Indiana, part three.
1,656 miles.
December 9th - 12th: Dale, IN/Santa Claus, IN/Evansville, IN/Bedford, IN/Louisville, KY/Lexington, KY
I slept in and woke up to eat at a Chinese buffet with Matt called Iron Chef. We watched a cute couple on a date while feeling like we were on one. The food was really good, though finding out what was vegan was not easy. We watched a stupid Katie Holmes movie back at the hotel called Miss Meadows. That night, a girl from Philly on OKCupid whose profile I'd liked actually messaged me. It was the first time it'd happened since I started the profile that July. She was sober and vegan, her mother was dead, and her pictures made it appear as though she was cute. Her profile was as lackadaisical as every other girl on there's, but I felt confident she was cool enough to waste my time on. She almost immediately gave me her number and we started texting every day, all day, from that point forward. It would figure a girl in Philadelphia would contact me after I basically moved out of the city.
The next morning, we left as the sun was still rising and headed a few miles outside of Dale to a town called Santa Claus. I had only ever passed by billboards for it during my first hitchhiking ride with a truck driver. It was basically Christmas all year in the small town and large Santa statues sat outside of just about everything, whether it be a Subway or a liquor store. Oddly, they also had a large theme park with water rides and full-scale rollercoasters. We went to an old building shaped like a miniature castle and looked around inside. It was mostly a gift shop and candy store and little to nothing inside was vegan. I hate Christmas, and the town itself wasn't weird enough to keep me interested for very long. We headed to Evansville so Matt could keep looking for jobs and ate at Chipotle for lunch. That night, we saw Birdman in the theaters and once again ended up eating Chinese, as it was repeatedly the only vegan option we had in these small, pathetic towns.
My sleeping body in the passenger seat kept Matt company the next day as he drove around aimlessly. He woke me up because he'd found the giant Uncle Sam statue we'd heard about. According to local legend, it had to be moved because it caused car accidents. Apparently, from a certain angle that many passersby would first see it made it appear as though Sam had his dick out. It was really just his hand extended by his hip. Driving through some small town after he talked to some guys at a Tyson egg farm, we decided on a whim to try and donate blood. Everyone stared at us when we walked in, all of them old men who probably served in wars or were retired cops. The American Red Cross women were very nice, though. After thirty or forty minutes, we both left having given no blood. Matt wasn't eligible because an error in his last check-up marked him as potentially HIV+ and they had to let me go because my blood pressure was somehow too high. That night, we went to a Papa John's for bread sticks, which we ruined by microwaving expired Daiya mozzarella all over, and loaded up on Boca nuggets and Silk nog from a Jay-C grocery store. When I fell asleep, I had one of the most vivid and horrifying nightmares involving my parents yet. While they are less frequent, they still happen constantly and are bad enough to make up for however many weeks I'd just gone without them. In it, I got shot by my gun-wielding father after he trapped me under a couch he'd flipped over. He tried to crush me under it before wiping his half-flacid dick all over my face.
Nuggets for breakfast, we headed to a town called Bedford. We found ourselves once again driving around for no reason as Matt awaited commands from his boss in Los Angeles. We saw a man hitchhiking, so we picked him up. He needed a ride just fifteen minutes out of town, so we brought him. He smelled of alcohol and told us about being on disability due to a permanent injury he sustained while mining in a nearby town. We were teetering on the border of Kentucky again, so we went back to Louisville and ate at Earth Friends Cafe, a place whose logo alone piqued our interest. The words "Culinary Anarchy" adorned their location's window as we walked in and saw that they did in fact have several delicious sounding vegan options and an all-vegan selection of baked goods. I don't remember what I ate, but it was good. I suggested we go to Lexington, since Matt had never been there and I had fond memories of it. When we entered the city, we weren't sure what to do. Everyone I knew there was either dead, hated me, or had moved elsewhere, and the only fond memories I had involved Kara and hitchhiking around the punk fest that once happened there. We went and saw a water tower painted to look like a Dixie Cup, since it stood over their flagship factory, and then settled for yet another visit to a Mellow Mushroom. We got a hotel there that night and watched softcore porn starring Riley Reid, one of my favorite porn stars and a vegan. We watched The Skeleton Twins on my laptop and I spent the rest of the night having panic attacks that made me physically ill.
A castle that sells candy in Santa Claus, IN.
Not the most eloquent cry against racism, but I appreciate their effort.
Uncle Sam's dick.
Another line of ominous, top-secret animal torture chambers.
This tank of oil in Bedford at a pork factory was made to look like a pack of ground pork. Disgusting.
A job well done to the graphic designer for Earth Friends Cafe.
The Dixie Cup water tower in Lexington.
A simply beautiful anti-smoking mural outside of a hospital in Lexington.
December 13th - 15th: Louisville, KY/Kentland, IN/Watseka, IL/Fair Oaks, IN/Merrillville, IN
We decided Lexington was a bust, so we left early and made it to Louisville early enough to try the vegan-friendly brunch at Earth Friends. Unfortunately, it all tasted terribly weird to me, maybe being all food styles that would only make sense to suburban health nuts. I slept as long as physically possible in the car while Matt went about his day, only waking up to eat Nog froyo at TCBY somewhere. We ended up getting a room at the only hotel that existed in a desolate town called Kentland that decayed beneath an umbrella of grey. There was nothing there but a gas station or two, maybe a bar or three, and a CVS that closed before 7pm. It was the first time I'd been somewhere that sincerely made me miss Schenectady. We had no other choice but to sit in our room. I took a shower and tried trimming my beard.
Sleeping in the next day was nice, though. Between Matt's work schedule and our weekendly adventures, neither of us were doing that as often as could have. We ate some hotdogs and I watched the movie Tusk on my laptop. I got a really nice message from a veganarchist mother who had ordered my Pigeon Life zine for her teenage daughter's birthday. We needed a Walmart, but the closest one was over the Illinois border in a small town called Watseka. A single, long road sandwiched in darkness guided us until we saw a thin watertower with a big smiley face on it butting heads with the charcoal clouds. We were able to find a Chinese restaurant there that was pretty yummy. That night, I went on Craigslist and started looking at two-bedroom apartments for Matt and me in Philadelphia and Richmond, though I knew nothing would come of it. It was more a masochistic tease. Suicidal ideation kept me up all night after that.
I slept in the car for two hours and woke up in Chicago, where Matt had dragged us to the Chicago Diner for the second time. I still wasn't feeling so well. Between homelessness and lovelessness, I hardly wanted to eat, let alone in a room full of beautiful, skinny, vegan supermodels on dates with each other. I felt shame with every thing I ordered to the point that I could hardly finish any of it. Then we were back at Fair Oaks so Matt could try Calf Land again and drive in some more circles. We'd memorized every square inch and winding dirt road turn in that town by that point, even as it became obscured by rain. And then it was back to Merrillville. Indiana was a shitty enough state; going to the same little, shitty towns repeatedly was beginning to drive us both crazy.
Nice message from one of the coolest moms ever.
Our wonderful view from the hotel in Kentland.
December 16th - 17th: Griffith, IN/Cleveland, OH/Syracuse, NY
Thankfully, Matt was able to talk his boss into letting him start heading home for the holidays. Matt, and of course I, mostly just wanted to stop circumnavigating one of the most boring states in the whole country. That day, he halfheartedly pursued checking on some slaughter prospects, but the reality was that there was little to no chance any of these farms were going to be hiring anyone new just before Christmas, just as they weren't really going to be hiring anyone just before Thanksgiving. I could sense that Matt was somewhat relieved he hadn't found a new job killing or abusing animals. He wanted to be able to make a living off of animal rights activism, but undercover investigations were the only thing that came through amidst all of his applications, so he had to take it. In a perfect world, he'd continue to get paid to drive around the country and not get hired by anyone, but he neither wanted to risk being hired again nor wanted to exploit the resources of an animal rights organization. It was a bizarre feeling sensing anticipation of returning to Schenectady, but I guess that's what a state like Indiana can do to a man. I wasn't sure what I'd do once I got there, especially since it was the peak of winter, so I just tried not to think about it.
We stopped in a small town called Griffith and went into a cafe called Grindhouse that, to our surprise, had some punk girls working in it. They even had vegan options on their chalkboard menu. We both ordered a buffalo tofu sandwich that was amazing and drank some root beers. Besides them, the main street was gun shops and taxidermy. The rest of the day was spent driving to Cleveland. We grit our teeth at the static of his iPod transmitter while being nostalgic and listening to the Mindless Self Indulgence discography, and got there after dark to eat at Melt, one of my favorite places in the whole country. We stayed at a Travelodge in Willoughby. As soon as we pulled up to it, I recognized it as the same hotel Kara and I had schemed three free nights at while trying to hitchhike out of there just a couple years ago. It made me sad.
I talked to Grace in Los Angeles on the phone for a little while. She was being trained for her remote job for peta2. Back in the room, Matt and I watched some Victoria's Secret showcase where babes like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande performed as models strutted by them in lingerie. We both felt like perverts, but both of us had gone long enough without sex to appreciate such little things. I felt like my dick would shrivel up and fall off at any second. A little while after the lights were turned out and Matt had fallen asleep, I was lying on my stomach, using my laptop. The glow of my screen shone on the pillow supporting my elbows and chin. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eyes, I thought I saw something small crawling. Still traumatized from bedbugs, I immediately shot up and turned the lights on. Sure enough, the pillow was crawling with a colony of tiny, maybe newborn bedbugs. I woke Matt up immediately and we got the fuck out of there. We woke the front desk guy up from his sleep and demanded another room, though we couldn't get back to sleep until a full inspection had been done on each bed in the new one.
I woke up to another rejection e-mail from peta2. They were no longer hiring non-drivers for their tours and so they had to deny me. I knew it'd be the last time I'd ever bother applying for a touring position with them and I now had to fully look the future in the eye with little to no vision of what I would do with myself next. I was homeless, it was winter, Matt had no direction or money, and the only thing that would give me a reason to stay alive had just denied me for the second time in a row. It wasn't long after that that I also discovered Kara had decided to start selling a zine that she originally was just giving away for free to certain people that spoke vaguely but brutally about how "abusive" I was to her. Even though my name wasn't in it, just about anyone who would read it would know it was me. I was no longer useful to the organization I wanted to spend my life fighting for animal rights with and my old best friend was hellbent on convincing as many people as possible that she was some sort of victim of abuse by me. The world was unjust and brutal and it was not the best way to start my day, especially as we consciously neared my hometown.
We went out to The Flaming Ice Cube to eat, but the experience was pretty terrible and didn't make me feel any better about the morning's news. I'd only ever been to the Flaming Ice Cube in Youngstown, but I loved that one; this one not only called itself vegan while admitting they couldn't verify the vegan status of their breads and used honey, but they also decorated their menu with quotes from notable animal rights names like Jon Camp of Vegan Outreach seemingly excusing lazy veganism, going on about how "it's impossible to be a perfect vegan" and to try to be would require never using technology or tires, blah blah blah. No, perfect veganism is not currently possible in a world still so reliant on animal exploitation, but that doesn't mean you can't ensure vegan bread for your veggie burgers. Trying to find out if things were vegan from the waitress was a grueling process that almost made me leave. She brought us out an outdated paper with the ingredients to some buns that said it contained honey, right after she told us it no longer contained it. We ended up asking to see their frozen Ezekiel sandwich bread, since the hamburger buns were simply not vegan. We ate some shitty food on sandwich bread and then left. The weather was chilly and brisk and a fog sat atop the skyscrapers like ugly hats. We went to the Cleveland cop museum for some laughs. They confiscated my pocketknife to let me in, but it was worth losing, and the whole experience would really cheer me up for a bit.
Although confined to one room, there were a lot of funny or genuinely interesting artifacts in it. They had a collection of improvised weapons taken from prison inmates in one case, a wall of officers who had been killed in a historical riot way back in the day, and an entire section about the notorious Cleveland Torso Murderer who was never caught, including graphic black and white photographs of the bodies and some face casts of the unidentified victims. They also had a mock-up of a holding cell that you could walk in. It had been vandalized by a lot of people, so I of course drew a pigeon on it. We checked out their gift shop and asked the old woman watching over it if anyone had ever shoplifted from it. She said people had tried. I took some badge stickers and laughed at all the cop propaganda (copaganda?) directed towards children. On our way out, I signed the guest book, suggesting that they stop killing people indiscriminately, since a week or so before we'd gotten there, a 12-year old boy was murdered by an officer for holding a toy gun. We tried to check out some plywood planets and stuff and then got going.
I slept for half of our five-hour drive to Syracuse. We made sure to make up for our shitty dining experience at Flaming Ice Cube by going to a real vegan restaurant: the honorable Strong Hearts. Of course, the weather had become a mixture of rainy and snowy almost as soon as we entered the state of New York.
A bronze alligator chained up to a bench outside of a taxidermy shop in Griffith, IN.
A surprise vegan treat in a tiny town: buffalo tofu sandwich.
Welcome to Cleveland.
Visiting a police museum.
A planet made of ply wood.
A cute, lit-up chicken face, probably hanging over somewhere that kills chickens.
December 18th: Schenectady, NY :(
I was so fucking itchy. The little run-in with bedbug babies I'd had in Willoughby had left me with a left arm of excruciatingly itchy welts. The curse continued. I slept the entire ride back to Schenectady from there. The first thing we did when we got into town was get doughnuts at Price Chopper. I'd discovered some more bites down by my ankle and heel, so we went to Walmart so I could buy a new knife, almost exclusively for scratching these new bites and welts. As we walked down the aisles with it, I began scratching, only for the fresh blade to get caught in the groove of the cracks in my Achilles and slice me open. Blood leaked all over my sock. We went to Hannaford for no reason, then to Bombers, then to Whole Foods. We didn't know where to go or what to do, but staying in the car seemed natural at that point. Matt's parents let me sleep at their house that night, on the living room floor where Matt also slept. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning because of the intense itchiness. It drove me so crazy that I resorted not only to scratching and peeling away at my flesh, but also running almost scalding hot water over it. I just wanted any other sensation than the itching.
What the fuck was the chance that we'd seriously have another face-off with bedbugs? After an entire life having never even seeing one, they had become a recurring character; a manifestation of the curse I was now certain really followed me in my life. It's almost laughable, but this would not be the last time we'd see them, either...
Bed bugs, we meet again...