People here, in the rest of the country (and in the South in particular), are pretty astonishingly predominantly just a lot of pasty, soft, small-eyed blobs, people whose round, featureless faces had to put them somewhere on the spectrum.
On our way down the mountain, we stopped in the world’s first Coca-Cola bottling plant, which was strictly operational and not open for tours. The lady at the front desk gave us Cokes though, which was nice.
We arrived in Atlanta, Georgia in fairly good time, and took a look at everything that was closed by that time in the afternoon, already planning on returning the next day. We walked around the park in front of Coke World, and the Aquarium Pavilion, and the Olympic Park, and all the way to the CNN headquarters. We picked up lemon pepper wings, and then we parked and slept in a sketchy city lot.
. . . . .
Day 11. “The World of Coke.” A place that was pretty cool, past all the weird propaganda and the fact that a museum dedicated to a beverage was right across the way from a Civil Rights Museum and an Aquarium. The weirdest part was that schools were on field trips there though.
We paid to get in, and I consumed an amount of soda that no human ever should. It was sickening, but it was great. It was really fun, I thought upon reflection, as I staggered out of there.
We drove on to Savannah, a place where the Spanish moss hung from every even semi-tall plant. So fucking South. We drove around and just soaked up the South-ness, confederate flags, Civil War shit, Spanish moss, and all. I really love that Spanish moss look. We parked and walked the cobblestone paved roads under the old brick buildings that lined the shoreline; and however much of a tourist trap each shop was, it still just had a feeling, an aura, and a weight of time that sort of just swept me up into that whole romanticism of the South.
And in the afternoon, we’d sit in our waterfront parked car, barely clothed, and sweating profusely. It’s so hot down here, the windows are all fogged, and even with them rolled down it’s still like a goddamned sauna in here. I am physically wet as the sleeping pills kick in.
. . . . .
Day 12. By the time we woke up, the inside of the car had developed its own rainforest ecosystem, hot and steamy. We thought it’d be better once we got outside. It wasn’t. Hot, humid, rainy. I didn’t know rain could be hot until now. We drove to a visitor center, an old train depot, and a Revolutionary War-era bunker, our clothes soaking and sticking to our bodies. But despite the climate I still liked this place, it was rainy, and everything was a shade darker and a shade wetter, the moss hanging from the trees dripped with rain, and the cobblestones glistened with each drop. I really liked this.
Ken was quiet, he took things in, or he didn’t, I don’t know. He was swept up by the little things; by the bright and alluring, the living and the dying. He’d pick up rocks, and feathers, and little creatures, and keep them for the moment and then forget about them or move on to the next thing. And when he got behind the wheel, he drove across the great American night like a madman in flight. Chasing something big, or being chased, but living, living. And we’d take all of this country in and let it wash over us in a great tide, and we’d let the highways carry us to wherever we’d end up next.
I hesitated to tell Ken that I’d lost some of my virginity in the passenger seat, and the rest of it in the back seats, and that since then I’d made fast love to Lila in that Must-bang countless more times. I thought about Lila more than I wanted to, and I started to miss her. I’m starting to look forward to being able to see her in New York, I don’t know, maybe it was a mistake to break up, I do miss her. I don’t know though.
There was nowhere to jerk off on the road either, so I was a little sexually frustrated, and in that, I was able to empathize again with the virginal Kenneth. This was one aspect of the road trip I hadn’t thought about, but it wasn’t all that bad.
We visited Fort Jackson in time to catch the daily firing of a cannon, and then we carried on to Fort Pulaski, and we kept going because everywhere and everything costs money. Onto a beach, something that didn’t cost money. I stripped down to my underwear and chased something intangible into the Atlantic Ocean.
Ken hung back, sitting somewhere on the shore and wrote this in his road-diary:
In that gloomy and sleepy and grey place that called itself Tybee Island, nothing ever happened. A great cross-section of humanity moved in and out like the tide; always different, but ultimately always the same. I saw families, individuals, groups, young, old, American, local, and foreign. A great diaspora to this singular place. The coarse sand is pock-marked with the falling drops of rain. It is simultaneously hot and humid yet grey, and a cold wind sweeps the stinging cold drops of rain onto my skin.
Where am I?
There are long-haired teenagers, tan and fit, carrying boards to and from the shoreline across wooden piers to the sand. This is the middle of Georgia, but hey, it’s a beach. The beach town was filled with the same neon tourist clothing and wears as everywhere else, the only difference is the name stamped on the front of each shirt in bold white lettering:
“TYBEE ISLAND, GA”
Obnoxious neon tank-tops to fit perfectly our generation’s aggressively irreverent sense of fashion. “It’s a new art form, showing people how little we care,” Alex would probably quote.
I rock back and forth in a beachside swing as I look out onto the waves and the sky and the place far off where the two met. Alex left me for the ocean, he’s swimming now I think. I didn’t want to go in because I didn’t want to be all salty after. What kind of beach doesn’t have showers? We haven’t bathed since Memphis.
Everyone walks by, I think I can see oil derricks off in the distance. People have sun umbrellas up, why? It’s so grey here that there are no shadows. Just sand, grey sand, grey sky, grey shore, grey ocean. Even the people seem grey to me. All the same, yet I know that each of them does have a reason to be here as Alex would probably tell me, each one of them has a story and a journey, just like I do. Only I’m the one writing this.
And as I looked out onto that tide of people, the great cosmic ebb-and-flow of humanity materialized before my eyes, and I saw everything.
We left Tybee for the mainland and headed up the coast to wherever we’d end up next. The journey, the drive. We headed to Charleston, South Carolina, and stopped in a little shop for some boiled peanuts (they are actually a bean and not a nut) and a bottle of peach cider. It was delicious, and apparently, South Carolina is the real peach state; “those Georgian bastards are just imposters,” a man at the roadside peach stand told us.
We talked as I drove, music turned down low. We loved the road, but we’ve both had dreams about home.
“You know what I thought about last night, when I saw you changing from one of your two shirts into the other, both of them dirty and road-worn?” Ken asked.
“What?”
“I thought about how whenever my mom does laundry she always folds her clothes into my sister’s pile, I don’t know if she was telling herself or us that she thought she could still fit into them. How fucked up is that?”
“Jesus, man,” I said, “you know, one time, my mom had her laptop on the couch with her; she had it perched on the arm of the couch, and I walked by a few times, and then all of a sudden I heard a smash and came running out. After a second, she just started yelling at me. At me! Saying ‘why didn’t you tell me not to put it there’ and ‘why didn’t you tell me that was a bad idea,’ she literally can’t take the blame for anything.”
“Jesus man…”
We both laughed.
“Fuck them,” Ken said, and we laughed a little more.
. . . . .
I’ve found myself thinking about Lila a lot here in this romantic South. “Hey there De
lilah, what’s it like in New York City?” I’d think. I hadn’t talked to her since before we left, she didn’t want me to I’d guess. I don’t know, I know that this is for the best and all, for college, for this year, but after that, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s just the loneliness I’m feeling right now, but I still feel like I miss her. I’m not just missing being with someone, I’m missing being with Lila. Am I forgetting the bad stuff, or was there really just not any? I feel like I could be together with her again, I could honestly think of myself marrying her somewhere down the road. I still do love her, but I know that what we did was for the best, it has to be.
South Carolina is nice; Charleston’s a lot like Savannah, except it’s nicer, less muggy, more colonial, and more palm trees, a lot more palm trees, less Spanish moss though. There’s a lot of great Sheppard Ferry work scattered throughout the city. We checked out Fort Sumter, well, the on-land museum for the fort, the ferry to the island was already shut down for the night. We drove up the coast and found some plantations, which were also closed.
We parked in a public park on the waterfront and sat on a pier until long after nightfall, smoking. The car reeked of the off-brand ‘OFF!’ bug spray we bombed it and ourselves with.
. . . . .
Day 13. Well, we didn’t die of DEET inhalation, which was good. Ken’s hand was a bit swollen from a bite he probably got overnight though, which wasn’t good. We drove and came across the USS Yorktown (the second, ‘to confuse the Japs,’ as a curator told us), and we checked out a few more plantations before making our way out of South Carolina and into North.
We entered Wilmington and Cape Fear (yup, a real place) and swam in the ocean. Wilmington was a small beach town, like Tybee, but more vibrant. Touristy, but not trashy. We swam in the ocean, and then brought a bar of soap each to the beach shower and bathed thoroughly.
The town had its own beachy funk to it that reminded me a bit of home. We went into a burrito joint called Flaming Amy’s to see how the East Coast did Mexican food. I felt sorry for the poor bastards. I really missed home now, well not really home, just good Mexican food. And Lila, I missed Lila.
We consulted the map, spreading it out on the table in the restaurant. Looking around the eclectic eatery, I saw a ‘hot sauce wall of fame’ in the corner. Seeing that they lacked a bottle of Tapatio, and thinking then that this was some Southwest only sauce I went into the car to get the bottle we’d picked up for less than a dollar at the 99¢ Store in Arizona (though, in truth, I’m more of a Cholula man). I brought the bottle to the front desk and graciously presented it to the cashier.
“All the way from San Diego, just like us. I thought I’d leave this here as an addition to your wall of fame,” I said, handing over the bottle.
“Oh, wow, that’s so nice of you, that’s so cool… Kirstie, come look at what this guy just brought us,” she called out.
Kirstie arrived and looked at the bottle, “Oh.”
“Isn’t this so cool? He said he came all the way from San Diego with it,” the first cashier said.
“We get these all the time when we reorder hot sauce, we’re just running low on everything right now,” Kirstie flatly said.
“Oh,” both the first cashier and I said, both disappointed.
Kirstie insisted that we take it back with us on the trip. And so, dejected, we carried on. We sang “Wagon Wheel” all the way to Raleigh. That and “Thunder Road.” The former being Ken’s choice and the latter being mine. We sang those songs at the top of our lungs with the top down, sharing that moment and just living. I thought of Lila as I listened and sang, as I don’t doubt that Ken might have been thinking of Livi.
Go listen to “Thunder Road” right now, or go read the lyrics or both. Go, seriously, I’ll wait.
“Don’t turn me home again, I just can’t face myself alone again.”
I would sing to the road long into the night on our way to New York City. On our way to Lila. There was hope in that song, and there was hope growing inside of me.
We settled in Richmond by 3AM, driving around for a little while before finally finding a parking lot to settle in. The little parts of our routine becoming more and more comfortable and familiar. We’d move the snacks and backpacks from the back seats and into the trunk with the rest of our stuff, we’d then recline the driver and passenger seats all the way back (I slept on the driver’s side, he on the passenger’s), put on eye masks, took sleeping pills, and settled in for the night. This became home for us, this was our new normal now.
After we got the car ready for sleep we realized that we were both pretty hungry, so we found a good place to park by a McDonalds and went in for a snack. As we left the restaurant to go back to our car to sleep, a man approached us outside. He shook my hand, then Ken’s, then mine again; beads of sweat trickled down from his bald head. From what we could tell and smell, he was very homeless. He began talking to us, a lot, about a lot of stuff that didn’t make much sense. Ken was a bit speechless, I don’t think he’d ever talked to a homeless person before. I told the man that we were travelers and didn’t have much we could give him, but that we had food if he wanted it. He went back to asking for money. I offered to go into McDonald’s and get something for him or give him some snacks from the car. He went back to money, and that’s when I knew it wasn’t food he’d get with the money, so I tried to disengage with him. He wouldn’t. After some more talking, he finally was done with us, and Ken gave him a nickel that he had in his pocket. He said goodbye, and we started to walk away. The man then bent over, putting his hand to his ankle, now I was on edge this whole time, but this really put me on high alert. I could picture him pulling out a sock knife and embedding it into my stomach before I could do anything about it. But he just scratched his ankle and moved on. We got in the car and caught our breath, then drove to another McDonald’s parking lot and went to sleep.
. . . . .
Day 14. Tired, we left our parking spot in Richmond to pass the closed Poe museum and head onto Jamestown. I feel so clean after swimming and showering yesterday, and that’s such a nice feeling. I feel clean, bug bitten, and tired, but most importantly I feel clean.
It was a hot, humid, mutherfucker of a day. Our phones said it was 100 degrees outside by the time it hit noon. From there, and yes, I know I use that phrase a lot, we snuck past the ticket booth and into Jamestowne Settlement. I don’t feel all that bad about sneaking in places though, as President Truman said, we must cut down on the cost of living. There were two parts to the area, reenactment Jamestowne and Historic Jamestowne. I’ve loved the Jamestown story since I was a kid, and so this was really really cool to be here at the very start of America as we know it. This trip’s been an incredible hell of a fortnight so far.
We drove around Yorktown, the historical landscape of the country changing from Civil War to Revolutionary War the further we made it up the coast. When we got back on the highway, the sky opened up with an absolutely torrential pour; white-knuckling the wheel, I hydroplaned almost the entire way to UVA, where we parked in a structure and then ate a whole pizza by ourselves. We talked, I talked about my thoughts about Lila, and Ken seemed to agree that I should talk to her when I see her. I feel like I’d probably be happy taking Lila back now, at least for the time being. I feel bad about putting her through the breakup to just realize this, but I know she’ll be happy anyway. We slept in the parking garage, the tobacco leaves Ken picked (and stole) from the Jamestowne reenactment field hung up to dry in the back of the car.
. . . . .
Day 15. As it turns out, we parked in the most expensive parking lot ever. $27.50 by the time we left in the morning. I told the young attendant that we couldn’t pay and she called Sam, an old dude who came out to talk down to us. He was a dick. We said we couldn’t pay, he said ‘find it.
’ Well, okay, we drove backward up to a spot and came back with $13.43 in change. He wouldn’t accept it. We were arguing on principle now, not just out of being cheap.
He kept saying, “If I came to California, and didn’t pay, you think someone would just let me leave?”
Well yes, because Californians are nice. But I didn’t say that. I just drove back up, parked, and the two of us snuck out down the stairwell to get change for a $20 in one dollar bills. We drove back down to the gate and said that ‘some people had been really nice to us,’ and we gave him $22.43.
He just seemed done with us at this point and handed us an envelope with a return address and a pay request for $8.07, the exact fucking change, plus $3 more for the time we’d spent in the parking garage haggling with him.
“You better pay that quick, I’m writing down your Cali license plate.”
First, fuck you; second, don’t call it ‘Cali’ you prick.
We peeled out of there as soon as he opened the lift-gate. Yes, we were being cheap, but it was a matter of principle, we could have probably gotten a motel room for that much.
From Thomas Jefferson’s school to Thomas Jefferson’s home, UVA to Monticello. We looked around the museum, well I did, Ken stayed in the atrium with his phone. Much like at Jamestown and everywhere before, he was far more interested in his phone, or the ducks, or the pidgins, or the seashells, or the rocks. I didn’t mind though, I don’t like feeling as if he’s not enjoying somewhere that I am.
No More Dead Kids Page 15