Day 0 – Today is May Fourth, and Emilia and I are homeless. Tomorrow we begin our travels South, to New Orleans. We’ll drive, camp, stop around, visit friends, experience the country, live, laugh, love, etc. I see this as an opportunity to get my ya-yas out, to be jarred into some fresh perspectives. The pillars of my desire are a Toro y Moi concert in NOLA on Day 6 and The New Kendrick dropping on Day 9.
When we return to Maine, there are four questions to answer: Where (will we live)? Why (will we live there)? What (will living there look like)? How (will we afford it?) Hoping the trip will provide clarity somehow.
Day 1 – At a Prompto Oil Change in Portland, Emilia and I emphatically affirm to each other how awesome mechanics are, which we always do at Prompto, but today we’re feeling especially philosophical about this Prompto Oil Change on Forest Ave: the utility of the enterprise, the camaraderie within, the friendliness exuded, the cool uniforms, the workflow…we agree there are answers here for Society.
We’re meeting Jack and Nico in NYC. Google Maps tells me there is an hour-and-a-half delay in Portsmouth, and I inform Jack as much, not because the information is so pressing, but because I want him to feel bad for me. The woe he expresses is not what I’d hoped, and I’m embarrassed by my needs.
Per Emilia’s request, we start listening to an audiobook of The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas has a talent for writing heroes, young men that are pure of heart, not totally perfect, but always striving for goodness. It’s a moving archetype, and it makes me realize how a character like that would not fly in today’s sick, post-post ironic cultural landscape. “So who do we have? Who are our heroes?” I ask Emilia semi-rhetorically, for I find the answer as soon as the question is asked. I’m practically screaming in a caffeine-induced fervor: “The fucking Joker!”
I’m the Michael Phelps of driving: I’m the best at it and sometimes I smoke weed. Driving through NYC traffic is the ultimate test of my skills and I greet the challenge like a zealous anime character, panting, eyes wide, bouncing up and down in my seat. Emilia pisses in our travel mug. You don’t want your driving to be a product of the traffic, you want the traffic to be a product of your driving.
But still I can’t help but turn into a little bastard. I snap at Emilia a couple times as we draw nearer to Brooklyn. The matter of parking is always a sharp stressor for me, and the prospect of doing it in NYC has me sweating. Finally we get on Jack’s street and there he is, with Nico, standing in an available spot. I have to parallel park to get in there. I make one attempt and fail while everyone gives me tips. “I’m going to kill myself,” I tell Emilia, which I feel bad for saying. She tells me to get out so she can do it. I give Jack and Nico a hug, then sit on the sidewalk with my head in my hands, ashamed that something as low-stakes as parking can break me. I’ll be fine in five minutes.
Tonight I introduce myself to Gabriel, friend of Emma, but realize a split second later I’d already met him almost exactly a year ago, and I feel bad because I like him; Gabriel is funny, and a good talker. It’s just that his hair is so different than it was.
A woman faints at the Mexican restaurant just as we’re about to place our order. Men run up to the counter asking for water. The staff looks on edge. I tell everyone in our party that this could be a good bit for Curb Your Enthusiasm. “And you placed your order anyway?” Cheryl would bitterly reproach.
Day 2 – Jack makes delicious espresso. It’s drizzling outside and we go to the Guggenheim for the Vasily Kandinsky (who?) exhibition. On the way we stop at a poppin’ bagel shop. Emilia is starving and they forget to fulfill her order, an injustice that happens to her all the time. I am keenly sensitive to how a lack of food drastically affects Emilia’s mood, so I get anxious, and my anxiety produces the misinformed notion that there’s something Emilia could be doing better to resolve this situation, so I start giving her unsolicited tips like, “Maybe stand closer to the counter?” and “Can you ask about it again?” and “Five people have gotten their food since you ordered,” until Emilia orders me to go away. My lox spread bagel sandwich sucks, but soon we’ve all eaten and everything’s fine.
Jack pays for our tickets. Kandinsky made nice paintings and wrote some cool theories about creativity. This shit is wasted on me sometimes.
We go back to Jack’s and watch American Psycho while Emilia takes a nap. I haven’t seen the movie in a while and it triggers my Joker discourse. I’d already harassed Emilia and Nico with a Joker monologue on the subway (“The Joker’s our most popular aspirational figure, our archetype for social revolution: A violent freak who fell in acid and laughs a lot”), but now I’m at it again. “It’s no coincidence that American Psycho has reemerged in the zeitgeist within the last few years. It’s a Joker-type, a vessel through which people envision their own liberation by way of ‘snapping.’”
Emilia goes to hang out with other Brooklyn friends and we meet Emma at B&H Dairy. Jack tells us this is where they had their first date, and it’s where his parents went before them. Sammy meets us there and we have our annual catch-up. I eat borscht and matzo ball soup and perogies and articulate for the umpteenth time to the umpteenth ear the platonic shift happening in me and Emilia’s lives, the existential pregnancy of the upcoming summer. I say something I think is really clever: “I’m not living my life, I’m just managing it.” Oooh. Put that in a song.
Next we go to a packed Irish bar where one pint is delivered in two half-pint glasses, so when the hypercompetent bartenders walk through the crowd with their fingers laced through the handles of so many drinks, it’s twice as impressive.
I scream over the noise to explain why I would be really good on Survivor: “I’m a disciplined guy, I did lots of endurance sports in high school, so the physical is covered well enough, and as for social, I believe my personality is such that I could have a strong, yet understated, social game where I start with an allegiance with just a single other person, and that’s my anchor that I return to as I maneuver with everyone else.” Everyone mostly agrees, but also points out correctly that the anxiety of deception would debilitate me.
At Sammy’s I meet Phoebe the Mini Pig. Sammy frets that Phoebe’s recent rapid growth will extend past standard mini pig measurements and into Basic Hog territory. “Like what happened with Ariana Grande’s mini pig.” Phoebe squeals when scratched or jostled and it takes me a bit to disassociate the sound from slaughter.
Day 3 – Any time I’ve used public transit in NYC I’ve been following someone else’s lead.“You should take this as an opportunity to learn how to do this independently,” Sammy says as I look at all the possible ways to get back to Jack’s, different combinations of buses and subways. She’s right, and I say so before stepping out her door and walking 50 minutes back to Jack’s.
When I get back, Jack and Nico have just started S1E1 of Euphoria. I’d been uninterested in Euphoria because I’m put off by television shows where highschoolers fuck, but I guess not that put off, because we watch two episodes. Unable to help myself, I draw parallels between the psychotic character Nate and The Joker, a comment for which I immediately apologize, and am immediately forgiven. This is why we are friends. Watching and talking through two episodes of Euphoria with my boys while sipping espresso is a highlight of the trip. Then Emilia gets back from her friends’ and we leave for a quick stop in Philadelphia.
I try to piss in the travel mug but it overflows and I spray on myself.
In Philadelphia, you can park in the median of certain streets. I’m not sure I believe in it. We meet Emilia’s friends Andrew and Marcy and get a beer. They’re great, I like them a lot. I am pleased with the company Emilia keeps. Then we are off with not much of a plan.
Because we’re tired and do not feel like driving any further, Emilia and I stop at a Super 8 in one of those towns that exist to be an exit off the highway in Baltimore. In anticipation of cooping up in the motel with a pizza and watching TV, I get super high before we go across the street to order a pizza. This is a pretty status-quo move for me, but upon entering the establishment, an unusual paranoia strikes like lightning. The interior is totally empty except for me, Emilia, and two black teenage girls behind the counter chatting and laughing with each other. When we place our order, they express open disdain towards the initiation of labor. This reaction makes me feel disproportionately wretched. My brain invents crises faster than I can debunk them, interpreting this sad, lonely feeling I’m feeling in Baltimore as white fragility. My face feels hot.
Am I homesick for white people?
“You alright?” Emilia asks.
“I’m actually freaking out. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m having a great time. Hang in there, buddy.”
What a relief. I was sure she was also freaking out.
Back in the car with our pizza, I start stammering out an explanation, cringing and wincing over what I’m trying to articulate until Emilia stops me, gently.
“Are you in your head about whether those black girls liked you?”
Close enough. I nod.
“Don’t worry about it.”
In the Super 8, the sad feeling stays.
Day 4 – We’re going to Durham, NC to visit Emilia’s friend, Scotty, who’s in seminary school at Duke. Scotty is a delightful character who eludes perfect description. Scotty only makes sense in the flesh, contextualized by tone and delivery. His irony is difficult to keep track of, as it often feels like it's horseshoeing into genuineness. Hilarious guy, great host.
I learn via Instagram that the Toro y Moi show is cancelled due to ‘COVID in the touring party’, which is disappointing, but an outcome I had emotionally prepped for. Still I share my misfortune on social media because I want people to feel bad for me. We have arrived at Duke post-grad. An empty campus is a familiar and informative mood.
Exhaustion limits the ambition of our sleeping prospects, filtering our options until we’re set up to spend the night on the common-room couches in the dorm Scotty is RA of. Peter texts me to tell me ‘The Heart Part 5’ has dropped. For the next few days, I will compulsively intone ‘Look what I’ve done for you’ and ‘I’m serious, this is heaven’ to myself until Emilia asks me to cool it.
We’re hanging out until sleep comes. Scotty is working on a paper with the TV turned to whatever channel. In celebration of ‘The Heart Part 5,’ I get high before listening, thinking the weed will also help with sleep. Sadly, things go awry. My brain collapses in on itself again, not enough to not enjoy ‘The Heart Part 5’, thankfully, but after listening to the song, I’m asked to keep DJing, usually a revered role for me, but with the state I’m in, one that only inspires self-loathing. I’m sure my song choices are annoying everyone and painting a portrait of me as an asshole. I get self-conscious about what my face is doing, what my life is doing; I get worried if Emilia is feeling lonely and sad, too. I didn’t think I would feel this way on this trip, and there isn’t much comfort in the thought of our return. There’s so many decisions to be made when we get back.
Day 5 – We barely sleep and hit the road at 7am. A series of decisions takes us to a campground an hour outside Atlanta. I can’t remember the name of the campground exactly, but I know that it was ‘Indian’ something and that the nearby convenience store was ‘Big Chief’ something. This area of Georgia reminds us of Maine in how its rural, low-income landscape is cratered by asteroids of wealth, recognizable by way of new houses parked in the middle of inappropriately large swaths of manicured land, three cars in the driveway. Georgia is beautiful in the new spring.
Emilia and I set up camp at a nice spot next to a lake. The lakeview is mostly obscured, but access to the water’s edge is easy. We rounded out our mobile kitchen at the local Dollar General (a real institution in the South) and are preparing to eat well as preparation to sleep well. Against best efforts, a deep melancholy returns, more pressing now, and I’m ashamed to be so consistently bummed on a trip that is supposed to be a relief from being bummed. Going forward (homesick) and going back (homeless) feel equally hopeless. Historically, this trapped feeling has been an excellent exacerbater in pushing me to some sort of edge, and tonight is no exception: “I should kill myself” begins to nag my brain like a mosquito, not meaning anything by it other than to appropriately evoke the depth of my desire to Escape Mental Suffering. I can only hide from Emilia for so long. Over hot dogs, mac ‘n’ cheese, and salad, I lay it out.
“And I hate myself for feeling this feeling.”
“That’ll definitely help.”
Point taken. We finish our dinner and go down to the lakeside to enjoy a brilliant sunset. Emilia bird watches through her binoculars and I read Slapstick, one of the funniest books ever.
Day 6– We make the final push for Algiers Point in New Orleans. The amount of time and energy consumed by driving will not be accurately represented in this retrospective because it’s not interesting to write or read about, but driving is everything. We start affectionately referring to the car as ‘the coffin.’
There are two couples taking the same route at the same same time as us, making the same stops.
We arrive at our delicious little Airbnb and all I can do is whine about how I left my phone charger in Durham. I feel like I’ve lost 20 pounds and slept 5 hours.
Where we are, Algiers Point, is on one side of the Mississippi River; the famous parts of New Orleans, being Canal Street and the French Quarter, are on the other, a circumstance which creates the opportunity to take a ferry. We buy three-day ferry passes on the RTA GoMobile app and walk for twelve minutes through cozy, quiet suburban housing to the pier. The light makes everything golden, and the heat of the day is descending into a hospitable warmth. This is our hour of victory, but still I am clenched, feeling nothing close to relief or excitement, which is so annoying. Emilia is happy, trying to coax me out, but I can’t fake it (yet; I am trying), and eventually I hear exasperation in her voice.
There is a second level to the ferry where you can sit if you want to be out in the air. A woman chats animatedly to her parents about how she monitors her daughter’s social media use; a scum/punk couple bring their bikes aboard. Everyone is in a good mood on the glittering water, and the atmosphere of fellowship is drawing me out bit by bit, quietly but surely. A faint smile touches my lips, but just as I’m about to update Emilia on my mood, she says, not unkindly, “At least try to enjoy yourself.”
Too quickly I indignantly reply, “I am,” so petulantly, so lame, like I’m her teenage son. Emilia rolls her eyes and returns her attention to the water lapping at the side of the ferry.
Tonight we have an authentic New Orleans experience, as in, an experience authentic to hapless tourists in New Orleans. Emilia is determined to partake in local cuisine, but all the interesting restaurants are already booked, of course. We’ve done too little research. I am starved, so we end up diving into the first bar with an open kitchen. I make an effort to choose the most regional fried seafood I can. I think it was shrimp or catfish. The bartender is amazed at our tip.
The atmosphere, that famous New Orleans atmosphere you hear about, is there in the streets, so we get that, at least. Establishments have their doors flung open, and live music crowds the air, vying for attention. I only give money to street performers that have cute kids in their act, blowing atonally into a trumpet or smacking a plastic bucket to some sort of beat, until Emilia makes the astute point that these children should probably be in bed, that this might be exploitation. Or it might be fine–there are many valid ways to grow up. It’s hard to say.
You can open-carry alcohol here, so I do. Our brains are addled by exhaustion. We pass spot after spot, little hubs of culture and life that could’ve been good fun to check out if were we not so bedraggled. There are sweaty, pink business bros in tucked-in button-ups everywhere, looking at each other, looking at women, clamoring and scheming. They make me hate everything. I like hating everything.
Emilia and I walk along the water and try to figure out why it is so hard to stay up late now. Now as in at this stage in our lives. We share anecdotes from our ‘youth’ of adventures where we were tireless, unstoppable forces in strange scenarios and foreign cities. I think the common denominator in our stories is an unhinged horniness that isn’t so present in our lives anymore. Back at the Airbnb we watch two episodes of Euphoria that are really good.
Day 7– One of the books in the bathroom of our Airbnb is a book of essays by Mindy Kaling from 2011. You can tell it’s from 2011 because she uses the word ‘tranny’ prejudiciously.
Emilia wakes up and I coyly propose that we stay in our room all day. “That would be so depressing,” she says.
“Ha ha,” I say. “Yeah that was just a bit.”
Emilia sets about finding something for us to do today and quickly reserves spots for a kayak tour of the marshland just outside the city. We cram down a haphazard breakfast of oatmeal, clementines and peanut butter, then are out the door to catch the ferry back across the Mississippi. There’s time to kill before noon sharp, when we’re meant to meet our guide in front of a restaurant. It’s hot, ninety-something degrees, and we drag ourselves around. We camp out in the air conditioned lobby of the Jazz Museum, reading up on Professor Longhair and other legends I can’t remember now. I remember Professor Longhair because Jack had mentioned him to me back in NYC.
We’re standing at the anointed corner. A wiry, middle-aged man riding in a rickshaw pulled by a young woman on a bike passes us twice, and by overhearing his loud, one-sided dialogue, we figure out that he is one of the members of our kayak team. Emilia hails the bicyclist down, who appears grateful for the assist. At the same time, a young couple, like younger than us, arrive at the scene. The crew is assembling, which is relieving because this meet-up spot is non-descript enough that Emilia and I were worried we might be in the wrong place. The last of our group to arrive is a tall, handsome Japanese man, about our age, in a black t-shirt and jeans.
“Are you guys here for the kayak tour?”
He asks this directly to me and Emilia. We answer yes and a smile lights up his face. We learn his name is Ryuh. Ryuh has flown to the U.S. from Tokyo to do a sort of all-star tour of the States; two days ago he was in Washington D.C., and before that he was in NYC; after New Orleans, he’s hitting Dallas. Ryuh is easy-going and likable and tells us he’s hungover from last night–”Everywhere you go here, you drink.” He looks us up and down and commends us for our preparedness, our backpacks and water bottles and bug spray and sunscreen and snacks and appropriate clothing. We offer to share anything he wants and remark how, by contrast, he must be boiling in the heat. It is about ninety-four degrees now. Ryuh laughs bashfully.
“I was under the misconceived notion that America was not hot.”
And then a white van pulls up to the curb and our guide emerges wearing cute shorts and a worn, yellow, short-sleeve button-up that is unbuttoned all the way down, displaying a smooth chest made tawny from a life in the sun. He announces himself with a “hey y’all” as his feet hit the pavement.
Putting a cigarette between his lips, the handsome man with short salt ’n’ pepper hair introduces himself as “Bingo.” He can’t be much older than forty. It’s clear Bingo is strong, and it’s clear he has gotten strong not by sculpting himself, but by living a life that uses his body every day. Bingo’s manner and vocal pitch are a charismatic hybrid of southern and gay, and his keen intelligence is betrayed by subtle humor and easy personability. Bingo possesses the magical ability to not only make a group of people like him, but make a group of people like each other. Bingo is one in a million.
Bingo lays down the plan: We will take a twenty-minute drive north to get out of the city, make a stop at a gas station to address any final needs, then stop at an obscure entry into the marsh where Bingo has stationed the kayaks. They are not his– Bingo is a contract worker for the company that enables these kayak tours.
“If you enjoy yourselves today, please consider paying a gratuity, as the company takes most of your admission fee.”
Emilia and I take the back row of seats; Ryuh takes the one in front of us; the young couple, the one in front of Ryuh, and the wiry Boomer man, whose name I know now is Greg, sits shotgun with Bingo. Greg is a real chatterbox who engages Bingo with a vigor that suggests Greg is on the other side of a mid-life crisis. Through their conversation, we organically learn a lot about Bingo. Simultaneously, though, as that conversation is going, Emilia and I are chatting with Ryuh, an equally engrossing person. When we pass an exit that goes towards Baton Rouge he points and says, “Like the Janis Joplin song?” I didn’t expect Ryuh to be familiar with Janis Joplin, but I also don’t know what song he’s talking about until he exclaims, “Bobby McGee!”
Ryuh asks about our relationship, and we tell him our story, how we went to high school together but were just friends, then reconnected to be amorous eight years later. “Oh wow!” Ryuh enthuses. “I had a very similar experience with my own girlfriend, where we met in high school and then were on and off for long periods of time as we each had different obligations. But now we are together.” Damn. An air of fate settles between us.
Ryuh is again verbalizing his esteem for our preparedness . “Compared to me…” Ryuh gestures to himself tragically. “I didn’t bring anything!” Emilia makes a counterpoint that his method, in its simple and carefree approach, has its own honor to it. We chuckle a bit archly to each other because we can’t help but juxtapose Ryuh to us, especially me, who would crumble if I attempted to freewheel it like Ryuh is doing.
We’re all laughing, and I offer, “To be honest, my being so prepared stems from a deep and severe fear of being uncomfortable.” I say it in a funny way, not to be super heavy, but Ryuh’s face clenches into a look of concern that gives me pause.
Meanwhile, Bingo is still dropping tidbits about his personal history via conversation with Greg, pausing every so often to feed us cool factoids about the NOLA marshlands, most of which I’ve forgotten now, but I believe NOLA’s marshlands are the largest in the country. I was much more interested in Bingo, anyway, who unravels himself to be a noble vagabond (my words not his) who’s seen all of the country twice. “One time, a buddy and I took a road trip where we flipped a coin every time we came to a fork in the road.” That’s just the sort of thing Bingo would say about the unromantic decision of when to pull off the interstate–“a fork in the road.” Bingo knows a lot about the environment and the government’s environmental policies, and presents his information through a working-class lens without being all holier-than-thou about it. Bingo recounts what he said to the fourteen-year old girl who burst into tears during one of his tours because of how hopeless she felt to counteract our Climate/Environmental Crisis: “Honey, you just gotta find your own corner of the world and do what you can. Try not to worry about the rest of it.”
In the South, they say you’re ‘libel’ to do something instead of ‘likely’, and use ‘obliged’ and ‘reckon’ way more.
The kayak tour is splendid. We navigate wide and narrow passages of water bordered by verdant forestry. My memory of these two hours, and of our road trip in general, is saturated with the emerald of immediate spring, like we had found the new season ourselves in the South. We see owls, herons, woodpeckers, and baby alligators (!!!). Bingo tells us that alligators are the only reptile that plays, ‘playing’ being defined as any behavior that does not appear to satiate any biological need. “They have been observed to climb to the top of logs perched over water just to tumble off, climb back up, and do it again and again. The agreed-upon conclusion is that they’re having fun.” Bingo also discusses with us the history of alligator hunting, the methods and the legislation surrounding them. One said method involves latching a raw chicken onto an enormous hook, lowering the bait into the water, then coming back the next day to see if you caught an alligator.
“That’s cruel!” proclaims one half of the young couple. We all nod along vaguely, as this seems like the appropriate reaction. However, Bingo, proceeding slowly and kindly, says, “Perhaps…But if you’re from a poor family for whom you’re trying to provide food, it’s a good way to get meat on the table.” Bingo has spoken–we all nod again, but more emphatically.
Everyone’s quietly vying to get one-on-one with Bingo, who judiciously allocates some time with each of us. He is quirky and wise like Jiminy Cricket, humble and discreet like d’Artagnan. Here are the few Bingoisms I remember:
[On how anything tastes good fried]: Humans ain’t different from any other animal, we just want our salt lick.
[On polyamory]: Everyone feels so free until their feelings get hurt.
[On the hostility of a mother gator towards her young]: Reminds me of my own.
Soon we’re all back on shore, exhausted and happy, helping Bingo put the kayaks back on the towable rack, because we never want Bingo to suffer. On our way back into the city, Greg learns that his wife, who came to NOLA with him, fell and broke her arm while we were in the marshes, and is currently in the hospital. Do I even need to tell you that Bingo immediately offered to drop Greg off right at the hospital? Or that Bingo is intimately familiar with all the fastest routes to the city hospital because of his experience providing services and assistance to the local displaced and homeless?
What I admire most about Bingo then and now is how his sophisticated knowledge of dire American situations like severe poverty and environmental destruction didn’t turn him into a jaded nihilist; or if Bingo is a jaded nihilist, he was decent enough to put up a front for the sake of his kayak tour. I remember that he said, regarding the often-incompatible interests of our growing population versus our diminishing natural environment: “I don’t see it as a philosophical or political issue, I see it as a problem-solving one.”
People like Bingo are for people like me to merely recall.
Day 8– Today we have to leave our Airbnb by 11am. The plan: move out, put our shit in my car, cross the Mississippi for a visit to the Audubon Aquarium on the opposite shore, come back to the car and leave. We each take an edible after drinking our coffee and the two of us are finally, finally in a really good mood at the same time. The aquarium is fun as hell, a laugh a minute. Afterward, as we luxuriate on the marina and wait for our ferry back to Algiers Point, I say, “I think we’re finally getting the hang of this.”
We’re leaving Louisiana with a newfound optimism for our adventure. There are no more hard deadlines to hit, so we figure we can stop driving for inhumane stretches of time and proceed leisurely, meandering about the Southeast. First thing’s first, retreat northward to mitigate the heat. We make for the Mississippi border and stop at the visitor’s center, as we’ve done at every state line, to grab a brochure that’ll guide us to a good camping site. Eventually we get off the highway and on to the real roads of Mississippi. The sun is muted by an overcast sky, but the resulting gray is nonetheless bright and wide. Barren fields are expanding and forests dense with vines are constricting anyplace that isn’t a road. Not wanting to be East Coast Elitists, Emilia and I have so far met the South with open hearts, but…something is up. It’s like the land is keeping a secret. And that’s fair; as outsiders, we know our lane and accept that it’s not our right to be in on the Mississippi Situation. But if we’re on the outside, then it feels like there’s something on the inside of Mississippi watching us.
We see the sign for our chosen campsite and take the appropriate turn down a dirt road that leads to a clearing in the woods with two mowed-down plots for setting up camp. Outside these basic signifiers, very little here is making us feel that this is a place we are welcome to stay. Nobody else is there except mosquitos. Emilia makes the call to abandon. Dusk is falling. We get back on the road and follow it north. Our spirit of adventure is flagging, but what’s still there is enough to help us laugh off the dis-ease and keep going. We go and we go, we take one turn and then another, then we’re going down a road, we drive past a silo, then the road we’re on narrows, and we’re still driving, very slowly now, when we see it, in the yard of a trailer home, a tree with a monkey doll dangling from its lowest branch, hung by its neck with string. The red of the monkey’s lips is vivid enough to be seen from the road.
“That doll is being hung,” says Emilia.
“Well…” I reply, slow on the uptake, “It’s hanging.”
Emilia gives me a look.
“I mean,” I faltered, “Maybe a kid did it. You know how kids are. Senselessly violent?” As I lose conviction, the sound of barking arises from these people’s yard and quickly grows near. Looking out the car windows, we find ourselves flanked by two small dogs of indeterminate breed yelling at us to leave, which is exactly what we want to do, exactly what we would do if it weren’t for the mongrels ducking in between our tires. Desperate to avoid confrontation with isolated racists, I decide enough is enough and slowly execute a three point turn to go back the way we came, praying that I don’t kill a dog today. I don’t, and we flee into the darkening twilight.
Denial is no longer possible. Mississippi is cursed. All the hope we felt at the beginning of the day has been thwarted. We feel like failures, losers who can’t do this trip right. It’s too late now to figure out a new camping plan, so the new plan is to drive as far as we can east and then stop at some motel. Soon after we’ve passed into Tennessee, around 830pm, it begins to pour, so we exit the highway at the next opportunity and pull into a Quality Inn, longing for security.
Things are grim and dark in our room, both in furnishing and mood. Dim light fixtures cast gaunt shadows against the unloved, brown furniture. There is a locked door that joins our room to our neighbor’s. Emilia and I are mostly quiet as we prepare for bed. The open-endedness of our trip post-New Orleans, which had felt invigorating just nine hours ago, now feels like a burden, a circumstance I wish I could teleport out of. And I feel sad for Emilia, who had higher hopes for this trip than I, and whom I can tell is in the middle of processing a deep disappointment that is forcing her to reassess what our trip means now. How are we here again, in this place? Where did we go wrong? Why are we magnetized to these states of misery we want so badly to transcend? I am worried that some of the blame lies with me.
Moments after lights-out, a baby in the room next door begins to cry. This is too bad, but acceptable. It’s a baby, after all; it doesn't know any better. But then we hear more voices, what sounds like two or three men trying to talk over the noise of the crying baby. Over the course of the next hour, the horrible scene articulates itself: it’s a group of men neglecting a wailing infant, presumably one of their own offspring, to instead get loaded and talk shit. Taken separately, a crying baby or a room of loud guys are both pretty bad, but neither are perplexingly cruel, and it is the perplexingly cruel quality of the muffled crying and shouting and laughing on the other side of the wall that makes it impossible to make peace with, impossible to sleep through, as this noise is forcing me to acknowledge that this is life for most people.
At 1145pm the whole thing is still excruciating enough that I take the otherwise inconceivable measure of making a complaint at the front desk. Timidly I inform the woman working the night shift of our situation and request, if it’s not too much trouble, that we be moved to a different room. I am relieved by her mild demeanor, as anything spicier than neutral would break me tonight. She consults her computer for a minute before telling me we can’t be moved, but that she can make a call to the room warning them to shut it down at the risk of being kicked out. I have my worries about the consequences of that line of action, but I thank the woman and trudge back to the nightmare.
Day 9– Whatever the woman said and however she said it, the room next door falls silent within five minutes of my return, but it becomes apparent that they must’ve just relocated to another room in the hotel and abandoned the baby, because for the rest of the night, intermittent cries are heard through the wall. But as the clock strikes midnight and the ninth day of our trip begins, I remember: New Kendrick is out. I curl into fetal in Tennessee and listen to the album. I'm totally present.
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