And aren’t we guilty of devouring the classics
and going on and on about absinthe binges
and thank god wormwood is legal in the states again.

And how exciting it is to fall in love, swallow pints of beer
–not necessarily in that order–
come, quote Hemingway and fall out of love over meager breakfasts!

We shouldn’t be ashamed, at any rate,
To live these cliche moments if in such intensity that they cease to be cliche.
Like fruity wine and sentimental country songs, there being nothing left to say, anyhow.

(It is with great trepidation that I sit down to write this, almost exactly a year since we began this crazy trip, this is the final entry from my journal, in almost illegible script due to the bouncing, shaking bus.)

We drove along that great expansive border fence that ensures American “freedom”, as if a fence can grant freedom, built by the same architects that construct wars, paid for by you, the “free” citizen. At some point that looming fence disappears, and there is only the Rio Grande, which has been a border for longer than America has been a country. We took a left, down a dusty, rocky road that looked like it probably led to those underground cock fighting rings Ben was talking about, and entered New Mexico.

As we passed a border patrol car, partially obscured by the gathering dust, Pual asked, “Are you guys sure we’re going the right way?”

“Well Pual, there’s never any way to be sure about anything, really. But this looks right, according to Tyler’s map,” I replied curtly.

Ben pointed out the window from his spot on the couch, “There’ s the sign for it, take a left up ahead.”

The road, which supposedly led to Mount Cristo Rey, was more of a dirt trail than anything, and it led up a steep hill into what looked to be a rock quarry, not a parking lot. Hoping this wasn’t a trap for drug cartels to kidnap unsuspecting blonde tourists, I pushed the pedal down as hard as I could, like I was squashing a beetle, and we bounded the hill, kicking up rocks behind us.

The trail led past yet another border patrol car, and weaved up and and down a few more gravel hills. Everyone was holding onto something as the bus bounced along, looking out the windows nervously, worried that we wouldn’t make it, or worse, we weren’t even heading in the right direction, but the heat was brutal, I was tired, and I just didn’t care. If this is where the bus met its fate, let it be, I’d pack my bags and hitch hike home, leaving it there to be swallowed up by the dust.

Finally, after a doubtful drive, we came up on the parking area, which was desolate except for one rusty work truck. Two Mexicans were putting tools and a ladder into an old shed. I parked the bus, leaped out into the rocky parking area and went to ask them if we could hike up, going over in my head how I would ask them in Spanish if need be.

Both men were wearing matching red caps that read “Mt. Cristo Rey, 69 anos”, and as I walked up to them, one of them took off his cap and wiped his sweaty forehead with a raggedy kerchief.

“Hey guys, is it okay if we go up?” I said, pointing at the lumbering statue of Christ on top of the hill, his arms outstretched as if waiting for an embrace.

“Sure, man, but remember, it’s at your own risk. We aren’t liable if anything happens to you and your buddies,” one of them replied from behind a patchy beard.

“There have been banditos in the area, and reports of assults. People go up there looking to pray, and sometimes they come back down in just their underwear. The banditos wait in the rocks and jump out and rob them,” The other one added.

“And there are a lot of rattlers this time of year, so no shortcuts, okay?”

“Yes sir,  no short cuts. Got it.” I said, and started to walk back to the bus.

“I mean it, man!” he called after me.

Back at the bus, Ben was drinking his second Beer:30 and Tyler was filling up his canteen. A border patrol officer pulled up beside the bus and asked us if we were planning on going up the mountain.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, taking off his dark sunglasses and revealing surprisingly kind eyes, “Just realize that right on the other side of that mountain is Mexico. There isn’t a fence, no river, nothing, that’s Mexico down there. Just be careful. No one is going to attack four rough looking guys like you, anyhow.

I grabbed a cold, yellow powerade out of the ice chest and the four of us started heading up the mountain trail. We were met by the two mexican men, who were sitting on fold out chairs drinking Bud Light.

“Hey man!” one of them called after us, “If you have a little pistoletta, I’d maybe carry it up with you” he made made the universal symbol for gun with his fingers and held it up in the air, laughing as we walked beneath the sad yellow arch that read “Welcome/Bienvenidos”.

Maybe I should have been more worried, but honestly, I was okay with the whole situation, banditos, rattlers and all. I was ready for a little adventure to finish up our trip. But god was it hot. It was almost too bright to even open my eyes. God damn that unremitting desert sun, hanging right there over our shoulders ad we hiked up the dusty trail.

I thought that maybe if I did have a pistol, I might just stand in the oppressive sun, beads of sweat forming on my cheeks, and go right on ahead and shoot one of those banditos in existentialist cold blood. A man’s brain could get cooked out here, and the universe wouldn’t even bat an eye at any of it.

The trail up the mountain had so many lazy switch backs it made a third of a mile hike into a two and a half mile hike. There was a yearly pilgrimage up to the feet of Jesus on the last Sunday of October, when thirty thousand people showed up to hike this trail–grandmas, priests, children–and it had to be easy enough so the hordes of the pious could make the hike.

That’s great on a cool October day, but two pm on a July afternoon, with my sweat burning my poison ivy rashes, this dusty two and a half mile trail seemed unnecessary, but we weren’t supposed to take shortcuts, so we dealt with it as opposed to dealing with rattlesnakes.

So here we were, peering over one side of the mountain into Mexico, the other side into Texas, our feet treading New Mexican dirt, and this was the last bit of hiking, last bit of anything really, that we’d be doing on this three month excursion out west. That night we would be driving east across interstate ten, that lonely stretch of Texas highway, six hundred miles back to Austin.

But now, we were doing the last activity that we would be doing together as bus-partners, as the final four swashbuckling, ratty road pirates of that sluggish yellow ship. We hiked in silence up the Mexican mountain in hundred degree sweltering heat, talking only to curse the torturous sun and the dry desert air. We watched for rattlers at our feet, expecting to find them slithering in the dust at every turn, looking over our shoulders for sneaking banditos, all to get a vision of a twenty nine foot tall concrete Jesus, arms outstretched to blank desolation, hands facing down, blessing everything and everyone all at once.

When we finally ascended the top of the mountain, the sun had sucked the energy right out of us. No wonder we didn’t run into any banditos, we were the only people stupid enough to take that wretched trail this time of the year; it just wasn’t worth it to anyone else. Pual and I were shirtless and out of water, lying down on the hot concrete in the shade of Christ. Tyler had his shirt unbuttoned, revealing his hairy chest, his hat pulled down over his brow. Ben was taking shots of Damn Hot schnapps straight from the bottle, irreverent as ever.

So we sat in the shade of Jesus, who towered above us with a stoic gaze to the east. Two and a half months of travel had culminated here, seeking solace from the oppressive sun, high above El Paso at His feet. Our pilgrimage had finally come to an end. We saw the great American West in all of its beauty and splendor. We made new friends, caught up with old ones, and lost some along the way. We learned about ourselves, about each other, and about life itself. We witnessed great American monument postcard fodder with our own eyes, felt it with our own hands, touched it with our own feet. We were two and a half months older, but we were thousands of miles older–in that time we saw what most people take their entire lifetimes to see.

I put my wet shirt back on and, with Ben’s help, climbed up onto the platform on which Jesus stood, hugging his gargantuan feet, resting my sweaty face on his rock solid gown. I sighed in his shade, watching Pual, Ben and Tyler lounging beneath us, Pual drinking from a water bottle he’d found on the ground, Ben sipping from his brown liquor bottle, and Tyler reading the candles laid at the altar.

We were all the same. From east to west, hippies, punks, street kids, hipsters, Chads, Christians, Hindus, Mexicans, “Americans”, young and poor, rich and old, we are all the same, we are all from the same places and ultimately we’re all just seeking salvation. We all want salvation, every one of us, whether we’re able to admit it or not. And as I held onto the concrete leg of Jesus, staring up at his cold visage, I couldn’t help but think it’s out there. There is hope for all of us, after all. Even if it is so damn hot out here.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Ben left his bottle of schnapps at the altar with the liturgic candles, I said a small prayer –God bless us, keep us, and save us, amen– and we began our meandering ascent back down the mountain, towards the bus, which looked like a matchbox car or a mirage below us, the mantra “MAY I NEVER BE COMPLETE. MAY I NEVER BE CONTENT. MAY I NEVER BE PERFECT” glaring up at us.

Ben and I decided, despite the Mexicans’ warnings, to take some shortcuts on the way back. As a matter of fact, we walked down the entire mountain in about fifteen or twenty minutes, making leaps and bounds down shaky boulders and slippery rocks. Ben, drunk as always, was yipping and hollering the whole way down as we hopped from rock to rock like rotten nomadic mountain goats.

When we reached the bottom, half running half skipping down, the two old Mexicans were sitting in the shade, drinking cold Bud Lights.

“I’m pissed at you guys”, one of them said, sipping his beer slowly.

The other Mexican stood up dramatically. “I told you not to take any shortcuts!” he said wildly, “I saw you two climb up the ridge at Lady of Guadalupe!”.

It was true, we had indeed climbed up from the little relic, it was a five foot climb over a ridge in lieu of a long curve around the peak on the trail, leading to some superfluous stairs.

“We’re sorry. It was the only shortcut we took,” I lied.

“And I saw one of you climb up on the statue. Well, he did, anyway!” he said, pointing at his friend, who was still sitting down drinking his beer.  ”He has eagle eyes!”

“Oh, that was me,” I admitted, “I just wanted to get closer to Jesus,” I said glancing at my dusty shoes.

“You pinche chile con shit! You desecrated a holy site!” the loud one said, taking off his hat.

“Hey, I’m a religious man!” I said with a grin. “I didn’t desecrate anything!”

“It’s true,” Ben agreed with a nod.

“Okay, fine, you guys want a beer?”

So Ben and I hung out in the shade with the two friends, Arturo, who was sixty one, and Felix, who was about to turn seventy. Art, the louder one, handed us both two cold beers, which we promptly opened.

“I’m just as old as he is,” Felix said proudly, pointing up at the statue.

They told Ben and me that they came out here every Friday and Saturday to do maintenance. They even had to replace the right arm of the cross last year.

“You should have been here then” Felix said to me warmly, as if he were reminiscing, “Up there on the scaffolding, you could have kissed his face.”

They had grown up out here, in the shadow of the mountain. They knew every inch of this place. There was a spot beneath a tree on the east side that you could dig a few feet and get cold water to drink. “Our fathers took us out here since we were children, and we are still coming here, every weekend.” Art said from his chair.

Tyler and Pual finally caught up, winded and red, after a good forty five minutes; they hadn’t taken the shortcuts. It’s a good thing too, because Art never let it go that Ben and I had, saying “You pinche chile con shit!” every time he thought about it.

It was so refreshing, at the end of an exhausting road, to meet two best friends, so content with their static existence.

“This is life,” Art said. “If we didn’t have wives we’d probably be out here all the time.”

“Yeah, just put a trailer right over there and live out the rest of our lives here,” Felix chimed in, taking a long sip of beer.

The two old men, old but not weary, looked up at Jesus fondly as they spoke. “We really love this place. It’s like home to us,” Art said reverently.

Art looked down at my dirty legs, reading the tattoos above my ankles. “Stay Gold, huh?” he asked, “Is that why you have that long wildman beard? Trying to stay gold?”

They asked us about the bus, and about our trip, and the four of us gave the truncated version, each picking up where the other one left off.  It was a routine we’d mastered in the past few months.

“So you guys just worked during the year, saved up the money, and then went out and saw the world?” Felix interrupted.

“Yeah, yeah that’s the basic idea.” Ben said with a sip.

“I think maybe you guys have it figured out, you crazy motherfuckers.” Art said laughing.

We all laughed together, the six of us, all thinking the same thing about the opposite party. These guys, Felix and Arturo, they were the ones who had it all figured out. Here were two old Mexican Catholics, spending their entire lives devoted to taking care of this holy statue, and thus taking care of themselves in the process. And praise Jesus, praise Mary, praise all the saints in heaven, here were two genuine Zen masters, real holy men, right in front of us, beer in hands. They didn’t need to seek out existence, to seek out experience, to live frenetic and fantastic lives, they had all they needed right here beneath the indifferent sun.

There was a solemn sadness in their voice when they spoke of the past, but there wasn’t a hint of desperation, only acceptance and contentedness. These men were living here in peace, on the most violent border in America, in the shadow of Cristo del Rey.

“Next summer, swing by and get me” Art said with a vivid smile. “I’ll pitch in for the gas money and everything. I want to see the Grand Canyon.”

After we’d all had a few more beers, Felix and Art deemed the work day to be over, and we had to get back on the road. We all shook hands as we left, and Art pulled me in close, whispering in my ear, “Russell, I hope you found what you were looking for out here in the desert. You’re welcome here anytime, primo.”

I smiled and thanked him, wanting to hug this wise man like I’d hugged the concrete Jesus because it was evident that they were one in the same spirit.

“But next time, no short cuts! Ok? Pinche chile…”

So we drove back down the dusty road, out to the highway, leaving our new friends behind, maybe to never see them again. It’s just a sad fact those on the trail learn to accept, but all those streams wind up in the same ocean, anyhow.

We pointed the bus due east, on that long familiar stretch of interstate ten, dusty trade winds at our backside. It was all downhill from here. Back to sea level, back to my girlfriend, back to air condition and beds and television and our friends and our mothers and home, which had become such a lose concept in my mind. I would navigate the dingy yellow monster three hundred and fifty miles that night, from El Paso to Ozona, while everyone else slept, to park between semi-trucks at a rumbling three-am truck stop on the side of the highway. The next morning I would push on to Austin, driving the whole way in one straight shot, back sweating in my leather seat, just trying to get back to sanity and showers.

Pual sat at the graffitied blue table, staring patiently out the window, contemplating the life that lay before him. His foray into freedom, into independent recklessness, was coming to an end, with every mile of highway the bus covered, he got closer to the firefighter academy, and his looming career as a “professional”. He ran his fingers across raised words, written in acrylic paint, as the box fan on the table whirred pointlessly, circulating hot desert air. The blank expression on his face, as seen through my rear view mirror, seemed to agree with me, that it hadn’t been enough. Like the virgin who enters a young girl for the first time, or the cannibal who swallows his first chunk of flesh, is the voyager’s appetite ever quenched? Now that he has laid eyes on purple mountain majesty, will Pual’s eyes ever be content?

Ben drank from his cup, presumably full of liquor, I’ve stopped asking him what he is drinking at any given moment and taken to assuming. He sat on the couch in his ragged flannel shirt admiring some of the old VHS tapes he’d acquired on the trip–Legend of the Queerwolf, Faces of Death, something with Vincent Price on the cover– he put the tapes into a bag one by one. He pursed his lips together, his mustache protruding up like a caterpillar stretching before going into its cocoon. I’d never bothered to ask Ben why he wanted to go on the trip. It didn’t seem like an applicable question. I’d invited him with a beer in my hand at one of our house parties in Houston. I’d only met him a few times before, and that night he had been peeing in solo cups and leaving them around the house, hoping some sad hipster would mistake them for beer. “Yeah, man. That sounds like a great idea. When do we leave?” he’d said to be, carefully placing one of his piss cups on a stair rail. It just seemed like the most natural, obvious thing for him to do, there didn’t need to be a rhyme or reason behind it. The bus shook beneath him, around him, as he took inventory of his souvenirs, as I was taking inventory of my mental souvenirs.

Tyler strummed his guitar, sitting on the dirty couch which was caked in desert dust, riverbank mud, and beach sand. He was tweaking a Willie Nelsonesque dirge about Salt Lake City, the first lines going, “I keep prayin’ lord that the Mormons are right.” He sang it softly, to himself, and I wondered if he’d found the meaning of life, as he’d set out to do. It was apparent from his song that the Mormon temple hadn’t provided the answers. I found myself surprised and impressed with him when he had originally told me that was his goal of the trip, to find the meaning of life. Tyler, the self-professed atheist, who had long ago turned his back on his minister father’s religion, was still looking for meaning in existence, not giving any consideration to the apathetic existentialism that plagues most of our generation. There were dark semicircles under his eyes, like inverted crescent moons, the common badge the four of us exhausted travelers were flaunting. Despite Tyler’s supposed shortcomings, it seemed he was closer to finding the answer than I was.

My mind raced with the bus tires– it was over, our summer fling with the West, with the road, was winding to its end.I clinched my fingers around the vibrating steering wheel and fixed my eyes on the approaching horizon and we barreled across the West Texas highway, the tires humming, the bus creaking, my head reeling– the road always the same, ever changing, and always the same.

Printed above a swinging toy skeleton, there at the front of the bus, in Ben’s erratic handwriting was, “So much space, so little time.”  I sighed and knew it was true. Our three months on the road would never be enough, there was so much more left to be seen. Like back in grade-school, the few precious hours of twilight between three thirty and bedtime, there was no way to fit everything in those fleeting summer months. There never would be, but such is life.

Tyler drove us into El Paso that night blaring Beatles songs over the loudspeaker, drumming on the big steering wheel that had become so familiar and comfortable, singing along, his voice mixing with the rush of dry air coming in through the windows, that constant breathy roar. He drove carefully and intentionally, as he always did, his mind married to the road.

while I sat in the blue table, scratching the remnants of my Californian souvenirs.

I scribbled furiously into my notebook , the last one I’d be using on the trip, before I forgot the happenings of the days before. I was way behind in my writing, and my hazy recollection of the past few days was fleeting at best. The lights that hung from the ceiling swung back and forth as the bus swayed with the highway, the dull light bending and curling on the beat blue table, illuminating autographs, paint from the past, dry vomit, crudely drawn penises, and mantras written in permanent marker.

Pual sat on his bunk, as he often did, earphones in, looking out the window at the passing landscape. He remained quiet during most of our driving times, his eyes fixated on landmarks he may never see again, as if he were trying to memorize them. His head resting on his hands, his feet kicking like a child’s, he absorbed the beauty that is the Great West from the bus window.

Ben sat across the tiny aisle from me on the worn out couch on his computer. His new computer, I should say. The shiny reminder of his failed relationship, of the tiny little human being that we abandoned like she was an animal that refused to be house-trained. He was going home to Houston, where he would inevitably run into her, and her friends, and have to relive those confused, angry moments again in her burning face. I did not envy his lot.

We arrived rather late that night, and after staying up, trying to jot down everything I could remember, and certainly forgetting some of the details, I drifted off to sleep, the moon hanging high above yet another god forsaken Wal-Mart sign, the city of Juarez, Mexico buzzing down below us, on the other side of that vulgar fence.

I woke up early on the morning of July 30th, filthy, sticky, itchy and sore, but relieved that it would be the final night I would have to spend chasing sleep in a supermarket parking lot.

I stepped outside, into the wretched El Paso heat, and stretched my arms and legs wide.

“Today, looking out from my front porch, I get to view Juarez, the murder capitol of North America,” I said aloud with a yawn.

I had no desire to be in El Paso. I’d left the curious tourist in me back there in hellish Las Vegas, handcuffed and suffocated by the serpentine heat. I was anxious to get back to some semblance of normalcy, and more so, I was anxious to get back to the smooth caress of Stephanie, that angel, that beacon who would be waiting for me at the end of this yellow, draining trail. She was to be the well for my canteen, the sustenance for my stomach, and, god bless her, the pillow for my heavy head.

I pinned the final orange dot into the map at El Paso, Texas, feeling a sense of accomplishment and pride as the pin penetrated the paper. The line of dots snaked up across New Mexico, over mountains and deserts; up north through Colorado stopping in cities and trailer parks; across empty Wyoming and down into Salt Lake City,  where I parted ways with my closest friend; stretched over the top of Nevada, and  into California; hugged the California coast line like a curvaceous woman, dipping down into L.A; and then through the demonic desert of Nevada and the hazy dust of Arizona; back through New Mexico in a flash, to finally land here, on the tip of the panhandle of Texas.

I breathed a heavy sigh, wiping sweat from my forehead, and went outside to sit in the shade of a sad parking lot tree, thinking about what Susie and I had talked about the day before. I called Stephanie, and lay shirtless in the patch of grass that interrupted the black tar.

We exchanged pleasantries, and I told her that if all went well, I’d have us home in a day and a half.

“Oh just in time to help me move out!” She exclaimed.

Oh yes, splendid. Forget that bit about resting my heavy head, I suppose. The phone crackled in my sweaty ear.

We spoke for a while, making post-bus trip plans to rest and relax and make love. I had moved from the shade of the tree to the shade of the bus, laying on my stomach half of my body beneath the greasy behemoth, black pavement speckling my arms and chest like chocolate sprinkles.

My conversation with Stephanie was drawing to a close when suddenly an opaque, yellow liquid splashed loudly on the ground beside me, and up onto my arms, shoulders and face.

“What the fuck was that? What is on me? Is that piss?”

I jumped up from my lounging position, threw my phone across the pavement, and looked up to see Tyler standing there at the window, two empty Gatorade bottles that had only seconds earlier been full of ripe, morning piss. I screamed something feral and unintelligible, that with subtitles would have read “THERE IS PISS ON ME”.

I stomped across the parking lot, screaming at El Paso, at my poison ivy, at Tyler, at the god damned bus trip, and when I was done ranting, we all went and had a decent Mexican lunch.

“So do you guys want to hang out in El Paso?” I asked, sitting next to Pual in our booth, the mid-morning sunlight pouring in through the restaurant window.

“I’m ready to get home,” said Pual, “there’s nothing in this scary ass town I wanna see anyway.”

Tyler swallowed his mouthful of taco. “Well we’re here. We may as well take the opportunity and see a few things,” He said.

“Like what?” I said, taking a sip from my frothy horchata.

“Well, there are some old catholic missions that would be pretty cool to check out, and there’s this huge statue of Jesus on a hill, I’d like to see that.”

“Why don’t we just go find an underground Mexican cock-fighting ring and call it a day?” Ben said from across the table.

“You know,” said Pual, “the cocks that fight in those things are roosters, not penises.”

So it was decided, we’d finish our chips and salsa, board the bus– one two three four– and drive out to Mt. Christo Del Rey to see Jesus, and then drive across West Texas like madmen.

I listened as they tore  at each other’s throats under the boards,
and I knew we were one in the same, so I did nothing to stop it.
Even as growling heads clanked against rusty pipes and arched backs
Thudded against my floor, I readied myself for bed

Because I knew that their aggression was mine.

I woke up this morning feeling mostly refreshed. My brain was still a bit hazy, and the past three days had run together like a three car locomotive stuck on the tracks, black and dusty. Tyler had driven all night, and after walking into yet another Wal-Mart, I determined we were in Gallop New Mexico.

I walked around the supermarket eating a free corn dog and some jalapeño cheese poppers, using my eat while you shop method that seems to work so well. After my off-balanced and greasy breakfast, I waited for everyone to get up, and then drove us on towards Albuquerque. The orange dots on our map, which was still hanging up on the back wall of the bus, had completed their meandering loop. Our adventures were almost over: from Alburquerque we would drive south to El Paso, and then back east through Texas, backtracking t0 Austin, where we would meet up with our friends and finally sit down, take our shoes off, and sigh.

The landscape from Gallop to Albuquerque, east on I-40, is a fantastical myriad of mesas springing up from the earth, red mountains shedding their rocky shells, and ancient black lava flow piled up along the highway, evidences of a violent geologic past. We stopped in a dilapidated vapor of a Native American town, a victim of the death of old Route 66, so Ben could search for “some crazy liquor with an Indian chief or somethin’ on it”, a souvenir for one of his friends back home. Of course, he didn’t find the boon for which he searched, but he did manage to find a ten-dollar bottle of Green chili wine and a for a dollar six-pack of a beer called “Beer:30″, and determined not to give up.

After driving a few more dry, listless hours, the next punctuation in our trip was a truck stop across the highway from an Indian Casino. I pulled the bus up next to rumbling semi trucks and let everyone off. Tyler and Ben ran across the road to do some last-minute gambling, Pual sat in his bunk on his phone, and while the bus was filling up, I bought a package of herbal energy pills made for those few truckers who don’t do amphetamines.

I stepped back onto the bus with a styrofoam cup full of cherry coke, and popped the herbal pills. Pual and I were both anxious to get home. Since Las Vegas, this trip had lost much of its sheen for me. Even the Grand Canyon seemed a little lackluster after exchanging blows with Tyler in a sleep deprived, heat induced nightmare. We had said very few words to each other beyond necessity,  and I was ready to get away from him, and the trip in general; ready to be comfortable back home.

While we waited for Tyler and Ben to return from inside the casino, I called my lawyer to inquire about my insurance settlement. His secretary picked up just as I felt the pills kicking in, and as I sat on hold, my heart raced as I paced the parking lot.n Jittery, I listened as it was explained to me that I would be getting around twenty-five thousand dollars for my wreck, after hospital bills, and that the case should be wrapped up by the time I got home. I immediately called Stephanie and my mother, in that order, to tell them the good news. It felt like a millstone around my neck had just been clipped off. I hadn’t paid my room mates back in Houston for the past two months of rent, and I didn’t know how I’d pay when I got home, only adding to the daily stresses of this “vacation”.  Looks like everything would be okay after all, though.

Of course I didn’t have that money in my pocket yet, so its not like I could celebrate with a trip inside that air-conditioned casino or a bottle of champagne or green chili wine. No, a trickling smile would have to suffice.

We met Susie in Albuquerque to catch up over cheap sushi. We waited for her at a Starbucks, where Ben and Tyler used the internet and I attempted to read “Breakfast of Champions”. My mind was racing and my hands were shaking as I turned the pages of the book. My eyes darted in my head like marbles rolling around in a bucket. I felt like I was looking at things but not seeing them. Vonnegut’s words began to blur into a shady haze. Those trucker pills were really working me over, but hell, at least I wasn’t exhausted anymore.

I looked up from my book just as Susie pulled up next to the bus. It was great to see someone familiar, whom I knew and loved, who hadn’t been in rambling, bouncing closed quarters with me for the past three months. She was supposed to drive us over to the sushi place, but when we all piled into her car, it wouldn’t start.

“We’re some kinda bad luck, Susie,” said Ben apologetically.

She said a few curse words in Spanish, smacked the steering wheel with her brown hand, and opened up the car door. “I think its just having white people overload,” she said with a smile.

So we loaded into the bus and drove to the place, where we used her coupon for forty percent off sushi rolls. The five of us crammed into a tiny booth, with a red light hanging overhead. Susie and I talked about our time together in Springfield, Missouri between mouthfuls of raw fish and rice. It had only been two years since I left that place, but for her, it must be like getting to know a stranger with the face of an old friend. I’ve changed so much since those days that I’m surprised the two of us found it so easy to pick back up. My belief systems, my lifestyle, my appearance, my goals, my priorities– must all be unrecognizable from that Christian boy she knew back then.

The girl I dated in Springfield is still one of Susie’s good friends, and I know she would never be interested in the person I am today except as someone whom she could win for Christ. I often regret not being able to be close with her anymore, but to her, it’s just not possible.  Two years, that’s all it took. I’m glad Susie isn’t so particular.

“You know she won’t even talk to me. She doesn’t even want to be my friend. Last time I talked to her she tried to witness to me. Can you believe that?” I said as I dipped my Philly roll in the soy sauce dish.

“You broke her heart, you know?” Susie replied. “You left her there at the end of the year, with no intention of ever returning, and she was in love with you. She hasn’t gotten over it. You should have never started dating her if you didn’t intend on finishing it.” Susie talks so fast when she knows she’s right.

“It would have never worked out. Look at where I am. Get a whiff of how bad I smell. Try to run your fingers through my knotted, greasy hair. I’m not as complicated as she makes me out to be, i’m just a little wild. It had to end some time, it would have ended no matter what. It’s just such a shame that we can’t just be civil towards one another. We were once so close, with kisses and sweet talk and touching and–”

“Oh get on with it,” Susie said, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t know, it’s just a damn shame that all I am to her now is someone to tell the Gospel to. She wants to see me in Heaven, but she doesn’t want to see me. Do you know how impossible it is to witness to someone who used to witness to others?? Once a sheep leaves the herd, he doesn’t need to be reminded of all the virtues of pastoral life. He damn well remembers everything.”

“You know, Russell,” Susie began, pursing her lips together, her brown eyes looking into the right corner of her brain, “You can’t get so caught up on keeping everyone in your life.” Her words slowed down and she sounded less Latina for a moment as she thought out what she was going to say. “You should just be happy that they were once important to you, and then accept that they no longer are. Its like the river: Streams and creeks flow into the river, they feed it, they power it, and once its all in there you can’t tell any of the water apart. Its all the same, and then it all just moves down the river and empties out somewhere that you never see again, but you just jump in and enjoy it all the same.”

After Sushi, Ben went to the third liquor store of the day to further his monomaniacal quest to find the perfect racist red-man liquor. After scouring the aisles for thirty minutes, while the rest of us waited outside, he came back out with Green Chili beer, the least appetizing drink I’ve heard of today.

We tried to jump Susie’s car off with the bus, to no avail. So it was all hugs and goodbye waves and we left her there waiting on her father–another friend fading in the side view mirror. But we were off to El Paso–and sorry Suze–I couldn’t be sad for more than a few moments, before the anticipation of being back on Texas soil, and that much closer to home, overwhelmed me. She was right, after all, the river would keep rolling on and spit me out back in Houston, back in the arms of Stephanie, and the rest of my family.

The Lone Star State was so close I could taste it. Tastes exactly like cow shit and salty sweat; how sweet, how sweet indeed.

I woke up in the afternoon, bouncing along the Arizona highway, feeling like about ten bucks, which is much better than I’d felt in days. IT was raining for the first time since, I don’t know, Wyoming? The air was cool and I was so thankful to be out of hellish Nevada, thankful to be rid of that suffocating, slithering heat. It rained most of the way to Flagstaff, where we stopped for some barbecue in some kitschy place in the basement of a shopping center. You know the kind of place, with licence plates on the walls and a stuffed moose head above the fountain drinks.

After we ate, I stood out in the rain and listened to the hustle and bustle of Flagstaff. Music played on jukeboxes in lonely bars. Couples pranced through puddles. Water dripped from strings of white lights on closed shop windows. I stood out on a sidewalk and stared up at the dark sky, memories of the day rushing back into my mind.

We had tried to go over Hoover Dam. It was the last summer they were letting people drive across it, but there were no buses allowed due to the fear of terrorism. We had stopped at a truck stop that had a bar that served seventy-five cent beers, had a mini-bowling alley in it, and a coin operated machine that had a banjo, a piano, a guitar, and a tiny drumset inside of it, and would play whatever song you chose. I chose “Africa” by Toto, and stood there shuffling around in my flip-flops to the tune. I hadn’t talked to Tyler the entire day. I had, though, eaten at Mcdonalds.

I’d been in a daze all day, in and out of sleep. The drug-induced rest was appreciated, but it wasn’t refreshing, I needed more. I popped a few more sleeping pills once we got to the Flagstaff Wal-Mart parking lot, which was full of RVs and travel trailers.

July 28th…

From Flagstaff we drove in a succession of tourists in mini-vans, RVs, and station wagons up to the Grand Canyon. One would assume that there would be a legitimate highway system running to such a national landmark, but no, we wound up on a dusty highway that dead ended in a T with another dusty highway. At that T, was Bedrock City, the Flintstones themed camp site/restaurant our friend Leaf had given up his trip to the Grand Canyon for. He has seen Bedrock City, but he still hasn’t seen the Grand Canyon.

“Okay, anyone up for a Dino-burger? We have to stop here.” I said excitedly, possibly the first time I’d been excited since I was flying in the wind tunnel in Vegas. “We’d be letting Leaf down if we didn’t stop”.

“Yeah let’s do it,” agreed Ben. “I’m down for some greasy, dinosaur related menu-items.”

We parked in the gravel driveway, and hopped outside into the glaring sun. Inside the tourist trap of a diner, there were Flintstones magnets, sweaters, posters, stickers, t-shirts–basically any surface you could stick a Flintstones logo on– that all looked like they were from nineteen seventy-six. The blonde girl at the front counter eyed us as we walked in, but we walked right past her, and the jalapeno suckers with the worms inside them, to sit in the diner.

I had a Chickasaurus sandwich and a corn dog. Ben ordered the “Cactus Juice”, which was really just red kool-aid. There were very poorly drawn pictures of dinosaurs on the wall, it looked as if a third grader had free-handed most of them, and I have to admit, I was a little disappointed when none of my food came out shaped like a dinosaur.

An older woman with stringy hair had been waiting on us. She had failed to explain to Ben that cactus juice was kool-aid, and I wasn’t surprised when she asked us if we were going to take a tour of the park out back.

“How much is it? We’re kinda low on cash. Traveling and all,” Said Tyler.

“It’s five dollars a person, son” the lady said through her crooked teeth.

We all decided that five dollars was too much to see a bunch of sad, misshapen Flintstones characters, and we paid our bill and decided to go ahead and go to the Grand Canyon. I handed her my card and she frowned at me.

“You don’t have cash, deary? We don’t accept cards back here.”

“No ma’am, I sure don’t.” I replied, wondering why on earth any establishment in the year twenty ten would choose not to accept credit cards.

“Well, you can go up to the front and pay. Lindsey is much easier on the eyes than I am, anyway.”

“Oh, nonsense,” I lied, and walked to the front, eying Pebbles dolls and Dinosaur model kits. The blonde behind the front counter looked bored, her hair tied up in a pony tail, her eyes half closed as Ben and I approached her.

“Hi, uh, I’m supposed to pay for this up here? The lady in the diner said you were prettier than she was, so here I am,” I said, handing her my ticket.

Ben stepped up to the counter. “Is there like, a discount for the theme park back there?”

“You want to go back there?” the blonde girl said, thumbing over her shoulder.

“Yeah, we’ve heard great things,” I said with a smile. “Isn’t there like, an attractive dude discount?”

“Where are you guys from?” she asked. “you look so familiar.”

“Oh you wouldn’t know us, we’re from Houston,” replied Ben.

“No shit? I used to live there!”

“What are you doing here then? At bedrock city? In the middle of the desert?” I asked her, signing my receipt and pushing it across the counter to her.

“It’s a long story. I’m here with my boyfriend. His grandparents own this place.”

“How prestigious,” Said Ben. “How much are these?” he held up a sucker with a dried scorpion inside.

“A dollar. Look if you guys wanna go back there, you can go for free. It’s not a big deal.”

Ben licked on his sucker, and the four of us wandered around the “park”, which was really just a sad field, dying grass and red dirt, concrete replicas of Barney and Fred’s houses, a post office, a big brontosaurus slide, and a train (golf cart) that went through a big volcano. We went from sad attraction to sad attraction like children, snapping pictures with the concrete Fred and dancing with the concrete Wilma.

A concrete pteradactyl baby hatched from a concrete egg, Ben sprawled out in Fred and Wilma’s bed, dark glasses over his eyes, Pual and I were hauled off to jail by a painted plywood version of Sgt. Rubble, Tyler slid down the Bronto-slide, laughing like a child. The blonde girl came out to check on us. She offered us a ride on the golf cart-train, which went inside the volcano. Once inside we saw wondrous sights like a pterodactyl flying around a paper mache volcano which spat out a trash bag lava explosion. It was all very epic, and after the train ride was over, we decided maybe it was time to see the Grand Canyon.

I might have been disappointed with Bedrock City if I had paid the five bucks, but for a free walk around a field with poorly constructed Flintstones houses and sad Fred and Barneys hanging out like religious statues, it was an alright deal.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

We drove on to the Grand Canyon. The sky was still dark from the rain, but by the time we got there the clouds had opened up just enough to not regret the eighty mile drive off our route home. What can you even say about the Grand Canyon? What words are there? It’s damn grand, I suppose. But you’ve been there, right? Your parents took you when you were eight, and you didn’t appreciate it because it was hot and really, it was just a big hole in the ground.

And if you haven’t been there yet, do not fret, reader. You’ll rent an RV when you’re seventy and see it as part of your last ditch-bucket list sadness and say “They were right, it is damn grand.”

The four of us climbed out on every rocky peninsula that jutted out into the canyon and just basked in the exorbitant amount of space that fell below us. I tip-toed with a certain sense of vertigo in my gut, like rotting fruit, out on a rocky catwalk to sit up on a balancing rock that peered over into the abyss. I just stared out into the canyon, in amazement that wonders like this even exist.

Ben, Tyler, and Pual peed out into the canyon, and we tried to shove a boulder the size of a volkswagen beetle over the edge with no luck. How have I gone this long without seeing this magnificent crack in the earth? Birds glided on winds far below us, descending  eons of tans reds yellows purples golds, geologic masterpiece down down down to the tiny, mighty, rushing Colorado river.

I wanted to follow those birds into eternity, into creation, into antiquity, but we didn’t have the time. I’d have to come back here one day, with a date, and hike down there and look up at creation from the rock bottom of everything and say, “It is good, it is grand”.

But for now, we only had time to glance over the rim. Another day, Grand Canyon.

We stopped in what passed for a town outside of the park and had supper. I drank a two dollar hobo beer and took a few sleeping pills to ensure a good night sleep. I started to read “Breakfast of Champions”, but put it down out of feelings of incompetence and insecurity. I should just throw this god damned journal away with Vonnegut writing like that.

“Oh the Places You Will Go”, I thought to myself with a chuckle.  No one bought me that book when I graduated high school. My mother bought be an acoustic guitar and my grandpa bought me cowboy boots, you know, because my family isn’t bullshit. But let’s pretend they had bought be that goofy book like so many cheesy families do, so I could presently reminisce back on those zany pages and laugh at this exact moment, with my hands behind my back in handcuffs, on my knees in Las Vegas, with red and blue lights whirling like carousels.

It turns out that an officer had seen the whole “altercation” and radioed for backup. Once we were in handcuffs there were three cops on our bus with flash lights, searching for stowaways. I made it very clear that we weren’t consenting to any searches and that, without a warrant, what they were doing was unconstitutional. Ben tried to convince them that everything was fine, but the officer said we weren’t qualified to decide  that, and if we didn’t shut up, we’d all be taken to jail.

If I had a nickel…

They kept asking if any of us were related.

“No, we are friends. We aren’t a cult. That ain’t the partridge family bus,” I explained venomously.

“Dude, cool it,” Ben whispered.

They had Tyler off by himself down the sidewalk, and he was refusing to answer any of their questions. The officers came off the bus with their flashlights, “Nobody else is on there. It’s clear.”

They claimed that since we were living on the bus, our fight was technically a domestic dispute.

“Well that’s the asshole down there that hit me,” I said, pointing at Tyler. “He’s for sure an asshole, but I’m not pressing charges on anyone. There’s no reason for you to be here.”

Pual sat there in silence, shaking his lowered head.

“It sounds like you boys just need to go on home,” One of the officers said, shining a flashlight at the bus. “What the hell is ennuey?”

They let us out of our handcuffs one by one, and as soon as we were “free” their demeanor changed completely. We were no longer deemed a threat, and a few of them were even interested in the details of our trip. I answered a handsome blonde cops questions about the bus, and we all loaded up, first Tyler, and lastly myself.

Pual drove us in silence to a Hawaiian restaurant where we ate cheap burritos and discussed what had just happened. We left Tyler with himself, sulking on the bus.

I looked down at my bleeding knuckles and sipped from a glass of ice-cold water. “I’m sorry guys. I’m sorry any of that happened”.

The clock ticked on the wall. It was two thirty in the morning. Back at home, my parents were sound asleep, my girlfriend tossing and turning in her bed, my grandpa waking up for work. This was it for me. I’ve had fifteen hours of sleep total in the past five days, it is hot as hell here in Vegas, my skin was swollen and itchy, and somewhere in that tussle, I’d lost my damn Astros hat.

“Its okay,” Ben finally responded.

“You know, “Those cowboys just go crazy in the heat,” said Pual, with a toothy grin.

And that was that. We’d avoided getting arrested in Vegas. There would be no calls home for bail money. Pual had successfully hidden his newly packed pipe. The four of us were still free men, but as I pulled clumps of hair out of my dirty mohawk, I knew nothing would be the same.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pual parked the bus at a Wal-Mart, and having given up on sleep, Ben and I walked to a casino called “Arizona Charlie’s” with inexplicably had a portrait of Wild Bill Hancock as their logo. We wasted a few early morning dollars and hours, wandering around the ghostly casino sitting next to frustrated Jews, sleepy old women with feather boas, and red-eyed men, all pulling at the slots. They looked like automatons, creaking as they moved.

At four thirty we made it back to the bus to find Pual asleep on a cot in front of the bus, wearing nothing but his boxers. It was still as hot as ever, even in the pale moonlight; it seemed like the heat was rising up from the ground. I fell briefly fell asleep on the couch, but awoke before six, clawing at my itchy red arms and legs.

I went into Wal-Mart to buy itch cream and called my mom to tell her happy birthday. I wanted so badly to be at home with her, rather than wandering around Wal-Mart before sunrise like a zombie. I told her the story, and she said to just be civil, and get back home.

“I don’t have the money to bail you out, Russell,” she said from fifteen hundred miles away.

I bought a package of sleeping pills, popped three, and spent the rest of the miserable morning passed out in a drug induced, half-daze in my bunk, sweating out all my fury, frustration, fear, and sadness in the god-awful Nevada heat.

After reluctantly climbing out of the relaxing swimming pool and over the chain link fence, back into the sultry Vegas night, we wound up at a little bar called “Champagne’s Cafe” that claims to be the oldest casino in town. It was in old “historic” Las Vegas, away from the bustle of tourists, and we parked the bus in an unlit parking lot outside.

Inside the bar sat two old men in a far corner table, talking loudly about snakes, boa constrictors to be precise; a solitary old woman sat at a video slot machine, dropping quarters into the slot; a man in a ten gallon hat, with a wild mustache sat on the opposite end, in the dark, nursing a drink.  The bartender, a tired looking, but attractive blonde in her late thirties, with fake breasts and an obvious nose job, was on the phone with her babysitter as we walked in the bar.

“Well, its about time for Brendon to go to bed, just tell him Mommy will be home when he wakes up. Ok, ok, thanks, sweetie.”

The four of us sat down at fancy red barstools and ordered whatever was cheapest on the menu, which happened to be a beer and a shot of peppermint schnapps for three dollars. I figured I could afford to spend three bucks, since I had actually walked away with my five dollars from our casino hopping earlier.

There was a candle at every table, the tiny flames casting a dim light on the red velvet wallpaper that covered the wall. Ben and Tyler played video poker while I watched Baseball highlights on the TV above the bar. I couldn’t wait to get back home to the Astros to watch the rest of a typically terrible season.

The bartender, named Christine, gave us a few extra shots of schnapps on the house. “Where are you boys from? You look tired, like sailors at port.” She said with a charming smile, wet rag draped on her shoulder.

“Texas,” We all said in unison. The peppermint liqueur had opened up my sinuses.

“Oh well that explains it, I guess,” She said.

Tyler sat his glass down and leaned forward. “Explains what?”

She never answered him. Instead she asked what we were doing in Vegas, and I sat back and let Ben and Tyler explain our trip, the bus, etcetera.

“What, like a hippie bus?” She asked.

“No,” I spoke up, “We aren’t hippies. We have too much hate in our hearts to be hippies.” I leaned back and kept my eyes on the Diamondbacks and Phillies game. “If only we had pitchers like that,” I mumbled.

“Well take me outside to see it! Come on!” She exclaimed, throwing her rag on the counter.

She took pictures of us outside, in front of the bus, so she could show her friends. “I always meet some interesting people here. Last week a woman came in with a snake around her neck. Wild”.

A boa constrictor, no doubt.

Back inside, sitting on our fancy red bar stools, she insisted that we tell her stories from our trip. So between her serving drinks, Ben told her of Saray’s meltdown, I told her about losing three bikes in one night, Pual told her of bad acid in Kerrville, and Tyler told her about the little community in Eldorado Canyon, and how he desperately wanted to go back. There were the bats in Carlsbad, the Fireworks in Denver, the poison ivy in Big Sur, the ocean in L.A.

“It sounds like you guys have had a great time,” she said, leaning over the bar, revealing her ample cleavage.

I looked down sullenly at my empty glass. “Yeah,” I mumbled softly, “We’ve had a really good time. But i’m ready to get home.”

Before we left, in search of another bar, she insisted on taking pictures of us at a booth, lit by candle light, red velvet behind us. Tyler was drunk, Ben had won twenty-five dollars, and I was bored, itchy, and tired.

After sitting at a half empty Punk bar and listening to Tyler and Ben argue about hitting on some girls that they never actually hit on, and walking into an empty, but absurdly loud, seizure inducing flashy bar, we decided to go get something to eat. I thought Vegas was supposed to be wild and crazy! I’ve seen The Hangover! I’ve seen Fear and Loathing, where are all the strippers? Where is all the vice?

On the way out of the parking lot, Tyler stood up by the door of the bus, presumably to drunkenly yell things at passing pedestrians. He opened the door as I pulled out onto the road, and started throwing our trash out into the street, piece by piece. I was annoyed, but I didn’t want to say anything because, well, what’s the point really? Trying to talk to Drunk Tyler is like talking to a cranky toddler sometimes, so I just let him throw bottles and ravioli cans out into the night.

And then he threw the entire tin bucket that we had used as a trash can out onto the road with a loud clank. We were turning around in a parking lot at the time, so with a loud sigh, I slammed on the brakes, sending him  flying into the open door. I pushed past him, picked up the can, put it back in its place, and sat back down at the wheel.

“Seriously, man? What the fuck is your problem? You’re such an asshole. We didn’t need that stupid thing anyway,” he yelled at me.

“Come on, man, calm down,” Pual said in an annoyed whine as he packed weed into his glass pipe.

I tried to speak calmly and condescendingly, as to heap flaming coals on his head. “Yes sure, I stole us a new one, but it doesn’t mean we should just throw the old one out. It has sentimental value, Tyler.” When you use people’s names in a sentence, it adds to the level of condescension.

I wasn’t about the argue the benefits of having both cans because there was really no reason. I was just sick of Tyler and his drunk antics and tired and itchy and I just wanted to be home in bed. I didn’t want to deal with this bullshit, not tonight in the suffocating desert heat. But he kept yelling at me as I drove down the road, a relentless stream of epithets, ending with “You’re such a fucking idiot.” At that point I pulled over, put the bus in park and stood up, walking towards him. He backed up slowly as I pointed my finger at his chest.

“You have to stop talking to your friends this way!” I yelled. “I’m tired of being called an asshole, an idiot, a pussy, a faggot, whatever! I’m sick of it! You do have hate in your heart, Tyler, the hippies were right! You won’t have any friends if you don’t stop treating people the way you do!”

The heat crawled up my chest and around my neck slowly.

“Just sit back down before I punch you in the fucking face,” He said with a slur.

Oh his trademark empty threat, thrown around whenever he feels threatened or frustrated, which is usually just an annoyance, but now, with the heat pressing in on my face, climbing down my throat, I wasn’t going to have it.

“Do it!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, spit flying from my mouth. I took off my glasses, got right in his face and yelled, “Punch me in the fucking face, you god damn pussy! You’ve never hit anyone in your god damn life! Quit talking about it and fucking do it! Fucking hit me!!!”

And finally he did. An open handed side-swing to the temple. It smarted, but it wasn’t satisfying.

“Whoo!” I yelled like a maniac, Pual and Ben watching with their mouths wide open, “Give me some more! Fucking hit me!!!”

One more slap rained down on my cheek, and I put my glasses back on and sat down at the driver’s seat, thinking it was over.

“You can’t just talk to your friends that way,” I said over my shoulder quietly. “You’re a bad friend.”

I put the bus back in drive and felt the heat pressing in on me from all sides. It was coiled around me tightly, unrelenting.

“Drama, drama, drama. You guys have just been spending too much time together,” Ben said, sipping on a bottle of liquor at the blue table.

“No, this is bullshit. I’m a bad friend? Really?” Tyler barked. “All I do is call you out when you’re being a dick, and you don’t like it. At least I can say things to your face instead of going behind your back and writing it on the internet, you pussy.”

“You’re still mad about that blog from Marfa?” I asked. “All that blog said was that you were an asshole. Tyler, you are an asshole. And posting something on the internet, for everyone to see, including you, is the exact opposite of going behind your back, it’s entirely public.”

But he wasn’t listening, he had instead moved on to calling me  self-righteous, arrogant, pretentious –meanwhile Ben is giving me driving directions “left up here, take a right at the light”–selfish, ridiculous, delusional, and even went as far as to say that I treat my friends and girlfriend like shit, “Just to make your lousy self feel better.”

Despite the obvious projection, I sat pop-psychology to the side and pulled over in a gas station and came to a jarring stop, putting the bus in park.

“Get the fuck out of the bus, Tyler. We’re settling this right here and now, or I’m leaving you here in this hell-hole.”

He wouldn’t come outside with me, but he did manage to clumsily push me down the stairs, out into the parking lot. I lunged at him, while Ben and Pual yelled for us to stop, and socked him in the jaw, sending him into the driver’s seat. Pual tried to pull me off of him, but he had my long mohawk in his big man-hands, pulling at my hair, snarling at me, “get out of my face, Womack”.

Pual managed to get him to let go of my hair, and I retreated farther back in the bus. Tyler shoved Pual, “Sticking up for your ‘bro’? I’ll kick your ass too.”

Pual, who had stayed reasonably calm during this entire altercation, proceeded to absolutely lose it. He began stomping around like a chimp, screaming in Tyler’s face, using someone else’s voice, pulled from deep within. “TYLER, YOU FUCKING PUSSY. YOU’RE RUINING THE TRIP AND RUINING YOUR FRIENDSHIPS. QUIT TREATING THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE LIKE SHIT.” He yelled all of this, flailing his arms in the air, still holding his recently packed pipe.

Ben had taken the wheel at this point, drunk Ben, who had never driven the Bus before, drove us out of the parking lot as Pual unloaded on Tyler, who had retreated to the couch. I sat behind Ben, shaking with anger, coaching him on driving the bus, feeling the dry, Nevada heat pouring into the bus.

Now, I’m not sure at what point during all of this the cops pulled up next to us, they may have seen us in the parking lot, I don’t know, but in a few moments, we were being pulled over, red and blue lights flashing from behind us.

And somewhere, I heard a distinct hiss.

I woke up just before sunrise, completely miserable, sprawled out sweaty on the couch and scratching my skin like a maniac. I’d slept maybe two and a half hours, and that was all my degenerating body and mind was going to allow. I grabbed my itch cream and stepped out the door, eyes still heavy with sleep, and headed for the restrooms.

The pink sun was just starting to leak out over the distant mountains in the east, and in the dry desert twilight I could make out smooth rocky hills just on the other side of the highway, towering above the earth. Every state may look the same in the dark, but as the tender sunlight began to bleed across the desert, this definitely looked like Nevada.

A trucker stood outside the bathroom, admiring the same scene I was, but without acknowledging him I went inside and chose the only stall with a door, sat down, and began to apply my itch cream liberally. I had only been sitting there a few moments when I noticed a three inch hole in the stall divider at just about eye level, allowing a clear view into the next stall. I got the worst kind of chills, that reverberated from my spine into the pit of my stomach. This was some gay trucker gloryhole bullshit. I knew these things existed, but I’d never actually seen them before. What are the odds that out of all the rest stops and all the bathrooms I’d be alone at dawn in a stall with a gloryhole.

Before I could even begin to process what perversions took place in that stall I heard footsteps, and then there he was, the trucker who had been loitering outside, now standing on the other side of the divider, just hovering at the hole in his khaki shorts and long socks. Oh Christ, this was about to get ugly.

I pulled up my pants, flung the door open, and bolted out of the restroom as fast as I could, without looking back. Just the thought of what atrocities might have occurred was enough to turn my stomach. I instantly became physically ill. Whatever doubts I’d ever had about my sexuality were settled right then and there: case closed.

I walked back outside just as the raw desert sun crashed over the horizon like a pinkorange tsunami. A crow landed noisily on a lamp post in front of me. God was I tired. Tired beyond exhaustion. Everything seemed like a dream, hazy and muddled. I turned my back to the sun and saw that the moon was still hanging in the sky, clear as ever, a great full moon so big it looked fake; the third full moon I’ve seen on this trip. At that very moment, I was ready to go home. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________

It wasn’t long after the sun came up, baking the bus like a banana bread, that everyone apprehensively rolled out of their bunks. I lathered myself down with itch cream while they got ready, and then drove us across the Mojave desert toward Las Vegas, the city of sin.

We’ve been spoiled by West Coast weather. Not having AC on the bus hasn’t been a problem thus far. Heck, some nights were so cold I had to sleep fully clothed. But Nevada was not going to be as hospitable. The bus was sweltering. My entire body burned, it seemed, from the inside. We all felt like frogs being slowly boiled alive.

With Las Vegas growing closer and closer in the windshield, my brain felt as if it were a blister about to pop. Sweat dripped down my neck, the open wounds from my incessant scratching were starting to burn, my mouth was dry and tasted like coal. Viva Las Vegas, indeed.

I’m sure that the buildings glistened and sparkled in the Nevada Sun like precious rubies and gems. The Eiffel tower probably stood tall above the desert, the luxurious hotels must have looked like palaces, the pre-ozymandiacal pyramid certainly looked like a majestic siren to stupid travelers with heavy pockets, the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign definitely conjured up images of Elvis and fast times and better days. I’m assuming all of this about the Vegas strip, though. I couldn’t even feign excitement as the bus rolled down the drag. I remember nothing of it except that the temperature on one of the casino’s flashing signs read one hundred and six.

“My god, this place is completely impractical,” I complained to Ben, who was fanning himself, looking out an open window. “I can’t imagine why anyone would drive to the middle of a god damn desert to give their money away and get burned up by this blazing sun. I’m going to have a fucking heat stroke.”

We parked in an empty parking lot and got out to stretch our legs. Tyler walked out of the back with a pair of scissors.

“I’m doing it. I can’t take it anymore. I’m shaving my beard,” He said, sitting at the sticky driver’s seat.

“What?” I exclaimed. “We’re almost home! You’ve gotta be strong!” I pulled on my own scraggly wild man beard for emphasis.

“It’s too damn hot. It’s gotta go.”

As Tyler began to trim his beard, a man with a tiny mohawk popped up at the bus door, asking about the bus, and our trip. He was a longboarder, and worked at the indoor skydiving place that he pointed to as he spoke. He gave us tips on where to skate, what casinos to check out, and then he was just gone, skating back off to his place of work.

Within minutes he skated back up excitedly and asked if he could put some of his longboarding stickers on our bus. We obliged him, and he was gone again. Just a few moments later he was back with four free passes to the indoor skydiving place, and said that if we came in within the next twenty minutes, he’d give us a lesson for free.

So without a second thought we rushed over with him and got signed up, Tyler would have to finish trimming his beard later. Thank God for our ridiculously painted eyesore of a bus, opening up doors like this for us. I’ve always said it was better to stand out than to blend in. In college, all of my conservative professors remembered me because of my foot tall, fire engine red mohawk. I stood out in stark contrast to the very average student body, but I was a bright student and my “punk” image got me a lot of face time and good repertoire with my professors, which in turn, led to better grades.

So sure, the bus may have received  lot of negative attention on the road, but it also got us into places that we wouldn’t have had access to with some lame RV or plain white van.

So we got to put on some silly giant suits and float around in a wind tunnel for about half an hour. I fully expected Pual and I to be expert wind tunnel floaters, but none of us were really very good at it. The trick was to equally distribute your weight, and to let the wind do all the work. I thought my amateur zen practices would give me the still patience required to pull it off, but as I flew around the room willy nilly, I realized that I was a sham-poser like everyone in the world. At the very least I needed a few more lessons on just being, not fighting the current, but submitting to it: acceptance. I remembered the leaf in the stream in El Dorado Springs. That leaf would probably get along wonderfully in this wind-tunnel.

Despite our not being immediately acclimated to the world of zero gravity, we all had a good time. Pual actually did better than all of us, his smaller frame surrendering to the thundering wind, and Tyler looked exactly like bigfoot would if he were in space: hilarious. We thanked the instructor for his generosity and he bid us good luck on our travels. He told us that the tickets usually cost seventy five dollars a piece, and to consider ourselves blessed. We did.  We were.

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Afterwards, Pual and I tried to skate around town, dodging tourists and checking out casinos, but it was so god damned hot that we just ended up posting up at some slot machines, trying to make five dollars last. We played penny slots for hours, ordering cheap beers and trying to look like we were actually gambling, until some casino official asked Pual for his I.D, and we had to leave. I told them that I was his legal guardian, and in many ways I probably am, but he wasn’t buying it.

It never cooled off that day. Even at nine pm after the desert sun had set, when we all met back at the bus, it was still ninety-eight degrees out. The wind-tunnel instructor had told us about a motel swimming pool behind their building that he and his co-workers regularly sneaked into. So in hopes of cooling off, and maybe getting something that slightly resembled a bath, Tyler, Pual, and I jumped the fence and dipped ourselves in the cool, calm water, leaving Ben behind on the bus to nap.

Tyler scratched his much shorter beard. He suddenly looked years  younger and not so travel-haggard, and I couldn’t wait to get home to shave mine off completely, signifying the end of this maniacal excursion. Pual kicked around the pool like a frog, his tattoos glistening beneath the city lights. I breathed a ephemeral sigh of relief.

Vegas was bright and flashy, as I imagine it always is, but on a sweltering Monday night, it was much quieter than I ever thought it could be.  I enjoyed our moments of stillness in the pool. I had been moving for what seemed like years. My legs constantly kicking, my eyes always darting back and forth, my mind reeling. I watched spotlights dance in the air above us and floated there in the chlorine smelling water like a leaf.

Last night, after the bar, we all went to bed, but only three of us went to sleep. I had another three or four hour night of itchy half-sleep, scratching myself raw. But today is our last day in Los Angeles, and our last day in California, so there’s no time to worry about how much sleep I didn’t get. There are things to do.

We drove up the famous Mullholland drive and blared Tom Petty over the speakers. It was a Tom Petty kind of day anyway, Mullholland or not, the sky lit up slowly, and the sun beat down on us dirty, temporary Angelinos.

The bus barely made it up the winding ascent, slowing down to ten and sometimes five miles per hour around some of the turns, and rich people honked from behind us, not able to pass us on the two lane road, anxious to get to where ever they were headed. “Free Fallin’” came on over the speakers and I turned it up and waited for the perfect moment, when Tom Petty would croon that last great verse just as we overtook the final hill, but the CD skipped through the entire song, and our sonic moment was ruined–cold reality.

We stopped and pulled over in a gravel pull off, and exited the bus gleefully, cars honking at us as they passed. We stood at the edge of the road, and there was all of Los Angeles, sprawled out before us, all grand, all tortured, all golden, all desperate, all genius, all forlorn, neverending  Los Angeles.

“You know, all of those people down there, all of those rich people, they’re all rich because we’re so stupid,” Ben said, climbing up on a guard rail to get a better look at the sweeping panorama. “You go and pay twelve dollars to see Transformers or whatever drivel your girlfriend wants to see and it pays for their house, their pool, their cars. You can’t hate them for being rich. We make them rich.”

Mansions, that according to Ben, we paid for, cascaded down the mountain below us, and beyond that was downtown, the L.A skyline, the Capital Records building, highway 101– suddenly I wish I had a date, a convertible, and a Three Dog Night song playing over the radio, man I’d be set.

From our lookout spot on Mullholland we drove through Compton at Tyler and Pual’s demand. I was against it, but I guess they were hoping to get a stray bullet hole in the bus from some gang war or something; poverty tourism, I suppose. We drove through without seeing any scenes from “Boyz in the Hood” played out in front of us, thank God. Some kids chased after the bus yelling, like I guess they do with Safari Jeeps in Nairobi, but the Compton we’d heard about only from rap videos and late night television was not the Compton we were seeing, which was fine by me.

We were supposed to see Victoria play a show across town, and being that it was almost rush hour, we decided to head over there. The sun shone hot through the windshield and I absentmindedly scratched my right thigh, where more poison ivy rashes were bubbling up. It seemed that as the original strains were getting better, new ones were appearing. My crotch felt a lot better (oh sweet relief) but there were new spots on my legs, in between my fingers, and running down my ass. How miserable, baking in that vinyl driver’s seat.

L.A is just too damn big. The venue was twenty five miles away, and I can honestly say that I appreciate the sheer volume and terror of Los Angeles traffic; from the wheel of a thirty six foot school bus at that. I twitched and scratched and tapped on the steering wheel nervously, and we eventually got Tyler to Victoria’s show, which was held in a tiny, dingy DIY space down the road from Echo Park.

Ben, Pual and I ducked into a tiny Mexican corner market that had a hand painted sign hanging above the screen door. The floor was dirty concrete, the shelves were dusty, and most of the light in the place was emanating from a buzzing Corona sign in the corner. Pual and Ben bought a 40 a piece, and I purchased something called an El Jefe for  novelty’s sake. It was a thirty two ounce can of purple flavored twelve percent malt liquor for just three dollars. That’s like eight beers.

So within thirty minutes we’re crammed into a tiny venue with a bunch of hipsters, listening to Victoria’s overly reverbed voice, and I’m holding an empty can of El Jefe with a huge dumb drunk smile on my face. Victoria played the same ethereal finger picking four chord song in seven variations, and then we listened to a boyfriend/girlfriend indie folk duo play some bright, understated songs. The girl in the group looked exactly like an old flame of mine, at least in the drunk dark, and I stared intently at her mouth and neck as she sang their cute little diddies.

I know a third band played, but between bathroom breaks and somehow drinking more beer, I can’t remember anything about them. I was constantly looking at my phone to check the time. We had to be in West Hollywood by nine to see Everclear, and I was getting antsy, fearing we wouldn’t make it. But the general consensus, when I’m worrying and tapping my feet, is “Oh sure, we’ve got plenty of time, we’ll be fine”, but something always goes wrong and inevitably we’re late to everything.

But after the third band was done, and everyone was good and ready, we left.

“Ben are you sure you don’t want to come?” Tyler asked him before we boarded the bus.

“No, I’m going to stay behind with Victoria and her friends. They’re going to take me out,” he said, sipping on a Tecate.

“You’re going to miss seeing Everclear… at the viper room… where River Phoenix died?” I asked incredulously.

“Listen, man” he began. Though we were about the same height, I suddenly felt as if he were looking down at me. “I just can’t enjoy things like nineties pop-rock for the sake of itself. Have fun with your Third Eye Blind or whatever.”

“You, sir, have no soul,” I retorted in my best English accent, and off we were.

Pual drove us up to West Hollywood, and Tyler hung out the bus, counting the block numbers on Sunset Boulevard impatiently against the clock. The strip was lit up like July Fourth. Girls hobbled in high heels from club to club beneath blazing neon signs, burning bright against the black backdrop of the Hollywood night. No stars shone in the sky, just the neon pinks, greens, reds, purples, advertising drink specials, live music, cheap women.

“There, the viper room! Pual, park the bus!” Tyler hollered.

Pual stayed in the bus to sleep. He didn’t have fifteen dollars to spend on a show, so we left him there and hurried down Sunset Boulevard. We got to the club in which River Phoenix died right before it reached capacity.

And there we were, In Hollywood, in a packed club, watching a band resurrected straight from my childhood. They played every song of theirs I like, every song of theirs anyone likes for that matter. It was surreal. It was that scene in my movie where tears start welling up in my smiling eyes during “Father of Mine” and a grainy childhood montage of myself and my friends starts to roll. We’re running down the streets, barefoot and sincerely happy, back when nothing mattered, and in fact, in that moment, nothing did matter, except, well, Hollywood and Everclear and the magical, wonderful bus. I don’t know if it was the El Jefe running through my system, or just pure thirteen year old endorphins, but “THIS IS A SONG ABOUT SUSAN. THIS IS A SONG ABOUT THE GIRL NEXT DOOR” and I was elated.

After the show, we had to drive down to pick up Ben on the side of the road near Echo Park, and then we dashed out of L.A. Tyler and I spoke ecstatically about our nostalgic experience while Ben tisked tisked in the background, cool California air rushing in through the open windows.

I’m running on just twelve hours of sleep over the past four days, and I know I’m not going to fall asleep anytime soon anyway, so I pull over just outside of town and load up on energy drinks and sunflower seeds, and decide to just drive all night, getting as far up the road towards Vegas as possible before my mind crashes.

I drove through the quiet night, reveries of the evening still playing in my head, and left California behind. Every time I leave a city or a state, or a trail, I have this overwhelming fatalistic sense that This might be the last time I see this place, and as I drove across the California line, with my friends asleep, that feeling was unusually strong.

And as I drove further east, out into the desert, that sinking feeling was accompanied by a  slow, crawling burn. It seemed to climb up my muscles and joints from the floor of the bus, rising up from the road, or Hell, or both, and making its way through my tired body in a wave, before sitting on my brain, just behind my eyes.

California at our backs, death-pale desert ahead of us, I tried to stay awake. There’s a sort of droning hum roar mmm rrrr to the bus that is as as much of a maternal lullaby as anything my mother ever sang me. I was nervously scratching at my poison ivy, eating handfuls of sunflower seeds a time, letting their discarded shells pile up on the stairs by the door. There were no natural features outside the bus windows to look at. Every state looks the same in the dark. With nothing to keep my eyes on, to keep my interest, my eyes were locked solely on punctuation, on yellow lines dashing by, and they felt like hot coals in my head.

I tapped my shoes and felt that raw burn emanating from beneath the bus, crawling up my feet into my legs and thighs like a hellish centipede. My eyes were getting heavy at around four thirty in the morning. I had already taken off my shirt, and my jean shorts felt like they were plastered to me. There was a fire on my brain and I was sweating and I couldn’t tell if it was a fever or just the God damn desert.

I pulled over at the next rest stop I saw, parked between two sleeping big rigs, pulled my pants off and threw myself on the couch. “GOD HAVE MERCY ON ME,” I thought as I slowly drifted to sweet, sweet sleep.