"The road to nowhere..." - Anatomy of a Sunday Night Random Road Trip
Long hilarious story you want to read, reprinted from Myspace. http://www.myspace.com/marcuskdowling.
OK. Yesterday was the biggest clusterfuck ever. But, as is most of my life, it was freaking hilarious.
My lovely girlfriend has both a pulled muscle and a pinched nerve in her lower back. She's tough, maybe stupid, but she hasn't taken any medication for it. So, my weekend of drinking and dancing to celebrate not having a show to work or travel to since the 12th of ever was pretty much shot. I wanted to go out anyway, but most of my friends are of the heavy drinking and eating fried and batter dipped food and being crass variety, so, going out was not in the cards.
Until yesterday. As if Reverend Ike had entered the apartment, she was miraculously cured. Saturday night she looked pale, almost gray, and miserable as I drove around in search of a mall where ignorant people didn't shop, and took her along for the ride, where she sat upright in obvious pain. Sunday morning, she was up and moving like Denise Austin or something. But I digress.
We went down to the National Mall to see whatever IMAX movie was playing. You know the IMAX gimmick is where they give you the 3-D glasses and you watch educational movies with animals that look like they're going to rip off your head and shit. It's fun. We saw a safari movie that had lions with ENORMOUS testes. I mean, it looked like the lions had limes where the nuts were supposed to be. And, we watched leopards have sex and eat an antelope. Yeah. You totally had to be there.
ANYWAY, we left, and I started telling a story about a girl I slept with in college who went by the nickname of "The Lake." As in, she was chubby, so, once my roommates met her, they reminded me of my claim that I had "slipped and fell in a puddle of ass" when I first met her, and instead claimed that I had "fell into fucking Lake Erie." Yeah. Score two points for common decency. Whatever. The story involves "The Lake" attempting to woo me from my girlfriend at that time, a woman that I dated for eight years and who almost ruined my life, and fills me with such indiscriminate anger when I see her so as to make me weep tears of rage and strile inanimate objects very hard.
Bam. As we were walking past the hours and hours of line of people waiting to see Rosa Parks' lifeless body in the rotunda of the Capitol Building, I hear "MARCUS....honey....is that you?" Yeah. It was her. I've tried to keep my present girlfriend and my old girlfriend from meeting. One sucked, the other one is awesome. Plain and simple. Karma being karma, I mentioned her, and WHAM out of the blue, she shows up, with her mom, and some old fucking black guy her mom is dating, who said "Oooh....Marcus...I den heeeard that there name befo'." Like I'm the fucking Loch Ness Monster or something. It all happened so fast that it didn't register until about two blocks later when I splintered a board on a park bench like I was Pat Morita breaking bottles at the beach. Ugh.
So, with Desperate Housewives on repeat, I decided the woman and I needed to take a drive after getting home, and the woman arguing correctly with me that I've been an asshole on some level for almost two years because of the acts of someone she doesn't even know. Burn. Yeah, it hurt. Fuck.
While talking, we drank a bottle and a half of diet soda between us. Then, I decided I wanted Dunkin Donuts coffee, which, for the price, is the best coffee on fucking planet Earth. Iced coffee, sugar, no cream, w/ blueberry flavoring. Yeah. One for me, one for her. We were thorsty or something, so we drank them quick. Then, WHAM....caffeine rush, we're high off the caffeination. Lord. I've never felt like this in all my days of living and breathing.
So, we go out driving out Route 1 past College Park, past Laurel, and into Howard County, and past Howard County into Baltimore County, until we stopped in the new place I want to live. Arbutus, MD. Yes, Arbutus. The sleepiest redneck hollow I've ever visited. It was like the town in that Christmas movie with Chevy Chase where they move there and it's perfect, but it's all fucked up.
On the way there, we passed through Elkridge, MD, which is the home of numerous redneck bars, which I will be visiting on "Redneck Bar Tour 2005" sometime this December. My personal favorite was "Woody's Bar," which was in an aluminum siding on aluminum siding house, and was cut out of where the living room or game room would be. There was Woody tending bar, with four old white men in trucker caps watching football drinking beer very slowly at 11:20 PM on a Sunday night. SUNDAY NIGHT. AND MONDAY ISN'T A VACATION. IS THIS GREAT OR WHAT?
We also passed the largest Subway ever, with a 16 foot long sandwich stand, and seating for 250. No joke. Plus, we saw a deli spelled DELLY. Awesome. Just a slice of Americana.
Then, we got lost. In Arbutus. Which runs along Route 1. Right next to it actually. Sadly, we kept missing our connecting turns, and drove all over that fucking town. Then, we stopped at an open Papa John's where three 16 year old redneck unbathed kids were just smoking pot and being slackers. I ask, looking like the ultimate city slicker, "How do I get back to Washington via Route 1?"
Redneck Black Unwashed Kid w/ Blong Carlito looking Afro and 1992 Cypress Hill Tour Shirt: "DC...oh...go to the left."
Redneck White Unwashed Kid with Bald Head Who Looked Like Danny Basham: "Naw dawg....go to da right meng. Right. Str8 down Sulphur Springs and shit.
Redneck White Unwashed Girl in Spongebob Pants and Mike Vick Falcons Jersey and Hair in Pigtails Smoking a Blunt: "Yeah boy, go straight down Sulphur Springs...your jacket is pretty. Can I have it?"
Me: "No. But thanks. Peace."
Yeah. So at this point, it's cold as fucking hell, and the caffeine starts making us go wacky. The following things were said and done.
Me: "Hey babe. Look at me. I'm Randy Orton. (does Randy Orton pose with a huge grin on my face."
Me: "Hey babe. Look at me. I'm Dave Batista. (does Dave Batista gun shooting gimmick looking like a two year old hammering on a table with a knife and fork cause he's hungry)
Me: "I hate Fort Meade. (flips middle fingers at sign) STONE COLD FORT MEADE."
The woman: "I'm so high. Oh shit. It's a red light. Let me stop the car."
Me: "Ummm...dear. I'm Randy Orton. And Evolution is a mystery."
The woman: "Shutup. You're scaring me."
Me: "Ummm....the line is twenty feet right there, you know."
The woman: "Oh shit."
Me: "I see the line in the sand, you know. I'm trying to find out. Who I am."
The woman: "Ok. No more caffeine for you....OH SHIT! Am I on the wrong side of the road?"
Me: "No dear, you're swerving between dotted lines.
The woman: "Fuck. We need Taco Bell."
Yeah. We got home fine. But sadly, the caffeine STILL hasn't worn off.
Fuck. That was quite the day.
- Marcus