2004-05-16 - 9:01 p.m.
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5 in 8
The days seem long. They aren't though. They're the same day as yesterday, same as tomorrow may be.
Because tomorrow, you may die and not even know it.
You see everything in blurs and twists. Faces shoot past and you get all of 5 seconds of each as they hurry and rush. Overhead, the speakers pump some automated voice over and over again, warning you not to leave your bag unattended and if you see any shady people, let authorities know.
As if terrible people wave a terrible flag before doing something terrible.
You lug 50 pounds of yourself around, tied to your neck in some vinyl sack, pockets everywhere. There are papers telling you what numbers to say to some person so that you can be rocketed miles upon miles away from your home, numbers to say to some person so that you can sleep in a condom of a bed - used and discarded, numbers to say to someone to get your car back.
Each room changes, but the feeling is the same. This is anywhere but home. The showers are too small every single time and you still wipe down the toilet even if technically, it's yours for the time being.
A quiet empty room always reminds you just how alone you are.
You drift quietly above cotton ball clouds and patchwork ground, so far away it seems like terrible art whizzing past you. The night comes and there are a million lights beaming out, electricity shooting everywhere as we fulfill our most blatant obsession to escape the unknown and unforgiving darkness that swallows us whole when the sun goes away. Lines of dots spread back to the horizon and they could be Maryland or Illinois or Florida and you'd never know. The speakers replace their automated voice with a voice that sounds automated, reminding you that if your seat is back and your tray is down right now, you done fucked up.
When you get there, the rush is the same each time. Not an adrenaline rush - more of a momentum. You feel caught in deadlines and schedules, unable to break free from the drag of your responsibilities as it rips you from one alien city to another.
This is my life on the road.
Imagine being with complete strangers for your entire day. Imagine people you know from blank pasts, random meetings based on advertising and business. You shake hands with people who smile when you come near, maybe because they're alone too and a face they've seen in the rat race before is welcome or maybe they know that if you take their picture, their phone rings a few more times or they get to show it off to the office. Either way, both of us are miserable and know that this is the only way to do it. We've both come here for the same reason: to feed a beast that feeds us. We're here to turn the wheels of the economy and keep the money in our pockets.
I have even less of a reason to be there. I wait outside doors and stalk hallways. I do racing laps around mazes of tables filled with blinking pens, CD openers, stress balls and other trinkets, all full of this company name or that one, most of which will go in my bag and come home with me, only to clutter my floor of my room and eventually find it's way into the garbage.
There is nothing that reminds you more that you are alone than a big empty bed. Except maybe two and almost every room I sleep in has one unused bed, enormous and vacant. The lights go out after you watch a few measily minutes of horrible television, a watered down version of a watered down medium stripped to basic 18 channels. You stare at the ceiling in the dark, see the light streak through that thin sheet blocking your window from a vast wasteland of urban sprawl and remind yourself that this is exciting. That you are in a city you've never been before, even if the city shoots past you out of plane windows, train windows, car windows and hotel windows. It's almost like teasing yourself with a huge toy you can never play with.
The dark always lets you know how alone you are when you are alone.
I toss and turn every night, rolling all over a bed that people have had sex on - filthy sex so filthy, they'd rather pay money and do it on a sexed in bed than filthy up their own sheets. There are shower caps I never use, bottles of shampoo and conditioner (sometimes conditioner) and lotions of a million smells each, with the standard thin block of soap in the tough paper.
The showers are always too small.
I never fake it. I never walk up to someone and look interested. I don't want them to think I do either, but it's hard to when you have no idea what they are talking about. You just learn what is a good thing and if someone does better than that good thing, you become surprised. There are people telling me things that would make someone who understands what they are hearing shudder with excitement. People get so excited about their product you want to see if they have a hard on but that's impolite. I bet they usually do.
Florida palm trees sway for me, but only for a few hours. I wander around a vast playground with steel drums playing and suits and slacks swishing as business cards are handed out like food rations to the starving. I take a few pictures, finally getting to learn what the face to the voice on the phone is. There are people here I've hounded relentlessly, calling them upwards of 15 times in a month to remind them deadlines are coming up and that they had better give me their money fast before they miss their chance to gain exposure.
And they do too. They gain a hell of a lot of exposure with us. This one woman in New Jersey called me her saint because my first day on the job, nervous as all hell, I shot pictures of everyone I could find. Someone saw her picture in the paper and offered her a job, solely because she was sitting at a table with other people. I've changed the lives of people, sometimes for the worse, and I do it everyday. An ad runs and their phone rings and they call back excited as all hell to do it all over again, happy as fuck that someone gives a rats ass about a man in a basement office trying to get by. And it makes me happy.
There are a few that it doesn't work for and sometimes, I look at their ad and even I wouldn't call them if I had to. They think that an ad automatically makes them money. Only the good ones do.
Ohio spreads before me and I've never been there. After spending all of a day in Florida, I learned that you can indeed fly somewhere in the world, change someone's life and make it back in time for dinner. There is nothing in Ohio. Even in Columbus, the largest city in the state according to the guy driving me.
They are all funny too. Each driver is different and you know how it's going to be the moment they take your luggage. A smile and a comment and you know they're going to talk your ear off. Grabbing your bags and cramming them in your car and it's 10 minutes of complete and awkward silence for you.
They all like to ask if you've had a good time, if you've enjoyed yourself. If you've seen the sights. Most of the time, I haven't. In fact, most of the time, I sit in my room and read a book or watch neutered television until my body gives up and I pass out. I've read 5 books this week.
A lot of times, they like to talk to you about women. Most drivers are men and I don't know why. In fact, I can't remember once having a woman driver and I couldn't give you one reason for it. The man in the livery car that drove me to Islip so that I can be flung to Ohio told me he'd been married for years and had multiple girlfriends at one time for ever. There was one dry spell, he said, for a month where it was just him and his wife. He likes it when he has a lot of girlfriends too, running off to this one and that one, and that he has to keep a book to remind him who he's with.
He also tells me he loves his son in the same breath almost. Even his illegitamate children.
Then he tells me that's what life is about, that it's against nature to be with one woman all the time and this whole time I get furious in the back because I don't even have that one woman all the time. I don't have anything. He tells me that even animals run to multiple partners. I just sit there and think that if you want to act like an animal and fuck everything you can, then go ahead. Just because animals do it doesn't mean I have to lower myself to tricking women into bed with me and moving to the next hole when the present one isn't interested.
Animals also eat their own shit and lick their own balls. I don't do that either.
I'd rather devote myself to one person who devotes their self to me as well. A partner in crime, not just a sex partner. How many of your sex partners will take care of you when your sick? How many sex partners will listen to your worries or troubles? You have to lie and sneak just to be with these women. I'd rather walk freely, holding the one person worth living for in my arms.
But to each their own.
South Carolina is beautiful. My ex - THE ex - might still be in Charleston, just graduating as she was a year younger than me. I don't think about her anymore and even when I was there, it was faint stirrings in my memory. More of a "I wonder if I'll run into her here." Not a "I should go out and see if I can find her." If she was worth it, I would have abandoned the entire convention and just rented a car, looking at every turn to find her. There are few people like that in the world and I don't even have one anymore.
It takes a toll on you, a vagrant, a vagabond. Wandering the country and standing in the background, taking photos and jotting notes down so taht you can jigsaw it all back together again and summarize it in 50 pictures and 5 paragraphs. As if entire days of your life could be best captured in photos and words.
I decide South Carolina will be different and I since everything ended early, I go change out of my uniform of slacks and a short sleeve shirt with my company logo over my heart. I put on old courderoys and an Atari t-shirt and jump in the first cab I see, asking them to take me to Market street, a suggestion one of the women in the state association gave me.
I get out and immediately see that there is nothing happening. Every where, there are restaurants and pubs but I don't feel like spending $100 because I'm bored. Even for the sake of a night on the town in a new city. I slip into a jazz club called Minstral and there are dixieland jazz musicians playing dixieland jazz right at the door as soon as you walk in. They are all over 70 except the trombone player, who must be closer to my parents age - 50. I remember playing trombone back in middle school and wonder if I had kept up with it, if I could play like this - this amazingly heartfelt and beautiful music. He cups his hand and covers the bell with a toilet plunger, making the trombone sound like a drunk trumpet. I sip gin and tonics while smoking, relishing in the fact that this isn't New York. "This isn't New York, sir. You could do whatever you want here." I tip the bartender extra for that comment.
Then I decided to hit Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co. It's like I decided to go to TGIFridays in the South. I drink some ridiculous Forrest Gump themed drink while watching 2/3 of Forrest Gump on mute, subtitles and all. On the opposite TV, NEw Jersey holds on for 3 overtimes and kicks ass enough to win it. The man mixing my drinks (terribly) starts in with barchat and I soon learn he's from Connecticut. Where SHE'S from. The coincidence chills me to the bone and I think to myself I should slow down because if I'm this drunk that I'd bother to put 2 and 2 together on that fact, I'm too drunk for my own good.
Instead of slowing down, I decide trying out a sushi bar is a good idea.
If you know me, you know that I don't eat sushi. At all. In fact, if it comes from the sea at all, I don't eat it. For whatever reason this is, my body rejects seafood and I just can't stand it.
I've had a few California Rolls before (not even real sushi my boss would tell me later) and they were acceptable so I feel safe in that fact. I feel brave as I stagger in and plop down in the seat at the bar, with all that seafood in front of me, chopped to bits and ready to be rolled. Having no prior experience ordering sushi, I look at the menu and see a California Roll for $4.95 and think to myself "That better be a damn good roll for something as wide as a silver dollar and thick as a hand to be 5 bucks." I decide to order 2 and take a stab at a Crispy Roll - shrimp tempura with avocado and other fun stuff. The waitress brings me a plate with 18 rolls on it and suddenly it dawns on me that I've ordered enough sushi for 2-3 people. For myself. And I don't even eat sushi.
Embarrassed and completely drunk off of the 2 dollar Coronas they were selling at the bar, I begin to eat. Each roll is a trial. I cover it with ginger and then dab on wasabe. My nose burns the first few times as I figure out even a dab of wasabe is enough to make my eyes water and I end up going through one whole beer for 2 rolls. I keep telling them I didn't know it came with 6 apiece and that back in New York, they only give you 4 per serving which was why I ordered so much.
These are lies. I've never ordered Sushi in my life.
The guys behind the bar giggle as if they were japanese women and tell me how much they love my Atari t-shirt. They take this opportunity to turn their tip jar towards me, a big Atari written out on the glass. After 4 or so reminders on how awesome my Atari t-shirt really is, I get the hint and toss a dollar into the glass and leave 7 rolls of sushi behind with a 20 dollar bill to cover the cost and tip.
Sitting at the bar by myself with a room full of college kids celebrating their recent graduation and the last time they may ever see each other drives it home that, yes indeed I am alone.
I get home and my empty room confirms it.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
