kindness of strangers - i
this post won't have the right texture if i don't at first explain that only part of my trip over the last week has been geographic. that part is easy to write about. what isn't easy to write about is the railroad spike that has been driven through my cynicism. or a gaping hole of despair opening up in my stomach. then being cauterized. then opening again. then being seared shut so suddenly that i am still in shock. hell i don't even have a vocabulary for this. typing 'uplifting' is unfamiliar on a keyboard - my fingers almost just cramped up.
ah yeah. let's start at the melbourne i95 onramp, two hours north of miami, where kita kindly took me as a front for my parents, only after letting me crash at her boyf's for a few hours and guiding me through sandwich preparation protocol.
it didn't start out well because it never does (something about neuropeptide levels, thanks candace b. pert). kira had dropped me off at the nearby walmart and it was raining. i was walking out to the onramp, trying to shake this sense of impropriety and embarassment i was feeling at the idea of standing in front of potentially thousands of drivers doing something completely ridiculous, when a huge SUV drove through a deep puddle near me and covered me from chest to toes in water.
oh GREAT. i am a HUGE FUCKING LOSER, covered in DIRTY LOSER WATER. i felt like i was in the middle of one of those naked dreams. i grit my teeth, set my pack down in the mud, stuck my thumb up in the rain, and had a ride two minutes later.
?
two minutes.
maybe three.
a guy in a pickup. named tim. he said he felt bad for a guy standing out in the rain. i told him not to feel too bad; i hadn't been out there too long.
i looked around. i couldn't understand how but my abject shame was completely gone. mostly i felt alert. and grateful.
tim turned out to be one of these loud, coarse, friendly central florida guys (imagine the dude from adaptation).
"my wife and i are into s&m," he began at one point.
"uh... yeah?" i replied. lizard brain kicking into gear.
"yeah. she snores and i masturbate! HA HA HA!"
ha ha! ho boy. tim drove me to edgewater, an hour or two north of melbourne. the edgewater exit was nothing more than an empty road and a small gas station. and it was raining still. a guy was filling up his taxi cab. i don't particularly know why, just gut i suppose, but i asked him "you wouldn't happen to be headed north, would you?"
he hesitantly replied he was, and we went through a semi-confused exchange (bringing out a map to show him where jacksonville was) which ended with him asking me, "you don't have a knife, do you?" i promised him i didn't. we got in the car and took off. something was wrong. he was going east. i pointed this out and he said, "oh, you know i thought something was wrong," pulled a u-turn and got onto the correct highway.
this guy was so strangely shifty. i think he may have been nervous with me in the car, but after a while i realized he was just permanently... distracted. he drove 50 mph in the slow lane, adjusting the air conditioner and raising and lowering windows every few minutes, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel every 30 seconds. he would repeat to himself the number of miles left to jacksonville at every single sign, and then poorly reevaluate how much time that meant.
"70 miles... oh. we get there in half hour."
but besides that roger was friendly. asking about my family. he was nicaraguan so we discussed central american stuff. he told me horror stories about being an immigrant taxi driver in miami and how the day before his brother (also a cab driver) had been stabbed in the leg by robbers. he politely explained his original hesitancy to help me out by saying "you can't trust people these days." which is probably true, as true goes on a sliding scale. he told me he was driving out to san antonio to live with his sister. he wanted to get a job as a nurse because someone had told him that it was a short certification course, after which he could "make... at least... 50 or 60 an hour". he rubbed his fingers in front of me when he said that. international money sign. good luck dude.
roger dropped me off on stockton, central jacksonville, right off i10. i had a sheet of paper in my pocket with turnip's number on it. but it was already past 9, so i looked around for a bit to scope out sleeping options. the neighborhood looked a little shady. i took a few steps towards the gas station across the street before noticing plastic yellow ribbon that said "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS". there was a white news van with its transmitter telescoping out above. i walked up to the news caster and asked him what had happened.
"oh, last night there was a robbery here and someone got shot in the face."
just like that, he said it. oh, okay. i walked over to a cab driver and said, "hey man, where is a nice part of town to go for a walk?" i don't know. i couldn't think of how to put "where is a suitably quiet, safe underpass for me to sleep under?"
he gave me the appropriate incredulous look and said "man, are you crazy? nowhere round here."
well. so i called leah. then everything just went awesome. but first i took a nap. another homeless guy was sharing the area i chose to take a nap, but he seemed mostly harmless, muttering to himself and digging a hole in the ground into which he placed a coffee can.
now we jump into lightspeed because i say so. after all i am writing about the kindness of strangers, not the kindness of really incredibly wonderful people who i am lucky to count as friends.
okay i can't help it. a few things: turnip and semiprecious and skunk_ape swooped me out of ohshitville and took me straight to harry's. this is exactly what i needed - i was pretty shaken up from my day. they took me to their home and i met venison price, and showed me pictures, and played great music, regaled me with stories, took me to eat at legendary spots like the casbah and i am so hook'ahd on the hookah (and some other place with bright paint outside. and beer? cheese? soup?), took me out to talbot and braved BITING FLIES, shared their absinthe, some INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE mezcal, crazy menstrual wine, their dogs and cats, renditions of pearl jam songs, X-TREME crab fishing stories. man.
then leah gave me a place to crash, took me to five points, her great antique store with mystical chime toys and out-of-body kindergardeners, introduced me to her mom and mexico stories and hilarious eddie izzard, introduced me to all sorts of good music (not surprised!), got groceries and COOKED this extremely tasty dinner (surprised!) with a nice bottle of wine, had some fucken' wicked talks about feminism and other deep stuff, showed me around her neighborhood and its pretty parks, did a little car browsing, scoped out my dropoff point with me, and even had a tire changing adventure, and got up super early to drop me off at an on-ramp.
when all i did was email leah a few days before and say, hi! i am coming through town. let's get a beer.
seriously! i went from OH WHAT THE FUCK to a completely different kind of OH WHAT THE FUCK in the span of a weekend. this is where i can muster not even the tiniest bit of typical lj-coolness or cynicism: you guys took such good care of me and i am still reeling. i don't even know how to say thanks enough. you guys have hearts of gold and such overwhelming good spirit. the next time i settle down, come visit and i will roll out not one red carpet but probably like twenty of them. maybe thirty.
this post is getting long. more happens later, and i'll get to that.
ah yeah. let's start at the melbourne i95 onramp, two hours north of miami, where kita kindly took me as a front for my parents, only after letting me crash at her boyf's for a few hours and guiding me through sandwich preparation protocol.
it didn't start out well because it never does (something about neuropeptide levels, thanks candace b. pert). kira had dropped me off at the nearby walmart and it was raining. i was walking out to the onramp, trying to shake this sense of impropriety and embarassment i was feeling at the idea of standing in front of potentially thousands of drivers doing something completely ridiculous, when a huge SUV drove through a deep puddle near me and covered me from chest to toes in water.
oh GREAT. i am a HUGE FUCKING LOSER, covered in DIRTY LOSER WATER. i felt like i was in the middle of one of those naked dreams. i grit my teeth, set my pack down in the mud, stuck my thumb up in the rain, and had a ride two minutes later.
?
two minutes.
maybe three.
a guy in a pickup. named tim. he said he felt bad for a guy standing out in the rain. i told him not to feel too bad; i hadn't been out there too long.
i looked around. i couldn't understand how but my abject shame was completely gone. mostly i felt alert. and grateful.
tim turned out to be one of these loud, coarse, friendly central florida guys (imagine the dude from adaptation).
"my wife and i are into s&m," he began at one point.
"uh... yeah?" i replied. lizard brain kicking into gear.
"yeah. she snores and i masturbate! HA HA HA!"
ha ha! ho boy. tim drove me to edgewater, an hour or two north of melbourne. the edgewater exit was nothing more than an empty road and a small gas station. and it was raining still. a guy was filling up his taxi cab. i don't particularly know why, just gut i suppose, but i asked him "you wouldn't happen to be headed north, would you?"
he hesitantly replied he was, and we went through a semi-confused exchange (bringing out a map to show him where jacksonville was) which ended with him asking me, "you don't have a knife, do you?" i promised him i didn't. we got in the car and took off. something was wrong. he was going east. i pointed this out and he said, "oh, you know i thought something was wrong," pulled a u-turn and got onto the correct highway.
this guy was so strangely shifty. i think he may have been nervous with me in the car, but after a while i realized he was just permanently... distracted. he drove 50 mph in the slow lane, adjusting the air conditioner and raising and lowering windows every few minutes, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel every 30 seconds. he would repeat to himself the number of miles left to jacksonville at every single sign, and then poorly reevaluate how much time that meant.
"70 miles... oh. we get there in half hour."
but besides that roger was friendly. asking about my family. he was nicaraguan so we discussed central american stuff. he told me horror stories about being an immigrant taxi driver in miami and how the day before his brother (also a cab driver) had been stabbed in the leg by robbers. he politely explained his original hesitancy to help me out by saying "you can't trust people these days." which is probably true, as true goes on a sliding scale. he told me he was driving out to san antonio to live with his sister. he wanted to get a job as a nurse because someone had told him that it was a short certification course, after which he could "make... at least... 50 or 60 an hour". he rubbed his fingers in front of me when he said that. international money sign. good luck dude.
roger dropped me off on stockton, central jacksonville, right off i10. i had a sheet of paper in my pocket with turnip's number on it. but it was already past 9, so i looked around for a bit to scope out sleeping options. the neighborhood looked a little shady. i took a few steps towards the gas station across the street before noticing plastic yellow ribbon that said "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS". there was a white news van with its transmitter telescoping out above. i walked up to the news caster and asked him what had happened.
"oh, last night there was a robbery here and someone got shot in the face."
just like that, he said it. oh, okay. i walked over to a cab driver and said, "hey man, where is a nice part of town to go for a walk?" i don't know. i couldn't think of how to put "where is a suitably quiet, safe underpass for me to sleep under?"
he gave me the appropriate incredulous look and said "man, are you crazy? nowhere round here."
well. so i called leah. then everything just went awesome. but first i took a nap. another homeless guy was sharing the area i chose to take a nap, but he seemed mostly harmless, muttering to himself and digging a hole in the ground into which he placed a coffee can.
now we jump into lightspeed because i say so. after all i am writing about the kindness of strangers, not the kindness of really incredibly wonderful people who i am lucky to count as friends.
okay i can't help it. a few things: turnip and semiprecious and skunk_ape swooped me out of ohshitville and took me straight to harry's. this is exactly what i needed - i was pretty shaken up from my day. they took me to their home and i met venison price, and showed me pictures, and played great music, regaled me with stories, took me to eat at legendary spots like the casbah and i am so hook'ahd on the hookah (and some other place with bright paint outside. and beer? cheese? soup?), took me out to talbot and braved BITING FLIES, shared their absinthe, some INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE mezcal, crazy menstrual wine, their dogs and cats, renditions of pearl jam songs, X-TREME crab fishing stories. man.
then leah gave me a place to crash, took me to five points, her great antique store with mystical chime toys and out-of-body kindergardeners, introduced me to her mom and mexico stories and hilarious eddie izzard, introduced me to all sorts of good music (not surprised!), got groceries and COOKED this extremely tasty dinner (surprised!) with a nice bottle of wine, had some fucken' wicked talks about feminism and other deep stuff, showed me around her neighborhood and its pretty parks, did a little car browsing, scoped out my dropoff point with me, and even had a tire changing adventure, and got up super early to drop me off at an on-ramp.
when all i did was email leah a few days before and say, hi! i am coming through town. let's get a beer.
seriously! i went from OH WHAT THE FUCK to a completely different kind of OH WHAT THE FUCK in the span of a weekend. this is where i can muster not even the tiniest bit of typical lj-coolness or cynicism: you guys took such good care of me and i am still reeling. i don't even know how to say thanks enough. you guys have hearts of gold and such overwhelming good spirit. the next time i settle down, come visit and i will roll out not one red carpet but probably like twenty of them. maybe thirty.
this post is getting long. more happens later, and i'll get to that.