The Raveonettes: Pretty in Black

There was darkness in the air, brimming over the window and flowing around my legs that night. As the endless fields flew past my eyes, I reached down to crank the radio up once more. The speakers and engine were groaning under the weight of the sky but I could not hear their cries. The only thing that played out in my mind was the runny eggs, weak coffee and sobbing confessions of the early night, the diner and its insistent cheerfulness. One side of my quarter was hope that the song in the jukebox could change my life. The other side of the coin was her face broken into a thousand fragments of regret and pain.

I could still smell the metallic sweetness of the coin, feel the textures on my fingers and hear the mechanical clicking of the record player near the door. Each memory was as sharp as a steak knife, clearer than anything that came from her mouth. There was something about the slightly damp table; the way the napkin clung to its home reminded me of her. The way I found her arm around mine a pair of handcuffs, a napkin determined to stay.

As the confessions of sobbing infidelity spilled out of her mouth, I sat numb and listened to everything around me; clinking coffee cups, yelled orders, the constant buzz of busy short order cooks and the jangling guitars radiating from the jukebox. There were words spoken, but they sounded so far away. Should I feel bad about that? The eggs and runny grits seemed more real than anything I heard.

So the night rushed in with its unfolding darkness outside the front door, the smoke from the diner mixing a greasy odor with the fresh smells of grass and starlight. I felt cold door handle, squeaking vinyl and the numbness of the night wrapped tight around my heart as I slid into the seat. The crunching gravel turned to gasoline fumed roaring as the rubber hit pavement and I poured out onto the road. Endless fields, they spread out in front of the hood like waves of ocean tide, topped with reflected moonlight and swirling with the possibility of relief.

The radio was my saving grace, the hand reaching out from the glowing dashboard and steadying my grip as I pushed the needle past 100 and into the grey zone between a death wish and a new life. I was speed itself, I was the wind. There was no difference between the ground rushing outside the windows, the roaring eight cylinders in front of my feet and the pain deep inside my chest. The driving guitar melts inside my eyes and I feel each drumbeat on my skin.

Everything leading up to this moment was necessary, the total loss of self in wind and steel; the sobbing lies echoing across a Formica table; tasteless runny eggs and lifeless grits; grizzled truckers and the constant flow of coffee brought by the waitress; teenagers sneaking cigarettes and glances at each other from grimy booths; everything is in its place. The Raveonettes led me past the pain, past the bullet riddled state line sign and into comforting darkness flowing around the car and into my lungs; salvation and temptation in every chord; the joys of love and the bitter taste of loneliness were mine for the taking. Dawn found me stranded without fuel 300 hundred miles from home drinking a bottle of cheap beer, laughing at the sun and at the happiest place in my life.



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