Witness Me!: Tales and Ramblings From a Semi-Spontaneous and Wholly Irresponsible Road Trip - Part 1

I had been driving for four straight hours before I decided I needed a rest. There’s only so much Red Bull you can drink before you start to feel like you’re going crazy. The drive up until then had been relatively uneventful, the only surprises I had had were when I drove past a sign that read “Welcome to Mississippi” and then a few hours later I drove past another sign that read “Welcome to Alabama”. I had thought that the drive up to Nashville was a straight shot from Louisiana directly to Tennessee, that should give you an idea of the kind of planning that went into this trip.

But that was kind of the whole point of this trip. I just wanted to drive. I wanted to drive through beautiful country and go to places I hadn’t been before. This was not a trip about planning. It was a trip about doing. I wanted to do something. Something a little wild, a little crazy. So I took a month off of work from both my jobs and did just that. There was a great deal of trepidation doing this. After all, we all need to make money, right?

There was a movie I had in my head that kind of served as the theme of this trip. You can probably guess it by the title, the movie was Mad Max: Fury Road. Of course, there are some big differences between what I'm doing and what Max did in that movie. Like for instance, I'm not trying to save a bunch of sex slaves from a fascist dictator and his car gang of cronies. Well... maybe I am if we think of the sex slaves as a metaphor for my freedom and expiring youth and the fascist dictator as the system in place trying to grind me down to a nub and destroy my individuality. Oooh, I like that. Let's go with that. 

In any case, I was grateful for the rest stop I came across somewhere in Northern Alabama. Not just because it gave me a chance to stretch my limbs and click my joints, but also because it was just so beautiful. Seriously. It may have been one of the most attractive rest stops I’ve ever seen. It had this huge lawn of thick luscious grass that was obviously well kept. And in this grass there were these giant pinewood trees peppered throughout. It all looked so nice that even though I still had another four hours at least of driving ahead of me, I decided I would get out my notebook, take a seat at one of the idyllic picnic tables, and write a page or two. A writer's got to write when he feels inspired. That's rule one right there. 

I didn’t want to be around anyone, it’s no fun to write when you can be bothered by other people’s conversations, so when I saw the family at the table nearest to me I walked past them, headed towards a picnic table at the far end of the lawn, which was wholly vacant.  But then that nearby table with the family called out to me, and everything suddenly changed.

“Hey Mr. Randy!”

There is only one type of person that calls me Mr. Randy. My students. As a part time gig I teach a class for acting and improv to first and second graders. Now, one of those first or second graders was waving and smiling at me in the middle of nowhere Alabama. It was a surreal moment to say the least.

For a few seconds, I tried to do the math on the odds of me bumping into someone I know here at this rest stop 350 miles away from town, but then my head started to hurt so I decided to just enjoy the moment instead.

My student was with her parents. They were smiling too. We were all smiling. It was just so crazy. It must have taken a full minute or two of goofy smiling and repeating the expression “How crazy is this?” before we actually began a real conversation.

In this conversation they told me that they were off on a family road trip to see an aunt… or an uncle, I really can’t remember. In this conversation I told them that my gig as a camp blogger had just ended so I decided to just spend the entire month of August traveling, so that’s why I just got in my car and started driving. I also told them that to do this I had to call off work from my other job, as a tour guide. I also told them about my other job as a improv teacher. I told them I’m doing these random jobs to pay the bills until my writing starts to pay. I rambled about all of this for some time. And when I stopped they smiled and nodded their heads.

I think they wondered why I didn’t have a family or a real job, but I can’t be sure, I tend to project these kind of things on certain types of people. You know, people who have the whole family and security thing going on. I just assume they think I'm a piece of shit for not having any of this. It's safer to think this way. 

In any case, my student was thrilled to see me, so that was nice.   

Back on the road, I focused on getting to my destination. Nashville. Nashville was going to be wild. Not necessarily because of the town itself, which I knew little about other than that it was a big town for country music, but because the person I would be staying with, Reilly, was a person I had a long history with. He's certainly a friend, in fact it's passed that at this point, he's practically a brother. But he's also a madman, just like me. And when madmen get together after years apart, who knows what's gonna happen. 

As the sun began to set, I put on the song "Spikey Cars" on my Ipod. It's a song from the Mad Max Soundtrack. You know the parts of the movie where the action and insanity is just peaking and there's that song that just takes it to the new level? That's "Spikey Cars". I highly recommend giving it a listen if haven't. Especially if you're driving down a long highway to an unfamiliar city where guaranteed madness awaits you. It really completes the moment. 

Moving to the Mountains

When I was in 3rd grade, my family moved up into the mountains. Like the way, way, way high up mountains. it was rather insane time in my life for a million reasons. I wrote a piece about it that I am very proud of and hope you check it. Also, planning on writing a lot more in here, with much more frequency, so I hope in a few weeks you come back and check up with greater frequency as well!


The Flat Part of Black Road

Hey Something Else I got Published Someplace Else Besides this Blog! Yayy!!!!

So I got this piece about my Mardi Gras experience published. I'm proud of it, I think it's funny. I hope you do too. Check out it in the link below. I would write more funny things write now but I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of stuff I don't wanna do. So while, I'm doing that, you guys should... well click on the link obviously. I don't know what you should do after that. This world is filled with so many options...

 http://neutronsprotons.com/?p=1037

Kissing, Shoplifting, and Peeing: The Classic Love Triangle

                 

There are three things you will need to know in order to fully appreciate this story. One, when I was a child I was accused of shoplifting when I was, in fact, innocent, and I was too scared to speak up for myself at the time, and that memory of failed action has haunted me ever since. Two, I have an unusual bladder, one where once I even have one beer in me, shrinks like the Grinch’s heart the day after Christmas.  And three, at the time that this story takes place, I had been in the middle of a considerable dry spell, romantically speaking.

OK, so just to recap: dry spell, false accusations during childhood, and small bladder. We good? You got it? OK, great, then let’s get this puppy rolling then. 

            The story starts with the middle item on the list rearing it’s ugly head. I had to pee. This wasn’t such a big deal, except I had a lady with me. We were in the car together, I was driving her home after our date. The date had gone reasonably well, in my estimation, and now the plan was for me to take her home, walk her to her door, and kiss her. It was a bold plan, but then again, I’m a bold man. Always have been.

            Anyway, the only thing standing between me and this plan was my bladder. Like I said,  it was causing me a great deal of discomfort. Would this discomfort affect my kissing performance? That certainly seemed like a possibility. After all, shouldn’t the passion of the kiss outweigh all other passions at the moment? I felt it should. And yet, I could not honestly imagine a scenario where anything could outweigh the passion I currently had to relieve the pressure of gravity on my bladder until this problem was taken care of. What a fool I had been for ordering that second beer! Clearly, my hubris had gotten the better of me in the moment.

            I turned into the gas station nonchalantly, hoping that my date would keep on talking without noticing what I had done.

            “Oh, do you need gas?”

            Damn, she noticed. That left me with two options. One, I could lie to her, telling her I do need gas when, in fact, I don’t. Or two, tell her the truth, that despite my two visits to the men’s room at the venue, nature was still calling me like a crazed ex-girlfriend who won’t accept that it’s over. While I’m not one who normally believes that deceit is the optimal route when getting to know someone, I also wasn’t willing to admit that internally I had the workings of a seventy year old man.           

            “Yes, I need gas.” I said. Then I hopped out of the car before she could ask any more questions.

            I headed to the gas station store in a brisk but collective manner. It wasn’t a slow walk by any means, but it also didn’t scream to anyone watching Hey! I need to pee, get out of my way! (Remember fellas: It’s important to be smooth on a date at all times, you never know if she’s watching.)

            Once I was inside the store, though, I became an entirely different beast altogether. I shed my cool casual walk, and replaced it with my patented get-the-hell-out-of-my-way-before-I-shower-you-with-my-shame-juice stagger. I lurched to the far corner of the store, figuring that would be the most likely place for the restroom to be. I cursed when I realized my assumption was wrong, and looked high and low for any sign for the restroom. I found one in the other corner, and blazed a trail to the promise land.

            Now, it’s in the bathroom when this story goes from your run of the mill bladder-needs-disrupt-romantic-desire story, to something far more nefarious. For it’s in the bathroom, while I was using the urinal, when an old, middle-eastern man who appeared to be an employee of the gas station, walked into the bathroom and washed his hands. He didn’t go to the bathroom himself, you understand, he just washed his hands in the sink. This wouldn’t be all that weird, except for one thing. The whole time he washed his hands he was staring at me. And it was not a kind stare either, it was a mean, angry stare. Instinctively, I returned his stare with a mean stare of my own, and before I could even realize how weird this random angry stare-off with a stranger in the bathroom was, he disappeared back out to the store. Obviously, I was perplexed, but I also knew that there was a female in my car who needed a good kissing in the near future. And now that I had discarded my discomfort, I had to focus on that task, no matter how many odd, old men angrily scowl at me while I relieve myself.

            So I left the restroom and made my way to the main door of the store. That was when I heard a voice from behind me.

            “What did you take??”

            I turned around only to find the old man scowling at me once again.

            “What?’ I asked in a genuinely confused tone.

            “I know you took something,” He barked. “You come in here, you go to one corner of the store, then the bathroom, you are up to something!”

            Now I saw what’s going on here. I was being accused of shoplifting. You remember the number first thing on the list, right? That’s important right now, because that incident and the baggage that came with it, came roaring out at me at that very moment.  

            “Excuse me?! Are you accusing me of stealing! You think I stole something! How dare you! Well go ahead then! Check my pockets! I dare you! Put your hands in my pocket and check! I didn’t steal shit!”

            At this point, the other clerks working in the store could tell by the earnest anger in my voice that their coworker had made a mistake, and so they politely told me just to go, that they were sorry this happened. The old man himself even put up an almost apologetic hand and I saw the anger fall from his eyes. I had won the moment. My childhood injustice had been righted.

            I could have just walked out of the door right then, enjoying my small victory. But, you see, I have never been a clever man, and that becomes especially clear now. For I decided that the best thing to do was let loose a “Yeah, that’s right mother fucker.”

Now, let’s just take the time to make things clear. I’m in no way the kind of guy who goes around telling people “yeah, that’s right motherfucker”, unless I’m joking around with a friend. I’ve never said it seriously. I know there are some people, tough people, who do, but that’s not me. But in that moment, I realized it could be me. I could be the guy who underlines his righteous victory with a vulgar, masculine send-off.

 I could be that guy!  

So I became that guy.

And it felt good being that guy…for a quick second, and then the old guy heard what I said and things got dark. Real dark.

 Now, I’m not sure if the term motherfucker means something different in the country that this person was from, or if he generally just takes exception to someone insinuating that he fucks his own mother, but whatever the case, his eyes went back to angry in a flash. Actually, that’s not true, they didn’t go back up to angry, they jumped that level altogether into something I could only call murderous. This guy’s eyes wanted to murder me, and the rest of him didn’t seem too against the idea either.

            “Hey!!!” Was all he said. Or at least, it’s all I heard him say before I hightailed it out of the store.  

            I collected myself when I was near the car. I calmly and collectively hopped back in the car and drove off in a casual, yet masculine manner, hoping by doing so my date wouldn’t ask any questions. 

            “Didn’t you want to get gas?” She asked, confused.

            “Uh, yeah, but they were all out.” I said, not thinking about what I was saying. There was a long pause after this, and I looked over at her and knew she wasn’t buying that for a second. And so, realizing that there was really only one thing to do at this point, I told her the truth. All of it. And, because I’m one lucky son of a bitch, she loved the story.  She laughed, and I laughed, and then we both laughed some more. A terrifying moment turned into an awesome one.

And then a few minutes later, in front of her door, I kissed her.  I kissed her good.

Yeah, that’s right mother fucker!!

I Used To Live With A Gone Girl

I feel like I need to start this story off with a clarification: Marissa and I were roommates, not lovers. We wouldn’t make any sense as a couple. To tell you the truth, we didn’t make any sense as roommates either. But I was desperate for a room and she was desperate for the other half of rent, and Craigslist was helpful enough to complete this doomed equation. And just like that, a very, very bad living situation begun.

Like any bad living situation, the fault lies with both parties. I was at fault for neglecting to tell her beforehand that I was absented-minded and messy. And she was at fault for neglecting to tell me that she was fucking insane. Once we both found out about each other's faults, we tried to treat the situation maturely like adults.    

But somewhere along the way, we declared war on one another. I will spare you the details, because it’s not all that interesting and I fear I would become a far more bitter narrator than I ever care to be.

The story I do want to tell you, however, takes place during this war, over the course of one night, when we were forced into a period of peace. It was during this period that I discovered that I wasn’t just living with an unstable person, but an actual Gone Girl. If you have not read the book, or seen the movie, I suggest you do so at this time (or at least check out its wiki page). Go ahead, I’ll wait.

OK ready? Great. Now like all stories of this nature, this one begins with a series of loud THWACKS.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

“RANDY! Randy are you there! Please help! Let me in! He’s after me! He’s after me! Let me in!”

“Aaaaaah!”

(Another quick clarification, that last bit of dialog, that “aaaaah!”, that’s coming from me, not from the voice pleading for help. As I’ve explained in the previous story, whenever I am awoken by a loud noise, a let out a surprisingly feminine cry. But I digress…)

THWACK! THWACK!

“RANDY! PLEASE HELP ME! HE’S AFTER ME!”

Like a frightened toddler, I swivel my head up to my bedroom window, the direction where the screams are coming from. That’s when I discover my roommate, Marissa, standing on our front porch, her face smushed up against my window, begging for help while her hands continuously slap the glass.

“Ma-Marissa?” I sputter.

THWACK! THWACK!

“Randy, you gotta let me in!! He’s coming!!”

Instinctively, I jump out of bed and rummage through my pants pockets looking for my keys, but I can’t find them. Meanwhile, she keeps on thwacking the glass and pleading for me to unlock the front door, as if I’m unaware that the situation is serious.   

At last, I find my keys and run out of my room and straight to the front door to unlock the deadbolt. I try my best to get the key into the key hole but I’m so full of nerves that it takes a humorously long time to do so.  

THWACK! THWACK!

“Randy! Open the door! He’s after me!!”

Finally, I get the key in and unlock the door. Immediately, the skinny frame of Marissa bolts into the house and she jumps into my arms. This is all very weird for me, as Marissa has refused to talk to me in the last three weeks, much less touch me. (Which has just been fine with me, interacting with her at all made my skin crawl.) And yet here we are in this moment, with her shivering in my arms, thanking me profusely. 

“You just saved my life! You just saved my fucking life!” She repeats this over and over again. Naturally, as I hold her, I peer out the door window, waiting for some boogey man to suddenly start rampaging towards us. But no one comes. Eventually, I get Marissa to calm down enough to let go of me and take a seat on the couch. 

Three minutes later, Marissa is clutching a cup of water, muttering to herself, as I sit next to her wondering what to say. Luckily, I end up not having to say anything, as she suddenly dives into the whole story, or at least, her version of the whole story.

 She tells me that she was at work (she works as a bartender at this dive bar in Midcity… yeah I know, enough said) when her ex-boyfriend came in and started harassing her. Then the manager tried to get him to leave and they got into a fist fight, then the cops show up and the ex-boyfriend hightails it to the back patio where he hops the fence and disappears. Then Marissa gets a call from a girl who says she is her ex-boyfriend’s new girl and she’s going to beat her up. This freaks Marissa out so she leaves work and walks home. That’s when the ex-boyfriend finds her on the street and chases her all the way to our house.

“Holy shit.” I say, when she finishes. “That’s insane.” I find myself actually feeling sorry for her, wondering if maybe I’ve been too hard on her, if this is what she’s been going through. But then a thought hits me.

“Wait… don’t you work like three miles away?”

“Yeah.”

“So he chased you for three miles?”

“Yes! I’m telling you he’s fucking insane! He wanted to kill me!”

Obviously, this sounds all kinds of weird to me, but before I can pry more information from her she excuses herself to her room so she can lay down. She tells me goodnight and thanks me again for ‘saving her life’ and then disappears into her room.

So there I am, alone in the living room, in my underwear, wondering what the hell has happened in the last twenty minutes. And then, of course, there was a knock on the front door. A loud, aggressive knock.

It’s him! I thought. It’s the boyfriend! He’s come here to get his revenge!

A grab the closest thing around me that could be used as a weapon, the plastic blue broom leaning up against the wall. If the image of me in my boxers, armed with a broom, walking towards the unknown while my crazy roommate hides in her room sounds too much for you, don’t worry, I felt the same way. I promised myself once this night was over I would start looking for a new place to live.

I open the door and am greeted by the sight of two stern looking police officers.  (For those keeping score at home, yes, this is the second story in a row where I answer the door in just my boxers only to find the police staring back at me. I guess it’s just my thing). 

“Sir, we know you’ve been in an accident. Come with us.” One of the gruff cops says.

“Accident?”

But before the cop can explain further, a voice chirps up behind me.

“It was me officer, I was in the accident…” Marissa says as she walks nervously towards us.

I give her a quizzical look, but the cops whisk her away into their patrol car before anything is explained to me.

The last thing I hear her say to the cops is: “Am I in trouble?”

Now it is three in the morning, and any hopes I had of getting some sleep that night are completely dashed. Instead I lie in bed wondering what really happened with Marissa. What kind of trouble had she gotten herself in now? Would I ever see her again?

An hour later, I get my answer. Marissa returns home. I go out to the living room to meet her. This time, she’s all smiles, completely calm. I am beyond confused. After I press her a little she gives me the story, the real story.

Apparently, she didn’t walk home from the bar. She got a ride from some guy she met at the bar, she tells me. They were drinking together when he offered her a ride back. He was pretty drunk, but he told her he was fine to drive. So they got in his truck and headed towards our house. Somewhere along the way, he managed to drive into the neutral ground and run straight into a tree, causing his truck to flip over. They both crawled out of the truck and ran off in different directions. Marissa headed to our house (but not before leaving her purse in the truck, which is how the cops found her at home), the man ran somewhere into the night. And that’s how it happened to be that she came banging on my window.

So all that stuff about the boyfriend chasing her and trying to kill her was totally made up. This never made any sense to me... until I saw the movie Gone Girl. Then the dots connected. A delusional woman angry at a (ex) lover and wanting him to pay so she tries to stain his reputation and make him seem evil? The truth became evident. And the truth is, I’m lucky I’m still alive, cause I was living with a freaking Gone Girl.

The End

*also, Marissa is not her real name, I’m not crazy enough to take that risk.

Neutrons Protons Article: I Was a Ninja Turtle at Coachella!

Hey everyone,
   one of my stories was published by Neutrons Protons. This is a hilarious story (if I do say so myself, remember I have to be my own hype man here!) about me at Coachella dressed as a ninja turtle, and you can only read it over at Neutrons Protons. So click on the link, and be happy!

LINK

SWAT Team Alarm Clock

As I mentioned in my previous story, I don’t live in a great neighborhood. There are obvious disadvantages to this (also mentioned in my previous story) but there are benefits as well. Here is an example of one of those (well, sort of)…

I went to bed happy the night before, because I knew I was flying home in the morning. I would be leaving this swamp (a swamp that I do love very much, but still a swamp nonetheless) and heading to the redwood mountains that I loved as a child. It was this image of nostalgic warmth that lulled me to sleep. And there I stayed, until…

BANG BANG BANG!

I woke up with a yelp of fright (I mean this literally, I have this weird thing where if I’m awoken unexpectedly by loud noises I unleash a pitiful yelp for help), and scanned the area for danger.

BANG BANG BANG!

No danger in my room. I realized I was okay. Then I checked the time. 6:20 am. Shit. My alarm clock was supposed to wake me up twenty minutes ago. I proceeded to fumble with my stupid clock, cursing its incompetence while trying to find the reason why it didn’t go off. 

BANG BANG BANG!

Fuck. I had set my alarm clock for PM not AM. The classic blunder!  I thanked God for whoever was making that infernal banging noise. If it wasn’t for that, I might have slept right through my flight.

BANG BANG BANG!

Who the hell was making that noise though, I wondered. Perhaps it was my roommate, locked out possibly, trying to get me to hear his knocking from all the way in my room.

Figuring that was exactly what it was, I go to the door in just my boxers, so I could surprise him with the sight of my hairy, pale/red body.

BANG BANG BANG!

I opened the door to find a team of SWAT police facing me. Guns at their sides, bullet proof vests on, the whole bit. And judging by their facial reactions I could tell they were just as surprised at the sight of me as I was of them. “What the hell is this white boy doing living in this ghetto, and why is he so hairy and pale and red?” they seemed to be asking.

After this initial awkwardness passed, the leader of this pack, a square-jawed, fit man who slightly resembled an older version of Deputy Junior from Reno 911, stepped forward and threw a picture in my face and asked me if I recognized the man in it. The picture was incredibly grainy, but despite that, I could still clearly see that this was a picture of my next door neighbor Emil. I could even make out the tattoo tear drop on his left cheek, a tattoo that always made me wonder about him. He seemed like a nice enough dude, but wasn’t that tear drop tattoo strictly for those who had killed someone? Is that why they were here? To arrest a murderer??

           

The SWAT LEADER repeated his question, had I seen this man? But all I could do was think back to the past encounters I had with Emil. He was always good to me. I recalled this one time when my brother was in town and he gave both of us a beer as we were heading into a taxi. I also remembered that he was usually a very horny young man. Whenever a girl came to the house, he would pretty much interrogate me later about if she liked to get down and if she had any friends. That always made me feel uncomfortable.

Now I was getting interrogated by this SWAT leader and felt even more uncomfortable. If I identified the man in the picture, would that make me a narc? Or even worse, a snitch? Wait, is a snitch worse than a narc, I wondered? I wasn’t sure… I knew that snitches get stitches, but what do narcs get...

“Hey man,” Deputy Junior interrupted my thought process. “if you know this guy and you want to do the right thing, just tell us.” He was using the good cop strategy on me, and it was working. Why shouldn’t I be honest with this cop, he’s just trying to do his job. On the other hand, I didn't want to die... with one foot firmly over each side of the fence, I responded: “Well, he might be this guy that lives next door, maybe you should knock on his door and see if he’s there…”

           

 I needed to hurry. My wake up call and interaction with the New Orleans’ Finest had left me with just 15 minutes to pack before my cab was going to pick me up from the airport.  I grabbed my suitcase from my closet, opened it up and then pulled out my list of things to pack.

As I looked at my list, I could hear the SWAT Team playing bad cop with the apartment next door. 

            -A week’s worth of socks.

            “Where is your brother, asshole?!”

            Check.

-Sunscreen/hat

“Fuck you, I want my lawyer!”

Check.

- T-shirts, casual. And a few dress shirts.

            “Where is your brother? Just tell us where he is!!”

            Check.

            -  Hiking boots, Chapstick

            “I’m not telling you anything!”

I’m not sure exactly when, but at a certain point I no longer felt like I was packing for a vacation home, it felt more like I was fleeing for my safety. I had pointed the finger at the neighborhood criminal element, and now I was going into the witness protection program.

           

As I threw in my good pair of jeans on top of the haphazard mess that filled my suitcase, another worry hit me. What if they hadn’t found Emil. I knew Emil lived with his brother next door. Was that his brother they were talking to, or was it Emil himself. What if it was just his brother, and Emil wasn’t at home? If his brother wasn’t the one they wanted, would they just leave him at his house, unarrested? If so, would he see his brother later that day? If he saw his brother would he tell him that he thinks someone put the finger on him? That someone in the building pegged him as the outlaw they were looking for? Would they put me in that group of suspects? If so, would they want to talk to me, maybe give some much earned stitching for snitching?

I zipped up my suitcase and waited for the honk of my cab, trying to ignore the escalating anger occur just beyond my thin wall.

“Do you want to be in a world of shit?! Because if you don’t tell us where you’re brother is, you will be in a world of shit!!”

Two minutes later I was throwing my suitcase in the back of cab, trying with all my might to use my peripherals to see if it was Emil they had in handcuffs, as I dare not look directly at the situation, that might have been enough to convince Emil or his brother of my guilt.   

The cab sped away to the airport without me ever confirming whether the cops had found their man or not. As we drove out of my bad neighborhood, the driver looked back at me in the mirror and asked:

“So where you going, buddy?”

“anywhere but here man, this place is just too hot right now.”