Across Illinois we ate soggy gas station fries; we buried a small sparrow dead yet still warm as a heart in our hands at a playground in Iowa; in Wisconsin there was whiskey and heartbreak; in Ohio there were cicadas falling from the trees and getting stuck in our haphazardly-chopped hair—but really and truly, in Ohio there was a heartbreak, and a fuck up, a fuck up Oh yes Oh most; in Pennsylvania there were hostels and monuments and motels and sleeplessness and a heartbreak, and night; and in Indiana, headed back towards Chicago on the longest day of the year, there we were, two boygirls in thrifted suits and scuffed-up boots and battered beat old hats atop our chopped hair feeling the hostile eyes of reststop strangers upon us like they wanted to kill us for being what we were. We got back in the red sinwagon, me behind the wheel and Maggie riding shotgun rolling cigarettes with drystale dregs of tobacco, turned Tom Waits louder on the tapedeck, growled along. “We’ll never be going back home.” And laughed at the judgmental hatred of petty-eyed strangers because what were they gonna do? We’d been dodging evil looks all across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic and they may’ve wanted to kill us but we’d already survived. Survived the heartbreak and the hangovers and lost wallets and being tailed by cops while driving a car with suspended plates; survived sleeping in the car in the Maryland summerheat, sleeping on hardwood floors smelling of catpiss and hard, itchy cots in rooms with psychedelic wallpaper; survived no money no food no gas in New Jersey and smoking weed from empty beercan pipes. All that and the extra things you’ve gotta survive if you’re a girl-type person, even (especially) a boygirl. Not just stinkeyes but rapethreats. Men following us down dark-dank Baltimore alleys and all we had was a stolen switchblade for protection. Sleazy guys at parties with groping hands and dead fishtongues who wanted to watch us make out with their too-pretty underage girlfriends and then wanted to join in. Other guys we thought we loved who we thought loved us, who we were so desperate to touch that when they wanted to fuck with no condom we said yes, yes, and if we got an STI or knocked up? Well, we’d probably survive that too. Because we had each other, Maggie ‘Rat Hole’ Mayhem and Jessie ‘Whiskey’ Disobedience. I punched the gas and glanced over at her, rolling smokes, sipping coffee, her feet up on the dash and her hat pulled low over her glittering green eyes, my rain dog, road dog, partner-in-crime, and said: “I love you. Please don’t die.”
