Premature evacuation, part twenty-three.
Even though we were trying to get back in only a couple days, we still made a few stops along the way. From Phoenix, we went down to Tucson to check out the Rattlesnake Bridge. Designed by local artist Simon Donovan and built in 2002, the bridge went over the busy Broadway Boulevard and was designed to look like the native diamondback rattlesnake. We had to park on a residential street by another park, empty but for some bare amenities like trash cans and picnic tables. The sun was bright and the atmosphere dry. We climbed up a small hill to access the opening of the bridge, which was made to look like the face and gaping jaws of the snake with fangs for support beams. It was honestly really fucking cool, even though many locals apparently criticized it for being corny. Walking through its body, which caged in the walkway and was painted in the typical colors and segmentation of a diamondback, we came out the other end, where a separate sculpture of its tail and rattle stood 30 feet out of the ground, pointing toward the sky and playing a loud rattle sound as we walked near it from hidden surrounding speakers. It was definitely cheesy, but we loved it.
An hour east from there, off the interstate near Dragoon where there wasn't much of anything else, was this roadside attraction and travel center heavily advertised with 247 billboards across 200 miles of I-10 as The Thing?. The last time I'd been there, it cost only a dollar to experience and was actually really bizarre, with antique guns and saddles from the days of the Wild West, a vehicle supposedly owned by Hitler, wood-carved reenactments of medieval torture, and other seemingly random artifacts before the concluding reveal of an allegedly mummified mother holding her baby inside some scratched Plexiglas case. There was no coherent theme, just a strange tourist attraction shoddily thrown together from some unrelated collector's items across a couple dusty warehouses. It was definitely memorable enough to drag Alyssa to it, though. Originally opened as an attraction in 1965 by a former lawyer named Thomas Binkley Prince, it had always revolved around the preserved rotted corpse of this mother and her baby, which he had purchased for $50 a decade earlier from a man most believe was probably the legendary Homer Tate, who made a career near the mid-20th century out of creating fake mummies, Fiji mermaids, and shrunken heads out of paper, mud, and bones. When Thomas died in 1975, his wife Janet began to run the operation, and soon decided to turn it all over to the Bowlin Travel Center company.
When we got there, I discovered they'd just recently rebuilt and rebranded the attraction entirely earlier that year. Under new ownership, the Dairy Queen and shelves of usual desert gift shop junk were still there, and the titular Thing still the star of the show, but it was now surrounded by new and outlandish lore and a "museum" that cost tens of thousands of dollars to design. Now there were aliens and dinosaurs. Along with them was a fabricated history lesson by their billboard guy, concocting a tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory about the Earth originally being colonized by extraterrestrial beings 65 million years ago, their domination and domestication of the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs' eventual mutiny against their alien overlords, the aliens' retaliation with an asteroid that exterminated all the mutinous dinosaurs, and the subsequent collaboration between the aliens and human beings throughout history since the days of the Egyptians. It was all pretty stupid, and the admission price had gone up to $5 per person. Still, we gave it a chance, and walked through the caverns and large rooms that had replaced the old warehouses, reading the ridiculous "What ifs" proposed in the placards next to the extremely detailed dinosaurs and aliens, including the schematics for the sophisticated saddle technology used to wrangle and ride them. Some relics from the original exhibition made their way into the new one: the vehicle allegedly once owned by Hitler now had Winston Churchill riding in it with an alien driver, the old stagecoach and farming equipment were there as historical remnants, I guessed, and The Thing? was still the big reveal at the end, now being sold as the potential missing link between us and aliens, or the cargo that sank the Lusitania, or whatever.
Diamondback Bridge.
The (new) Thing.
One night, I tried to break up with Alyssa. I felt dishonest for not telling her all my full feelings those past couple of weeks, and even though I told her what I was doing, I still felt like I was emotionally cheating on her whenever I'd text with Franchesca. I kept finding myself getting frustrated with Alyssa in ways that I just had never gotten when I was with Tara, and I could only assume this was because of suppression becoming resentment, or something. We had pulled over for the night, off a remote road in the New Mexico desert, outside of the Holloman Air Force Base. A semi-truck was already parked there and turned off, and the only thing around us besides them were the millions of stars in the clear, dark sky. I don't really remember how the short conversation was started. Maybe she asked me outright a question about my feelings for her; maybe I just jumped into it like pulling off a bandage.
Either way, I know I eventually came out and said, "I don't think I really want to be with anyone right now in my life."
I think she asked me what I meant.
I told her I didn't think I should be dating anyone at the moment.
I think she asked me what that meant for her.
I told her I still hoped we could stay close friends.
She almost instantly began to loudly sob, throwing her face into the pillow and crying, saying she wasn't going to have anyone else if I stopped seeing her. She cried that I was all she had. I had never broken up with anyone before, and I felt pretty fucking terrible doing it in that moment. I shut back down, held her, and told her we could talk about it more when we got home, that I didn't know what I wanted to do yet, that I knew I was going to feel really guilty about her coming all the way back to frigid, boring, bleak Albany just because that's what I wanted to do next. Somehow, we got some sleep that night.
She woke up with a sadness hangover that didn't disappear from her face or tone for hours to come. She still tried to muster some enthusiasm as we went to the White Sands National Park, somewhere I'd had on my bucket list for a long time and was very excited to finally be seeing up-close. There we were, standing before an endless expanse of gypsum crystal dunes covering 275 square-miles of desert--the largest of its kind anywhere else in the world. It all looked like snow, but felt like a special kind of sand on our bare feet and in our hands. We ran up the many hills. Footprints were left across every wave of sand. It was almost jarring to be standing somewhere that only the blue sky and the white sand were visible. My brain kept anticipating painful winter temperatures on my naked feet, but all I felt was the strong breeze. Unfortunately, we did not have any sleds with us.
It went as deep as 30 feet, and the dunes reached heights of 60, all carrying 4.1 billion metric tons of gypsum sand. An inconceivable natural process that took thousands of years to come together like this began 12,000 years ago when the area still had flourishing bodies of water and grassland inhabited by Ice Age animals. As climate warmed, shallow sea beds deposited calcium sulfate, tectonic activity turned the beds into mountains, rain dissolved the gypsum in the mountain walls, small streams of rain washed it into the basin, those small bodies of water dried up because they didn't have access to the ocean, and left behind were surfaces of selenite crystals. We walked on a metal ramp that took us out into the sand with benches and signs along the way discussing the unlikely endemic flora and fauna that existed there, most of which were moths but also included a pocket mouse, an earless lizard, and camel crickets, all evolved to thrive in such a unique environment. It was one of the most breathtaking places I'd ever gone.
I drove in increments of five hours. After the White Sands, we stopped in Odessa for dinner. We found some chain called Genghis Grill that allowed us to build our own bowls of stir-fried veggies, tofu, and rice. We got to fill our bowls with whatever we wanted as a little buffet area and then hand it over to the chefs who would then fry it all together. We were surrounded by rednecks piling various slabs of meat on top of their bowls. The food was really good, and we got a side of edamame to go with it. I'd wished I'd gotten to stumble on the place more often while on the road.
While at a laundromat, cleaning all of our blankets and stuff, I elaborated on my feelings to Alyssa. I tried to be as kind but honest as I could be while still in the midst of figuring it out, myself. On paper, Alyssa was a perfect partner, and had treated me better than anyone had in a long, long time. All I knew was that my feelings for her were unfamiliar and ambiguous to me, and uncertainty wasn't something I would ever want from my partner, so it definitely wasn't what Alyssa deserved. I basically took her along on the boomeranging thought cycle I had been on for weeks. Tara had been the love of my life for my entire adulthood, and my feelings for her during the three times we'd dated were my basis of comparison for all other relationships. I knew my feelings for Tara had always been unparalleled, and they certainly were significantly less intense with Alyssa, which affected the threshold of my patience and affection. I couldn't help but oftentimes feel like Alyssa was more of a best friend than a romantic partner as a result of these relatively weaker feelings. But then the question was whether or not the difference was explained by the fact that my relationship with Alyssa was healthy and the one I had with Tara was very much not so. Was my idea and experience of what true love felt like while I was with Tara just feelings of infatuation and codependency, and therefore my feelings for Alyssa more what a normal feeling of closeness and romance feels like? Was I just downplaying and degrading my feelings for Tara because it made falling out of love with her and falling in love with Alyssa easier? Should I be with anyone at all while still confused about all of these things? No conclusions were drawn at the end of it all, and I could tell so much of what I shared stung Alyssa deeply, but we both agreed to see what happens next, assuming she wanted to hang around and find out.
We went to Denton so she could visit her big sister, Kelsey. I was nervous to meet her, partly because I feared she'd be baffled by and disappointed in Alyssa's choice for a man, but also because I had just tried to break up with her sister. But I knew how much Alyssa loved Kelsey and how long it had been since they were last able to see each other. We got dinner at Mean Greens Cafe dining hall on the University of North Texas campus--the first of its kind in the country, and somewhere I thought of frequently ever since I'd first visited. We walked right in without paying for entry and began loading up our plates. I went absolutely wild, piling on just about everything they had: mac and cheese, tofu, lasagna, black-eyed peas, dinner rolls, cake, gingerbread soft-serve ice cream, a loaded panini sandwich. It wasn't every day I could eat at a free all-you-can-eat vegan buffet, after all.
On the way to her sister's house, we passed by an outrageous flat earther yard, with a pick-up truck parked outside carrying a telescope in the back. They didn't understand gravity and believed all the water was level on the flat disc our planet actually was. I stayed mostly quiet while Alyssa and Kelsey immediately jumped into seeing who could talk the loudest during their rapidfire conversations. We met her nice roommate. Like Alyssa, Kelsey was a classically-trained woodwind player, and worked giving lessons to kids. Alyssa lived in her shadow and definitely experienced intense envy over her. It probably didn't help that Kelsey was totally gorgeous. She made her bed and gave us her room for the night, and we got going the next day. They'd be seeing each other again during the upcoming holidays, anyway.
We were back to five-hour bouts of nonstop driving. We stopped in Nashville for a big dinner at Graze, one of the stand-out vegan restaurants in the country as far as I was concerned. The last time I'd been there was with Tara. Alyssa was tracing Tara's footprints in a lot of cities we'd visited, almost literally living in her shadow. I got an order of their magnificent loaded potatoes, covered in cashew cheese, seitan chorizo, guacamole, vegan sour cream, pickled jalapenos, and green onions, and a buffalo quesadilla along with it. For dessert, we shared a brownie sundae that was absolutely prefect.
The White Sands!
Creepy apple boy.
Genghis Grill.
The Mean Greens vegan buffet food court!
Crazy flat earther house in Denton.
Hummus plate and pizza at a Mellow Mushroom somewhere.
Graze in Nashville!
We made a stop in Columbus, somewhere I'd only briefly been once before in a state that I mostly hated, in large part so I could meet a longtime online friend named Joe. When we got in, we first stopped at North Market and got a buncha vegan snacks at Joe's recommendation: bubble tea at Bubbles Tea & Juice Company, dumplings at MOMO GHAR, and doughnuts at Destination Doughnuts. Joe met up with us with his partner at the time, Corella, and we all sat around and chatted for a while. It was so nice finally meeting him. He and I had a lot of heavy stuff in common, and I'd actually started talking to him because he was flirting with Sam while I was still dating them. We were both vegan straightedge and suffered a history of abusive relationships and cancellations.
I had to stop and see the Arnold Schwarzenegger monument, a seemingly random, out-of-place sculpture just a short walk from the Market. It turned out Arnie had a link to the little city of Columbus dating back to 1970, when he arrived in town and won the Mr. World contest. After that triumph, he became friends with the organizer and they put on events together for years. In 1989, they created the Arnold Classic, an expo which had bodybuilders compete, and it still happened every year in Columbus. The monument was unveiled in 2012 and stood at 8 feet. It was pretty detailed in its veiny glory, even where his noticeably small package was confined. I grew up with Arnie on my TV, so I would always adore him. Plus, he was mostly vegan nowadays!
From there, the four of us went to explore an obscure local landmark. It existed behind a Tim Horton's, down some dirt trail to the trees and a stream. It was a creepy tunnel entrance straight outta It, known locally as the Gates of Hell, the Portal to Hell, or the Blood Bowl. It was less sinister than that, of course: it was just a drainage tunnel covered in graffiti under the city streets intended to help bring the stream to the Olentangy River. Maybe a skateboarder had died or been injured there, but there wasn't anything verifiable about those rumors. A clever vandal spraypainted the mouth to look like the open jaws of a monstrous jackolantern. The remnants of a steel cage meant to prevent large debris from clogging up the tunnel was the first thing we saw. Some other kids were also exploring, one of them in the middle of doing some shitty graffiti. Normally dry, a recent rain had the stream unusually strong and deep. We were the only ones adventurous enough to go all the way inside and walk to the other end, and we all wound up soaked as a result of it. Corella slipped and fell on her ass pretty hard at one point. I walked barefoot through the cold water, and our collective lights let us check out the graffiti and smaller adjacent tunnels. When we reached the end, we found lots of trash, including a twin-size mattress, someone's debit card, and a piece of art on canvas. We had to climb a steep, muddy hill to get back up to the streets.
For dinner, we all ate at a place called Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace, a grungy hotdog joint with a ton of cheap vegan options. We all loaded up. There were a lot of unique hotdog topping combinations, and their house veggie dog was awesome. We also shared fried leeks and some loaded cheesy "tot-chos". It was our final night on the road as we made our way back to Albany from the west coast after three months living in a car and traveling the country. It was the perfect way to end the trip, but neither of us knew just how difficult and hard our lives in Albany were about to become.
We'd stop for the night somewhere outside of Buffalo and embark on the final five hours back to Albany the next day, during which I'd get the call that my mother had suffered a stroke and was probably brain-dead in the hospital, and days later would find out I was being accused of horrible things on an Albany Facebook group.
Arnie.
To the Gates of Hell.
Dirty Frank's!
An hour east from there, off the interstate near Dragoon where there wasn't much of anything else, was this roadside attraction and travel center heavily advertised with 247 billboards across 200 miles of I-10 as The Thing?. The last time I'd been there, it cost only a dollar to experience and was actually really bizarre, with antique guns and saddles from the days of the Wild West, a vehicle supposedly owned by Hitler, wood-carved reenactments of medieval torture, and other seemingly random artifacts before the concluding reveal of an allegedly mummified mother holding her baby inside some scratched Plexiglas case. There was no coherent theme, just a strange tourist attraction shoddily thrown together from some unrelated collector's items across a couple dusty warehouses. It was definitely memorable enough to drag Alyssa to it, though. Originally opened as an attraction in 1965 by a former lawyer named Thomas Binkley Prince, it had always revolved around the preserved rotted corpse of this mother and her baby, which he had purchased for $50 a decade earlier from a man most believe was probably the legendary Homer Tate, who made a career near the mid-20th century out of creating fake mummies, Fiji mermaids, and shrunken heads out of paper, mud, and bones. When Thomas died in 1975, his wife Janet began to run the operation, and soon decided to turn it all over to the Bowlin Travel Center company.
When we got there, I discovered they'd just recently rebuilt and rebranded the attraction entirely earlier that year. Under new ownership, the Dairy Queen and shelves of usual desert gift shop junk were still there, and the titular Thing still the star of the show, but it was now surrounded by new and outlandish lore and a "museum" that cost tens of thousands of dollars to design. Now there were aliens and dinosaurs. Along with them was a fabricated history lesson by their billboard guy, concocting a tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory about the Earth originally being colonized by extraterrestrial beings 65 million years ago, their domination and domestication of the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs' eventual mutiny against their alien overlords, the aliens' retaliation with an asteroid that exterminated all the mutinous dinosaurs, and the subsequent collaboration between the aliens and human beings throughout history since the days of the Egyptians. It was all pretty stupid, and the admission price had gone up to $5 per person. Still, we gave it a chance, and walked through the caverns and large rooms that had replaced the old warehouses, reading the ridiculous "What ifs" proposed in the placards next to the extremely detailed dinosaurs and aliens, including the schematics for the sophisticated saddle technology used to wrangle and ride them. Some relics from the original exhibition made their way into the new one: the vehicle allegedly once owned by Hitler now had Winston Churchill riding in it with an alien driver, the old stagecoach and farming equipment were there as historical remnants, I guessed, and The Thing? was still the big reveal at the end, now being sold as the potential missing link between us and aliens, or the cargo that sank the Lusitania, or whatever.
Diamondback Bridge.
The (new) Thing.
One night, I tried to break up with Alyssa. I felt dishonest for not telling her all my full feelings those past couple of weeks, and even though I told her what I was doing, I still felt like I was emotionally cheating on her whenever I'd text with Franchesca. I kept finding myself getting frustrated with Alyssa in ways that I just had never gotten when I was with Tara, and I could only assume this was because of suppression becoming resentment, or something. We had pulled over for the night, off a remote road in the New Mexico desert, outside of the Holloman Air Force Base. A semi-truck was already parked there and turned off, and the only thing around us besides them were the millions of stars in the clear, dark sky. I don't really remember how the short conversation was started. Maybe she asked me outright a question about my feelings for her; maybe I just jumped into it like pulling off a bandage.
Either way, I know I eventually came out and said, "I don't think I really want to be with anyone right now in my life."
I think she asked me what I meant.
I told her I didn't think I should be dating anyone at the moment.
I think she asked me what that meant for her.
I told her I still hoped we could stay close friends.
She almost instantly began to loudly sob, throwing her face into the pillow and crying, saying she wasn't going to have anyone else if I stopped seeing her. She cried that I was all she had. I had never broken up with anyone before, and I felt pretty fucking terrible doing it in that moment. I shut back down, held her, and told her we could talk about it more when we got home, that I didn't know what I wanted to do yet, that I knew I was going to feel really guilty about her coming all the way back to frigid, boring, bleak Albany just because that's what I wanted to do next. Somehow, we got some sleep that night.
She woke up with a sadness hangover that didn't disappear from her face or tone for hours to come. She still tried to muster some enthusiasm as we went to the White Sands National Park, somewhere I'd had on my bucket list for a long time and was very excited to finally be seeing up-close. There we were, standing before an endless expanse of gypsum crystal dunes covering 275 square-miles of desert--the largest of its kind anywhere else in the world. It all looked like snow, but felt like a special kind of sand on our bare feet and in our hands. We ran up the many hills. Footprints were left across every wave of sand. It was almost jarring to be standing somewhere that only the blue sky and the white sand were visible. My brain kept anticipating painful winter temperatures on my naked feet, but all I felt was the strong breeze. Unfortunately, we did not have any sleds with us.
It went as deep as 30 feet, and the dunes reached heights of 60, all carrying 4.1 billion metric tons of gypsum sand. An inconceivable natural process that took thousands of years to come together like this began 12,000 years ago when the area still had flourishing bodies of water and grassland inhabited by Ice Age animals. As climate warmed, shallow sea beds deposited calcium sulfate, tectonic activity turned the beds into mountains, rain dissolved the gypsum in the mountain walls, small streams of rain washed it into the basin, those small bodies of water dried up because they didn't have access to the ocean, and left behind were surfaces of selenite crystals. We walked on a metal ramp that took us out into the sand with benches and signs along the way discussing the unlikely endemic flora and fauna that existed there, most of which were moths but also included a pocket mouse, an earless lizard, and camel crickets, all evolved to thrive in such a unique environment. It was one of the most breathtaking places I'd ever gone.
I drove in increments of five hours. After the White Sands, we stopped in Odessa for dinner. We found some chain called Genghis Grill that allowed us to build our own bowls of stir-fried veggies, tofu, and rice. We got to fill our bowls with whatever we wanted as a little buffet area and then hand it over to the chefs who would then fry it all together. We were surrounded by rednecks piling various slabs of meat on top of their bowls. The food was really good, and we got a side of edamame to go with it. I'd wished I'd gotten to stumble on the place more often while on the road.
While at a laundromat, cleaning all of our blankets and stuff, I elaborated on my feelings to Alyssa. I tried to be as kind but honest as I could be while still in the midst of figuring it out, myself. On paper, Alyssa was a perfect partner, and had treated me better than anyone had in a long, long time. All I knew was that my feelings for her were unfamiliar and ambiguous to me, and uncertainty wasn't something I would ever want from my partner, so it definitely wasn't what Alyssa deserved. I basically took her along on the boomeranging thought cycle I had been on for weeks. Tara had been the love of my life for my entire adulthood, and my feelings for her during the three times we'd dated were my basis of comparison for all other relationships. I knew my feelings for Tara had always been unparalleled, and they certainly were significantly less intense with Alyssa, which affected the threshold of my patience and affection. I couldn't help but oftentimes feel like Alyssa was more of a best friend than a romantic partner as a result of these relatively weaker feelings. But then the question was whether or not the difference was explained by the fact that my relationship with Alyssa was healthy and the one I had with Tara was very much not so. Was my idea and experience of what true love felt like while I was with Tara just feelings of infatuation and codependency, and therefore my feelings for Alyssa more what a normal feeling of closeness and romance feels like? Was I just downplaying and degrading my feelings for Tara because it made falling out of love with her and falling in love with Alyssa easier? Should I be with anyone at all while still confused about all of these things? No conclusions were drawn at the end of it all, and I could tell so much of what I shared stung Alyssa deeply, but we both agreed to see what happens next, assuming she wanted to hang around and find out.
We went to Denton so she could visit her big sister, Kelsey. I was nervous to meet her, partly because I feared she'd be baffled by and disappointed in Alyssa's choice for a man, but also because I had just tried to break up with her sister. But I knew how much Alyssa loved Kelsey and how long it had been since they were last able to see each other. We got dinner at Mean Greens Cafe dining hall on the University of North Texas campus--the first of its kind in the country, and somewhere I thought of frequently ever since I'd first visited. We walked right in without paying for entry and began loading up our plates. I went absolutely wild, piling on just about everything they had: mac and cheese, tofu, lasagna, black-eyed peas, dinner rolls, cake, gingerbread soft-serve ice cream, a loaded panini sandwich. It wasn't every day I could eat at a free all-you-can-eat vegan buffet, after all.
On the way to her sister's house, we passed by an outrageous flat earther yard, with a pick-up truck parked outside carrying a telescope in the back. They didn't understand gravity and believed all the water was level on the flat disc our planet actually was. I stayed mostly quiet while Alyssa and Kelsey immediately jumped into seeing who could talk the loudest during their rapidfire conversations. We met her nice roommate. Like Alyssa, Kelsey was a classically-trained woodwind player, and worked giving lessons to kids. Alyssa lived in her shadow and definitely experienced intense envy over her. It probably didn't help that Kelsey was totally gorgeous. She made her bed and gave us her room for the night, and we got going the next day. They'd be seeing each other again during the upcoming holidays, anyway.
We were back to five-hour bouts of nonstop driving. We stopped in Nashville for a big dinner at Graze, one of the stand-out vegan restaurants in the country as far as I was concerned. The last time I'd been there was with Tara. Alyssa was tracing Tara's footprints in a lot of cities we'd visited, almost literally living in her shadow. I got an order of their magnificent loaded potatoes, covered in cashew cheese, seitan chorizo, guacamole, vegan sour cream, pickled jalapenos, and green onions, and a buffalo quesadilla along with it. For dessert, we shared a brownie sundae that was absolutely prefect.
The White Sands!
Creepy apple boy.
Genghis Grill.
The Mean Greens vegan buffet food court!
Crazy flat earther house in Denton.
Hummus plate and pizza at a Mellow Mushroom somewhere.
Graze in Nashville!
We made a stop in Columbus, somewhere I'd only briefly been once before in a state that I mostly hated, in large part so I could meet a longtime online friend named Joe. When we got in, we first stopped at North Market and got a buncha vegan snacks at Joe's recommendation: bubble tea at Bubbles Tea & Juice Company, dumplings at MOMO GHAR, and doughnuts at Destination Doughnuts. Joe met up with us with his partner at the time, Corella, and we all sat around and chatted for a while. It was so nice finally meeting him. He and I had a lot of heavy stuff in common, and I'd actually started talking to him because he was flirting with Sam while I was still dating them. We were both vegan straightedge and suffered a history of abusive relationships and cancellations.
I had to stop and see the Arnold Schwarzenegger monument, a seemingly random, out-of-place sculpture just a short walk from the Market. It turned out Arnie had a link to the little city of Columbus dating back to 1970, when he arrived in town and won the Mr. World contest. After that triumph, he became friends with the organizer and they put on events together for years. In 1989, they created the Arnold Classic, an expo which had bodybuilders compete, and it still happened every year in Columbus. The monument was unveiled in 2012 and stood at 8 feet. It was pretty detailed in its veiny glory, even where his noticeably small package was confined. I grew up with Arnie on my TV, so I would always adore him. Plus, he was mostly vegan nowadays!
From there, the four of us went to explore an obscure local landmark. It existed behind a Tim Horton's, down some dirt trail to the trees and a stream. It was a creepy tunnel entrance straight outta It, known locally as the Gates of Hell, the Portal to Hell, or the Blood Bowl. It was less sinister than that, of course: it was just a drainage tunnel covered in graffiti under the city streets intended to help bring the stream to the Olentangy River. Maybe a skateboarder had died or been injured there, but there wasn't anything verifiable about those rumors. A clever vandal spraypainted the mouth to look like the open jaws of a monstrous jackolantern. The remnants of a steel cage meant to prevent large debris from clogging up the tunnel was the first thing we saw. Some other kids were also exploring, one of them in the middle of doing some shitty graffiti. Normally dry, a recent rain had the stream unusually strong and deep. We were the only ones adventurous enough to go all the way inside and walk to the other end, and we all wound up soaked as a result of it. Corella slipped and fell on her ass pretty hard at one point. I walked barefoot through the cold water, and our collective lights let us check out the graffiti and smaller adjacent tunnels. When we reached the end, we found lots of trash, including a twin-size mattress, someone's debit card, and a piece of art on canvas. We had to climb a steep, muddy hill to get back up to the streets.
For dinner, we all ate at a place called Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace, a grungy hotdog joint with a ton of cheap vegan options. We all loaded up. There were a lot of unique hotdog topping combinations, and their house veggie dog was awesome. We also shared fried leeks and some loaded cheesy "tot-chos". It was our final night on the road as we made our way back to Albany from the west coast after three months living in a car and traveling the country. It was the perfect way to end the trip, but neither of us knew just how difficult and hard our lives in Albany were about to become.
We'd stop for the night somewhere outside of Buffalo and embark on the final five hours back to Albany the next day, during which I'd get the call that my mother had suffered a stroke and was probably brain-dead in the hospital, and days later would find out I was being accused of horrible things on an Albany Facebook group.
Arnie.
To the Gates of Hell.
Dirty Frank's!