#another of my favorite queerings of kerouac is this one from daphne gottlieb

[razorsadness]

Manifest Destiny (Great American Novel Remix)*

*All italicized text from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.

How I became a pirate: I walked past my mother. She was yelling at my sister for not dusting. The clock struck six and stopped. My sister froze, hands fixed over her ears. I kept walking. Upstairs, I pocketed the bus tokens and a pack of lifesavers from my mom’s dresser. I walked out the back door. I stole across the yard, down between the bushes and out into the world. My stomach felt cold and strong. I was gone. I left with my canvas bag in which a few fundamental things were packed and took off with fifty dollars in my pocket.

Why I became a pirate: There was no space for me in the family photo. I had to leave home to find home. I followed stories like a map. I stole them in pieces and stuck them together. I took the word “pirate” because there were no others. Or, the others who did this before me were pirates, every single one.

I did not run away from anything. Nobody touched me wrong. Nobody hurt me first. I was not a runaway girl. I am a pirate. I am running to. Adventure. In search of home.

This is how I became a pirate: I pointed two fingers towards my body. I abducted myself at gunpoint. I changed my name from Mary to Mark; I am the X that marks my spot. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon. I laid on the ground, cut my red hair off at the root, left it in a red ring halo around my body when I stood up. My parents would have been pleased. They always said the girl with the fire hair was trouble.

I pointed two fingers towards my body. I abducted myself at gunpoint. It was sexy. I put on boy clothes and for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy I wanted to reach, the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on. I felt sweet, swinging bliss. I abduct myself away, looking for home.

I wasn’t scared. I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. Now I’m Mark. I’m X. I’m Kerouac. I go on the road, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

The bus ride was forever. Twenty minutes later, I got off at the only stop I knew. Somewhere along the line I knew there would be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me. I walked to the park at the end of the block and sat down under the biggest tree. Someone had carved an X into the bark. The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the American night. I stole the tree like a second base and named it “home.”

I pulled the lifesavers from my pocket and stuck one into my mouth. Dinner. I suddenly realized that everybody in America is a natural-born thief. I was getting the bug myself. I took time.

In the park, a mother pushed a stroller. Small girls scrambled over the jungle gym, shrieking. A man watched his dog shit, then picked it up. I had to go, and leave confusion and nonsense behind. There was nothing for me here.

In the distance, a very small bus began rumbling. I boarded. Next to me, a woman fed her baby. An old man snored. I got off in New York, my knees peg-leg stiff. A man staggered down the street, yelling starving, hysterical, naked; yelling of the best minds of his generation. He was dead. I shambled after him, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. I had to save myself. My picture burned back at me from every telephone pole. REWARD. WANTED. It was time to move again. I stole into the night on a train.

Next to me, another pirate, a young boy slept. His name was Kerouac. All he had with him was a copy of On The Road. Together we moved through the night into the future, together, depot to depot, station to station, through America’s veins, throbbing. The thing that bound us together in this world was invisible. I pointed to long lines of telephone poles that curved off out of sight over the bend. He nodded. By morning, our tongues were painted yellow, red, green and my lifesavers were gone and we were in Chicago. Chicago smelled of blood: stockyards and gangsters. We kept moving.

Because we were pirates, cars opened their doors and we sprang inside, us howling like a tornado with the rush and rage of the road. We whirlwinded through Kansas, went right on into Des Moines, hitching a ride with two boys from the University of Iowa. We took their car when they passed out drunk. In Salt Lake the pimps checked on their girls and we drove on, on to Denver, on to San Francisco, on to San Diego, Hollywood, a flophouse.

Somewhere, among the hiss of tires in the rain, a woman was crying, the radiator was rattling a slow moan, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. Pirates take what they want and I wanted Kerouac, wanted him because he was a boy. My boy, in her boy clothes with his girl body, his girl clothes with his boy body. I stole his kiss. He stole mine back. We unbuttoned each other, took our girl bodies out of our boy clothes, dug into each other like treasure, and the room rolled like the ocean around us, found us in high seize. We broke a ballpoint pen and hammered one small, bold word into the flesh over each others’ hearts, in our girlie curlicue scripts: HOME. It hurt. It was good.

Time starts again here. We’re walking, hand in hand, following telephone poles to the ocean. I thought this was an adventure, but it’s a love story. Mine. Me and Kerouac, stealing change, diving for food, making our way through all this, now, here, standing at the very edge of America, and behind us, all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it. It’s a movie I’ve never seen before. It’s mine. And here you are, with us, walking towards the water, watching the waves crash and roll with us, looking at a place where there are no roads, no hard routes, just the crash, hush and swell of things moving in front of us and we can ride them anywhere. Anything could happen to you, to me, at this place marked with an X. Time starts again here. Let’s go. We’ll write the story. We’ll write home.

—Daphne Gottlieb, from Final Girl