"I want you to hit me as hard as you can."

"You’re not Tyler Durden, Pent. Lay off the movie lines."

"I don’t think you understand this, Niff. I’ve grown up in a society raised by mothers. My dad works all the time. Your parents aren’t together anymore - just look at your brother. His only role model is his mommy."

"Okay, so little Jack is going to grow up seeking keen living room sets instead of his masculinity. So what? Should we start a fight club, Mr. ‘I want to search for individuality just like my hero Chuck Palahniuk’?"

"Well, for starters, Niff, you wouldn’t be in the club because you’re a girl."

Stop. Maybe this is a bad place to start the story. My name is Pentagon Winters. I’m the guy sitting on one of those concrete "logs" they put at the front bumper end of a head-in parking spot, and I’m wearing my school uniform: one white button down shirt, one pair black trousers, and one pair of tennis shoes.

Stop. Even before that, I’m at school in Coach Paulson’s drivers’ ed class and I’m pulling away from Orange Star High for my first time on the road. The class vehicle is a purple Dodge Neon, and I look down the length of the sleeves on my white shirt at the molded plastic wheel.

The Neon was donated to Orange Star High, and already it’s gotten its pretty face beaten. Niff complains that the car isn’t cute anymore, but I know that a man is not his car, that a car gets you from point A to point B, that a bike could do the same for the most part, that power windows and fuel injection and production of smog are all decadence.

"Stop. Turn right." Coach Paulson wasn’t declaring anything new here. It was always a right turn. Everyone turns right. As long as Coach sits in the passenger seat and my mind is in Hindu cow mode, I will follow the herd.

"Stop. Turn right again." I imagine that Coach Robert Paulson is the multibillion-dollar advertising industry, and I am the kid in front of the television.

This is Kool.

It may seem unrealistic that I was thinking of anything other than not crashing. It’s true that I did have the traditional first timer’s trepidation, but that doesn’t move the story along. You might complain that the way I’m telling the story doesn’t give you the understanding you need to relate with me. The truth is, you can never relate with me. Your soul cannot know me, except to gain a foggy vision through what I choose to say.

I have a soul. This soul is the culmination of everything I remember or feel or think. Every time I trip on my own feet in front of a crew of my-agers, teens, if you want to call them that – every time I think about talking to some chick, but don’t – every moment of my waking day, my soul takes notes and tells my body how to react.

When words come from my mouth, or if my hand comes up to flash a thumbs up sign, my body is making a physical representation of the decisions of my soul. Actions give you a hazy view at best; some people are intent on lying to themselves and others by doing what they are not thinking. Judgement comes on the soul, and there is only one conclusion: the physical world means nothing, in that it’s just a representation, and it means everything, because that’s how souls communicate.

All that exposition to say, everything I think needs not be documented for you. In between lane changes and yield signs, my mind might flash over to some cute chick in my next class, or the time Niff fell down a flight of stairs, on purpose, in sort of a flashy way, because someone offered her a buck plus attention to do it. These are good things to talk about, but many times, these are just hints of subjects that crumble around me when I start trying to describe them.

It’s the same with me trying to describe driving for the first time. You’ve felt it. You remember it. I think it’s just understood that there’s nothing significant to learn from a story that’s been heard a million times.

"Stop. Do you think you can do a left turn here?" Barnyard animal switch flipped on again. Moo. Tell me where to go. I was his puppet. I would buy his product, because I trust him. Him. The Media. It’s kinda neat how society evolves. A while back, I don’t know when, they started the whole economic theory about supply and demand. It seemed to make sense. People only bought what they needed, and the factories were limited because it only made sense for them to create what the masses desired. The market got wise at some point, who knows when, but they learned how to shift the balance of trade to their side. Corporation after corporation gradually learned that the way was to manufacture desire.

You must have these jeans.

Bottled water is its own joke.

"Stop Winters. Stop! Gee golly whillakers, Pentagon, watch the road!" – at which point I ran the red light. Right in the intersection, the unassuming Lexus slammed into my back bumper, and traffic was officially stopped, right in front of a Super Wal-Mart. Screw Walton Enterprises, Inc.

So here I am at the front bumper end of one of those head in parking spots, and Niff’s here. Paluson’s at the payphone next to the soda machines that offer you various flavors and colors of battery acid to drink, and I’m ready to stop feeling. Everyone’s okay, of course, but man…

"Niff, look at me. What do you see? It doesn’t matter. I want you to hit me as hard as you can."

--Shigeharu Kobayashi