(True Confessions from The Man in the Orange Suit)
by Kerry Glamsch
Driving the Brain
I got a telephone call in the spring of ’99. Someone
who knew me asked if I’d be interested in driving The Brainmobile.
It’s ten weeks, the voice said, and a whole lot of driving; you’ll
be out on the road alone, but it pays real well. I figured you’d
be up for it.
Three weeks later, I climb inside The Brain and cue
up a Pixies CD. Thinkwell’s an Austin-based company that makes interactive
textbooks. For promotional purposes, they’ve built a giant blue
fiberglass brain, mounted like a parasite on the back of a sturdy
pickup. In addition to driving, the job includes donning a bright
orange jumpsuit, crashing conferences and universities, and passing
out free stuff to an awed and giddy populace.
There’s a PA system, and I squeeze the mic and hold
it to the speaker. Feedback. The bass line from “Gigantic” kicks
in. I slide The Brain into drive. A crowd of sweaty employees waves
so long. Monday, June nineteenth, twelve noon, ninety-eight degrees
out. The frontal lobe extends over the cab, providing shade to the
air-conditioned black interior. Boxes fill the cerebral cortex:
brochures, packets, and little foam squeeze brains. I’m supposed
to make a speech.
“Well,” I tell them, “Here goes nothing.”
More feedback. I wonder if they’ve heard me.
“Well,” I start again, “Can you all hear me okay?”
They smile and wave, wishing to get out of the heat.
The owner of the company gives me a smiley thumbs up. I take my
foot off the brake. All right then. Away we go.
The Brainmobile creeps forward. I let go of the mic.
Two dirty windows offer distorted views out the back. Side mirrors
leave blind spots big as a dozen hippos. I hit the blinker and creep
out onto First Street. The truck rocks side to side. I check the
mirrors and toot the horn. The last of the crowd files back inside
the building.
Highway 71, outside La Grange, and the first wave
of Roadtrip Bliss starts doing its thing. The land opens up and
the blacktop turns gray. Roadkill becomes exotic. I slap the dash,
and give the seat a bounce. Feels pretty good in here. Check it
out. I’m on my way to Montreal. New York! San Francisco! Fucking
Yuma, Arizona!
Okay, so maybe Yuma’s no big deal, but look out there,
just look: clouds drifting in from the Gulf of Mexico, unpainted
barns sagging in the summer breeze, double-wides praying for mercy,
fresh rolled hay waiting to be hauled away, sold at auctions, or
hay markets, hell, I don’t know, but listen to this incredible stereo:
Emmylou Harris covering Lucinda Williams’ heartbreaking Sweet Old
World. Neil Young coming in on the chorus. My God, it’s too much—
I’m snuffling tears when all of a sudden, Beep! Beep!, a beat-to-shit
Toyota pulls up on my left.
Overflowing with farm kids, the car keeps pace. Scrawny
brown arms thrust out from open windows, pointing at the weird brain
thing zooming down the road. They’re laughing, and I’m wiping tears,
and I think, Uh oh, maybe it’s not the brain they find so amusing.
Maybe it’s the bald guy with sideburns, what’s he doing, singing
his way home from a funeral? I look over, trying on a smile, sort
of a Yeah, I know, pretty damn crazy, huh? The car speeds away.
Pretty soon, it’s raining.
My father died in October of ’96. He had been a teenager
in Hitler’s Germany, with an extensive collection of underground
Louis Armstrong records. But because he was also a jujitsu champion,
and because his father had fought in the first world war, he was
expected to join the SS once he turned eighteen. Instead, at seventeen,
he joined the German Navy, but his ship was destroyed before it
left harbor. He and a friend attempted an escape to Switzerland,
were nabbed by German forces, tried as deserters, and sent to the
front. The war almost over, he sought out and surrendered to the
Americans. During his nine month stay in a French prison camp, he
made friends with a guard named Bill. Bill hailed from Muncie, Indiana.
My mother’s people rode an oxcart from Georgia and
homesteaded a portion of land east of what is now Tampa. Mom grew
up in Plant City, Florida, Strawberry Capital of the World. In the
spring of ‘55, while working for the local newspaper, she interviewed
a young immigrant who had just driven a sleek Buick down from Muncie.
She wanted to know why he had left Germany.
Dad worked as a traveling salesman. He’d go away forever,
then show up again with presents, drink a lot of beer, and show
me martial arts moves. His face would turn red, and I remember telling
other kids he was an Indian. He said that my brother and I were
the last of the Glamsches. His sister had married a Mexican fighter
pilot, and an Uncle Fritz disappeared during the war.
A few weeks after he died, I searched the Net, and
came up a cousin Gundula living outside of Munich. Together, we
located fifty-nine other Glamsches. One of those, Suzanna, said
she had tracked the name back to seventeenth century Austria. Seems
there was an expression going around at the time. If you had a “glamsch”
in your family, you had someone who would take off and go traipsing
around the world. I look in the rearview mirror, and ask Dad what
he knows about it.
Just this side of Houston, I pull off for some gas.
A big guy with a crewcut breaks into a smile. The sort of man who
would, under any other circumstances, aggressively want nothing
to do with me, today he’s just a big boy in overalls, excited by
this, this... thing that’s just pulled in.
“I give up,” he says, “What the heck is it?”
“You got me,” I tell him. “Woke up this morning, there
it was.”
He laughs and shakes his head.
“Tried everything to get rid of it,” I say. “Figured
oh well, what can you do.”
“I hear that.”
He places his hands on the brain and rocks it back
and forth.
“Top heavy,” he says.
“Yes it is.”
“Be careful out there.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, “I’ll try.”
I should’ve expected this. Starting with a teenage
hitchhiking trip that took me from Tampa to Vancouver B.C., I’ve
crisscrossed this country more times than I can remember. And every
time, it’s the same sweet song: people are good. Most differences
fade once you’re out on the road. But this? This is even better.
Now I’ve got a topic of conversation. A link. Something that says,
Hey everybody, I’m one of you, a working stiff, on the move, breaking
the rules, sticking it to the man. An American; and damn proud of
it.
My first night out, I stop at a restaurant in Lake
Charles, and sit down to a table of mudbugs. I try to blend with
the locals, as folks come in and say things like, What is that y’all
got out there? Seems the second most popular question, right after
the what is it thing, is, How come it’s blue?
It’s storming in Baton Rouge. The folks at Thinkwell
suggested I take treats with me when I go calling; there’s a store
that sells Krispy Kremes right at the gates of LSU. I drive around
the university, mic in hand, doing my best Gene Kelly. Singing in
the rain, yah de yah de yah de yah... A Biology professor shows
me his hissing cockroaches. His secretary eats a chocolate-covered
glazed.
Folks in Alabama eye me with suspicion. Everywhere
else, people pull alongside, snap pictures, laugh and wave howdy.
But this whole brain thing seems to be a little too much here. Maybe
they think I’m making fun of them: We don’t have much use for
that down here. Or that maybe The Devil’s behind this, out to
snatch their souls. I’ve met people from Alabama, and they seem
all right. But they’re the ones who’ve left. These folks still live
here. Even the kids look sour.
A store clerk in Georgia wonders how much they’re
paying me for this. She tells me I’m lucky, and that she wishes
she had my job. I tell her it’s a lot of driving, and that part
of the time I’ve gotta wear a goofy orange uniform. She says that
she’d do anything to get away from here, and that the uniform can’t
be any worse than what she has to put up with. I tell her we have
a lot in common. She says she wants to come with me. I tell her
I’ve got a girlfriend. She rolls her eyes and says, Whatever.
Marcy and I moved to Austin by way of St. Pete, San
Francisco and Asheville. Adventures in living along the U.S. Bohemian
Trail. When The Texas Center for Writers offered me a three year
fellowship, I panicked. Would I be able to devote myself to writing
and a relationship? What talents might bloom if I were to
plunge alone and unprotected into the great unknown? Part of my
application asked why I write. I answered that I wanted to know
God, to give myself over completely. I believed then, and still
do, that the daily practice of any art can be preparation for that
moment when “I” gets out of the way, and “It” (God, chi, ki, collective
unconscious, whatever), begins to flow. But in searching for something
so metaphysical, was I willing to risk losing the greatest person
I’d ever known?
While stuck in traffic, I try to call home. The machine
picks up, and I leave a rambling message full of loneliness, love,
and desire. Marcy’s majoring in Social Work. On weekends, she works
at a home for pregnant teens, changing one heart at a time. I use
her life as a template, hoping that someday I might be nearly as
good.
More traffic in Greeenville, where a hipster in a
pickup offers up a cryptic smile. Wondering what he’s up to, I pull
forward, losing sight of him. But when his truck glides even again,
I notice a pretty young woman sitting on the seat beside him. She’s
turned to face me and has lifted her shirt, pointing to her chest
as if I have any hope of looking anywhere else.
Something’s in the air. At a traffic light in Charlotte,
a smoking Chevy pulls next to me. The shirtless guy behind the wheel
flicks his cigarette into the street. With eyes the color of vomit,
he motions for me to roll down my window.
“If that was a pussy,” he tells me “you could climb
right up inside of it.”
In Raleigh, while walking through the parking lot
of a Motel Six, I see a young couple going at it on the front seat
of a white Camero. I go back to my room and try to call home again.
I open a drawer, and flip through a Gideon’s Bible. I go to the
window and look out at the parking lot. The Camero’s gone. I try
the TV. Seventy-seven stations, nothing worth watching. I turn off
the light, get under the covers, close my eyes and pray for guidance.
On the Rue Sainte Catherine in Montreal, female prostitutes
step off the curb and yell, Sex! Last summer, I came here for a
film festival with my friend Scrappy. He and I ate pizza and watched
the action from behind a big window. I’ve sworn to myself that I’ll
never go to a prostitute. When I was a teenager, my father told
me sordid tales of the road. Once, I asked him why he ever had children.
He said that he never wanted to be lonely.
I don’t guess I want children either. Too many here
already. Children without parents. Without food. Without a place
to call home. Marcy says that someday she’d like to adopt. She’s
the kindest person ever. We’ve been together for nearly eight years,
and I figure it’s about time to do something. Though she’s never
pressed me for marriage, I feel like it’s coming in from all directions
at once. The honorable thing to do. There is nobody I’d rather be
with.
And yet here I am, on Rue Sainte Catherine again.
A young woman in a black leather vest steps out from a doorway,
and says something in French. I tell her I don’t understand. She
switches to English, and becomes more specific, mentioning a couple
of very popular sex practices, and the very low price for each.
She says her name is Maude, and she opens the door and says, Let’s
go. A florescent staircase leads up to the innards of a pay-by-the-hour
motel. I hesitate behind Maude. She limps up a couple of steps,
then rests on the railing. In this light, her skin looks tired and
yellow. I wonder if she’s stoned. I tell her that I’m sorry, but
I just can’t do it. She sighs and mumbles, and says it takes money
to live. I hand her a twenty, then go back to my room, and sit on
the edge of the bed. Outside, they’re setting up for the jazz festival.
The afternoon light turns violet. I listen to someone test a microphone.
Test, test, test echoes through the empty air.
The jumpsuit is a thick, 100% nylon, and zips all
the way up the front. In New York State, this sent up warning flags.
Turned out that it’s the same style and color as the prison road
crews there. Secretaries stepped away from their desks when I waltzed
into their offices, their voices wavering when they asked how they
might help. In Binghamton, I thought it was an inherent skepticism,
but an Economics teacher in Albany cleared things up after asking
me if I was lost. A yellow hard hat with an attached blue brain
in front completes the picture; in stairwells and rest rooms, I
slip into it and pretend that I’m transformed. There’s a list of
six conferences and thirty-nine universities to visit, with top
priority going to the conferences. Thinkwell hasn’t paid my way
in, so presentation is everything. This is what we mean by “crashing.”
Back in Washington DC, The 4th Annual Green
Chemistry & Engineering Conference was meeting at the Academy
of Science, which sounded innocuous enough. But I didn’t realize
that the Academy of Science was directly across the street from
the State Department, and next door to the Federal Reserve. Fed
Chairman Alan Greenspan was speaking the morning I circled the block,
big blue brain looking for a place to park. I put in some Al Green:
“Love and Happiness” sweet and funky through the PA. Finally, I
found a space, ducked into the Brain, and donned my crash costume.
But at the entrance into The Academy, a man with mirrored sunglasses
held up his hand, shook his head, and said no. Another man with
sunglasses approached me on the sidewalk and kindly asked me to
leave. I very cautiously explained that sidewalks are wonderful
things that belong to each and every one of us. An American Institution,
like libraries, public schools, the Humane Society, Thanksgiving.
“If I see you accosting anybody,” he tells me, “I’ll
have you arrested. Got it?”
So I was limited to parading in front of the attendees
whenever they dashed out for a smoke, fishing them into conversation
using paltry juggling skills as a lure. Luckily, two guys from Ohio
soon asked me what the deal was. After showing them The Brain’s
interior, and giving them some squeeze toys, they agreed to act
as moles, sneaking in dozens of CD ROM samples and stacking them
on tables.
Compared to Washington, The World Conference on Educational
Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Telecommunications at the Montreal Sheraton
is cake. I park out front, hit the flashers, and fill my shoulder
bag with goodies. Riding escalators, I spread The Word to a delighted,
friendly, and appreciative crowd. Somehow, the city of Montreal
seems to have escaped the 1980’s, that period in history that ripped
away a part of our nation’s soul, leaving so many overworked, cynical
slaves to capital in its wake. The change here is startling. Like
time travel, or dreaming.
When I cross back into The States, it’s Canada Day,
and they’re giving out tiny maple leaf flags. A border patrol asks
me to pull it over. I hear him on the radio, calling for reinforcements.
Other men in uniform appear. They check out The Brain and laugh,
then wave me forward, telling me to have fun. Thanks, I say, I’ll
try.
Nine years ago, I was attacked by a burglar, stabbed
eleven times, thrown through a window, and left for dead in a suburban
hedge. My heart stopped twice on the operating table. The doctors
said I would not make it. Waking up a couple of weeks later, I said
a prayer, offering myself up, a servant to God, do with me what
you will.
Everything became a possible sign. I spent my time
listening for instructions. Nine months later, when offered a job
as a volunteer forest ranger in the Cascades, I figured I’d better
take it. And though I don’t believe I’ll ever know exactly what
God is, while living at the Hart’s Pass cabin, I experienced some
mighty expressions of what It could possibly be. Heaven here, word
made flesh, thought and prayer transmuted into substance. I imagined
someone with whom I could share my life.
Before the stabbing, I’d been an actor. Marcy cut
hair for a theater where I worked. At the end of my Cascade summer,
that same theater offered me a job as a stage manager. Returning
to St. Pete, Florida, I went to Marcy’s shop and asked if she knew
of any apartments for rent. On November 3rd, 1992, the
night of the presidential election, we climbed to the roof of my
new apartment and consummated our relationship. We’ve been together
since. I’ve helped her through school, and if I die tomorrow, I’ll
feel that I’ve at least done one thing good.
On the 4th of July, I drive out to Coney
Island, and park The Brain on Mermaid Avenue. Red brick tenements
box in courtyards, where elderly Russians sit in folding chairs,
playing cards, cautiously soaking up the sun. A group of black kids
plays in an open fire hydrant. Puerto Rican mothers set up homemade
sidewalk grills; the smell of meat overpowers the sweet, salty air.
Under the boardwalk, tattooed Dominicans pump serious iron. But
then? Then there’s the beach; laughing, sexy, alive with a million
stories, each one a different door that opens into a million more.
I step into the middle of it, and close my eyes and listen. If God
is a river, then this is the Mississippi: strong and fertile, the
lifeblood of a nation.
My friend Clay rides with me from Atlanta to Memphis.
We stay at a Red Roof Inn. Marcy makes plans to meet me in Frisco,
our first time back since we moved away. Clay says he’s been depressed.
He says he’s looking for meaning. I ask him what a tree means. What
is the meaning of the ocean? I tell him about that long-ago Vancouver
trip, how I hitchhiked coast to coast and stood at the Golden Gate,
end of the road, three a.m., a blanket of fog obscuring the Pacific.
I suggest that God is everywhere, and that a key to happiness is
to give thanks for all we have. We lean against a wall on Beale
Street, drinking beer, and watching local kids do tumbling tricks.
Clay says I collect memories like others do trophies. I tell him
that years from now, I want to be able to look back over a lifetime
of experiences, to know that I’ve done something, lived a life not
ordinary. He says that Alzheimer’s is really gonna be a bitch for
me. And could I please stop talking about God?
Driving through Oklahoma, you get all the God you
can stand. They tell you here that Jesus Christ is God. They proclaim
it on billboards. On bumper stickers. Jesus on the television. Flashing
signs say that He is Risen! He’s everywhere. A man on the radio
tells me I should fear God. Another voice says that I should fear
my government. But hold up a minute: I thought that God was love,
and isn’t that the opposite of fear? So if Jesus Christ is God,
and God is love, then aren’t all these media Pharisees some sort
of Anti-Christ? I’m not saying I know. But I am thankful when I
finally cross into New Mexico. The radio announcers here speak an
entirely different language.
There’s a massage parlor in San Francisco that calls
itself The Green Door. Marcy and I used to walk by and joke about
how it might be fun to one day go inside together. A week before
we moved to Asheville, we stopped and rang the bell. An Asian woman
in a kimono ushered us inside. She looked to be in her fifties.
She asked us what we wanted. We asked if we could get a massage
together. She nodded, yes, of course, and led us into a room with
side by side tables. We took off our clothes as instructed, and
then waited for a very long time. Finally, our hostess brought in
a large blond woman with dark eyeliner and vodka breath, who looked
to be plucked off the streets. Marcy and I held hands and watched
each other, looking for signals to leave. The older woman, very
professional, worked on Marcy’s back as if she were in a dental
office. Hulga, on the other hand, treated my back like so much dirty
laundry, pulling, twisting, and slapping. Her sweat dripped onto
my flesh. I’m certain I heard her belch.
Five years later, I pick Marcy up from the S.F. airport.
She slides into the front seat, and we hold each other close. Car
horns honk. A policeman blows a whistle. Marcy smells just like
home. I’d like to sit here forever, but instead, I put The Brain
in gear and we hit the highway, taking it down Market Street, past
The Green Door, and out through the Haight. We pass our old apartment,
9th and Judah, then west along the N line to the Ocean
View Motel. This is where we stayed when we first moved here— a
foggy end of town, where gray row houses suggest 1950’s communist
Europe. We’re unloading our suitcases in front of a coffee shop,
when we hear our names being called.
It’s our friends from the old neighborhood Jim Yurt,
and his fiancé Cassandra, who now live down in San Bruno. We’ve
lost contact, and it seems like providence has brought us together
again. Cassandra hails from New Orleans. A frustrated actress, she
now works as a dominatrix, making enough money for both of them.
Jim drinks more coffee than any man alive. He’s a Gulf War vet,
who loves to make up stories. For awhile there, he went around spreading
rumors that Marcy and I were witch and warlock. And so for our going
away party, I told him we were sacrificing a goat, knowing he would
get the word out. I drew a circled chalk pentagram on the wood floor,
and covered it with a throw rug. Just before midnight, Marcy lit
candles, and threw the rug aside. Solemnly marching in from the
bedroom, I held a pillow out in front of me, and on the pillow,
a folded paper boat. Urged on by the chanting partygoers, I lit
the boat afire, and placed it in the center of the circle. Later,
Jim swore to everybody that he was certain I had said “goat,” but
after that, his rumors never carried the same sort of credence they
once had. Funny thing is, the boat left a tiny charred pentagram
on the floor that would not scrub out. We left it there when we
moved back East.
Jim shows us a new tattoo on his arm: ‘Cassandra,’
wrapped around a bleeding heart. That’s great, I tell him, wondering
what the hell’s the matter with me. Is it the old Glamsch curse
that keeps me from tying the knot? Fear of domesticity? A journey’s
end? Or is it fear that keeps me here? The desire for comfort, reassurance,
and family, growing stronger than the pull of hollow rambling every
year? Marcy and I have matching tattoos: ‘Tulsa’ in a cursive, almost
Sanskrit lettering. We got them in Carlsbad, on our move to San
Fancisco. We tried to get them in Tulsa, but a motel desk clerk
there with the name Donna tattooed in block letters across her chest
said that tattooing is illegal in Oklahoma. We should’ve known.
Oklahoma, an American metaphor.
I’ve worked extra hard in the days preceding Marcy’s
arrival, doing the brain thing at universities in Fresno, Berkeley,
Sacramento, Davis, and San Jose. This offers us a little more time
alone, without the orange jumpsuit in the way. Thinkwell’s provided
me with a digital camera, so that I can take pictures for their
calendar. We park by the Golden Gate Bridge, a perfect Sunday, cool,
no fog. Sailboats race around Alcatraz Island. Marcy wears a pink
sweater, her beautiful red hair tied up in a high pony. Ghostly
fog horns wail across the waves. This is the woman I’d like to spend
the rest of my life with. I open my mouth to speak, but the words
don’t come. Marcy asks if anything’s the matter. On the other side
of the bay, Sausalito creeps up into the hills. Beyond that, The
Muir Woods, the coastline, Oregon, Washington, Alaska. People say
that the Northern Lights are a wonder to behold. I start the truck
and head back toward Chinatown.
I’m in L.A. for a week, hitting four schools and two
conferences there. For the past six years, I’ve been writing screenplays,
working up a crazy fantasy of living in a little weekly motel on
Wilshire, writing crappy multi-million dollar movies, calling out
for champagne and escorts, and snorting up ropes of crystal meth.
The reality of the place, however, seems to be a city so chockfull
of cars, that it takes hours just to get anywhere. Everybody’s beautiful,
and everybody’s on the go. Beemers and Porches honk and speed past.
I hold my breath when I change lanes, hoping I don’t crush anybody
important.
On August 3rd, my birthday, I drive to
Venice Beach and check into the Cadillac Hotel. A restored art deco
where Charlie Chaplain once stayed, the building juts from the boardwalk
like a four-storied, Technicolored-colored ocean liner. The Brain
seems happy to be parked out front. Happy, and oddly proud. By now,
we don’t even have to speak to each other, we’ve established a motor-psychic
connection. The lobby of the hotel feels like a youth hostel; the
people there speak French, Italian, and German. The Australian at
the counter says my brother has called, wishing me a great big happy
birthday.
Horst is two years older than me. One morning, when
I was fifteen, I woke up to hear our mother yelling. She’d discovered
a buddy of his in bed with him. Big deal, I thought, so his friend
spent the night over. What’d she want him to do, sleep on the goddamn
floor?
I open my third-floor window and look out at the beach.
The room faces north; in the distance, the Santa Monica pier. Horst
and his partner Brian have been together for seventeen years. For
more than a dozen of those years, Brian has lived with HIV. Horst
continues to test negative, but they both still party like teenagers.
Last summer, I spent a couple of weeks at their house. Horst, who
took over our father’s pool cleaning business, has developed the
habit of falling asleep in front of the television. One night, I
sat next to him as he polished off a bottle of wine. Once he fell
asleep, I went to the bookshelf and pulled down some scrapbooks.
In all of his pictures, Brian is the life of the party, dressed
in costume, or half naked, radiating like the sun. And Horst is
there with him, smiling, laughing, soaking in the rays. If I choose
to, I can marry the person I love. Walk arm in arm, hold hands,
kiss in public, with no fear of threats or violence. Half the people
in these pictures are already dead. Who am I to tell anybody how
to get through life?
Dear Marcy. You remember that coffeehouse here
Jim Yurt talked about? Last night, I tried to find it, walking slow
through Venice Beach. There’s canals here, just like the real Venice,
and classic architecture, built around the turn of the century by
some guy named Abbott Kinney. There used to be gondolas, too, an
original still hangs in the Cadillac Hotel lobby.
It takes me an hour to find the place, and when I
do, it’s closed, so I opt for a beer instead. I pass by cocktail
lounges with softly glowing counter-tops, aqua martinis sipped by
people in their early twenties— people living inside of movies,
perfect bodies, shiny black leather, resplendent glowing teeth.
Tanned foursomes ooze from open restaurants, snapping their fingers
at ready valets. The gap between rich and poor is astonishing. One
of these days, the beautiful people will be dragged from their cars
and eaten.
I’ve given up hope and started back to the hotel,
when a stick of a woman stops me on the sidewalk. Arms crossed,
she holds her elbows, speed-muttering some sort of witchy incantation.
The sound of men fighting grabs my attention, and I look over, and
see I’m standing in front of some sort of apartment house. The front
windows have all been removed, and on the airy porch, two men grasp
each other’s throats, dancing in a drunken circle. A bamboo bar
has been set up in one corner. A boom box on the floor cranks out
some early Foghat.
A woman named Linda gives me a tour of the back hallway
art gallery. Her face looks tightened, pulled back across her cheeks
and forehead. Hard, freckled breasts push out from a vee-necked
sweater. We stop at reproduction of a European cityscape, the sort
of thing you’d see at Sears. She asks if I know what city it is.
I guess, say maybe Vienna. She says she used to travel with Van
Halen, back in the David Lee Roth days. I ask her what she did.
She winks and says that’s none of my business. A hall door opens.
A three hundred pound man in a Panama hat stumbles from the bathroom.
With a nose like W.C. Fields, he plays the part, lifting his hat
and introducing himself as Tim. He says he works as an airline pilot,
and that he used to be involved with the CIA.
Back in the lobby, Linda introduces me to Daisy, an
intense young woman with Charlie Manson eyes. She tells me her brother
is a filmmaker, and that his first film has just shown at Cannes.
I ask her if there’s a place that sells beer nearby. A Johnny Depp
character with prominent bicuspids steps forward and tells me there’s
a place just around the corner. I excuse myself, hurry down the
street, and return in minutes with a couple of tall six packs. I
set them on the bar and tell everyone to help themselves.
A gray-haired man steps from the huddle of now-exhausted,
best buddy fighters, and says that he’s from Arkansas. He says that
he owns the place, and that a friend of his in Little Rock knows
a black woman who gave birth to Bill Clinton’s son. The talk turns
political, so I drift over to Daisy and ask about her brother’s
film. She looks puzzled, as if it’s the first time she’s ever heard
of it. Big Tim grabs my elbow and leads me over to a shirtless guy
with bleached hair and scabs on his knuckles. He wants to set things
straight. Tim’s told him that I bought the beer for everybody, but
that can’t be true, can it? I tell him it is. He asks if I want
to get high.
The music grows louder, a pipe goes around, beer gets
drunk, and the cops show up. They ask who lives here, and everyone
raises a hand. Before they leave, they tell us to keep it down.
Tim looks worried. Someone starts to giggle. A hunched-over, Uncle
Fester looking fellow peeks out from a doorway and waves. Johnny
Depp starts talking about his uncle, Pancho Villa, and how he was
into some mean black magic. The shirtless guy tells me about a trip
he once took with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. Driving
down from Michigan, they ended up in Tijuana, ran out of money,
and the girlfriend offered to turn tricks so they could get back
to the States . The slut, he says, the whore. I wonder if this is
some sort of “home.” If maybe the attendants lie bound and gagged
in a closet. Uncle Fester sneaks forward, his high-pitched voice
like air from a balloon. I watch his lips, and slowly make out the
words. He says he used to be a hockey player. But then there was
an accident. Something bad happened. He shakes his head and shrugs.
Before moving to Texas, I spent a month in Florida
with my father. His cancer had metastasized, and the doctors had
just started him on morphine. He was terrified of dying, it’s all
he talked about, and I tried everything to take his mind away from
it. One night, while sleeping, a voice came to me, strong, not at
all like dreaming. It said, Don’t worry, everything’s perfect. I
sat up in bed and listened to see if there was anything else.
Sometimes, I try to recall what it was like when my
heart stopped. People ask if there was a tunnel of light. It’s amazing
what they’re willing to believe. And though I’m not sure what comes
after this, after the voice that night, I’m certain that there’s
nothing to fear. I tried to tell my father this, but it was too
late for him to hear.
Crossing back through Arizona, a blast of wind jerks
me onto the shoulder. A wave of rain drops from the sky. I turn
on the flashers and park. For awhile, there’s only water. It obliterates
the landscape, thundering against the brain. Once it passes, the
sun reappears, flooding the valley in front of me. I get out, hop
a fence, and climb to the top of some rocks. The storm moves off
to the north. I breathe through my nose: sage, dirt, and rain. It’s
hard to imagine a more astounding world than this one. I open my
arms to heaven, and give thanks for everything I have.
