Living In Sin

"Living In Sin" - Bon Jovi (New Jersey - 1990)
Mid-June roadtrip to Cimmaron, New Mexico for a ten-day survival hike in Philmont. The rented bus took us seven days and a million miles away from home. It was the first time away from home that was further than the state of Virginia. Windows down, backed up toilet, gameboys linked across high-backed seats, farts, sodas and me with my walkman staring across the desert. Fifty people on the bus, twelve in my group, four I really knew, and one friend but I was really alone. The foam on the headseat made my ears sweat and I fidgeted constantly to keep the cording from touching my chin. The button kept clicking on and off as I hit rewind then play making sure I was exactly 3 seconds of quiet before the song came on. Click, play, click, play, click, fast forward a bit, close my eyes - play.
I was 18. What did I know. Bon Jovi was getting closer to something as I was getting further. The song didn't pull me out of the bus, it pulled everything in. The song reversed on me. It was the first time a song had ever done that. I was an antenna for these open roads. I felt the song in this girl with the cast on her arm walking around Cape Canaveral. I felt the song in the sad eyes of the boatman in the alligator infested bayou. I felt the lone shacks miles away from the road standing forgotten against the wind. And that dry hoarse scream at the end of the song - like the desert wind was drying him out. Drying me out. I was that boy who leaves home to become a man and Bon Jovi was telling me that it was going to be beautiful but it wasn't going to be easy. I was trying to know so much about myself as a youth that I never wondered about anyone else. And here was the world and I had no idea what was going on. Who are these people? Why are they so happy? Why are they so sad? And it was then I realized they were relationships. The girl in the cast thinking of a boy back home. The man in the bayou thinking of taking his ill wife to the hospital the next morning. And all of those people drying up in those distant shacks never leaving - holding on to someone. And here I was with nothing learning how to grab hold.
The worse part of the trip was being stuck with fifty people in the same situation who didn't have that privilege of Bon Jovi. As I was laying in the dark hallway linoleum of a rented navy building, a bar of soap shattered just over my head. One of the weaker members had been teased too much and lost control. He was screaming at everyone and coming closer. I needed a fix. I needed my lesson. I wanted to know how to get out of here without getting up. Who would I hold onto?

Click, play, click, play, fast forward a bit, close my eyes - play

http://bon-jovi.lyrics-songs.com/lyrics/4999/