Wonk
06-29-2006, 12:02 AM
This is some shit I went through a while back. There's been a shit-load of RL information posted about me, on the board, so I figured, why not post something I was trying to get published, anyway, here.
I recorded the events, soon after they happened, into a journal I was carrying with me. I transcribed from the journal and onto a friend's computer, when I got to Austin, embellishing here and there but the following really is a true story.
Finding My Way
By Wonk
Chapter 1: Starting over.
“You start where you’re at.”
-Who knows?
10/30/2004
I have spent over four months trying to make things work out in Tucson, AZ. I am leaving a failed partnership with a man who has put me up in his home with the expectation that I would have been able to find work by now. That has not been the case and as it is not I figure it’s time to cut my losses and leave.
It’s my last night here. I am aghast at the way things have turned out. When I was drinking I remember the games of pool I would play to pass time with. There would be a shot at a ball that would involve enough complexity to call it and I would make the shot and the exact opposite of what I wanted to have happen happened. It never failed. I would just get to a certain point in the night, perhaps even doing somewhat well and instead of the 3 ball going into the corner and the cue hitting the bank the cue went into the corner pocket and the 3 ball hit the bank.
That is what has happened here. Only I’m sober and It’s a much larger pool table with much better intentions and a much larger failure to be sure. There are so many things I tried to hold onto and so many things I found worthwhile and I really found myself at home here and just as everything seemed to be coming to fruition everything has utterly evaporated.
I stand outside and talk to Jason who works here at Coffee Exchange. He tells me about this guy who stayed over at his place for a while, sleeping on the floor, play video games, and in general, being a mooch. I’ve taken the helping hand and gone out to look for jobs, applied for them on the internet, done the opposite of what this guy did and had no success with it what-so-ever. In the end we both achieved the same result. We both wound up on our asses, out in the cold.
Maybe I did things wrong. Maybe I applied for the wrong jobs. A’s for effort don’t count in the game of life. Results do. I know I tried. I know I had the best attitude in the entire world and that for every night going to bed discouraged I woke up the next morning with a fresh face and a new attitude and was ready to let it happen, help it happen, and make it happen, again.
I prayed. God, did I pray. I meditated, especially over the past three weeks. I paused when agitated or doubtful. I applied everywhere I could think of to apply. I walked with blisters on my feet, in the hot sun, bought new shoes, got haircuts, ironed shirts, pants, shaved, re-wrote resumes, showed them to people to get their thoughts, etc. I did everything I knew to do except for waiting for a job to come up and bite me on the ass sitting at home playing the Xbox. I figured God would guide me and I listened and a couple of times I thought he might even come through for me. I figured as long as I took action, I would be guided.
It’s no use, now. I’ll be gone in the morning. I stand outside having another cigarette. It is nearly November and it is finally getting cold at night. I look inside the coffee shop. Life goes on. These people are nothing more than a passing memory now. I watch them. It seemed like I used to have an interaction, an attachment but I’ve detached and so have they. It’s like I’m a ghost. It’s like I’m already gone.
Chapter 2
Gone.
“Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus.”
“50 ways to leave your lover”
by Paul Simon
Gone. Gone to Tucson, Arizona. Gone to writing at Coffee Exchange, Gone to the Sunsets, the immanent job just around the next corner, places to live waiting on a phone call, and the promise of sex never realized.
Gone to the rear seats in the Loft Theatre where Spooky, her nick-name earned from the very subtle but endearing way she used to sneak up on me, and I get x-rated, barely watching the first Godzilla movie, almost naked, definitely exposed, in a fit of heavy-petting, kissing and nearly having sex. Gone to one of the best things to happen to me in Tucson.
Gone to Bentley’s House of Coffee and Tea where I met Spooky, Gone to the Epic café on Fourth Avenue and University where Chicago, the king of post apocalyptic fashion, his chain-mail armor wrapped around his head, and his pageantry of drugged out homeless grifters, interlope like zombies milling about aimlessly, looking for either there next scrap of food or their next mook. He’s the leader of the prison-gang straight out of Escape from New York. “I’ve heard of Snake Pliskin. I heard he was dead.” Are the next words you expect to hear coming out of his mouth and if you ever see him, you’ll know what I mean.
Gone to Tucson Alcoholics Anonymous. Gone to their marbles to throw away if you ever decide to drink again so you can then say you’ve, indeed, lost your marbles. Gone to the fucking bat-shit crazy individuals who pack that hall every Friday killing more alcoholics than they’ll ever help.
Gone to the past two weeks of pending dread. Gone to the endless job hunt, the endless unsolicited advice on how and where I should apply for jobs. Gone to the endless cock-tease that is Tucson, Arizona for Yours Truly.
Gone to walking my clothes over to the Sudz and Dudz, then disappearing around the corner to Bookman’s to find something to read. Gone to the Walgreen’s that educates the consumer on what it’s like to be schizophrenic with the multiple marketing device assault on the senses.
Gone to the women. Gone to more I can’t think of cause I’ve got to go. Gone to the beautiful women.
Gone to meditation at the park. Gone to the ants marching across its entrance. Gone to Kevin, Chelsey, and Bailey. Gone to shelter. Gone to rescue.
Gone to Chelsey. Gone to the hours we spent just talking. Gone to her genius. Gone to a friend.
Gone to one of life’s little ironies. Gone to the people who brought me here. Gone to me watching the wife getting treated worse than the dog. Gone to helplessly watching it all happen. Gone to being a party to it because I watched it all happened and did nothing. Gone to leaving as soon as he got home to escape it. Gone to the never-ending, all-consuming psychopathic chaos. Gone to hoping he would learn kindness. Gone to trying to teach it to him.
Gone to leaving her on the front porch, almost in tears, not being able to do a damn thing because in the end he makes her happy and it’s none of my business. Gone to the thing I will never be, that I will never put my wife through; that I will never put anyone through. Gone to the chaos he created in me. Gone to the pain. Gone to the fear. Gone. All gone.
Gone to the music that brought me here. Gone to the unending and inadequate criticism. Gone to utter cruelty. Gone to the endless soul stomping experience that was this partnership. Gone to enjoyment of something good that I put my intellect, heart, and soul into; that I spent hours contemplating, refining, inventing, contriving, re-inventing, editing, perfecting, and submitting. Gone to the reluctance in showing my last piece of work to him. Gone to the one song that got the compliment I was looking for.
Gone to the equipment. Gone to the fun it was supposed to bring me. Gone to the despair I should feel at leaving it behind. Gone to the fun it used to be. Gone. All gone.
10/31
I slept on the floor last night at Waverly St. I went to sleep with the thought that when you do the right things the right things happen. For all of the drama around me and that I’ve put behind me I felt strangely at peace. The house was vacant, Kevin and Chelsey having spent the night at their new place, and it felt odd and melancholy to be in. I didn’t much care for having to stay there one more night but I was tired and needed the rest.
On my way to bed I walked through the place once more. It was littered with each of our odds and ends but mostly mine. I tried to pull the last of my stuff together to leave in the morning but succumbed to sleep before I got much done.
There were experiences there that I was leaving behind and broken promises of my own making. I tried to figure out where it all went wrong. Kevin would say that almost every decision I made along the way, from when I got here, to now, was wrong. I remembered his “choices” lecture, delivered in bruising honesty worthy of Henry Higgins out of My Fair Lady, in the studio last night. I know that when I get truly angry at something someone has to say about me chances are it’s probably very true. I didn’t get angry but if it’s all the same I would have preferred not to be leaving in the way I am.
I waited until around 11 a.m. for Kevin and Chelsey. Kevin was polite but to the point. Chelsey was still keeping the idea of me working at Intuit in mind but happy and hopeful for me. I told them I was going on a walk-about, knowing I was headed to Austin but not having the faintest idea how I’m going to get there.
Kevin pointed out my folly almost immediately after I told them what I was doing with the amount of stuff I had on the front porch to hoist on my shoulder. I’m in decent shape but am no Atlas by any stretch of the imagination. I walk with it all the way down Waverly, 3 blocks, to the bus stop on Campbell.
There I ditch a red wind-breaker, 2-3 T-shirts, an extra yellow bag I had food in, one pair of blue shorts, one pair of green shorts, and a pair of slacks. It’s still too heavy to walk far with.
I'm at the Red Roof Inn near Interstate 10. I had to lug my stuff on three different busses to get here. The driver on the fifteen, squarely in Bush’s corner with both water bottle and lunch box plastered with campaign bumper stickers, rather liberally, I might add. He also knew his bus routes. “Take the 7 to Alvernon, get on the 12 and ask the 12’s driver to take you to the 26.” By the time he answered all of my questions I’d missed the 7 that was passing by and had to wait another hour.
12 got me to the Red Roof Inn and Denny’s. The 26 would have gotten me to the TTT (or “the Triple T” as it is referred to) Truck Stop. I was starving and when I saw the Denny’s I was sold.
I’m booked into the Red Roof Inn and I’ve called dad from the room to mail me my *last unemployment check via overnight. Dad said Tim, my little brother, had a place in Atlanta for me and I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t going to do that. I can’t do any more rescues.
I’m certain of my bed at Red Roof through Tuesday and I am just as certain I’ll wind up in Austin.
11/01/04
I spent the morning putting items into a trashcan in my room that I was pretty sure would not be needed for my journey. I threw away manila folders, 3 black garbage bags, my cheap-assed AP tool purchased at 7-11, 4 clothes pins, 1 pastel-ribbon lined egg shaped box lined sequined with cheap glitter containing > $1.00 in change, 1 belt, cheap binoculars, 1 plastic box, formerly containing handy-wipes, 1 empty water bottle, Te of Piglet (Later given, after I had finished it, to a convenience store clerk who noticed the Dragon on my cap), 3 packages of ramen, and 1 ruler. Consolidating it was a good gauge of how much extra weight I had gotten rid of.
I remember the ride down from Colorado with all of my stuff in a rented Suburban and thinking about the meditation and the fact that I knew then what I know now, that I would be in Austin, and asking if I was doing the right thing, not just by Kevin but by myself, trying to make a go of it in Arizona first.
I remember thinking that perhaps we would enjoy some success in Tucson that would have allowed for a successful transition to Austin. I remember so many good intentions and expectations about this and now all the good will and all the effort has wound up heading me for Austin but without the success I had expected to transport me there.
I remember the feeling of obligation that I had to Kevin. He had afforded me an opportunity and I wanted to honor that. I remember his being quite happy that I had arrived and excited to have me around. I remember that evaporated all too soon.
As if I at least knew what to do, however insufficient, I wrote and left behind thank-you letters for Kevin and Chelsey. They were rather open-ended, not assuming any outcome prior to their delivery. I had expected to be mailing them but left them on a chair I knew they would be taking to their new place.
Spooky also seemed to know. She had maintained, in one of her e-mails to me, that she was not sure if I’d wind up elsewhere. She had read our horoscopes on our second date. Mine could be translated into this outcome but as with most horoscopes, its confirmation is propelled by vagary.
In the weeks prior to 10/31 Chelsey and I were both possessed by a notion of pending transformations. It could have just been all that was going on. It was a feeling that there was a major change about to occur; that while it may seem scary, or at least odd, it would yield results better than we could have hoped for.
Still compelling the idea of change I had an encounter the other morning while I was sitting outside smoking, with no shirt on, and a Jehovah’s Witness came up to the house on Waverly. She advised me that I needn’t get a shirt for us to have a conversation but I felt differently. As I returned she read from Proverbs quoting “The meek shall inherit the Earth.”
I didn’t rightfully appreciate the meaning in that but it has now given me a modicum of faith to see this through. It is certain that this is as meek as I’ve ever been and I feel I’ll become even more so before my journey is over. I listened until she offered me a brochure which had several more Bible quotes in it, taken out of context, and relevantly applied to what was happening in the World today. I told her I didn’t appreciate it when people took words in the Bible out of context reframing them to suit their own agenda and she took that as an end to the conversation we were having. It’s OK if I do it though.
It is decidedly lonely around here and that coupled with my last unemployment check should do well to propel me well away from this place tomorrow. My only regret is that I still have to get my check cashed in Tucson before I leave.
Denny’s has, piped into it, disquieting songs of despair, loneliness, and heartbreak. It is the somber, melancholy, and sentimental selection of music that adds desperation to this already barren milieu. I cannot imagine a more depressing soundtrack to work to but the employees and customers seem content to live their days out by it. Whether it is the jaded industrial psychologist, enticing the customers for desert after their already fattening comfort food, while making the environment unwelcoming enough to reinforce that already immanent departure, or merely the angst ridden manager putting up a good front for employees and customers alike while quietly seething with pain and hope for a reconciliation with his ex-wife, whoever is to blame for this music of the damned; Phil Collins, and his endless supply of pallid, lukewarm torch-songs, has brought to bare all the makings for a small, quiet, and uneventful Hell on Earth for the broken-hearted and the broken down.
I turn my mind to focus on the great unknown; the limitless possibilities extended before me. Even as I step outside the door for my last pack of cigarettes in Tucson, I look forward to what is ahead and put thoughts of good back in mind. I conserved today for tomorrow brings with it a world of change and new decisions to be guided through unclouded, strong, and rested.
11/2
I feel like I walked 20 miles today. I may have made 10. I walked all the way down to Campbell on Irvington and found an Ace Check Cashing place in a deluge of urban sprawl. On all four corners of the intersection there had been amassed multiple shopping centers. I don’t think I have seen this much concrete and asphalt in quite a while. It is just downright ugly. There was only one check-cashing place but a payday loan shark on every corner.
I weighed myself on a scale at the store with the Ace check cashing place and found that without the extra forty pounds of belongings I only weighed 140 pounds. I consider 160 to be my ideal weight. I wound up ditching the brown carry-on bag and consolidating its contents to my other bags. I used the laundry bag tying it onto the handle of my Nike backpack. Dehydration is another concern and it was plenty hot today.
My last meal in Tucson, proper, was a bacon-cheeseburger with hash browns at the Waffle House on the edge of nowhere. It all seemed so remote, like I’d never even been in Tucson. Maybe that is what it is to be truly gone from this earth or maybe it is just a reminder that prestige, in one's mind or in the perceptions of others, is simply an illusion; that we are all sand on the beach and that no matter our individual or collective endeavors, in the end, we never really amount to much of real and lasting consequence. Then perhaps what might be viewed as nihilism could be seen in another way: That taking ourselves too seriously in the grand scheme of things isn't what God intended for us in the first place. It's fine and well to do good things so long as one appreciates the cheeseburger afforded to them. It is in the common that miraculous things come to pass for the very fact that our earth has not been plowed through by an asteroid is verified by the next moment savored, the next bite of life, the next word written.
I started down I-10 after lunch taking the Alvernon entrance. Litter and wreckage are strewn across every mile I walked. It seemed that there would have had to have been a wreck for every 10 feet of flat-top to have accumulated as much wreckage as I saw and that being with only the major debris being cleared in the dark of night by a near-sighted clean-up crew.
I began realizing we are a feckless lot. I don’t think any of us realizes how lucky we are. Looking at that highway strewn with the waste of our extravagance is truly humbling.
I’m at the Triple T, now. It is a large mega truck stop with showers, a restaurant, a store and a souvenir shop. In the restaurant there is good, old fashion, down home American cuisine. I’m having fish & chips for the easily digestible protein content. Most of the clientèle should not have concerns with retaining their weight. These people are huge. Retirees and truckers, alike. One table appears to have members of a long-hall convoy and another retains its regulars, as though reserved for them in perpetuity. All of them are fat.
I saw a bumper sticker, here, that read: Annoy a Liberal – Live, Work, Be Happy. My rebuttal is Annoy a Conservative – Use Logic, Acknowledge Nuance, Tell the Truth. Bush won.
Room 226 on exit 269 is easily the worst place I’ve been. The owner’s office has a lousy, sickly sweet smell that seems way too strong for just honey. It’s not honey. It’s honey on steroids.
The room, in my name, isn’t a picnic either. There are cigarette burns everywhere. The drapes are nearing tatters, torn in several places across the span of their fabric. They, along with the comforter, the table, the dresser, the night table, the bathroom counter, and the carpet have multiple cigarette burns.
The bathroom door is patched over with a thin piece of aluminum screwed into the remaining wood surrounding a rather large hole that had been punched through it. The fire alarm is knocked loose hanging from its mounting on the wall. The cable attaches to the back of a newer TV with a small wire protruding from the co-axial insulation. Every time I walk by the television the cable becomes dislodged and needs to be reinserted into the socket. It looks like the original connector was hurled, along with the old TV, into the bathroom door.
Why? Maybe I’m here witnessing the destruction and mayhem I’ve caused in an alternate pathway, where I’m still drinking. God, you know, I think I’ve seen enough. At this point I have to ask why to all of this.
I ponder being in this hotel room, ruminating on its ruin, as a reflection of my own despair. It isn’t what I wanted at all. This, the end of my time in Arizona, is what I least expected in return for all of my action. That all of my effort has brought me to this point is of great consternation to me.
I cannot and, I dare say, will not come back here, to this filth, again. I could lie to myself and say that this is some part of a higher plan but, honestly, if I made that determination right now I might very well be short changing God and His Everlasting capacity. The fact that I trusted in Him and that perhaps He gave me the very least of what I actually deserve for the eleven or so years I spent drinking is enough for now.
I’ve had enough, though. I don’t think I deserve this, anymore. I am quite tired of this existence and if I cannot hope to achieve better than I may as well be drunk. It is quite intolerable.
Chapter 3
Full Circles
“They say the meek shall inherit,
You know the book doesn’t lie…
You know the meek are gonna
Get what’s coming to them,
By and by.”
Little Shop of Horrors: “The Meek Shall Inherit” – Howard Ashman
11/05
Yesterday morning found me in better spirits. I found the motel’s laundry facilities and made sure I would be as odor free as possible. I knew I would be riding in someone else’s car. I had to wait for the washing machine to clear and wound up running into a permanent resident of the motel.
This guy just lived there. I’m not really sure what else he did but it sure seems like a barren existence to me. He had visited Hippie Hollow, a nudist and skinny-dipping hangout in Austin, and really liked talking about that. It spurred me to leave, all the more quickly, that he chose to reside there in perpetuity along with his somewhat unethical voyeurism.
Precisely at 11:00 the Indian owners began calling for the return of their room key. I still hadn’t had a shower and wasn’t ready to surrender the key until I had one. I was polite with them, took my shower, finished packing, explaining that I was still waiting on my laundry to finish so I’d only be around just a while longer as I checked out of their hell hole.
The essence of this day seemed to be timing. Had things not happened as they did, yesterday, I would not be writing this, right now. I lugged my belongings over to the Chevron station, where I purchased two half-gallon bottles of water, three power bars and three granola bars. I had one last cigarette at the picnic tables they have outside, used the restrooms one last time, in Arizona, and headed out, determined not to stop until I reached the next service station.
As I walked underneath I-10 and turned onto the service ramp I nearly ran into Victor Antonio from San Antonio. It didn’t take me long to realize that this guy is a pro in the art of the walk-about. He says he’s been doing it for the past three years and to look at him you’d have no reason to doubt it.
I gave him my e-mail address to add to his collection of over 1000. He promised to put me on his list of subscribers he relays his experiences to anytime he gets to sit down at a computer. Hunter S. Thompson would be impressed by this guy’s gonzo spirit.
Victor talked me into walking back with him to the gas station so he could get something to eat. Since he was on his way to San Antonio, where the love in Texas is, and since he’d had 3 years on me in traveling around I agreed to journey with him. The tall, tanned, but lanky man is adept at finagling just about everything he needs throughout his travels. The guy managed to talk the manager into letting him have free food from the A&W attached to the Chevron station.
The guy’s a fast talker; not the proverbial fast-talking freeloader but just a fast talker. I suppose it’s from speaking into his tape recorder trying to conserve both tape and batteries that he has cultivated this habit that translates into his normal manner of speech. He repeats a couple of mottoes ad infinitum. “The Universe will provide if you let it.” and “Food: fuel for the body.” are spoken with both annoying frequency and cadence but then absolutely no one is a picnic.
It’s all part of his plan to take over the World. He was anxious to recruit me into his legions who were busily but quietly advancing a peaceful socialist revolution through the overthrow of the free-market system in conjunction with the legalization of marijuana. I told him I had my own path to follow but that I’d be happy to keep his company for the time being.
Victor is a genius. His ideas are anachronistic. The rest of us are quite unprepared for his vision of the future and definitely unprepared for his way of life. To be sure his reasoning is, at times, self-aggrandizing if not altogether delusional but who am I to say he’s wrong.
Victor survives meekly and unlike others in his social station, seems quite happy with it. If the meek shall really inherit than Victor already has. He lives hand to mouth, and in return for his provisions gives back what he can in the retelling of his experiences. His heart is in the right place, wanting what he wants for the rest of us. He maintains a truly humble, if not altogether Taoist existence.
In me he has a solitary cult following and, although I may not be willing to join his cause for the sake of my own, I silently root him on hoping that his stated goals are one day achieved. Town to town and city to city he roams with meager possessions, a walking stick, rope wrapped around the handle and a ball compass embedded in the tip. He has an upbeat and infectious attitude that you can’t help but to admire.
Victor reminds me of the homeless children on the 16th Street Mall in Denver, CO. They fight with each other coached by a lifetime of abuse along with a truly stressful living situation. They are mired in the drama they create for both themselves and the rest of us. Their road-warrior wardrobe and borderline dispositions inspire fear and disdain from the businessmen who ignore their pleas for assistance. Soccer moms, ensconced in their cookie-cutter communities look down their nose at them scorning what they cannot understand or control, as they make the day trip for shopping and dining at the newest mall in the heart of Downtown Denver.
The gutter-punks- runaways, outcasts, stoners, drunks, schizoids, schizophrenics, bipolars, and junkies live on the edge of existence daily, unsure of where their next meal might come from, who might take advantage of them, what lies in store for them around the next corner. They selfishly and unknowingly perpetuate their existence living out their lives hand-to-mouth, consumed by the drama in one hand and the need to anesthetize the pain it causes in the other. Unable to focus on the solution they sink further into their dysfunction taking action to relieve the pain they suffer from that results only in more pain and suffering. Chaos to end chaos can achieve only chaos but no one can see the forest for the trees. No one can end their suffering.
Or rather, no one will end their suffering.
It would lend more credence to abortion rights opponents, I suppose, if in their effort to paint legitimacy on their cause they did something to alleviate the massive amount of suffering on Denver's 16th Street mall, on Congress Avenue and The Drag (Guadalupe), in Austin, TX and while we’re at it the rest of the United States and the rest of the world. This world is infested with unwanted or abused children but instead of focusing their effort on helping the one’s who are alive and suffering they focus on the children who are unborn.
Why can’t they see that these are problems which, for all of their prohibitionist effort, could be solved with better effect than if they are to continue on their present course? It is a ridiculous past time and one that reveals a perverse strategy: to control their own feelings of inadequacy by controlling the reproductive organs of another human being.
It is nothing more than some men’s view, along with some women’s, that a woman is naturally, or at least should be, castrated. They can re-endow themselves and re-endow the castrated woman, by forcing her to have a child.
The abortion represents their original exclusion from Mommy’s and Daddy’s secret bedroom game. Daddy was the only person who could give Mommy his penis in the secret chamber and I was never allowed to participate. I was also frightened I would be castrated if I tried to play, with Mommy, the games Daddy played.
Now they can re-enact this early childhood trauma allowing them, and their unformed psyches, to force their way back into the womb. As they forcibly placate mommy with a new penis they enact retribution on her at the same time. Did you think graphic depictions of aborted fetuses on the side of a bus were anything more than a man’s mutilated penis? Yeah physically that really is what they are but in the recesses of a right-to-lifer’s mind a dead fetus is a dead penis.
I see the excess of existence with money, religion, and paranoia driven politics strewn on the side of Interstate 10. I stand more of a chance of changing peoples minds than I do of cleaning the mess they have made up, on Interstate 10 alone, in my lifetime. It is excess justified in the name of comfort, personal safety, religious grandiosity, and because they can, driving by in Yukons, Suburbans, and Magnums. The biggest of the big.
They plow down the highway in their largess consuming so much that they drive the prices of gasoline from countries whose populations, at this point, rightfully hate us into the stratosphere. Annoy a Liberal – Live in excess. Work for the oppression of people whose viewpoint doesn’t coincide with yours. Be Happy with toys that are too big for you, the Earth, and the people around you. Live in gated communities. Work for people who pollute the environment, cause major financial crisis with ethics violations, and thrive when they send your job overseas. Be happy with what you’ve got cause it ain’t gonna last!
I wonder if they complain bitterly about the high price of gasoline the rest of us pay as well. I don’t know any of these people but I suppose they do. Do they treat the clerk badly when they pay over $40.00 to fill their Goliath at the pump? What do they do to make the world we share a better place? For as close to God as they must consider themselves to justify the burdensome excess they still don’t have anything I want. They definitely aren’t meek but to say I appreciate being meek would be another fallacy, altogether.
They are doing the same things the gutter-punks do. The fact that they do it with money, that it is done on a larger scale, that they are just as blind to the mayhem they create as solution as the gutter-punks are scares the hell out of me.
I don’t want to be any part of that crater.
I lose Victor about a mile from the gas station. He needs to get to San Antonio sooner than my methodology will allow. I have no methodology. I am formless and prepared for anything. He says if he gets a ride he’ll be sure and look out for me on the side of the road and get the car to stop if he can.
I shake his hand, wish him well, and journey onward. I look back and he’s still walking away. I look back again and can’t see him anymore. In the timing of the day, he turned out to be a useful interruption.
~~
I let my beard grow because I’m rather young looking for being 35 years old. I knew by hitch-hiking I was putting myself in a vulnerable position. I wanted to detract from any youthful appearance that might be enticing of unwanted advances from lonely truckers. I also wanted to confer the authority normally afforded a person my age, although a lot of that is just in how one carries themselves. Even with my beard, Victor made note of the fact that I still look young.
I-10 passes by a state and federal prison. I wasn’t expecting anyone to stop and pick me up, never minding the fact that a majority of prison escape attempts occur at night. I did however get some offers for rides that I declined.
Here are some of the rules I used for potential rides:
1.The condition of a vehicle is a reflection of its owner. You can tell a lot about someone’s psychology by the condition their possessions are in. Sure, some people have to make due with what they have. When what they have has trash in the backseat and looks as though it hasn’t seen the business end of a hose in a while chances are there is more amiss.
2.Do they look like people with responsibilities? Chances are the sloppily dressed, long-haired, disgruntled looking, person with the Old lady just broke it off with her Sancho this morning and just now picked me up from prison look in their eyes doesn’t have a great deal of responsibility to speak of.
3.What is the first image that comes to mind as you look into their eyes? Is it from the point of view you would have sitting low in the backseat, the man with the long hair is glaring at you, tossing his head back, and laughing maniacally every time you wince as he waves a knife in your face? Oh, I wouldn’t feel very comfortable in that situation. Would you?
4.Do they ask you or tell you? “Get in the car.” Doesn’t convey the sense of respect one is supposed to have for your well-being. When the second driver points his finger at you, his eyes with black, puffy, heroin sheik rings underneath, that essence of Charles Manson oozing out of every pore in his body, then points down at your supposed seat, and then breaking the grimace curling across his lips, as you wisely try to wave him on, bulging those crazy, creepy, Charlie eyes and saying “GET IN!!” in as forceful a manner possible it should throw up multiple red-flags.
5.This is the most important one: What does your gut say? What does the voice, thought, or intuition say? So if when the van that looks like something that could be used in the commission of a serial killing prompts that issuance from one’s belly in as loud and as clear a “no” one might hear as though an actual person had said it directly to you do what it says.
I’m planning on making it to El Paso in the next few days, if not tonight. I wanted to be around some place to get more water and food last night. The weight of what I am carrying has me asking what I can jettison to lessen the burden on my shoulders. It’s not that I can’t handle the weight. It’s that I have the wrong type of backpack for it. The straps dig in, cutting off the circulation to my arms, and I am constantly having to flex and shake my arms to re-circulate blood into them.
My legs feel a hell of a lot better than they did after I reached Exit 269. I had to reposition some of the weight I was carrying but overall it worked out pretty well. My next backpack is going to be meant for hiking for sure but I’ll never do this again, even with a new backpack.
I take a break beneath a bridge. After the first two offers for rides I am beginning to realize the jeopardy of this. I have a power bar and a granola bar, a cigarette, some water and then draw the symbol commonly used by members of the 12-step group I belong to on the laundry bag hanging from my backpack.
I find a metal hook on the side of the road and use it to attach one of the waters to my backpack. Take the third offer for a ride, my gut tells me.
I head onward, rejuvenated and hoping the thought I had under the bridge is correct. The straps sink into my arms again and I press on. Despite everything, I’m optimistic, hopeful, and determined. My life has deteriorated to the contents I can carry but something is keeping me going.
Up ahead, in the distance, there’s a black sedan parked on the side of the road. I’m thinking maybe there’s car trouble or he needs water. Who knows? I’m not expecting a ride at this point. I keep getting closer and he’s not learving. I walk past the driver, with his window open, and give him a slight nod as he looks up from his book-map. He smiles, flicks his fingers from the top of his head as I journey onward.
A honk comes from the black sedan now behind me. Motion beckons from the driver’s side. “Where are you headed?”
“El Paso”
“You want a ride?”
“Sure.” I say. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it. Some of the best decisions I’ve ever made are like that. Some, clearly are not. He opens the back door, I put my stuff in, I get in the front seat and we’re off.
He asks if El Paso is my final destination. I tell him its Austin. He says he’s headed in that direction going all the way to Baton Rouge Louisiana. I’m on my way home.
Brendan is a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. His duty is to transport AWOL marines back to base, whom the US Marshall has obtained, or who have been arrested for being drunk and disorderly, or similar charges, including DUI. He would rather be doing something else than picking up marines who would rather not be marines and putting them back into the service of our country.
I suppose, if I were going to send a man on a mission, this is the guy I’d want to transport trained killers from point A to point B. The lieutenant was a Marine Color Guard assigned to both the Pentagon and the White House at the beginning of the Clinton administration. His other assignments include being a drill instructor, the first Iraq war, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. He’s a true, All-American kind of guy; married his high school sweetheart, two teenage twins, one three year-old.
His favorite topic isn’t his resume. It’s his family. He and I are pretty quiet up to the point his wife calls for the first time since I joined him. I start asking him about his family and the guy lights up like a Christmas tree. A huge smile emerges across his face. He won’t talk much about the military and most men I’ve known, who’ve seen combat don’t like to talk about it much with someone who hasn’t been there. That’s understandable. This guy loves to talk about his family. He also loves to talk about fishing which is bad if your as hungry as I was when he started talking about catching albacore tuna off the California coast.
The former drill instructor spoils his wife and kids whenever he gets the chance and as much as his job takes him away he throws every mile of it back into his parenting ethic spoiling his wife and kids every time and in any way he gets the chance to.
Victor was right about the Sunsets in New Mexico. They are really pretty but not as pretty as the one I saw one day at the park. Man, what a horrible day, but the sunset made it worth reliving. I had had it. Spooky and I were on the rocks and I had gone everywhere I could to find a job and there was nothing in either finance or romance that was promissing as a result of my endeavors.
This was about a week before I left Arizona. I had gone home and found Chelsey nearly in tears on the doorstep. In the back of my mind *Surrender repeated. And that is pretty much what I did. I heard Chelsey tell of another one of Kevin’s eviscerations and how she had finally gotten angry with him and slammed the refrigerator door seven times. I left. I told her where I was going and invited her along but their marriage isn’t any of my business.
I went to the park, defeated after spending so long in Arizona with so little to show for it. I watched the sunset and tried not to think about how terrible things were. I didn’t try to empty my mind. I just tried to be as I was and watch the sunset. There was so much to think about that I was tired of thinking. I was tired of wasting my energy on it. I was tired of being consumed by it.
I watched the sun turn the sky a deep shade of orange and bounce off the clouds that hung in layers across the sky. I watched the sky’s transmutation, beams of light and dark scraping across the sky, rising as the sun sank down and crossing as the clouds crossed. Wispy flakes of an orangey gold color spanned from the middle to the top of my view. Below them were gold encrusted billowing plums and along the left side were two long spans that stretched from the horizon, all the way behind me.
As the sun finally sank below the horizon and the sky lost its visibility and as it began to get colder I went home. I found Chelsey in a better mood but I told her I saw what Kevin did and that I didn’t like it either. I knew I couldn’t do anything about it but I wanted her to know that I knew it wasn’t something that she was making up. I wanted her to know that I saw the chaos he creates. I have come to revile him for it.
Brendan and I have our differences but we share some idiosyncratic similarities as well. We’re both perfectionists. We’re both smokers, smoking somewhat at the same time and fans of the Marlboro brand of cigarettes. We’re attracted to very intelligent women. His wife is a pediatrician. Mikari, Spooky, Chris, Jill, Lara, and Suzanna were all very intelligent but I couldn’t hang onto them. Here’s hoping to the next woman I meet being the one. I pray she’s smart enough to hold onto me and not too stupid to let go.
We have also both been mugged in Denver. Mine was an unsuccessful sucker-punch three-man operation. His was a successful robbery at gunpoint resulting in his losing $600.00 and his Pentagon purchasing card. The Marine had a gun on him at the time of he was pulling money out of the ATM. The thief waited for him to get the cash then showed him the gun. If the mugger had known what I know about the guy all that I know about the guy he would have not mugged the guy. Actually, I guess he picked the right guy.
It says a lot about Brendan, what happened next. After the guy had his money the LT says, “Be sure you buy a kid a nice Christmas gift with some of that.” The mugger looks at him as though he’s daffy, taken aback by the comment, and probably the fact that it was as genuine as it gets. The mugger could have, just as easily, been turned into a pretzel a mortician was trying to reconstruct for the aesthetic purpose of an open casket.
Perhaps, for all of the death he has seen, speaking of Bosnia and Afghanistan as particularly brutal, another death wouldn’t have sufficed. Maybe the lieutenant thought this guy could be someone’s father, or maybe $600.00 and a close call isn’t sufficient to kill another man. Maybe it was just the right thing to do.
The last vestige of the Sun’s light sinks below the horizon, tucking neatly beneath the burgeoning sheet of street lamps that meet flatly, the El Paso night sky. A surreal cityscape stretches around us, enveloping the car; a city pulsing around us, its radio intruding into our space, and as we approach the city’s center arcs of neon change colors for at least a mile, shimmering, lining the urban expressway. It is all so trippy.
We make a stop for a piss and at the rest stop there is a coffee machine and I begin to see the beginning of a full circle in my life. From leaving El Paso, passing through it’s outskirts on a Greyhound bus to head to Colorado to returning to have the very coffee I once had at the Salvation Army in Austin, TX right before leaving. It’s the first of many circles to be completed. Perhaps it’s all unrelated. Perhaps I am nothing more than fooled by the randomness of it all. Perhaps. I don’t know.
We drive on. We stop and get gas on the end of I-10 in El Paso. Waves of exhaustion plead to the beckoning hotels there. We ignore them and head onward into the night sky; the highway stretches out before us. Miles of black top ahead. We pass a sign that says over 500 miles to Dallas and the calculations I do in my head says we won’t make it tonight but silently I beg the driver to press onward to Austin.
Brendan gets a call from home again. One of his kids can’t decide whether to go on a weekend church retreat or to a concert. He patiently listens to the looming crisis enveloping his child, however silly it seems, and explains that the teenager is at an age now when decisions have to be made that require a sacrifice and that you sometimes only have the choice, in the end, that your heart makes.
Onward we drive and it feels like two friends on a road-trip. We hit an animal carcass, bones already protruding from its hide and a fierce red surrounds each of the compound fractures. The exhaustion is setting in. I know what he’s going through. You want to rest but you want to come to a final stop first. You want to be there, pressing on, being woken up by the struts embedded in the side of the road, pulled back into the road, not knowing if you’re dreaming the road you see ahead of you. We pull into a rest stop.
There we each have a power bar, get out for a piss, and rest for a spell. Then we’re on our way but we’re not going to make it to Austin tonight.
Wisely, and right before Fort Carson, we pull into another rest stop. He’s done for the night. I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve. I’m on my way home and I want to be there already. I pull my coat on and sit in the cold listening to an El Paso hard-rock station cycle through its evening program and its promotion, endlessly kicking off another non-stop set of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and beyond hit music, that features a Harry Carrie impersonation that begins faltering in its entertainment value on the second listening.
I sit quietly as ‘80s power ballads and glam rock are plunged in with ‘90s grunge and then another set of commercials, and then Harry Carrie, again; every fifteen to twenty minutes for the next two-and-a half hours. He wakes up and turns the radio’s droning automation off. Fifteen minutes later I get out of the car, go to the bathroom one last time and return.
Cold air fills the car and I put on my hat and gloves. Brendan leans forward and turns on the car, jacks up the heat and turns on both of the seat-warmers. An hour or so later, I am sweating. I take off my gloves, hat, and unzip my jacket and go back to sleep.
I woke up while it was still dark. There wasn’t any coffee around for miles and I’d have to wait but I didn’t need it much anyway. I start thinking of all the people I left in Austin and wonder if I’ll run into any of them. I wonder if I’m just doing another geographical relocation bringing not only what I had on my back from Tucson but the same problems I had there as well.
No. This is just fear. It’s pure bullshit. This is different. I’m supposed to be doing this. For whatever reasons it didn’t work out in Tucson but even if it had, I would still be moving back to Austin. No matter what.
I watch the sun rising, trying to shake off the fear, and Brendan wakes up. We brush our teeth, and we’re on our way. Slowly, as we near Ozona, Texas, the feeling slips away. Coffee is the only looming concern I have now and that’s quickly about to be resolved.
I don’t think, even living in Texas, I have been through this part of the state. It is beautiful. No mountains. No cactus. Just beautiful rolling hills and a curving highway that cuts through layers of limestone. There’s no radio that can be picked up and we are left quietly driving through the wind-farms as we reach Ozona.
It is a small and very quiet little town. There is a serenity there that, with all of the change I had taken on, felt very reassuring. Brendan didn’t like it so much and I got the feeling that had he not been married he would be quite the hell-raiser on his lonesome. He likes the big cities. Ozona rang of an existence lived in the doldrums of a tiny bedroom community, for me as well, but I appreciated it for what it was: a nice place to visit.
On into the Texas hill country we head after breakfast, too far away to pick up anything substantial on the radio other than an auction featuring thick southern accents articulate in their language to sell baked goods, manicures, and facials, among other things.
To anyone on the outside, it’s gibberish. It is gibberish spoken so naturally, with accents that play lyrically with the words, with the hypnotic cadence of seducers, and so endless, as they sell an Italian Cream cake. The actors solicit bids, over the radio, from various companies in the area. When people call in to make a bid they are spoken of familiarly.
In the background, behind the two principals, there is a flurry of activity. People move in and out of the room, laughing at their jokes and quips, correcting their misunderstandings, and making jokes of their own in reply as they pull one item away to replace it with yet another. It is a hive of activity endlessly plodding on. The Italian Cream cake jumps in a series of bids, from thirty dollars to one-hundred-eighty dollars, before it is sold and replaced with the Pie-of-the-Month-for-a Full-Year item from so-and-so’s diner.
The telephone has a jarring presence within the din of background noise and dialogue. Right next door, a fire truck pulls out, its siren on, its horn blaring oblivious, for the time being, to the auction benefiting the public library at its side. The two announcers continue in their banter. The woman, startled by the fire engine, makes a joke about having a device that could make the same kind of racket at the grocery store.
The fire engine is an omen to a new subtext in the plot that has yet to reveal itself amongst the never-ending banter of the auction. It emerged so quickly that I almost missed it. One moment they are talking of who might benefit from the pie of the month for a year. On behalf of the diner, without their representation or permission, it is suggested that at certain times the pies might be consolidated so that you could amass an onslaught of them for special events.
Weddings, family reunions, Thanks-giving, and New Years, are all recommended for potential consolidation of the normally monthly pie. It seems reasonable enough. They are trying to sell it to everyone whether you need a pie a month or twelve pies for the Twelve days of Christmas. And how could it go so wrong in the next few moments? In seconds, how can a man ruin himself?
One moment, content in his position, he sounds so robust, friendly, personable, and wise. It is a simple breach of the taboo that propels him into the ground like a plane that tried a maneuver it was never meant to. If you blinked you missed it.
You might never understand why the woman suddenly snapped, with the same lyrical sing-songey quality of tone in her voice, an utterance that passed through her consciousness from her dark and secret place, guarded and unassailable to the man’s casual off-color remark that casts him into conversational limbo hereafter.
And with a sour curl in her voice she replies “Oh no! We’re not going there.” And I have a feeling that maybe it was the suggestion he made that her husband should call in for the pie of the month in case she, as his wife, was not inclined to provide him with the frequency, quality, or variety of pies that the diner could. Perhaps, to his credit, he never meant to imply the double-entendre that was implied. Perhaps she just never meant to have her capacity to make pies impugned in such a setting as the radio.
Never the less the man pays for his ignobility dearly. “What do you mean?” he asked as if he truly only had meant to inject some more of the playful banter he was now loosing his grasp on. His thick, Southern drawl with its throaty twang, its prominence in the conversation, with words that fall from his mouth into the air around us like a thick gravy reminding me of the whisky soaked, cigarette smoke filled conversations my grand-parents held in their kitchen table in Killeen, Texas, this man’s voice almost as salty as theirs, thoughtless, free of pretense, and now ignominious in its character, sinks into the background being upstaged by the woman, the accessory attendants, and the ringing of the telephone.
His once silky words now take on an oily characteristic as he tries to amend his casual taunt. Indomitable and victorious the woman continues propelled into stardom in this feature. Her words like rose petals in the wind continuing onward now failing to reply to the man floundering for redemption in the way they once had. From her lips, like water, they flow, ringing in the air around us like bells from a Christmas choir.
Underneath, in her muted replies she makes out of necessity to the now disgraced leading man, I can hear the contempt. It is a disdain coupled with a pride that propels her forward forcing her even more into the dialogue of this hill country melodrama.
The radio play fades as we go, deeper into the hills, curling around the twists in the road, through the valley, down I-10 on the way to I-290. The lieutenant is going out of his way for me to get to Austin and I am grateful. I am anxious. I am hungry. I am tired of being in the car and I remember that he could have dropped me off in El Paso. There is anxiety nonetheless.
I ponder the new beginning ahead and want to hit the ground running. I sit in day-old clothing and think of whom to contact and all that I have to tell them and all of the things that have happened in their lives. I think of all of the places I want to visit. I think of all of the writing to be done. I think of all of the adventure to be created.
We stop at one rest stop and are joined by bikers, on nice BMW touring bikes on their way to get some steak, who taken a rest-stop for a beer. It’s a nervous pause for me. I want to be there already but I focus on the world around me instead. There is so much uninterrupted countryside.
It is all so beautiful in its laziness and seems so separated from the world outside. It’s like being in Heaven where there are no concerns leering at you from the outside world. There’s no city pulse. I think of the different world it is in Baghdad, right now. In Fallujah. Do we really need to be there? How did it all happen? It all seems to be done in vain. All the chaos, to achieve the feeling I have right now, and it doesn’t make any sense.
We aren’t long on our way again before we stop in another small Texas town right before Johnson City. A tall church steeple on a white church inhabits a park where we stop for Brendan to change clothes. Brendan makes a remark about this being a nice place to live and were it not for the fact that he would have to curtail his off-shore fishing I’d want him to move out here.
Remove the supposed prejudice of this Red state and, well, it’s quite heavenly. It’s every bit as American is Brendan is. We are there for thirty-minutes. The next stop is Austin, TX and a Super 8 Motel.
We hit Austin on Friday, November 5th at around 2:30 pm. People are already getting off work and the delay they pose is nothing less than maddening. He patiently drives through the traffic making his way from I-290 to I-35 and then up the parking lot to the Super 8 on the corner of I-35 and Twelfth Street.
He drives up to the entrance. I get out, letting him know he’s got a new friend in me, and check in. The Indian owner sees me carrying my stuff in looking ragged and unclean. I stand before her in my overalls, asking for a room for one night. She pulls the attendant into the transaction and disappears into the back office. I check in and get a Dr. Pepper and a Snicker’s bar, consume the last of the Granola bars and then try and call a friend.
The phone is consumed with static from an untamed DSL line offered as a service by the hotel. The clerk hadn’t been notified and I am reminded the reason is because most of the people who had been in that room had their own cell-phone. I get his answering machine, and in my state of mind, forget to leave a number where I can be reached.
I take a shower, change clothes, and leave the room to get dinner. It is dusk in Austin and I am still two hours away from beginning this entry. There is a brisk chill in the air.
I head, from room 201 across the interstate, up Twelfth Street to the Capitol Building and through its grounds to the very beginning of Congress Avenue. As I near, there is nothing less than a deafening twittering, flapping, cacophony of birds heralding my entrance onto Congress avenue.
I am just one more bird though, returning here. I eat, call Larry Porter, and then sit down at Little City and considering the girth of this entry begin outlining it. I ponder this, sitting at Little City, writing again in a journal and holding fewer possessions than I left here with, how many circles have come to a close just now.
I reside, tonight, in Room 201, that has a magnificent view of Downtown Austin. I am back here, more easily than I could have imagined. I am back here, more easily than when I had left.
I recorded the events, soon after they happened, into a journal I was carrying with me. I transcribed from the journal and onto a friend's computer, when I got to Austin, embellishing here and there but the following really is a true story.
Finding My Way
By Wonk
Chapter 1: Starting over.
“You start where you’re at.”
-Who knows?
10/30/2004
I have spent over four months trying to make things work out in Tucson, AZ. I am leaving a failed partnership with a man who has put me up in his home with the expectation that I would have been able to find work by now. That has not been the case and as it is not I figure it’s time to cut my losses and leave.
It’s my last night here. I am aghast at the way things have turned out. When I was drinking I remember the games of pool I would play to pass time with. There would be a shot at a ball that would involve enough complexity to call it and I would make the shot and the exact opposite of what I wanted to have happen happened. It never failed. I would just get to a certain point in the night, perhaps even doing somewhat well and instead of the 3 ball going into the corner and the cue hitting the bank the cue went into the corner pocket and the 3 ball hit the bank.
That is what has happened here. Only I’m sober and It’s a much larger pool table with much better intentions and a much larger failure to be sure. There are so many things I tried to hold onto and so many things I found worthwhile and I really found myself at home here and just as everything seemed to be coming to fruition everything has utterly evaporated.
I stand outside and talk to Jason who works here at Coffee Exchange. He tells me about this guy who stayed over at his place for a while, sleeping on the floor, play video games, and in general, being a mooch. I’ve taken the helping hand and gone out to look for jobs, applied for them on the internet, done the opposite of what this guy did and had no success with it what-so-ever. In the end we both achieved the same result. We both wound up on our asses, out in the cold.
Maybe I did things wrong. Maybe I applied for the wrong jobs. A’s for effort don’t count in the game of life. Results do. I know I tried. I know I had the best attitude in the entire world and that for every night going to bed discouraged I woke up the next morning with a fresh face and a new attitude and was ready to let it happen, help it happen, and make it happen, again.
I prayed. God, did I pray. I meditated, especially over the past three weeks. I paused when agitated or doubtful. I applied everywhere I could think of to apply. I walked with blisters on my feet, in the hot sun, bought new shoes, got haircuts, ironed shirts, pants, shaved, re-wrote resumes, showed them to people to get their thoughts, etc. I did everything I knew to do except for waiting for a job to come up and bite me on the ass sitting at home playing the Xbox. I figured God would guide me and I listened and a couple of times I thought he might even come through for me. I figured as long as I took action, I would be guided.
It’s no use, now. I’ll be gone in the morning. I stand outside having another cigarette. It is nearly November and it is finally getting cold at night. I look inside the coffee shop. Life goes on. These people are nothing more than a passing memory now. I watch them. It seemed like I used to have an interaction, an attachment but I’ve detached and so have they. It’s like I’m a ghost. It’s like I’m already gone.
Chapter 2
Gone.
“Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus.”
“50 ways to leave your lover”
by Paul Simon
Gone. Gone to Tucson, Arizona. Gone to writing at Coffee Exchange, Gone to the Sunsets, the immanent job just around the next corner, places to live waiting on a phone call, and the promise of sex never realized.
Gone to the rear seats in the Loft Theatre where Spooky, her nick-name earned from the very subtle but endearing way she used to sneak up on me, and I get x-rated, barely watching the first Godzilla movie, almost naked, definitely exposed, in a fit of heavy-petting, kissing and nearly having sex. Gone to one of the best things to happen to me in Tucson.
Gone to Bentley’s House of Coffee and Tea where I met Spooky, Gone to the Epic café on Fourth Avenue and University where Chicago, the king of post apocalyptic fashion, his chain-mail armor wrapped around his head, and his pageantry of drugged out homeless grifters, interlope like zombies milling about aimlessly, looking for either there next scrap of food or their next mook. He’s the leader of the prison-gang straight out of Escape from New York. “I’ve heard of Snake Pliskin. I heard he was dead.” Are the next words you expect to hear coming out of his mouth and if you ever see him, you’ll know what I mean.
Gone to Tucson Alcoholics Anonymous. Gone to their marbles to throw away if you ever decide to drink again so you can then say you’ve, indeed, lost your marbles. Gone to the fucking bat-shit crazy individuals who pack that hall every Friday killing more alcoholics than they’ll ever help.
Gone to the past two weeks of pending dread. Gone to the endless job hunt, the endless unsolicited advice on how and where I should apply for jobs. Gone to the endless cock-tease that is Tucson, Arizona for Yours Truly.
Gone to walking my clothes over to the Sudz and Dudz, then disappearing around the corner to Bookman’s to find something to read. Gone to the Walgreen’s that educates the consumer on what it’s like to be schizophrenic with the multiple marketing device assault on the senses.
Gone to the women. Gone to more I can’t think of cause I’ve got to go. Gone to the beautiful women.
Gone to meditation at the park. Gone to the ants marching across its entrance. Gone to Kevin, Chelsey, and Bailey. Gone to shelter. Gone to rescue.
Gone to Chelsey. Gone to the hours we spent just talking. Gone to her genius. Gone to a friend.
Gone to one of life’s little ironies. Gone to the people who brought me here. Gone to me watching the wife getting treated worse than the dog. Gone to helplessly watching it all happen. Gone to being a party to it because I watched it all happened and did nothing. Gone to leaving as soon as he got home to escape it. Gone to the never-ending, all-consuming psychopathic chaos. Gone to hoping he would learn kindness. Gone to trying to teach it to him.
Gone to leaving her on the front porch, almost in tears, not being able to do a damn thing because in the end he makes her happy and it’s none of my business. Gone to the thing I will never be, that I will never put my wife through; that I will never put anyone through. Gone to the chaos he created in me. Gone to the pain. Gone to the fear. Gone. All gone.
Gone to the music that brought me here. Gone to the unending and inadequate criticism. Gone to utter cruelty. Gone to the endless soul stomping experience that was this partnership. Gone to enjoyment of something good that I put my intellect, heart, and soul into; that I spent hours contemplating, refining, inventing, contriving, re-inventing, editing, perfecting, and submitting. Gone to the reluctance in showing my last piece of work to him. Gone to the one song that got the compliment I was looking for.
Gone to the equipment. Gone to the fun it was supposed to bring me. Gone to the despair I should feel at leaving it behind. Gone to the fun it used to be. Gone. All gone.
10/31
I slept on the floor last night at Waverly St. I went to sleep with the thought that when you do the right things the right things happen. For all of the drama around me and that I’ve put behind me I felt strangely at peace. The house was vacant, Kevin and Chelsey having spent the night at their new place, and it felt odd and melancholy to be in. I didn’t much care for having to stay there one more night but I was tired and needed the rest.
On my way to bed I walked through the place once more. It was littered with each of our odds and ends but mostly mine. I tried to pull the last of my stuff together to leave in the morning but succumbed to sleep before I got much done.
There were experiences there that I was leaving behind and broken promises of my own making. I tried to figure out where it all went wrong. Kevin would say that almost every decision I made along the way, from when I got here, to now, was wrong. I remembered his “choices” lecture, delivered in bruising honesty worthy of Henry Higgins out of My Fair Lady, in the studio last night. I know that when I get truly angry at something someone has to say about me chances are it’s probably very true. I didn’t get angry but if it’s all the same I would have preferred not to be leaving in the way I am.
I waited until around 11 a.m. for Kevin and Chelsey. Kevin was polite but to the point. Chelsey was still keeping the idea of me working at Intuit in mind but happy and hopeful for me. I told them I was going on a walk-about, knowing I was headed to Austin but not having the faintest idea how I’m going to get there.
Kevin pointed out my folly almost immediately after I told them what I was doing with the amount of stuff I had on the front porch to hoist on my shoulder. I’m in decent shape but am no Atlas by any stretch of the imagination. I walk with it all the way down Waverly, 3 blocks, to the bus stop on Campbell.
There I ditch a red wind-breaker, 2-3 T-shirts, an extra yellow bag I had food in, one pair of blue shorts, one pair of green shorts, and a pair of slacks. It’s still too heavy to walk far with.
I'm at the Red Roof Inn near Interstate 10. I had to lug my stuff on three different busses to get here. The driver on the fifteen, squarely in Bush’s corner with both water bottle and lunch box plastered with campaign bumper stickers, rather liberally, I might add. He also knew his bus routes. “Take the 7 to Alvernon, get on the 12 and ask the 12’s driver to take you to the 26.” By the time he answered all of my questions I’d missed the 7 that was passing by and had to wait another hour.
12 got me to the Red Roof Inn and Denny’s. The 26 would have gotten me to the TTT (or “the Triple T” as it is referred to) Truck Stop. I was starving and when I saw the Denny’s I was sold.
I’m booked into the Red Roof Inn and I’ve called dad from the room to mail me my *last unemployment check via overnight. Dad said Tim, my little brother, had a place in Atlanta for me and I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t going to do that. I can’t do any more rescues.
I’m certain of my bed at Red Roof through Tuesday and I am just as certain I’ll wind up in Austin.
11/01/04
I spent the morning putting items into a trashcan in my room that I was pretty sure would not be needed for my journey. I threw away manila folders, 3 black garbage bags, my cheap-assed AP tool purchased at 7-11, 4 clothes pins, 1 pastel-ribbon lined egg shaped box lined sequined with cheap glitter containing > $1.00 in change, 1 belt, cheap binoculars, 1 plastic box, formerly containing handy-wipes, 1 empty water bottle, Te of Piglet (Later given, after I had finished it, to a convenience store clerk who noticed the Dragon on my cap), 3 packages of ramen, and 1 ruler. Consolidating it was a good gauge of how much extra weight I had gotten rid of.
I remember the ride down from Colorado with all of my stuff in a rented Suburban and thinking about the meditation and the fact that I knew then what I know now, that I would be in Austin, and asking if I was doing the right thing, not just by Kevin but by myself, trying to make a go of it in Arizona first.
I remember thinking that perhaps we would enjoy some success in Tucson that would have allowed for a successful transition to Austin. I remember so many good intentions and expectations about this and now all the good will and all the effort has wound up heading me for Austin but without the success I had expected to transport me there.
I remember the feeling of obligation that I had to Kevin. He had afforded me an opportunity and I wanted to honor that. I remember his being quite happy that I had arrived and excited to have me around. I remember that evaporated all too soon.
As if I at least knew what to do, however insufficient, I wrote and left behind thank-you letters for Kevin and Chelsey. They were rather open-ended, not assuming any outcome prior to their delivery. I had expected to be mailing them but left them on a chair I knew they would be taking to their new place.
Spooky also seemed to know. She had maintained, in one of her e-mails to me, that she was not sure if I’d wind up elsewhere. She had read our horoscopes on our second date. Mine could be translated into this outcome but as with most horoscopes, its confirmation is propelled by vagary.
In the weeks prior to 10/31 Chelsey and I were both possessed by a notion of pending transformations. It could have just been all that was going on. It was a feeling that there was a major change about to occur; that while it may seem scary, or at least odd, it would yield results better than we could have hoped for.
Still compelling the idea of change I had an encounter the other morning while I was sitting outside smoking, with no shirt on, and a Jehovah’s Witness came up to the house on Waverly. She advised me that I needn’t get a shirt for us to have a conversation but I felt differently. As I returned she read from Proverbs quoting “The meek shall inherit the Earth.”
I didn’t rightfully appreciate the meaning in that but it has now given me a modicum of faith to see this through. It is certain that this is as meek as I’ve ever been and I feel I’ll become even more so before my journey is over. I listened until she offered me a brochure which had several more Bible quotes in it, taken out of context, and relevantly applied to what was happening in the World today. I told her I didn’t appreciate it when people took words in the Bible out of context reframing them to suit their own agenda and she took that as an end to the conversation we were having. It’s OK if I do it though.
It is decidedly lonely around here and that coupled with my last unemployment check should do well to propel me well away from this place tomorrow. My only regret is that I still have to get my check cashed in Tucson before I leave.
Denny’s has, piped into it, disquieting songs of despair, loneliness, and heartbreak. It is the somber, melancholy, and sentimental selection of music that adds desperation to this already barren milieu. I cannot imagine a more depressing soundtrack to work to but the employees and customers seem content to live their days out by it. Whether it is the jaded industrial psychologist, enticing the customers for desert after their already fattening comfort food, while making the environment unwelcoming enough to reinforce that already immanent departure, or merely the angst ridden manager putting up a good front for employees and customers alike while quietly seething with pain and hope for a reconciliation with his ex-wife, whoever is to blame for this music of the damned; Phil Collins, and his endless supply of pallid, lukewarm torch-songs, has brought to bare all the makings for a small, quiet, and uneventful Hell on Earth for the broken-hearted and the broken down.
I turn my mind to focus on the great unknown; the limitless possibilities extended before me. Even as I step outside the door for my last pack of cigarettes in Tucson, I look forward to what is ahead and put thoughts of good back in mind. I conserved today for tomorrow brings with it a world of change and new decisions to be guided through unclouded, strong, and rested.
11/2
I feel like I walked 20 miles today. I may have made 10. I walked all the way down to Campbell on Irvington and found an Ace Check Cashing place in a deluge of urban sprawl. On all four corners of the intersection there had been amassed multiple shopping centers. I don’t think I have seen this much concrete and asphalt in quite a while. It is just downright ugly. There was only one check-cashing place but a payday loan shark on every corner.
I weighed myself on a scale at the store with the Ace check cashing place and found that without the extra forty pounds of belongings I only weighed 140 pounds. I consider 160 to be my ideal weight. I wound up ditching the brown carry-on bag and consolidating its contents to my other bags. I used the laundry bag tying it onto the handle of my Nike backpack. Dehydration is another concern and it was plenty hot today.
My last meal in Tucson, proper, was a bacon-cheeseburger with hash browns at the Waffle House on the edge of nowhere. It all seemed so remote, like I’d never even been in Tucson. Maybe that is what it is to be truly gone from this earth or maybe it is just a reminder that prestige, in one's mind or in the perceptions of others, is simply an illusion; that we are all sand on the beach and that no matter our individual or collective endeavors, in the end, we never really amount to much of real and lasting consequence. Then perhaps what might be viewed as nihilism could be seen in another way: That taking ourselves too seriously in the grand scheme of things isn't what God intended for us in the first place. It's fine and well to do good things so long as one appreciates the cheeseburger afforded to them. It is in the common that miraculous things come to pass for the very fact that our earth has not been plowed through by an asteroid is verified by the next moment savored, the next bite of life, the next word written.
I started down I-10 after lunch taking the Alvernon entrance. Litter and wreckage are strewn across every mile I walked. It seemed that there would have had to have been a wreck for every 10 feet of flat-top to have accumulated as much wreckage as I saw and that being with only the major debris being cleared in the dark of night by a near-sighted clean-up crew.
I began realizing we are a feckless lot. I don’t think any of us realizes how lucky we are. Looking at that highway strewn with the waste of our extravagance is truly humbling.
I’m at the Triple T, now. It is a large mega truck stop with showers, a restaurant, a store and a souvenir shop. In the restaurant there is good, old fashion, down home American cuisine. I’m having fish & chips for the easily digestible protein content. Most of the clientèle should not have concerns with retaining their weight. These people are huge. Retirees and truckers, alike. One table appears to have members of a long-hall convoy and another retains its regulars, as though reserved for them in perpetuity. All of them are fat.
I saw a bumper sticker, here, that read: Annoy a Liberal – Live, Work, Be Happy. My rebuttal is Annoy a Conservative – Use Logic, Acknowledge Nuance, Tell the Truth. Bush won.
Room 226 on exit 269 is easily the worst place I’ve been. The owner’s office has a lousy, sickly sweet smell that seems way too strong for just honey. It’s not honey. It’s honey on steroids.
The room, in my name, isn’t a picnic either. There are cigarette burns everywhere. The drapes are nearing tatters, torn in several places across the span of their fabric. They, along with the comforter, the table, the dresser, the night table, the bathroom counter, and the carpet have multiple cigarette burns.
The bathroom door is patched over with a thin piece of aluminum screwed into the remaining wood surrounding a rather large hole that had been punched through it. The fire alarm is knocked loose hanging from its mounting on the wall. The cable attaches to the back of a newer TV with a small wire protruding from the co-axial insulation. Every time I walk by the television the cable becomes dislodged and needs to be reinserted into the socket. It looks like the original connector was hurled, along with the old TV, into the bathroom door.
Why? Maybe I’m here witnessing the destruction and mayhem I’ve caused in an alternate pathway, where I’m still drinking. God, you know, I think I’ve seen enough. At this point I have to ask why to all of this.
I ponder being in this hotel room, ruminating on its ruin, as a reflection of my own despair. It isn’t what I wanted at all. This, the end of my time in Arizona, is what I least expected in return for all of my action. That all of my effort has brought me to this point is of great consternation to me.
I cannot and, I dare say, will not come back here, to this filth, again. I could lie to myself and say that this is some part of a higher plan but, honestly, if I made that determination right now I might very well be short changing God and His Everlasting capacity. The fact that I trusted in Him and that perhaps He gave me the very least of what I actually deserve for the eleven or so years I spent drinking is enough for now.
I’ve had enough, though. I don’t think I deserve this, anymore. I am quite tired of this existence and if I cannot hope to achieve better than I may as well be drunk. It is quite intolerable.
Chapter 3
Full Circles
“They say the meek shall inherit,
You know the book doesn’t lie…
You know the meek are gonna
Get what’s coming to them,
By and by.”
Little Shop of Horrors: “The Meek Shall Inherit” – Howard Ashman
11/05
Yesterday morning found me in better spirits. I found the motel’s laundry facilities and made sure I would be as odor free as possible. I knew I would be riding in someone else’s car. I had to wait for the washing machine to clear and wound up running into a permanent resident of the motel.
This guy just lived there. I’m not really sure what else he did but it sure seems like a barren existence to me. He had visited Hippie Hollow, a nudist and skinny-dipping hangout in Austin, and really liked talking about that. It spurred me to leave, all the more quickly, that he chose to reside there in perpetuity along with his somewhat unethical voyeurism.
Precisely at 11:00 the Indian owners began calling for the return of their room key. I still hadn’t had a shower and wasn’t ready to surrender the key until I had one. I was polite with them, took my shower, finished packing, explaining that I was still waiting on my laundry to finish so I’d only be around just a while longer as I checked out of their hell hole.
The essence of this day seemed to be timing. Had things not happened as they did, yesterday, I would not be writing this, right now. I lugged my belongings over to the Chevron station, where I purchased two half-gallon bottles of water, three power bars and three granola bars. I had one last cigarette at the picnic tables they have outside, used the restrooms one last time, in Arizona, and headed out, determined not to stop until I reached the next service station.
As I walked underneath I-10 and turned onto the service ramp I nearly ran into Victor Antonio from San Antonio. It didn’t take me long to realize that this guy is a pro in the art of the walk-about. He says he’s been doing it for the past three years and to look at him you’d have no reason to doubt it.
I gave him my e-mail address to add to his collection of over 1000. He promised to put me on his list of subscribers he relays his experiences to anytime he gets to sit down at a computer. Hunter S. Thompson would be impressed by this guy’s gonzo spirit.
Victor talked me into walking back with him to the gas station so he could get something to eat. Since he was on his way to San Antonio, where the love in Texas is, and since he’d had 3 years on me in traveling around I agreed to journey with him. The tall, tanned, but lanky man is adept at finagling just about everything he needs throughout his travels. The guy managed to talk the manager into letting him have free food from the A&W attached to the Chevron station.
The guy’s a fast talker; not the proverbial fast-talking freeloader but just a fast talker. I suppose it’s from speaking into his tape recorder trying to conserve both tape and batteries that he has cultivated this habit that translates into his normal manner of speech. He repeats a couple of mottoes ad infinitum. “The Universe will provide if you let it.” and “Food: fuel for the body.” are spoken with both annoying frequency and cadence but then absolutely no one is a picnic.
It’s all part of his plan to take over the World. He was anxious to recruit me into his legions who were busily but quietly advancing a peaceful socialist revolution through the overthrow of the free-market system in conjunction with the legalization of marijuana. I told him I had my own path to follow but that I’d be happy to keep his company for the time being.
Victor is a genius. His ideas are anachronistic. The rest of us are quite unprepared for his vision of the future and definitely unprepared for his way of life. To be sure his reasoning is, at times, self-aggrandizing if not altogether delusional but who am I to say he’s wrong.
Victor survives meekly and unlike others in his social station, seems quite happy with it. If the meek shall really inherit than Victor already has. He lives hand to mouth, and in return for his provisions gives back what he can in the retelling of his experiences. His heart is in the right place, wanting what he wants for the rest of us. He maintains a truly humble, if not altogether Taoist existence.
In me he has a solitary cult following and, although I may not be willing to join his cause for the sake of my own, I silently root him on hoping that his stated goals are one day achieved. Town to town and city to city he roams with meager possessions, a walking stick, rope wrapped around the handle and a ball compass embedded in the tip. He has an upbeat and infectious attitude that you can’t help but to admire.
Victor reminds me of the homeless children on the 16th Street Mall in Denver, CO. They fight with each other coached by a lifetime of abuse along with a truly stressful living situation. They are mired in the drama they create for both themselves and the rest of us. Their road-warrior wardrobe and borderline dispositions inspire fear and disdain from the businessmen who ignore their pleas for assistance. Soccer moms, ensconced in their cookie-cutter communities look down their nose at them scorning what they cannot understand or control, as they make the day trip for shopping and dining at the newest mall in the heart of Downtown Denver.
The gutter-punks- runaways, outcasts, stoners, drunks, schizoids, schizophrenics, bipolars, and junkies live on the edge of existence daily, unsure of where their next meal might come from, who might take advantage of them, what lies in store for them around the next corner. They selfishly and unknowingly perpetuate their existence living out their lives hand-to-mouth, consumed by the drama in one hand and the need to anesthetize the pain it causes in the other. Unable to focus on the solution they sink further into their dysfunction taking action to relieve the pain they suffer from that results only in more pain and suffering. Chaos to end chaos can achieve only chaos but no one can see the forest for the trees. No one can end their suffering.
Or rather, no one will end their suffering.
It would lend more credence to abortion rights opponents, I suppose, if in their effort to paint legitimacy on their cause they did something to alleviate the massive amount of suffering on Denver's 16th Street mall, on Congress Avenue and The Drag (Guadalupe), in Austin, TX and while we’re at it the rest of the United States and the rest of the world. This world is infested with unwanted or abused children but instead of focusing their effort on helping the one’s who are alive and suffering they focus on the children who are unborn.
Why can’t they see that these are problems which, for all of their prohibitionist effort, could be solved with better effect than if they are to continue on their present course? It is a ridiculous past time and one that reveals a perverse strategy: to control their own feelings of inadequacy by controlling the reproductive organs of another human being.
It is nothing more than some men’s view, along with some women’s, that a woman is naturally, or at least should be, castrated. They can re-endow themselves and re-endow the castrated woman, by forcing her to have a child.
The abortion represents their original exclusion from Mommy’s and Daddy’s secret bedroom game. Daddy was the only person who could give Mommy his penis in the secret chamber and I was never allowed to participate. I was also frightened I would be castrated if I tried to play, with Mommy, the games Daddy played.
Now they can re-enact this early childhood trauma allowing them, and their unformed psyches, to force their way back into the womb. As they forcibly placate mommy with a new penis they enact retribution on her at the same time. Did you think graphic depictions of aborted fetuses on the side of a bus were anything more than a man’s mutilated penis? Yeah physically that really is what they are but in the recesses of a right-to-lifer’s mind a dead fetus is a dead penis.
I see the excess of existence with money, religion, and paranoia driven politics strewn on the side of Interstate 10. I stand more of a chance of changing peoples minds than I do of cleaning the mess they have made up, on Interstate 10 alone, in my lifetime. It is excess justified in the name of comfort, personal safety, religious grandiosity, and because they can, driving by in Yukons, Suburbans, and Magnums. The biggest of the big.
They plow down the highway in their largess consuming so much that they drive the prices of gasoline from countries whose populations, at this point, rightfully hate us into the stratosphere. Annoy a Liberal – Live in excess. Work for the oppression of people whose viewpoint doesn’t coincide with yours. Be Happy with toys that are too big for you, the Earth, and the people around you. Live in gated communities. Work for people who pollute the environment, cause major financial crisis with ethics violations, and thrive when they send your job overseas. Be happy with what you’ve got cause it ain’t gonna last!
I wonder if they complain bitterly about the high price of gasoline the rest of us pay as well. I don’t know any of these people but I suppose they do. Do they treat the clerk badly when they pay over $40.00 to fill their Goliath at the pump? What do they do to make the world we share a better place? For as close to God as they must consider themselves to justify the burdensome excess they still don’t have anything I want. They definitely aren’t meek but to say I appreciate being meek would be another fallacy, altogether.
They are doing the same things the gutter-punks do. The fact that they do it with money, that it is done on a larger scale, that they are just as blind to the mayhem they create as solution as the gutter-punks are scares the hell out of me.
I don’t want to be any part of that crater.
I lose Victor about a mile from the gas station. He needs to get to San Antonio sooner than my methodology will allow. I have no methodology. I am formless and prepared for anything. He says if he gets a ride he’ll be sure and look out for me on the side of the road and get the car to stop if he can.
I shake his hand, wish him well, and journey onward. I look back and he’s still walking away. I look back again and can’t see him anymore. In the timing of the day, he turned out to be a useful interruption.
~~
I let my beard grow because I’m rather young looking for being 35 years old. I knew by hitch-hiking I was putting myself in a vulnerable position. I wanted to detract from any youthful appearance that might be enticing of unwanted advances from lonely truckers. I also wanted to confer the authority normally afforded a person my age, although a lot of that is just in how one carries themselves. Even with my beard, Victor made note of the fact that I still look young.
I-10 passes by a state and federal prison. I wasn’t expecting anyone to stop and pick me up, never minding the fact that a majority of prison escape attempts occur at night. I did however get some offers for rides that I declined.
Here are some of the rules I used for potential rides:
1.The condition of a vehicle is a reflection of its owner. You can tell a lot about someone’s psychology by the condition their possessions are in. Sure, some people have to make due with what they have. When what they have has trash in the backseat and looks as though it hasn’t seen the business end of a hose in a while chances are there is more amiss.
2.Do they look like people with responsibilities? Chances are the sloppily dressed, long-haired, disgruntled looking, person with the Old lady just broke it off with her Sancho this morning and just now picked me up from prison look in their eyes doesn’t have a great deal of responsibility to speak of.
3.What is the first image that comes to mind as you look into their eyes? Is it from the point of view you would have sitting low in the backseat, the man with the long hair is glaring at you, tossing his head back, and laughing maniacally every time you wince as he waves a knife in your face? Oh, I wouldn’t feel very comfortable in that situation. Would you?
4.Do they ask you or tell you? “Get in the car.” Doesn’t convey the sense of respect one is supposed to have for your well-being. When the second driver points his finger at you, his eyes with black, puffy, heroin sheik rings underneath, that essence of Charles Manson oozing out of every pore in his body, then points down at your supposed seat, and then breaking the grimace curling across his lips, as you wisely try to wave him on, bulging those crazy, creepy, Charlie eyes and saying “GET IN!!” in as forceful a manner possible it should throw up multiple red-flags.
5.This is the most important one: What does your gut say? What does the voice, thought, or intuition say? So if when the van that looks like something that could be used in the commission of a serial killing prompts that issuance from one’s belly in as loud and as clear a “no” one might hear as though an actual person had said it directly to you do what it says.
I’m planning on making it to El Paso in the next few days, if not tonight. I wanted to be around some place to get more water and food last night. The weight of what I am carrying has me asking what I can jettison to lessen the burden on my shoulders. It’s not that I can’t handle the weight. It’s that I have the wrong type of backpack for it. The straps dig in, cutting off the circulation to my arms, and I am constantly having to flex and shake my arms to re-circulate blood into them.
My legs feel a hell of a lot better than they did after I reached Exit 269. I had to reposition some of the weight I was carrying but overall it worked out pretty well. My next backpack is going to be meant for hiking for sure but I’ll never do this again, even with a new backpack.
I take a break beneath a bridge. After the first two offers for rides I am beginning to realize the jeopardy of this. I have a power bar and a granola bar, a cigarette, some water and then draw the symbol commonly used by members of the 12-step group I belong to on the laundry bag hanging from my backpack.
I find a metal hook on the side of the road and use it to attach one of the waters to my backpack. Take the third offer for a ride, my gut tells me.
I head onward, rejuvenated and hoping the thought I had under the bridge is correct. The straps sink into my arms again and I press on. Despite everything, I’m optimistic, hopeful, and determined. My life has deteriorated to the contents I can carry but something is keeping me going.
Up ahead, in the distance, there’s a black sedan parked on the side of the road. I’m thinking maybe there’s car trouble or he needs water. Who knows? I’m not expecting a ride at this point. I keep getting closer and he’s not learving. I walk past the driver, with his window open, and give him a slight nod as he looks up from his book-map. He smiles, flicks his fingers from the top of his head as I journey onward.
A honk comes from the black sedan now behind me. Motion beckons from the driver’s side. “Where are you headed?”
“El Paso”
“You want a ride?”
“Sure.” I say. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it. Some of the best decisions I’ve ever made are like that. Some, clearly are not. He opens the back door, I put my stuff in, I get in the front seat and we’re off.
He asks if El Paso is my final destination. I tell him its Austin. He says he’s headed in that direction going all the way to Baton Rouge Louisiana. I’m on my way home.
Brendan is a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. His duty is to transport AWOL marines back to base, whom the US Marshall has obtained, or who have been arrested for being drunk and disorderly, or similar charges, including DUI. He would rather be doing something else than picking up marines who would rather not be marines and putting them back into the service of our country.
I suppose, if I were going to send a man on a mission, this is the guy I’d want to transport trained killers from point A to point B. The lieutenant was a Marine Color Guard assigned to both the Pentagon and the White House at the beginning of the Clinton administration. His other assignments include being a drill instructor, the first Iraq war, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. He’s a true, All-American kind of guy; married his high school sweetheart, two teenage twins, one three year-old.
His favorite topic isn’t his resume. It’s his family. He and I are pretty quiet up to the point his wife calls for the first time since I joined him. I start asking him about his family and the guy lights up like a Christmas tree. A huge smile emerges across his face. He won’t talk much about the military and most men I’ve known, who’ve seen combat don’t like to talk about it much with someone who hasn’t been there. That’s understandable. This guy loves to talk about his family. He also loves to talk about fishing which is bad if your as hungry as I was when he started talking about catching albacore tuna off the California coast.
The former drill instructor spoils his wife and kids whenever he gets the chance and as much as his job takes him away he throws every mile of it back into his parenting ethic spoiling his wife and kids every time and in any way he gets the chance to.
Victor was right about the Sunsets in New Mexico. They are really pretty but not as pretty as the one I saw one day at the park. Man, what a horrible day, but the sunset made it worth reliving. I had had it. Spooky and I were on the rocks and I had gone everywhere I could to find a job and there was nothing in either finance or romance that was promissing as a result of my endeavors.
This was about a week before I left Arizona. I had gone home and found Chelsey nearly in tears on the doorstep. In the back of my mind *Surrender repeated. And that is pretty much what I did. I heard Chelsey tell of another one of Kevin’s eviscerations and how she had finally gotten angry with him and slammed the refrigerator door seven times. I left. I told her where I was going and invited her along but their marriage isn’t any of my business.
I went to the park, defeated after spending so long in Arizona with so little to show for it. I watched the sunset and tried not to think about how terrible things were. I didn’t try to empty my mind. I just tried to be as I was and watch the sunset. There was so much to think about that I was tired of thinking. I was tired of wasting my energy on it. I was tired of being consumed by it.
I watched the sun turn the sky a deep shade of orange and bounce off the clouds that hung in layers across the sky. I watched the sky’s transmutation, beams of light and dark scraping across the sky, rising as the sun sank down and crossing as the clouds crossed. Wispy flakes of an orangey gold color spanned from the middle to the top of my view. Below them were gold encrusted billowing plums and along the left side were two long spans that stretched from the horizon, all the way behind me.
As the sun finally sank below the horizon and the sky lost its visibility and as it began to get colder I went home. I found Chelsey in a better mood but I told her I saw what Kevin did and that I didn’t like it either. I knew I couldn’t do anything about it but I wanted her to know that I knew it wasn’t something that she was making up. I wanted her to know that I saw the chaos he creates. I have come to revile him for it.
Brendan and I have our differences but we share some idiosyncratic similarities as well. We’re both perfectionists. We’re both smokers, smoking somewhat at the same time and fans of the Marlboro brand of cigarettes. We’re attracted to very intelligent women. His wife is a pediatrician. Mikari, Spooky, Chris, Jill, Lara, and Suzanna were all very intelligent but I couldn’t hang onto them. Here’s hoping to the next woman I meet being the one. I pray she’s smart enough to hold onto me and not too stupid to let go.
We have also both been mugged in Denver. Mine was an unsuccessful sucker-punch three-man operation. His was a successful robbery at gunpoint resulting in his losing $600.00 and his Pentagon purchasing card. The Marine had a gun on him at the time of he was pulling money out of the ATM. The thief waited for him to get the cash then showed him the gun. If the mugger had known what I know about the guy all that I know about the guy he would have not mugged the guy. Actually, I guess he picked the right guy.
It says a lot about Brendan, what happened next. After the guy had his money the LT says, “Be sure you buy a kid a nice Christmas gift with some of that.” The mugger looks at him as though he’s daffy, taken aback by the comment, and probably the fact that it was as genuine as it gets. The mugger could have, just as easily, been turned into a pretzel a mortician was trying to reconstruct for the aesthetic purpose of an open casket.
Perhaps, for all of the death he has seen, speaking of Bosnia and Afghanistan as particularly brutal, another death wouldn’t have sufficed. Maybe the lieutenant thought this guy could be someone’s father, or maybe $600.00 and a close call isn’t sufficient to kill another man. Maybe it was just the right thing to do.
The last vestige of the Sun’s light sinks below the horizon, tucking neatly beneath the burgeoning sheet of street lamps that meet flatly, the El Paso night sky. A surreal cityscape stretches around us, enveloping the car; a city pulsing around us, its radio intruding into our space, and as we approach the city’s center arcs of neon change colors for at least a mile, shimmering, lining the urban expressway. It is all so trippy.
We make a stop for a piss and at the rest stop there is a coffee machine and I begin to see the beginning of a full circle in my life. From leaving El Paso, passing through it’s outskirts on a Greyhound bus to head to Colorado to returning to have the very coffee I once had at the Salvation Army in Austin, TX right before leaving. It’s the first of many circles to be completed. Perhaps it’s all unrelated. Perhaps I am nothing more than fooled by the randomness of it all. Perhaps. I don’t know.
We drive on. We stop and get gas on the end of I-10 in El Paso. Waves of exhaustion plead to the beckoning hotels there. We ignore them and head onward into the night sky; the highway stretches out before us. Miles of black top ahead. We pass a sign that says over 500 miles to Dallas and the calculations I do in my head says we won’t make it tonight but silently I beg the driver to press onward to Austin.
Brendan gets a call from home again. One of his kids can’t decide whether to go on a weekend church retreat or to a concert. He patiently listens to the looming crisis enveloping his child, however silly it seems, and explains that the teenager is at an age now when decisions have to be made that require a sacrifice and that you sometimes only have the choice, in the end, that your heart makes.
Onward we drive and it feels like two friends on a road-trip. We hit an animal carcass, bones already protruding from its hide and a fierce red surrounds each of the compound fractures. The exhaustion is setting in. I know what he’s going through. You want to rest but you want to come to a final stop first. You want to be there, pressing on, being woken up by the struts embedded in the side of the road, pulled back into the road, not knowing if you’re dreaming the road you see ahead of you. We pull into a rest stop.
There we each have a power bar, get out for a piss, and rest for a spell. Then we’re on our way but we’re not going to make it to Austin tonight.
Wisely, and right before Fort Carson, we pull into another rest stop. He’s done for the night. I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve. I’m on my way home and I want to be there already. I pull my coat on and sit in the cold listening to an El Paso hard-rock station cycle through its evening program and its promotion, endlessly kicking off another non-stop set of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and beyond hit music, that features a Harry Carrie impersonation that begins faltering in its entertainment value on the second listening.
I sit quietly as ‘80s power ballads and glam rock are plunged in with ‘90s grunge and then another set of commercials, and then Harry Carrie, again; every fifteen to twenty minutes for the next two-and-a half hours. He wakes up and turns the radio’s droning automation off. Fifteen minutes later I get out of the car, go to the bathroom one last time and return.
Cold air fills the car and I put on my hat and gloves. Brendan leans forward and turns on the car, jacks up the heat and turns on both of the seat-warmers. An hour or so later, I am sweating. I take off my gloves, hat, and unzip my jacket and go back to sleep.
I woke up while it was still dark. There wasn’t any coffee around for miles and I’d have to wait but I didn’t need it much anyway. I start thinking of all the people I left in Austin and wonder if I’ll run into any of them. I wonder if I’m just doing another geographical relocation bringing not only what I had on my back from Tucson but the same problems I had there as well.
No. This is just fear. It’s pure bullshit. This is different. I’m supposed to be doing this. For whatever reasons it didn’t work out in Tucson but even if it had, I would still be moving back to Austin. No matter what.
I watch the sun rising, trying to shake off the fear, and Brendan wakes up. We brush our teeth, and we’re on our way. Slowly, as we near Ozona, Texas, the feeling slips away. Coffee is the only looming concern I have now and that’s quickly about to be resolved.
I don’t think, even living in Texas, I have been through this part of the state. It is beautiful. No mountains. No cactus. Just beautiful rolling hills and a curving highway that cuts through layers of limestone. There’s no radio that can be picked up and we are left quietly driving through the wind-farms as we reach Ozona.
It is a small and very quiet little town. There is a serenity there that, with all of the change I had taken on, felt very reassuring. Brendan didn’t like it so much and I got the feeling that had he not been married he would be quite the hell-raiser on his lonesome. He likes the big cities. Ozona rang of an existence lived in the doldrums of a tiny bedroom community, for me as well, but I appreciated it for what it was: a nice place to visit.
On into the Texas hill country we head after breakfast, too far away to pick up anything substantial on the radio other than an auction featuring thick southern accents articulate in their language to sell baked goods, manicures, and facials, among other things.
To anyone on the outside, it’s gibberish. It is gibberish spoken so naturally, with accents that play lyrically with the words, with the hypnotic cadence of seducers, and so endless, as they sell an Italian Cream cake. The actors solicit bids, over the radio, from various companies in the area. When people call in to make a bid they are spoken of familiarly.
In the background, behind the two principals, there is a flurry of activity. People move in and out of the room, laughing at their jokes and quips, correcting their misunderstandings, and making jokes of their own in reply as they pull one item away to replace it with yet another. It is a hive of activity endlessly plodding on. The Italian Cream cake jumps in a series of bids, from thirty dollars to one-hundred-eighty dollars, before it is sold and replaced with the Pie-of-the-Month-for-a Full-Year item from so-and-so’s diner.
The telephone has a jarring presence within the din of background noise and dialogue. Right next door, a fire truck pulls out, its siren on, its horn blaring oblivious, for the time being, to the auction benefiting the public library at its side. The two announcers continue in their banter. The woman, startled by the fire engine, makes a joke about having a device that could make the same kind of racket at the grocery store.
The fire engine is an omen to a new subtext in the plot that has yet to reveal itself amongst the never-ending banter of the auction. It emerged so quickly that I almost missed it. One moment they are talking of who might benefit from the pie of the month for a year. On behalf of the diner, without their representation or permission, it is suggested that at certain times the pies might be consolidated so that you could amass an onslaught of them for special events.
Weddings, family reunions, Thanks-giving, and New Years, are all recommended for potential consolidation of the normally monthly pie. It seems reasonable enough. They are trying to sell it to everyone whether you need a pie a month or twelve pies for the Twelve days of Christmas. And how could it go so wrong in the next few moments? In seconds, how can a man ruin himself?
One moment, content in his position, he sounds so robust, friendly, personable, and wise. It is a simple breach of the taboo that propels him into the ground like a plane that tried a maneuver it was never meant to. If you blinked you missed it.
You might never understand why the woman suddenly snapped, with the same lyrical sing-songey quality of tone in her voice, an utterance that passed through her consciousness from her dark and secret place, guarded and unassailable to the man’s casual off-color remark that casts him into conversational limbo hereafter.
And with a sour curl in her voice she replies “Oh no! We’re not going there.” And I have a feeling that maybe it was the suggestion he made that her husband should call in for the pie of the month in case she, as his wife, was not inclined to provide him with the frequency, quality, or variety of pies that the diner could. Perhaps, to his credit, he never meant to imply the double-entendre that was implied. Perhaps she just never meant to have her capacity to make pies impugned in such a setting as the radio.
Never the less the man pays for his ignobility dearly. “What do you mean?” he asked as if he truly only had meant to inject some more of the playful banter he was now loosing his grasp on. His thick, Southern drawl with its throaty twang, its prominence in the conversation, with words that fall from his mouth into the air around us like a thick gravy reminding me of the whisky soaked, cigarette smoke filled conversations my grand-parents held in their kitchen table in Killeen, Texas, this man’s voice almost as salty as theirs, thoughtless, free of pretense, and now ignominious in its character, sinks into the background being upstaged by the woman, the accessory attendants, and the ringing of the telephone.
His once silky words now take on an oily characteristic as he tries to amend his casual taunt. Indomitable and victorious the woman continues propelled into stardom in this feature. Her words like rose petals in the wind continuing onward now failing to reply to the man floundering for redemption in the way they once had. From her lips, like water, they flow, ringing in the air around us like bells from a Christmas choir.
Underneath, in her muted replies she makes out of necessity to the now disgraced leading man, I can hear the contempt. It is a disdain coupled with a pride that propels her forward forcing her even more into the dialogue of this hill country melodrama.
The radio play fades as we go, deeper into the hills, curling around the twists in the road, through the valley, down I-10 on the way to I-290. The lieutenant is going out of his way for me to get to Austin and I am grateful. I am anxious. I am hungry. I am tired of being in the car and I remember that he could have dropped me off in El Paso. There is anxiety nonetheless.
I ponder the new beginning ahead and want to hit the ground running. I sit in day-old clothing and think of whom to contact and all that I have to tell them and all of the things that have happened in their lives. I think of all of the places I want to visit. I think of all of the writing to be done. I think of all of the adventure to be created.
We stop at one rest stop and are joined by bikers, on nice BMW touring bikes on their way to get some steak, who taken a rest-stop for a beer. It’s a nervous pause for me. I want to be there already but I focus on the world around me instead. There is so much uninterrupted countryside.
It is all so beautiful in its laziness and seems so separated from the world outside. It’s like being in Heaven where there are no concerns leering at you from the outside world. There’s no city pulse. I think of the different world it is in Baghdad, right now. In Fallujah. Do we really need to be there? How did it all happen? It all seems to be done in vain. All the chaos, to achieve the feeling I have right now, and it doesn’t make any sense.
We aren’t long on our way again before we stop in another small Texas town right before Johnson City. A tall church steeple on a white church inhabits a park where we stop for Brendan to change clothes. Brendan makes a remark about this being a nice place to live and were it not for the fact that he would have to curtail his off-shore fishing I’d want him to move out here.
Remove the supposed prejudice of this Red state and, well, it’s quite heavenly. It’s every bit as American is Brendan is. We are there for thirty-minutes. The next stop is Austin, TX and a Super 8 Motel.
We hit Austin on Friday, November 5th at around 2:30 pm. People are already getting off work and the delay they pose is nothing less than maddening. He patiently drives through the traffic making his way from I-290 to I-35 and then up the parking lot to the Super 8 on the corner of I-35 and Twelfth Street.
He drives up to the entrance. I get out, letting him know he’s got a new friend in me, and check in. The Indian owner sees me carrying my stuff in looking ragged and unclean. I stand before her in my overalls, asking for a room for one night. She pulls the attendant into the transaction and disappears into the back office. I check in and get a Dr. Pepper and a Snicker’s bar, consume the last of the Granola bars and then try and call a friend.
The phone is consumed with static from an untamed DSL line offered as a service by the hotel. The clerk hadn’t been notified and I am reminded the reason is because most of the people who had been in that room had their own cell-phone. I get his answering machine, and in my state of mind, forget to leave a number where I can be reached.
I take a shower, change clothes, and leave the room to get dinner. It is dusk in Austin and I am still two hours away from beginning this entry. There is a brisk chill in the air.
I head, from room 201 across the interstate, up Twelfth Street to the Capitol Building and through its grounds to the very beginning of Congress Avenue. As I near, there is nothing less than a deafening twittering, flapping, cacophony of birds heralding my entrance onto Congress avenue.
I am just one more bird though, returning here. I eat, call Larry Porter, and then sit down at Little City and considering the girth of this entry begin outlining it. I ponder this, sitting at Little City, writing again in a journal and holding fewer possessions than I left here with, how many circles have come to a close just now.
I reside, tonight, in Room 201, that has a magnificent view of Downtown Austin. I am back here, more easily than I could have imagined. I am back here, more easily than when I had left.