We'll make our summer last for two more months, part twelve.: zeroenthusiasm

zeroenthusiasm

We'll make our summer last for two more months, part twelve.

Nov 07, 2010 23:59

187 miles.

DAY THIRTY-FIVE: Saturday, November 6th.
We woke up at 11:30, checked out, and walked down the road until we found a Subway to get food at. We sat and ate while a group of little bourgeois girls stared at his rudely. Even though we were no less than ten years older than these little girls, we stared back and refused to look away until they did. They were shameless, though, and beat us brutally with their young, judgmental, piercing glares. A guy walked over to us and asked if we wanted the rest of his sub. We told him we didn't and he responded, "I can give ya twenty bucks!" It was awesome. We were in a little area called Turkey Creek, about fifteen miles or so away from downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. After eating, we walked over to the on-ramp to 40 East/75 North and held up a sign indicating we just wanted to go to DOWNTOWN KNOXVILLE. There was a bitter cold, heavy breeze while we stood there and a lot of traffic. A woman pulled over and gave us a McDonald's angus burger, a can of chicken noodle soup, a container, and some packets of anti-headache powder. A guy gave us a dollar. Another car pulled over, driven by a white young professional and a young Asian girl, and handed us a jumbo Ziploc bag neatly prepared and filled with food and supplies: a can of peaches, a new tube of toothpaste and an unopened toothbrush, a pair of white socks, a big can of Chunky meat soup, a can of tuna, two things of cheese crackers, and a plastic knife and fork. It's always amazing to see people try to help total strangers, but also confusing when you're specifically asking for a ride and are given money or food. Are they trying to help while also keeping their distance? Even more interesting is getting a glimpse into what they perceive the needy actually need, personally never actually experiencing the other side of things. Something fun to do when standing on the side of the road is to see how many cars read your sign and drive right on by while also sporting Jesusy bumper stickers and license plates; they're already 'saved', so I guess they don't care about saving anyone else. An hour later, a copper colored van pulled over with two girls and a guy my age inside. They waved us over and had us throw our bags in the back where there was a dumpster-like mess of foreign objects, papers, and fast food debris. The one girl in the passenger seat was a really pretty girl with freckles and the driver was her boyfriend; the other girl was a friend of theirs and a church-goer.

After they dropped the boyfriend off, they offered to drop us off at Market Square, where they said 'everything' was. They also gave us two free tickets to the Knoxville Orchestra. We had never been to a real live orchestra before, so we gladly accepted them. When we got off, we went straight to a cafe one of the girls said they worked at called Cafe 4. When we walked in, it was more like a fancy, expensive restaurant than a cafe, but it was in fact a cafe. We ordered a hot chocolate and then went up the stairs to an area with couches and artwork more pricey than probably our entire trip had been at that point. We were looking to use the free WiFi, but my laptop wasn't coming on. The last time I tried to use it, the power adapter jack had gotten so weak that it wasn't working inside the laptop at all anymore. So the laptop died and, basically, had no way of having its battery recharged. Of course, I was persistent and fiddled with it for forty minutes straight before I snapped and bent the jack so hard that it snapped off. Kara sat and watched, more than likely uncomfortable by the rage boiling up inside of me. You see, with me, when something goes wrong, it triggers a domino effect in my brain that rewinds to the original cause of the problem. So being out another laptop lead to me thinking about how the laptop was donated to me by a rich girl who can afford to give a laptop away, which lead me to thinking about why I needed a laptop donated to me, which was because I had gotten jumped and robbed and my laptop wound up smashed inside my backpack, which lead to me getting upset and pissed off that I was poor. Petty problems, I know, and I'm a tad embarrassed as I write about this, but my laptop had been our one and only way of navigating where we went and when as well as our only real way of discovering places to explore, visit, and eat at. So the laptop had become very important to us. A young couple sitting not too far from us watched nervously as I freaked out and used the F word a lot, then offered to give us directions to the library. We walked out with him and his girlfriend and he gave us $10. He even went as far as saying he'd like to buy us a drink if we run into each other again at some other point. I'll admit, that really cheered me up a bit, because he looked like any other college bro type would and acted nothing like it.

Only a few blocks away was the Lawson McGhee Library, where we were able to get twenty minutes of usage on a public computer as a nearby black man with very loud Tourette's syndrome twitched and yelled out single syllables. We wrote down as many directions as we could and then left. When I got outside, my rage reached a long overdue breaking point and I furiously smashed the laptop against a curb near the parking lot, stomping and kicked it, and swinging it as hard as I could against the concrete by its giant screen. It was like that scene with the fax machine in Office Space. Luckily, I had been prepared for this and uploaded everything important from the laptop onto a flash drive while it started giving me trouble in Tallahassee. I wasn't sure what we'd do the rest of the trip without it, but I sure felt great after destroying it. We left its dead body there, though I felt bad for littering. And then we walked a mile and a half through the collegiate part of town in search of vegan pizza. We both needed it, as we were both really bummed about the loss of our laptop. The walk was beautiful. Fall in Knoxville was like straight out of a movie or something, perfect leaves with perfect blended colors of apple green and blood red, our shoes swishing through them as we glided down the sidewalks. The temperature was cold, but not uncomfortable. We stopped in an amazing park with flowing water over smooth rocks in between vibrantly green lawns, towered over by the Sunsphere Tower, something we only knew of from an episode of The Simpsons where it crashes to the ground and empties itself of tons of wigs. Knoxville was beautiful, enough so to elate me like a happy song. To add to things, we also found $2 on the ground. We got to the Mellow Mushroom not too long after and were seated by a really pretty girl who told us she had played a show at the Moon and River Cafe in Schenectady with her band Spider + Octopus; she played accordion. We ate a giant vegan pizza with barbecue tofu on it and stocked up on free refills of rootbeer. Large gangs of college kids gradually filled the place to watch and celebrate some stupid game on the surrounding flat screens while we sat there and drew on the children place mats. After night fell, we left and started walking back to Market Square with intentions of either finding a movie to go see or a place to fall asleep. When we got back there, we gave all the food and supplies we had been given by the on-ramp to the first homeless person we saw; a dirty, incoherent black man sitting on a bench. He looked surprised and thanked us profusely, adding, "When you're homeless and you give, it comes back to ya."

The dead body of my old laptop. You will not be missed.

Knoxville, being all beautiful and stuff.

For a little while, we sat on some stairs at the end of the Square and people-watched. The late-night scene there was mostly comprised of upper-class people young and old. We overheard a girl break up with her boyfriend and how poorly he took it. We asked a random person if there was any nearby theaters around and he told us there was one right around the corner. So we went over to Gay Street (chuckle chuckle) and saw a long line outside of a Riviera theater. We walked right by it and then asked another random guy for directions to where the orchestra would be happening. He gave us a map he had of the area. He was also just visiting. When we walked back to the line outside of the theater, we started browsing what movies were playing. Due Date, starring Zach Galifianakis and Robert Downey, was playing and was literally the only remotely appealing thing on the marquee. A young girl, somewhere in her twenties, and her friend who looked like a high school physical education teacher, started asking us questions; what were we doing?, where were we from? And then, "Do you wanna see a movie?" We looked at each other surprised and excitedly told them yes. They were planning on seeing Due Date, too! Their names were Emily and Sharon and they told us the only thing they wanted from us was that we sat with them. On the stairs down to the front rows in an almost completely packed theater, Emily giddily asked us, "Do you guys want to stay over at my house tonight?!" Again, we looked at each other surprised and excitedly said yes. The movie was way funnier than expected and we laughed out loud a lot. It felt like after several days of rough hitchhiking, we were back to seemingly endless luck that either of us have only experienced while out on the road. After the movie got out and we went outside, two young girls in matching Victoria's Secret outfits came up to Kara, handed her $24, and gave her two big hugs. According to Emily, when we first sat down, one of them had asked her, "Are they poor?" On the ride to the outer suburbs they lived in, they told us some things about themselves. Emily was twenty-three and a nurse in west Knoxville. She lived with her older sister and Sharon in a big house that her mother had bought for them after it was foreclosed. Sharon was a little strange. We didn't really find out much about her other than the fact that she was thirty-two, a children's soccer coach, and had nowhere else to go due to "her problems". Emily mentioned enjoying having the extra space of a house to use to help people. She also repeatedly mentioned Jesus and them being "blessed", even saying her and her sister had "prayed over" something in order to make the decision about the house. At that point, we were immensely grateful for the random acts of kindness we had experienced, but definitely really uncomfortable with all the religious folk we were running into. Being religious just cheapens the altruism in my mind. We avoided saying anything in response to religion when it was mentioned and just sat silent in the back, thinking about how weird it is to hear people talk about Jesus like he's someone they hang out with on a regular basis.

We pulled into a spacious garage with an remote controlled door and were greeted by their old dog, Annie, who was friendly and welcoming as soon as we got out of the car. Emily introduced us to her older sister and told us to make ourselves at home after giving a brief tour of the first floor. It was pristine inside and the carpeted floor was soft like a cloud. At first, we just sat in the kitchen and surrounded Annie the dog with tons of love. We were introduced to the room we'd be staying in for the night, an extra room with a reclining chair and couch that folded out into a bed with a fireplace, flat screen television, and multiple shelves of books and DVDs. The walls were blank except one side of the room that had a single map of Africa framed. We were warned of what they called 'cave crickets' and soon found out what they were talking about: these giant, creepy bugs with thick, round bodies and thin, stick-like legs, making them look like some alien monster straight out of Starship Troopers. While completely harmless, they were really fucking creepy, and were heavily populated in that room. They could jump really high. We were also told that they'd be going to church the next morning, but that there was no pressure for us to join and that we could sleep in as late as we wanted. We used Emily's laptop for a little bit and then put in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was a really cozy and comfy night.

DAY THIRTY-SIX: Sunday, November 7th.
Emily woke us up at 9 and told us that there had been a change of plans and needed to bring us back to town if that was where we were going because she needed to go to another city after church and it'd make things easier for her. We obviously didn't debate it and went along for the ride at 10 back to Market Square. We went for a hot chocolate in Cafe 4 for a lack of any better ideas and no real energy to do anything but sit and then woke up enough to head next door to The Tomato Head, an all-local organic restaurant that turned out to be very popular amongst the local middle class. The hostess told us there would be a twenty- to forty-five minute wait, but we were seated within five. It was yet another moment where we felt unbelievably out of place. We were seated across from a long table that a disconnected upper-middle class family sat and ate. A little girl no older than six played card games on her cellphone; the mother read through a magazine; the father stared off into oblivion. All around us were well-polished yuppies and hipsters. We got one of the only things we could eat on their over-priced menu, a sandwich aptly titled The Vegan Sandwich, which was carrots, sprouts, tomato, spinach, marinated tofu, soysage, and vegan pesto, as well as a big, decadent cupcake. It was all delicious, but the portion did not match the price. The bathroom was cute enough to mention, the walls painted with an aerial view of a landscape, sharks flying through the air. After we got out of there, we walked across the way to a tiny place called Krutch Park and laid on the ground unabashed, purposely outstretched under wherever the sun decided to slowly move. We made a point to visit the library's public computer again, but were rudely rushed out by an asshole librarian who looked at us like we were threats and wound up just returning to the park to lounge about some more, just sitting back and admiring the little children with their parents and the dogs who were walked on through. A hippie around my age came up and asked us, "Y'all hobblin'?" I had no idea what 'hobbling' was until that day, but apparently it's a synonym for 'busking'. We talked to him for a bit about mostly nothing.

At 2, we walked over to the Bijou to redeem our free tickets to the 75th anniversary of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Again, a very awkward situation. At first, we weren't even sure if they'd let us in with our dirty clothes and giant backpacks. But they did without a fuss and we seated ourselves in the center fourth row amongst an audience consisting almost entirely of married couples no younger than their seventies and maybe nearing their hundreds for all we knew, in black tuxedos more expensive than my entire life and ties. We were handed a program with the story of the orchestra and the names of the pieces they would be playing that I'd never be able to remember. The conductor spoke a little as an introduction and was so cheerful about the entire thing. It was so endearing. And then they played for two hours and it was absolutely incredible. Neither of us had ever really seen a symphony live before, and as far as I knew before we got handed those free tickets, I probably never would since that sort of culture is kept exclusive to the wealthy, so it was a different experience that I am grateful for being afforded to have. For the first half, Kara fell asleep on my shoulder. After the show was over, we decided to be fat-ass pizza addicts and return to Mellow Mushroom. They seriously have the best vegan pizza either of us have ever eaten. Judge all you want. We had the same waitress as the night before and she remember exactly what we wanted. Halfway through our pizza, I picked up a slice that dropped a piece of jerk chicken from underneath it onto the pan. We picked it up, analyzed it closely, and then asked our waitress what it was, even though we were pretty sure we already knew. She came back and said, "I've got bad news... that was a piece of jerk chicken. But the good news is, your entire meal is for free!" The Pizza Gods had struck again. They had snuck that piece of chicken under our pizza to test our faith, is all. We sat around for a while, killing time by criticizing ultra-PC punx zines we had gotten from Richmond and playing Toy Story UNO, drinking glass after glass of Mello Yello. A group of annoying, fashion-obsessed women sat across from us at another table and discussed the most inane topics, like when tears in jeans are 'okay', where, and how big. One of them was pregnant, so asked if the feta was pasteurized, as if it matters at that point when you're already ordering a pizza and drinking sodas.

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and its demure, elderly audience that we had no business being a part of... but were due to the insane circumstances and opportunities that traveling throws into your lap.

Shit like this design on a placard on our table is exactly why Mellow Mushroom is the coolest fucking pizza place in the United States.

We walked two miles from there to an area called Old City in search of a place we had heard about called the Knoxville Pearl, an all-you-can-eat cereal bar. We obviously weren't hungry at that point, but we knew it'd be our last night in Knoxville and absolutely needed to relish in this place and all its delicious glory. To get there, we had to walk through a neighborhood of college-kid paradise homes. Old City was the Williamsburg of Tennessee, it seemed. We stopped at a record store and vintage shop called Hot Horse. We browsed everything in there and left with a big Ziploc bag of assorted colors and sizes of thread for only $4. And then we entered the Knoxville Pearl and were immediately taken aback by just how fucking awesome it was. The walls were covered in coloring book pages and the fronts of various cereal boxes. They had couches and seats, a public TV and video game consoles, an extensive selection of boardgames, and various knick-knacks everywhere you went (even the bathroom!). Then they had a counter of cereal dispensers. For only $6.18, you could choose and mix just about any cereal you wanted with just about any vegan milk alternative you wanted, and you could keep eating until you were sick. And boy, did we. We each mixed three or more cereals and stuffed our faces with three bowls of it. It was great, though we both felt like death afterward. The girl working there, a morose looking punk girl with big glasses and an old woman sweater, coincidentally another Emily, offered us a place to stay for the night on her way out. She wrote down her number and told us to call her when we were headed out for directions to her place. As we sat and tried to eat, a little boy named Gunner mothered by the owner of the place did everything in his abilities to annoy us. He kept touching Kara, climbing on her like a tree, and trying to shove sharpened pencils into our faces. He was such a little fucking asshole and we ended up snitching on him. In the bathroom, on the mirror, was a plea from the owner, an awesome woman who also roller-derbies in her spare time, begging the patrons to stop stealing stuff from her place. It made me sad. Before we left, we called this Emily girl and wrote down directions. The house was about two miles away from there, if that.

It was around 10 and the streets were dead, with the exception of a few homeless people hobbled over, talking to themselves in the shadows like zombies. A car zoomed by us and yelled, "See you at the house!" It was puzzling. We took our time and watched a train go by. When we got into the 4th and Gill neighborhood, we found the two-family house that Emily lived in for nearly free as she watched it for a friend who was never there most of the year. We also were welcomed by her boyfriend Loren, who we found out was the one who yelled from the car at us, and their mutt Astor, who was tiny like a fox but colored like a German shepherd. The living room was lacking electricity, but had a nice couch. The four of us sat in the kitchen and got to know each other. We found out we knew some of the same people, like Madeline Ava, and had similar experiences and issues with what the punk community was becoming. She seemed like a really cool girl as we exchanged travel stories and scathing opinions of the punk scene. We all went outside and tried to fuck with the circuit breaker to get some electricity in the living room, but gave up after a scary spark shot out of it. They went out to smoke weed with some friends and we decided to just fall asleep on the couch with Astor at our feet. We thought it was cool to have run into such people.

A few months later, I would find an anonymous post on Katt Schott's Tumblr, saying something along the lines of, "you know davegunn?! i'm in TN and met him. he was a really whiney, I'm-too-DIY-and-different-for-punk for me." Seeing as we know no one else in Tennessee, it was likely Emily or Loren. Oh, well.