The Fourth Of July: Dancing With Regina

Well, we're just two weeks into summer & already it's the Fourth of July weekend! Like most Americans, I'm going to sit and loaf around and go pretend it means nothing and then after that quick realization, I'm going to race around in my beat-up Saturn with my cell phone attached to my ear and zoom on out to the hippest, overcrowded shopping mall to pick me up some new-fangled chicken computer-generated music & after that, the sky's the limit, woooooohaaaaaaa!

Anyway, I've decided to present to you dear readers, an old favorite short story of mine, that centers around the theme of Independence Day. Please enjoy it & I promise to catch up with all of you next Tuesday, July 5...

I am standing on the porch of my apartment. It is darkness now. In the distance, I hear fireworks and look through my binoculars at the moon. I am shirtless, feeling a slight breeze on my skin every now and again. It is one of many reasons I chose to stay indoors tonight, as Fourth of July eve can be dangerous living in the city of Chicago. So many sirens tonight. So much noise over a holiday that seemingly has lost its meaning in the midst of the Americas.

When Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner, I am quite sure he never envisioned the state of emergency we have come to know as footloose and fancy free for all behavior. Look at us, the USA; look at what we’ve become a former shell of our well being. The founding fathers would be disappointed in what we have become. A cheap imitation of ourselves. Whereas, the holiday becomes just another pointless trip to the shopping mall to buy that latest fashionable dress or that hot death metal CD. The next night, to dispel the theory, I take two El Trains to a suburban fireworks display and a band concert beforehand. The leader of the band, after each song, tells a little story about the history of America and the efforts of the fireworks display.

“We’ve been doing this display for several decades…27 years. 27 years we’ve been taking in-kind contributions from taxpayers like you. Federal dollars do not pay for this display. And with your money, you’ve helped pay for these shows we’ve produced. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

Everyone in the crowd looks at each other. Is this guy mad? Later, when the band strikes up the tune, “America The Beautiful,” the bandleader messes up a lyric line. It is obvious that the guy is sauced. I tell you, it’s a sad blue note deal gone wrong. As it gets duskier, the band drags on and everyone wonders when the show will go on. The man says when it gets darker, the display will start. Most of us in the crowd are skeptical, especially in light of the fact that two towns away on either side of the packed suburban high school football stadium have already begun their shows.

As the fireworks finally get going, the canned patriotic music is blaring in the background, but little attention is paid, rather to the fireworks, loud, bombastic and orgasmically charged, the sort of kind of fireworks you would see after you just kissed your girlfriend or made love to her for the very first time.

I think of my Peru-bound girlfriend Regina this night and wonder if she would understand the great significance this holiday holds for me and the celebration it means for Americans all over. But America is America, you know? The land of milk and honey opportunities, rip-off scam artists raw and sexy, blight everywhere and a circus whore on every street corner, sucking down a cold frappacino, while waiting for their first trick of the evening.

And in America, the imagination stretches as far as the eye can see, can dream and can live so freely. At night, the beautiful creepy skies, darkened alleys, silent trees, sleeping houses, humming computers and silhouetted windows with shadows falling across them and teapots screaming with steam and pouring out hot waters onto teabags and sugars dumped into goofy chipped plastic or ceramic mugs embossed with goofy phrases like, “I Survived Stevie Kaplan’s Safari Bar Mitzvah,” “I Love You,” “World’s Greatest Dad,” “I Am Proud Of You Graduate,” “Happy 40th Birthday, Old Man” and lettered mugs and mugs with hearts and flowers and other engraved images.

And now I am outside, listening to El Trains rattle in the distance and police sirens howling like coyotes in the hollow darkness and the pigeons down below are pecking at the bones and tearing the flesh of their own family because they are hungry at 1 a.m. And now I slip on my soft black peeling headphones stitched together with gray duct tape and tune in the short-wave band and listening to late night conversations dying out like the day’s last cigarette and watching the fireflies and moths dance in a flurry of flight beneath burning electric streetlights.

And now I enter my room and it is hot even with the one lone fan twirling around and around on the highest speed, blowing into my face and I strip down to my shorts and lie in bed and I turn on the radio and listen to the news and slowly fall asleep with visions of embracing and dancing with Regina in my head.