It’s funny, but the beltway never seemed so beautiful as it does right now.  Not even on a golden day with the windows down as you sing along to some guilty pleasure with no inhibitions.  Take all that away, throw yourself outside the windshield, and you look down at your leg corkscrewed in the wrong direction and you wheeze out of your punctured lung and you smile.  Because lying there in that jagged glass, you know you’ve made it.  So you laugh.  And you don’t mind the taste of blood in your mouth. 

      Rewind to sitting in a backyard in Ohio with a cold-but-getting-warmer beer in your hand and your brother and your cousin’s husband as company; two men in the armed service, and you, a big-time college boy.  Or so everyone tells you.  But how can you be so big-time when he’s gone on multiple-year tours for the Navy and he’s shot real people in some Middle East country fighting for some Cause, while you’ve read T.S. Eliot and pondered the effects of Carter’s handling of some hostage crisis on the modern presidency?

      A dead poet and historical analysis never defended our country.

      And your cousin’s husband, he’s got two kids with a third on the way.  He’s been around, he knows things, and he asks you the same question everyone at this damn reunion can’t help but ask: So what do you plan on doing after school?  Only he asks with a smirk on his face.  And you shrug, saying the same old I’m-still-so-young-so-it’s-hard-to-tell spiel, when all you really want to do is tell him I don’t know and I don’t care right now.  And he’ll kindly remind you how fifty-grand is a lot to pay each year to not have a clue what you want with life.  And didn’t you know that the Navy, they could help you pay for it while offering you a life experience at the same time?  And your brother nods, but you just want to tell him how much of a fucking commercial he sounds like.  But you just take another sip of your beer, only this one’s a lot longer.

      Because no matter your accomplishments, there’s a million other kids just like you.  You are a replica of every other white, middle-class A-student.  Your experience is nothing new.  But neither is theirs, you want to point out.  But shooting guns will always awe people more than writing papers. 

      And then you’re in the car and your mom brings it up.  Your sister, she says, she hasn’t returned my calls for the past week.  And you ask about calling her at home, or at work, but your mother, she doesn’t even know her new address.   

      Travel to the beginning.  The point of origin.  The epicenter. You never knew it back then, but all your pain, all your awkward misery; well that was all money in the bank.  So you wish you could shake the baby-fat of that younger you and tell him how it would all be worth it someday.  How the then-love of your life calling you the tag-along-pup and going on to sleep with your brother should be a cause of celebration, not self-loathing.  Because once it’s self-loathing, it can’t be self-deprecating; it has lost its value.  And then it’d all be a waste.  But you’ve seen too many movies about time travel, so you’re afraid to warn him, afraid to mess up the space/time continuum.  Or something like that.  So you let the sad little shit continue his existence, because you know how the long, painful road eventually forks, and that’s all that matters. 

      Just a slight fraction of a turn to the left into oncoming traffic, a nice little jerk of the wheel, that’s all it would take.  Your personal butterfly flapping its wings to cause a tsunami in your life.  Or maybe you’ll forget to look before you merge onto the freeway.  Or maybe you’ll insert any other way you can imagine that will leave you broken, hurt, down for the count.  But not fully.  That’s the kicker.  You want to be up, or at least conscious, by eight.

      Yea we saw it, they’ll say.  Maybe he was on his cell phone or something, I don’t know, but the damn kid just didn’t seem like he was paying attention, twisted that car up something good.  And they’ll add: It’s a miracle he’s alive.  So tragic, such a shame, they’ll say.  And then they’ll say how their name is spelled with two I’s, so could you get that right for tomorrow’s paper, please? 

      Rewind to when it wasn’t this bad, when it used to be innocent.  The room was swirling with red cups and high-fives, and you’re in the corner with Liz Whatshername (a shame, really, that you can’t remember her more clearly, but that’s beyond the point).  Now, just to paint the picture, this is the stretched-out version of you, one who shed his previous birthday suite for a smaller size.  And as the fat and awkwardness and bowl-cut and braces slowly dropped away, your confidence conversely started to rise.

      Think Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

      And somehow, after talking about grade school, you are pulling out your wallet to find validation, because for some up-until-this-moment unknown reason, you had always carried your school IDs on you.

      No! Whatshername exclaimed.  That’s not you!

      Yup.  True story.  Sixth grade.

      Look at your hair!  And your braces!  Oh my God!

      I’d also like to direct your attention to the tech-vest that I wore everyday.

      That’s so sad!  And look at your smile. You were so clueless!

      I don’t know.  I think at this point it was painfully apparent how much of a hell middle school was shaping up to be.  But still, my mom would have killed me if I wasn’t smiling.

      I just can’t believe this is you!  What did they call you again?

      And somehow, for some reason, this pity, this delight in your past life, this acknowledging of what you had become, had turned lethal.  With your first taste of her awkwardly glossed watermelon lips, you knew you had found your gold mine.  You were hooked. 

      Jump to when you’re lying in bed and trying to get another fix.  Julia is smoking her usual post-coital cigarette, flicking it over that coffee mug that, after nearly an entire semester, has begun to resemble a flower pot.  Only, instead of morning glories and daffodils, it’s a revolting bouquet of butts. 

      You run your fingers over the cool and tender raised lines that her nails had dug into your neck, and you can’t help but think how you really hadn’t expected something like this.  Your time in Europe was supposed to be a romp.  A different girl from each country you visit, your brother had said, that’s what you should do.  A little different advice from the normal you should go to this museum and visit this park, but advice nonetheless.  But Julia’s bisexual I-don’t-give-a-shit Smith College attitude is something totally new to you, it’s engaging, and so you don’t mind.  Plus, she’s a great lay.

      You watch her blow the smoke out the cracked door, and you rack your brain, because its been about four weeks, so you’ve obviously already told her about the baby-fat, already showed her the ID.  But the well hasn’t run dry, and you go for broke:

      I once had sex with a hand.

      What?

      Yup.  I once fucked a hand.

      Like, your own hand?

      No.

      I figured.

      Yea.  Masturbation isn’t really that embarrassing.

      Well, depends.

      On?

      Frequency?  Maybe someone walking in?  I don’t know.

      I guess you’re right.  Anyway.

      Yea, you need to elaborate.

      We had been seeing each other for three weeks or so, and she was very specific on wanting me to get tested before we had sex.

      Who could blame her?

      Shut up.  Anyway, we were hooking up on the couch, and since it was in the common room, we were under my down comforter.  Things got hot--

      Temperature-wise.

      Well yea, and sweaty, might I add.  So I unbutton her pants and she unbuttons mine, and I’m thinking that I’m a stud, because here I haven’t gotten tested yet, and she knows this and we’re having sex.  So later I asked her why we didn’t use a condom, and she just kind of looked at me with this face like, what the hell are you talking about?  And then she starts laughing at me.

      So they were sweaty hands?

      Yea!  Small, sweaty hands.

      I won’t lie, that’s pretty gross.  You’re an idiot.

      You asked me for an embarrassing story.

      I did? 

      Go back to the transformation.  A deliriously perfect spring day.  A bike.  A wrong turn.  A broken leg.  Remember how your heart sank through your shoes when they told you it would need surgery.  Three pins in the ankle, actually.  But don’t worry; I’m very good at what I do.  And that was the first time you didn’t mind someone being smug. 

      Because the man who’s going to drill you back together better be confident.

      And so you wake up from an anesthetized sleep and you don’t know where you are, but you feel so warm.  But this only lasts a few seconds, and when you go to stretch like you always do when you wake up, forgetting you’re in a hospital bed for the first time in you life, you feel the pinch of the IV on your wrist and you suddenly realize that there’s a cast on your leg and a fire burning out of control in your ankle.  But that’s OK; because with one push of a button there’s a nurse to drug you up all nice again.

      So that’s why people get addicted to morphine, you think, as the walls melt.

      But then they flood in.  The flower-bearers, the well-wishers, the tearful saps and the reassurance-givers.  And that old exhilaration comes creeping in, only this time it’s completely saturating your senses, pressing in and filling every void that ever existed in your life.  You, in your broken state, in your crusty hospital gown, in your anesthetic room, are the world.  Only this time, grade-school pictures weren’t needed.

      And when they’re gone it’s OK because that thrill lingers there like the smell of past patients.  It will never leave.  It’s going to be a long road to walking again, they said, and while that made you cringe a few days ago, lying there in your newfound euphoric state, you smile, because you know

      This time it was not the morphine.

      And that night, when you were all alone after visiting hours and your television wouldn’t work, remember how mad you were?  How you sat there in your silent room, cursing your nurse, the asshole who installed the television, the hospital, and most of all your inability to sleep.  But then it hit.  Free from all the noise, all the useless distractions you got to sit with the only person who really matters: yourself.  So you said hello, and you enjoyed a night of introspection and self-awareness.  And in the morning, when they brought in the guy to fix the television, you said no thanks.

      And so from that point on, you go for more pain, more pity, more time alone. 

      Fast-forward to when your sister called you that day after you had left your mother, your worried-sick, uncertain-about-her-middle-child mother, and you felt your stomach -or was it something else- crash through the floor.  Because how could she be dead or even close-to-dead hurt if she was calling you?  And you know you’ll pick up, even though you know what this means.  And you’ll ask her why she hasn’t been returning her calls, how she’s had everyone worried sick over her, how irresponsible she is and that she better call mom.  And then you’ll hang up and sing a quiet requiem for all the attention you would have gained if only your mother’s worst fears were realized. 

      So when you saw that truck, headlights blazing, coming around the bend, it wasn’t so hard to make that slight left jerk of the wheel and go for a bigger, badder round two.  Because you can’t ensure that you’ll have a dead sister, but you do have control over your own steering wheel.  So you grip that wheel, that facilitator of self-enlightenment, and you just hope you don’t die.

      Because you see, this is not suicidal; it’s educational.  Because no one wants to die, but everyone wants to learn.  Because only through mutilation comes cleansing.  And if you want to die, then this is not for you.  This here is a rebirth, a type of phoenix rising from the ashes.  Only, you’ll be a broken, scarred, and ugly phoenix that people will shudder at, but risen nonetheless.

      Because when you’re once again there in that same ward of that same hospital named for that same saint, you’re in the real classroom.  And your admission, it wasn’t some test score or some essay that your parents read and re-read until you got it down perfect; it was the crunch of steel or the shattering of glass or any other sound that you associate with being broken, hurt, down for the count. 

      That period, what they’ll probably tell you is your recovery period, that’s not just a time for bones to re-connect and ligaments to heal, its not just time for skin cells to rebuild and blood to regenerate, it’s time for you to discover you.  Think of all the time you’ll have to yourself.  Because you know that introspection is something you’ll never get around to unless you’re strapped to a hospital bed wrapped in casts and self-pity and the pity of others.  Forget the meaning of life, you’re finding the meaning of yourself.

      Forget everyone else and only remember your needy, greedy self.

      Because it’s not a death wish if you only end up missing a leg or so.

      And then the doctor, he tells you how, despite your best efforts (but he doesn’t know that), it’s only a minor injury.  He tells you how your parents will be there to take you home tomorrow.  But you already knew this.  You could tell as early as the first sound of glass shattering.  Acknowledging it was something else though.  And all you can think about is all the screaming, all of the melodramatic moaning and tears and snot and incoherent words that you vomited that night.  And the embarrassment, it sets down heavy as you watch the nurses snigger.  And your friends call and say, well, if you’re going to be home tomorrow, then do you mind if we don’t make it out to that ward in that hospital named after that saint because, well, you know how high gas prices are right now, don’t you?