Summer at Christmas

Sorry no substantial updates lately, today I'm working on notes for my Best of 2004 CD and will finish Xmas shopping later. Weekend was OK, yesterday I saw a huge chunk of the city I never knew existed. Going to Milwaukee Thursday night and alone to C-ville on Friday, should be fun.

In the meantime, I feel guilty about not updating my blog, so here is a slightly edited but still completely true story I wrote a year ago. Spring of 2003 I took a solo road trip, mostly sleeping in my car on the way to New Orleans, and I started writing about what happened in a very grammatically poor style. Here is an excerpt, from Day 4:


4. On the Rocks

Saturday morning I have to be out of my hotel by noon, and I am, with ten minutes to spare. My car has been sitting in the hot sun all morning, and feels like an oven. Like an oven that’s been sitting in the hot sun. I’m afraid to breathe the air. I have decided to go southeast to Galveston, on the gulf coast. I can’t wait to see the ocean. I drive on a small two-lane highway. Texas doesn’t look like I thought it would here, it’s all light green grass and slight hills, scattered trees. I suppose I’d have to go further south or west to see what had been in my imagination: dusty trails, adobe, the bones of a steer, still laid out in perfect formation, like in cartoons. After a couple hours I meet back up with the interstate (I-10), and head towards Houston. Since I’ve been in Texas I’ve noticed that every single vehicle I see has a Texas license plate. I know the state is large, and I’m deep inside its borders, but by this point I’m starting to become a little worried. I’m sure all of these people have guns. Houston, I’ve heard, is the most polluted city in the United States, so I’m reluctant to roll my window down at all as I enter its limits, despite the fact that is has to be close to 90 degrees, and the traffic is crawling along. I see distant buildings and endless interstate highway, but not much of a feel for a city. No desire to stop yet, either, I want to run on the beach and dive into the cool water as soon as I can. Last night’s sleep makes driving easier than it has in days; I’m awake and my body has lost its stiffness. It feels like day one again. Because of this, I don’t mind the standstill traffic I encounter, or the fact that my car has no air conditioning. Besides, today is going to be a short day of driving, just over two hundred miles. I don’t make any stops (I got gas right before Austin, and none of the food in my trunk looked appealing) until right before Galveston on I-45, now going south, I stop at a tourist info place and get a handful of maps and brochures. The nice old lady encourages me to try a number of fancy restaurants and hotels, tourist attractions, and I don’t bother explaining to her that I’m not a tourist, I even sign her guestbook. I find out that the city is one long beach, with free parking. I thank her for her help and leave. I drive to the island while studying the map. There are a few palm trees, and the interstate runs directly into the ocean. It feels like I’m at the end of something, I can’t go any further, after around 1700 miles I’ve finally come to a dead end. I turn left on Seawall Boulevard and cruise the length of the town along the beach. It’s Saturday afternoon and crowded. I need to eat something, I haven’t yet today, plus I need to buy a long beach towel to lie down on, I don’t even own one. Near the east end of the island I turn left again, head into the downtown, park at a meter and walk around. The downtown in this city, like most, caters to out-of-towners, everything is a bit too expensive and unauthentic. But there are relatively no cars, and a lot of girls around, so I can’t complain. I find a small little outdoor café, order a grilled tuna sandwich (which is fantastic) and a Shiner Bock, eat outside at a table near a rather impressive manmade waterfall fountain, listening to some guy playing guitar and his wife singing back-up, they cover the Beatles and Van Morrison and are horrible, I’m one of only three tables occupied, and one of those are friends of the singing couple. And they have a giant tip jar, a gallon pail, hanging in such a manner that you actually have to duck under it in order to walk down the narrow pathway back to the street. I still have a substantial amount of the one hundred and twenty dollars I took out of an ATM in Madison, I’ve been paying for gas with my check card, but have no desire to give these kind folks anything, simply want to leave without feeling guilty. I get up and push in my chair, and, oh Christ the dude is smiling at me as he’s singing, that friendly “thank you for listening, we have shared this experience together and now are friends” kind of smile, I smile back and then resist eye contact as I walk calmly past the tip pail and out to the street. I smoke a cigarette and walk up and down the sidewalk in my flip-flops, checking out the stores and bars and firm tan girls. I buy a towel and then head back to my car, drive back to the beachfront, find a parking spot on the side opposite the water, and realize that I still have to change into my swim trunks. Hmmm. I get everything I need out of the trunk of my car: swimsuit, sun block, and return to the front seat. There is a lot of traffic on the road, but not too many pedestrians on my side of the street, so I wait for a space between the cars and quickly slip off my shorts and boxers and on my swim trunks. If someone saw me doing this I didn’t notice. I don’t really care too much, I guess. I put on sun block while standing near my car, it’s already about 4:30 so I shouldn’t have to worry so much, then grab my new towel and cross the street and down the stairs to the beach, not exactly good postcard material, a little drab and gray, but there is a breeze and waves and piers and gulls and surfers and bright sun and I’m so goddamn happy I want to sing. I leave my towel and flip-flops, hide my keys underneath (I don’t even want to think about what would happen if they got taken or misplaced, I’d be totally fucked), and walk towards the ocean for the first time since I was eleven (in Florida over Christmas on vacation with my parents). It’s warmer that I had thought it was going to be, I wince past the small rocks washed up near the edge of the water and wade further out. The waves are big and strong, I have to struggle to keep my balance as they hit me from in the front, and then the water rushes back out to sea underneath, pushing my ankles from behind. The water doesn’t get deep very quickly, but soon I’m out far enough to dive into the water with my whole body, right through a wave which instantly pushes my swimsuit down around my knees. I crouch and tie it properly, and then I’m off, feeling the sun and water and wind all at once, feeling the heat I’ve absorbed over the past couple days just leave my body in a rush. I want to stay here forever, grow fins and gills. I dance with the waves like Fred Astaire, dance with them like I never could with any girl I’ve ever met. I get out of the water, due to exhaustion, and crawl onto my towel. I look at the muscular surfer girls and the beach bunnies and their tanned boyfriends and feel incredibly white. I seem to be the only person here by himself, as well. Who goes to the beach alone? I walk up and down the shore and then go back into the water, where all my worries are washed away. I can’t remember when the last time was that I went swimming anywhere besides an over-chlorinated pool. While camping, a couple years before? I don’t even recall. And that would have been in some stagnant lake, without the salt and waves and endlessness of the ocean. I’m at peace, except now it’s past six and the shadows are getting longer. I dry off and wrap my towel around myself, get back in my car, drive out of town to the west end of the island, there’s a state park campground, but it’s all out in the open and mostly full and I didn’t bring a tent. Why didn’t I bring a tent? It would have been wonderful, sleeping outside, hearing the waves in the distance and waking up in the cool morning air feeling sleepy and horny and certainly more comfortable than folded in the backseat of my car. I almost consider going to a store to buy a tent, but decide against the expense, it’d be almost like getting an unnecessary hotel room, and instead drive into town. I call my parents from a gas station pay phone, telling them, as I have every night so far, which city I’m in and where I plan to be tomorrow. They seem amused by my actions. They didn’t quite understand my motivation for this trip, I had told them last weekend and they instead wished I’d go somewhere more certain, and not by myself, and possibly look for a job along the way. Their attempts to talk my out of it were barely acknowledged, and perhaps only delivered in a half-hearted manner. I also try and call my best friend, but he’s gone so I have to leave a message. We’d talked about taking a trip many times in the past, going on a whim to New York or even moving for a year to San Francisco or London, but those plans never really developed, he was busy and poor and there was always something which came up to prevent anything grand from happening. So if anything grand was ever going to happen, I would have to do it on my own.

A few hours later I am sitting all alone on the rocks by the beach as the tide stretches in, listening to my headphones and the surf, drinking out of a bottle of Shiner Bock I had bought, along with five others, at a mini-mart, trying to settle my butterfly-driven ‘come-on let’s keep moving there’s too much to see and do to possibly just sit in one spot and enjoy a moment’ stomach and my hopelessly kinetic heart. I had gone downtown and walked around the blocks and along the north piers, but had decided on avoiding all the bars and dance clubs and sunburned tourists, and found this little spot for myself. Earlier I had gone to Walgreen’s and bought turkey lunchmeat and made sandwiches with the bread I had brought along and no condiments. I was walking down the sidewalk along the beach when a homeless woman asked me if I had a sandwich for her. So I gave her one of mine and kept going. I’m regretting the fact that I didn’t start a real conversation with her, asked her to tell me a story. I, after all, was living in my car practically, so we shared some sort of bond. The bond of non-traditional sleeping arrangements, perhaps. But, no, I just kept walking, going to the Super Wal-Mart where I’d buy postcards. So now I am trying to look out for a) cops, because I’m not quite sure about the rules regarding drinking alcohol on the beach, maybe it’s not allowed; and b) packs of wild homeless men, with rat-like teeth and dirty fingernails like claws, ready to steal the fifty or so dollars in my wallet and devour me whole. And these rocks, wet, I could easily slip, especially after I’ve had a couple beers, drown in a foot of water. I’d drown, and then the pack of wild homeless men, or just one loner, would come and steal my wallet, and when my body was found the next morning the police would have no idea who I was, and my parents would start freaking out that night when I failed to call them. Maybe after a little while my parents would contact the Galveston police, since they knew I was there that night, and of course my car would get ticketed and maybe towed since you can’t leave it parked next to the beach overnight (unless of course my keys were taken out of my pocket and my car, parked very close, stolen), and eventually, after a few days, it would all come together for the authorities, and I guess someone would have to fly down there to identify my bloated dead body. My parents would have to call my apartment and let them know what had happened; I wonder if they’d have to pay my share of the rent for the rest of the lease. And I had just renewed it too. And they’d call all my friends that they knew, but what about the ones they didn’t know? I had an address book with me, in my car, maybe they’d find that. And what about Anne? Would she find out? Would someone think to tell her? Probably not, and of course she’ll never call me if I don’t call her first, that’s the way it has been for a couple weeks now, and she’ll just go on as always, probably glad that I’m no longer bothering her. She’ll get the first postcard I sent, from Oklahoma, and that’ll be it. And that fucking sucks, because if I die a sudden death, I’d want her to be the first to know about it.