cap turned backward, wearing a giant tent for a shirt. None of this bothers him in the least. He is unflappable. On the wall behind his head is a metal Route 66 road sign, and a framed photo of a shiny ’57 Chevy. The caption reads AN AMERICAN CLASSIC. Exactly.
John Miller and I settle into the booth. I’m not even hungry, but I find myself looking through the menu, eyeing the All-Day Breakfast selections and the Home-Style Dinners. They have hamburgers called The Marilyn and The Big Bopper, tributes to icons who died of a mysterious drug overdose and a plane crash in Iowa, respectively. This does not make me as sad as you would think. Someday everyone will die. Not everyone will get a sandwich named after him or her.
I look up from the menu and see that John Miller is staring at me, with a rabid, faraway look in his eyes. A Southern look, honed by peering off into great distances, searching for clues on the horizon. We don’t have that look in Chicago. He asks what I was laughing about, and I tell him the joke I just made to myself about the hamburgers. He doesn’t get it. Why would he? He is a maniac, he is just embarking on an adventure; he has no time to think about death. The waitress shuffles back to take our orders. John Miller is having some ghastly thing with eggs and bacon and french fries. I tell the waitress I want the repression burger, fifties style. She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even bat an eyelash; instead, she sighs and tells me it’s too early to order anything off the dinner menu. It was a pretty dumb joke. I order an omelet instead.
“So whudyou guys do for fun?” John Miller asks me, eyes wide now.
“I don’t know, man. To be honest, we don’t have a lot of fun,” I say. “Basically we just drive from one place to the next. We play shows. . . . I don’t know. It’s not fun, man. Not after a while.”
He chuckles. “You awghta come down to Jacksonville with me sometime. If you think this ain’t fun, you ain’t seen nothin’. Man, all we got down there is the fuckin’ water.”
I smile. Suddenly, I care about John Miller more than anyone else on the planet. He is a believer. He sees the good in everything. He is unscathed by life, not because he hasn’t lived, but because he hasn’t slowed down long enough to notice that he’s bleeding. He is free, like the hoboes of Kerouac. If he wanted to, John Miller could disappear right now, could pick up his garbage bag, toss it over his shoulder, and vanish into thin air. No one would ever come looking for him, and he wouldn’t expect them to. John Miller is unencumbered, he carries no baggage, has no phobias or neuroses. He asks no big questions, does not worry about what tomorrow may bring, because he lives only in the now. He is unlike anyone I have ever known before. I want him to teach me everything, how to embalm a body or hop a train, how to go through life free of burden and fear, how to be truly, maddeningly, dazzlingly happy. I want more than anything for him to like me. So I tell him the story of the actress I slept with in Las Vegas, about how she climbed in my bunk and told me to cum inside her, about how I haven’t called her since and probably never will again. He laughs and pounds the table with his fists and shouts stuff like “No shit!” and “God-damn!” at the top of his lungs, making the old, churchgoing crows stare at us over their plastic-framed glasses. I tell him about my other conquests too . . . the pretty tattoo artist in Phoenix, the girl with the studded tongue in St. Louis, the Chilean girl in Milwaukee who said her dad was Tom Araya from Slayer . . . and now John Miller is practically rolling on the floor, guffawing and repeatedly spitting out “Je-zus Christ!” with such fervor that the manager has to come over and remind us that this is a family restaurant. We ignore him and just keep right on shouting, cursing, being terrible. Offending churchly old women and meek, stammering managers. I feel alive for the first time in months.
But then, as our waitress tosses our food in front of us