There’s a man on the road. He’s waving around either a dirty white towel or a towel with the ugliest pattern you’ve ever seen. He has pants with zippers on the ankles. They’re undone so from a distance they look like bell bottoms, flaring in the wind. It’s almost majestic. He has a blue visibility vest with reflectors, in case you were driving by and somehow missed him.

Some vehicles pass and he blows kisses. Others pass and he points and shoots his fingers like guns. I don’t know the system but when it’s my turn I hope for the guns. I don’t kiss strays.

There are two young girls approaching from the opposite direction. As we pass he sees them instead of us. My wife turns to watch and I check the rearview.

I feel a little left out because I didn’t get a kiss or the guns. He was too distracted with pre-teens who were trying to live their lives without a man like this in them.

He turns to them completely now and says something. We’re too far away to hear. The kids ask my wife what she’s looking at. Just checking on some girls to make sure they’re ok, she says.

Should I drop you off and go check? I ask.

Maybe a good idea, she answers.

On my way back he’s moved on from the young girls and is back to blowing kisses at cars. He sees me and opens his vest and blows a kiss. Some other lucky bastard got the guns right after.

Then he swears loudly at people or at existence.

Other pedestrians wisely cross the road and choose to walk into oncoming traffic where there’s no sidewalk. They’re safer over there. He charges back and forth, sometimes at vehicles and sometimes pedestrians.

He is the king of the road. This stretch of it anyway.