I sigh as if my heart just broke, and pull over into a Walmart parking lot right beneath the freeway entrance.

When the fuck and I’m gonna get to finally leave fucking Blythe?

I piddle over into an empty space at the outskirts under some ugly brush, and almost laugh at myself for so carefully navigating between the lines of the parking spot. What’s the point, since my damn days are numbered, and there’s no other cars parked or looking to park anywhere near here? Yeah, I guess I’m just a pussy.

I kill the engine with no ghusto whatsoever, just by flicking my wrist at the keys so they tumble down by my feet.

We sit in silence, hearing nothing at all but distant engines, and I look over to see this dark, mad scowl all across Jolene’s pretty face.

“Uncle X, you talk to me, ok?” she pleads, though there’s certainly some anger mixed in there. “You tell me what you’re thinking. You better not be planning to kill yourself. Are you? Is that what you meant?”

I let out another sad sigh, and find it feels kind of nice to think about actually opening up and telling someone the truth about what I’ve got in mind. “Yes,” I say. “But it’s ok. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just . . . it’s my time, that’s all.”

“What the fuck do you mean it’s your time?” Now she’s only mad. “That’s what you say when it’s cancer, or a plane crash, or you fall off some fucking bridge. You don’t say it’s your time when you’re gonna off yourself! That’s . . . that’s stupid.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I admit.

Again, there’s silence. Way behind us, like a dot in the rearview mirror, I see a young mom bend to grab a bag or something from the bottom of her cart to hand up to her kid. Almost in a trance, I trace the outlines of her in torn denim shorts. It’s fine and all . . . something to look at as I daydream here and wonder what I might say next.

“Please don’t,” begs Jolene, her anger now no more.

“Jolene,” I begin, a new tact in mind, “the truth is, you’re kinda my hero.”

“What?”

“I know, it sounds dumb, but you’re the sort of person I always wished I could be. You know what you want. You don’t take shit from dicks like Tyler. You’re strong. And . . . well, like you said, you see things. That’s…”

“You see things, too, Uncle X,” she interrupts. “I know you do! That’s why I can talk to you.”

“Yeah,” I agree, “but you’re not shy about showing the world what you see. That’s something I never do.”

“So show the fucking world!” she yells, her fast-shifting feelings like a turbulent set of spinning spikes I’m not sure how to approach. “Why give up?” She’s already staring into my eyes, but her gaze changes . . . intensifies . . . as if she’s about to raise me up from the jaws of my slow, slow death just using her mind. “I’ll help you,” she says so softly it’s almost a whisper.

“Na,” I say, and maybe my whole hangover and a shitload of other weariness all settles in at once, “I’ll put it this way. Let’s say you’re a heroin addict, your age, and you come out of rehab. You know you’re gonna have to go through the ugliest, shittiest, messiest hellish time to get clean . . . and that’s just to get back to base-level life, y’know? But you do it . . . it’s not even really a question . . . since you’ve got a whole lot left in front of you that could be good, even if it hasn’t been good yet. You’ve got potential, and people ready to see you a new way, if you make them . . . if you succeed.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hell, I’m not even sure what the fuck I’m getting at. Still, I plow ahead, my body and voice now fully drained of all life and energy: “Well, now imagine you’re me getting outta rehab, and it’s like after my tenth relapse or whatever. Everyone already knows I’m a piece of shit. That’s all I’ve shown myself to be. I could go through withdrawals, and try to follow steps . . . but why? It’s different for me. Honestly, my job’s a deadend where I get paid to sit in a room. I don’t have fun, or really any friends. Nothing seems all that interesting. And . . . well, you know I don’t have sex. It’s too late for me. That’s it.”

If I wasn’t ready to collapse and pass out from sheer exhaustion and sadness, I might say I feel like a little weight has lifted just from having told her how I feel. 

Jolene doesn’t respond right away, and I love that about her. She’s not just going to say some hopeful bullshit for the sake of talking. Finally, she says real simply, “Well, you’re my hero too.”

“What?”

“You’ve always been my hero. You’re the only . . . I guess I have to say grownup, but that’s not… Anyway, you’re the only person I’ve ever felt like I can really be myself around. You are a nice person. You act nice, but you don’t even realize you’re a true nice guy deep down. I love you, Uncle X. I’m not just saying it so you won’t kill yourself.”

“I know.” I peak back at a couple vaguely female shapes emerging from the Walmart.

“I wanted to do this long before today. It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for . . . forever.” She crosses her arms, grips the sides of her top, and slings it up over her head, then follows through to unfasten and slip down her pants, all in a single wave-like motion.

Instantly, I’m sitting next to a naked Jolene, and she’s glancing down at her own body, then up, as if to assure me without words it's more than ok for me to look.

And yes, of course, my eyes take in hungry sweeps of her, and report back joyous sightings of tiny pink pokey nipples, a smooth, flat belly, the creamiest of thighs, and a thin, quaint pubic tangle where my vision comes to rest, hypnotized. Right away, it’s like I see the sorry trap that porn has always been for me, since it’s offered only so vastly an inferior taste of this most beautiful, amazing, and deeply meaningful of realities. Dude, Jolene is perfect . . . a fucking Disney-princess-level product of human and sexual evolution the likes of which I don’t think even existed when I was her age. Nothing could be any better, at all, about her body. Nothing. 

As if set on fire, my weighty, broken tiredness becomes a fog I feel myself getting resurrected right back through . . . and I rise up on the inside, empowered by forces I can’t come close to explaining.

“Uncle X,” she begins as I stare between her legs. She says more, but I don’t hear the rest.