I remember this one time hitchiking in I think it was Washington State and this guy gave me a ride in I think it was a VW bug and he was very tall sort of long-faced which now I think was significant but then in my Parsifalian "now" I didn't pay any mind to and he gave me a ride and then it was like we're going out to this thing, it was on a causeway or out a causeway a kind of jetty made of piled-up rocks and there was like a nuke plant out there or some kind of Navel base some checkpoint to get in there and he had the clearance to do that and then he pulled over and it was like I had to get out, a mile or so out on this causeway in between the highway and whatever installation that was and just sit there on these rocks while he went off and did something. What I'm trying to express here is the complete and absolute helplessness of that time, how I had no choice in anything, I was like a balloon, or a little kid, just drifting from one unseen briar patch to another, and so I was sitting on these rocks for a while and then the guy came back and I guess I ended up back on the road eventually I can't remember much else about it, but these elements are vivid:
His attitude which was folksy friendly until I balked at the turn-off, then he was progressively more threatening until the lab-response in me kicked in, what Pynchon called "calm imperturbable".
The physical character of the place, the long artificial reef the causeway was on, some kind of bridge or metal structure.
And the fact that to someone who didn't know me very well, he looked a lot like me.

put here 8:56 PM

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