Rob Erlich drove all the way from Albany, NY to the Jersey Shore in a heated frenzy. With no reguard for traffic laws, he sped down the parkway with a full tank of gas and twenty-seven dollars. The blue sky melted in the heat of the afternoon sun as he briefly stared into his rear-view mirror. His eyes burned from the glow of the road and about ten exits back, he had thrown his old, scratched up pair of sunglasses out the window of his 1997 chevy Chevalier. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it seemed like the stupidest thing he could've done. If only the goddamn sun wasn't so bright, he thought to himself. But the sun only got brighter and his eyes only got more and more singed from the goddamn glare on the friggin' parkway. Rob half thought of turning around and driving against the traffic, just to get the absent pair of shades, but rational thought aborted that plan.
So instead, he put his foot down on the gas pedal and accelerated to somewhere around 110 miles per hour. Trees on either side of the road joined together in a dark green blur with tiny white lines that reminded him of some science fiction movies where the captain of a particular starship orders the crew to send the vessel into warp speed or something.
He shot past other cars like a bullet. The broken, white lines that divided each lane blurred into one white hot warning---Don't Exit This Lane! Just go straight! The intense speed caused Rob's ears to pop and caused his nose to bleed. Fuck it, he thought, it's only blood. No one dies of a nosebleed. Blood cut a trail from his nose to his mouth. Instinctively, he parted his lips and let the stuff flow into his mouth. Liquid refreshment. That familiar salty taste took his obsessed mind off the acidic burning of his eyes and transported him to the world of his youth where the ingesting of blood brought relief from his pain and the drawing of blood from his own body brought with it a sense of perverse accomplishment.
"Take it like a man, you goddamn FAGGOT," his friends would say.
"Friggin' jerk off!!," they'd yell, "PUSSY!!," Followed by another punch, kick, hit , blow, jab, or any one of many other violent acts. The grab bag of abuse was bottomless and always full. Even a game of ball only acted as a front for violence. Darwin's theory of natural selection in effect. If you couldn't excel at the game, you got the ever-living shit kicked out of you by your friends. Then you excelled big time, or you had no friends.

Rob excelled in all the games because he couldn't accept the alternative. Little Robbie Erlich was a winner. He vowed to always make the scoring run, the winning touchdown, the final goal and the biggest trophy. To him and his friends, winning brought glory and losing brought a black eye.
EYES burned like eggs on the blacktop on a brutal Arizona afternoon. Rob could see a glow emanating from the road, and that was about it. He began to swerve within his lane- only a loser would swerve within his lane, though. Rob couldn't have that. He figured that if he must swerve, he'd swerve over all of the lanes and right into a tree because, if he survived, it would prove that he is a winner. But, if he died, it would show that he was a loser, who, according to Darwin, would help the evolutionary process along simply by dying. He almost swerved into a tree, in order to test his own strength, but once again, rational thought returned and aborted the plan.
School taught Robbie Erlich the very same lessons that his friends did. Only now, failure to excel had a social cost as well as a physical cost. Failure to excel in school was much more complex than the failure to excel in sports. In school, you could fail classes and be labeled an idiot. Once you knew of your own idiocy, you will never excel in school, because idiots don't excel. If you could fail to excel socially, then you would have no friends, no girlfriends, no popularity and nothing to do for the most part. Generally, if you were a social failure, you existed as a whipping boy for a good deal of those who did excel socially.
It seemed logical that their hard earned social success gave them a green light to beat the fuck out of all the geeks and nerds. If a geek had any self-esteem, it was the patriotic duty of all of the kids in popular circles to fucking shred, rip, and squash that fucking faggot's self esteem like a rabid pit bull rips a newborn infants' head from its body and devours it. Kills it dead. But the burning sun blasted white hot balls of shimmering light into Rob's goddamn fiery fuckin' fried bloodshot, burning, searing, fucking eyes. The heat produced an anger in this man who was now just a pissed off driving machine with eyes on fire and a bloody fucking nose.
"Shit, goddamnit! F'in' motherfucker!!!" he cursed and punched the dashboard hard enough to break it. He let out another stream of profanities as his knuckles swelled up on the hand that hit the dash-board. He began to scream as the car flew down the road. The sun burned his eyes into two red coals. The knuckles on his right hand felt like the skin covering them had been torn to the point where his bones underneath had been exposed. His head was all sorts of fucked up and his shirt, pants, and face all had about half a gallon of blood soaked into them. To top it all off, the all time winner and successful lawyer from Albany, NY forgot just why the fuck he was going to the goddamn Jersey shore in the first place. It was just a gut decision with no logic or rational thought. Just then, Rob realized that the only way to excel at anything was simply sit back, relax, and say , "To hell with it. All of it!!" His eyes may well have burst into flames . It now became totally unbearable. And since he had no control over the brightness of the sun, he decided to take control over his eyes with the hand that wrecked the dash.
All he wanted to do, as his speedometer hit 115 mph was to claw those eyes right out of his fucking head, at whatever the cost. This time, rational thought went the way of Robert Erlich's sunglasses, and so did his eyes, and so did he............ . . . . . .