34 hours part III
The final chapter in my vacation story, where we kill a hobbit, and find out that Neo is part of the Matrix. Enjoy!
All I knew when I woke up that morning was that it was morning, and to be honest, I wasn't even sure if it was morning at all. I knew the sun was up and shining, I knew I wasn't at home. I had that feeling, that incredibly lost feeling, that head swimming in air, or water, or whatever a head might be floating in, that discombobulated, unfocused feeling. I was tired and sore, and I wasn't in my bed. I felt like I had been hit by a giant bus, or been in a fight with Mike Tyson, or perhaps I had just been stuffed in a small car and driven nearly half way across the country. Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.
It was Tuesday morning, maybe Tuesday morning, and I wasn't in my bed. Actually, I found myself in a place where I had often dreamed, wished, and hoped that I'd one day find myself, Sparkle Princess's bed. She, unfortunately, wasn't in the bed with me at the time. She was sleeping in another bedroom, her mother's bedroom to be exact.
Sparkle and I had just driven from Dallas, Texas to Tucson, Arizona the day prior. The drive should have been a relatively simple drive, but was exasperated by a late starting time, and a mad scramble to finish packing and shipping all of Sparkle's belongings to her new address.
My friend Sparkle Princess moved to Dallas, Texas after she graduated college to be closer with her sister. She spent four, maybe five not-so-eventful years in Dallas (Perhaps the one event she might favorably upon will be us meeting), and then decided it was time to move on. She's a vagabond. Someone (a psychic) told her that he thought she'd do well out on the west coast, and she took his divination to heart (I know that someone (the psychic), and I can tell you from personal experience that he's a bad movie picker. You'd think that someone wielding powers of divination would know that "Pulse" would be horrible movie. I could have told you that from watching the trailer).
So, Sparkle packed up her things, and moved to California, taking me along for the ride, or at least as far as Tucson, and after a long day of driving, a night of heavy sleeping, I woke up, and found myself in Sparkle's bed, yes, unfortunately alone.
I sat up in her bed and looked around her room. I looked at the posters hanging on her walls, and some of the old photos placed in small frames she had on her dresser. Her bedroom had this, "Come home anytime, you room will always be here for you, but Ill use it for storage in the meantime" look that parents sometimes give their kids room after the kids have moved away. I walked out into the house, to look for where I had plugged in my cell phone the night before. I turned the cell phone on and saw that it was 9 in the morning, Tucson time. I walked around the house, looking at the older family pictures. I wondered what Sparkle was like as a young girl. She's quite a mystery, at least for me, as an adult, I can't imagine what she was like as a kid. Sparkle made me promise not to look at her early childhood photos. I feel I kept my promise, as I didn't out and out stare at the pictures, just looked long enough to get a feel for the moment. I was sort of hoping that a glimpse into her past would help me to figure out some of the more eccentric ways of her present. They didn't help much.
Sparkle was still asleep in her mom's bed, and I was getting bored with snooping around the house (plus I did make a promise not to snoop). I attempted to once again hook the television up, (Sparkle's mom was out of town, and had unplugged her cable box and television) but again (I had tried the night before) the number of wires befuddled me. I sat on the couch in the living room for a bit, my head was obviously still asleep. After wandering around the house for fifteen minutes it finally dawned on me that I was in an alien place that needed exploring. I looked out the windows and saw the mountains and cactus and desert surroundings being baked in the hot Arizona sun. I saw strange little birds with horned beaks, little lizards, and tiny squirrel mice running around. I took a shower and got dressed. I was in a totally new place, and it was time to explore.
I had just finished writing a little note saying I was going to walk around the neighborhood when Sparkle woke up.
"I'm going to walk around. I've never been to Arizona, and I kind of want to see what its like out there."
"Great!" She said. "Before you go, let me get you some mace."
"Mace?" I asked. Did we take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and end up in Compton?
"Yeah, we have mountain lions and sometimes you have to mace them."
"Really?"
"Really."
I will sometimes say that I could wrestle a bear and win in a fair fight (no eye gouging or hits below the waist bears often cheat), but I've never thought about having to fight off a mountain lion. They're quicker, more nimble. I'd really have to be on my toes to take on a mountain lion. Still, I figure one good haymaker to the snout ought to take down a mountain lion, plus I should outweigh a mountain lion by a good 100 pounds. If nothing else I could sit on it.
"Do mountain lions usually run up and just randomly attack people?" I asked.
"No, but you want to be careful anyway. I can’t find any mace."
"It's okay. I’m resourceful. If I see a mountain lion Ill just throw a rock or my shoe at it."
"Okay."
I went out for my walk, while Sparkle took a shower. I never saw any mountain lions, nor did I see any wild bore. In fact, none of the dangerous Arizona wildlife came out to greet me. Really all I saw was more giant cacti, more squirrel mice, more tiny lizards, and more birds with crazy beaks. It was hot and quiet, it seemed as if I was the only person outside. I felt as if I had stumbled onto a weird "Left Behind", post apocalyptic sort of scenario where I was the only person left on the planet. Just me and the animals, and a world full of empty houses. Then a car drove by. Then a dump truck. Then another car, the mood was broken, and I decided to walk back to Sparkle's house.
She had just finished getting dressed when I walked back into the house.
"Did you enjoy your walk?" She asked.
"Yeah, it was alright. It's hot out there."
"Yes it is."
"Plus, were in a higher altitude. The air is thinner."
"Did you see any mountain lions?"
"No. They were afraid of me".
"I'm sure that’s what it was."
My flight back to Dallas was at 4:30 in the afternoon, so we had a few hours to eat and see the sights. I put my overnight things back together in my backpack and tossed it into the back of the two-door Honda Civic. Sparkle put on her shoes, and we were finally ready to go out into the world.
This new world of Tucson, Arizona, where the cactus stretched high into the sky, standing as tall as the houses, and where everything had the back drop of tall desert mountains. I was excited to go out and explore. First stop, the mall. I know, it sounds crazy. Actually, our first stop was a grocery store, AJ's, which is like a fancy Whole Foods. There was a nice market place where one could buy prepared food, there was a wine room, an extensive beer isle, and all kinds of regular and natural groceries.
We bought a muffin and coffee, and sat out on the patio silently taking in the mid morning air. We were still beat from the day before. We tried to talk, but I think we were all talked out, and so, we instead watched the rest of the Tucsonians as they read their newspapers and ate their food. My thoughts were slow, swimming in mud. She was silent too. She looked relieved to be home, but tired.
I quietly looked around at all the people that surrounded us, sipped my coffee, and ate pieces our cranberry muffin.
"I can’t get a feeling for the people of Tucson." I said.
"How's that?"
"Well, It sort of reminds me of New Mexico, you know, what with the desert and the mountains."
"Right."
"New Mexico, Taos, specifically, is full of two kinds of people. Rich tourists, the rich tourists might live there, they came to visit, and stayed, and poor people that work to serve the rich. The people who work at the Wal-Mart, or the Burger King. There is very little middle class, almost no middle class in Taos. You're either rich or poor. The poor might be hippies, or earthy types."
"Uh-huh."
"But here, I don't know, its like you picked up one of the Dallas suburbs and just placed it by the mountains. There are a few earthy types here, but everyone here looks like they're from Plano or Richardson" (Dallas suburbs).
"I don’t know most people here are cool. They really don't care how they look, or things like that."
"I can see that. I don’t know. All I'm saying is that it's different."
We left the grocery store and walked over to the mall. It was an outdoor mall. All the shops were self contained, four walls, a roof, a floor, an open front door, but the walkway between the shops were outside, under a covered awning, not a roof, with music being piped through the walls. It was as if someone took a regular indoor mall, and ripped off the top, it was nice, like being indoors, and outdoors all at once.
Sparkle and I wandered into an Anthropologie. We walked around the shop, looking at odd trinkets here and there. Sparkle, who used to work at an Anthropologie in Dallas, would fill me in on this or that display. She wanted to buy something, a wine glass, for a mutual friend of ours. She wanted me to take the wine glass back to him in Dallas.
"You can't buy him something from Anthropologie." I said.
"Why not?"
"Because, he can go to an Anthropologie in Dallas and buy himself something."
"Yes, that's true, but the question is, will he?"
Sparkle has a way of making the most perfect of sense. There's no way I can argue that point.
We walked around the mall a bit longer. We took photos of ourselves against the mountain back drop scenery. Then we decided it was time to eat.
We went to a small Mexican restaurant called Guadalajara Grille and ate. The food, as promised was really good. Unfortunately the food sat in our bellies and made our already slow heads even slower. I wanted nothing more than a nap. A few quiet moments to reflect on the previous days events. Maybe some time to sit at the base of a mountain and look at the nature. Walk through the wildlife, dodge the mountain lions as the leap toward us, run through the fields, throw rocks into a stream, laugh and run and jump with Sparkle in our last moments together.
It seemed as if our mood grew grimmer with each passing minute. We were both exhausted from the day before, all the packing, and the driving, and the talking to one another. And now, there were loads and heaps of Mexican food, sitting in our bellies, weighing us down.
We knew that we would eventually have to part ways. We couldn't talk about what we'd do tomorrow, or next week, cause there would be no tomorrow, or next week for us. We, or at least I, knew these were going to be our final moments together. In a couple of hours I'd be on a plane headed back to Texas, and she'd be in a car headed out to California. We both work retail jobs, were both struggling artist types, which means neither can afford to buy a plane ticket and visit the other on a whim. The thought was definitely hanging heavy on my mind, but I'm the sappy one. I wasn’t sure exactly how Sparkle felt about the whole thing. She was sort of quiet, so maybe she was having the same sappy thoughts somewhere in that head of hers, then again, she may have just been trying to digest her food.
We finished eating, then drove around Tucson, and looked at the buildings. They were older, not very attractive. The looked as if they were built in the 40s or 50s, blocky, not very imaginative, and looked out of place against the southwestern landscape.
"You know, if we could do this over," I said, "I think I would have preferred us to get here a day earlier, that way we could have spent today lounging around your mom's house, cause I just can't concentrate at all today."
"Yeah."
"You want to go to Bookmans?" She asked.
"What's that?"
"A used bookstore."
I work at a bookstore. I am, on a daily basis, surrounded by books, and people who want to read books (and yet, they have such a hard time scanning the shelves and reading the titles, so they ask me to find the books for them. Maybe I'm just bitter cause I had to work today), so I have an interesting reaction when I go into other bookstores. I want to go, I really do, I want to go to other bookstores. I like seeing the other guy's displays. I like seeing how they lay out their store. I like seeing what books are popular. And after I've done one lap around the store, I'm done, you know why? Because I work in a bookstore. I've seen all these books before, and I always feel a little silly buying a book from someplace else when I could buy the book from my bookstore for a lot cheaper.
I walked around the store a few times, and was ready to go. Sparkle walked around the store, and then noticed I was starting to fall asleep on one of the chairs set up throughout the store.
"You hate it here don’t you?" She asked.
"I don’t hate it."
"You look miserable."
"You know I work in a bookstore."
We left and drove around Tucson a bit longer. I told Sparkle that I often dream of retiring to some place that looks like a ranch, a southwestern ranch. It wouldn’t be a working ranch, cause I don't know anything about cattle, or horses, or anything like that. I just like big open spaces, and woodwork.
We drove around looking for ranches that I could possibly live in, but we couldn't find any. The nicest ranches had giant walls surrounding the buildings. Again, we were lost for something to do with our remaining time. Eventually we decided to simply go to the airport, and wait out our remaining minutes of our adventure.
"There will be no goodbye." She said as we entered the airport parking lot.
"What?"
"No goodbyes, no hugging, none of that stuff."
"What are you..."
"I dont like goodbyes. I don’t want it to be depressing. When it’s time for you to leave I'm simply going to get up and walk away."
"Just get up and walk away?"
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
"Yes."
It seemed a little cold, but if there was anything I'd learned from my 30 hours with Sparkle, its that she is what she is, and one of the things she's not is overly emotional.
We walked into the airport, and picked up my boarding pass. We looked around in the airport shops where she and I bought overpriced trinkets for people back home. We looked at the bad art on display in the airport. We sat on a bench just outside the check in point, the point she couldn't cross, cause she didn't have a plane ticket, the point I had to cross to get to my plane. We sat for a bit. I asked her when she'd be leaving for L.A. She said the next day. She was going to visit some friends in Phoenix that night, and would finish her journey the next morning.
It was while we were sitting there occasionally talking about nothing in particular that I understood the reasons behind why I wanted a big goodbye.
Sparkle was the last in a long line of people who have left to go onto other things.
It started, well I guess it started with me. My family used to live in a small suburb of Dallas named Farmers Branch. Farmers Branch is a lower to middle-middle class city. It's an older city, it's wrinkles were showing, crime rates were slowly climbing, and my parents wanted out. We moved one city over, to Carrollton, but I left behind the first girl I ever liked, (or at least whatever feeling it is you have for a person of the opposite sex when you’re in the third grade) Linda.
I can remember (I think) almost exactly when I realized I liked this girl. Our class was coming back into the classroom from lunch, or recess, or something, and she was standing by her desk reading a note. I stood there watching her read the note in the darkened classroom. She smiled, folded the note back up into a tiny square, and held the note close to her chest, almost as if she were hugging the note.
"What is that?" I asked.
She wouldn't show me.
I said it must be important since she hugged it.
She said she didn't.
I said, she did. I said, "You hugged it like this." And I gave Linda a hug.
It was at that point that I became instantly embarrassed by my actions, and I pulled away, maybe because someone else walked into the room. But I sort of wished that maybe the moment had lasted longer. Actually, that’s probably conjecture by my older, smarter self. I was 8 at the time, and that was 22 years ago, for all I know, I was thinking, at that particular point and time, that girls were the enemy (and don't get me wrong, they still are, but now for completely different reasons). But I swear, I think I felt something for that girl.
I actually ran into Linda a few months after we had moved to Carrollton. My mom and I were shopping at K-Mart, and I saw her in the toy isle. She asked me for my number, but I couldn't remember the new phone number. I ran around the store looking for my mom. I finally found her, and told her I ran into Linda, and I needed to give her our phone number, and I couldn't remember it. My mom scolded me for not remembering the phone number, "What happens if something happened and you needed to call home, and you can't remember the phone number?" Which is a valid point on her behalf, but that wasn't the time for me to learn that particular lesson; I needed to give the number to the girl I might end up marrying.
I ran back to the toy isle, but Linda was gone. My mom came and got me, she was done shopping and it was time to go home. I told her I had to find Linda.
"You better hope you find her between here and the checkout line." She said.
I didn’t.
I don't know why I didn't simply ask Linda for her number. I was young and dumb I guess, but chances are if that same scenario happened today, I'd still end up flummoxed to the point where I'd allow the moment to slip through my fingers.
I moved on.
Andrew, Theater Guy, and I were all neighborhood friends in elementary school. I had adapted to my new surroundings in Carrollton. We'd get together every evening and read comics, ride bikes, and do boy things. Then Andrew moved 70 miles away to a little town called Red Oak. I got to go out to Red Oak on one or two occasions, but we eventually lost contact with one another. I remember digging through my closet while home from college one summer. I found something that reminded me of Andrew, and I thought, "It's crazy how people just grow apart." I thought Andrew and I would be friends forever, but I hadn't seen him in ten years. I don't think I'd recognize him if we were standing next to one another. Theater Guy got to see Andrew a few years ago. Apparently he's a tattoo artist in Dallas somewhere, and looks nothing like the tiny blonde haired kid we used to kick the soccer ball with.
Then there was Honda Accord Girl. Honda Accord Girl was my girl. We never dated, (I was too chicken to ask, and was well on my way to building the emotional walls that now prevent me from being able to hold, or even start a romantic relationship) but I promise you, if there's such a thing as alternate realities, then Honda Accord Girl and I are married in those realities. We developed an interesting relationship over the course of a decade. She was the best friend of Theater Guy's younger sister. That meant that when I was with Theater Guy, and our band of merry friends, I tried to fit in by picking on Theater Guy's younger sister and her friends (Honda Accord Girl- we called her Mute, on account that she was soft spoken) during the daytime, but come nighttime, I would walk over to Honda Accord Girl's house, knock on her window, and she'd sit in her window sill, and I'd sit on her front yard, and we'd talk for hours. She was my date to Married Guys wedding. We ate, and laughed, and drank, and danced, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with that girl. I'm pretty sure she wouldnt have minded if that were to happen either, but...
I walked her out to her car, she got into her black Honda Accord, and I watched her drive off. I never saw her again.
I don't know what happened. She moved to Denton to go to school, I lived in Dallas, the two cities, while only being an hour away from one another seem as if they are on opposite sides of the state. We talked on the phone, but our phone conversations became less frequent, we e-mailed each other, but those stopped too. Now, I don't know where she is, I know nothing about her, but I swear those three brake lights on the back of her Honda Accord that lit up, right before she turned onto the service road to the highway, right after she left the wedding, those lights are etched into my memory forever.
Then there's my mom. She, too, is gone.
Then there's Angel Starlight, my best friend from college. She moved to New York, got married, and we don't talk anymore (that’s partially my fault).
I remember my father telling me that some friendships just don't last. That people growing apart was a fact of life. I remember thinking that was the saddest thing I'd ever heard. And not sad in a Nicholas Sparks, "A Walk to Remember" kind of way, but in a Nick Nolte pulled over for drunk driving kind of way. Sad that people can get broken to that point. Where they no longer believe in the endurance of friendship. That people simply grow old, and apart from one another. But lately, I'm starting to think he might be right.
In the past two years I've had more friends move away.
Bean's gone to L.A., Kelpy's gone to Austin, Over Opinionated Girl has moved to Austin. My co-workers Matt and Neens have moved away (Austin and Portland respectively). I still talk to Container Store Girl, but it's not the same as it was back when I was desperately trying to get her to fall for me. She's moved onto other things, which is fine, and I'm happy for her, but I'm still trying to figure out where I am. So in essence, she's moved away too.
Then there's Theater Guy. My best bud in the whole world. He moved to China a few months ago. He'd been in grad school for the past two years. I'd been in crazy dreamland, trying to get Container Store Girl to notice me in a more romantic fashion for the past two years. So we'd kind of being doing our own thing for the past two years, but we'd get together at least once a week, and talk about ideas, and life and love and television and books and culture, and whatever. Then he had this opportunity be a part of a program that helps teach Chinese kids English through theater games.
He took the job.
His parents threw him a going away party. I was there, along with Theater Guy's other friends, Ruth, the other Jeff, and Cassidy. They were my friends too, they still are, but this was Theater Guy's new crew that he had developed over the past two years. Then, right in the middle of the party, my friend Scoop called, (Scoop was my friend that had come along in the last two years), he was feeling down because he'd just broken up with his significant other and he was lonely (and to be honest I felt for him, but I've been alone my whole life, so my sympathy only ran so deep).
I had to leave Theater Guy's going away party cause Scoop was a basket case. I tried to convince Scoop to come out to the party, but he didn't want to. I had to leave the old friend to tend to the new (more high maintenance) one. I felt awful, but the whole event seemed to encapsulate Theater Guy's and my relationship as of late.
I went over to Theater Guy's house (his parent's house actually) the night before he left to live in China for a year. True to form we talked about politics, life, art, theater, culture for along time. Theater Guy's dad came out into the living room and said, "You need to get to sleep. You've got to be at the airport early in the morning. Tell your friend good night." He said that as if we were ten years old again.
Theater Guy looked at his dad and said, "But it's Jeff Hernandez."
That's when I felt it. It didn't matter how many other people there were. Scoop, Container Store Girl, other Jeff, Cassidy, The Romero, Ruth, they all had important roles to play in our lives, but in the end, for me, there would always be Jeff Hernandez and Theater Guy, and we would always be friends no matter what.
Still, tomorrow came, and Theater Guy got on a plane, and 23 hours later he was on the other side of the world. The next time I'll see him will be September 2007.
So, after all that, after watching all those people up and leave, while I stayed (Something compels me to stay in Dallas, why? I don’t know) I found myself in an airport sitting next to Sparkle Princess, the next one in line to leave. I wanted my goodbye, it seemed I had a collection of them now. I wanted my goodbye, but really, I simply didn't want to leave or be left by another person.
"I'm going to go, this is getting too depressing." She said.
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"Well, okay. Drive safe the rest of the way out to California."
"I will."
Sparkle stood up and walked over to the other side of the rope line. I stood up and walked over to the security lady. She highlighted the part of my ticket that read "SEC."
I walked over to the security checkpoint. Sparkle was standing on the other side of the rope line.
"We're not hugging." She said as I walk up to her.
We didn't hug. I simply shook her hand and said nothing. I turned around and walked to the x-ray machine.
It would have been a profoundly sad moment for me, if the moment hadn't been interrupted by the fact that I perhaps look like a security threat.
I was asked to stand in a small area, where I was patted down. A man went through my backpack, asking me questions, and taking what I can only assume were samples looking for toxins (?) from the pockets of my backpack. This was a couple of days before the London airplane terror plot, so they didn't take my toothpaste.
My phone rang as the security people finished with me. It was Sparkle, who was still standing on the other side of the rope line.
"Is this blatant use of racial profiling going to be put in a blog?"
"Maybe. That was weird."
"I think they totally think you look like a terrorist."
"This is why I always wear flip-flops to the airport."
"Yeah. Okay Ill talk to you later."
"Call me when you get to L.A."
"Okay. I will."
"Be careful driving."
"Stop getting sappy."
"Okay. Bye."
And with that, I hung up.
I got on the plane. A few hours later I was back in Dallas sitting on Scoop's couch thinking about how I had to go back to work the next day, while Sparkle was driving out to L.A. I looked around Scoop's apartment. I was there only 48 hours earlier (He let us borrow his camera for the trip). I thought about everything that had happened in the last day and a half, about how we had driven all those miles, through two and a half states (one of the states being Texas, which is as big as three states put together) about the conversations, about the introspection, about where I was, and where I was going. About where I used to be, and about where everyone else was now. 34 hours had passed, and I was back home once more.
All I knew when I woke up that morning was that it was morning, and to be honest, I wasn't even sure if it was morning at all. I knew the sun was up and shining, I knew I wasn't at home. I had that feeling, that incredibly lost feeling, that head swimming in air, or water, or whatever a head might be floating in, that discombobulated, unfocused feeling. I was tired and sore, and I wasn't in my bed. I felt like I had been hit by a giant bus, or been in a fight with Mike Tyson, or perhaps I had just been stuffed in a small car and driven nearly half way across the country. Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.
It was Tuesday morning, maybe Tuesday morning, and I wasn't in my bed. Actually, I found myself in a place where I had often dreamed, wished, and hoped that I'd one day find myself, Sparkle Princess's bed. She, unfortunately, wasn't in the bed with me at the time. She was sleeping in another bedroom, her mother's bedroom to be exact.
Sparkle and I had just driven from Dallas, Texas to Tucson, Arizona the day prior. The drive should have been a relatively simple drive, but was exasperated by a late starting time, and a mad scramble to finish packing and shipping all of Sparkle's belongings to her new address.
My friend Sparkle Princess moved to Dallas, Texas after she graduated college to be closer with her sister. She spent four, maybe five not-so-eventful years in Dallas (Perhaps the one event she might favorably upon will be us meeting), and then decided it was time to move on. She's a vagabond. Someone (a psychic) told her that he thought she'd do well out on the west coast, and she took his divination to heart (I know that someone (the psychic), and I can tell you from personal experience that he's a bad movie picker. You'd think that someone wielding powers of divination would know that "Pulse" would be horrible movie. I could have told you that from watching the trailer).
So, Sparkle packed up her things, and moved to California, taking me along for the ride, or at least as far as Tucson, and after a long day of driving, a night of heavy sleeping, I woke up, and found myself in Sparkle's bed, yes, unfortunately alone.
I sat up in her bed and looked around her room. I looked at the posters hanging on her walls, and some of the old photos placed in small frames she had on her dresser. Her bedroom had this, "Come home anytime, you room will always be here for you, but Ill use it for storage in the meantime" look that parents sometimes give their kids room after the kids have moved away. I walked out into the house, to look for where I had plugged in my cell phone the night before. I turned the cell phone on and saw that it was 9 in the morning, Tucson time. I walked around the house, looking at the older family pictures. I wondered what Sparkle was like as a young girl. She's quite a mystery, at least for me, as an adult, I can't imagine what she was like as a kid. Sparkle made me promise not to look at her early childhood photos. I feel I kept my promise, as I didn't out and out stare at the pictures, just looked long enough to get a feel for the moment. I was sort of hoping that a glimpse into her past would help me to figure out some of the more eccentric ways of her present. They didn't help much.
Sparkle was still asleep in her mom's bed, and I was getting bored with snooping around the house (plus I did make a promise not to snoop). I attempted to once again hook the television up, (Sparkle's mom was out of town, and had unplugged her cable box and television) but again (I had tried the night before) the number of wires befuddled me. I sat on the couch in the living room for a bit, my head was obviously still asleep. After wandering around the house for fifteen minutes it finally dawned on me that I was in an alien place that needed exploring. I looked out the windows and saw the mountains and cactus and desert surroundings being baked in the hot Arizona sun. I saw strange little birds with horned beaks, little lizards, and tiny squirrel mice running around. I took a shower and got dressed. I was in a totally new place, and it was time to explore.
I had just finished writing a little note saying I was going to walk around the neighborhood when Sparkle woke up.
"I'm going to walk around. I've never been to Arizona, and I kind of want to see what its like out there."
"Great!" She said. "Before you go, let me get you some mace."
"Mace?" I asked. Did we take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and end up in Compton?
"Yeah, we have mountain lions and sometimes you have to mace them."
"Really?"
"Really."
I will sometimes say that I could wrestle a bear and win in a fair fight (no eye gouging or hits below the waist bears often cheat), but I've never thought about having to fight off a mountain lion. They're quicker, more nimble. I'd really have to be on my toes to take on a mountain lion. Still, I figure one good haymaker to the snout ought to take down a mountain lion, plus I should outweigh a mountain lion by a good 100 pounds. If nothing else I could sit on it.
"Do mountain lions usually run up and just randomly attack people?" I asked.
"No, but you want to be careful anyway. I can’t find any mace."
"It's okay. I’m resourceful. If I see a mountain lion Ill just throw a rock or my shoe at it."
"Okay."
I went out for my walk, while Sparkle took a shower. I never saw any mountain lions, nor did I see any wild bore. In fact, none of the dangerous Arizona wildlife came out to greet me. Really all I saw was more giant cacti, more squirrel mice, more tiny lizards, and more birds with crazy beaks. It was hot and quiet, it seemed as if I was the only person outside. I felt as if I had stumbled onto a weird "Left Behind", post apocalyptic sort of scenario where I was the only person left on the planet. Just me and the animals, and a world full of empty houses. Then a car drove by. Then a dump truck. Then another car, the mood was broken, and I decided to walk back to Sparkle's house.
She had just finished getting dressed when I walked back into the house.
"Did you enjoy your walk?" She asked.
"Yeah, it was alright. It's hot out there."
"Yes it is."
"Plus, were in a higher altitude. The air is thinner."
"Did you see any mountain lions?"
"No. They were afraid of me".
"I'm sure that’s what it was."
My flight back to Dallas was at 4:30 in the afternoon, so we had a few hours to eat and see the sights. I put my overnight things back together in my backpack and tossed it into the back of the two-door Honda Civic. Sparkle put on her shoes, and we were finally ready to go out into the world.
This new world of Tucson, Arizona, where the cactus stretched high into the sky, standing as tall as the houses, and where everything had the back drop of tall desert mountains. I was excited to go out and explore. First stop, the mall. I know, it sounds crazy. Actually, our first stop was a grocery store, AJ's, which is like a fancy Whole Foods. There was a nice market place where one could buy prepared food, there was a wine room, an extensive beer isle, and all kinds of regular and natural groceries.
We bought a muffin and coffee, and sat out on the patio silently taking in the mid morning air. We were still beat from the day before. We tried to talk, but I think we were all talked out, and so, we instead watched the rest of the Tucsonians as they read their newspapers and ate their food. My thoughts were slow, swimming in mud. She was silent too. She looked relieved to be home, but tired.
I quietly looked around at all the people that surrounded us, sipped my coffee, and ate pieces our cranberry muffin.
"I can’t get a feeling for the people of Tucson." I said.
"How's that?"
"Well, It sort of reminds me of New Mexico, you know, what with the desert and the mountains."
"Right."
"New Mexico, Taos, specifically, is full of two kinds of people. Rich tourists, the rich tourists might live there, they came to visit, and stayed, and poor people that work to serve the rich. The people who work at the Wal-Mart, or the Burger King. There is very little middle class, almost no middle class in Taos. You're either rich or poor. The poor might be hippies, or earthy types."
"Uh-huh."
"But here, I don't know, its like you picked up one of the Dallas suburbs and just placed it by the mountains. There are a few earthy types here, but everyone here looks like they're from Plano or Richardson" (Dallas suburbs).
"I don’t know most people here are cool. They really don't care how they look, or things like that."
"I can see that. I don’t know. All I'm saying is that it's different."
We left the grocery store and walked over to the mall. It was an outdoor mall. All the shops were self contained, four walls, a roof, a floor, an open front door, but the walkway between the shops were outside, under a covered awning, not a roof, with music being piped through the walls. It was as if someone took a regular indoor mall, and ripped off the top, it was nice, like being indoors, and outdoors all at once.
Sparkle and I wandered into an Anthropologie. We walked around the shop, looking at odd trinkets here and there. Sparkle, who used to work at an Anthropologie in Dallas, would fill me in on this or that display. She wanted to buy something, a wine glass, for a mutual friend of ours. She wanted me to take the wine glass back to him in Dallas.
"You can't buy him something from Anthropologie." I said.
"Why not?"
"Because, he can go to an Anthropologie in Dallas and buy himself something."
"Yes, that's true, but the question is, will he?"
Sparkle has a way of making the most perfect of sense. There's no way I can argue that point.
We walked around the mall a bit longer. We took photos of ourselves against the mountain back drop scenery. Then we decided it was time to eat.
We went to a small Mexican restaurant called Guadalajara Grille and ate. The food, as promised was really good. Unfortunately the food sat in our bellies and made our already slow heads even slower. I wanted nothing more than a nap. A few quiet moments to reflect on the previous days events. Maybe some time to sit at the base of a mountain and look at the nature. Walk through the wildlife, dodge the mountain lions as the leap toward us, run through the fields, throw rocks into a stream, laugh and run and jump with Sparkle in our last moments together.
It seemed as if our mood grew grimmer with each passing minute. We were both exhausted from the day before, all the packing, and the driving, and the talking to one another. And now, there were loads and heaps of Mexican food, sitting in our bellies, weighing us down.
We knew that we would eventually have to part ways. We couldn't talk about what we'd do tomorrow, or next week, cause there would be no tomorrow, or next week for us. We, or at least I, knew these were going to be our final moments together. In a couple of hours I'd be on a plane headed back to Texas, and she'd be in a car headed out to California. We both work retail jobs, were both struggling artist types, which means neither can afford to buy a plane ticket and visit the other on a whim. The thought was definitely hanging heavy on my mind, but I'm the sappy one. I wasn’t sure exactly how Sparkle felt about the whole thing. She was sort of quiet, so maybe she was having the same sappy thoughts somewhere in that head of hers, then again, she may have just been trying to digest her food.
We finished eating, then drove around Tucson, and looked at the buildings. They were older, not very attractive. The looked as if they were built in the 40s or 50s, blocky, not very imaginative, and looked out of place against the southwestern landscape.
"You know, if we could do this over," I said, "I think I would have preferred us to get here a day earlier, that way we could have spent today lounging around your mom's house, cause I just can't concentrate at all today."
"Yeah."
"You want to go to Bookmans?" She asked.
"What's that?"
"A used bookstore."
I work at a bookstore. I am, on a daily basis, surrounded by books, and people who want to read books (and yet, they have such a hard time scanning the shelves and reading the titles, so they ask me to find the books for them. Maybe I'm just bitter cause I had to work today), so I have an interesting reaction when I go into other bookstores. I want to go, I really do, I want to go to other bookstores. I like seeing the other guy's displays. I like seeing how they lay out their store. I like seeing what books are popular. And after I've done one lap around the store, I'm done, you know why? Because I work in a bookstore. I've seen all these books before, and I always feel a little silly buying a book from someplace else when I could buy the book from my bookstore for a lot cheaper.
I walked around the store a few times, and was ready to go. Sparkle walked around the store, and then noticed I was starting to fall asleep on one of the chairs set up throughout the store.
"You hate it here don’t you?" She asked.
"I don’t hate it."
"You look miserable."
"You know I work in a bookstore."
We left and drove around Tucson a bit longer. I told Sparkle that I often dream of retiring to some place that looks like a ranch, a southwestern ranch. It wouldn’t be a working ranch, cause I don't know anything about cattle, or horses, or anything like that. I just like big open spaces, and woodwork.
We drove around looking for ranches that I could possibly live in, but we couldn't find any. The nicest ranches had giant walls surrounding the buildings. Again, we were lost for something to do with our remaining time. Eventually we decided to simply go to the airport, and wait out our remaining minutes of our adventure.
"There will be no goodbye." She said as we entered the airport parking lot.
"What?"
"No goodbyes, no hugging, none of that stuff."
"What are you..."
"I dont like goodbyes. I don’t want it to be depressing. When it’s time for you to leave I'm simply going to get up and walk away."
"Just get up and walk away?"
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
"Yes."
It seemed a little cold, but if there was anything I'd learned from my 30 hours with Sparkle, its that she is what she is, and one of the things she's not is overly emotional.
We walked into the airport, and picked up my boarding pass. We looked around in the airport shops where she and I bought overpriced trinkets for people back home. We looked at the bad art on display in the airport. We sat on a bench just outside the check in point, the point she couldn't cross, cause she didn't have a plane ticket, the point I had to cross to get to my plane. We sat for a bit. I asked her when she'd be leaving for L.A. She said the next day. She was going to visit some friends in Phoenix that night, and would finish her journey the next morning.
It was while we were sitting there occasionally talking about nothing in particular that I understood the reasons behind why I wanted a big goodbye.
Sparkle was the last in a long line of people who have left to go onto other things.
It started, well I guess it started with me. My family used to live in a small suburb of Dallas named Farmers Branch. Farmers Branch is a lower to middle-middle class city. It's an older city, it's wrinkles were showing, crime rates were slowly climbing, and my parents wanted out. We moved one city over, to Carrollton, but I left behind the first girl I ever liked, (or at least whatever feeling it is you have for a person of the opposite sex when you’re in the third grade) Linda.
I can remember (I think) almost exactly when I realized I liked this girl. Our class was coming back into the classroom from lunch, or recess, or something, and she was standing by her desk reading a note. I stood there watching her read the note in the darkened classroom. She smiled, folded the note back up into a tiny square, and held the note close to her chest, almost as if she were hugging the note.
"What is that?" I asked.
She wouldn't show me.
I said it must be important since she hugged it.
She said she didn't.
I said, she did. I said, "You hugged it like this." And I gave Linda a hug.
It was at that point that I became instantly embarrassed by my actions, and I pulled away, maybe because someone else walked into the room. But I sort of wished that maybe the moment had lasted longer. Actually, that’s probably conjecture by my older, smarter self. I was 8 at the time, and that was 22 years ago, for all I know, I was thinking, at that particular point and time, that girls were the enemy (and don't get me wrong, they still are, but now for completely different reasons). But I swear, I think I felt something for that girl.
I actually ran into Linda a few months after we had moved to Carrollton. My mom and I were shopping at K-Mart, and I saw her in the toy isle. She asked me for my number, but I couldn't remember the new phone number. I ran around the store looking for my mom. I finally found her, and told her I ran into Linda, and I needed to give her our phone number, and I couldn't remember it. My mom scolded me for not remembering the phone number, "What happens if something happened and you needed to call home, and you can't remember the phone number?" Which is a valid point on her behalf, but that wasn't the time for me to learn that particular lesson; I needed to give the number to the girl I might end up marrying.
I ran back to the toy isle, but Linda was gone. My mom came and got me, she was done shopping and it was time to go home. I told her I had to find Linda.
"You better hope you find her between here and the checkout line." She said.
I didn’t.
I don't know why I didn't simply ask Linda for her number. I was young and dumb I guess, but chances are if that same scenario happened today, I'd still end up flummoxed to the point where I'd allow the moment to slip through my fingers.
I moved on.
Andrew, Theater Guy, and I were all neighborhood friends in elementary school. I had adapted to my new surroundings in Carrollton. We'd get together every evening and read comics, ride bikes, and do boy things. Then Andrew moved 70 miles away to a little town called Red Oak. I got to go out to Red Oak on one or two occasions, but we eventually lost contact with one another. I remember digging through my closet while home from college one summer. I found something that reminded me of Andrew, and I thought, "It's crazy how people just grow apart." I thought Andrew and I would be friends forever, but I hadn't seen him in ten years. I don't think I'd recognize him if we were standing next to one another. Theater Guy got to see Andrew a few years ago. Apparently he's a tattoo artist in Dallas somewhere, and looks nothing like the tiny blonde haired kid we used to kick the soccer ball with.
Then there was Honda Accord Girl. Honda Accord Girl was my girl. We never dated, (I was too chicken to ask, and was well on my way to building the emotional walls that now prevent me from being able to hold, or even start a romantic relationship) but I promise you, if there's such a thing as alternate realities, then Honda Accord Girl and I are married in those realities. We developed an interesting relationship over the course of a decade. She was the best friend of Theater Guy's younger sister. That meant that when I was with Theater Guy, and our band of merry friends, I tried to fit in by picking on Theater Guy's younger sister and her friends (Honda Accord Girl- we called her Mute, on account that she was soft spoken) during the daytime, but come nighttime, I would walk over to Honda Accord Girl's house, knock on her window, and she'd sit in her window sill, and I'd sit on her front yard, and we'd talk for hours. She was my date to Married Guys wedding. We ate, and laughed, and drank, and danced, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with that girl. I'm pretty sure she wouldnt have minded if that were to happen either, but...
I walked her out to her car, she got into her black Honda Accord, and I watched her drive off. I never saw her again.
I don't know what happened. She moved to Denton to go to school, I lived in Dallas, the two cities, while only being an hour away from one another seem as if they are on opposite sides of the state. We talked on the phone, but our phone conversations became less frequent, we e-mailed each other, but those stopped too. Now, I don't know where she is, I know nothing about her, but I swear those three brake lights on the back of her Honda Accord that lit up, right before she turned onto the service road to the highway, right after she left the wedding, those lights are etched into my memory forever.
Then there's my mom. She, too, is gone.
Then there's Angel Starlight, my best friend from college. She moved to New York, got married, and we don't talk anymore (that’s partially my fault).
I remember my father telling me that some friendships just don't last. That people growing apart was a fact of life. I remember thinking that was the saddest thing I'd ever heard. And not sad in a Nicholas Sparks, "A Walk to Remember" kind of way, but in a Nick Nolte pulled over for drunk driving kind of way. Sad that people can get broken to that point. Where they no longer believe in the endurance of friendship. That people simply grow old, and apart from one another. But lately, I'm starting to think he might be right.
In the past two years I've had more friends move away.
Bean's gone to L.A., Kelpy's gone to Austin, Over Opinionated Girl has moved to Austin. My co-workers Matt and Neens have moved away (Austin and Portland respectively). I still talk to Container Store Girl, but it's not the same as it was back when I was desperately trying to get her to fall for me. She's moved onto other things, which is fine, and I'm happy for her, but I'm still trying to figure out where I am. So in essence, she's moved away too.
Then there's Theater Guy. My best bud in the whole world. He moved to China a few months ago. He'd been in grad school for the past two years. I'd been in crazy dreamland, trying to get Container Store Girl to notice me in a more romantic fashion for the past two years. So we'd kind of being doing our own thing for the past two years, but we'd get together at least once a week, and talk about ideas, and life and love and television and books and culture, and whatever. Then he had this opportunity be a part of a program that helps teach Chinese kids English through theater games.
He took the job.
His parents threw him a going away party. I was there, along with Theater Guy's other friends, Ruth, the other Jeff, and Cassidy. They were my friends too, they still are, but this was Theater Guy's new crew that he had developed over the past two years. Then, right in the middle of the party, my friend Scoop called, (Scoop was my friend that had come along in the last two years), he was feeling down because he'd just broken up with his significant other and he was lonely (and to be honest I felt for him, but I've been alone my whole life, so my sympathy only ran so deep).
I had to leave Theater Guy's going away party cause Scoop was a basket case. I tried to convince Scoop to come out to the party, but he didn't want to. I had to leave the old friend to tend to the new (more high maintenance) one. I felt awful, but the whole event seemed to encapsulate Theater Guy's and my relationship as of late.
I went over to Theater Guy's house (his parent's house actually) the night before he left to live in China for a year. True to form we talked about politics, life, art, theater, culture for along time. Theater Guy's dad came out into the living room and said, "You need to get to sleep. You've got to be at the airport early in the morning. Tell your friend good night." He said that as if we were ten years old again.
Theater Guy looked at his dad and said, "But it's Jeff Hernandez."
That's when I felt it. It didn't matter how many other people there were. Scoop, Container Store Girl, other Jeff, Cassidy, The Romero, Ruth, they all had important roles to play in our lives, but in the end, for me, there would always be Jeff Hernandez and Theater Guy, and we would always be friends no matter what.
Still, tomorrow came, and Theater Guy got on a plane, and 23 hours later he was on the other side of the world. The next time I'll see him will be September 2007.
So, after all that, after watching all those people up and leave, while I stayed (Something compels me to stay in Dallas, why? I don’t know) I found myself in an airport sitting next to Sparkle Princess, the next one in line to leave. I wanted my goodbye, it seemed I had a collection of them now. I wanted my goodbye, but really, I simply didn't want to leave or be left by another person.
"I'm going to go, this is getting too depressing." She said.
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"Well, okay. Drive safe the rest of the way out to California."
"I will."
Sparkle stood up and walked over to the other side of the rope line. I stood up and walked over to the security lady. She highlighted the part of my ticket that read "SEC."
I walked over to the security checkpoint. Sparkle was standing on the other side of the rope line.
"We're not hugging." She said as I walk up to her.
We didn't hug. I simply shook her hand and said nothing. I turned around and walked to the x-ray machine.
It would have been a profoundly sad moment for me, if the moment hadn't been interrupted by the fact that I perhaps look like a security threat.
I was asked to stand in a small area, where I was patted down. A man went through my backpack, asking me questions, and taking what I can only assume were samples looking for toxins (?) from the pockets of my backpack. This was a couple of days before the London airplane terror plot, so they didn't take my toothpaste.
My phone rang as the security people finished with me. It was Sparkle, who was still standing on the other side of the rope line.
"Is this blatant use of racial profiling going to be put in a blog?"
"Maybe. That was weird."
"I think they totally think you look like a terrorist."
"This is why I always wear flip-flops to the airport."
"Yeah. Okay Ill talk to you later."
"Call me when you get to L.A."
"Okay. I will."
"Be careful driving."
"Stop getting sappy."
"Okay. Bye."
And with that, I hung up.
I got on the plane. A few hours later I was back in Dallas sitting on Scoop's couch thinking about how I had to go back to work the next day, while Sparkle was driving out to L.A. I looked around Scoop's apartment. I was there only 48 hours earlier (He let us borrow his camera for the trip). I thought about everything that had happened in the last day and a half, about how we had driven all those miles, through two and a half states (one of the states being Texas, which is as big as three states put together) about the conversations, about the introspection, about where I was, and where I was going. About where I used to be, and about where everyone else was now. 34 hours had passed, and I was back home once more.