I Am the Machine
Montgomery Village, Maryland
I had written something – not much but something – and lost it due to technical error/incompetence. It wasn't anything terrific so I'll just start again without bad feelings. Now that I think of it, what I had written was too large in scope: I was starting in on my mental health and family life and history and so on; I believe there's a narcissistic navel-gazing tendency of writers to want to default to autobiography. To avoid this I'll corral my output by dividing it up into places, starting with the one I'm in now. Travel writing is a good framework.
In a few days I will drive across the United States, starting in DC Metro Area Maryland and central Montgomery County, to central El Dorado County in California. I live in a municipality called Montgomery Village, which is just north of Gaithersburg and about 20 miles northwest of Washington DC. It's a shithole, mostly, I think.
There's no way the people who live here are poor, because rents and real estate prices in the DC area preclude that. But they are sort of trashy in an inexplicable way, parking anywhere they want and constricting the thoroughfare, leaving their garbage and old mattresses around outside, owning dogs that bark all day in their tiny fenced-in identical townhouse backyards, drinking and laughing and playing music at night, etc. I'd guess the neighborhood is about a quarter African American, a quarter European American, a quarter Latin American, and a quarter miscellaneous cultural-geographical immigrant, questions of citizenship notwithstanding. It feels like a poor neighborhood; a poor community.
There's a lot of construction, home improvement, and landscaping going on, at all hours, it seems like, in the non-raining non-winter. People are just too close together. I'll be glad to leave, because of all this, and because of a county-run group home for the mentally dysfunctional that has opened 20 feet from me, across the way. Or, it's just one neurodivergent man who caterwauls a lot, and a whole house full of his caretakers. Or, it's a sitcom-like collection of odd fish, who are often out in their backyard talking loudly, shouting, or downright screaming on the telephone, in Arabic or African French. Sound echoes in the canyon between two rows of houses, and travels up and through my bedroom window. I can discern conversations 150 feet away at the end of the rows, let alone conversations taking place in the backyard of the loony bin house.
Recently, the DC-Baltimore Metro Area was labeled "worst traffic in the nation", beating out Los Angeles and New York. I have some anxious, sensitive, temperamental and misanthropic tendencies and it's not easy for me to be surrounded by people, traffic, and noise, all the time. But I'm not that stupid; I know that the problem is not only created by population density, but by the way society is structured, for example in terms of every 175 pound meat-unit requiring its own two ton transportation device, the disconnectedness of modern society, neighbors not knowing each other, the death of community, etc. If you like your neighbor, you won't mind so much that he's banging on the wall or has a barking dog or whatever; people are more tolerant of friends and family. But this overcrowding of borderline hostile strangers is not my problem anymore – where I'm going I'll be out in the country, and subject to different problems (lots of bugs and McDonalds is far away).
Since I moved here at the age of 10 from Montreal, I've never liked DC Metro Maryland: It's humid, crowded, hateful, closed-minded, and materialistic, but maybe I'd experience all but the first two, anywhere. They like to pass laws here, and Democrats rule the political landscape. This is fine generally speaking – contemporary American political progressivism probably works well in more "hippie" socially tolerant and open places like much/most of the west coast, but in the tight-assed mid-Atlantic, socio-political left-progressivism produces (or reflects) a kind of Jonah Goldberg dystopia where, I think, you receive mixed messages: defeat your neighbor and be better than him according to a rubric of subsidized social climbing capitalism, but at the same time join him in a kind of forced equalist community two-bunk jail cell. And, you might not connect with him well enough to discuss this absurdity because it's likely that his background is not the same as yours – people here come from all over, and no one seems interested in anyone else, unless it's to exchange dirty looks on the highway. And as I said, Maryland likes to pass laws; the "democracy" box has been checked, rather than the "freedom" box. Police are everywhere, although they seem to go light on the civilian killings outside of Baltimore.
When we first moved here we'd take the metro into DC a lot and go to museums. That faded, and we (or at least "I") became like most other Central Marylanders: far removed from, mistrustful of, and resentful of Washington DC. A girl I was into for years made the successful jump from suburbanite to metropolitan, by commuting to a bar job and then getting an apartment. Then she started her real career (writer), bought a house with the help of a program that funded poor home buyers, and continued her ascent. She had some telling words...something like: "DC is so well-protected." She mostly meant in terms of the way the highways and roads are, but also culturally: I was in group therapy around age 18 or 19 and one of my fellows was a girl from DC who came to Gaithersburg. I asked her what DC thought of Gaithersburg and she scoffed or made a face or something, and might have even murmured some pejorative like "hicks" or "rednecks." Later in life, taking a Javascript class at that community college I mentioned above, I was called a redneck again by my Asian professor, all in fun. Cities are cool – that's all there is to it. If you're smart or talented you end up there and working where the money is. If you suck, you stay in the suburbs or in the country, eating and drinking yourself to death. People in both places are primarily watching screens though – I sometimes visited a friend in DC and all we did was watch TV. I don't actually know what people in general do but I suspect that metropolitans watch TV and eat fast food just like suburbanites, but they do it while living in a city and feeling better about themselves.
Cities have uneasy jealous relationships with the surrounding feeder lands, I think especially when the cities are important or "international." DC is a good lookin' city though; it makes you feel like you don't belong there because you are not smart or pretty enough. Wanting to live in a cool city is, to some degree, a young person's thing, and then when that person follows through and ages in place they find themselves in their 40s and stuck in a filthy concrete hell, crawling with homeless alcoholic criminals and marginally served by an incompetent and underfunded government. Probably city people have a canned answer for those particular sour grapes.
The whole crab-eating Annapolis/Baltimore "we are the real Marylanders!" thing is fine, but I'm not exposed to that; I'm in a pseudo-federalized no man's land, here in "Mo" county. Or, maybe I just don't talk enough to people, or maybe (probably) the whole country is gelling into an acultural blob. But, my opportunity to observe the DC Metro Area is closing fast: four (three and a half) more days then I'm gone, into Virginia and beyond. I don't think anyone else has arrived at a cohesive snapshot of Maryland, and I certainly won't; I'll leave largely in ignorance, but knowing that I don't really like it here and never have. Probably few from elsewhere have even a faint idea of what Maryland is generally like. Maybe they think Baltimore (Ravens, Orioles, "The Wire"), maybe they think crabs in the bay. I don't know.
That said, I realize that every state is similarly resistant to analysis: "You can't generalize about (Kentucky/Montana/Hawaii/whatever) – it's really like five totally different states! You have the x in the south, the y up north, the z in the middle, etc." Maybe Maryland is more so this way but I doubt it. Maryland being slightly unusual might be only because it is small and partly eaten by Washington DC, like Connecticut is by New York City or Rhode Island is by Boston.
Now that I think of it, Maryland is divided into urban, suburban, and rural, like anywhere, and I'm not sure there is a big difference, culturally, between rural western, rural eastern, rural southern, etc. Maybe rural central has fancier houses. Are the DC suburbs and the Baltimore suburbs the same? Yeah kinda. Is DC the same as Baltimore? Not really, but DC is not part of Maryland. It's easy to get sidetracked with discussions like this so I'll push on.
After all my Maryland-bashing you might suspect sour grapes. On the plus side, Maryland has plenty of water and there are no wildfires, and it was not my decision to move; I didn't want to at first. To be honest I'm not sure if I want to now, but I don't want to stay here either. I want things to be different. My feelings of discomfort are more about who I am than where I am. I don't have a job or a family of my own, and I said goodbye to my three friends here (one I saw once every two weeks, the other a few times a year, and the last maybe once a year on average), and will say goodbye to my father's family and my father on Saturday. I saw them pretty often – once a month, maybe. It's midday Thursday now, and I leave early in the morning next Monday. I'm ready to go, I think, but I get a strange ill feeling when I think of i-66 leading out to Front Royal and i-81 which will take me south to Kingsport, Tennessee, my first stop. Maybe I'll get squashed by an 18 wheeler.
An internet friend asked me about my trip, so I'll post those questions-and-answers, plus some elaboration and "prose-ification" (text chat doesn't usually make for complete or elegant sentences without a lot of editing). That is a good way to begin.
Q: Is there room in the car on the road trip?
A: There will be some room; I'm not taking most of my stuff as it's being transported by hired movers. I'm taking photos, fancy dishes, decorative miniature animals, and clothing to my stepsister Renee, in Wyoming, and I'll have some other personal items with me like this laptop, a guitar, a camera, clothes, papers, and so on. Probably the front passenger seat will be clear but the trunk and backseat will be full.
Q: Do you have any passengers?
A: No. My mother and Jim are charging across the country in four days, together in another car, and starting out a few days after I leave. I am concerned that they will become exhausted, crash, and die, but my mother has assured me that she will leave her cell phone "on" and keep it charged and nearby, so that if she doesn't pick up I can immediately panic. I, on the other hand, am going to take longer to cross the country – somewhere between seven and ten days, probably, maybe. Right now I have the urge to extend this even more by hanging around in Colorado or with my stepsister Renee for some length of time, but that may change when the time comes. I think ultimately I just want to evaporate into a puff of something ethereal and live as spirit among the buttes in Utah (they have Google Fiber in Provo).
Q: Are you driving?
A: Yep. Gonna be a long drive. I'm dividing it up into eight roughly six hour minitrips, followed by lying around for a while, and/or socializing with the people I've arranged to visit en route. I'm an okay driver. My mother and Jim think I'm a good driver but this is because I have fast reflexes and a year ago avoided a collision on the highway with them in the car. I have trouble with anxiety and making right turns into traffic however (is the car coming in my lane? Will he change lanes? What is the general level of competence of these other drivers and how assiduously should I avoid being near them?). All this sounds like I really do think I'm a good driver, and that I think real good drivers don't know they're good drivers, so they don't brag about being good drivers; it's complex trickery to convince you that I'm a good driver. In truth I'm average or slightly below average. Or maybe my elemental driving skills are so uneven that it's hard to encapsulate all of my driving as "good" or "bad." Who knows? My anxiety might be a good thing in some circumstances, but in others it gets in the way – sometimes I'll get so stressed out in a maneuver that I'll just "get it over with" without checking my surroundings well enough. And, there's the whole brain injury thing. Probably I shouldn't be allowed to drive at all.
Q: Are you staying in motels?
A: Some, or maybe exclusively; I haven't decided. I found addresses of some mid-priced hotels in all of my destinations, and then also the addresses of nearby truck stops if I feel like I want to save money and rough it a bit. I would like to do this (save money and rough it), but sometimes the flesh is weak. We'll see what I end up doing. I think I will try it at least once to experience sleeping in my car surrounded by diesel engines roaring and bright lights flashing, and see if I can stand it. There's a chain in the USA called "Love's Travel Stop" that gets good reviews, which I'm curious about. There's also Pilot Truck Stop, which also seems to be thought of highly. People on the internet say that truck stops are the safest place you can sleep on a road trip outside of paid lodging.
Q: What is the price of a motel?
A: I narrowed my search to places between $75 and $100 a night. I have had bad experiences with cheap ($40 a night) hotels (stench, unmade beds, mess, filth, disease, etc). I don't enjoy feeling like a primadonna, but sometimes I think physical comfort is the only thing I really "have" in life (I mentioned being single, unemployed, fat, and brain damaged).
Q: Do you have a Google Maps route link?
A: I do.
This is an elegant URL – you can easily read each stop in it. As I mentioned, the first thing to do will be to head west on i-66 toward Front Royal, Virginia, so as to get on i-81 and head southwest toward Kingsport, Tennessee, where I'll do a quick visit with another internet friend (other than the one who asked these questions). I'm not sure if I should write about people, because that always gets you into trouble. But people are a big part of this trip – in a sense I'm structuring the whole thing around visits; certainly I'm driving in a less direct way than I would have if I'd just gone straight to California.
The first thing that the extremely astute or the web surfer will note is that my route is not a straight shot – it bends in a "U" down to Kingsport and up to Paducah, and also heads straight north from Boulder to Thermopolis before cutting west again. This adds some hours – maybe 5 or 10 in total – to what would have been, without people to visit, a more linear east-to-west efficiency drive.
The first person I will visit is Internet friend #1, named Ben, who lives in Kingsport. He's just six hours southwest of where I am now, and I plan to get there sometime during midday, having left early next Monday. We'll eat, and talk, and probably that's it. Maybe walk around. He seems concerned that there won't be enough for us to do; I've tried to reassure him that things will be fine. Next there's internet friend #2, or Troy, in Kansas City. The only thing he and I have discussed is that I should come to his house and meet his family. After that, I'll see a long-time friend's younger brother Yoni, along with his family, in Boulder. My arrival might coincide with the end of Sukkot, a Jewish holiday, and so Yoni, a very observant Jew, will be unable to use telecommunications or drive at that time. I might end up going to synagogue with him and/or sitting around on a creek bed watching his daughter play (these were approximately his words in an email). Finally, I'll visit with my stepsister (my stepfather Jim's daughter) Renee and her husband Ricardo, who live in Thermopolis along with her son Kaleb and his girlfriend Jade. Renee has said that she would like to offer me a place to sleep, and I might take her up on this if the offer still stands when I get there; at first, I had wanted to stay in hotels, but the mounting price of this started to sting a bit, so I might be grateful for relief that does not involve a truck stop parking lot.
My new home is near (maybe officially "in") Camino, California, which is a very small town (one or two thousand people). I have been working on the best way to describe my new locale, and it's something like this: just south of Camino, which is just east of Placerville, which people are more likely to have heard of. I'll be an hour east of Sacramento and an hour west of lake Tahoe – between the two of them, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in east-central California, surrounded by wildfires and pulling on ever-diminishing water resources. The hope is that El Nino cooperates this year and we have a wet winter. "We"...already I'm talking like a Californian and I'm still here in Maryland, sitting on my bed, listening to the autumn crickets at night.
Among these more important places containing humans I know, are some rest stops: Paducah, Kentucky (home of the National Quilt Museum); Wakeeney, Kansas (about halfway through Kansas, maybe about where Kansas turns from humid to dry); West Wendover, Nevada (border town between Nevada and Utah – casinos on the Nevada side). Just spend the night and move on, in those places, I think. But in the other places I'll spend one or two days, or maybe more. I don't know what I'll do, ultimately. I fear I may have overplanned already, and the fact that I have a number of people who are expecting me around a particular time already puts a certain unwelcome constraint around what must be a quintessentially Bohemian experience, according to any and all American lore: "the cross-country road trip." So I think I will have a map, but then maybe throw the map away, so to speak. Or I might just be boring and plough on through on schedule. I'm not sure how exciting this is going to be: a lot of driving, which I've done before, and then visiting with people in an adult, perfunctory, dinner-and-drinks way, which I've done before. But 1) perhaps "exciting" is not the thing I am looking for, and 2) Heraclitus cautions against this kind of rhetorical trap: "You can't step in the same river twice", he says, meaning that experience is never what you think it's going to be (at least, not exactly).
Q: What kind of car do you have?
A: A 2005 Hyundai Accent. It's a small stick shift sedan that I've cared for and serviced on time. I've employed a mechanic I mostly trust, and "my" car (my mother owns it but I fix it and drive it) gets good reviews online. I am a bit worried about foot/leg cramps and discomfort in driving for so long without cruise control, and a bit worried about sunburn through the window. Maybe these things are silly, inasmuch as I have sunscreen, a sun shield, and a long sleeved shirt I can wear if necessary. The foot and leg discomfort, well...we'll see. It may not be that bad. I hope I don't stress on the road. Probably I should be more worried about that than I am (worrying about starting to worry about worrying sounds pathological). I freak out easily on the road, when there is heavy, fast, close-together traffic (all the time, around here). I don't like the looks of St. Louis, or Kansas City – I don't want to drive through them or around them or near them. I'll be staying in one of them, maybe for two nights. Some people relish the unexpected and I think I do, too, to a degree at least – when the unexpected comes in the form of a new movement in a piece of music. But when it involves flooding or a closed hotel or a mechanical failure in a car, or even worse: a traffic jam, I doubt my ability to take it in stride. I thought about asking my psychiatrist for some Xanax before I left, but didn't.
I'm going back and forth on this: should I bring my guitar, or should I pack it for the movers? The only disadvantage of packing it for the movers is that it might be subject to dry conditions. The main advantage to leaving it for the movers is that I won't have a big encumbering expensive easily damaged stealable thing with me for 3,200 miles of road travel. Probably I will end up packing it, along with my mother's guitar, and relying on humidifying guitar case sponges (this is a thing) to not dry out over the course of maybe one week, probably two weeks, and possibly three weeks (moving companies are bad at giving a precise time frame). Here, in Maryland, where the fall humidity is around 50% on average (perfect for guitars – another reason not to move), the sponges dry up in about two weeks. So once the moving truck passes central Kansas and things dry up after, let's say, a week, the rate of sponge drying will increase – let's imagine it's cut in half. So, maybe, the guitars will go 3.5 days without water; I think this will be okay. Also, my guitar was made in China and was slathered in lacquer by some factory worker and/or robot. Perfect intonation though...best I've ever played. Maybe a little on the quiet/un-resonant side. I'm not so worried about my mother's guitar: 1) I hardly play it, 2) it's her guitar, and 3) it's a tough old bird.
I'm going on and on...I could do this for pages, maybe indefinitely, so I will cut it short. When I write again it will be after having given up my house keys.
Winchester, Virginia
I took "the small roads" out of Maryland into Virginia, instead of using highways 495 and 66. This may have been a mistake, but it's all done now. I say this because the experience of navigating unfamiliar twisting narrow roads in Virginia in the dark was, like so many other experiences in my life, stressful. I felt some relief when I got on the highway to Winchester, and drove my final 25 or so miles without such a level of pain. Now I'm sitting in a gas station/convenience store with a Dunkin Donuts, Subway, and maybe some other things in it. I had weakly resolved to eat healthily on this trip, but that fell out the window when I felt the relief of getting out of my car, and saw delicious hot food. I am a stress eater, or a suddenly relieved-stress eater. I am mostly just an eater. Also, on the subject of confessing my mental illnesses, when approached by a pack of cars going faster than me, I said out loud "I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared." Maybe I have a fear disorder instead of an anxiety disorder. Maybe I have both. I think it's both.
Now I have only about 5 more hours to go til my first stop: Kingsport, Tennessee. I talked to the first guy I plan to meet up with yesterday, named Ben. He sounded depressed and tired. I think maybe he was less-than-happy because I had built my plans around him having today off, but his school schedule changed unexpectedly, and so he will barely have any time to meet with me. Maybe no time at all. He's doing the best he can and I appreciate it. I could have switched everything all around again and alerted everyone with "oops there's been another change" but I wanted to get out of Montgomery Village today, this morning, at 5:30am, and did.
Ben is a reformed drug dealer who spent a few years in prison. He's trying for a middle class life, and is doing well at it: finishing up college and entering the information technology workforce. He impresses me a great deal, and inevitably I compare myself unfavorably to him. A few times I've wanted to tell him that I'm proud of him, but I don't know how that would go. He had a rough early life, with drug addicted and probably abusive parents with whom he is no longer in contact, ended up in prison, and now is making something of himself in dogged defiance of the tendency of inmates to return to prison rather than assimilate into mainstream society ("recidivism," is I think what you call that). If I had been born into his shoes I probably would never have ended up in prison because I don't have the motivation, skill, wherewithal, etc, to be a successful drug dealer; I'd probably just be homeless, dead, or in a mental hospital, social locations that don't seem that far off for me now, although I was born into privilege ("a few generations of my family on both sides have graduate degrees," he brags).
Of course I don't know how much experience is responsible for creating the people we are, vs. genetics. As far as I know "genetics" is more favored now – you are who you are, and you're born that way. There may even be studies that prove it. It's kind of fatalistic but maybe it's more accurate. Ultimately I think it's kind of leftist: no matter what you do, you're stuck – you can't "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" in accordance with the American Dream, unless you're one of the lucky few in possession of brainmeats that make that possible. Leftist, or Calvinist, or something. Maybe just deterministic. This segues into the "God vs. Free Will" discussion, where God-given "Free Will" is necessary to make life worth living in the face of the omnipotence of that God; it sorta seems like He is playing games. Not that I believe or accept or think often about any of this – it's just that I have spent a lot of time with Christians so they've kinda brainwashed me, in a mild "educational" sort of way.
I should get moving soon – the sooner I get to Kingsport the better chance my friend has of squeezing me in, although I resolved out loud, to my mother and her husband, that this trip would not be about bending over backwards to accommodate the schedules of others, and if someone was not able to meet up or imposed unwelcome constraints I would toss those people aside. Maybe that's just stress talking, but I think a milder version of this sentiment still holds true. But I hope I can at least see Ben – I've been talking with him for years on the internet.
Now I'm on highway 81, heading southwest from Winchester Virginia all the way past Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech and Seung Cho, past Roanoke, and into Tennessee. According to my GPS this should take a little over five hours. We'll see.
Somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee
I stopped at a rest area to write this. As it turns out, I'm not as keen on doing the hotel thing as I thought. Mostly the idea of parking, checking in, forking over $80, sleeping in a bed and watching HBO, then worrying about my stuff getting stolen out of my car, and then leaving the next day, seems unnecessary and probably unpleasant. So I think I will try to get all the way to Kansas City with a $0 hospitality budget.
I met up with my chatroom friend Ben in Kingsport. I was nervous, of course, but covered it up by going into "radio interviewer" mode – I have a firm voice and I sound educated, so I think that helps people listen and take me seriously. But I have a hard time being free and loose and getting all the jokes and just playing it by ear like people are supposed to do. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm capable of making deep connections with others. It seems like with most people, the more they spend in each other's company, the closer they get, and it eventually reaches this cosmic level of symbiosis where they end up having sex (if so inclined), or exchanging psychic messages. I think I am missing something there, after the head injury (before that I think I did okay at friendship). But I was glad to see him...we definitely shared something socially intimate over text chat and it was good to put a face to the name. I think maybe I don't get as much from others as some people do – I don't enjoy them as much, or don't have access to some deep level of spiritual connectivity, as I mentioned above, and I have an easy time saying goodbye. It's weird, and frustrating. This will be the only person I visit with whom I do not smoke weed. I have semi-facetious plans of getting a medical cannabis card in California and just doing that all day; it will be kind of like my retirement there, since the real world didn't work out for me.
What Ben and I actually did: eat Chick-Fil-A in his university cafeteria that stunk badly of burnt food, with two of his friends; the Chick-Fil-A homophobia thing was mentioned. Then I walked him to his next class, and was briefly nervous that I would not be able to find my car, parked in some student parking where I might have been issued a university ticket. I think I spent about an hour in his company. Mostly it served to tell the two of us that the other existed in real life, was not covered in pustules, could walk/talk/change facial expressions, etc. It was a "reality check."
Tennessee is nice, I guess. It's hotter and more humid here than in Maryland, which I don't like, but it seems laid back and friendly and is nice-looking, architecturo-culturally (the way the look of the buildings builds an impression of the way a city or other place generally feels). Or maybe it's not Tennessee that is such a different place than what I'm used to, but only the different town size: Kingsport/Johnson City is small and isn't really near anything big (the closest thing is Knoxville, which I am approaching now). I think I'm at the left-hand upper tip of my "U" that I made to visit Internet Friend #1 (Ben) – my 3 hour diversionary "U." The GPS says that it would take me 12.5 hours of straight driving to reach Kansas City, Missouri, from here. I won't go that long, I don't think – just maybe until dark, and then I'll find a place to sleep: a truck stop or rest stop or Walmart or hospital. I prefer playing it by ear like this.
Some large bug just landed on my head. I'd better go. One thing I noticed in southern Virginia was the accents. Ben has one, although his compadres – fellow computer science students at the Chick Fil-A – did not seem to. I'm particularly curious about Kentucky for some reason; that's next. It seems exotic and I think of Kentucky Derby Pie; also, I am psyched about Paducah. I should check my roadmap, or look at the one here at this travel stop. Travel stops are nice – I could spend a while here, sitting at this picnic table typing on my little $180 Acer Chromebook that still has 94% battery remaining. Then, in my car, I have a prepaid flip phone, two standalone GPS'es, and an iPod touch. I probably brought too much stuff – good thing I didn't bring my guitar like I wanted to at one point. I could have left my pillow and sleeping bag at home, I think...my car seat headrest is fine for a pillow and it's too damn hot for a sleeping bag. Stinkbugs! That's what landed on me. I'm outta here.
Cookeville, Tennessee
Ok, I'm still in Tennessee. Tennessee is really wide – it's proportioned like a 16:9 television. I appreciate it, as a state. It has lots of impressive natural features: rolling hills, misty mountains, rivers, streams, thick blankets of trees, and so on. It's big enough to be mostly wild, but it also contains real cities like Knoxville and Nashville. If you like hikin' and huntin' then I imagine this is one of the places to be. I did Kingsport, Knoxville, and now some place that begins with a "C" – Cookeville or Crossville. As the sun began to set, I thought "I don't want to drive at night." Then, it started to rain, so I pulled over and got dinner, which was depressingly huge (the "Special Dinner", it was called), at a Mexican Restaurant. I called my mom, who suggested I stay in a hotel rather than rough it at some truck stop or parking lot. It was a good idea, for me – I was starting to flip out a bit. And, by that, I mean experience bad feelings that were starting to express in uncontrollable ways. Probably some combination of anger and fear were the feelings, and the expression mostly took the form of shouting elaborately sarcastic, profane insults at God. Some of the feeling and expression though is more like screaming in pain, like someone who is being tortured. Pain is distinct from fear and anger, I think, and sometimes that's all I can discern: pain, mental anguish, etc, or maybe just excessive neurochemical impulses; I was twice diagnosed with a seizure disorder and I've had a few bona fide seizures.
The alternative to continuing to freak out was to hole up in a moldy hotel, and that's where I am now, for $57 a night. The two Tennessean front desk bros were watching a boxing match, and reluctantly came around when I walked up; one of them wore a popped collar on a white polo shirt. I can handle the moldy smell – whatever – but I hope there are no bedbugs, and if there are, I hope I do not transfer them to my new home. I must think to myself, "A homeless person would be grateful to get this room! It is luxurious." And, frankly, it is rather luxurious compared to sleeping in the car, which I had planned to do – but it was just too dark and rainy and ugly for that, plus my mommy said not to. Maybe something good's on the tube. If stuff gets stolen out of my car while I sleep here I will be unhappy; that was one of my big reasons for not wanting to sleep in a hotel. At least I was not so fucking stupid as to bring my guitar; travel as light as you possibly can, always – that is the takeaway. I connected to the wifi here and it is only mildly sucky. Tomorrow I might get as far as Kansas City but I might also not. If the weather and humidity is better I might consider, again, sleeping out. But we saw what happened to identical plans just now so don't count on it.
Giving more thought to my internet-to-real life encounter, I think I'm glad I did it, even though right about now I'd like to be three hours closer to Kansas City than I am, because the encounter will help cement our online friendship. Blah blah. In Kansas City I have been instructed by someone to eat barbecue, and I might. I will also spend two nights there. This is going to be an expensive trip but I thought/knew that would happen.
Cookeville, TN
I feel like I should write something after sleeping here in what turns out to be Cookeville, Tennessee, just westerly enough on my path to be in the central time zone, and after taking a lovely shower. I find that when I travel and stay in hotels in the United States, it's always a gamble on whether the water will be "hard" or "soft"; rinsing with "soft" water leaves me coated in slime. Here in West-Central Tennessee the water is hard, thank goodness. But at some point on my trip I know I will encounter the dreaded soft water.
I've changed my tune: hotels for me. Even the crappiest stinkiest loudest dump of a hotel is better than sleeping in the car. I need to shower pretty regularly because I am a naturally greasy person who is always secreting things through his disgusting oily skin. For this deformity I pay the penalty of $60 a day.
I suppose Hunter S. Thompson set the standard for a road trip, and now if you want a memorable experience you need drugs, or violence, or something. Well soon I shall have it – just gotta make it to Kansas City, where the second person I'm going to meet, named Troy, will furnish me with marijuana. 10 hours to go. I won't start again til it's light outside in 20 minutes or so. Looks like I might be drivin' into some weather this morn.
A rest area just over the Kentucky border
I just crossed over into Kentucky, and I felt happy to do so and leave Tennessee – Tennessee is just too big, and too humid. It's more than humid: the state seems contained in a cloud; thus "the great smoky mountains." I'm sure it's not always that way, everywhere, but I got a lot of that during my drive through. One nice thing about being a traveller is the short, open, honest interactions with strangers that I, at least, feel more inclined to participate in. There have been several – most recently with a "Kentucky Welcome Center" greeter who answered a question I've been posing for a while now: Kentucky is no different, culturally, from Tennessee. But, culture is everywhere and is reflected in everything, or so says the former humanities grad student, so maybe we need to ask: how is Kentucky different from Tennessee, in any way? 1) It's smaller, less populated, and with fewer big cities, and 2) it has more streams than any other state save Alaska – so says "Dallas" the welcome center greeter.
Highway rest areas, I must reiterate, are nice. At least during the day. I think I've decided that at night I must hole up and not move around much. When it's dark I'll be in a hotel. During the day, I'll be out and about: either driving or exploring some place like Kansas City. I think I'm going to end up staying another night. My GPS says I have over eight hours to go before Kansas City, and I might stop in another three, maybe, or four if I'm feeling adventurous. Everything is easier and I guess somehow less interesting if you have money. I have some money – I don't mean that like "I'm set for life" but I have some in the bank and can afford this trip, and still have lots of adequate cushion leftover for my inexpensive life, mostly free of room and board. They say that it's dumb to keep money in your checking account, but I disagree, because in fact I'm buying something: I'm buying security. Life lesson #1 in this document – take heed.
I visited a new-age guru/therapist in Michigan last spring, and my impression of the visit has been that it was mostly useless: she did a "clearing," which means she waved the evil spirits or evil energy or whatever away from me with some hand gestures, but that's not the worst part: she tried to sell me homeopathic products. The Internet is resolute and unified in its response to homeopathy: it is dumb and bad. And yeah, I agree that there's nothing (as in, no thing – aside from water they are materially empty) there and any effects from homeopathic remedies are placebic. However, "placebo" is a big term that has not been unpacked often or sufficiently (right?). Mostly it implies something about the body's or "the self"'s ability to heal itself. So, "placebo" sounds like a dismissive term but I think it points in the direction of something enormous in the curative arts/sciences. That said, I still think homeopathy in its current cultural container is stupid; I'm on board with The Internet there.
The reason I brought up this guru-woman is that one of the things she said sticks with me: she said that it's ok to feel a need for safety and security, and that this doesn't make me weak or incompetent. Well maybe it does, but that's ok too. I just need a lot of hand-holding, even if it's me holding my own hand. I get through the best I can – I'm not a grand adventurer or MacGyver or anything like that. I stay in hotels, go out to eat, and so on.
I like stopping for awhile, then driving for an hour or so, then stopping again. It feels decadent. I think I am starting to love my Chromebook. I have mentioned Google and Chrome and various Google products a lot in this document. Does this mean I am a scumbag and/or capitalist? It's kinda like in the movie "You've Got Mail" where AOL is featured, or "Castaway" where FedEx is featured – there might be some business or service or capitalistic feature that exists and is a big part of our lives, and mentioning it doesn't necessarily constitute advertisement or shilling. Right?
I have not taken a single picture on this trip. If a trip is about photography then it becomes a time consuming, walking-around-the-neighborhood, thing.
Paducah, Kentucky
For some reason I had been fixated on Paducah, Kentucky, while I was planning my trip, so it seemed right to stop and spend some time there, which I did. Researching it a bit while planning this trip, I had found the National Quilt Museum, which might sound sort of kitsch and "largest ball of twine in three states"-ish, but it was impressive, $11 admission notwithstanding. Quilts take a long time to make – that's their main deal, I think. And, along with that, you'll see necessary attention to detail and a lot of precise execution; there's a computerized quality to it, in a way. According to man-hours spent, a quilt-maker would have to charge huge amounts of money in order to earn a good wage. Memorable ones were two blue and gold macaws and a Paris waterfront scene. I learned something from the guard – in quilting, basically you have three things you can do: sewing bits of fabric on top of a base fabric, joining bits of fabric at the edges, or painting the fabric.
Before the quilt museum I went to a pawn shop, and then a McDonald's. I went to the pawn shop to look at the guns, and to McDonalds to use the wifi, in order to find a strip club in Paducah. I found one and went there; it was depressing, I suppose some readers might say predictably. Come to think of it I don't think I've ever felt lifted up and elevated after visiting a strip club, and I have sort of a tendency to go to them in different cities (Montreal, Detroit, Baltimore, now Paducah, maybe other places). Just one dancer with pregnancy stretch marks and kind of an agéd marmot facial configuration, named Lacy, was on the stage. I gave her a dollar, paid $3 admission, and bought a $2 tiny plastic cup full of Bud Lite. There was also what might have been a bouncer or owner sitting in the corner going over some papers, and one very fat middle aged man in shorts and a baseball cap sitting in the front row staring expressionless at Lacy. I know why I do this (go to strip clubs), but it's not clear why I keep doing it.
After the quilt museum I visited a small terrible art gallery that reminded me of the county fair children's art contest that I used to enter in Maryland – the one where blue ribbons are awarded to East Asian kids who have precisely shaded realistic drawings of dogs for hours, hunched intensely over the paper. It was a collective-funded gallery; in the collective there are a couple of hundred local amateur artists, and if they pay dues they can show their work at the gallery. Probably this sort of thing exists in a lot of places, but it's a little bit shameful, in my opinion – it seems to be for people who aren't good enough to be "real" artists but still so want to be artists that they pay a fee to do an imitative dance. Maybe it's not so bad, I dunno. But I know a few people – enough to generalize that this is "a type" – for whom their ambition and narcissism and, more charitably, "creative drive", far exceeds their talent. After that I went to the arts district (the "real" arts district), about which I received one version of a story from the attendant at the terrible children's county fair gallery, and another version from a "real" live artist (a potter) in the arts district.
The first version goes something like: the city of Paducah gave away a bunch of real estate to artists on the condition that the artists would fix up those houses and leave their galleries open to the public, but lots of artists just used Paducah as a cheap home base while showing elsewhere and were never there with open doors – plus half the artists just upped and left.
The second version goes something like: the city of Paducah gave away a bunch of real estate to artists, and had unrealistic expectations that the artists would be running something like a shopping mall, and were upset when half of them left, not realizing that a 50% success rate in the realm of small business is grand indeed; plus the arts district has done great things for Paducah even if it didn't work out exactly the way the city wanted it to.
It was kind of funny to hear both, because when I recounted the pay-for-play artist's story for the potter, he barked "Not even close!" and then launched into his version, which I thought was in fact pretty close to the first version except for another opinion on which party was in the right.
The guy who told me "version b" was an enormous tool, with a dyed-blonde elongated "bouillon cube" beard and odd-rimmed glasses. To this day I'm not sure why artists insist on looking like artists; it's like some teenage fashion gene that usually shrivels up and appropriately dies on schedule in healthy people is kept cancerously alive in artists, causing things like 3" chunks of lower lip hair at the age of 50. The potter asked me if I was an artist, and I reflexively said "sorta, yeah...I have an MFA (Master of Fine Arts degree)," a position he attacked on the spot. I agree with his "gotcha": having an MFA only means that I have an MFA. But the problem is (of course I didn't say this right then and there because I am a slow thinker, especially when my brain is encumbered by the complexities of socialization, plus I don't like fights) that the definition of "artist" seems to vary depending on who is talking, and furthermore will vary in the direction of who is talking; for example, perhaps people who are overly subsumed by a capitalistic market are more like plumbers than artists, and don't have the intellectual tools to be sociopolitically self-critical, although I think any and all artists, academic or market, are practiced hands at seeming rich and smart, so they're hard to defeat. But is art "bigger" or more important than just making/selling tchotchkes? I dunno; maybe. That said, I tend to agree with this kind of Warholish character in Paducah that someone who makes art and makes a living off his art, is an artist. So, thanks to him, I have this prepared for when someone asks me if I'm an artist or that subject comes up again: "I have some training and background there." I will rehearse it a few times.
Right before the Warholesque minifactory visit (the Real Artist gave me a postcard that reads "Don't become famous for doing something you don't like") I had a mint iced latte or something at a youth art market cafe. They had put up a sign that read "Les Toilettes," pointing to the restrooms – it was an interesting example of what you see in an arts district in Paducah, Kentucky; if that sign were for some reason found in Chicago or New York or whatever, the only explanation for its existence would be three or four levels of irony deep.
Somewhere in southern Illinois
That's where I am now – I just pulled off the highway and am in a junky-looking supermarket parking lot. A lot of America is poor and junky looking. I wonder if it wears on people and makes them feel poor and junky themselves, especially now with the Internet and pervasive cable TV and so on that presents more or less a single standard for how to be that everyone sees. This goes back to that "architecturo-cultural" concept I landed on some words back; basically you can tell a lot about a place by "deconstructing" what people have built or have allowed to accumulate there, unless they're making a real effort to fool you. And, even then, maybe so.
Also, I almost can't believe I'm in Illinois. It feels foreign. Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky are part of The South, and although lots of people deny that Maryland is part of The South, it is at least adjacent to it. But Illinois is in the midwest, pretty much, although I have heard that southern Illinois (here) is a different beast. I'll just be here for a little while – St. Louis, Missouri (yuck), is nearby. But Missouri is weird; neither midwest or south. On a Mercator map it looks to be in the geographical center of the United States, which counts for something.
I visited a convenience store/gas station that had old-school gas pumps with flip numbers and manual switch-on levers; analog pumps. In the back of my head was the notion that the gas itself was similarly old fashioned (the pumps read "UNLEADED"), but I realized that was crazy-talk. I complemented the cashier on his pumps. I also did this in Tennessee, but for a different reason: there I saw and used a very modern slick fast pump – the Apple Computer of gas pumps. The response to my compliment in Tennessee, from an Indian woman who was at first very nervous when I asked "Are you the owner?", was "Bless you!". The response of the cashier in Illinois to my gas pump compliment there was "Yeah we get a lot of compliments on our pumps...also we get a lot of people who don't know how to use them!" I replied, "Mostly young folks, probably." He went something like "Haw, yeah", and that was that; I felt dirty afterwards. It's disturbing how fluid and flexible my personality is depending on whom I'm talking to. I guess this is normal, but maybe not that normal; it seems schizophrenic.
It's evening rush hour, all roads lead to St. Louis, it's raining, and it's a quarter after five. So...maybe I should just stay here (southern Illinois, or the junky supermarket parking lot)? Nah, I'll drive til it gets dark in earnest I guess. But I had to pull over and do an entry for Illinois. Every once and awhile I flip out and start yelling back at the intrusive personalities who speak to me in my mind. The voices give me advice and try to help me, but they still annoy me. A quick aside: does talking about my mental illness give me "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" points, vis-a-vis roadtrip literature? Anyway, I had a therapist who suggested I respond with compassion to these voices rather than with violent anger. When voices start in on me, I suppose that means it's time to "take a timeout." Right? Right!?! I can't decide whether to leave this parking lot or stay here forever. I'm getting hot and sweaty.
I just saw a man with a "Chick Magnet" shirt. I think what happens is this: people wear that kind of thing in bumfuck locales like this one, and people from New York laugh at them while wearing the same stuff but doing so ironically, but the secret is that the people in bumfuck locales are wearing the "Chick Magnet" t-shirts ironically too; you just can't tell because they're fat and poor and are surrounded by aluminum siding, badly paved parking lots, and neon signs. People don't become stupider based on where they are, although IQ scores might drop. But that's another discussion (basically, I think measuring visual pattern recognition and vocabulary is a narrow way to assess mental ability).
I'm happy to be free.
Fairview Heights, Illinois
I stayed in a hotel adjacent to a Holiday Inn, so my assumption was that in order to compete this lesser hotel would have to keep itself pretty nice. I don't know if I was right – sometimes I'm not really sure what makes one hotel different from another. My guess that it's "the little things" – whatever stands out in a patron's mind. So, in this case, I could hear my neighbor snoring through the wall, and the detachable shower nozzle's bolt needed to be tightened so it would stay properly angled in place to spray my shivering body, and I saw a couple of stains on the carpet. Other than that it is just a hotel room, which is good, I think. I suspect I've stumbled upon a successful business model for the hotel industry: make them all the same and don't have little tiny things wrong with them like toilets that fill slowly or rooms that smell vaguely of mold, because travellers will remember those details and not stay there again, or worse: post angry ungrammatical exaggerations on the internet. It's kind of a narrow margin for good experience, but I think that's what capitalism does: makes everything the same, and then if something deviates in a bad way, or even in any way at all, that thing gets punished.
Fairview Heights, Illinois, is a really typical American suburb. It's just a big shopping/restaurant/hotel district, as far as I can see. It seems to be not-poor, too. In a way the poorer stuff, like that junky Illinois supermarket featuring the guy in the "Chick Magnet" t-shirt, makes for better stories. If stuff is fancy and monied, then, under capitalism, it just all ends up the same, the only slight differences being based on how much money a place has. For instance, (parts of, obviously, I realize) Dallas Texas is like Fairview Heights, but a little "nicer" – there's something "leveled up" about it even though it's basically of the same substance: maybe more and bigger buildings, fancier establishments, a little bit cleaner and better kept up, or something. This is not to say that Fairview Haven or whatever it's called, Illinois, is any slouch, but Dallas was like the Oz of Capitalism – I took it to be a cross between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. If you like that kind of thing (shopping and eating out), it's hard to go wrong with Dallas. An interesting dichotomy is that if some place is fancier, has more money, etc, then the actual experience will probably be more comfortable, but the stories that you get out of it will be less interesting. Or, maybe the suburbs are just boring, and you have to go to the city or the country and talk to people. Or, maybe you only have to be a good-enough writer to squeeze good stuff out of a suburban experience.
In other news I seem to have lost my $100 electric toothbrush. Maybe this is why all the cool stuff happens to youngsters: they don't have any money, and so are forced into interesting situations as they make due and sleep under bridges. Adults just drive around from place to place buying food, and losing their toothbrushes amounts to the hardship, the life problem, that they must overcome in triumph.
The clerk who checked me in was sexy. I thought about the possibility of asking her over to my room or what time she got off work, but I realized that that sort of thing is way more likely to produce bad feelings on everyone's part than a positive experience, plus I'm just shy and unconfident and not a "playa" and all of that. So I just thought about her, jerked off, ordered a pizza, and fell asleep watching Fox News with the light on. Also, she was fat enough so that I didn't feel too outclassed in that department. I think some fat can look good on a woman, but not so much on a man – men are supposed to be tough sinewy twists of iron, ready for the hunt, whereas women should be soft and gentle and welcoming and abundant in child-nourishing energy, in the womb and at the teat. I'm pretty sure women are "supposed to be" fat in the butt and boob areas, and that this is an indication of some kind of fertile energy wealth that attracts paleolithic-minded men in some imaginary acultural state. This is not to imply that I think we are cavemen bound to strict evolutionary psychology; I acknowledge that we can do whatever we want and, in theory, direct our minds and thoughts and passions wherever we want, examples being things like firewalkers, people who stay awake for days for some religious ritual, and the emaciated model "Twiggy" in the 1960's. Recall, if you will, my position on the all-importance of human culture: "man is the measure of all things."
Today I'll drive to Kansas City, which will only take a little under five hours, I'll check into a hotel, and then I guess explore KCMO (Kansas City, Missouri, as opposed to Kansas City, Kansas) on my own. Then tomorrow I'll meet up with another friend from the internet I've been remotely chatting with for years. I need to get more cash. God, being an adult is dull. Maybe what I need to do is be a journalist...go around interviewing people and recalling conversations, like I did with that artist in Paducah. I told the sexy clerk at this hotel that I liked her perfume, and that it smelled like saffron or something exotic/Indian/Ethiopian (I later found out this was just a lingering smell in the lobby). She said she was sort of obsessed with perfume, then I told her that my favorite perfume on a woman was White Musk, which she had never heard of. Then I told her about the book, "Perfume," that features a crazy guy who makes weird perfumes from odd substances; he either has a super-acute sense of smell, or no sense of smell. Yes, "Perfume"...you should read that, sexy hotel clerk. That'd be surprising if she did. I never have.
I will be happy to get out of the suburbs and out of the city. Problem is, internet friend #2 (Troy) lives in Kansas City, and the next person to meet on my list (my long-time in-real-life friend's younger brother) lives in Boulder. Then I can go see my stepsister, who lives in a tiny little town. Four humans in total on this trip if all goes well and according to plan. But then I'll be in the home stretch – not much more of this trip left, and I'll soon have to start a new life in Camino, California, that might turn out to be 1) unpleasantly similar to my life in Montgomery Village, 2) unpleasantly different, or 3) somehow both. Maybe I can do a cool literary thing where as I get closer I examine all kinds of growing psychological issues more intensely, and then pretend to resolve some personal problems and end with looking out the window in my new room.
I've often said I'd choose boredom over anxiety, but really I'd prefer to experience neither.
Just west of St. Louis MIZZOURAH
I'm in a diner – one of those "local color" places that you're supposed to eat in, as opposed to McDonalds. I walked into the empty establishment and blurted out "I guess I'm it!" The owner replied "...for now," with a hint of a defensive tone. I suppose it's not good when business is slow, although it's good for me, the customer – funny how interests are opposed there. Getting out of the St. Louis area was hellish – lots of complexity, construction, closed exits, heavy fast rude traffic, etc, and I'm not even really out of it yet; it's a big city, a "real city." The weather mysteriously turned pleasant from just east of St. Louis, to just west of St. Louis; I seem to have escaped the southern bog. And, I think it can only get better from here; the United States is basically divided in half: the humid east and the dry west.
Missouri is unique: it contains two big cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, with each being on the absolute edge of the state, east and west, respectively. Today I'm headed from one to the other, in four or five hours of driving. The geography might be changing from many many trees to slightly fewer trees. And then, in Kansas, one finds zero trees; I've been cheating on Google Streetview over the years and especially recently. Doing a roadtrip now, in 2015, is a different experience than doing one in 1990, or 1950. A cross country drive in 1950 would have been exciting. Now, I feel like I've seen everything in photographs already, and I know pretty much what to expect from the massive amount of information I've scanned since around 1999; 16 years of internet brain damage.
I have to keep reminding myself of Heraclitus's wisdom: "You can't step in the same river twice." That said, there is some objective measure of "different experience" that has been tarnished a bit by the internet and my advancing years; it's just not the same anymore, but I have no choice but to take what I am given. That is, until I get some THC flowing through my system. It's good stuff – it works to make everything so much more interesting, vital, alive, and immediate – it's like a mindfulness drug, sort of. I think the thing to look forward to, and the thing to focus on, is the people I will visit, rather than the increasingly barren landscape of the United States as I cross it heading west. At first I sort of thought I would prefer the more barren landscape that starts to exist about halfway across Kansas, but now I have an idea that I prefer the thick blankets of trees in Tennessee, although the humidity in Tennessee is unbearable.
I ordered a chili dog and it should be here soon; I wonder if I look like a yuppie nerd, with my glasses and laptop computer. I talked to a man just now who told me the name of this place – Warren County, I think he said – and then when I asked "What happens here?" he said "NOTHIN', HAW." Mine was a stupid, leading way to ask that question – the kind of response that is normal or expected is obvious, and that's what I got. I probably should have asked if people like it here, or if business is good, or something. It seems like in places that are not big cities, people purport to dislike it and wish they lived in a big city. But I'm thinking now that this is a ruse, and that they just say their life is "boring" in the suburbanized country while leaving out that "boring" is how they like it. It's a massive conspiracy.
I'm not that far out into the country – according to the defensive diner owner, I'm still more or less, arguably, sort of in the St. Louis area. And it looks pretty crowded, still, when I look outside. But again, this is the eastern half of the United States, and that whole area is basically crowded. Sorry to mention Google again, but if you go to Google Maps and click the little orange "street view" man while looking at the USA, you'll see so many crawled roads on the eastern half of the USA that they form an indiscernible blob of blue if you zoom out enough, whereas you'll start seeing big islands of non-coloration between big roads in the more westerly areas. It will be interesting to be in those westerly places; I've not really been any further west than Missouri or further east than Placerville, California – that in-between area is a large mystery. I don't think I've ever set foot in mountain time, aside from connecting flights. Man, modern life is a disappointment; it just seems to ruin everything with cheap mass produced flavorless approximations of reality, convincing people that they've "really lived." I need drugs. Maybe this is my "midlife crisis". I think if you use that phrase then the younger half of the population immediately loses interest in your text.
Around about the center of MIZZOURAH
I'm at a rest area, and I've decided that I like Missouri, maybe best of all the states I have driven through so far, as long as I can avoid St. Louis. Of course, this time of year – around October 1st – is deceptive; now nearly any place is going to seem better and it might be preferable to instead judge locales by climate statistics (low humidity and low temperatures, for me). I have about two hours to go til Kansas City. My "city phobia" (metrophobia?) is growing I think, although in fairness most of my complaints about cities have to do with driving and traffic. Maybe if I didn't own a car I would be fine, but I have a feeling I'd still complain about crowds. A ladybug is preening itself on my laptop. It just took off on a journey somewhere. Ladybugs strike me as putting in a fair effort into flying; they seem heavy, relatively speaking, with small wings. I poked this one before it took off, from behind, nudging it a millimeter or so forward. It didn't seem to notice or care.
I was thinking about girls, or women as they are sometimes known, and how two of them recently ignored emails from me. This might just be email culture, or the fact that I was never terrific friends with either of them, but still, it makes me depressed and inclined to think I am very unattractive, in a general, not-necessarily-physical way; in fact I can be weird and awkward and defensive and mean. Sometimes I think I don't really value people all that much as more than sex partners or sources of money, although that might be an exaggeration.
Some other times I think the worst thing to happen to public consciousness was the "downloading" of the psychiatric/mental health lexicon into the standard vocabulary such that now, you have everyone talking about being OCD or being a sociopath or being bipolar. I'm not sure which is worse: the possibility that regular people are misusing these terms, or the possibility that these terms are so fuzzy and literary that they can't really be misused, and that modern mental health care providers throw them around as haphazardly as anyone else.
Anyway the whole point of this is to convince you that I am not a sociopath – I am a garden variety low-empathy narcissist with poor self esteem. I know this for two reasons that I can think of right now although I'm sure there are several – oodles in fact – more: 1) when I'm on my bike I automatically imagine what it's like to be driving and have to avoid a bike, so I am careful to be non-annoying/hazardous in traffic, and 2) just now, and on many other occasions, I did not squash that ladybug for no good reason. I think I just have a problem relating to people. Plus, I'm fat and poor and live with my parents and don't dress well, and so people don't want to include me in their reindeer games.
If I spent another hour here at this rest stop I would get to KCMO in a good time for dinner. I have thought before that in modern life, there aren't that many places you are allowed to just "be" without coming under suspicion of loitering, trespassing, criminality, deviance, etc. Maybe this is just obvious and I should not expect a free lunch in a world with acreage for sale. I'm sure there are some places where you can just exist, but I think the general trend in society has been to compartmentalize and regulate human activity such that you have to have some goal, like going to the store to buy something, or going for a jog to stay healthy, etc, and if you just sort of stand there on a street corner you seem crazy to others and they call the cops, who tell you to go away. I've even had this problem in public parks (admittedly, it was at night). Generally, it's harder and harder to find a way to just "be" in an aimlessly way outside of your home. For another supporting example, consider the guards at the US-Canada border – they always need to hear a reason for visiting, and an itinerary. Even though I find it quite conceivable, or even desirable, that someone (such as myself) would want to drive to Canada on a whim with no real plans, I don't know that this is an acceptable thing to say to the border guards, who might not let one in if one were to say that. Border guards remind me of TSA agents: undereducated and overly-empowered. It's worth pointing out that American border guards have seemed much more relaxed and "easier" than Canadian border guards. Perhaps this is what happens when two countries of uneven population/power/cultural significance are abutted against each other.
The point of all this, finally, is that highway rest stops are rare places where you can just exist, indefinitely. Maybe there are jackbooted thugs who patrol them from time to time and don't like people hanging out all night, but I don't see how they could tell someone to leave unless they watched a car remain parked for 12 hours or something like that. In a way, highway rest stops are like a "hole" in modern society, so I like them. I can just sit here at this lovely stone picnic table, being attacked by ladybugs and typing at a document that seems to be less and less about travel and more and more just an excuse to journal. I'm a little sick of driving and I'm only about a third of the way there.
A man I just talked to, when I told him I was in the process of moving to California, asked "Did you get transferred out there?" No one suspects that I don't have a job when they hear me and see me – I don't look disabled, or even seem/sound disabled. They'd have to hang around with me long enough to see some psychotic emotional event in order to suspect that yeah, maybe it's best that this guy isn't in the workplace. Aside from that, though, my disability is that I don't like to work. "Welcome to the club! I don't like to work either!" Yeah, but I really don't like to work. "Hah! I 'really' don't like to work, either!" Yeah, but I really really don't like to work. "Oh."
The penalty of not working is that you get no girl, although there are exceptions to this (homeless people sometimes have partners, for instance). But I'm not attracted to girls who find me attractive; I guess this problem is an old one (not wanting to date in your own "league"). What happened was this: I started off with a nice looking face, a normal body, and a pretty smart brain, but then I got hit by a car and damaged my brain, plus I earned two degrees in fine art, and I gained about 150 pounds more than what I should weigh according to BMI charts. So, I'm stuck with standards that contain ideals of the women who would have dated smart, good-looking, lots-of-potential me, before the obesity and the brain damage, and before the art degrees. Maybe this sounds bad (a lot of people don't seem to believe in, or don't like to believe in, "leagues" for romance), but it's the truth. I either have to improve myself, artificially lower my standards, or continue my life as a masturbating monk, although I've had some short-term success at giving up pornography.
My brain damage makes life more difficult and unpleasant for me than it used to be, but I can still do some things (although I'm not sure I'd have been able to do this trip without the help of a GPS). I've told you about the voices, and the screaming; telling the voices to shut up and/or threatening them with torture and death, and then being sarcastic with God. It is notable in light of the foregoing that the two main takeaways from Judeo-Christian text are taken by many to be "love your neighbor" and "love God." A few months ago I wrote a document – maybe three pages – explaining exactly how and why I am disabled; detailing my neuropsychological dysfunction, and maybe I'll include that here, so you can read it and go "aha!". It might make things sound worse than they are, because I don't experience all those symptoms all the time; they're intermittent, and usually triggered when something confuses me, or wants to make my brain go faster and do more than it wants to, or I experience something like social pressure or emotionally charged expectations from another person. I think my emotional acting out (screaming, swearing, etc) is a kind of self imposed handbrake for those situations. Maybe all I can do is write. Employment is always stressful though – that's why they call it "competitive employment." I think modern success is measured in a person's ability to either cope with, or just not feel in the first place, fear and fear-related brain activity such as "anxiety."
Now I will get a second diet Dr. Pepper (I've been eating like a giant monster hog on this trip), sit in the car for a while, maybe lie down for a bit, then continue on my way. I'm so glad I'm doing this alone.
Liberty, Missouri, near Kansas City
I think there's a large gulf between the stories we tell and our realities. I'm in a place called the "Liberty Triangle," in the Kansas City suburbs, and it's almost exactly like Fairview Heights, Illinois: restaurants, stores, and hotels. But not only that: the stores, restaurants, and hotels are all pretty much exactly the same, from the brand names to the construction. I went out to eat last night, looking for barbecue since I'm in Kansas City, and I didn't want to drive anymore so I just went to a nearby place in the Liberty Triangle that sufficed: a Texas-themed steakhouse. What later amazed but then only filled me with a sad emptiness, was that this restaurant was precisely the same as pretty much every other restaurant of its type in existence, currently. They have proliferated like bacteria recently: Applebee's, Chile's, The Outback Steakhouse, etc. I'm not sure what you would call them, but the decor inside is identical, and they are priced similarly (around $10-$20 for a typical entree). It was crowded too...I gave my name and was given one of those light-up pager things like you always get at this type of place. I really wonder if going out to eat is all it's cracked up to be, in most cases; a lot of people really like to do it, but they keep going to Red Lobster and places like this, because they're convenient, advertised, pretty good-tasting and perhaps reasonably-priced, and therefore diners have mediocre experiences, but I'm not sure anyone in my social location knows how not to have a mediocre experience, maybe in anything.
I hate to mention capitalism again but I think this is what happens: a model that works, that makes money, is discovered, and then business owners all do the same thing, because it would be insane to try something new when you already know what "works" (makes money). So we end up with the entire country, from coast to coast, looking the same, at least in the suburbs. Maybe this is why the suburbs are thought to be so evil by so many. Why do I always end up in them, doing suburban things? I think because I am lazy, and the suburbs are easy – they make it that way. But, over time the suburbs kill you on the inside by offering nothing but the bland, shiny, lowest common denominator. Maybe an apologist would say something about the inherent beauty of averageness.
As I get older I become more "compartmentalized" in my worldview and cognition: "sure, let's go out to eat," I'll say, and then more and more I'll just go on autopilot, and through a lack of thought, energy, creativity, and originality, I'll end up at this Texas-themed steakhouse because that's where you get directed if you don't make some effort to "live creatively" and struggle out of the capitalistic suburban straightjacket. It bothers me that I saw this near St. Louis, and I'm seeing it now near Kansas City, the two great Missouri poles. I've lived in the suburbs my whole life and it might be too late to save myself.
I throw the word "capitalism" around a lot; I guess I mean something like, "when making as much money as possible is the main reason for doing anything." But how else are you going to do it? How do you encourage risky creative enterprise without the dream of financial success? Maybe that doesn't matter, and all we'd be missing without capitalism is Dave and Busters and eye catching commercials; you could still go out to restaurants and buy products, but maybe not have two to choose from. I notice that when there's something that isn't tied to money-making, figuring out how to use it is often a lot harder, because there's not really motivation to capture as much audience or customer base as possible. I feel like many people who talk about capitalism a lot don't know much about Marx or economics or anything, really, and I don't want to be one of those people. Knowing nothing about anything while talking about everything is kind of the hallmark of modern culture studies.
Yesterday evening took some effort: the first hotel I went to had only a $140/night room with a jacuzzi, so I used my GPS's outdated and incomplete list of businesses to find another nearby place that sounded affordable (a brand name I had heard and associated with affordable lodging). But then I realized that I was driving around downtown Kansas City during rush hour (which wasn't so bad actually), and that I was here to visit an internet acquaintance, Troy, and get some rest before moving on rather than do sightseeing in downtown KCMO. So I plugged Troy's address into my GPS and drove toward his house, stopping just short of it, where I called him and asked if he would help me find a nearby hotel (I don't have a smartphone, although I could have found a McDonalds and used their wifi with my Chromebook or iPod). Actually, what happened was I called him and asked if he wanted to start hanging out ahead of schedule. He said "no," in a nice way...pretty normal. In this case I was the weird one for trying to bump things up. Anyway, he found me a hotel, and I checked it out: it was $105/night with a mean and grumpy clerk, so I called Troy back and asked him to find me something cheaper. He did and I ended up here, in Liberty, Missouri, at the Super Eight Motel. I like it; It's clean and smells all right, although perhaps too strongly of deodorizer and cleanser or something – there's artificial citrus in the air that fills my senses every time I walk into the room. But it has a "cheap but clean" quality that I like; it doesn't feel so manicured and suburban.
I really do worry that I'm a boring person, and that I'm not capable of living in an exciting way anymore. When I was younger I think I was boring too, but I had some friends who dragged me around to stuff like jumping off cliffs in an abandoned quarry. Pretty much all of my cool stories from age 19 revolve around these friends and I'm all too aware of the fact that if it weren't for them I would have led a far less interesting life as a teenager and young adult. Now I'm in the midst of a life that involves places like the Liberty Triangle. This must be a midlife crisis – the kind of thing that people try to solve with sports cars or young girlfriends...something designed not to make them feel young, necessarily, but to make them feel like interesting, vital, alive people again, who do not set out in the dark at a waddling trudge off to the steakhouse across the parking lot from the Super 8.
One event of note there: I walked into the office to throw something in the trash, and immediately after got a phone call in my room from the off-site and angry Indian owner, demanding that I explain myself. I did, and I mentioned the incident to him when I checked out in an approximate gesture of claiming the "right." I don't remember who apologized to whom. Maybe both.
I can't do interesting things anymore. Everything I do has a title, and a name, and there's a prescribed way of doing it: "go out to a restaurant", "go out to a movie", "take a road trip", "go for a jog", etc; the adult world is a minefield of categories. A few paragraphs up I mentioned that the stories we tell are more interesting than our actual lives, but maybe it's the other way around: maybe I've become blinded to reality somehow, and my stories are about the steakhouse when in fact they should be about wondering if the server felt sorry for me, sitting there alone and kind of obviously depressed. Or about the recently turned seven year old kid at the table to my right who was having a birthday, and who was singled out by the whole establishment for a song, and who looked crazily, genuinely overwhelmed and excited, like he was on the verge of not being able to handle it. That's almost cheating, though, to use other people – what about now, in my hotel room? There's a tiny coffee maker here, and I remember being pleased with myself in Dallas when I saw a similar thing and worked out how to use it. I don't know.
I'm going to be disappointed if I get to Camino California without having had a "real experience," although I think it's that form of No True Scotsman that leads to the aforementioned midlife crisis: "I want to really live!" Bring on the marijuana.
The middle part of Missouri, where it gives way to countryside between the St. Louis suburbs and the Kansas City suburbs, looks like an American landscape painting. Also, there are many highway billboards featuring things like a quasi-evolutionary progression of salamander to monkey to human with a big red "X" over it, "What will you say to your maker?", and then going more fundamental with just the 10 commandments. I wonder what would happen if I had a "Hillary 2016" bumper sticker. I met a tattooed, muscular, shirtless man at the central Missouri rest stop who told me, immediately, for some reason, that he had just gotten out of prison. He was with his family, and his wife added quickly to the abrupt incarceration confessional that he was a nice guy. Then he added "...for drugs" (i.e., not for armed robbery). I told him congratulations (on getting out), and then that I had spent some time "inside" myself, which is basically a lie – when I was 19 (there's that age again) I spent the weekend in jail for pulling a gun on some people I thought were dangerous, during a drug-addled psychotic episode. But there's something about interactions with strangers that cause me to blurt out exaggerations; I guess I feel I'm not good enough as I am and have to spin things a little bit. This sounds typical, and probably liars are created out of low self esteem.
There has to be a philosophy for what I mentioned before: that creating names and categories for experience seems to kill it. For example, there are only three states of cultural geography: the suburbs, the country, and the city. The suburbs have steakhouse and outdoor malls and housing developments, the country has trees and grass and farms and old rickety houses, and the city has big rich fancy buildings and rickety dilapidated buildings, in different 'hoods, as well as staggering crowds and traffic. So that's existence – that's everything. I've already experienced everything. I guess it's the old Heraclitus thing, but I'm afraid I'm not a good enough writer to really paint a picture of reality – instead I just tell stereotyped stories: "Today I checked into the Super Eight motel and it smelled like mold." I do the best I can.
I think the problem has something to do with the inability of language and writing to describe actual experience, and my reliance on narrative to give a structure, meaning, and resilience to memory. I have a bad memory and I believe it has been made worse by my mood stabilizer meds (carbamazepine, or Tegretol). I'm going to go pig out on the free breakfast. I have a date with internet friend #2 at 10am, in three hours. So I'll freshen up, and try to get out of here by 9:45am. This what I write here is just a tiny fraction of my experience on this trip. Another part of the problem is something I mentioned before: fancy stuff is more pleasant to experience, but broken down shoddy stuff makes for better stories later. Maybe writers are supposed to exaggerate their suffering. Maybe they always have.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time...like tears in rain. Time to die." - Batty, from Blade Runner (1982)
Liberty Triangle, the next morning
Yesterday I hung out with internet friend #2, named Troy, and except for him occasionally looking at me like he was going to kill me, we had a good time. First he introduced me to his stepfather, who creepily hung out shirtless and smirking with his stepdaughter, and we chatted for a bit. Then, he and I smoked weed in his basement room. It's kind of an odd room – he moved into his sister's room for some reason and has not put up any of his own wall hangings or decorations, because, as he said, he's sick of living there and is kind of detached from the household. So there is a big poster of three wild horses – the type of thing a teenage girl would have – among other oddities. I played with his three dogs – big ones, some of which looked suspiciously like pit bulls, although the stepfather lied that they were boxers with long muzzles. He seemed like a real fuckface, in a lot of ways, one of which was not treating Troy very well or respectfully. I don't remember exactly what the stepfather said, but it was something like automatically dismissing Troy's statements as wrong and unimportant. Of course, I noticed this more sharply than I would have if I had been not-intoxicated with marijuana.
Troy and I talked about Martians and the FBI, such as we were in our mental state, and observed some suspicious street sweepers that seemed to vanish after we looked at them. "They're following you because you're crossing the country", Troy said...it seemed plausible at the time. We went out to eat, drove back, and hung out some more. We did some very nice ego-free guitar playing, where we'd just pass Troy's Ovation acoustic back and forth when one of us got tired of it, and that I'm not sure would have worked without cannabis. I put on some new strings for him, hoping it would help his intonation problems, but the neck had been cracked and so there's no hope, really. But it's interesting how in a guitar with intonation problems, the open chords is the area where you mostly see problems – if you play fancy stuff like mid-neck scales and intervals, then neck distortion like this is not so apparent. We also went out to lunch – we tried for Chinese buffet but it was closed, and so we went to a barbeque place; it was all right. I spent about six or seven hours with him – pretty impressive for an introvert like me, although I was helped along by the marijuana. I have mixed feelings about him. On the one hand, he can be nice and he's pretty smart and thoughtful and so on, and we had a good time, but on the other hand he's seriously crazy – like, state mental health facility-level crazy – and has violent tendencies. This could describe me too, but it doesn't mean I want to hang around with another version of myself. Troy is kind of trashy: missing a tooth and listens to Insane Clown Posse, but that could be a positive; maybe I would feel more uncomfortable with an overly-manicured, overly-socialized yuppie-type looking down on me. I like him, I think...maybe more in principle than in actuality. The death-stares and a mini-freak out where he seemed to blame and insult me for something like not arriving at the right restaurant (it's not clear exactly what happened but I felt some definite social discomfort) out were disconcerting, but mostly my negative experience with Troy comes from the Internet, where he occasionally flipped out and went manic, losing all of his inhibitions and generally being socially inappropriate and intolerable. Once he accused me of being behind some large number of the online identities on the computer system/club we're both on, of trying to steal his girlfriend, and maybe some other stuff. Generally I like to keep my distance from this dude or at least allow myself the opportunity to retreat, but that doesn't mean I don't hold him in high regard in some sense. He's interesting.
I'm not sure I enjoyed being stoned. For one thing, although I had lots of interesting and creative ideas, I wasn't near a computer or pad and paper, and I forgot them all. Now I'm kind of in the aftermath period, and I don't feel anything profound. On top of all this I am sick – I have a cold. I first felt something in Tennessee: a sore throat. Now it feels scratchy in that cold-like way, and I was feeling sort of like incubating in bed yesterday evening. I'm so fat and heavy that it's hard for me to sit anywhere but my car seat; I get tailbone pain, and it's hard to get up. Lately, I've been getting up more like a fat person: struggling and carefully bracing my legs in the squat position under my bulk and lifting it up slowly, rather than just popping up in the light and carefree way normal people do. I'm sure this is not pretty.
The strangest thing that happened to us, to Troy and me, on our intoxicated drive-about, sit-about, eating, and guitar-playing day was probably this: at one point we drove past some police gathered on a lawn...it looked to be some kind of ceremony. I assumed it was a wedding and in my state of mind I shouted "Congratulations!" at them, thinking that cops like this kind of HAW HAW I'M A LOUD AMERICAN sort of social engagement. Later I found out it was a funeral – I shouted "Congratulations!" out the window of a car rolling slowly by a cop funeral. Nothing came of it but it was pretty odd thing to have happen to a stoned brain.
It's funny how my brain struggles to find things to worry about – for instance, finding a hotel in Boulder is my new worry: should I look for a room and try to book one now, so I don't have a repeat of yesterday's situation where I tried five hotels before settling on one? Maybe I'll just look for a Super 8 in Boulder. For me the potential deal breaker with hotels is the smell, although turning on the air conditioning seems to help that. I think the problem is that I am lazy, and when I decide what I need to do I resist it a lot.
It's actually 11pm right now, and I just woke up – I went to bed at something like 6pm. I'll leave after dawn tomorrow and set off across Kansas. I've started eating "low carb" on this trip – I'm going to see how that affects my appetite.
Kansas City is nice – nicer than St. Louis, at least. I wonder how I will like Denver/Boulder. It's possible that I won't like it much. Ugh, I just had a bad-tasting painful coughing fit...one of those coughs that makes me feel like my lung tissue is disintegrating into a rotting lattice. I don't know that I'm going to seek out more weed in Colorado, as I had planned to.
Iowa, near the juncture of Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska
This place seems like "real America," to me. And if a thing seems like something to me you can bet it seems like something to other people too – I don't live in a cultural vacuum and I'm not that crazy; I think this area of the country enjoys a certain "down home," breadbasket respect in other places. I'm at a Pilot travel center, which is one of the truck stop chains I had originally planned to stop and sleep at before I pussed out and went for hotels. Speaking of hotels, I'll be spending $300 in Boulder to stay three nights – and that's about as cheap as it gets. I have decided that I prefer "Super 8" motels, based on a single experience at a non franchised location – this is why I did not enter the sciences as a trade.
I was a little ways north of Kansas City, and I'm heading a little ways north of Boulder, and so the set of Garmin navigation algorithms put me on a different path than the Google algorithms put me on, assuming central Kansas City to central Boulder. As a result, I will not be travelling through Kansas, but Nebraska. I hear Nebraska is nicer, anyway. Pilot charges for its wifi which is sort of unbelievable in this day and age, but I guess it's like an airport in that way. But still – there are Subways and McDonaldeses and so on here (I have a Starbucks gift card I need to use), all of which always have free wifi. Of course, airports feature those places and they (I don't think) don't have their own special wifis.
I'm sitting in a parking lot again, mostly shielded from the sun and smelling the sunscreen I slathered on my left arm and left knee to protect these body parts while driving. It's a pretty nice place to hang out, and no one is going to bother me here. I have a headache, probably from a combination of the weed I smoked yesterday, caffeine withdrawal, and being sick with a cold. There are so, so many pickup trucks. The per capita number of trucks has increased steadily from Virginia through Tennessee and on to Missouri. I wonder if in some endgame I will see pickup trucks walking around and handling things with their tires-for-hands, like in a Richard Scarey book.
It looks very agricultural here, with cornfields and center pivot irrigation systems parked over them (I had to research what those things are called). Funny thing is, it didn't really look like this in Missouri – it changed pretty abruptly to farm-type stuff after crossing over into Iowa. Soon I'll cross into Nebraska where I will traverse the entire elongated latitude of the state, just like I did in Tennessee.
I was going to talk about driving a little bit. I talked about my car a little bit in the beginning but I'll repeat myself and maybe say a bit more. It's a 2005 Hyundai Accent, and it belongs to my mother, although I take care of it and fuel it up. I don't pay my own insurance, though. It's a good car, both in my experience and according to online reviews. Probably most people would say that this is not the car to be taking across the country: it's small, although it is a four door sedan with a real trunk (I prefer hatchbacks, but I have a feeling everyone does these days). It's a four cylinder engine with about 100 horsepower, but it has good torque. I don't quite understand what "torque" means, but it sounds like it has something to do with the transmission of power from that small engine to the wheels, and the size of the gears that do it – like, a small gear spinning a big gear will produce a lot of torque, or the other way around.
My car is a stick shift, which means that you can "get more out of less" in terms of acceleration. But for the purposes of this trip, mostly my car has been in 5th gear going about 65-75 miles per hour, at a little over 3000 RPM. It seems happy and healthy: no weird noises, no temperature fluctuations. I haven't popped the hood and looked inside at the fluid levels. The tires seem very small, and like they might pop, but probably they are ok. I'm almost halfway there with no problems so I can use inductive reasoning to determine that the last half of the trip will be ok too. Of course, I don't have cruise control, but I have "poor man's cruise control," where I wedge my foot into the corner of the gas pedal, floorboard, and wall of the pedal well in such a way that my foot sort of rests there while depressing the gas, and requires no muscle tension; 'tis an art. I remember I was worried about leg/foot discomfort, and anxiety attacks – I have experienced almost none of the first.
People with anxiety, with long term anxiety, might tend to be boring people, because they have learned avoidant behavior and don't do anything because they keep having bad experiences. Basically they become agoraphobic. I think, in a way, that I am doing the agoraphobic version of a cross country drive, and that if I wanted to do it "right" I might take the small roads and stay with random people and sleep in my car, and so on. Maybe you need to have been 18 in 1969 for that sort of thing, though. There are some road trip narratives; I can think of two: Easy Rider, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Three: the National Lampoon's Vacation series. Kerrouac's On the Road? I dunno; I bet there are lots. I mentioned Hunter S. Thompson earlier on so that makes five coming to mind.
My step brother asked me something I found odd, before I left: "What are you going to do?" The obvious answer was "drive" but I think that was assumed. What he meant was, "how are you going to be able to stand driving all day?" I think I am naturally more suited to this than some people, perhaps – sometimes I don't even have music on, and I find books on tape impossible to follow while I'm doing anything but sit still. It's possible that this only means I'm sort of dumb and have to devote my full mental energy to driving straight ahead on a highway, but no – I do think about lots of things. I entertain myself with my own thoughts, and sometimes even talk/make noises to myself.
It is a great relief to have fewer cars on the road. I think when there are a lot of them, like there are in the DC area, it's just not possible to drive safely; people are too close together, and they drive next to each other, which is something I, and I think all sane people, avoid on the open highway – you travel on the right and pass quickly on the left, flooring the pedal to 85 mph to get around a semi truck going 68 or 69, feeling the whole car shake and hoping that you won't hit a tiny bump and spin out of control to your death and the death of 2-4 other motorists, and then when you see headlights in your rearview mirror you get back into the right lane and slow down to semi-sane speeds. That is my driving methodology.
I bought two Pellegrinos and a Starbucks Vanilla Latte at this here truck stop. This is just an expensive undertaking – that's all there is to it. I'm glad I'm staying at hotels. I don't want to calculate how much I'll spend on this trip although it should be around $2,000. Renee called me yesterday while I was stoned with Troy and sitting on his patio, and tried to get a better idea of when I'd be there. I told her "5-10 days" which I think I can live up to. I also talked to Yoni, the younger-brother-of-my-friend, this morning, while I was still at the Kansas City Super 8. Everything seems to be going well there: we might hang out Sunday, and we will definitely hang out Monday. He told me that he had house guests, but otherwise he'd have been happy to offer me a place to stay. I guess he didn't know exactly when I'd be there and so went ahead and made plans – and also, they might be his wife's house guests. I felt a little marginalized but I was never Yoni's great friend, so it's expected that he doesn't prioritize me, but it's hard not to notice this.
I can't help but feel a little marginalized in general by people as I get older and they focus on their wives and jobs and kids. I matter less and less, the longer I stay single and mostly destitute. It's kind of sick that the only way for a man to matter in society is if he is willing to give away his money – be a provider. I guess it's not more or less sick than the way a woman only has relevance as far as her beauty and youth takes her, but we have feminism which fights to change that; I don't really perceive many institutions trying to broaden the social palette for men ("losers matter!"). Maybe I'll get back on my way now, to Nebraska. I'm sort of excited about Nebraska, as I was about Kansas but perhaps even more so; I've never been there, not even to Omaha airport (that I recall).
I think I like writing in truck stops and rest areas, rather than hotels.
Lexington Nebraska
I'm pretty sick. I feel it all over, but especially in my chest. This is a really nice Super 8 though, and Nebraska is sort of amazing – it's so empty. There are big, big parking lots – way bigger than they have to be. Land use does not seem constrained by value anymore; there are big fields that no one seems to care about. It's getting cold here, in the evening. Actually, I take that back – I'm right on the edge of some wetlands/river, so I think the big fields don't count in quite the same way as an indicator of valueless land. I almost have an urge to go explore the bank of the Platte River. There was a movie, "Nebraska", that portrayed this state and its inhabitants not so nicely. I saw this movie, and it kind of ruined the fantasies I had about this part of the country. But, now that I'm here, I realize that this movie was kind of unfair, in that sense, not that I want or need to put a stop to artistic license.
It is a dump here in some sense, but it is really lovely in some other ways. The people, for the first time on my trip, look totally different: I see cowboy hats, and scruffy beards. I saw one guy who was all duded up, in the restaurant I went to: he had a bright orange jacket, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat with two gold tassels. He was impressive. Also, there were a number of extremely fat people – disastrously obese, to the point where they could not move normally. This is more common in middle America I think. I'd fit in pretty well here. The restaurant I went to was more like a cafeteria, and had both a saloon and a dining room. There was no decor at all, and the waitress told me that it has been there a very long time. I ordered chicken fried steak, which was decent.
Between the NE-CO border and Denver, in a McDonald's (Barf, Colorado? Buff, Colorado? Something like that)
I am surrounded by rednecks. I thought Colorado was supposed to be progressive but there are people here with camouflage caps and overalls (no kidding – overalls). This state is more boring to drive through than Nebraska – I think it's been inflated by the whole marijuana thing. Anyway while I sit here making mountain goat challenge-eyes at all the men in this here McDonalds, I'll tell you about this cool little store I stopped in, in Nebraska. It was one of the precious few "local color" places I could find – the most "local color" thing about it being that it sold guns. I talked to the owner and exchanged some pleasantries...I forget the specifics. But it was a positive experience and I wanted to note it. Other than that it's just been...highway.
This trip is mostly a zen exercise to me, at the moment – driving for long stretches and familiarizing myself with different trucking company logos (like "Yellow", printed on an orange background – I love that one). I am spending so much time doing nothing. Highway driving is basically like meditating. This may be the secret of why people enjoy road trips.
There was a man, at about 10 o'clock, with beefy arms and a young family. I sorta feared him. He left, but now there is an even scarier man at 12 o'clock with HUGE tattooed arms and a young son – I should get out of this McDonalds. He left. Probably these bodybuilders are out vandalizing my car in tandem. That reminds me: this morning I had what might have been my biggest freak-out on this trip. I was in the process of trying to get organized, putting unused items in my trunk, when I misplaced my keys in my hotel room. They were under some blankets on my bed, but my adrenaline shot through the roof as I walked inside and out, checking and rechecking my car for keys left in a lock. Then I lost my cell phone, briefly, but it turned out it was in my backpack. My problem is that I am just utterly dominated and ruled by anxiety; I basically can't function when I am having an attack. And then when I find the thing that I was looking for, if it was indeed a lost item that caused the freak-out, I have a rage explosion. This time I swore and cursed, spitting on my hotel chair and slamming it across the room. But I felt better once I got back on the highway. I like country highway driving. I do not like city driving, and I'm apprehensive about driving in Boulder/Denver.
As I've intimated a few times I'm not having a very "real" experience...my GPS tells me where to go, and I just drive on the highway, eat at fast food places, and check into a motel. This is like the lazy debutant's version of a road trip: check into a hotel, check out at 10am, and drive til 3pm, at which point I check in again. Seriously I don't really know what else to do. Look for sights to see? Fuck. In a way though this is the point of this whole document, that has been evolving all this time: that seeking out experience as a middle aged man is not going to work, and that really when people like me are feeling that kind of existential ennui that they think they can cure in some way, they are going to be disappointed. I don't think there is a cure for existential ennui; you just have to accept it and re-tool it into some kind of zen meditative state, rather than boredom, because you can't have a young brain again – you can't be as open to experience as you were when you were little. When you're little, everything is new and time stretches on forever. But when you age everything has a category and a name, and you write it off: "I went to the store", even though going to the store is an enormity of experience.
When I get to Boulder I am going to seek out a weed store and stock up on edibles.
Well I'm in another fucking Super 8, but this time I get to pay almost $100 a night for the privilege, the reason for the cost being that it is near – not even in – almighty Boulder Colorado, which is some hot piece of ass real estate right now.
Longmont Colorado (north of Boulder)
I'm fucking pissed off and I'm not having a good day. At McDonald's today I escaped the drive through line and yelled at the cashier "You're too slow!". Then, pulling out, I had to deal with a slow mailman, and yelled "faggot!" out my window, like a champion. And now I'm in another identical trucker motel complex off some interstate. I do not understand this country. I don't get it. The whole thing is the same...truly, I just don't see any variety.
Unless you like hotels, driving, and fast food, I wouldn't recommend a drive across the USA. I sort of like these things but it's starting to feel excessive. I just called the front desk and checked out early, foregoing my visit with Yoni.
I ordered a pizza. I am tired of my life...there's nothing interesting or fulfilling in it. I have no idea what these things would be. Maye create art and have shows? Become thin and fuck girls? I think I have, secretly, megalomaniacal fantasies of great power, such that nothing will ever be fulfilling enough. Well...maybe not. No, actually – scratch that. I just want to be headed somewhere good...I think that's my thing. I wish something made me happy.
I may not like this trip much on the whole but I think I may have been thinking of it wrong: what I like is driving (mostly, until I get tired of it). Man I was in a bad mood today. I think I might have reached my exhaustion point: 5 days, 2000 miles. Another 1200 to go. That reminds me, I did a terrible thing: before I left for my trip, in the townhouse parking space in Montgomery Village, my car backed in and angled out toward my route (this was accidental, I admit), I forgot to set my odometer to "0". I did remember, a few miles south of Winchester VA. Call it about 75 miles, what I owe my odometer.
My throat is sore – that painful, focused kind of sore that makes me think "strep."
I was supposed to meet up with my friend's younger brother today – that's why I'm near Boulder. But, that didn't pan out: he had to squeeze me in around some other houseguests and a Jewish holiday, and this squeezing would have meant 3 days in Boulder (Longmont) at $300. I remembered my rule: "Don't let visits with others cause this trip to be unpleasant – it's about you, etc etc." So, I texted my friend's brother with "sorry, logistics, etc" and checked out after only one night; totally reasonable, but it took some willpower to do.
Still north of Boulder
I want to do my laundry before I go. My throat feels bad. I hope I don't require partly insured medical care. I will choose to remember Colorado as a dump – I think it's so nice in the Rocky Mountain area that they just don't give a thought to the eastern portion, which is worse than Nebraska. Maybe that should be their tourism motto: "Colorado - Uglier Than Nebraska".
Yesterday I even bought a bottle of THC soda at a weed shop. I took a cough syrup sized portion and maybe felt something like relaxation and wanting to talk more, but it wasn't profound. I think I will leave it here in the wastebasket. It was only $20. Mostly, it made me sick to my stomach.
Just north of the Wyoming - Colorado border
I took some quick notes on my iPod touch of things I wanted to mention: 1) I do not like dining alone, in a regular sit-down order-taker restaurant, with menus; it makes me feel very lonely. So from now on I will stop at truck stops and fast food places and gas stations. 2) Even though hotel culture appears banal and not interesting, I think that assessment is a grave mistake – the same kind of epistemological mistake I've been trying to avoid, in theory – to write it off as just "staying in another hotel." Lately, I've been attached to Super 8 motels – I think my last three or four places have been Super 8. Motels are refuges – they are places where you let your guard down and become vulnerable, and you trust the hotel establishment to somehow keep people from banging on your door. From check-in time, at 3pm, to checkout time at 11am, you have a new home and can relax, go around naked, talk to yourself, etc, even though clearly it's just a room and very much not yours. "Mini-lives of vulnerability", is what I had written down. I know when I go out on the town sometimes while staying at a hotel/motel, I have that same "I wanna go back to the hotel" feeling, which is the same as the "I wanna go home" feeling. So I think this has implications for hoteliers: welcoming, clean, and safe, are the three fundamentals. When I stay in a hotel on this trip, I leave a light on and leave the TV on (usually Fox News, and my choice is perplexing to me...I think I like the colors and production: The Look of Fox News). Then I go to sleep from around 6pm to maybe midnight, wake up, fiddle with my laptop or maybe write some more, and then sleep again from 3am to 8am or so; sometimes for this second shift I turn off the TV and light.
My throat feels a little better but not much. I sound sick and my voice is very, very low – I am more threatening-seeming, I think. I stand there staring, and mumble something in a low bass register. "Pardon me sir?", says the clerk. I'm sorry but I just don't have the energy to play nice right now. I find that when I'm wearing my glasses, I am much more inclined to play "the mountain goat game" with people: staring contests, basically – I am often so captivated by another human face that I can't stop staring at it, and usually the person looks away. If he doesn't then I fake a smile. This is my recipe for social discourse.
I'm glad to be out of Colorado, although close to the border I half expected to be pulled over for some invented infraction by Wyoming's finest to search my car for cannabis and cannabis accessories. I sort of understand the disgust with the weed scene, even though I do partake of it from time to time: it stinks, and it attracts the wrong sort of element. For places trying to maintain a traditionalist sort of social conservatism, like Harper's Canada or Wyoming, legalization of marijuana is a thorn in the side. In fact, I smelled it burning in another room, and alerted the clerk, which was a dickish thing to do. Maybe I am a "law and order" conservative, like Sean Hannity or Richard Nixon. I presume Nazi armbands can be purchased online.
I should say more about my experience in the Colorado weed store. I was tired, and grumpy, and impatient, and generally emotionally labile, and I was meandering on and off highway 80 looking for a Starbucks where I might spend my gift card. In the midst of this I saw an "Herbal Life" sign on a big warehouse-type building. I made an illegal U-turn, parked, and went inside. They had it organized into a reception area, where they check your identification, and then a backroom store area, where they let you in if it's not too busy, and check your ID again. I wasn't interested in smoking anything, because this is evidentiary and gross, and requires a lot of hardware (plus I'm rottenly sick in the respiratory system). Instead I got that disgusting aforementioned bottle of watermelon flavored THC-infused drink, that I ended up pouring down the drain at the Super 8 in Colorado after having one cough syrup-sized dose and maybe, possibly, feeling some relaxation and/or tendency to socialize more. So, if the Wyoming Highway Patrol pulls me over, I got nothin'.
John Q. Law: We pulled you over for insufficient tire pressure – your wheels look a little squishy, like they are bulging out between the rims and the asphalt. We'd like to search your vehicle if that's OK.
Me: I guess that depends on whether you untape the bunch of boxes in the trunk that are full of china, animal sculptures, and photographs, and definitely not marijuana or related paraphernalia.
John Q. Law, his eyes alight with the flame of probable cause: So you're saying we can search some of your vehicle, but we specifically cannot search the boxes in the trunk?
Me: I realize that sounds bad but I just don't want to mess them up and have to retape them all. Maybe I'd better not consent to a search at all.
John Q. Law: Step out of the car please.
Thermopolis, Wyoming
I texted Ricardo and called Renee – no answer from the latter but the former was happy and enthusiastic about my arrival. I had originally told Renee I'd be in Thermopolis, Wyoming, in between 5 and 10 days from our phone call in Kansas City (maybe 4 days ago? I hope it was that long ago at least). So I left a message on her voicemail explaining that a meeting in Boulder between me and Yoni probably would not work out, and so I would be showing up presently.
I'm about five hours away from them. It will be interesting, to say the least – probably the most interesting of my visits, because they're family, by marriage. I like being more than halfway done with my trip – quite a bit more than halfway, I think. I'm not looking at the odometer now (I'm in a Wendy's attached to a Love's Travel Stop) so I don't know exactly.
I had a good lunch: a $2 jalapeno and cheese sausage that I had to prop up naked against the cash register because I couldn't find any trays or containers (I nearly couldn't find the buns but asked, and even then I had some trouble), plus a V8; one can't help but feel virtuous upon drinking a V8.
I think somewhere around this time I had my happiest experience on this trip – it felt what I think happiness should feel like. I was just driving and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of contentment and warm joy that just made me wriggle with relief, safety, and hope. I just loved driving on the highway, and I was happy to be in my car doing it. These moments don't happen very often but sometimes I get them...usually when bedding down at night.
Today, I went out with Renee to some hot springs here, and crawled around the pool and jacuzzi, both naturally heated. They're sulphur springs, and so they smell like a hard boiled egg – it's not bad once you get used to it, but it's a little gross at first, especially when you see that the facilities upkeep is not really Holiday Inn calibre.
I haven't beat off in a while and it's starting to make me a little psychotic. A problem at the juncture of mental healthcare and power is that defining "reality" is an epistemological no-man's land, or division by zero, or something like that; to say the least it presents problems. Furthermore mental healthcare professionals are comfortable dividing by zero when they apply the label "psychotic" to a part of someone's thinking, and prescribing an antipsychotic, which is really a tranquilizer that dulls and diminishes brain function across the board, so that the crazy thoughts will diminish along with everything else and the patient can be labelled "successfully treated" even as they function much less overall, mentally, with diminished speech, creativity, movement, volition, and everything. There's no way to target individual psychological functions with medication – you kind of have to do carpet bombing on the whole biological system, similarly to the way chemotherapy treats cancer while killing lots of healthy cells. I'm on a medication that does this, although it's not classified as an antipsychotic. Instead, it's called a mood stabilizer, which is pretty much the same thing if you think about it: it curtails cognitive, emotional, and as a result, social/environmental behavior. Carbamazepine is very much like a tranquilizer.
Carbamazepine might also work to screw my memory up, or at least give me aphasia. I think I experience things less intensely than I used to, which in some ways is good – I don't lose my temper as much. Sometimes I feel like we medicate so much as a society just to get people to do what they don't want to do, like work 50 hours a week as a project manager, or live with their parents at age 40. There's no question that I'm brain damaged, but I can do some things successfully, like drive across the country. This part, today and yesterday evening, is probably the hardest part. The social parts were somehow the hardest parts. I think if I were just driving on my own with no stops I would not even notice this trip.
I should write about my biggest freak-out yet – a bona fide nervous breakdown, or panic attack, or whatever the term-du-jour is. Renee wanted to go get groceries before her husband got home so we could get done before I had to go to bed at 10pm as I had emphatically stated. I didn't hear clearly but she said something about my paying for the groceries – this upset me and set off my "being taken advantage of" alarm, and by time we left I accidentally-on purpose forgot my wallet. So we went, and I said I had not brought it, and then she explained that I was to be remunerated by her husband when he got home. I freaked out a bit, going "what do we do, what do we do", and Renee just calmly, beatifically, as if she were used to dealing with crazies, had me drive her car back to get my wallet while she waited with the groceries. I drove her car back, and couldn't find the trailer park in the dark. That's when I freaked out and started screaming uncontrollably, pleading for God to help me. "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE" I was yelling pathetically. My voice was hoarse. I made several u-turns on the thoroughfare (basically a highway, but without many cars on it). Although I don't remember clearly, I must have finally found it, but at the time I really didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I was going to go back to the grocery store and yell at Renee to take me back now, and then I was going to leave Thermopolis immediately. But it was fine...I got my wallet, paid for the groceries ($40), and then later that night Ricardo gave me $40 cash.
But man...I was in a bad state. Although, the thing that I have noticed is: my uncontrollable emotional expression, my state-of-torture anxious rage, doesn't seem to affect my competence as negatively as I might think. I'll be screaming and wanting to die and planning to die later, but I'll still be getting whatever I need to get done, done. This happened in that case, and it was all fine when it was over. Renee and Ricardo understand about this kind of thing – about mental problems – so that was good. After we were all back with the ingredients and Renee was making dinner, I just sat there on the couch staring ahead into space, only murmuring replies and not changing my facial expression, until I had had a couple of beers. Then I said something that made Ricardo laugh: "I think alcohol works better than Xanax." It might, too – people have been using it for millennia so it must be doing something right.
Battle Mountain, Nevada
This is my last hotel, and I'm so happy to be in it. I haven't showered or changed my clothes in a while, except for a shower at the mineral springs place. I suppose hospitality customers would not be happy to know that I am sitting on a chair naked. I doubt they'll clean it – if it doesn't look dirty it doesn't get cleaned, I think is pretty much the universal policy of institutional housekeeping. That someone else might have been here sitting on the chair or oozing sexual fluids on the comforter or whatever doesn't bother me at all – I don't care about cooties. Bacteria are a fact of life, and there are a number of lectures to be had in this area, about symbiosis with colonic flora, or that half your weight is actually made up by bacteria in and on your body, or something like that. The one I heard about recently is related to the gut flora topic: that these gut florae do a lot that affects your behavior. Maybe I should get a fecal transplant from a thin person.
Speaking of that, I just ate at really mediocre Mexican restaurant where it was policy to end every conversational phrase with "...my friend." They brought out the chips and salsa, as is pro forma (not to harp on this, but again I am reminded that culture seems to be basically all the same in the USA), and then something that was similar to a ChiChi's "seafood chimichanga." It was fine...tasted like bland greasy salty food. But what was bad was the service. The place was almost empty when I showed up at 5:30 or so, but by 5:40 it was completely full of road crews; on the way out I saw my little red car had been surrounded by various large American pickup trucks, with v8 turbo diesel and so on. So, the service ended up being really slow, and I left a small tip ($.97 on a $14.03 bill) to punish a particular waiter for insufficient staffing, as one does. They probably just think I'm cheap.
There was another hot hotel clerk here, and again I thought of somehow asking her to my room or asking when she got off, or something. She was kind of back-country seeming, as if she just didn't have that big a verbal or cultural vocabulary – there wasn't much "there" in a sense; all she knew how to do was smile. She was young, of course. I went down into the lobby to talk to her a bit, after my wanderings about to find a whorehouse and/or food or whatever. I ended up driving to the whorehouse, not being able to find it, drove back, re-checked the address, and drove out again, all with really minimal anxiety. Man on a mission, I guess. But when I got to the whorehouse I wasn't able to even attempt a performance. For one thing the girls were ugly, of course. And it was just weird. Prostitutes are weird. I think I might be done with them, and with strip clubs. So, for the record, I attempted legal weed in Colorado and failed, and I attempted legal prostitution in Nevada and also failed. It's all probably for the best.
Tomorrow I arrive in Camino, California, my new home, with my mom and Jim. My mom called yesterday while I was wandering around Renee and Ricardo's trailer park, and said that she'd arrived, and there was electricity, but no hot water, and no telecommunications of any kind. I have a feeling that I'm going to be mostly working on this document after I get "home" (still seems odd). I don't know quite what I'll do with it – massive editing is a given, but maybe I'll even have this be some kind of "Part I" to a more complex piece (Part II, The Adjustment? Part III, The Mental Hospital?).
I drove for a long time today – from 6:30am today to 5:30pm, plus add an hour for the time change to Pacific in Nevada (I never knew this), so 12 hours on the road today.
Oh yeah: I got a $290 ticket in Wyoming for doing 36mph in a 20mph school zone. I was pretty pissed off about it and it soured my mood for maybe more than half of my drive, but I felt better when I reached the point I would not go back in time to avoid that speed trap, knowing that I'd have to do that much driving over again; it was an interesting mental exercise. I saved $200 in lodging + $90 (let's say) in entertainment since my Boulder contact fell through, so call it even. I always do stuff like this to make losses feel better – it's probably not businesslike or whatever you call it. Sound fiduciary conceptualization?
Wyoming is spectacular; the scenery looks like what a little kid might draw for "scenery": hills, little mountains, trees and plants of all sizes but not a massive blanket of them, puffy clouds, and various animals in big open fields. Also you start to see big weird rock formations out there, which continue in Utah. In Utah, the salt flats were unlike anything I'd ever seen: a flat expanse of beige, grey, and white, sometimes thinly covered in a silvery mirror of perfectly still water, all of it extending for miles. I was expecting Nevada scenery to be dull, but it's not – the towns are pretty dull, like Battle Mountain, the one I'm in now, but the countryside is like a slightly more muted, flattened, and repressed Wyoming, but still quite lovely when the yellow shapes of the shrubs echo the white shapes in the billowy clouds in the sky as the sun sets. I've never seen this part of the country before.
In spite of this waxing Ansel Adams, I might have decided that I kinda don't like the United States or the people in it. Either you get the outdoor mall/steakhouse phenomenon, the ugliest trashiest executions of architecture that it's possible to execute, dumped haphazardly and occasionally like little off-white turds on the landscape (sometimes I think "ugly on purpose" is some kind of American Christian ideal), or suburban housing developments – go to Google Maps, and drop the little streetview man down anywhere on the United States; chances are you will see lawns and single family homes. So that's how the interior looks. And then you have the cities: either cafe-oriented arts districts, tall office building financial districts, or slums. AND THAT'S AMERICA. Out of these I think the slums offer the most promise.
Except the saving grace is the natural landscape: clouds lapping up against soft dark mountains in Tennessee, the green pastoral of central Missouri, salt flats in Utah, buttes in Wyoming, and rolling hills covered in yellow, green, and brown scrub brush in Nevada. I think my main problem with the natural world is that you can't pop into Starbucks and grab a coffee. However, you can shoot a deer and have food for a month. Something I think I'd like to get into hunting; it might complete my disdain for civilized society in a satisfying way. I'm sure I'm just looking at things wrong – in an un-mindful, non-present-experiencing way. I am full of categories that I am eager to fit present experience into, so I can write it off like a tax expense and forget about it.
I've been listening to some country music on this trip, as well as some religious programming, to kind of snottily take in the petroglyphs of the nose-boned natives. It's remarkable how dumb country lyrics are. I suppose rock 'n' roll can be just as bad, although at least rock singers do listeners the courtesy of not singing in an understandable way. Country lyrics, on the other hand, really do speak on drinking and pickup trucks, and on girls, who like the guys who like drinking and pickup trucks, and that's reportedly all that goes on in The Country. But, I have to admit, pickup trucks are pretty great.
Still Battle Mountain, Nevada
I should say more about the whorehouse. I went to a brothel last night, but rest assured gentle reader: I bought/rented nothing other than a beer; I stepped inside, chatted with some people, and then left. I had intended to rent some sexytime, but I was so nervous and unhorny that I changed my mind. No one seemed to care; the industry is probably used to cold feet. I actually have rented quite a few prostitutes over the years – between 5 and 10, maybe. So I'm not inexperienced or anything and I might have done okay this time, but I just wasn't in the mood (suddenly I feel like Holden Caulfield). By the way, I have discovered that if one does want a good experience with a prostitute, the thing to do is refrain from masturbating for a few days, depending on your proclivities and capacities. For me, I'd say six days of self-love celibacy is a good and tested figure.
I was asked to pick one of two girls: one was in lingerie and the other was in a baseball cap, jeans, and t-shirt in a kind of "college prep" costume. I chose the college preppie, but it didn't work out in an ultimate way, as I said. After sitting with this creepy and vaguely unattractive woman for a while determining that nothing would happen, I went to another room to see some dancers, who mashed their boobs against me and asked if I wanted a lapdance. Again, I declined.
The "madame," I suppose, had her arm in a sling. I asked about it, and she said she had gotten between two dogs in a dogfight. Her voice was unnaturally deep from a lifetime of smoking. I think she wanted a "tough guy" type persona. I heard her yelling at some of the dancers (it was a strip club as well as a brothel), and I asked her, "iron fist?" – she replied "no!" defensively. I wonder if she knew what that meant; maybe she thought I was proposing a sex act. Strippers and prostitutes are sort of disgusting, but that word needs a lot of unpacking before I accept or allow head-nods of approval. For one thing, they are almost always ugly – like, uglier on average than the general population. But mostly prostitution is just so dishonest – maybe it's similar to psychotherapy: an imitation of a natural, normal, voluntary human interaction, but one of the participants' consent is replaced with money.
I think that it's good to stay "monistic" about sociology (speaking of text that requires unpacking). Briefly: there are a lot of things, like experimental science and accounting and cooking dinner, that require precision and categories and "distinguishing this from that". But when it comes to human interaction, an almost postmodernistic "everything is everything" approach seems to work best. For example, sex is not really distinguishable from love, and endeavoring to create a cut between them is going to create psychological problems. There's a time and a place for strict categories, but I'm not really sure human interaction is it, with some probable exceptions.
Must remember to pay my ticket to the municipal court of Shoshoni, Wyoming. I think it's sort of funny that the chief of police of this little burg was hunkered near the thoroughfare at 7am scavenging revenue to buy a new office telephone, antler hatrack, or whatever. "We have a zero tolerance policy," he said. Well...I have a zero tolerance policy too, but I don't have the enforcement capability to back it up. Might makes right. But fuck it, right? I can't be worried about that shit; life goes on, man. And I already accounted for it, so I'm at zero dollars. Fuck Wyoming.
Well no, Wyoming is cool. Maryland is manicured and rich, Virginia looks cobbled together, Tennessee is beautiful, Kentucky is a cross between Virginia and Tennessee, Southern Illinois is a dystopic wasteland, Missouri is a pastoral paradise (the middle of it, at least), that one tiny corner of southwestern Iowa looks like a picture of "American agriculture" in a social studies textbook, Nebraska is weird in a post-apocalyptic nature resort way, (northeastern?) Colorado is ugly and overrated, Wyoming is something out of a storybook, Utah is like Wyoming but not quite as nice, and Nevada has a whole 'nother thing going – I haven't quite figured out Nevada; I like it, basically. There is a "thing" in each state, and I don't think I'm making it up based on expectations, either; the United States really are different places (for the most part, based on my limited experience, in spite of past statements that the whole country is the same, etc). In a few hours I will be in California, and then I'll be home. I'm dawdling now – I should hit the road.
A truck stop in Nevada, maybe 50 miles before Reno, and 99 miles before Camino
I've been sitting here in this trucker's lounge for a while. There are other things I want to talk about that keep occurring to me when I'm on the road, and sometimes I write them down. I'll have to go back over and see. But nevermind for now.
I'm back in my car now. I found some shade and bought some water; I feel like Mad Max. I like the desert, and I like Nevada: it's a combination of a desert landscape and a somewhat schizophrenic culture. Prostitution and gambling have been legal here for many years in what would have otherwise been much like Wyoming: a quiet socially conservative place. So there's that element, of the white American older religious conservatives who vaguely and wistfully think and hope a Jesus-Reagan thing is coming back, and then that amoral "sin city" aspect, and these two facets peacefully coexist over endless semi-desert, in all directions. Every little town has casinos, and maybe a brothel. It is a strange place – a unique state – and I like it.
I think you can have a good time in places like Colorado, if you don't care about weed, or Nevada, if you don't care about gambling or prostitution. I said something about prostitution earlier – basically that it's not "real sex". If for some reason you can't or won't or don't have real sex, you can replace it with masturbation or prostitution; I think masturbation is preferable. In terms of "real sex", you can be involved in a long term relationship, do one night stands, or some happy medium between these – micromonogamy, or "the 5 night stand". It remains to be seen what I'll end up doing with my 40 remaining years of human sexuality. I'm kind of in the "forever alone" camp, because I have low self esteem and have problems making passes at girls/women, or whatever it is you're supposed to do. Be more social in general, I think, and then sometimes sex just naturally develops from this as a kind of statistical phenomenon; that's my new theory. Also I'm just fat. From time to time I get a wake-up call and realize psychology, religion, philosophy, etc, is just explanatory window dressing, or bullshit, built on top of physical actuality. My life gets depressing sometimes but most of the time it's ok, especially after a good wank. I can see why some older societies prohibited masturbation: it really throws a wrench into the gears of reproductive socialization; I think if women knew the extent to which the time since a man's last ejaculation affects how he interacts with her, there would be more members of the lesbian political party.
Mostly I fantasize about Tara, an ex girlfriend whom I recently saw again. I played with her tits and cuddled her and kissed her and said sweet things to her on a park bench in Virginia – that was a good day. Even when I'm looking at porn to get off, I end up tilting my head back away from the screen, as if looking up to God (really, away from the crap on the screen), and think about Tara. Am I thinking about her body? Her tits and ass and pussy? Or am I thinking about her, as a monistic whole? She talks too much, like so many people. But she's very sexy, and I think it is not too sociopathic/narcissistic/autistic to build a relationship mostly on this. I suspect there is far more going on, neuropsychologically speaking, than just "horniness" when we feel attraction to another, or another's body, or another's body parts. I have often thought that men will pretend to be more shallow and less touchy-feely/lovey-dovey around other men – it's like they're of two minds: one in the presence of a woman they're "attracted" to, and one in the presence of another man. When I imagine calling up Tara, I could say "I think about the time I went down the front of your shirt on that public park bench and felt your nipples get hard between my fingers", or I could say "I fantasize about you all the time." I think one of these is more appealing to women.
I like hanging out in Nevada doing nothing. Having a laptop legitimizes one's presence, especially if one is typing on it rather than clicking through Facebook or whatever. I think my experience is all right. There's a fly in my car with me and he is annoying. She? Funny how bugs are always male, except ladybugs and probably butterflies. Luna moths?
My throat feels fine, by the way – it started getting better quickly yesterday and now my malady is basically gone. It's dry here in the desert though; I find myself wanting more water. I'm always sucking on a bottle of something.
Camino, California
I'm in my new room, looking out the window. I just turned my head to look out the window then, because I remembered something I had written earlier about ending this document with sitting in my room looking out the window, except I think in that version I also resolved some personal spiritual crisis. That's not happening; I just got back from Safeway to get some Family Groceries, and I did my usual screaming. I guess this is just how I have to live my life. I could try different meds, I suppose – maybe I'll do that when I get a new psychiatrist. They always like to piss all over new patients like a dog on a lawn.
I'm crazy – I have brain damage, and mental illness. I'm on disability for it. I can function in some marginal ways in modern society, but I can't do everything. Mostly I can't cope emotionally, but I have some cognitive problems too. I dunno – maybe here I can finally retire. I felt like my "job" in Maryland was sort of justifying my disability to some imaginary panel or board. Maybe that activity or pressure can go to rest now.
This California landscape might be the prettiest of all: hills with a great variety of uncrowded trees, and some rocks popping out here and there; it kinda looks like a golf course or other highly landscaped landscape, compared to eastern wildlands. It's preferable to define your local by geography rather than by culture. For example, I used to live in "the DC metro area," and that doesn't sound as good as "I live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains."
One more thing: going over this document, it bothers me that the Google Maps link I gave early on turned out to be inaccurate. So here's a new one that reflects the path I actually took across the USA.
Looking at that url, it's easier to see why I had such a culturally uniform experience: I stayed in the suburbs and small towns. Above I included only places I slept in, so no artist in Paducah, no Internet Friend #1 in Johnson City/Kingsport, nor any number of rest stops/rest areas. For comparison, and so you don't have to find it yourself, here's my original Google Maps url I pasted into this document in the first couple of pages – this is where I had originally planned to sleep.
This difference demonstrates an adage I conceived of on my trip, but that I'm sure is not original: make a plan, but then don't follow it.