Freedom’s just another word
for nothing left to lose.
-from “Me and Bobby McGee”
There was a boy whose name was Kurt, and there was a girl whose name was Sandy. Kurt and Sandy met in the park, on a sunny afternoon.
Or they met on a blind date.
Or they met when they went to the same bookstore at the same time on the same day to buy the same book on conspiracy theories.
Who knows where these things begin. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, Kurt and Sandy were crazy about each other. Where you saw Kurt, you saw Sandy, wherever she went, he went, too.
Things seemed to be going well. After some months they moved in together. Or Kurt moved in with Sandy. Kurt was “between places.”
Or Kurt was between gigs.
Or Kurt lost his job at Chuck E. Cheese for yelling “Eat me” at a room full of eight-year-olds.
It doesn’t really matter. The point is, they were together. They were doing alright. Sandy worked at a bakery. They always had day old bread and day old donuts around. Somehow they got by.
But Sandy was on her feet eight hours a day and she was tired when she got home. And Kurt was there by himself, drinking beer and getting high.
Or his friends were there, and they were all drinking beer and getting high.
Or Kurt was up until 5 a.m., listening to The Kinks, or watching “Green Acres” re-runs.
Sandy got up at 5 a.m. To go to work. Or Sandy “woke up”, you could say. At any rate, she kicked him out and Kurt went to live with his folks.
He called, of course. Day and night. The phone rang off the hook.
Kurt called Sandy his soulmate. Or he called her the love of his life.
He called her his reason for living.
Or he called her a whore.
Kurt still had one last trick left up his sleeve. He went to Sandy’s place while she was at work, and slipped a letter under the door.
Then he went home, and blew his brains out.
Kurt took his father’s gun and blew his brains onto the wall. In the letter, he wrote, I did it for you.
Among other things.
Sandy cried and cried. She cried first thing in the morning. At night, she went to bed in tears.
But after a week or two, Sandy got up, and got dressed. She went to work and didn’t cry. Not that day, or the day after that or the next.
Love is love, and hate is love; it's love with a gun to its head.
Or freedom’s just another word for it doesn’t really matter.