian slaughterer.” I prance about, singing in schoolyard melody about Nashville’s favorite son. Mustard and chili will slick up this cultural lineage; that state flag’s coming down now for an ass-wipe. “Thom-as Jefferson, slave-whipping hypocrite,” is my motto of centralized government. I sling trash like confetti; stacks of wadded wax paper and bags, napkins and condiment packets tumble in the breeze over the expansive green lawn. Wish to God I could spray a shit on the stars. “Jeffer-son Da-vis, captured in a dress by the Yan-kee grunts — hoo-ah!” I cry. Smash my bottle on the bronze of Jackson on mount, then slash at the fetlocks in hopes he’ll spill like Saddam.