“Hoppers (Dennis and Edward)” by Dan Grossman

Dennis Hopper in 1973 (Public Domain image)

     I picked up Dennis Hopper at the Indianapolis International Airport. I knew he was dead, but that’s the name that showed up on my Uber app. He certainly looked like Dennis Hopper—I mean the way he looked in the late 60s. He wore the same fringe suede leather jacket he wore in Easy Rider. 

 He laughed the same disquieting laugh—giving me the thumbs up—while approaching my vehicle. “Hey man,” he said, getting in shotgun, “Take me to the Edward Hopper show, pronto.” So I drove him West on I-465 towards the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. He rolled down the window, lit up a big old doobie, and said, “You mind?” 

     “No,” I said. I was lying because I didn’t want to get into a fight, not while trying to keep pace with truck traffic. “Why Edward Hopper, Dennis Hopper?” I asked, realizing too late the glibness of the question.  

     But he didn’t seem to mind. “It’s in the totality,” he said. “Ed Hopper shows you the whole of life, the quiet loneliness, the loneliness of transient spaces. When I was collecting modern art, I was only getting a fraction of the whole thing, you know?”
    I shook my head. “I’m not sure I follow,” I said.  He exhaled a mushroom cloud that was lassoed by the outside rush of air. “With modern art, I was only getting fractions. I was getting color, light, and form—sometimes not even form. But with Hopper, you get story, you know what I mean?”  

     “I guess so,” I said. We split from I-465 and followed I-65 west.  By the time we had turned off the highway onto Michigan St, Hopper was stoned. And when I pulled into the parking space at the museum, Hopper was telling me all about Plato’s Cave, and how everything was just shadows. “I’ve been listening to those podcasters,” he said. “Ben Shapiro and the rest, and it occurred to me the only reason Easy Rider was a hit was because of the country’s so conservative. Yin and Yang. It took me all this time to come to the same realization the Hell’s Angels did before they became John Birchers.” 

But I was unaware of that piece of history. “Again, I don’t follow,” I said.  

Hopper then snagged me with his Apocalypse Now glare. “It’s like my friend Captain America said about us hippies,” he said. “We blew it, man.”