https://www.angelfire.com/art2/remind/index.html
iamnotsusan@hotmail.com
copyright 2002 by R.A.Barrington
I arrived at Zorrid’s half out of my skin. 8 a.m. I found him in the bedroom.
“You’re excitable.” he said.
“What’s up? Let’s go. Why are you still in bed?”
He starts to speak in a monotone: “I’ve found it. There are no more questions, no more answers. Finally I get it.”
“You goof, what are you talking about?”
“Hibernation.” he paused. “Are we home yet?”
“Ohmigod. Why are you acting like this?” I started to walk out of the room.
“Why are you leaving? Get in with me.” he said as he flipped back the blankets.
He had on a wifebeater, his bare legs scorched me through my low riders as he scooped me into the bend of his body.
After a stop at White Hen for coffee, Dominick’s for ice, and the bank for a $1000 in twenties, we took off. It was 12:30.
We shot into the heart of Chicago, Zorrid driving through a million lanes of citydrivers, crossed the bridge up onto the Skyway, ghetto housing down below, smashed out windows, boarded-up ramshackles, a penny for hope. If you break down, do not get off, you could die.
Two hours behind the wheel and Zorrid had stiffened up again. At “Fireworks! Fireworks! Get Yer Fireworks Here!” Merrillville, Indiana I took over. Zorrid is very amusing. He puts the seat of my Buick up as high as it can go, and the back is like a Puritan pew. I buzz it back down, relax the back and take off.
It’s February, right after Valentine’s Day, brilliant sunshine, no snow, no sleet, bare and dry, easy driving, 80 M.P.H. Our music is a big mix: DMB, John Prine, liz phair, ween, Wilco, The Cranberries, Violent Femmes, Aliotta and The Groove Machine, Live, Dylan's "Love & Thief", Counting Crows, and a spoken-word Kerouac. He likes to talk and listen, so we go for long stretches...musicless.
Yesterday at 3:30 I was in a doctor’s office for the third time last week. Z called at 5:30.
“Ready to go?”
“What?” My mind had been so provoked by pain that I hadn’t thought of anything else.
“You’ve been wanting to leave for a month. Feel good enough to spend a few days in a car?”
That’s how awesome this man is. He didn’t forget.
“We’ll leave tomorrow at 8 sharp. I need to be back on Thursday for a meeting.”
That’s how I ended up here…TODAY!
By 5:30 we are zooming through Cincinnati…to the left shoulder-to-shoulder wooden houses built on hillsides, the pavement is swaddled pink mercury vapor light, ahead the bridge crossing the Ohio River. Just south of the city we get off in Florence. Zorrid likes it because it is brightly lit and everything is in one spot. Dream Street…for real, that is the actual name of the street. Four motels, eights restaurants, gas, and a liquor store…perfect for the traveler.
“It looks okay.” I say as we cruise down the strip, “but it’s too early. I’m not even tired, are you?”
“No.”
“Okay, let’s get farther south before we stop.” Roadtrip Rule One: Get as far as you can the first day. You have the most energy and are totally excited, so the time passes quickly.
I strike a bargain. “How about if we stay here on the way back? “Okay.”
Back on the Interstate, six wide lanes. We are an hour and a half in when some moonshine-laden Kentuckian roars in on an access ramp and comes across two and a half lanes almost taking us out. He straightens out his rusty Nissan and is right in front of me, going 70. I had to slow down 10 M.P.H. just to let him in. There are no other cars or trucks around us. I am swearing like a crazy person. “First Lexington exit and we are off.”
Around 7:30 we arrive in Lexington, Kentucky. I have been driving up and down large hills for hours. The landscape is a secret. We can only see what our headlights carve out.
Just a few miles up the Interstate we find a Holiday Inn. Perfect. Zorrid signs us in. He is so old he has an AARP card and gets a big discount on the room.
It’s always the same room. Clean with a king sized bed, three pillows, innocuous framed art, mini-refrigerator, microwave, and bath with the sink outside the toilet/tub area. You could be in Arlington, Boise, or Dallas. Inside the room it is always a hotel, on the road.
We ask the desk clerk about food. “Six miles west is the city.” she says with a soft Southern drawl, pointing us in the right direction, just in case we forgot our compass.
As we leave the parking lot I spy a Gentleman’s Club called Pure Gold. Haha! “Zorrid, Let’s go there after we eat.” It’s Saturday night and the sign says no cover before 9. (We will arrive well after 9) The parking lot is very crowded. “I have never been to one. Could we? Want to see some naked humans?”
“Not really.”
“Just an hour. Okay?”
“All right. You should see for yourself. You think its “Eyes Wide Shut,” it isn’t.”
We cross over Man O’ War Boulevard. Zorrid is impressed. “Probably the best racehorse ever.”
We run the restaurant strip…Chinese, Mexican, a steakhouse…
“Mark’s Feed Store. How does that sound?”
“Sure.”
We sit in front of the fireplace and order up barbecues. I have pulled pork; he has beef. I ask what burgoo is, and am extremely curious so I order it. The other diners turned and looked at me when I asked. Maybe it’s my northern accent, or perhaps burgoo is as common as dirt in this part of the world. How could anyone not know what it is?
Barbecues come as stacked meat on a bun. You put on your own sauce. “Original,” which has a distinct vinegar aroma and is pale orange, or the dark red, which smells like Masterpiece BBQ sauce to me. I buy a bottle of “Original” for my barbecue buddy back home.
Burgoo…yippee! It is a very thick stew made with beef and pork and chicken and a few veggies. It is tasty. My friend John, whose mother worked as a café waitress and did crockpots every night at home, would call it “one-pot-slop.” The waitress tells me that it is served on Derby Day, an honored tradition. You chomp it down while listening to political speeches... rant, and raves.
I chase my Kentucky food down with a Big Red. It is a cherry-cream-soda-tasting pop bottled and brewed up in Texas.
Zorrid wants to go back to the room to change. I say, “Why?” The “club” is a big, nondescript, metal-pole building. “Certainly they cater to people coming off the road. Travelclothes.”
Inside it is a $10 cover. Everyone is dressed. Z was right. Black suits and white for the women, the patrons. The dresses glow in the blacklight. All of the white floor-length tablecloths are glowing too. There are three levels. A woman is on the stage. Another one is at a little back bar. Many women are giving lap dances. It is a very nice-looking club. Spotlights in pure colors-red, blue, green, blue trace through the room. It is dark. The women are naked except for a g-string, yet the lighting is so strange they don’t seem naked. It is difficult to focus on them because of the weird bouncing lights. Men and women are gathered at tables; oddly most of them are in conversation, not watching the naked women.
I am watching, intently. The women move quite sedately. They all are wearing very tall platforms, at least 5”. I probably couldn’t dance in them either. They cannot touch the men and the men cannot touch them. They barely touch themselves. Now I can see some of the women are totally naked. The women are very very skinny, tiny breasts, some with just nipples. Their bodies are androgynous. Stickgirls. The one with waist-length blondish hair wraps her locks around a bald man’s head. An older women strips out of a shiny green-and-white-flowered catsuit. This one has breasts, circles, bought. When the woman in shiny blue shorts takes our drink order she surprises me. Up close, she has the hollow face of the woman that is called “The Coal-Miner’s Daughter.” No one is dancing on or at a pole. Maybe that part is just on teevee or at the movies.
What I am most entranced by is the DJ. He does a constant patter. Interrupting the music with “Kitty. Kitty” “I want to buy everyone at the drink a bar.” He talks to the women. He tells them to go backstage. All twelve of them come back out, dressed in a variety of skimpy, Frederick’s-of-Hollywood outfits, with a hurricane-pink in a shapely glass with an umbrella, in hand. The DJ says you can get a lap dance for $25. The women wander through the crowd looking for takers. Some don’t get any. They take turns on stage, scarcely moving, going to the edge of the stage to a man, any man with money in his hand, the dancer squats down, the mark tucks the greenback in a garter that is down near her knee, she bends and kisses him on the neck, and goes back to dancing. The DJ asks the girls, “Does anyone have a stiffie?” All of the lap-dance girls raise their hands. “Any 8” or more?” Again they all raise their hands. The humor here is thin, a bit tragic. No one wears a genuine smile.
I am wondering why the owners don’t hire some tall, long-legged women, some large-breasted women, and some zaftig beauties? Surely a number of men that come here would like some variety, or at least a shapely ass. I wonder why they are all the same versions of one type of girl. Perhaps they are facsimiles of a woman the hiring-person once loved. It is a bit bizarre. More flesh=more eroticism. Hell, I want to see an authentic fat girl, one that moves her flesh so attractively, that she draws all of the light in the room directly to her. Isn’t this about getting turned on? Then again...What do I know?
I think you could get fooled here. It’s just like any club back home. You meet a guy and he looks gorgeous and then when you walk outside into real light, you look at him and Whoa! You say to yourself “What was I thinking?” I think I need to drink more so this part of dating works better.
Back at the room Zorrid tells me that the men getting lap dances probably were just tossed by their girl so they go there, spent $200 on a stripper, and pretend the woman actually likes them. “The whole stripper routine is a fraud. It lacks one thing: meaning. So it is nothing.”
Ha! To me it was almost sanitary. You would see more “activity” in almost any dance club. Or at the beach. And the clothes are a LOT cuter!
All-in-all it was a bit boring and pathetic. And now I know that I am not a lesbian. None of it turned me on at all. No meaning, I guess. It did sate my curiosity though. Stripping seems to me to be an exceptionally zombie way to make a living. But what do I know? I never tried it. I do like naked dancing though.
One more q: Where are all of the naked men?
Back at the hotel we showered and went to bed.
The next morning we woke at 7. Zorrid went to the office and brought back coffee and Krispy-Crème donuts, and turned on the teevee. We watched some retro show called “The Little Rascals.” It was a hoot! A black-and-white of a rough-tumble gang, basically sweet-hearted, poor kids. When it was over I asked Zorrid which character he would be. He said Darla! He is so Darla, indeed, a sly, dark-haired princess. I said I would be AlphaAlpha. He said, “You got that right! Same smile. Same optimism.”
NEWS FLASH: Noble, Georgia. Eighty bodies are found in a woods behind a crematorium. The owner has been ill so he turned the operation over to his 28-year-old son. Additional body parts are sticking up through the red-Georgia clay. More to come. Stay tuned.
I-64 to I-74 to I-75. Just before Knoxville we joined all of the Sunday saints for a buffet at Ryan’s. No kidding! I had been at Ryan’s in Rockford, Illinois just a few weeks ago! It is a chain. Argh. But Zorrid and I wanted to do it, so there we were eating buffet with lots of white, well-dressed church peeps. Guess what? Almost the same food...black-eyed peas, sweet potato Fluff stuff, except you could have carved ham, sliced turkey breast, or sausage, all served by a chef. It was yummy, sort of. Oh wait...they had my fav...veggie lasagne. I think soul food and Southern food might be almost the same thing. It could be a big trick.
I swung out of the door singing…“Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.”
Oh! It’s chilly this morning. I tie my road-sign green GAP scarf around my neck. Zorrid throws on his onyx-black leather jacket.
I-75 is quiet, mostly semis, those always-on-the-road men, carting must-have goods across the country. We are in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Outcroppings of carved out hills are scattered with scrawny evergreens seemingly growing right out of the rocks.
Speaking of rocks, I need one for my garden back home. Say the rocks here look a lot like those in Missouri. What’s up with that? I don’t want any repeats.
We are sweeping through a mountain range, the Bald Mountains. Oh no! The sheer rock cliffs are weeping. I am guessing this is shale. WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS! The mountains are crumbling. In 100 years none of this will exist. We pass into the New Found Mountains.
Nice colors. The mountains are shades of blue, more intense close up, ombre, growing paler and paler the farther away they are. We are skirting the Great Smoky Mountains. Wedgewood blue peaks, Mt Sterling (5835’) and Chiltoes (5888’) rise out of a brilliant white ring of fog/clouds. The roads are still wide and softly rolling. Down in Maggie Valley I spy a roadside attraction…pink elephants, Davy Crockett, a circus seal, and plastic multicolored flags flap in the breeze. “Let’s get some groovy take home gifts.” An hour later my bag is full-a Herkimer diamond in matrix for my nephew, a pair of salt and pepper shakers shaped like mountains, one says “Blue Ridge Mountains”, and the other says “Great Smokies.” I have a hand-painted Bear mug for Jordan, some bizarre 9-11 memorabilia for CeCe, and a jasper picture rock for Jeret, it looks just like the image on his antique rotating man-fishing Beer sign! Five T-shirts and I am done with my little goofy presents. I bought a Daniel Boone tank for myself. Zorrid can’t find an amusement in the trinkets. He is laughing at me, again. He says my enthusiasm is all he needs.
The man at the store said it was 137 miles to Asheville, North Carolina, our destination. (I wanted to watch the sun rise and set in Key West, but there isn’t enough time.) Zorrid is a Tom Wolfe fan, the older one, “You Can’t Go Home Again” so he is interested in Asheville. F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t live here, but he came on occasion to write. There could be magic in these mountains.
The storeman added, “Mountains?” when I asked about it, “Honey, you are just in the foothills here. This is nothing.” Whee-hoo! Hang on to your hat!
Already I have developed vertigo. If I am driving and look off into the deep dusky valleys, my head starts to spin. My body is always eager to toss itself off the side. I have to work at it, use my intellect, to save myself from flailing off the mountain. It happens on all mountains, here, out west, it doesn’t seem to matter. Zorrid must drive.
I love mountains…their grandeur, the colors, the way the wind makes curly-cue eddies. I am in awe.
Zorrid takes us up one side and down another, curving, going into the throat of two sharp tunnels dug out right through the mountains. They have lights inside at 2’ intervals. I hold my breath, not intentionally, it just happens.
My ears have been popping all day long.
Am I gonna see God, mommy?/Am I gonna die?/It really hurts mommy!/Am I gonna die?/Smile on mighty Jesus… I put on ween’s “Spinal Meningitis” song. It makes me feel better.
Damn this is fun!
Asheville. We have arrived. Houses are built up in the towering mountains look down on the city, an old crumbly place with lots of empty storefronts downtown. Once it had been elegant, perhaps in the 20s or 30s, evidenced by a scattering of dramatic Art Deco architecture.
We followed Patton Street in to the Chamber of Commerce to get a local map and select sleeping quarters.
The brochure on Days Inn North looked great. I wanted a Jacuzzi suite. Heading towards Weaverville we found the hotel. It was 3:30 and the rooms weren’t ready yet. “In two hours” the desk clerk said. So we paid and went to a bookstore we had passed, The Reader’s Corner, on Monford Avenue. Inside the front door, to the right, was a large selection of used Tom Wolfe books-“Look Homeward, Angel” “The Web & The Rock” “Of Time and The River” plus a selection of his minor works.
I love used bookstores and this one was particularly nice, jammed floor to ceiling with worthy texts, yet open enough so your ass doesn’t bump into the bookshelf on the other side of the aisle when you bend over to look at the books on the bottom shelf. I bought two travel books. One by Lawrence Durrell, “Spirit of Place” and a contemporary book about an upside-down girl. Yes, I liked the title!
From there we headed over to Woodfin to drive by the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, the favorite son of Asheville. Ironically, he wrote scathingly of Asheville, much like Hemingway did of Oak Park, IL, “a town of wide streets and small minds.”
The other doodad of Asheville is the Biltmore Estate. It is touted as the largest private home in America, some 240+ rooms of overblown ornamentation. I wanted to see the French Renaissance Chateau architecture, so when we went to the visitor gate we were surprised that it cost $36 for a four-hour tour. No peeking, so we left. You could purchase souvenirs at the fancy store this side of the gate. It is like saying you were there when you weren’t.
We stopped at two galleries, New Morning and a folk art place. They need LuLu’s! I bought a pair of calla lily earring, fine little sculptures by Stuart Nye. When worn the stems that will wind down my neck, perfect for a wedding. Not mine, someone else’s.
Malaprop’s on Haywood was great. It’s the bookstore where they invite Southern authors in for readings. You can find almost anything here. Well, I should say I went shopping. Z stayed in the car and read a free paper called “Snitch.” He is an easy man to tend to. And he looks good naked too!
Swinging back north to the room, we stopped at a liquor store for Z.
OOOH-WHEE! The room was very very very pleasant… spacious, clean, and nicely appointed. Only $70 too! It would be three X’s that in Chicagoland or even Milwaukee.
We unpacked and filled up the Jacuzzi. Our tired bodies need the massage from the vigorous jets. We drank and smoked and ordered pizza. Well, we tried to order pizza from Frank’s Roman but we reached a message that said it was the Sabbath and they were closed, and you should be too. Well, something like that. We settled for Domino’s. Yike’s it was horrid! Big tasteless dough-ball pizza and the garlic bread was just a smash of dough with garlic salt on it. Come to Chicago if you want pizza…crispy thin crust or a deep-dish with spinach. Yummmmmm. And garlic bread is a Gonella Italian-style bread slathered with butter and garlic crisped up under the broiler.
After Z took a snooze and I read a bit, we dressed for a Sunday night in Asheville. Stella Blue was closed so we went over to Club Hairspray. The parking lot was crammed with cars. The building is a wooden nondescript place painted yellow and pink.
Inside it was too fun…50s hair-dryer chairs, Eames warped-plastic light fixtures, and a floor painted in amoebic shapes. All very casual. We ordered drinks and sat at a side table next to the bar where a bunch of men and women were clustered. The boys wore nice make-up and the girls looked like they could kick my ass all of the way to Florida.
In the center room, a bunch of 20-somethings were watching a Janet Jackson video on a big-screen. Then I saw it…a poster…Red Letter Day was playing downstairs. Whee-hoo! What luck.
We stepped into the orange stairwell, down 3 steps, turn, down 3 steps, turn, down 3 steps turn, where we met the Mad Hatter, okay not the Mad Hatter, a girl selling tickets, $10 apiece.
Through the black door we saw the band playing, drenched in spotlights. We could barely see the kissing men or the groping girls. It was so hot in there I was starting to scorch!
If you like punk music you will love Red Letter Day. They are from Illinois. Go to MP3 and listen to “Sincerely Beautiful” or “Friday The 13th” or “Saturday the 14th” Good music for your ears and your happiness.
Fill that hot tub up again. Let’s dip in honey.
We woke to a 7 a.m. wake-up call and as we headed out of town south to Greenville, South Carolina, I realized that Asheville is almost an anti-corporate town. That is rather refreshing in the 21st Century.
Within an hour we hit Greenville, just about the antithesis of Asheville, all glittery with shopping malls. BUY BUY BUY
We stopped to buy food for a picnic later today. I saw the storeowner yelling at a black man who was panhandling outside of the convenience store. “Get out! Don’t come back again or I will call the cops.” The red-eyed drunk man had just begged money from a tall professor-type customer leaving the store. You will also notice that Greenville has a large black population. I didn’t see any people of color at all of Asheville.
We drove past a sign that said “Carl Sandburg Home.” I thought he was from Galesburg, Illinois. I think when you are famous everyone claims you even if you spent just a week in a place. We all need heroes.
This may be when we went over the French Broad River; then again it might have been in Asheville, or before Asheville. Sometimes things get messed up when you travel. I can tell you for certain that we went over the French Broad many times.
Today was mountain day and we headed straight upward to the cradle of forestry. The narrow road soared, wiggling sharply back and forth, a continuous series of fast switchbacks, on the edge of a mountain in the Pisgah National Forest. The outcropping are dripping, ice formed during the night, sections still in the shadows are frozen solid. When we reach Caesar’s Head we pull over to view one of the waterfalls, Looking Glass. It is magnificent! A man in his late 30s is there with his ailing father. I sense that this will be one of their final trips. I like the younger man. His sincerity and compassion shines. A mother is sitting down below the road, on a wooden rail, watching her children play near the falls. Sunlight is striking them. We remain in the shadows.
At the trail sign “Appalachian Trail” we pull over onto of the side-outs. We have a picnic at one of the tables near the river. I don’t know the name of this river. It could be French Broad, or the feeder for the French Broad, but I think it is weeping mountain juice. We don’t stop at the ranger station to find out.
Forty-five minutes back on the curly road and Eureka! Zorrid finally finds a place to pull over so I can get a rock. He climbs about 6’ down the side of the mountain to get it for me. I am frozen, that flinging thing again. The deep woods is littered with beer cans and those little sampler bottles of whiskey. Great. Get drunk and drive this mountain. I am glad it is still winter and the tourists are around yet.
OH! I found a dead dehydrated bird. I think it is a Rhode Island Red chicken, small with reddish-brown-copper and white feathers. He must have wandered away from one of the local farms. I want him, so I scoop his dehydrated carcass into a white trash bag with a stick. I’ll make a shrine to him or her.
We are on our way to Waynesville, slowly coming down off the mountain. There are houses now, little rattletraps. In Crusoe we see a park out on an island in the rocky river. It says “Bikerland.” There are little cottages and picnic tables. Soon, the houses look larger, better built. This area is not a gathering of poor dirt farmers. Many of the people have Herefords. They are ranchers. Independents, I think. Escapees from the city. A huge mobile home park of at least 100 trailers sits on another island. Retirees.
Waynesville is a relatively large town. This is where the outlanders must get their food and supplies.
Now we are back on I-40, same as before, tunnels but this is a big Interstate. We see an overturned semi. “Came on the downgrade too fast and couldn’t make the corner. Or the weight of this load shifted.” says Z. He knows about such things.
I am driving now. The mountains have unnerved me. I ask Z to grab the wheel whenever we go over a long bridge. French Broad. French Broad. French Broad.
I like Z so much because I don’t seem to be able to scare him. When I tell him I am feeling a bit fragile today, he just says, no biggie...or his equivalent of that which is shrugged shoulders.
I am taking him to Florence Y’all. That’s what the watertower says in bright orange letters. Back to Dream Street.
I am playing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco. It’s that lyric where he says, “lies are wishes.” I tell Z that I think of lies as protection so people don’t hurt me. I ask him his take on lies. He says, “Lies are fun.” See what I mean. How could anyone say that!
We arrive on Dream Street in the dark. It is late. We played a long time on the mountain. All of these places and the only one with a room is a Motel Six. A tour bus was just ahead of us, last room left. The room is tiny, basic, no amenities, and no shampoo for Z.
He uses mine and now he smells like a girl.
We dress for dinner and head straight to a Mexican restaurant that Z had his eye on the first time we stopped here. He has tacos. I have enchiladas suizas topped with an unusual salsa verde. I love margaritas! He loves any kind of cerveza.
Z hits a liquor store. Z says the Olympics are steeped in garbage, fake sports too. But I say, “Isn’t it like Mt Olympus…the Greeks …a presentation…proof that your country has the finest athletes?” He counters with, “Boring.” We watch “Charlie’s Angels” on HBO. I do girlstuff in the bathroom.
Good God, the room is a rotisserie. I am boiling and wake up at 4:12, and turn the heat off. The thermostat is all scratched up and I can’t tell which way to go. I crack open the door letting the cold air sweep into the room. If an intruder breaks in and kills us, well that is what will be. I am TOO hot! Z just sleeps away. He looks good when he sleeps, peaceful. I like the way life has etched up his face. It’s not putty white and all soft like cubicle-corporate guys. The sun engraved this man. He has lived.
We are out by 9. He hits Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and White Castle for his lusted-after minihamburgers. I stop at Bob Evan’s. They have carryout. I order biscuits and gravy and a Boston decaf. Ohmigod! My mouth is in heaven. This is sooooooooo good. I think a mother has cooked this up especially for me. The biscuits are big fluffy orbs so light that could float in the sky and the spicy sausage gravy is salt and peppered up just right. I am Goldilocks, so go away!
Be sure to take the bypass around Cincinnati. Almost zero traffic. The Ohioans are asleep. Ha! The secret of bypasses is this: any three-digit number is a bypass. If it starts with an even number it goes around a town/city. Most often these start with 2. If it has an odd number it goes through the town. These are 1’s or 3’s.
Spanish moss is smothering the planet. It is devouring the woods even as far north as Cincinnati. I’m guessing that the moss was a foreign introduction, possibly as a cash crop, or perhaps brought in to kill off some other forest pest. Just like sparrows and purple loosestrife that are the banes of the north. We fight them though, tooth and nail. Well, the loosestrife. That’s what my pal Nellie does. She goes around Minnesota plotting out the patches glued to the edges of waterways. Her degree in one she made up, something like Doctor of Wildforestry.
Driving today is shear hell. It is raining and the semis all throw out a waterspray, blowback, from their wheels. My Buick is too low and I have to turn the wipers on to very fast or I cannot see anything. Being behind a semi passing and another in the slow lane is particularly treacherous. I am swearing, a lot. Z offers to drive. “Not yet, Z-man. I have it under control.”
Twice, 18-wheelers almost sideswipe us. It is so dim and dreary that all of us drivers have road hypnosis. We all just want to take a nap. That is exactly what Z is doing.
In my rear view mirror I see a navy blue semi passing behind me. He keeps getting closer. Whoosh! I am going 75. He is blowing by me at least 85! Fuck! A psycho trucker!
Thirty miles up I-74, I pass him. The lettering on his door states that he is from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Damn, a homeboy a little too coked up. Or maybe his wife is having their baby. Who knows anyone’s real story?
Just like earlier when that man in the red SUV pulled in too close to me. I kept screaming at him and then when we both pulled over at a rest stop and the man got out. He was tiny and old and permanently bent over. I am a mean girl sometimes.
Z is back behind the wheel. We are closing in on Chicago. He is doing the Skyway again. Oops, we end up right down in the loop, took the wrong off-ramp. Sears Tower and the other skyscrapers have their heads wrapped in dense clouds. We squeeze into the six outgoing lanes of the Dan Ryan. We are inching northwest. Z planned this so we would beat rush hour. Looks the same to me.
I am thinking of the liner notes on a Talking Heads CD Kellie gave me the evening before I left. “Rich people travel to view poor people.” I wish they hadn’t ever said that. I wish I hadn’t read it. It just might be too true.
Home home home, sweet home. The air smells right. Everything that had become boring is warm and familiar. I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed. That is right after I pluck the feathers from my dead bird in the trunk.
1,628 miles. Thanx Z!
