I suppose this is an appropriate time to mention my nine-hour nightmare. It was horrible. I woke up five or six times, each time from an extension of the same nightmare, and each time I fell asleep I drifted right back into it.
The plot of the dream was very similar to that of 28 Days Later, except many fewer people had been infected, so it was probably more like 8 or 9 days later. However, the dilemma was much the same--senseless, wrathful, human-like creatures were everywhere, and those of us who had remained uninfected could only think to hide. I found some magnificent hiding places too, except the second I found a good spot, a bunch of other people would try to hide there as well, until finally the spot would be so obviously conspicuous that I would become uncomfortable and once again begin the search for a safe spot to hide.
1. In Chicago, where we spent three nights and took an elevator up the world's tallest building (arguable), there is a hot dog stand on every corner (not arguable)--which is fantastic if you're like me--which I am--and you love hot dogs. Really, I can best describe Chicago in terms of food, because we spent much of our time there eating. Max, our gracious host and amazing hammer-dulcimerist, can eat more in one sitting than I can in an entire day, and he did so frequently. (According to a scale in a housewares store in Palo Alto, CA, I've gained weight on this trip. This does not seem fair because I eat less food than everyone else.) Max was my kind of host: negligent of any real demands, concerned only with having a good time at that exact moment. This is how I try to live my life. When I was very young, I told my parents that I needed to do at least three fun things a day. Needless to say, they laughed at me, and then made fun of me for the rest of my life. With Max, we did at least five or six fun things a day, and accordingly my experience of Chicago was quite favorable.
2. In a movie theatre lobby in a Northern Chicago suburb, we and everyone else in the line pretended not to stare at actor/comedian Jeremy Piven, who was leaning against a counter nearby. Attractive women in pairs kept approaching him and asking to have their picture taken with him, which he rightfully seemed to enjoy. We talked about how awkward it must be for people to recognize you everywhere you go. We finished our conversation and moved to the front of the line to buy tickets for 'Big Fish,' which was fantastic. Not three minutes after we had finished our conversation did a girl in the lobby stop Joel and I and say, "Wait a minute. Aren't you guys in Olde English!?" We tried to actual casual, as Jeremy Piven would have done, and pretended that being recognized in Chicago wasn't the coolest thing that had ever happened to us.
3. Chicago is called 'The Windy City.' Max insists that it is called this for political reasons, and I insist that he should be stood in front of a row of men with guns and shot for how wrong he is. (Please, do not research this to prove me wrong, only do so to prove me correct). Regardless of whether or not the politics are indeed 'windy' or not, Chicago itself was fucking cold. During the period when we were there, and more specifically, during the period when Joel and I walked eight blocks from the subway station to the Sears tower, the temperature (including political wind chill) was twenty below zero.
4. In a fairly spur of the moment decision, I've decided to move to Chicago for the summer, where I will most likely:
a. continue to wait tables.
b. take some classes at Second City.
c. live with compadre Brendan Sullvan.
And while heterosexual Brendan and LL-Cool-Me are by no means getting married, I will in the near future be posting some sort of registry, just so that relatives and people I hardly know will pay for our furniture and household needs.
Along the way I bought a blank journal, so I could begin the first draft of my manuscript, titled On the Road 2: The Reckoning (alternately titled Back On the Road: The Beckoning), but anticlimactically its pages remain blank, for as of yet, not a damn thing has happened to us.
Pennsylvania, just as I remembered it, was long and arduous and seemingly without a western boundary.
Ohio made no impression on me at all, though I do feel it noteworthy to mention that there were very few exits, and that this proved cumbersome when we came upon a snowstorm. We agreed to pull the car over at the next exit, and that exit ended up being in Indiana.
Indiana itself proved so boring that we decided to take our chances with a car accident, and continued on our way. (I can comfortably make such snide remarks about Indiana because I have never known anyone who has ever called this deserted plane home. I have no reason to believe that anyone lives there at all. It is, after all, "The Crossroads State," as in "The Middle Point Between One Place Worth Visiting and Another.")
Driving has already become tedious--not because either of us are tired--no, that problem is easily corrected by the queen size mattress in the back of the van, upon which I took two long naps today, one of which spanned all of New York and the easternmost portion of Pennsylvania. In addition, we have a DVD player which we've connected to the car stereo. At no point in his entire life was Jack Kerouac as comfortable as I was this morning--curled up in a mess of pillows and blankets, watching Futurama, moving westward at 70 mph. Anyway, back to driving being tedious.
At some point, perhaps an hour and a half ago, deep in Indiana, the rain that has thus far been a fairly consistent feature of our drive began to freeze to the windshield, provoking the wiper blades to make a gentle swooshing sound that probably lull me to sleep, were I not so well rested from my various naps. The sweet swooshing aside, the opaque windshield makes me uncomfortable--not only because I can't see, but because I imagine that the surface we are quickly moving forward upon is essentially a skating rink. Earlier today, in a patch of empty highway, I endeavoured to test what I have come to call the "Frozen Lake Theory" by slamming on the brakes. This, of course, startled Joel, who I had neglected to warn, and also sent the DVD player, which had been in his lap, flying forward, where it crashed and emptied its contents on the floor. For a moment I feared it had been rendered useless--like so many cars and trucks we had passed today, embedded on their sides in the snow--and that we would have to endure the remaining width of the continent--two times over--without the beautiful luxury of digital distraction.
1.04.2004 We leave for Chicago in the morning. I plan to write down everything interesting that happens to us, and hopefully I will be able to update this page on somewhat of a consistent basis (dependent, of course, on other, benevolent people sharing their internet access). Look forward to real updates. For the first time in a long time, I will finally have not only stories to tell, but also the time to write them down.
Does anyone live between Madison, Wisconsin and San Francisco, California? Looking at a map, we realized that we are fairly screwed in this region. Going as far north as Minnesota is simply too impractical, especially considering that the mattress we've managed to fit into the back of Joel's van is twice as large as the mattress I normally sleep on. However, we are looking for adventures. If you live between Madison, Wisconsin and San Francisco, California, and have an adventure for us, please contact us immediately.
The "Roadtrip" page design took two days of straight labor. I apologize that those days were not consecutive, but I've been tending to other concerns. For instance, listening to depressing music and watching movies by myself.
I've been listening to a fair amount of Rilo Kiley lately, and while their music is in no way depressing in a conventional sense, it carries with it a specific sort of sadness. Such is the problem with melodic love songs written by beautiful women. Jenny Lewis, the lead singer of Rilo Kiley, is currently, to me, the most attractive woman on the planet--an opinion based almost entirely on the sound of her voice, and verified in part by some careful image searching. One picture showed her holding hands with Jake Gyllenhaal, a fantastic actor whom I've always liked and who I now despise and vow to kill. You heard me, Donnie Darko: you've got 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds until the end of your world unless you stay a moonlight mile away from my good girl.
