My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

by Davy Rothbart

  Fifteen, twenty minutes later, all the boys had finished their food, crumpled up their bags, and, giggling, tossed them up front at Miller Time, who wearily chucked the first couple back our way, and then ignored the rest. “Now, here’s a tune,” he said, cranking up the volume so loud that the speakers were crackling. It was John Cougar Mellencamp singing:

  Oh, ain’t that America? You and me …

  Ain’t that America? Somethin’ to see …

  This, from what I knew of it, was one of those songs, like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” that had been written as a eulogy for the dying American Dream but had been so widely misinterpreted as an anthem of patriotism and working-class pride that its original intent had been usurped in the popular imagination. And, actually, when you really thought about it, the artists were wrong and the popular imagination was right, for how could you listen to Mellencamp sing the chorus and not feel stirred by a love for America, whatever its shortcomings might be? As the song went on, Miller Time lifted his voice to sing along, his can of Bud held aloft and swaying, like a candle at an arena rock show, and when the chorus returned he shouted, “Everybody now!” to press the boys in back—and me, too, I guess—to join in.

  I’d actually once been to the old, sagging farmhouse in Brownstown, Indiana, where Mellencamp had recorded this tune “Pink Houses,” down in the Dagobah-like bogs and hollows near the Kentucky border, and I found myself thinking about the strange, dilapidated beauty of that part of the country. The song continued, swelling into its next verse, and I couldn’t help but think of the beauty and sadness of a lot of the places I’d been and a lot of the roads I’d traveled, a montage of Americana imagery with a personal bent. As corny as it might sound, I felt moved by the song in a way I never had been the other eight thousand times I’d heard it, maybe because before the past hour and a half, I’d never really considered leaving the country for good, and you can’t truly appreciate something until it’s slipped from your grasp, or is about to.

  And if I stopped to think about it, how could I really leave home and abandon my country? Here, apparently, bighearted Marines in vans packed full of machine guns traipsed the land, rescuing stranded travelers. Try finding that in England. But it was more than that: some of my best friends were transplants from places like India, Senegal, and Sweden, and as grateful as they were for the (mostly) kind ways they’d been treated in the United States and the opportunities that had come their way, they were also honest about their divided hearts, that weird gnawing ache of living in an adopted home that even with its blessings can never truly feel like home. Could I give up my home for Anna? She was an angel, brilliant, cool as fuck, and it killed me to think of throwing in the towel on something magnificent before it even had a chance to really start, but maybe, in spite of everything I’d believed—or had wanted to believe—about my own impulsive sense of adventure, I wasn’t ready to cash in my dollars for pounds and move across the pond for a chance at love. Maybe I’d hang around the U.S. a bit longer and see what else came my way. Maybe, as a couple of friends had told me, I didn’t want to find love in the first place, because if I’d wanted to find it, they believed, I would’ve found it already. Maybe they were right, and that precious, terrible longing I felt every time I saw a girl who could be “the one” was an end in itself, and all I truly craved. As the last verse played, I chugged the rest of my Bud and buoyantly joined in, belting out the final chorus with Miller Time, his lady friend, and four out of the five boys, all of us singing with great feeling:

  Oh, ain’t that America? For you and me …

  Ain’t that America? Somethin’ to see, baby …

  Ain’t that America, home of the free!

  Yeah, little pink houses for you and me.

  The song ended and Miller Time shut off the radio, passed another Budweiser back to me, and announced that he was taking a nap. He reclined his seat and planted his cap over his face. I cracked the beer and sat looking out the windows. Our communal sing-along high began to fade, and the night grew steadily cool and mournful. By now, we were just a few miles from where I’d left Anna in the truck. I often wished that I could split myself a hundred ways and live a hundred separate lives—one part of me might have whisked off to London to try and build a life together with Anna, while another part of me might have jumped ship, rolled along with Miller Time and his brood and built a life for myself in Downey, and still another part of me could keep on the same directionless path I’d been treading. But in the end, I supposed, we only had one life to lead, and the roads not taken would always outnumber and outshine the roads we ended up taking, day by day, without plan.

  “There it is!” cried the youngest boy, who’d been gazing out the window with me. “That’s your truck, right?”

  Indeed, there it was, my pickup, abandoned on the distant shoulder, hazards still blinking, flashing in the lights of passing traffic, as trucks veered into the far lane to avoid coming too near. A quarter mile up the road, Miller Time’s girlfriend spotted a gravel turnaround in the median and eased off the pavement into the dirt, kicking up pebbles and a cloud of dust behind us. She waited for a break in traffic, then spun into the westbound lanes, and pulled up right behind our pickup. Anna, in the cab, turned to look at us, her face ghostlike in the van’s headlights.

  Miller Time came hazily awake. “We home?” He sat up a little. “Oh yeah, Tumbleweed.”

  I worked my way forward, opened the side door, and began to fumble through some kind of meaningful goodbye to everybody, but right at that moment, the big pudgy kid with the buzz cut, who hadn’t said a single word the entire time I’d been with them, jerked his head up and shouted, “You guys, you guys, look, I did it! No way, look!” And balancing it with extreme care, he held his puzzle high to show off his hard-earned victory, every marble in its place, while the boys and even Miller Time himself marveled in amazement and gave him his props. The kid had stolen the thunder from any grand pronouncements I might have had, but that was okay, because what was there for me to really say but thanks and God bless?

  I grabbed the gas can, stepped down from the van, shut the doors, and headed for the pickup, where I paused to empty all three gallons of gas into its thirsty tank. Finally, I rested the can in the bed of the truck. Anna reached over to unlock the driver’s-side door, and I climbed inside. “You’re back,” she said with a smile, having already forgiven me, it seemed, for being such a dumbass and forgetting to fuel up. It was a joy to see her, though her beauty felt doubly painful, now that I’d put to rest, for the most part, any dreams of us living out our lives together.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry that took so long.” I watched in the side mirror as the Black Stallion edged back onto the highway and gently passed by, with nary a “Git!” nor a “Giddyap!”

  “It’s okay,” Anna said. “I had my book with me. And I saw the most unbelievable sunset. Did you see it? Right over the road.”

  “I missed it, I guess.”

  “Oh, it was gorgeous. It was one of a kind. Spectacular, really.”

  “You know what that means,” I said, as I started the engine, and, once traffic lulled, guided us back onto the freeway asphalt. “It means, if we hadn’t run out of gas, we could’ve driven off together into the sunset. Literally.”

  She laughed. “Lit-trilly.”

  “Yeah. Lit-er-ull-lee.”

  We fell quiet for a moment. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” she said. “There’ll be other sunsets. There’ll be another sunset tomorrow.” But she seemed withdrawn, and her words felt coded. Was she saying we’d have other chances to watch the sun set together, or had she, in my absence, surrendered on our future as well—and by “other sunsets,” did she mean other people for us to fall in love with?

  “It won’t be like this sunset,” I said. “The one I missed out on. It’ll be different. Inferior, maybe.”

  “There’s a million sunsets out there,” Anna said urgently. “Each one is magical.” And with that, she slipp
ed her seat belt off, slid across the seat, took my hand, and gave me a wondrous kiss on the cheek.

  It wasn’t all it could have been, perhaps, but in that moment, it was enough. I smiled and put my arm around her, floated over to the fast lane, and hit the gas, and we hightailed it for the coast, the desert at our backs, the city ahead. For a little while longer, at least, it was just the two of us and the road.

  SHOUTS

  This book wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the openhearted generosity of the fellow drifters and wanderers who’ve crossed my path over the years and shared their stories with me, and the kind, alluring females I got all crazy about who tolerated my company for a moment or two. To all the dear friends, loved ones, and passersby depicted in these pages—under their real names or otherwise—I offer my heartfelt, enthusiastic thanks.

  I have enormous gratitude for the many people who have made my travels so rich—had a drink with me, given me a place to sleep, or introduced me to adventure. Thank you! Your kindness means more than you know. Much love to my brother Peter, my longtime road partner, and the other brave souls who’ve joined us in the van—Brande Wix, Sarah Locke, David Meiklejohn, Andrew Cohn, Brett Loudermilk, Devon Sproule, Benoît Meulewaeter, Megan McDowell, Esther Rose, Javan Makhmali, Shawna Jo Lee, and Alex Gross, plus our tour partners Chandra and Leigh Watson, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, Eli Horowitz and John Brandon, and that stone-cold pimp Frank Warren. And giant thanks to my wise, loving, and inspiring parents, my incredibly kick-ass housemates, and the amazing communities in Ann Arbor and L.A. who always make coming home such a delight.

  I learned how to write from Judith Dewoskin, Warren Hecht, Ken Mikolowski, Sara Corbett, Eileen Pollack, and Charlie Baxter—thank you for your hard work, generous spirit, and encouragement. Thanks to storytelling gurus Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, and Alex Blumberg; to the magazine editors I’ve been lucky enough to work with: Andy Ward, Mark Kirby, John Hodgman, Kevin Awakuni, Shaina Feinberg, Heidi Julavits, Andrew Snee, Tim McKee, Sy Safransky, Carlin Flora, Mike Dawson, Dave Swanson, Juliet Litman, Rafe Bartholomew, Jay Kang, Dan Fierman, and Lorin Stein; and serious props to some brilliant writers who have shown me great kindness: Dave Eggers, Miranda July, Jim Carroll, Jonathan Ames, Susan Orlean, Carrie Brownstein, Sarah Vowell, Elizabeth Gilbert, Aimee Bender, David Sedaris, Bill Simmons, Chuck Klosterman, and Tom Robbins.

  For the gale-force inspiration, thank you to my brother Mike, Devin Friedman, Josh Bearman, Mike Kozura, Daniel “D Shot” Garvatt, Vaughn “Count Mack” Taormina, Luke “Classified” Boyd, Randy “Biggz” Ingram, “Mic Dangerous” DiBella, A-Side Worldwide, the Jenkers, the Del Rio Six, the Medora Hornets, Seth Bernard, Willis Earl Beal, Rae Spoon, Danny Schmidt, Kelli Shay Hicks, Will Sheff, Bob Ritchie, Carson Mell, Tim McIlrath, Joe Principe, Brandon Barnes, Zach Blair, the Gaskets, Frank and Muriel Salzman, Jeff Kass, Mark Borchardt, Allison Anders, Lynn Shelton, Dan Tice, Liam Murphy, the Sanford-Durant Family, the Brodsky Family, Mimi, Grandma Bobbie Mitchell, Deep Spring Center sangha, Elks Lodge #322, Alley Bar, Amanda Patten, Dean Bakopoulos, Rachel Dengiz, Brandon Baugh, Jason Orfanon, Brooke Bailey, Dan Zatkovich, Jalen Rose, Will Bynum, Anna Stothard, Chuck D, Tim Haldeman, Richard Frey, Hakim Selby, Byron Case, and all the other champions who keep me flying high. Thanks to the Found magazine team for their selfless service: James Molenda, Al McWilliams, Jason Bitner, and all the finders and friends who’ve made the Found family so meaningful. Thanks to T. Williams Samuels, Sr., and Booker Noe for getting me into trouble. And thanks to A. J. Wilhelm for bailing me out of it too many times to count.

  For their clutch assistance during the writing of this book, I want to thank the lovely Zoe Ruiz and the equally lovely Dani Davis. Much respect to Robb Bindler, Matthew McConaughey, and John Mellencamp for their kindness; also, to legal badass Sam Bayard. John Allen offered generous, invaluable assistance with my research for “The Strongest Man in the World.” I encourage anyone who’s curious to learn more about Byron Case’s situation to read John’s incredibly engaging and detailed book, The Skeptical Juror and the Trial of Byron Case, and to check out the website FreeByronCase.com.

  At Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I’ve been blessed with a team of talented, dedicated, bighearted heroes: Emily Bell, whose ideas and constant support have been an immeasurable boost; Steve Weil, for being so damn down and going way beyond the call of duty; Mareike Grover, Ed Cohen, Rodrigo Corral, Spenser Lee, and Abby Kagan for their devoted contributions; and all the other kings and queens on West 18th Street. I have unlimited adoration for the folks who work so hard to make books the best they can be, and to get them into readers’ hands. Thank you!

  Three last crucial shouts to the three people who willed this book to life: my editor and friend, Sean McDonald, for his vision, humor, and perceptive insight, and a belief in me so dogged it’s sometimes led me to shed a tear; my baller agent, Jud Laghi, who’s been a lead blocker and trusted friend these past ten years; and the incomparable, exquisite Mary Margaret Box, whose love and friendship is an absolute blessing, proving that even the most idiotic of idiots can be cured.

  Finally, my biggest thanks are reserved for you, dear reader, for hopping in and going for a ride with me. I wrote this book for you. Hope to see you on the road.

  PEACE—DAVY

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2012 by Davy Rothbart All rights reserved

  First edition, 2012

  Lyrics from “Pink Houses” courtesy of John Mellencamp.

  Reprinted by permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rothbart, Davy.

  My heart is an idiot / Davy Rothbart. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-374-28084-0 (alk. paper) 1. American wit and humor. 2. Rothbart, Davy. I. Title.

  PN6165 .R68 2012

  818'.602—dc23

  2012003821

  www.fsgbooks.com

  eISBN 978-1-4668-0246-9

  This book is a memoir. Occasionally, certain aspects—characters, locales, scenes, names of businesses, and bits of dialogue—have been altered, amalgamated, reordered, refashioned, omitted, or even fictionalized to conceal identities and preserve narrative flow. But even as small creative liberties have been taken, all of these stories are grounded in truth. Enjoy!