I just got back from that very long, smelly trip. It was exceptionally long and smelly. I survived on bread and apples and just a few minutes of sleep each night. My body has never been angrier with me and I don,t blame it. I empathize with my body,s hatred of its possessor.
I doubt that I can remember every place I visited or everything I did in those places, but I,d like to see if I can try to remember or at least make up something about each of them.
First I drove to Los Angeles to pick two goons who would accompany my Death Cab For Cutie cover band on our first grown up voyage. Los Angeles is stupid, but the tacos are great. Unfortunately, by that point I had realized that I brought very little money with me that was to last me for a month so a greasy street taco was a luxury I could not afford.
The next day I was in Los Osos which I believe means ,,Those Bears,, but it could easily mean ,,Those Eyes,, if you changed a letter. At the end of the night, I rested my head on the bar in which we had played and the bar tender gave me a glass of water and told me I wasn,t allowed to sleep. That may have been the only time anybody has ever thought I was drunk.
I already forgot what happened next so I will have to refer to my list. Ah yes, Oakland was next. One of the rear view mirrors on the van got smashed that night. Also, the place we played was squeezed between a weird biker bar and a big building that had women in bathing suits having their pictures taken with sweaty men in front of the entrance. It was a strange scene and I am proud to say that I was in the middle of it.
Next was Eugene. It rained a little bit in only the way that the Northeast can. The town was filled with railroad tracks and dreadlocked slugs. I spent much of the night in a large room filled with huge bags of beans and flour. There were a few evil boys in attendance and they intimidated me. A woman with a tattered dress yelled and yelled about how generous she was.
Then I was in Portland. Everything was expensive. I fell asleep on a table. I received the gift of a warm hat. A woman angrily cooked a crepe in a cramped trailer. It felt like I was there for six days.
Seattle was next. We played to a nearly-empty room and got paid an exorbitant amount of money. That was fine by me. It was about this time that I realized that I would likely be sleeping in the van every night for the rest of the trip. This was almost true.
The last time I was in Seattle, I was in the same building and I was terribly sick. This time, I wasn,t sick at all, but I still didn,t have that much fun because there is no place I have ever been where the parking is worse and if there is one thing that boils my viscous blood faster than anything else, it,s not being able to park when I want to.
After Seattle was Boise. That was a disaster. I bought a bowl of French fries because I was in the Holy Land. A man rapped angrily in front of nobody for a long time. We didn,t even really play music. I drank the hottest water I had ever had in my body. A man was in the process of housebreaking a hog he had caught and he kept two turtles completely submerged in cloudy water. I was angry and laughing.
On the way to Salt Lake City, I took a nap for two hours. Those two hours would be the only moments in which I was in the van and it was moving, but I was not driving. I quickly learned my lesson and did not repeat that mistake again for the remainder of my travels. I saw a friend and slept in his home. A glistening man took our money and used it to perform horrible experiments on unwitting children.
In Denver, everybody wanted to buy drugs, but we got there right as all of the drug markets closed. What a loss/relief. We played in a bookstore and I found out that the meaning of life is frogs. The streets were filled with jubilant, pugnacious youths and foul sounds. I lost my stick of deodorant for several hours.
Lawrence Kansas was great. The parking was sublime. You could pay fifty cents and park for five hours. Everybody there was either older or younger than me. Nobody looked my age. It was completely unremarkable. It was my kind of town. A group of kids at the show got very hurt when their home state was referred to as a ,,filth chrysalis.,, We sat near the uninterested bar tender as she shouted at the basketball players on television.
We stayed in a hotel that night. By ,,we,, I mean everybody except me. I was busy getting my money,s worth out of that van/bedroom. The next morning, I gorged myself on conveyor belt pancakes, dry toast, and slimy eggs.
Saffron - Petra I
Then we drove to Ames. If I remember correctly, that was a house show where we all because addicted to crossword puzzles. It was a weird, allergy-inducing night that I was not interested in. A young man with a mustache growing into his mouth drove into the night as drunk as he could be after slurring drivel for two hours.
I have never seen more pedestrians that I have in Chicago. It was terrible. Don,t those people have homes that they should be hiding in? Don,t they have children they should be ignoring?
That night, I stayed in a very fancy, clean apartment owned by two doctors. I stayed up all night and didn,t sleep because they put The Hobbit on television and it was six hours long and I was enthralled. In the morning, I cooked a twelve eggs and washed my filthy clothes in their clean washing machine.
In Lafayette, I ate an incredible amount of free food at the nicest restaurant I had been inside in weeks. The meal was paid for by the owner who also owned the disheveled bar in which we were to perform. The bar was great. It was dirty and filled with poisonous smoke and uninterested individuals and they paid us and let us sleep in what quickly came to be known as ,,the crack shack.,, It was a gutted apartment above the nice restaurant that was devoid of all furniture other than several creased, soiled mattresses. The inside of the toilet was slate grey under the waterline. The freezer was bare save for a bag of mixed meats. I slept in the van.
There was not a single person who came to see us play in Cleveland so we acted accordingly and did a very bad job. While there, I felt like I was constantly on the verge of being robbed. It was a strange, dirty city that I have no interested in visiting again. The bar smelled of grilled bread and cheese and we were paid much more than we were owed which was fine by me. We stayed in another hotel that night. There were no mechanized pancake machines to take advantage of the next morning, but I did shave my disgusting body in the clean, well-lighted bathroom and fill my gullet with eggs and juice.
In Philadelphia, I had the worst pizza I have ever eaten. The pizza was bad, but what made it almost intolerable were the two forlorn slobs that prepared and served it. They were misery personified. They were the human embodiment of quiet, angry suffering. I bought two slices. Each was one dollar including tax and I paid far too much. A one legged man in a wheelchair pushed himself backward down the city,s busiest street. The next morning, we were treated to a subpar, yet expensive breakfast.
New Paltz had snow on the ground and three inches of water in the basement where we performed. My lungs quickly filled with dust and mold and I was certain I would fall ill. Miraculously, I did not, but I did step in more puddles and mud than I ever thought possible. I slept with a hat on and broke into somebody,s home to use their bathroom. I spent much of the day talking about poop. There were blonde dreadlocks as far as the eye could see.
In Brooklyn, I ate a fancy grilled cheese sandwich. There were too many people at the show and they refused to leave. I fell asleep sitting up for a little while. I met my bosses for the first time and they didn,t fire me on site which was a huge shock for everybody involved.
The next morning, I walked around and thought briefly that maybe New York isn,t so terrible. There were small, inexpensive restaurants everywhere. I liked that. Then, I was hit in the mouth by a piece of flying garbage. I didn,t like New York anymore.
That night, we played another show in Brooklyn to a room full of disinterested rockers. A girl got drunk and played with her hair all night long. I went into a stranger,s apartment while they did drugs in front of their pet. I felt like I was lost the entire time.
In Baltimore, I sat in a stranger,s home and talked about South Park. I washed my clothes in a dirty washing machine. I ate an incredibly large, dry burrito and didn,t pay for it and awoke the next morning to find an ambulance glowing outside of the shabby home in which my friends had slept. I assumed they were all dead.
Rather than performing in North Carolina, I drove one million hours to Nashville; a beautiful, warm city filled with territorial bugs and wet air. This was my favorite city I visited. We ate huge quantities of tasty food in a dirty garage of a restaurant. It was excellent. We then performed in a nice restaurant filled with old people and young kids who didn,t know what year it was.
In Little Rock, was spent much of the day hiding from the rain. We played in a warehouse filled with hungry eighth graders who were trying cigarettes for the first time. They threw every penny they owned at our feet. I expected to find everybody with knives in their hearts the next morning, but I did not.
In San Antonio, we played in a room filled with artificial fog. We saw The Alamo from the window of a moving car. It looked exactly like an old building. We drove to Austin that night so we would,t have to do anything the next day.
In Austin, we were treated to incredibly delicious pizzas served to us at a farm in the middle of nowhere. It was spectacular. I was surrounded by beauty and the sound of screaming children and the combination made my heart race. I spent the rest of the day swooning and trying my hardest to push the Record button in my brain.
El Paso was hostile. The leather clad punks did not like the fact that I was tired. We left as soon as we could. I felt like I became the host of a parasite in that town.
In Tucson, I wandered the warm streets and sat quietly in an astronomically-themed bar. We participated in a game of trivia and lost terribly. I ate the messiest pizza I have ever consumed. We played to nobody and were paid handsomely.
San Diego was just fine. I liked the Hispanic neighborhood we were in. The homes were quaint. The restaurants smelled inviting. The people at the show were drunk and surly. A squat man with the face of a turtle shell yelled and yelled. Every band played for an hour except us. I fell asleep while driving to Los Angeles that night. Napping while driving is nice.
