The earth beneath our lonely feet
I borrowed my son's Green Day CD this morning, stuck it in my old warped silver walkman, listened as I hiked up hill, up hill, up hill to the crest of my town where the rich people live, where Kilt Man lives. I dropped Avon brochures here and there, thought about my son, 17, and the way danced solo to Boulevard of Broken Dreams for his dance final exam. Watch me dance, Mom, he asked me one night, and I sat on the couch and listened to his wailing music as he practiced hip-hop moves I didn't recognize ending with a slide across the wood floor. The days following his exam I played his CD while he sat in small wooden desks and suffered Senior Year biology, anthropology, history, all classes he can't wait to finish. I practiced his dance, remembered every hip swivel and fist shake, perfected his moves but never showed him.
I dropped a book at Kilt Man's house. I wrote a personal note on the back next to the naked foot advertising Avon Cracked Heel Relief Cream. "Hey" my note said "I feel like a heel, not calling you back and all, but my best friend died and I went to Europe." I left it hanging on his iron gate, didn't scale the wall like last time, kept on a stealth Avon mission just dropping and running, not standing still long enough to be seen. Green Day kept me company, and every now and then I saw a dog or a cat and shook my booty like a teenaged hip-hop dance student.
It felt good, listening to alien music, thinking about men who might call, touching the soft petals of velvet tiger lilies gracing the entrance to a stone mansion, watching the Latino gardeners hose and rake and clip hedges. I waved at each one, left them Avon samples and books on the hoods of their trucks. I cut through the canyon between the rich and the regular and picked a few yellow flowers for my hair. The two teenaged Christian girls at the tract house bordering the canyon sat under a fading ash tree. They looked as old as the neighborhood itself, lonely, tired of being home-schooled and isolated.
"Hey, girls! Girls! You guys want some free makeup samples?" I waved an Avon brochure their way. Their mom never ordered makeup from me, kept a clean-washed face on top of wholesome teddybear sweatshirts, but she did buy bubblebath and bar soap and once purchased a travel bible from the Avon Inspirations catalogue. The girls shook their heads no, sorry, no. I sat on the sidewalk and pulled an opaque bottle out of my backpack and took a long drink of warm water. Poor Christian girls. I cranked Green Day a little higher. No makeup. Geeze. Poor kids. I let my legs splay out in unladylike fashion, let pill bugs crawl over them, watched the girls sit and stare at each other, at the tree, the sky, the steady windows of the house.
"Uh, hey, girls? Do you guys have a boombox? I can teach you a dance if you like. I'm bored. Come on, dance with me." I removed my headset and clicked the CD out of the case. "Come on, it'll be fun. It's OK, you're mom knows me."
The girls looked at each other again and the tall one rose, smiled at me, ran inside the house, returned with a black music player. She shook her long brown hair behind her head, and I hear it hit her crisp white shirt. They both wore skirts, sensible demure skirts with gym shorts underneath. I popped in Green Day and selected my son's song.
"Now there's exactly one bad word in this song. When it gets to that part I'll yell out something else so you won't hear it, ok? It's a song about how difficult it is to walk your own unique path. I think you'll both enjoy it. My son dances to this song, and he taught me this dance. He's around your age, he goes to the high school. He's had a tough life because he has a sensitive soul and he gets teased a lot. He's good-looking, so that works in his favor, but being cute doesn't stop people from saying mean things, does it? And hey, usually the worse thing when you live a single existence is honoring your own thoughts." I shook my shoulders, rolled my head back and forth in preparation, bent down, hit play. The girls looked at each other, looked at the house as if afraid someone might see them, might hear me talk about dissent and personal power.
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone
I showed them how it's done, how lonely people get up and dance, really dance, man, showed them how to shake those blues and stare them down. I repeated the steps, repeated, sang out loud, yelped Alleluia when the singer sang Fuck and slid across the grass for the grand finale. The girls laughed, started moving legs and arms in ways not quite hip-hop but just as fantastic, and I hit play again, and we all moved to the ways we didn't match the rest of the universe. I saw a flutter from one of the house windows, saw their mom peek through and smile at the sight of the Avon Lady dancing with her daughters, waved and kept my hip-grinding to a minimum.
I left them giggling, sweaty, practicing their own moves, picked up my junk and hoofed it home. So much of my life reduces to dance, the dance of the mothership, I thought. I might be passing out stapled hunks of dead trees this Earth Day but part of me is sending morse code through my feet, telling the earth I need her against my body, need her to walk against, to help me walk alone.
5:45:04 PM 
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