Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 9: Peace Train

9 
Peace Train

==============DANNY==============

We got in my Mustang, and before we were even backed out of the driveway, Mary asked if she had a name. I had to remind Mary that guys don't do things like nickname their masculine cars. Without my consultation, she dubbed my Mustang "The Stang," and somehow it stuck. I condemned Mary for her unoriginality. She applauded herself for embracing a cliché, which, somehow, in Mary logic, rendered it truly counter-culture.

So, like typical teenagers, we were indecisive as all hell and couldn't figure out where to eat. After what I think was our first disagreement—Mary wanted Thai, I voted pizza—we ended up going to a Shawarma place downtown. Which should not be confused with downtown Carraway Beach. Downtown Gilmore Park was an entirely different beast. To put it bluntly, downtown had seen better days. Nowadays, it lucked out with half a dozen tattoo parlors and bars that had, at most, a two-year lifespan (Yes, we had two bar scenes in town because Gilmore was a population of raging alcoholics).

So believe it or not, acquiring matching tattoos was not what we went to do downtown. There was a record store I wanted to take her to.

Cosmic Records smelled like mold, potential asbestos, and pot. Actually, mostly pot. And I'm also pretty sure the guy who worked there, who wore the same denim shirt every single day (as I've never seen him wear anything else), slept in the back behind the counter. But hey, they probably had every single record ever produced from Jermaine Jackson's solo career, to Irish Folk Songs for Children, and everything in between.

I was looking for a particular Cat Stevens album while Mary flipped through the nineties hip-hop bin and found Biggie Smalls. It slowly began to dawn on me that she was the one stuck in the nineties.

"I wish I could've told him he was beautiful when he was black," Mary said, looking at a wavering holographic poster of Michael Jackson from his BAD era.

She didn't really explain why and I left it at that. Mary then demanded that I had to choose one retro artist (male or female) that I would have sex with. Without even giving me a second to formulate a thought, she told me she would bone Steven Tyler and then quickly returned the question my way. After some good solid pestering, I professed my attraction to Debbie Harry.

"Debba—who?"

"You know, like, Blondie."

Mary got a hoot outta that and wouldn't let it go for the rest of the day. Whenever I asked her a question, she would scrunch up the blonde in her hair and then draw out her answer in a ditzy voice. It didn't matter how much I pleaded that Debbie Harry was a punk-rock chick, she would still do the ditz voice. For a girl who knew so much about pop culture, that surprised me.

Later, after walking around Downtown all afternoon, we hiked our way to the river basking at the bottom of the ravine that broke off from the street. While sitting, talking on the riverbank, listening to the rush of cars on the 306 hidden by the foliage of the trees, Mary asked me, "Why that one?" about my choice in record.

"Some of Cat's lyrics are like my gospel," I said, grabbing the album from the plastic bag and pulling out the lyric sheet. "Like this right here, the first track on the A-Side:

Well you roll on roads / Over fresh green grass.

For your lorryloads / Pumping petrol gas

When you crack the sky / Scrapers fill the air.