Loose Change

A Personal Essay Written April, 2005

This was written in 2005. It’s been lightly edited in 2026 for clarity, attribution, and privacy. I changed a name. There. You happy? The opinions and assumptions belong to the twenty-one-year-old who wrote them.

Loose Change
April, 2005
David C. Roberson

“The day you stop changin’ is the day you die.”
-Scott Lobdell, Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1, #337 (spoken by Wolverine)

“‘This is cheap fucking shit! You won’t get addicted!’” my roommate Justin reads from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the benefit of Spencer, our dear friend and chauffeur on a trip to Birmingham to witness the surrealistic styling of one Matthew Carroll, who has directed a small student film.

Justin is twenty-one years old. He is thin with brown, bristled hair that’s cut short. Many have made the observation that he looks like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, and I will admit more than a vague resemblance. Imbued with a sense of selfishness and a lack of self-doubt that would leave the more compassionate people of the world in awe, Justin has, despite knowing of my mangled back, called “shot gun.”

Spencer is twenty-three years old. For over a year now, he has set college aside; he patiently awaits his release from activation, courtesy of the United States Air Force. He has short, reddish-blonde hair. It grows on his arms thicker than on his face. A man of short stature and lean physique, Spencer is a considerate type who often finds himself either indifferent or unwilling to make waves. He’s also dating my sister.

The car belongs to Spencer. It’s a ’95 Ford Escort, hot pink. The insides are gray. In the back seat alone there lies empty soda cans, piles of clothes (both clean and dirty), binders full of Air Force engine manuals, a bag of pistachios, a Foo Fighters DVD, myriad stickers plastered across the backs of seats, a chess board, dirty dishes, empty Starbucks cups, notebooks full of artistic musings, hangers, piles of compact discs featuring tons of indie rock groups, and me. I’m crammed in somewhere between Justin’s distorted chortles and the thumping of the bass line. The classic Bright Eyes album, Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground pounds in my ears. I concentrate on that to forget about the pain in my back.

It was in a foreign hotel’s bathtub I baptized myself in change.
And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been.
-Conor Oberst, “From a Balance Beam”, Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

The sunlight shines through the dirt-streaked windshield and onto a Christian cross. It hangs from Spencer’s rearview mirror and swings like a pendulum. The sunlight’s effect on it amuses me as it swings: from shine to shadow, shine to shadow. It’s at this point I take notice of the fact that Justin has relegated himself to reading silently. Spencer just drives. I notice that all I’ve done in the past hour is scribble in my own notebook or stare out at that boring barrage of gray and green. And then it hits me: things have changed.

There was a time, and not so long ago I might add, when a road trip such as this would have been fun. It would have been nothing short of spectacular. It was a time when Spencer and Justin were rooming together, when we didn’t have to drive a hundred miles to see Matt, a time when we all believed in the same God, the same ideals… it was a time before we all changed.

In the three years that have lapsed from those days, Spencer has been activated and has started a serious relationship with my sister of all people. It seems almost wrong somehow, but she’s an adult. I keep forgetting that. Justin, the once vigilant and ever-heartfelt Christian has turned his back on his faith in favor of a more rigid and some say unrewarding religion: science. He was always a dick, but he now sees his freedom from piety as a pass to put himself first regardless of circumstance. I seem to have simply grown in my bitterness, more isolated from society.

Bright Eyes dwindles out with their final song, “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved)”, and Spencer breaks the silence by requesting that I offer up a new album. Flip-flopping through the monstrous CD binder, I find a suitable selection: the introductory Bob Dylan compilation that I made him last year. Spencer pops it in his player, but for some reason it takes me over twenty minutes to even acknowledge that it’s on. I look down to my notebook to find the reason. I’ve been writing.

Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast.
Oh, but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last.
I can change, I swear, oh, oh!
See what you can do.
I can make it through,
You can make it too.
-Bob Dylan, “You’re a Big Girl Now”, Blood on the Tracks

I don’t even notice that the sun is gone until I hit a break in writing. It’s like waking up from a long dream and realizing that you’re not who you thought you were, but your neighbor. I look out the right-hand window, and I see all of the familiar sights. I know I’m close to being in Birmingham. I’ve traveled this road too many times, I know it well. The last time, I was going to see someone. In fact, I saw her for six months. It all seemed like it was six weeks. It took less than six seconds for the end to come. In the blink of an eye, a tremendous error in my life had come to an end. Praise Jesus. I don’t travel that road much now.

The truth of the matter is I’m the kind of taciturn, shadowy character that mothers drag their children away from in the toy aisle. I’m tall and lumbering. I wear dark clothes and a scowl like a policeman wears his badge. I haven’t changed since I was sixteen years old. I thought I had, but I hadn’t. It all became clear to me on that night, driving to Birmingham. I used to wonder if those mothers saw something in me I hadn’t recognized yet, but they were only ever seeing my exterior.

I’m not the creeper, the killer, the destructive force that makes children weep and women run for the suburbs. I’m the guy who buys action figures because they’re physical manifestations of someone’s imagination that keep my spark of childhood alive despite society’s demands that I acquiesce to dim adulthood. I’m the “weird” guy who sits in the corner and writes while everyone else has fun. I’m the shadow that women turn to when they need advice about a potential lover, and the solemn, supposedly soulless bag of bones who is expected to possess no emotion to claim. I’m the bent ear, the leaned-upon shoulder, the phone number you throw away when things are good, and the guy you blame when things are bad. That isn’t changing.

I need an easy friend.
(I do) With an ear to lend.
(I do) Think you fit this shoe.
(I do) But you have a clue.
I’ll take advantage while
You hang me out to dry,
But I can’t see you every night
(for) free.
I do
-Kurt Cobain, “About a Girl”, Bleach (Nirvana)

A little over a month ago, one of my best friends, Sean, left Montgomery to marry someone he’s only seen a handful of times. He moved from Alabama to Colorado. As Spencer slips another disc, Give Up by The Postal Service, into his player, I think of all the times Sean and I spent in the parking lot at my apartment complex smoking cigars, laughing about lost love, and complaining about Montgomery in general. I think of the deep, billowing sadness that seeped from the man’s every pore. It was so thick I nearly drowned a few times, I think. Out of every one of my friends, I related most to Sean. His background, his morbid, macabre sense of self-deprecating humor… I felt that I sort of adopted him as my brother, and tried to give him a piece of what he lost since his own brother committed suicide. I didn’t think we would be standing outside in that parking lot every night for the rest of our lives, but I certainly never saw it coming to an end, either.

I’m screaming at the top of my lungs pretending
The echoes belong to someone—
Someone I used to know.
-Ben Gibbard, “We Will Become Silhouettes” ,Give Up (The Postal Service)

We pull into a parking space, and I stop thinking about Sean. My aching back has a spider-sense, and it knows that it’s about to be stretched after what seemed like hours. The muscles start twitching in anticipation. I’m stiff all over, and I groan while getting out of the back seat. Justin laughs.

Walking to the hall, I realize something else. We’re about to view a film directed by my oldest friend Matthew. For years I heard his almost endless monologues about filming. I listened to him giggle and snicker and shout in joy about ideas for movies. And now we’re going to see something he’s actually put into motion.

Matt’s a man of around six feet. His hair is short, dark brown. He has a thick beard and an even thicker mid-section. I’ve known him since we were five. Were I to ever wed, he would probably be the man holding the ring. We talk almost every day, so I know what to expect when the film starts.

We take our seats. I see an old acquaintance who recently found out he’s going to be a father. I see another in the throes of a new relationship, mere months after his girlfriend of three years cheated on him. I wonder how it is that we all got so old. How life has taken us down its twisted roads to fatherhood, marriage, accomplishment, atheism, loneliness, and indifference. I ask myself how we’re supposed to deal with this sort of thing: the departure of friends, family, and lovers, the acceptance of replacement parts, the management of real progress; the art of avoiding dormancy. And then I see Matt smiling at me and waving as the lights go dim. I wave back. The murmur of the crowd dissipates, and I sit back in anticipation of more loose change.

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