chapter one: avi, culture ;-(
"Help! I’m trapped in a car with a madman…"
That was the post that started it all; the proverbial message-in-a-bottle I vaguebooked onto/at the internet shortly into the start of my journey. Sure, sticklers will try to interject that clearly “it all” must have started sometime earlier seeing as I was already trapped in the car with the madman when I wrote that, but I have no patience for such shortsighted thinking when my writing that obviously started what is easily the real story here. Because even tho I was already in a situation worth telling about, I had so little idea where I was going or what I was doing until after I started getting responses to my telling about it.
You see I got into the car willingly, before I realized what I was getting myself into (as these things often go), and I’d committed myself to a misadventure already, so I was still trying to roll with it. But since I received my first-ever mobile device that wasn’t just a crappy cellphone with an unusable browser as a gift, specifically because I was making this trip - my mother insisting I had no excuse not to stay in touch after I left - it only made sense to use it to share even my mildest misgivings. Even if it was just on Facebook :-/
Sometimes the world can surprise you, though, when you just try reaching out a little bit.
But just in case you’re interested, and so that I don’t have to come back to it, I’ll clarify a bit: I don’t really use Facebook at all, as well-versed in the internet as I am (or thought I was) but, suddenly finding myself moving quickly, far & then farther away from anything I know, I found myself latching on or reaching out for some semblance of normalcy. I wanted to know that I still knew anything, I guess.
I didn’t, though. Facebook is terrible and no way to build or maintain relationships. After starting from scratch and even rebuilding the drawing board, I know that much again now. I also managed to recall that the web is one big deception, and that nothing is ever as it seems until it is. So for a little while I didn’t want to give in, you know, i wantd to just kinda get used to it and besides, I was remembering everything I didn’t like about social media all over again in no time anyway
But perhaps I should explain: I’m 25 and living at home, or I was until I wasn’t any more, which is perfectly normal nowadays and wouldn’t be so bad by itself if it weren’t for everything else in my life being terrible :-( but it was most definitely terrible in ways I can’t even get into right now. it’s why I left home, though, and left in that way where you’re running away from something way more than running toward anything. only I was fully aware of that fact and had simply concluded it was the right and logical thing to do. I’m not saying my home-life was a war zone or anything, but there are plenty of places in this world that it makes sense to run from regardless of whether or not you have a destination in mind at that moment.
And that is ultimately the reason why I am terrified right now, and why I am sitting here in a car plunking this all out into my phone, autocorrect be damned (actually turned it off almost as soon as i started): this is a defense of some kind against the sudden crushing reality of my decision. i’m only a day out but it’s my first night sleeping nowhere in particular, blowing away with the evening breeze because at this moment I belong nowhere. I’ve left where I was but I haven’t ended up anywhere yet, and all the safeties of home are gone along with the comforts. I’m not worried about tonight really. I’m worried about next month and next year, and about never actually landing anywhere.
I tried a sublet for the summer, a few towns away in what passes for a city in Connecticut, and for awhile that worked. It was different at least, and since i was renting from a grad student at yale it was surprisingly nice :-) almost insulting tho how it was among the best places Ive ever lived and it had as much to do with the convenience of someone richer as it had to do with how well i was acutally doing. But i ignored that as best I could + instead focused on how well i was living for once.
The job that had me doing so well just doesn’t matter because, long story short, i lost it, right at the end of summer - downsized in a bad economy thats busy almost kinda sorta recovering as long as you had lots of money already and didnt lose it when everyone else did. All that matters is it was enough to keep me in this place, and that I worked at night and didn’t really know my roommates. So i lost it, the job, and then i started to lose it. you know, my mind. cuz i had been tentatively offered one of the other rooms in the apartment long-term - a nicer room that was another $150/month - but i couldn’t even keep the room i had if they were open to that. I didnt even ask.
And when one of my fellow subLetters ran into me, on my 1st unemployed night as he came home from work, and asked me where i was going next, it never occurred to me that he hadn’t been asked to stay - he seemed to have a lot of purpose and direction as he told me about his plan to go out west anf take a job that was waiting for him, that i just assumed thatd been his agenda from the start. Hell, he wanted to leave a few days before his lease was up so he must be really excited baout his new life. Again, i didn’t even ask.
I just knew i couldn’t stay here any longer, and I’d be damned if i was going back home again. So when this roommate who i only everr drank with once or twice on a random weekend night said i should roadtrip with him out west, pay for some gas, keep him awake on the road and maybe he could get me a job at his dad or whoever’s company? What do you think I did?
I made plans to dispose of whatever i couldn’t sell, sold whatever i could, sold all but one of my guitars </3 I told my mom and whats-his-name and he gave me some cash + a slap on the back. Mom gave me this phone and the Mom goodbye, tearful hug, hankie in hand, everything. So glad i went to the old house for that, to drop off the few things i couldn’t get rid of.
And despite the huge red flag the night before we left where he’s drunk as hell at 7:30 pm and finally lost a wrestling match to his button-down shirt at around ten, at which point he passed out on the living room couch - I was all in at this point. So when he woke up a few hours later, threw up in the bathroom, then started drinking again, I just set the coffee pot and went to bed. He managed to hold a job all summer, after all. Hes just blowing off steam.
Following the same logic i also just shrugged it off when he woke up mad late after saying he wanted to hit the road early - well he got really drunk last night, i told myself. So i just made a full pot of coffee, smoked a cigarette and waited. Then i unpacked my stash and got high, drank some coffee and waited. Then i found his keys and started packing the car, my stuff and any of his bags + boxes left out in the living room. Then i drank coffee and waited, and was almost at the point of being actually annoyed when he got up.
I told him yeah, a little bit. Then I hit the bathroom, smoked another cigarette, and waited. It was just getting dark out when he was finally ready, and by this time i was annoyed, but grateful that my annoyance was over, so i kept my mouth shut hoping we could just get going already.
My breaking point didnt come til we were about an hour or so into the trip, driving along the parkway out of CT to the parkway through NY to avoid the GWB. Not alot of cars on the road but he’s speeding and weaving through everyone, getting a little faster, then faster still. I asked him whats going on, why are we going so damn fast, and he just blurts out
"Dude I have really got to find a bathroom like right now! I know there’s a rest area around here somewhere, used to come this way all the time with Dad and… OH SHIT!”
And he slammed on the brakes, threw it in reverse without even looking (no one way there thank god) and sped into a rest area that was just a sad brick building where the only doors were on the maintenance room, and not the actual bathrooms. The lot was completely empty, but a moment after we skidded to a complete stop a small truck or a van zipped by in the darkness of the parkway behind us.
He all but dove out of the car, leaving it running as he started running toward the dismal brick structure, and how he managed to shut the car door at all in the process is a mystery I missed - I was still staring at the black tire marks behind us that he left when he screeched us into this spot. Not that we’re parked properly in a spot but the entire lot is empty so i didnt even really care about that. So now you know why, sitting there in the car, it made sense to post that message to facebook. And that’s when it happened.
I got a lot of pings back immediately, mostly just “you ok?” and other stuff that i wasnt really looking for - i don’t know what i WAS looking for - when at the bottom of the comments appeared text from a ‘Slingo Lang’:
"Maybe he’s trapped in that car with you, Rorschach.”
There was nothing about that reply i didnt like, but i didn’t know who that was or how or why they were looking at my posts. So i asked, who is Slingo Lang?
It took me a moment of staring into space before i got it. “….Robert? is that you???”
"Shh. we’ll talk later. slingo dot lang at g ma il dot co m"
All I said was ” :-x ” and copied his email into my contacts - and good thing too cuz i just sent one to him that said “got it! - remi” and when i went back to Facebook, his comment was gone.
So i sat here in the car long enough waiting that i pulled out my drawing pad + sketched a still life of the view out the rear window, started filling it in and coloring, and only started tapping out this story when my phone went off: someone else liked a comment someone had made about a thing i think i said i liked on facebook and i fell for the whole ruse - my phone was in my hand again. I closed the app in disgust, probably how people in the olden days used to slam phones but way quieter, and just opened the browser. then in small text google randomly presented me with a word of the day because they know i probably need the help, and i saw
aviculture [ey-vi-kuhl-cher] n. the practice of keeping and breeding birds and the culture that forms around it
and of course my first thought was something like “avi… culture?… is that what they’re calling hanging out online now or?…” before i even read the actual definition. Then i did read it, and then i realized that the internet is full of humans who couldn’t belong and so instead turned into birds & flew off into the Cloud. Maybe just to justify my own weird thought to myself, i had a weirder one. it’s a good defense til you run out of turtles on the way down.
But yeah, i opened Facebook again and posted my half-baked notion anyway - what the hell, it’s late enough right? Who cares? Nobody, probably, and for some reason that was comforting. Nobody replied and nobody liked it.
I guess thats what that means.
So I went back to my drawing, just coloring it in with markers now really, and i’m just about done at this point when he finally comes back out to the car.
"Sorry about that, dude - shouldntve had those burritos right before we left."
You gonna live? I asked for entirely selfish reasons.
"Yeah, I just feel like i shat a whole chicken just now."
We pulled out of the rest area onto the parkway and drove on in silence for awhile before i finally thought to turn on some music. The roads were smooth so i pulled out a portable reading lamp from my bag + clipped it to my sketchpad so i could work on my drawing awhile, til he said the light was bothering him. So i went back to tapping out this story on my phone, using my jacket to shield him from the glare.
And actually we just stopped again for gas and i’m OK with the drawing as is:
So now that i ve typed all this there’s no way around coming back to that earlier bird-thought, the word of the day, and realize that there are all sorts of reasons to need an escape, some more drastic than others - and that I’m taking flight from a fight I can’t take anymore just like basically everyone online who isnt a bot or a troll. all coming together with our shared sense of not belonging where we come from or where we are…
And pulling back onto the road just now and tapping out that last paragraph while listening to the soft fuzz of fading radio music, my phone went off again. Slingo has replied to my post like a voice in my head:
" it’s like a tragedy we’re all in together ;-( "