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5/20/2006 08:22:00 PM
this is the trip.
beginning:: sleeping with one eye open
If it's 9pm on a Thursday, why don't you go to Louisiana? That's what we said, that's how your mind spins on this Thursday night -- no really, you'd been planning it for a while, but only half-planning, like sleeping with one eye open and hoping for the best, or having a shotgun under your bed but not knowing how to use it. So you swing out in the Ford Focus, your little yuppie transport, and into the rain, a city sobbing for you as you leave? Or just a city that needs some sun. You are headed for sun, you craved sun and shrimp and ceremony, and so -- New Orleans.
If it's 3am on the Interstate, you might want to kill yourself. You might want to just spinspinspin off the swervy dark road and swaddle yourself in the sleep that you know awaits you out there, in that velvet blanket of rainy night. Just go. Just swerve. No. Just. Keep. Driving. These are crazy thoughts. They pass through in less than a millisecond. But the whispers of tired pull at you, pull at your lower eyelids, you are forgetting to breathe because you are willing your eyes open. You are... switching drivers.
When it's 7am and you are pulling into the parking lot of the Motel 6, you are swept up in relief and disbelief. It's a Motel 6. Who stays at a Motel 6? No one here cares anymore, that's for sure, you will stay anywhere. Your brain is half-dizzy, half-elated, and when you snuggle under the polyester coverlet that you imagine has been slept under nine thousand times, and you pull up the clean white cotton sheets, you are nestled in a cocoon. Awake after 6 hours of half-sleep and drive again.
driving again:: caffeine, lazy eye, murder scene
When you see Blytheville, Mississipi, you know you are close to Louisiana -- you start thinking of "blythe," blythe meaning happy, happy meaning being in the south, driving past winding green spaces that stretch and sprawl -- you breathe in these spaces, these spaces become your breath, this road becomes your spine and you are going so fast now that the pink wildflowers poking up against the asphalt blur like a crazy Monet.
Dark is falling, your night is falling, but caffeine and hip-hop are fueling this show, you are popping your collar, you are navigating with one hand on the wheel and one hand doing a little hip-hop dance, you are still hurtling through Louisiana, with an eye out for hurricane wreckage (which you do and do not want to see) but then -- HALT; creak; slow down, a road is closed. A road is closed.
When you see a lighted trailer, with a mobile sign outside (like you see on all those strip malls, those rentable signs with the moveable letters) you see there is food. Jambalaya! Ice cream! This is an oasis of food and directions.
If you see someone with a lazy eye, you might think he just has a lazy eye. If you see another someone with a lazy eye, you might wonder what is in the water. But you order your shrimp poboy (Poor Boy?) Lost without lodging, you gather directions in pieces through the advisings of those on the porch, with directions that include "past the railroad tracks" and "if you don't mind gravel." You have visions of sleeping in your car next to the swamp.
When you see the Colonial Inn in Amite (Uh-Meat, A-Meat?), you will probably be hesitant. You will not want to be racist. You will not want to be a pussy. But you will wonder why there is so much back-and-forth and in-and-out of one particular young black male while you sit in your car and wait for your boyfriend to come out alive from the motel lobby. Hopefully with a room key? You are not quite sure what you hope for.
If you see a room that has some damage -- holes in the walls, brown stains on the walls, split wood on the doorframe, mold on the shower and a dead spider under the tray on the bathroom sink, you may start to wonder. You wonder. Ok, you wonder and then you begin to craft the script for a one-act play that is simply the protagonist musing on the various displays of damage. Your limit is blood. Do not sleep here if you see blood on the sheets. No blood. Sleep.
in paradise:: the price is right at the liberty inn & sonic
The morning is your oyster. Do they have oysters here? You are in Lousiana, you must shower, you have not showered in days. You struggle. You straggle. You are in the car now, with all your worldly possessions screaming down route 16 to Franklinton so you can follow your twisted-up Google map directions to get to the hotel you never booked because they didn’t take reservations. Here. No. There. No. Back. Gone. Out. Over.
Stop at the library, where they will tell you exactly and not exactly how to find a better oasis.
Find a better oasis for your $55. If you are staying at the Liberty Inn, you are happy, you are in a blanket of joy, you are thinking you have been a contestant on the Price is Right and there is in fact a prize and it is in fact your hotel room and you coulda bet $1 because in fact it is cheaper than you would expect, if the same price bought you a murder scene last night.
SONIC. What? SONIC. What? A car wash?
NO! Have a cheeseburger. Have a cheeseburger.
NO! Ok. Chicken. Have some chicken. A bird is better than a land animal.
You will fall in love with several things on this trip -- including Sonic cheeseburgers and cherry limeade.
exploring:: um. that was... scary.
You have so much time today, you are swimming in time, it is Saturday and sunny, with a place to stay, you can do anything you want, you are a resident of Louisiana, you are among the blessed. Go to New Orleans. See the city that went underwater on all those t.v. shows, and see what's left.
Um.
That was scary.
What?
That was not a neighborhood. That was a series of half-abandoned buildings and some people wandering the streets like there shouldn't even be cars on the road and looking lost.
We're lost.
Ok. Here's the French Quarter.
You only know to find a cafe, because sometimes when the world overwhelms, coffee and sitting and chatting and people-watching make everything sane again. Find Cafe du Monde. Don't lose where you parked the car. Watch the people float by in their various incarnations of tourist, rich person, tourist, rich person, normal person, poor person, street person, entertainer person, person person person. Where did they all come from? At least we have a seat amongst patches of powdered sugar under the umbrella of Cafe du Monde.
Where's the car?
Walk walk walk. Stop in fountain/chandelier store. Contemplate which lavish glass lighting fixture or absurd bronze fountain you would purchase if filthy rich. Walk walk walk. Stop in trippy mask-lined cave store. Contemplate buying large butterfly wings for all-purpose Halloween costume. Decide against it. Walk walk walk. Stop in gumball-cheery gift store. Buy wedding card. Contemplate buying life-size gummy anatomically correct heart. Decide against it.
Ok. Here's the car.
You are locked in the bathroom of a gas station.
After 5 minutes someone hears the pounding, rattles their keys and unlocks you. "Lock's messed up." Yup.
At home (Franklinton, your apartment, your Liberty Inn, "The Libb") you find more Sonic, ensconce yourself in cherry limeade, a cheeseburger and the Jack Daniels you bought in a liquor store in the French Quarter. Love the one you're with.
blooming and dancing:: masks, candles, castles
Are you serious? It's Sunday. Sunday is a wedding day, today we will see marriage bloom, love bloom, another tripday bloom. What should we even do today? How should we spend our pre-wedding time? It is a blur, you are waking late and then deciding to check e-mail, a half-hour drive away. But then you discover the radio, it has been hiding things, it has been holding secrets on those transparent cheese-filled airwaves, no -- this is country music. And you could listen to it for a song or two. AND THEN another song;
No WAIT, don't turn it; another song; OK just keep it! We know this one, we heard it before, let's sing it; and when you sing you understand that anyone can learn these, anyone can cry over the love they lost when they effed it all up, and anyone can remember how their mother looked when she waved goodbye as you left for college (Stop crying you loon.) and all right, you love that one by Garth Brooks that you remember from the time your family played that one CD over and over as you drove to Boston.
It's 3pm, we must get home for the wedding.
Your nail polish is effed to high hell. It looks like you murdered someone at the Colonial Inn. Bright red cheap nail polish bought in a mad fit of needing-to-feel-appropriate that drove you to a Walgreens way back in Tennessee. Do not wear this nail polish. Go to the Winn-Dixie and find yourself something else, girl. At the very least, find some remover to take it off you before you scare the wedding guests. Get thee to the ceremony.
There are masks on the table. Do you take one? Which is you? Are the big masks for the people who are hugely important to the bride and groom? Are the small masks for the people who don’t really matter? Do we matter? We matter this much. Let's wear these.
When the bride comes out in a pearl white dress, wearing a mask, and descends from the castle, and someone drops rose petals from a window above as she begins to walk, you are in a dream-trance, and this is the only thing that matters.
When the groom, wearing a mask and a long coat with tails, lights a candle for the father he lost last year, you are in a dream-trance, and this is the only thing that matters.
At the reception, they all dance -- the people they know, they don't know you. But then two of their Louisiana friends take a shine to you and maybe feel a little bit sorry for the two of you are here all alone. What? Oh yes. You know the groom. You learn about the days before he knew you and was a theatery southern boy, you learn that you can pin money on the happy couple and buy yourself a dance, you learn that it's best to bring large bills for this task so that a pile of ones doesn't fall off his cravat.
Winding down, winding down, winding down. Back at the Liberty Inn, finish your bottle of Jack Daniels. Slow happy torture to get whiskey-drunk.
back to the north:: empty bottles, the grand prize, a clenched heart
When it's Monday, you will be dazed. The phone will ring and what? Check out? Us? Well. I suppose so. I suppose we must. We were supposed to leave today. That's right. Leave the south. Pack fast, like you are leaving the scene of a crime, caught in a whirlwind of misplaced underwear, one lost sock, and your empty whiskey bottle. The road back begins.
Lather your road back in things that mean south to you; Sonic stops and country songs that you learn as you go. Find out that on B93, the grand prize of the WEEK is a pizza and a VHS tape. Rinse with cherry limeade. Repeat. Feed each other Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
When you come home, there is something of the south left, and when your heart clenches in traffic while you inch through the city, and when your nerves jangle about going back to work, you think of the windy roads and open spaces, the DJ who announced the pizza prize with such gusto, the cheeseburgers, the country songs you blared and the rose petals that fell from a castle. Immediately find a country station in Chicago.