Art saves him, and through art life saves him.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
December 1969
"What a crock of shit." Randy throws the door open so hard it slams into the adjacent wall, chipping the paint. "So Terry can have three fucking girlfriends at the same time and call it 'free love', Ken's cruisin' down to Will Rogers for jailbait and says age is just a number, but two men kissin', yeah, that's where we better draw the moral line."
You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling, though there's nothing very funny about the situation. Randy hardly ever cusses, a side effect of being raised Soc, thinks he's too damn posh for that; it's always worth a good laugh whenever his tongue trips over the words.
Another side effect is that every injustice feels brand new. "I dunno why you're so surprised," you say, putting aside the dog-eared copy of On the Road you'd been flipping through. "Ain't like the rest of the world's exactly linin' up to march for queer rights."
"What the hell kind of commune is this?" Randy kicks the bedpost hard enough to break his toe, then erupts into another string of curses. "They'll listen to the Velvets, sure, they'll drop acid, they'll burn their draft cards, then they see somethin' really provocative and that's just not groovy anymore. They wanna smash the system, but they won't say a word against the sodomy laws."
You never intended to stay here as long as you did— only packed a duffel bag of mostly underwear and a few battered, water-stained paperbacks when you stormed out of Darry's house— and you sure as shit never bought into the ideals Randy ascribed to this VW Beetle of misfits and malcontents, united by a love of quality grass more than any love of justice. "We're outlaws. Excitin', ain't it?"
(You thought you'd left crime behind you sometime before Curly Shepard went inside, robbing you of the devil on your shoulder, but here you are, risking two to ten if any of your so-called comrades nark. Maybe there's more of your daddy in you than you like to admit.)
"Didn't you read about the riots at Stonewall, in New York?" He flops down next to you; as if you don't remember the pictures in the newspaper, the bricks thrown through the windows, the strange, stirring hope that rose out of you like a flower blooming from concrete. "The times are a-changin', Pone, just not here. Not in this lousy hick city."
Randy looks around the room you share— the worn mattress, the dreamcatcher with half the beads fallen out, the stubs of joints littering the floor— and sets his jaw. "Let's get outta here."
You let out a laugh, a hopscotch step to incredulity. "C'mon, you can't be serious. An' go where, exactly?"
"Somewhere a little more 'Puff the Magic Dragon' than 'Okie from Muskogee.'"
"You plan on suckin' dick on the side of the road?" you say with the smart mouth that's gotten you into trouble your whole life. You're three years younger, but at times like these (or when you learned Randy can't do his own laundry), you feel a hundred years more jaded. "'Cause your daddy ain't about to pay for this, and Darry sure as shit won't."
Instead of looking crushed by this influx of practicality, Randy just studies you, the green flecks in his hazel eyes standing out even more starkly than usual. "You're a brilliant writer, you know. Ain't a lot of fourteen-year-old kids who could create somethin' like that theme."
"You can quit gassin' me up," you start, your brows rising past your hairline, "it ain't about to work—"
His lips curl into a smirk before you can finish the sentence. "Oh, I ain't gassin' you up. You're stagnating artistically. Admit it. You ain't produced anything close to that in years— you're scared to even try."
God, do you want to deck him, your blood aflame inside your veins, but the worst part is that he's right. Since the tenth grade, you've got three salvageable poems, a godawful play about your breakup with Cathy that ripped off Cat on a Hot Tin Roof like nobody's business, and a half-baked novel whose sensitive, artistic protagonist is so much like you, even you want to puke. "Fuck you—" his smirk only grows wider— "you don't see me makin' fun of your sorry-ass folk-pop album—"
"We've milked all the creative inspiration outta this place," Randy says with a grand sweep of his hand, looking at you the way Neal Cassady must have looked at Allen Ginsberg once. "I mean. You could stay. Go to college like your brother wants, get some business degree, do what you're supposed to do." His hand snakes over to your thigh, gives it a tight squeeze. "But I want you to come with me."
You haven't seen Darry since September, and your mind recoils from the memory like it's a hot stove. You need help, Ponyboy, he said as you smoked cigarette after cigarette on the porch until your fingertips reeked of nicotine, you need to go to a doctor, you're sick. Before you end up some useless burnout like Uncle Gene.
You knew, despite what the DSM claimed, that nothing would ever fix the desire coiled inside you. Letting your hair grow out long, kissing boys, and writing so, so much bad poetry felt like waking up again, coming back alive. If I'm sick, you said slowly, I don't want to be well.
A million wars were waged since the summer you graduated high school, about what your father would have wanted, how much Darry sacrificed for your sake, what to do about Soda (who only shows up at home anymore, reeking like death and as gaunt as an Auschwitz survivor, to beg for cash), but unlike the strum und drang of all the others, this one smacked of a quiet finality— there was nothing left to say, really, after that. There's nothing left of your family anymore, really, just ghosts and ashes and photographs, collapsing like moth's wings with the slightest touch.
You lean over and press your lips to the juncture between his neck and shoulderblade, inhale the smell of marijuana and patchouli that clings to all his sweaters; he cups your face in his hands and kisses you hard, his stubble against your skin more right than any caress from Cathy. "You're fucking crazy," you make sure to tell him, but as you say it you already know you've lost. "We ain't got no money, we ain't got no plan—"
"Hey, we got our health, and—" he slings an arm around your shoulders— "we got each other, right? Better than stickin' around here 'til the draft board comes knockin'."
You love him, that's the trouble, like a cat licking up antifreeze, sweet and enticing before it melts your insides. Maybe you've loved him since you first stuck out your tongue and let him put an acid paper on it, since you started staying up all night fucking and reading excerpts from Howl, since he barreled into your room and forced you to examine a world outside the confines of your neighborhood. You've lost so many people; no matter what it costs you, you can't face the possibility of festering here while he drives off alone.
"We're takin' my car," you say, fumbling around for the keys on your nightstand. "I am not listenin' to what you call a cassette the whole way there."
The two of you settle on singing along to the Kinks, loudly, off-key, until you see the fog come up over San Francisco. You refuse to look back, not even once.
Just my take on a potential future for Ponyboy :)
