Right and Left, One Leg at a Time

"You eat like a fucking slob." I judged Waters.

"All you do is shit on me, man."

"Yeah, well then use some toilet paper, if not a napkin." I sighed.

We had been on the road for about two weeks when I began to realize how sick of everything I had become. My foreign made car held us cramped inside smoking cigarettes and drinking alcoholic energy drinks for ten, twelve, fifteen hours at a time. We'd stop almost every night in a different place in a different town, leaving pieces of ourselves behind and bringing a little bit with us like the sloppy viral parasites I felt like we truly were in that moment in a sandwich shop somewhere near the Oregon/Washington border.

Waters had a piece of beef hanging from his lip. He cleared his throat, his hands grasping the meat sandwich between bulky fingers, mangling the bread as red sauce seeped through his white knuckles and onto the counter top. His elbows were sprayed far apart, parallel with the counter, almost comically so, as if he was trying with all his brute strength to crush the sandwich rather than eat it. I felt dangerously close to either maniacally laughing until I cried or just letting out a feral scream like the dog that I was.

I felt so lousy that I didn't even feel like drinking a beer.

I jumped out of my chair and walked by a couple sitting on a couch picking at a salad with a fork while starring nervously at me, leaving Waters with his pile of sandwich. I wondered vaguely if I looked nearly as bad as I felt, so I strolled aimlessly to the bathroom and stood hypnotized with my back to the toilet starring at a giant Ansel Adams piece on the wall. A black and white snowscape covering a trickling river lay before a vast mountain with clouds slightly obscurring its tip. It seemed outdated and boring to me, a pointless display of a moment which will occur over and over again, mocking the mortality of the men who decided to appreciate it.

Damn, when I got like this it was best for me to be left alone. I kicked at the trashcan, knocking it around the bathroom, then turned on the facet and splashed water everywhere making a hell of a mess. Spitting on the floor, I turned out the light as I left.

I sat heavily back down at the counter where Waters was finishing up. He nodded at me and mumbled some type of acknowledgement, as though the god damn sandwich had satisfied him in some sick and twisted way which I would never understand and no woman would ever match. I vaguely recalled my 300 pound friend telling me once that he'd take a good sandwich over a woman any day.

I tightened my scarf and stood ready to leave. I wasn't hungry, and we still had several hours left to drive before we finally concluded our little mission here. It was exactly two weeks ago to the day, perhaps the hour despite any complications the shifting time zones would present, since our departure from the Pioneer Valley near Hadley, Massachusetts until our arrival to this little town somewhere along the Hood River.

Waters started smoking a cigarette as we walked out onto the street built into the hillside overlooking the river. Small boats and people surfing dotted the thick, green water as cars lazily drove through the one way streets, surrounded by ancient forests which no doubt smirked an old man grin of amusement at the little monkeys below getting their computers repaired and their sandwiches eaten and their cars filled with gasoline.

We passed some people on the street as we smoked, making our way back to the car. If I had been in another mood, anything other than the total darkness I felt right then and there, I would've enjoyed a walk down to the river to dig the sounds of the water lapping against the rocks and the cries of the windsurfers as they collapsed back to earth in a splash of frigid green liquid. I wanted to lay down in the crisp and clean looking streets and block all traffic and inconvenience everyone just so I felt justified existing, just so I felt needed.

The road had taken my mind somewhere in Utah, then the final straw was in Idaho when we had staggered into a budget motel at two in the morning from the freezing mountain air. It was early October already, and the summer freedom was slipping away from my understanding as winter was quickly approaching especially in the dense and desolate ugly air of Idaho where nothing lined the roads except the smell of rotting fish for some reason.

"Hey." I said to the man at the gas station somewhere outside of Oxbow.

"Hi there."

"Why does it smell like shit outside?"

"That's the fish hatchery a few miles up."

"Trout?" I asked.

"Steelhead. Rainbow."

"How do you tolerate that?"

Starring straight back into my eyes, "Can't change it. You learn to live with it. You learn to love it."

So said the little bald man who gave free showers to truckers only, otherwise it was two dollars for fifteen minutes of hot water and soap included, plus a towel. He had learned to live it and to love it at his dusty fuel pumps where the wind blew like it probably would on the moon if there was wind, as he starred strangely out at us as we piled back into my blue car with the Massachusetts license plate and we roared another two hours. Under a clear Idaho sky with illuminated planes flying low overhead, heavy with people and aluminum, we finally found a cheap looking hotel that we could stay at. Idaho was one of the few states that we stopped in that we didn't know any locals so a hotel would have to do.

I knew Waters didn't have much money so I walked in to the front desk, my breath visible in the cool mountain air, into the warmth and bright lights of the lobby like a man on the run. No one was at the front desk so I banged the little bell that I didn't know they still had in hotels, and a woman's voice called out from behind some door and she emerged, a beautiful young looking lady motherly carrying a load of white sheets which she had apparently been folding.

She starred sleepily at me and donated me a smile as I met her eyes, momentarily without a thought in my mind as I got lost in her, I didn't know that Idaho had such a goddess within it, I never would have guessed from the dusty moonscapes and the frost glazing my car windshield which had Waters sitting inside of it smoking cigarettes and eating candy bars. I realized that I was very far from home, that in fact I didn't have a home anywhere, I had forfeited it nearly two weeks ago in the dim light of hoping idealistically that perhaps I should chase down some type of fleeting notion of freedom and deliverance thousands of miles away from the town of my birth.

But all of these truths and realizations were nothing elese but mere moss at the base of a pinnacle of beauty which lay before me in the incarnation of a gentle light haired angel vibrating at a level well beyond my understanding, so with my mind, I lost my thoughts.

Once again, I said "Hello, my friend."

And she said in slight puzzlement, "Hello," again.

I had turned my back to my life back east and in a moment such as this I could not remember any of the good things it once was, and now I was face to face with someone who could show me peace and the stars, or at least how to properly fold bed linen, but instead I settled on a handshake.

"Staying awake?" She asked me.

"I'm always awake," I started, thinking again of the peace and the stars which I saw presented so clearly in her light eyes and light hair.

"But now, I'd like a place to sleep, and rest my head."

"You've been driving a lot?"

"All day and night."

She donated me another smile, my palm still warm from her only touch.

"Sounds about right."

"You've been working hard." I said, and it wasn't a question. Her hand was soft, but it was a worker's hand.

"All day and night."

"When do you get off?"

"Morning. Five hours." And she donated to me my final, weary smile of the evening and I wanted nothing more than to lay down with this lovely working woman outside, in the freezing mountain air and stare at the stars which were so bright and clear in the lonely empty sky, and get the back of my clothes all wet from the damp ground and frost as we embraced peace up in Idaho, the top of our country.

But she already had guessed that, because what she said next was, "I have to meet my boyfriend at eight."

And I'm sure my face must've sank and became sickly and hollow, because coast to coast some things just don't change, so I gulp my breath and say, "Ah, why don't you lose him for a bit? I've got a bunch of scotch in my car."

But she just sadly shakes her head and doesn't offer me any more smiles but merely takes my fifty dollars and gives me a key. When I go back to the car to get Waters and our stuff, she is gone, back behind some doors folding linen. Waters takes the elevator and I take the stairs and we race each other to the third floor. By the time I reach the landing I am out of breath and my satchel is heavy as I kick open the door to the hallway and Waters is already off of the elevator and waiting for the key and I in front of the room. I unlock the door and kick off my shoes and we relax, sipping sexually frustrated scotch and ice while smoking high powered marijuana in the little room, twenty four hour news coverage pouring out of the television box as we recharge our bodies and all our electical equipment.

The next morning we leave at nine and the woman is long gone, some fat old man is behind the desk and he takes my key and makes me sign something which I just throw away immediately anyway. Waters and I climb back into my blue foreign made automobile and crank up the heat to get rid of the ice on the glass until it gets really hot inside, then we carry on again, heading west like always until we hit some small town on the Hood River near the Oregon/Washington border and I feel lousy and hateful and angry, and I know it has something to do with the little lady from Idaho who sadly took my fifty dollars like she does from people everynight, knowing that she'll most likely never encounter them again as they scatter to far off place that she's never seen, some to places she can't pronounce, awaiting for what never will be...

And I'm paranoid and weird because suddenly there seems to be cops all over the roadways and I have to slow down and go the speed limit. It's as though everyone in the damn state of Idaho is on the road at the same time, all heading west on I-84 for some reason, and the cops are hiding in their dark corners and little nooks in between overpasses waiting to trap the faster commuters while violent crimes are no doubt being committed somewhere. I tell Waters this, and he agrees, and to take my mind off the lurking pigs we crank up some loud music on the radio and packs some marijuana into our little pipe as we cruise, and soon we're out of the city limits of Boise and into the desolate wasteland which is most of the country again, away from slow stupid middle American drivers and the swine which enforce their laws.

And now with all that behind us and my mind an egg from all the days driving and drinking and sleeping on the ground and the floor and the couch, memorizing people's names because they're letting me sleep in their blankets and trying to bite my tongue so I don't offend them and get kicked out like I used to do back East all the time while pretending to like their pets, their giant dogs and prickish teenage children and roommates who join the navy. Luckily Waters is on public relations, hooking us up with lodging and quarter from Iowa to Wyomming because I move and talk like a magnanimous madman from constantly sipping alcoholic energy drinks, and despite the fact that Waters and I are driving across the country with no concrete reason or justification other than answering the question with the question, "Well, why not drive across the country without having a plan? Want to see some pictures, I have a beautiful shot of Lake M-something from Madison, Wisconsin?"

Highway 84 winds right next to the Hood River near the Northern Oregon border, through the dust colored mountains and trees until finally the water disappears and we're lef talone in winding moutain roads, going up and down comically, making Waters and I believe that there must be some better way, and the emergency ramps for run away trucks make us believe that everyone will someday have their day to die, but not us, because we're driving so fast and crazily that everything is left behind. Some young kid in a green Japanese car with Oregon plates passes us on the right on a two lane highway straight-away, so I clomp my foot down heavy on the pedal until we pass him again. Then, there's construction which closes the second lane every now and then, so we pass each other back and forth making the other wait behind us until the second lane opens up again to pass. The curves and bends in the mountain are harsh and unforgiving, and I have big Waters lean this way and that to try to balance the car and fight the "oh shit here we go" feeling that happens when you take a really sharp corner at a really high speed. The kid in the green car passes us and pulls away at over a hundred miles an hour, breaking the century mark and I finally refuse to match him because the curvy moutain road is begining to scare me a bit. Then as we turn a corner we see his car on the shoulder stopped for some reason, and he's sitting on the trunk smoking a cigarette; we're driving far too fast for me to read his facial expression but I do beep the horn at him and Waters waves.

We reach Portland and get stuck in traffic, it's early afternoon now and the rain starts to fall. Bumper to bumper, we're trapped, and it makes me feel like I'm back east, late for three separate consecutive job interview in Boston because I've been up all night with two crazy beautiful and beautifully crazy girls snorting pills and drinking tequila, and for some reason I decide to take them with me to the city for my job interviews but the traffic is just too thick and we get too lost so we instead just turn around and head back to smoke opium and snort more pills and I land a job so depressing and unfulfiling but so well paying that I quit a year later to drive across country with Waters for no reason in particular other than to escape and check out whats going on in the other direction, because I have a large hunch that the people are up to something fine and good and I don't want to miss it at all.

Waters stirs awake, he's been sleeping ever since we left the sandwich shop town on the Hood, which is fine, I prefer to drive anyway, and he sparks up a cigarette and stars out the window, craning his head and turning it in different directions trying to eyeball up any and all pretty ladies in the other cars which I'm sure creeps them out almost as much as it annoys me. I light a cigar for myself, because I know that I'm about a week away from smoking cigarettes again after quitting for a year, so I'm gradually easing myself back into a good tobacoo regiment.

Finally, the traffic clears and we exit onto another highway which will take us straight into Eugene, our final destination where we'll meet up with Julio, our good friend from our university days back east who dropped out of the university to do some living out on the west coast, much like ourselves but only with slightly less dedication. Flat farmland lines the roads, and the rain lets up a bit and finally clears onto our right side, over the farmland and distant mountains beside the road way. A rainbow appears, and Waters asks me,

"What color is it?" Because he's color blind and tends to mention it frequently.

"ROY G. BIV." I tell him, and then proceed to explain to him what that means.

I stop somewhere to buy a taco because I'm starting to get really hungry, and Waters fills up with gas and cleans the windshield for me to prepare for our final descent. We can start to smell the finish line now, it's been a long time, we've both had a while to think a lot of things over, but now everything in the past is in the past, as we are approaching the endzone. I steal a drink from the taco store and I eat my lunch as I drive twenty miles over the speed limit, the radio blasting loud music from local stations as we attempt to learn the culture.

Waters is finishing his last cigarette and talking excitedly about something as we pour off the highway system into the city of Eugene, Oregon, which we note looks somewhat similar to Madison, Wisconsin in all the right ways and Debuque, Iowa in all the wrong ways. We miss our turn for Julio's street, so we turn around on the main strip and go back, down his road with our car windows down, also noting the strange pine tree aroma of the state which is thick and moist and gross. I call Julio on my phone letting him know that we've arrived, finally, 10 days behind schedule but that's fine because there was no real hurry. Julio is at work but he tells me that there's a key underneath the mat and to just let ourselves in even though his roommate/cousin is home.

"Won't we scare him?" I ask.

"Yeah, but who cares?" Julio responds.


Regards, Esortnom