Lone Star

The guy down the road from you wants to be famous. He wears his jacket collar turned up and his Fedora pushed forward. He wears sunglasses on cloudy days: he doesn’t want to be looked at, he wants to be seen.

The guy down the road from you walks in a consciously unselfconscious way. It reminds you of someone getting up to give a speech. You wonder if he practices in front of a mirror.

He drives a car that was made when James Dean and Steve McQueen were Kings of Cool. The car is empty, except for a guitar case on the back seat.

Sometimes, late at night, you hear unfinished phrases of soulful music floating down the street. You know it’s him and you wonder why he doesn’t finish those phrases, why he doesn’t play at the pub on open-mic night.

You’ve seen him at the dimly lit café on the corner. He drinks black coffee and reads second-hand paperbacks. Sometimes he leans over a tattered notebook, his ballpoint pen hovers over a blank page but never leaves a mark.

You’ve heard he has a desk job at some paper-shuffling boredom-factory in the city. You wonder how he lives with that.

You imagine him sitting at his desk with its fake wood grain surface, staring at a photo hidden in his top draw. It’s of some pop-culture celebrity, someone from his youth: the embodiment of his dreams. You imagine that his longing runs deep. His heart is beating in his chest; he can feel his freedom: taste it; it’s just outside the window; just beyond the bars.

The guy down the road from you wants to be famous.