CHAPTER FOUR

Beatnik writing crap: The eyes glaze while they blaze; the heart sinks while it skips, the lips tight as they plush, push, pressing on life through to death, before rest you must work before the rest is glorious. Young things, human beings, tight pants, wanting hands, sensitive skin, the allure of sin, of heaven waiting, of heavy playing; death wish dreams and far from hurting we wanted to live, fast and young, we wanted some fun, some beauty, a little at least, a bee sting, a rose peddle, a trickle of blood, the peddle to the medal and all our wild screams, a kick at the puddle of mud, and then we’re clean, while we laugh manically near naked in the rain, wash away all pain; you’ve got to break through the nothings to get to something, to become something, to bath in the beauty of our youth and minds and owning our times, accept nothing less, I hope you liked my dress, I wanted it to be the best, I twirled in it for you, shielded my eyes from the sun glare, soon to sink but before then who can say at least we had fun, we were aware, at least it was all for something greater than nothing; sink our teeth into the glow, now we know, now we are—ourselves.

On May tenth I received an e-mail from Candice. I didn’t know she had my e-mail address. I don’t know how she got it. She wrote I hope you didn’t forget about our road trip. I wasn’t bluffing. She included an itinerary. She said it’s a romantic idea to just take off and go wherever adventure leads but she’s learned that if you ever really want anything to happen it requires planning, as lame as itineraries and putting work into things may be. She said not to worry about money; this was a present, from the group, Jan’s old high school friends, to me.

Seattle to Newport Oregon, a little beach town, using I-5, five hours thirty six minutes. Stay overnight in Newport.

Newport to the Redwoods in California, 437.8 miles on I-15 South, a seven hour forty eight minute drive. See the big trees. Stay overnight there, in Redding at a campsite or hotel, whatever we feel like. Redwoods to Anaheim, 590 miles down I-5 South, a nine hour thirty four minute drive. Sleep there. Stay two nights there, two days for Disneyland. Or longer if we feel like it. Go to the beach there too, maybe go to Magic Mountain and Sea World or Hollywood or whatever. Disneyland, happiest place on earth. Sure, for kids, but it’s fun to dork out on your inner kid. Ironic nostalgia; she wrote something like that.

Disneyland (Anaheim) to Las Vegas, taking 1-15 North, 224.4 miles, that one is only a four hour drive. “Only”. Vegas, the “Adult Disneyland”. Yeah, it sucks we’re all under twenty one, but we’ll still make it work. Go see the Donny and Marie show (I think she was kidding) or Celin Dion (kidding?) or one of the Circ shows (the weird French-Canadian acrobat shows), there’s a brand new Michael Jackson Circ show (I hope she’s not kidding) and just revel in the gaudy cheesy bling of it all. Play strip pool with Prince Harry, die in the heat, walk the strip like prostitutes, see the Bellagio fountains and the pirate show (free entertainment) steal Mike Tyson’s tiger, gorge on the ritzy buffets, laugh at the Goth street magician (Chris Angel Mind Freak!) flop like fish from seizures from all the blinking neon lights, watch the boys pretend to be cool, sneak into a strip show, who knows, all that jazz, hit a club or two, go shopping, find some luck, gawk at it all then barf glitter in the morning all Kisha like. Stay there a night or two, depending.

Then Vegas to the Grand Canyon, Arizona, 275.77 miles on I-40 East, four hours thirty one minutes. Go on a hike there or just look down at the giant chasm. Maybe stay the night there. Maybe tap into some Indian magic or something.

Then Grand Canyon to Moab Utah, and Arches National Park; James Franco lost his arm in a movie around there. Five hours fifty one minutes, 328.89 miles. Camp there a night. See the red rock sculptures and nature cathedrals, hike through the narrows, this shallow river that cuts through these red rocks, go swimming in some natural pretty pools, see lots of lizards maybe and mountain goats, who knows, maybe a bobcat or mountain lion or vulture, or young hiker hippies or vacationing families or mountain and dirt bike enthusiasts.

Moab to Yellowstone, 601.16 miles, ten hours and twenty seven minute drive, using I-15 North, driving through Salt Lake City, and those Utah mountains there. Stay at Yellowstone lodge or camp. Hope you don’t mind camping, she wrote. Bring a sleeping bag. I had recently read that they discovered the volcano under Yellowstone (the whole park is a giant crater volcano) is bigger than they thought. Scary. If it blows, scientists say, it could be cataclysmic, like, the meteor that hit the earth making the dinosaurs extinct cataclysmic. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen anytime soon. Anyways, a lot of Bison there, the American Buffalo. And bears. And wolves and foxes and moose. And crazy geysers and hot springs and canyons and rivers and mud pools and moose and sulfur springs and Old Faithful and chipmunks and tourists and junk like that. Grand natural wonders. The Grand Tetons are nearby, and those are the most photographed things in the States, I’ve read. Impressive picturesque mountains.

Then Yellowstone back home to Seattle, a eleven hours thirty three minute drive, 760 miles, I-90 though Montana and North Idaho before reaching Washington.

That’s a lot of road, a lot of gas burned, a lot of time, but you have to think of the time on the road as part of the experience, not a burden, if you want to enjoy the whole thing. Seeing the road sights. Sleeping, talking, listening to music, meditating, kissing, watching movies on the i-pad or portable DVD players, playing games, whatever. Just enjoy the letting go of time and existing in a state of timelessness without place, never in one place long, a state of continual motion, moving ahead, south, then east then north then west, in this little (but huge) Western U.S. loop.

We’ll all smell and feel really gross by the end, Candice predicted, but we’ll feel gross in a glorious way. We’ll watch movies, listen to music, have sing-along’s, sleep, talk, daydream during the long drives. Don’t worry about driving, she wrote, which was a relief to read since I only had my permit. Don’t worry about smelling nice; we’ll all stink equally at the end, which is one kind of great thing about road trips, she wrote, but added, of course there’ll be showers at the various motels, in Anaheim, Vegas, and, she thinks, at the parks.

Wow. That’s a lot, I thought, after reading her e-mail, feeling a little dizzy. I had been to Disneyland and Vegas and Yellowstone before, when younger; mostly too young to really remember much of each visit. Just sort of vague stuff like a overturned tree stump looking like a buffalo in the dawn and for some reason being really afraid of it, and seeing a bright star, probably Venus, while in Disneyland and thinking that magical for some reason. I’m sure Disneyland and Vegas have changed a lot since I’ve been, while keeping their essence, because each at their core have an unchanging essence about them, an identity that’s unchanging despite the cosmetic construction around and in them, which is part of their vacation destination lure.

All that time in the car, or van, with those people. Ten, eleven hour drives. Just lost in time with them, in that weird way riding in cars for long distances can cause time to sort of become this melted waxy nebulous thing; something about how the constant speed in a straight line over sustained time over the vast arid landscape of the American west blurs the lines of where the past and the future meet; the future ahead hitting the windshield while the past empties behind and it all feels the same inside the moving van, the drone and vibrations of the engine a comforting white noise constant throughout. Some people have problems with long drives; feeling impatient, like time is being wasted, like they’re in a cage forced to sit still for too long. But I think I can handle it. Just go Zen about it. I mean, it might be nice to listen to a great hour long playlist a few times in a row and digest the songs. And if all that driving, riding, sitting in hot stinky seats as scenery blurs by things drive me or others a bit stir crazy, well then, that’s all a part of the experience too. Going crazy doesn’t always have to be negative. Going crazy can produce some interesting results, some creative bursts, some new insights, who knows what. Right?

It’s a beautiful thing to drive through a sunset and then through the night and see the stars firmly in place out the car window while you move; you are not in any fixed position; what’s ahead and what’s behind a constant ever changing collision, and you wonder how and why that is, how you are moving, so fast, but out the window the stars are still. Then you see the North Star, the end of the Big Dipper handle in that star constellation, then daydreaming of the future and love as the daydream slips into deep sleep then you wake up and look out the window, see the North Star again and see that the Big Dipper had spun upside down while you had been sleeping, and marvel how that happened, manifestation of this earth spinning, while you sat still and rested while speeding across this earth; all in motion, all still, the rhythmic motions as sure and constant as a steady heart beat.

And music sounds better while on the road for long periods of time; or it can, a song can manifest itself more clearly, while the mind is providing the daydream and rest only a road trip provides; the only better setting to enjoy and understand a song is to dance to it.

We’ll all stink together. What a nice thought; like the intention of school uniforms; we’re all equal, no status lording over, no room or space for it, in the van. I wondered if that would be possible for me; to eventually not feel intimidated, nervous, in awe and inferior to these people; that by the end we really would all stink together. The same stink and the same glory, the same general shared experiences, same story with different variations, that when later recalled by those who shared the living of it would elicit laughter and guffaws and spurs in the other to tag the end of each other’s sentences with the beginning line: “remember when?”

I didn’t know. Part of me, despite daydreaming of the possibility of this road trip all through school, February on, when presented with its actual manifestation, an e-mail, a semi-solid plan, an itinerary, didn’t want to go; feeling too inferior to feel like I belong to ever be comfortable enough to ever really be able to enjoy it. Always feeling like the punch line of the prank is hanging over my head on a precarious string, like a bucket of pigs blood over the head of Carrie as she accepts the prom queen mock coronation, so happy to only have the happiness betrayed and turned sour as it’s reveled the set up to her happiness had only been the set up for a cruel prank to ridicule her.

And it’s all a bit much, isn’t it? A lot of places, a lot of road. A smorgasbord. Is it too much?

Happiness takes bravery. There’s a Bjork lyric that says something like that. It takes courage to accept it. Maybe that’s the line. It’s in that song “Big Time Sensuality”. I hadn’t listened to that song in a long time. It’s one of the songs Jan made me listen to and love in her effort to educate me on cool quality music one must know and love in order to both know and love real valuable art and not just be dragged by the hooks of the spotlighted mainstream fare, in order to be a unique and cool educated person. Bjork was arty cool. Jan categorized different types of coolness with the corresponding music: arty cool, retro cool, grunge cool, urban cool, diva cool, and so on. It takes courage to enjoy it. That’s how the line goes, I’m fairly certain now. She can taste it, Bjork sings, it’s just around the corner, she sings and she’s in bliss over the electricity of the anticipation of this “Big Time Sensuality”. A brilliant song. A bliss out high of a song in the somewhat bi-polar nature of the catalog of Bjork songs; although even her “melancholy” songs aren’t so much about being sad as they are finding beauty in sadness and overcoming sadness. Like that song, “Hyperbalad” about that woman who lives on the mountain and every morning before “he” (some lover or husband) wakes up she goes to the edge of the cliff and throws things off it then imagines herself falling over the cliff and she does this so that she’ll feel safer up there with him, and this is a sad song (she contemplates suicide every morning) but also somehow a triumphant song, with its electronic beat ending crash rave crescendo (audiences pogo jump jubilant to the beat at that part of the song at her concerts, as documented on YouTube) in this metaphor I don’t completely understand intellectually although emotionally know that it is both melancholy but also triumphant and beautiful. She thinks of death in order to enjoy her life more, maybe is what the metaphor is trying to explain.

Anyways, I didn’t mean to go into a Bjork tangent. After Jan’s death I had been thinking of death a lot and doing so hadn’t made me want to live a more full life; or maybe it made me want to have a more vibrant life but hadn’t resulted in living a better life; I’ve found dwelling on sadness just cultivates more sadness in this ever downward spiraling vortex into deeper darkness, although there may be something to the whole “light and dark are defined by contrasting with each other” thing, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll put some Bjork songs on my road trip playlist, I had thought after reading Candice’s e-mail and my string of lose reverie thoughts somehow leading to ponder Bjork, who I had said I hadn’t listened to it in awhile and maybe it’d be nice to rediscover, to re-appreciate Bjork, and a thing like a road trip offers a nice opportunity to do that. Bjork and maybe Fleetwood Mac, as well as discovering new music my new friends would introduce to me from their own road-trip playlists; a good road trip should offer some new discovery by the end, both in the outward literal sense, as in, wow you really have to see The Grand Canyon in person to really appreciate how deep it is, or, wow, well that’s a bit underwhelming after such a long drive, and in the “self-discovery” sense which I’d argue is the purpose of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road ; the journey is a literally journey out “On the Road” to discover something, see something out there, wanting whatever is out there to discover, but also it’s about a metaphysical journey into the soul, self discovery; what’s the reason for the restlessness, the search for meaning and eventual enlightenment (which I’d argue for Dean in On the Road is that you have to grow up and take responsibility for yourself eventually).

We will all stink together. A nice thought, sort of; hopefully we’ll not literally stink too terribly, but the sentiment that we would all be in one class together; everyone would have slept on everyone else’s shoulders by the end of it all, without any qualms. Everyone’s bare feet would have mashed up against everyone else’s noses by the end of it all, all for the better.

But I still felt nervous and part of me hoped that when I showed the e-mail to my parents that they would freak out and declare that of course I can’t go. Vegas? Only supervised by wild college kids between their first and second years? No way. It’s not that we don’t trust you they might say. It’s that we don’t trust them. I mean, Vegas? Camping? Horny college boys? Two weeks or however long on the road? Cramped in some van. With boys? Multiple overnights with boys? Horney college boys? No way. No, no way. Of course not. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d react that way. And I wouldn’t throw a teenage tantrum over the refusal, the way which would maybe be expected of most teen girls, who would shout back in a whiny pout: “It’s not fair! Why won’t you let me LIVE?! I’m not your little girl anymore! Whaaaa!”

I showed them the e-mail during bites of the microwave Lasagna mom cooked for dinner. And, to my surprise, after the briefest of discussion, without me begging or pleading or anything, they both agreed that I could go. They both said they had been hoping something like this would present itself, for me. Something to give me a jolt, wake me up, cause me to return to myself, whatever that means. They’d even give me money to pay for it, they decided right there on the spot. Dad said I could take his debit card. He trusts me, he said. A lot; which sort of astounded me. Made me feel like I’d be too guilty to betray so much trust given to me, by, I don’t know, using his money to buy booze and drugs or prostitutes or a new race car I’d drag race or refuse to wear a seat belt or clean underwear, and junk (although I knew I wouldn’t be wearing a seat belt for long stretches; too cumbersome).

I think they thought of it as a healing process for me. They observed I had been in a funk. Or a depression slump. Slipping grades and heavy walk and avoiding eye contact and so much time spent alone in my room, never going to parties, not having friends. Just like a walking dead zombie or something. There’s risk involved (Vegas, college boys, car accidents, stranger-dangers, police chases, Buffalo gorging, road kill, S.T.D.’s, kidnappings, death, etc.) but I guess they figured that the potential rewards (healing, having fun, getting out of the house, being too occupied and cramped to attempt my own suicide, whatever) would be worth the risks. (Actually I don’t know if my parents knew college boys were also invited. I just told them Candice and some of Jan’s other high school friends).

If a child is more cautious than the parents it means there’s something terribly wrong about either the parents or the child. In most of those cases it is the parents who are wrong. But in the case of this road trip, I’d be the wrong one, a broken teenager, if I didn’t want to go despite my parents not only allowing it but encouraging it. It takes courage to enjoy it. Be brave, take risks, chase your fears, you only live once.

I typed in “Riding in cars with boys” in YouTube search and a obscure Lana Del Rey song popped up, with her song set to black and white footage for a GUESS fashion campaign starring model Amber Head flirting with these shirtless male models as they travel through desert towns in booty jean shorts then they get stranded on a glorious tropical island and continue their staged playful flirting, teasing, posing, kissing and it’s a rare Lana song of buoyancy and pop melody all these images (close up of curled toes, big leaf covering her bare chest, her svelte shoulders bare and she raises her eyebrows, looks up to the side while exposing a dimple caused by her open mouth smile and this man, dripping wet and sexy and six packed ab’d up, broad shouldered, taut torso, thick full black hair, chases her around a palm tree and into sea waves and he picks her up, and then they’re on a bus and he takes off his straw cowboy hat and puts it on her and she nestles into him looking longingly pensively out at an unseen horizon) are choreographed to, yet despite the up tempo beat the Lana song is of course about death. She sings about going out when she feels like it and being dangerous and up to no good, she’s a dark star, but she’s just making up for what she’s never had. I was born to live fast and die young she sings in the bridge, or something like that; a lot of her songs, or all of them, have a variation of that theme. She’s been living her whole life riding in cars with boys. I decided I’d add that song on my road trip playlist.