(Winter Version)
On my three-mile loop down to “mid-city” and back, I saw a guy in a thrift store t-shirt, pleated khakis and chucks. I hoped for a second that I had slipped back in 1999 and the Pavement I was listening was still new (to me). Which would mean that there were so many other things that would be new. I wouldn’t have read Joan Didion, or seen a David Gordon Greene film. I’d be driving a Nissan Sentra. I’d still think that Mr. Roboto Project was the best place to see a show. Death Cab for Cutie was still lo-fi and Modest Mouse sounded new. The tickets I just bought to see Built to Spill would be $5, instead of $33.
But I wouldn’t be running, I’d be eating lots of queso and talking about taking up smoking and being something—I didn’t know what yet, but something.
I would have read my first David Foster Wallace essay. And my creative writing classes would be filled with freshmen boys who loved to dress up like him. By dress up, I mean in the uniform bandana and ratty t-shirts, and also in their footnotes. I loved and hated those boys, and the particular way they said DFW. I loved them because they were the staple of creative writing classes—a workshop needed their standard cynicism.
But they were so god damn annoying. I loved and hated them much like I loved and hated David Foster Wallace. Even though he was new to me, I knew from the moment I read “Existentiovoyeristic conundra notwithstanding, there’s no denying the simple fact that people in the U.S.A. watch so much television basically because it’s fun,” he and I would have a difficult relationship. Mostly because he taunted me, begged me to imitate him. I think I hated those boys because I knew that the something I wanted to be was DFW, but I just had the common sense to reign in it.
If it was still 1999, I guess he’d also have new things to look forward to.
I snapped out of this back-when nostalgia once I ran past a girl in Thomas Circle wearing yellow crocs. I’d been running on that block many times. The pavement wasn’t new.
