Booze and Babes In The Valley of The Sun

I’m in the middle of a three-week bender that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud.

I left Cleveland.  Arrived in Idaho.  Took a shot to welcome myself to town.  And then I took a few more shots.  And that’s how I got here.

Being the new girl in a small town, especially a booze and adrenaline-fueled mountain, is a lot like being the new kid in high school.  Except with more booze and more boys.  The one to ten ratio of bangable girls to truck-driving, tobacco-chewing, gun-shooting mountain further contributes to the new-girl-in-high-school sense of standing out like a sore thumb.  And since they all know each other, and they all know every other girl in town, and they all know which combinations of their friends and their girl friends have slept together, the heralded arrival of a new girl who hasn’t slept with some combination of best friends and roommates is usually trumpeted with glad tidings of great joy, much rejoicing, boisterous fanfare and endless rounds of shots.  Lots and lots of cheap whiskey, tequila and Red Bull. 

You walk into the bar and the music stops, the conversation ceases, the heads turn and one solitary bottle clangs to the floor.  Who’s the new kid in school?  The generally consensus is, “Hey there’s a new girl.  Let’s buy shots.”  And then, once you get to know each other it’s, “Hey there’s our new friend.  Let’s buy shots.”  And after that it’s, “Hey it was sunny today. Let’s buy shots.”  You get the picture. Which is how I’ve managed to work myself into a nasty little pattern of staying up too late drinking more tequila than I care to drink, waking up early, nursing my hangover with huevos rancheros, taking a three-hour nap, working, having “just one” post-work beer, deciding that it would be ok if I went our for “just one” drink at the bar, finding myself taking “just one more” shot at the Cellar, stopping by Whiskeys for “just one minute,” crawling into bed around 3 AM smelling like a booze and barroom and then repeating it all over again the next day.  Tomorrow I’ll take the night off.  Really.  I swear.

If its one thing mountain towns do well, it’s suck you in.  They’re like that crazy friend everyone has who can get you to dance on the stage at the Sapphire strip club in Vegas, jump off cliffs at Lake Cumberland, dance on tables in Cancun, huck the 30-footer, dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly (I’m seeing a pattern here) and take body shots on a lazy Tuesday night.  You always play by their insane rules because they’re so damn convincing, and handsome and fun.

And that’s how people end up on thirty-year mountain town benders.  They wake up one bluebird morning, rub their eyes and wonder how the fuck they got here.  It’s like Rip Van Winkle, mountain bender edition.  Confused, they say, “Last thing I remember, I was here for one summer (or one winter – take your pick).  And then we took a bunch of shots.  And now I’m here.  Whoa.  What a trip.”  And  when you’re a local in a mountain town your life really is others vacation.  Which gets dangerous when you’re constantly surrounded by a bunch of loud Texans, sexy Miamians or snobby new Yorkers all drinking it down.  You forget that they’re on vacation.  And your not.  And can’t help but join them.  Somehow you get sucked in.  And before you know it, everyone’s buying you shots.  And you’re buying everyone else shots.  And before you know it you end up blacked out and passed out in a boat somewhere. 

And it always seems to be worse when you’re they new kid.  One friend, upon arriving back in town, just gave up and just kept a running tab going at the bar for several days.  Rumor has it they were going to set up a cot in the kitchen for her to sleep on so she didn’t have to waste precious drinking time and drinking money going home each night. 

After awhile you forget that in the so-called “real world” outside your mountain town, people don’t drink every night of the week (really?), don’t spend their days skiing mountains tourists pay $98 to ski (suckers) and don’t believe that a daily 3 PM beer is as important as three square meals, eight hours of sleep and eight glasses of water (but isn’t beer the top triangle on the food pyramid?). 

So go ahead and point and laugh.  Call it frivolous.  Call it immature.  Call it not the real world.  Call it a snow globe.  I’m going to keep on doing it while I can.  I work hard, pull strings, hustle, or some combination thereof, to make it all work.  So if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go now.  I’ve got a cold beer and a shot waiting for me.  I’ve got a lot of work to do to keep this bender rolling.

Author's Note:  Special thanks to Sarah for this title.

My Home On The River That Caught Fire

I started foaming at the mouth and chasing my own tail today.  I recognized this as an early warning sign of resuming wanderlust.  Shit, I really thought I’d make it longer.  You see I have a history of poor impulse control and a tendency towards erratic behavior.  But the doctors assure me that I’m not bipolar.  I just possess sundried and assorted forms of craziness and restlessness.

I am from Cleveland.  A place where the checkout lady at CVS calls me ‘honey’ and was there when I had to purchase tampons for the first time, underage beer for the first time and Plan B for the first time.  A place the humidity makes my cleavage sweat even at midnight and is about as welcome as a the middle seat on an airplane between two bulbous, perspiring 300-pounders whose beads of sweat are inching closer and closer to my elbows on the quarter-inch of armrest that is allowed me by their bratwursts of arms.  A place where people invite you in to sit down at their dinner table because, “Don’t you just know, this young lady was so nice to me today at the grocery store.  She helped me with my buggy.” (and yes we say ‘buggy.’ And sweeper, and clicker.  And if you don’t know what those words mean then you’re just not cool enough).

Cleveland.  Land of surprising ethnic diversity left over from Rockefeller’s days.  Not like Aspen, where you see a person who isn’t white walking down the street and find yourself wondering how they got so tan in the middle of winter.  Cleveland’s got the Czechs, the Croatians, the Poles, the Russians, the other assorted eastern Europeans, the Slovenians, the Irish, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexicans, the West Africans and of course the Italians.  Oh, the Italians.  I dated one once.  They make excellent lovers but terrible husbands or boyfriends.  Remember that.  It might serve you well someday.  They are the race of hair gel and tempers, rigatoni and knee-bending sex.  I will never stop missing inappropriate ass grabs from old men with gold crosses or the sort of overstuffed feeling that only copious canollis, everlasting slices of pepperoni and Grandma Marie’s urgings of, “Come on Katie, you’re too skinny, just one more slice of lasagna,” can wage upon one’s stomach.

Cleveland. A place where this hot mess of a world that we live in right now stares you right in the eye.  It’s my family friend’s face when they find out that they have a bun in the oven and no way to support the ones they already have.  It’s my sister’s eyes when she knows that she might lose the restaurant that is their income, their home and their lifeblood.  It’s the brittle little tear that drops down her cheek that’s already seen too many sorrows when she owns up to the fact that cancer is eating her husband alive and leaving her with two babies.  Alone.  It’s my brother-in-laws head in his hands to hide the tears on his lean, 200-pound high school football star frame when he hears that his house might enter foreclosure.  It’s a place where unemployment is 13%.  It’s a place where the pain of the Great Recession and the Economic Crisis are more than a trite buzzwords garnered from CNN.  It’s a place where these phrases spell a nasty reality.  That life’s hard.  Life’s a bitch.

And unfortunately for me fluttering free spirits with tendencies towards eccentricity and penchants for musing philosophically about the meaning of life, don’t get along so well in the school of hard knocks.  No time for that nonsense when the bank man’s coming to take your house. I got tired of this weight.  The weight of the Cleveland humidity sticking to my skin, even at midnight.  The weight of the problems in my loved ones faces wearing me down.   The weight of my memories dragging at the edges of my psyche. 

And so I’m headed West again.  It will be the tenth time my 2005 Subaru has crossed the country.  And I’ll rejoin comrades in our bubble.  Where this sadness is far, far away in a land called Cleveland.  The place where I’m from.  So don’t fuck with me because I’ve got a whole city behind me ready to kick your ass because us Clevelanders stick together.

The Quitter Who Laughs Last

This is not a fairy tale.  But it does end happily ever after.  I think.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I lived in cubical hell.  And then I quit my perfectly logical, very reasonable, well-enough paying job, packed a duffel bag and hopped on a plane to Aspen.  And I’m not going back.

I have a history of quitting.  And of making quick decisions once I make up my mind.  I just pack my bags and go.  My father likes to be melodramatic about these things and worry that I will never amount to anything and end up barefoot and pregnant every time I quit something.  Herein lies a brief history of my quitting.

First I quit college.  Four times.

I spent approximately one month of my freshman year at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.  It just didn’t feel right.  And for the first time I trusted my gut.  And it felt good.  And then I quit two more schools just for good measure.  And then I graduated.

Then I got into Oxford.  So I went.  Because it was Oxford.  And if you get into Oxford you go.  I guess.  But it just wasn’t for me.  I like freedom, and mountains and madness.  Not seven hundred year-old stiflingly damp tradition in a flat, damp land.  So I quit.

Then I went a got me one of those high-paying jobs.  At a reliable company.  With reliable pay increases.  Doing reliable work.  With reliable people.  It was a great company.  Just not for me.  The problem was that I hate reliability.  I like remarkable.  And really the opposite of remarkable is very good.  And McMaster was very good.  But not remarkable.  I was seeking something.

I was seeking myself.  I still am.  Hopefully I still will be on the day I hit the pearly gates with a six-pack and a slew of stories.  I was seeking that madness that feels like its going to explode out of you like an orgasm of lunacy.  I was seeking people who inspire me to be just a little more insane every day.  People who ask, “Why not?” instead of, “Why bother?”  I needed to find my fellow dreamers and sinners – my desperados and free birds, my rolling stones and high-flying birds.  I like crazy people with a gleam in their eye.  I like the kind of people who might walk out the door and never come back because the world was calling and they had to go.  These people have broken my heart and destroyed me.  They’ve left me lying naked on the floor asking, “What the hell just happened?” 

But they challenged me, and pissed me off and made me question my reality, my morals, my dreams and my soul.  And I have stories and laughs and tears.  But never a dull moment.  And I’d rather have that remarkable life than a life of safe reliability, a stable marriage and a good paycheck.  Because I guess I am just fucking nuts.  And each day I get a little bit closer to the authentic me.  My own crazy devil without a cause.

So I quit that life and I hit the road.  And I’m still going.  Everyone likes to call it a phase.  And rattle of trite clichés about “growing up” and “settling down” and “changing my mind” and “getting it out of my system.”  I think they truly believe that one day you reach a magic age when you must get serious and settle down into the mendacity of a 9-5 job.  This life supposedly offers the steady security that your life will never falter and will never be scary, but will never be crazy nuts either.  I promised myself never to go back there lest I go back to the dark corner of hell where I was wallowing.  Go ahead.  Roll your eyes at my youthful naïveté all you want.  I’ll add you to my list of people to call in ten years and say, “I told you so.”  And yes, there really is such a list.

And I know it’s going to end happily ever after.  And I will find people to share my ride with.  And every night before I fall asleep I pray (even heathens can believe in God).  I thank God for having the strength to change the way I was.  And I ask for peace of mind, and a gentle hand, and a miracle to heal my broken soul.  And I pray – don’t let us get sick, or old, just let us be together tonight.  

I Have The Bartender's Clothes But No Bartender

Stuck in Denver with no place to go (Please See Exhibit A and Exhibit B for further explanation) and out of luck for the moment I opt for comfort food.  I come from Aspen, the love child that was born when Sodom and Gomorra went out drinking with the Land of Milk and Honey and just happened to have an unprotected good time.  In other words, because I spend my life in a  hedonistic winter playground for adults, my comfort food is anything that is not celebrated by Bon Appetite or Food and Wine, is not frequented by Paris Hilton or Kate Hudson and is decidedly not creative or progressive.  Comfort food is mainstream America at its finest.  I can order $2.95 tasters and cheap wine in Cherry Creek (an upscale enclave in Denver populated by hipster yuppies, desperate housewives and grey flannel suite wearing execs – all with crunchy-hippie yearnings), just as easily as I can in Cleveland.

I belly up to the bar and order a satisfyingly cheap glass of Zig Zag Zin and a basil, tomato and goat cheese pizza.  And then it commences.  My obsessive compulsive, psychoanalysis of my fellow Brio patrons.  There are the requisite business travelers.  A 30-something woman in a power suit who looks like she over-compensates for being a woman in Corporate America by being a raging bitch.  There’s a member of the grey flannel mafia hunched over a scotch on the rocks and studying the melting ice cubes in his highball glass.  There’s the brassy-haired blond behind the bar who probably escaped from St. Louis as soon as she got the chance.  And then there’s the bar clown.  Every bar has one.  He was the loveable funny guy in high school and has never really grown up.  His apartment likely has Chili Peppers posters and remote control cars strewn around despite the fact that he’s old enough to have a big-boy job and an apartment that is more Pottery Barn than Kappa Sig; or at least responsibilities greater than showing up to the bar in time for his 4 PM shift.  I’m intrigued by him though and throw him a wry smile.

He and the brassy blond and debating who gets to leave early on account of the snow.  They decide to Rock Paper Scissors for it.

“I can beat anyone in this bar in Rock Paper Scissors,” the clown puffs out his chest.

“That’s a bold statement.”   This seems to offend him.

“Well then let’s go kiddo.”

I throw paper.  I always throw paper first.  It’s easy.  Just a flat hand stretched out in front.  My paper covers his rock.

“All right it was just luck.  Let’s go best two out of three.”

My scissors beat his paper.  Sweet victory.

Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Rock-Paper-Scissor’s clothes would be in my car.  Alone.  Without their rightful owner.  How did he get away with no clothes you might ask?  Well the night didn’t end up like that.   What kind of girl do you take me for?  So how did I end up with three brand new shirts from Brooks Brother, a Nordstrom bag full of socks and two news ties of unknown designer origin?  Some things in life are just a mystery.

I returned said bag to the hostess stand with a polite note reading, “So sorry I had to leave quickly last night.  Thanks for a great evening!  Good luck in all future endeavors.  (970) 319-4810.  Kate.”   Four hours later I was almost back to Aspen and my phone rang.  Little did I know I had recruited a stage five clinger.  He would proceed to call me daily for the next three weeks.  He didn't stop until i threatened a restraining order.  Well actually that's not true.  But it would have been funny if it was, huh?

A Rainy Day In Idaho

It’s a rainy day in Idaho and I’m on the road again.  Still looking for that real world out there in that big, vast somewhere.  Disappearing down this lost highway, underneath that purple-gray bruise of a sky, I can breath.  Smells like wet, and dirt, like one of the juicy sausages of a caterpillar unearthed from beneath Mom’s terra cotta pots.  Country is on the radio again and it keeps interrupting my otherwise profound musing on the metaphysical being of life. It’s all pure America.  It’s all heartbreak and hope, healing and moving.  It’s never easy to say goodbye.  I’m gonna drive to Atlanta, and live out this fantasy.

It’s nice to sleep again. Woke up early this morning around 4 AM.  Thoughts of us kept keeping me awake.  Not passed out drunk from too many bottles of Fat Bastard sleep.  Not return to the crypt from taking four Tylenol PM’s sleep.  Not I’ve cried so hard that snot dripped from places I didn’t know it could drip and now my body is cooked sleep (footnote: thanks for dealing with that one D).  But good old-fashioned sleep.  The kind you get when the rain is sliding down the windowpanes on a summer night as seductive as Miles Davis’ Blue Is Green.  It’s what seeps into your body when you’ve finally put everything else to bed. But that’s ok, there’s nothing left to say. But you’ll think of me.

Clayton, Idaho.  Population 26.  I note the irony of the name.  My family’s name is Clayton.  Sweet somewhere far away someone’s name is Clayton. But we can be assured we’ll meet again by and by.  If not here then somewhere up above.  The place is lump-in-your-throat beautiful.  It must be how parents feel looking at their babies, or how art connoisseurs feel looking at a Caravaggio.  I am neither so I can only imagine.  The Salmon curls up and wraps around my mind like the ribbons of smoke that used to twist and wind up from my old lover’s midnight cigarettes.  It’s seductive and sort of frightening.  Like any good lover should be.  Most are neither. 

I really like to know things.  That’s deep I know.  But bear with me. Not knowing what we could have been, what we should have been.  However, it’s this desire to “know things” that provided the jet fuel for American expansion.  It’s also our collective, national ADHD.  Once we know one thing we want to know another because our attention has already deviated from the original thing that we discovered.

The lure of the open road lies in its promise of freedom and hope and new beginning and forgotten sorrows.  The logic is as follows.  If Point A is bad, and Point B is unlike Point A, then Point B must be better.  This has drawn road warriors from the pioneers to Kerouac, Lewis and Clark to Thelma and Louise.  The problem lies once again in the fact that human behavior is inherently illogical.  Generally humans arrive at Point B only to realize it has it’s own set of problems and that they should either go on ahead to Point C, or cut their losses and head home to Point A.  And so we as Americans move.  As Stevenson said, the great affair is to move.  That’s what we do as Americans.  We pack our worldly belongings into the big, American-made land barge (or small Japanese vehicle in my case) and head out in search of meaning and answers, new beginnings and buried problems.  The problem is we don’t find them.  But then again, I guess that’s life.  Take your records.  Take your freedom.  Take your space and take you freedom.  But you’ll think of me.

And it’s a good thing we’ve got problems, and highways, and cars, and hope.  Because if we didn’t we would never move.  And if we didn’t move we wouldn’t have the America we know today.  And maybe that would be good.  But maybe, like the weird uncle everyone has, you have to love America warts and all.  Because maybe that’s how life is.

It’s never easy lettin’ go of the ones we love.

Author’s Note:  Cut me some slack.  Thanks for listening to me wax poetic about life and the open road and it’s effects of the interpersonal relationships to individual problems that define the dichotomy of American life today.  I’m a bottle of cheap red wine in and it seemed appropriate.  Tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.  

Things To Do While Driving Through The Empty Plains

Anyone who has driven the vast stretches of empty space, prairie and farmland that comprises the Great Plains of America will understand.  And most of you will know what I mean when I say that there are times when an entire song will play on the ipod and you will realize that, albeit the fact that you have been starring at the road the entire time, you have not really looked at the road for the duration of the song.  This empty, straight road, devoid of other drivers, provides you with ample time and ability to perform myriad meaningless task behind the wheel.

1. Read the map.  I mean really read the map.  When you really read the map you discover town with names like Fairplay, Last Chance, No Name, Slickpoo, Zaza, Hungry Horse, Lolo, Cut Bank and even Hell (Michigan).  You learn about mountain ranges and lakes, national monuments and national parks.  One time I read the map for ten minutes in eastern Wyoming and realized that I should check in with the road before continuing to study the map.

2. File your nails.  Yes, this sounds unnecessarily girly and very anti-feminist of me.  But trust me, when you've been driving for throaty-seven odd hours and have nothing to look at but trucks, prairies, the hood of your car and your hands on the steering wheel, eliminating ragged nails become an obsession.  And since driving requires little or no attention, filing is easy.

3. Eat.  You could actually set up a TV table with a full steak dinner and enjoy it without disrupting your drive.  Nonetheless, on the road, all you're likely to come by is Arby's or Subway, McDonald's or Burger King.

4. Change drivers.  I've done it.  Cruise control makes many things possible.

5. Read a book.  Or, for those who prefer pictures to words, watch a movie.  While I've never tried either, I know people who rent a stack of DVDs before any long road trip.  This makes you question the safety of the roads more than you already do doesn't it?

6. Take a nap.  Ok, just kidding.

7. Watch other drivers.  You will never believe the things you see people doing in cars.  I've seen people applying make-up.  Not just lip gloss but full blown foundation, concealer, eyeliner, mascara and eye shadow.  Like my mother always said, "Careful you could poke an eye out."  I've seen people reading books.  Probably just tourist book and not entire novels but nonetheless, truly engrossed in books.  I've seen more nose-pickers, family-jewel-adjusters, clothes-changes and eyelash-getter-outters than I can count.  But what really takes the cake is when you look at a passing car or glance in your rear view mirror and see a lone driver behind you.  And then, just like that, there are two people in the car behind you.  A guy and a girl.  Priceless.

National Parks, Inc.

Visiting a national park in off-season is a lot like visiting Aspen in April, Seaside Heights, New Jersey after Labor Day or a Des Moines street carnival on Monday morning.  It’s as quiet as a college library on spring’s first sunny day; yet you can hear the faint creaking of chairlifts, or smell caramel apples, or see toothless carnies grinning.  It’s perhaps the most authentic time in these worlds built mostly on whimsy and fantasy.  It’s when you see them for what they are, cracks in the varnish and all.

There is no other time to visit one of America’s great National Parks but during these times.  I do this not only to fulfill my romantic yearnings for authenticity and realness, but also because of the decided lack of the species Homo touristicas.  Find this species in their natural habitat, usually the behind the wheel of the gas-guzzling, road-hogging RV, within the confines of the Shitty-Items-Made-In-China Gift Shop or at the I’m-A-Fat-American Fast Food Restaurant.  This species is identifiable by their really white sneakers with requisite white tube socks, neon green or magenta fanny packs and khaki shorts.  They can usually be seen carrying their young on a nylon leash, or dragging them by an arm as the young screams because they were not allowed to purchase a Shitty Gift at the Shitty-Items-Made-In-China Gift Shop.

Everything leading up to Glacier National Park is themed. It’s as if Walt Disney himself got a hold of the Great American Wilderness and created Wilderness Disneyland.  There is the Glacier View Inn, the Glacier Bar and Grill, the Glacier Bear Supermarket, Wild Indian Curios, Glacier Laundromat and the list goes on.  The so-called Glacier Park International (yes, international) airport is bigger than both the Aspen airport as well as the Akron-Canton airport.  Where is the wilderness I was looking for?

Inside it’s all park fees, park rules, paved park roads, fenced off park picnic areas and tourist shops in this supposed wilderness area.  At this time of year the park, like the Des Moines street fair, is blissfully devoid of Homo touristicas.  It’s just me and a Tacoma with a couple from Alaska, who probably came down south to this here beach for spring break.

I wake up and unfold myself from the backseat of my car, feeling good about life because I was not attacked by a hungry, pissed-off early spring grizzly, and am greeted by the most pristine excuse for a High Rockies lake that I have ever seen.  Alone, absolutely alone, I can’t think of anything better.  Except maybe a cup of coffee, but let’s not split hairs.  I don’t think it would feel the same if the morning silence was interrupted by a screaming rug rat, the growl of an RV engine or the smell of bacon frying on the portable Coleman.

The National Park system is quite the accomplishment.  It protects vast swaths of land and allows the city-bound American to get a taste, however small and brief, of true wilderness.  This is good.  Otherwise the Average American wouldn’t stand a chance against the call of potato chips, Pepsi and the six-hundred channels on their Direct TV. But are they really experiencing the wilderness or are they just touring around Wilderness Disneyland?  It’s just another one of the contradictions that makes America great.  Welcome to National Park, Inc.

Rules For Sleeping in Your Car

Since we are on the topic of sleeping in cars…

1. Never sleep naked.  I don’t care if you are hot.  I don’t care if you want to have wild sex.  You never know when a cop, ranger, grizzly or a shotgun-toting Montanan will come a-knocking.  It’s always better to be clothed in these situations.    Nudity makes it really awkward.

2. Always lock you car.  It deters psychopaths and bears from breaking and entering.  And it gives you a chance to start the engine and make a quick getaway if such an intruder should surface.

3. Don’t fuck with the US Government.  Park Rangers love nothing more than ousting car-sleepers parked in inappropriate camping spots.  Obey all signs in National and State Parks.  Or at least be able to explain why you didn’t.  Note: National/State Parks are different than National/State Forests and require a fee.  Should you choose to ignore this, beware that a Ranger will sniff you out like a bloodhound on a coon’s trail.  Public lands and BLM lands are ideal.  Especially in the wiles of Northeastern Idaho. 

4. If you don’t obey said signage, play nice with the ranger, cop or shotgun-toting Montanan who is mad at you.  Playing dumb usually works best for the female variety of car-sleeper.  Bonus points for nice tits and pretty smile.

5. Crack a window so you don’t suffocate.

6. Keep all of your shit in the car.  Rangers, vagabonds and animals tend to collect it if it’s left outside the vehicle.

7. Leave the driver’s seat clear in case you need to make a quick getaway.

8. Don’t let your fear get the best of you. 

9. Face east.  There is nothing better than watching the sun come up.