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December 14
Casey Cramer, like the rest of us, goes to work each morning and
puts his pants on one leg at a time. It’s just that when he
gets to work, his job is to run into people as fast as he can, and
his pants are spandex, have thigh pads, and only go down to his
knees.
Casey Cramer is the backup fullback for the Carolina Panthers of
the National Football League. Matt, Ben, and I know him from his
days as a tight end for Dartmouth, so when we came to Charlotte,
we looked him up, hoping to learn about life as a young American
trying to make it in the NFL. We also wanted to know what kind of
weird, twisted behavior went on behind the closed doors of an NFL
locker room.
Casey lives with his fiancé, Lizzy, and their teacup Chihuahua
named Toof. Last year, Casey’s first in the NFL, he bounced
around the league before finding a home with Carolina. After several
injuries to other running backs and fullbacks, Casey started three
games. This year Casey’s on the practice squad, which means
he practices with the team, but doesn’t dress for games. He’s
“putting his time in” as they say, which is the starting
point for most young professionals’ career trajectories. But
he plays football for a living, so putting his time in doesn’t
entail entering numbers into spreadsheets or retrieving mocha lattes
from Starbucks. Instead, he has to learn the Panthers offense and
occasionally endure a jockstrap full of IcyHot.
Casey and his teammates go to work around six every morning to
prepare for a day full of watching film, studying playbooks, lifting
weights, practicing, and daring each other to do gross, stupid,
or inhumane stunts. The guys work hard, Casey says, but they also
have a good time. The locker room is like a fraternity. Frequently
the veterans will offer younger guys like Casey some cash, maybe
fifty bucks, to do something humiliating. Casey, the team’s
“dumbest smart guy,” usually complies.
Casey has held his breath in the ice bath for as long as possible
and he’s raced a teammate to finish a quart of mayonnaise
(they both polished off their jars in around three minutes). Another
time his teammates gave him a bunch of goldfish and paid him for
each one he ate. He swallowed twelve little guys, then three big
ones. For the bigger fish, he had to chew them up and open his mouth
to prove that he was actually eating them. Then Jake Delhomme, the
team’s starting quarterback, said he’d give Casey a
hundred bucks if Casey could vomit up a live fish. Casey vomited
up two fish, both alive and kicking.
As a practical joke, Casey once poured an entire bottle of Palmolive
in the Jacuzzi. He got sent to the head coach’s office for
that one. Apparently some of the Panthers staff didn’t understand
why a Jacuzzi full of bubbly dish detergent was funny.
If the team likes to partake in juvenile stunts, it might be because
they work so hard for most of the day. Not only do they put themselves
through extreme physical punishment, but they also have to study
playbooks that are more complex than the Batmobile’s user
manual. Learning the Panther offense, Casey says, is way tougher
than any class he took at Dartmouth.
But Casey admits that despite his education, he’s doesn’t
always make the right decisions on the field. He says he’s
not the brightest player, nor the most athletic. It’s hard
work that has gotten him to the NFL, and he says he probably has
such a strong work ethic because he’s always enjoyed proving
people wrong. Maybe that’s why, when someone says, “I
bet you won’t eat fifteen goldfish and then vomit them all
out,” he does.
One of his teammates, Rod Smart, is particularly good at levitating
the mood in the locker room. Smart likes to refer to himself in
the third person, and he still responds to his old XFL moniker,
He Hate Me. In the weight room, Smart tends to eschew the team’s
standard issue workout shorts for white spandex pants. The pants
are pretty much see-through in all the wrong places. It’s
in this outfit that Smart likes to hug the strength coach.
One time, Smart forgot to bring his spandex pants to the workout
facility. Actually, he forgot to bring everything besides his sneakers.
He climbed aboard the treadmill, turned it on, and began running.
Completely naked.
In the film room, Smart once asked the team if they wanted to see
a trick. The rest of the team said they did (I don’t know
why), so Smart momentarily disappeared behind the large projector
screen. When he returned, he wasn’t wearing any pants (not
very surprising, I know), he was on all fours, and his package was
tucked between his legs. Smart turned his butt to the team and began
wagging his tail.
If the locker room has all the positive qualities of a fraternity,
it’s got some of the negative ones too. Casey says it would
be very hard for a gay player to come out because the locker room
is so staunchly heterosexual, and “gay” is used as a
go-to derogatory term. There’s also a party culture that surrounds
the NFL, and some of the guys freely partake in it. But half the
team prefers a quieter lifestyle. There’s a large Christian
influence on many of the NFL players, so they leave the partying
to others.
Although Casey says there’s no divide between the team’s
white and black players, the other guys sometimes give him a hard
time because they know he’s sensitive to any racist comments.
Smart will walk by Casey’s locker room, stop, and say, “Cramer,
did you just call me the N-word?” Casey, of course, has said
no such thing, but Smart repeats the question, only louder: “Cramer,
did you just call me the N-word?”
That gets the entire team going and they all yell at Casey for
being a racist.
Casey also gets a hard time for being from an Ivy League school.
They call him “Dartmouth,” which doesn’t sound
like a very clever insult, unless you’re hearing it for the
437th time of the year after you’ve just missed a blocking
assignment.
Casey might get called “a racist” or “Dartmouth”
or the “dumbest smart guy,” but he also gets called
“one-speed” because he always goes full speed. The veterans
hate his style because it makes them look bad in practice when they’re
trying to rest their bodies. Casey doesn’t mind being called
“one-speed” though. He’s still trying to prove
his doubters wrong. That’s why he’s always in the weight
room, that’s why he studies film so carefully, and that’s
why he’s willing to eat a quart of mayonnaise or fifteen goldfish.
---
Yesterday began in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Kentucky. I went into
the Wal-Mart in the morning to get some motor oil and saw that this
Superstore housed a grocery store, a restaurant, a bank, a Movie
Gallery, a hair salon, another Wal-Mart (only slightly smaller),
three Starbucks, two Boeing 767 hangers, and a giant gorilla who
was working the check-out register for $2.67 an hour. (I made up
everything after the hair salon, but you get the point). And I got
a great deal on the Castrol 5W-20 I was looking for.
We then drove to Charlotte, via the beautiful Smoky Mountain National
Park, where we saw our first real snow. It’s frickin’
cold in Charlotte.
Back in four. Email adam@tyap.com
to be notified when new blogs are posted.
December 10
Ben and I took a walk around Charleston yesterday morning while
Wigs did some work and Matt went out to do street interviews. In
the afternoon we drove to Clemson and watched Wigs and Matt’s
friend from high school, Akin Akingbala, help the Tigers basketball
team beat Eastern Tennessee State University. Akin, a 6’9”
Nigerian center, scored thirteen points and ripped down two key
offensive rebounds that put the nail in ETSU’s coffin.
After dinner at a rib joint, we went back to Akin’s apartment
and met some of his teammates, one of whom, Troy, treated us to
a recital of one of his poems.
---
I want to take this opportunity to go back to New Orleans and share
what I saw there. A lot of this will be redundant if you’ve
read the other guys’ blogs because I didn’t have a journal
day in New Orleans, but I wanted to write down what I saw, if for
nothing else, to have my own written record of it. Here it is…
---
Mayor Ray Nagin looks down at his New Orleans constituents from
the Astor Hotel balcony as he delivers a speech that is supposed
to instill hope in the holiday season. He’s wearing a dark
suit, his head is freshly shaven, and a twenty-foot high, unlit
Christmas tree watches over his right shoulder.
Several rows of citizens watch from the center strip of Canal Street,
where street cars used to run and palm trees used to stand at full
mast. They are listening to the mayor, but they’re here for
the free trees – the city is handing out 500 Douglas firs
as soon as the big tree, the one on the balcony, is lit.
Television vans line the curb in front of the Astor and cameras
are pointed toward the mayor. He finishes his speech, but the television
networks aren’t ready for the tree to be lit. Mayor Nagin
mumbles something about waiting for the 5:30 news. Suddenly Santa
Claus has taken the mayor’s place on stage and he’s
yelling HO HO HO, apparently unaware that the microphones are working
just fine and there’s no need to shout.
But Saint Nick’s moment in the lime light is short lived.
The networks are ready and the mayor reappears to ceremoniously
plug an oversize extension cord into an equally enormous socket.
The tree’s red and green lights blink on. Brief, half-hearted
applause follows, but the television crews have captured their sound
byte. They turn to the New Orleanians for reactions.
Waiting in line for a tree is a 24-year-old Caucasian woman from
Los Angeles named Gab, who moved to New Orleans a year ago. She
tells us she lost her job in November, but she had enough of a nest
egg to come back to the Crescent City. She’s taking photographs
and hoping to produce a book full of images of the aftermath. The
city will rebuild itself through human resiliency and through propagating
its art, she says.
Outside the Astor, two African-American women and a young girl
are disinterestedly watching the slowly moving line for the free
trees. They are staying in the Astor because they’re unable
to reenter their homes in the ninth ward. We ask if the Hotel is
a good one, and one of the women says, “It’s nice, but
it’s not that nice.” They think the city and state have
offered them a series of insufficient gestures. “I’d
love to have a tree,” the woman says. “But I don’t
have a house to put it in.”
The little girl is seven. She just had a birthday. I ask her what
she wants for Christmas and she says she wants lots of things. She
shows us her list, which is a stack of a dozen rumpled teal coupons
that have been cut from a newspaper retail insert. One advertises
a Schwinn bicycle, another has a picture of a robot dog.
When she’s shown me the last coupon, she says, “And
I also want a house.”
As we walk away from the Astor, down Canal Street, a black and
white United Cab stops at a red light. It’s a Ford Expedition
taxi, and the driver leans out of the open window and asks if I’m
the guy who told off Ray Nagin at a town meeting. No, I say, it’s
a case of mistaken identity. The driver’s name is Greg. He’s
31 and African-American. He seems disappointed that I’m not
the guy from the meeting because Ray Nagin’s “a joke”.
His buddy, riding shotgun and wearing a black Los Angeles Dodgers
hat, agrees. He tells me the president, the governor, and the mayor
should all be hung.
---
The streets of downtown New Orleans feel empty, cold, and broken.
Some businesses are back, but many stores are locked, their windows
displaying toppled display racks and shelves spilling merchandise
into the aisles. Windows are missing from skyscrapers and people
are missing from the streets. Even the French Quarter, one of the
areas that inhabits higher ground and has therefore bounced back
relatively quickly, feels like a beachside boardwalk in the winter.
Bourbon Street is open for business, but it’s nowhere near
capacity. Women are almost non-existent. After meeting two females
in a restaurant who work for ABC News, they ask us to wait with
them until their ride arrives. “There aren’t many women
here,” one says. “But there are lots of men.”
“And they’re aggressive,” the other one says.
Women are perhaps staying away for the time being, but law enforcement
is ubiquitous, keeping close watch on a city that has seen only
one murder since September. State troopers from New York as well
as local officers patrol Bourbon Street, chatting with each other
and nodding to their colleagues who pass on foot, on horse, in car,
or in golf cart. The National Guard is here, too. They’re
seen less frequently than the police, but it’s not rare to
see a camouflage Humvee driving up St. Charles St. The uniformed
officers inside have quite possibly just returned from Iraq, back
in the U.S. to watch over a region that tries to pick itself up
after losing a battle to nature’s invading forces.
The t-shirt shops on Bourbon Street are open again. They’ve
got the standard screen-printed salutes to drinking and sex, but
a new genre of t-shirt slogan is hanging on the racks these days.
Alongside a black shirt that says I GOT BOURBON FACED ON SHIT STREET,
we see one that reads KATRINA GAVE ME A BLOWJOB THAT I’LL
NEVER FORGET. Another t-shirt shows a cartoon bull squatting over
a toilet bowl. The caption underneath says FEMA.
---
On the north end of the French Quarter, there’s a restaurant
called the Port of Call, which is famous for great burgers and an
alarmingly potent drink – The Monsoon. We sit at the bar and
order both.
There are two bartenders at the Port of Call and they look enough
alike to pretend to be brothers when strangers ask. One bartender,
the one who makes our Monsoons, warns that the drinks are likely
to be night-enders. “You’ll get drunk after one,”
he says. “You’ll get laid after two. You’ll go
to jail after three, and after four, you’ll get laid in jail.”
He then finishes his Bud Light, extinguishes his cigarette with
draught beer from the tap, and sways off toward the other end of
the bar. He is the French Quarter as it used to be, an all night,
every night party where everyone’s invited.
The other bartender, Larry, is sixty-one years old, wears glasses,
and has a white ponytail. He worked as a graphic designer, but got
out of the business seven years ago, came to New Orleans, and has
been working as a bartender every since. He also works at Johnny
White’s, a tavern that never closed during the storm. Johnny’s,
which turned into an impromptu community center for those seeking
food and news from the outside world, received some significant
media attention. Larry tells us that he played hardball with Chris
Matthews and won.
New Orleans is accustomed to the presence of journalists and cameras
by now. Most people seem to have been interviewed at least once,
but they’re still happy to have their stories recorded. They
stress how important it is to let the rest of the country see what’s
going on in their city.
Our bartender, Larry, and his wife didn’t leave during the
hurricane. They stayed in their apartment in the French Quarter,
saw the storm arrive and depart, then watched the chaos that followed.
Larry, a Vietnam veteran, said the weather sent a charge through
him and made him feel twenty-five again. After it was over, he watched
through the window with a shotgun in one hand and a .457 magnum
in the other as looters ran by their house.
Larry had an agreement with men in two of the apartments that overlooked
the courtyard: if any looter jumped the fence and wandered eight
feet toward the building, they would all shoot, catching the trespasser
in three-way crossfire. Only one man jumped the fence, but he retreated
before any bullets flew. Larry seems slightly disappointed that
the man didn’t keep walking.
Larry is one of many New Orleanians who refused to leave, refused
to bow to the elements. I ask him if the city will bounce all the
way back and he says of course it will.
---
On Wednesday The Times – Picayune runs a headline in high
bold letters that says DOOMED TO FAILURE. The accompanying article
discusses a flawed design in the 17th Street Canal levee, but it’s
a borderline apocalyptic headline for a town that is trying to promote
a message of optimism and resiliency.
Also on the front page, in much smaller font, is, “N.O. hopes
wireless service connects.” In that article, one that covers
the launching of a city-wide wireless internet network, Mayor Nagin
is quoted as saying, “This is a huge leap for the city. This
is one more sign that we are rebuilding New Orleans into something
better, something bigger, something wireless.”
Eight of The Times – Picayune’s first twelve pages
are devoted to a section called “Hurricane Aftermath,”
denoted by two torn red and black storm signal flags.
In the late morning, a writer for the Village Voice, Anya Kamenetz,
drives us through the ninth ward to show us the most damaged section
of the city. As we drive toward the ward, the evidence of destruction
gradually increases. Once inside the neighborhood, the streets are
mostly empty, occupied only occasionally by a police cruiser or
a family inspecting a house for salvageable belongings.
The sidewalks are covered in trash and debris, cars are caked in
flood grime, and personal belongings spill out of houses like a
torn doll’s stuffing. Each house has been marked in spray-paint
by the National Guard upon inspection. It’s a coded tag system
that, among other things, lists how many casualties, if any, were
found in the house. Most houses, thankfully, say zero. We do, however,
come across a house that says 1 DEAD DOG.
Mundane artifacts have been thrown from their habitual settings,
come to rest in unfamiliar surroundings, and formed scenery that
is extraordinary in its improbability. A plastic children’s
playground, with slides and ladders in primary colors, has been
swept against a chain link fence. It looks almost animalistic, like
a dog straining to jump the fence, or as Anya suggests, “like
a dinosaur.”
Deeper into the ninth ward, toward the Canal St. levee that broke,
entire blocks are wiped out. Ben, Matt, and Wigs ventured to the
levee and saw houses unearthed and turned literally inside out.
One house was wearing its own wood floor like a floppy hat. Elsewhere
a wayward barge has spilled out of the canal and crushed the hood
of a short yellow school bus, tipping the whole vehicle forward.
(see all the pictures here)
Wind and water blew apart the neighborhood, and it’s hard
to fathom how reconstruction could even begin to take place. Rebuilding
each house is impossible – some of them don’t even exist
anymore. And razing the ninth ward would seemingly take years, even
with bulldozers a block wide.
Some day New Orleans might become, as Mayor Nagin says, something
bigger and better, but for now, there’s plenty of work to
be done and it’s hard to know where to start.
December 6
The search for Charlotte Simmons began, somewhat appropriately,
on facebook. Wigs and I wanted to find a Charlotte Simmons because
we’ve both read Tom Wolfe’s seminal depiction of modern
college life, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and we thought it would be
interesting to profile the real deal, the non-fiction Charlotte.
(To be clear, Tom Wolfe’s book was not based on a real person,
and certainly not a real person named Charlotte Simmons. His Charlotte,
the main character in his book, comes from rural North Carolina,
has never kissed a boy, and wears tapered jeans.)
So Wigs went online and found a Charlotte on facebook. She’s
the only one in the country who’s listed. This Charlotte was
a freshman at the University of Florida, which we thought was perfect
because Wolfe’s Charlotte is a freshman, and he did some of
his research in Gainesville, home of the Gators. Wigs sent a facebook
message to the UF Charlotte, explained our project, explained why
we wanted to interview her, and asked if we could meet up when we
came to Florida. She responded, “Yeah, def. Who are you again?
LOL.”
We were golden, we thought. In another facebook message exchange,
she agreed to talk to us, but warned that she’d be very busy
studying for exams, so we should let her know when we were coming
to town. We did, but by the time we got to Gaineseville, there was
still no response from Charlotte.
Wigs and I were forced to go into detective mode. Here’s
what we knew about Charlotte: she was a freshman, she was in a sorority
(but we couldn’t remember which one because we’re idiots
and we had forgotten to write it down), and one of her favorite
movies is Footloose. We also, thanks to the University of Florida
student directory, had her dorm address. There’s a fine line
between detectives and criminal stalkers, and we were walking it.
One of the first people we stopped was a freshman who was returning
to her own dorm. We asked her if she knew where Charlotte’s
dorm was located, but she didn’t. We explained why we wanted
to know, and when she found out that we were writing a book and
filming a documentary, she exclaimed, “Really?!” and
did a cute little jump, then a dance, that lasted for a good ten
seconds. We asked if she knew Charlotte, just on the off chance
that she was in the same social circle (the school has about 40,000
undergrads, so it wasn’t likely). She didn’t know Charlotte,
but she volunteered to call her roommate and ask her to look up
Charlotte on facebook. It turned out that the roommate knew her
– they were in the same rush group together. Charlotte was
a Delta Gamma.
(And I have to include my second favorite part of the conversation
(the jump-dance was #1): At one point, Wigs invited her to come
with us, then immediately uninvited her, saying, “Do you want
to come on an adventure? No, you’re busy.”)
As the girl was on her cell with her roommate, four other girls
recruited Wigs to take a picture of them playing in a fountain in
front of the University of Florida welcome plaque. The picture was
part of some sort of sorority scavenger hunt, but they offered to
give us a ride to Delta Gamma, or DG as it’s called, on their
way to their next stop.
Wigs knocked on DG’s door and a girl answered. We explained
what we were doing there, explained who we were looking for, and
the girl said, “Oh! She’s like my best friend.”
The girl, Kayla, called Charlotte and a couple minutes later we
had an interview set up for the next day at noon.
On Monday, Ben and Matt dropped Wigs and I off at the UF Southwest
Recreation Center because they were taking Harvey down to New Smyrna
Beach, near Daytona. We would catch up with them later.
Wigs and I figured we’d get a workout because
a) we could use it, and
b) we had some time to kill
After the very productive workout session, we needed a ride back
to the DG side of campus to meet Charlotte. Wigs asked a female
student who was leaving the Recreation Center if we could hitch
a ride, and she said sure. People are very helpful here. She asked
what we were doing in Gainesville if we weren’t students,
and we told her we were looking for Charlotte Simmons. “Oh!”
she said. “She’s like my best friend!”
---
Charlotte, as described by her friends, Kayla and Lauren (our driver),
is nice, funny, kooky, and crazy.
Wigs and I were hoping, truth be told, that Charlotte would be
the complete opposite of her fiction self: bubbly, shallow, ADD,
and naïve. But we were disappointed. Disappointed in a good
way, I guess. The real Charlotte Simmons is smart, direct, insightful,
and very mature. She’s either figured out everything about
college in the past few months or she came here prepared.
Wigs and I talked to her in her sorority over enchiladas, then
followed her to her acting class, where she gave a stirring rendition
of a deadbeat mom riding shotgun in a car next to a husband who
wants to kill her.
There’s more to the story, but it will have to wait till
the profile’s posted. For now, I’m riding in the bus
to Ocala, hoping that Wigs and I will find a ride to Daytona Beach
from there.
---
WARNING: second half of the blog contains
adult content, which probably isn't suitable for anyone under the
age of eighteen. Seriously.
4.5 hours later
Well, Wigs and I found a ride out of Ocala. A nineteen-year-old
kid named Tony picked us up and brought us out toward Lynn. Tony
works in an outfitters store, and will begin community college in
the spring. He told us that we were heading toward a National Forest,
and there were lots of “rainbow people” who live out
in the woods, smoke marijuana, and convene once a year to trade
their pot for camping equipment.
Our next ride came from an older guy named Clayton who gave us
a ride in his pickup truck. There wasn’t room for me up front,
so I rode in the back, and felt good in the late afternoon Florida
heat. Clayton took us outside of Lynn, and warned us that the next
thirty miles would be nothing but trees and it was dangerous to
hitchhike through the forest.
The sun was going down and so was our luck.
Soon it was completely dark and nobody was going to stop on the
side of the road to pick up a couple backpackers. Especially not
if they got close enough to see Wigs’ robust beard.
We were still over an hour from Daytona Beach, where Ben and Matt
were. We decided to head to the nearest gas station and hope that
somebody swung through heading east toward the coast. A half hour
later, we were sitting outside the Chevron when a guy named Buck
asked us where we were heading.
Buck wasn’t wearing a shirt, he had a camouflage baseball
cap, and his jeans were tucked into knee-high lace-up boots. He
drove an old red Chevy 1500. He asked us where we were heading,
we told him, and he said he could get us part way there. Well, all
right, we said.
As we climbed into the truck, Buck asked if we wanted a beer, reached
into a cooler in his truck bed, and threw me a Keystone Light. Wigs
doesn’t drink, so he said No, thanks. Buck shrugged and cracked
one for himself.
As we left the gas station, Buck told us he needed to make one
quick stop to see a guy. The guy owed him fifty bucks, he said.
On the way there, he asked us what we were into, “Trucks or
bikes?” We’re not really into either trucks or bikes,
so we just asked him what he was into. He said he was a motorhead.
Always has been.
After a couple miles driving in the wrong direction, away from
Daytona, Buck pulled behind an empty gas station, popped the hood
of the Chevy, and exited the cab. A few seconds later he was back
behind the steering wheel with two fresh Keystone Lights, one for
me, one for him.
“So,” Buck said, “What kind of pussy y’all
like? Blond, red, or brunette?”
We were, of course, speechless.
Finally Wigs said he kind of liked it shaved. (At this point, we
were more into impressing Buck than telling the truth. I had already
told him that I liked to enter my old ’88 Dodge Raider in
off-road races, which is not even close to true. “Fuckin’
hard on,” Buck had responded before banging his beer can on
top of mine and chugging.)
“You like ‘em with shaved heads?” Buck asked,
confused.
“No,” Wigs said, “You know, I like when they
shave down there.”
“Oh,” Buck said. “Fuckin’ Hard on. I’ll
drink to that.”
Buck went to take a leak on his engine block, and Wigs and I finally
had the chance to exchange a look of mutual and pure horror. This
guy was going to kill us. No. He was going to rape us, then kill
us.
Buck returned. “Fuckin’ hard on,” he said. Then,
to break an awkward silence, he asked us what turned us on –
trucks or bikes.
Wigs told him we had recently watched an NASCAR Imax movie and
Buck seemed fine with that.
Wigs went to get a pizza, so it was just me and Buck, and we talked
about trucks, bikes, and why women shouldn’t be allowed to
own bars. When Wigs returned with the pizza, Buck asked him where
the beer was. Buck seemed kind of pissed about not having beer,
so I said I’d go buy him some.
When I came back, Wigs and Buck were facing each other across the
truck bed, neither of them saying anything, Buck with his foot up
on the back driver’s side wheel. I presented Buck with his
four-pack of tall-boy Busches. “They didn’t have any
twelve packs?” he asked.
“We can get you some more if you drink them all,” I
said.
“I think I feel like reading my book,” Wigs said.
This seemed like a curious thing to say in front of Buck, a man
who had already stated that he distrusted Wigs because he didn’t
drink. Choosing to read a book instead of hanging out behind a bar,
drinking beer with Buck, seemed like something that might get us
runover by a red Chevy 1500.
It was such a weird thing to say, in fact, that I realized that
Wigs wanted to get the hell out of there. So I played along. “Sure,”
I said. “That sounds good. Let’s go read at the Shell
station.”
Buck didn’t seem happy. He looked downright depressed that
we were leaving. I stuck out my hand, and he shook it, but only
because he had to. “You can keep the beer,” we told
him.
“Yup.”
Wigs was hightailing it away from the truck, looking back over
his shoulder every few strides like he thought Buck was going to
be coming after us with some kind of homemade weapon, perhaps a
hubcap nailed to a baseball bat. “What’s the matter?”
I asked.
“He was masturbating,” Wigs said.
Once in the Shell station, Wigs relayed the story to me. When I
left the truck, I told him, “Let’s assess the situation
as we go,” meaning, “Let’s make sure we don’t
get in the car with him if he wants to drive us to a swamp or something.”
At that point, Wigs and I were behind the truck and Buck was in
the cab doing God knows what. After I left, Wigs had stood behind
the truck for a couple minutes, not knowing what to do.
Finally Wigs circled around to the passenger’s side and peered
in the dark open door. That’s when he saw Buck with erection
in hand, eyes closed, and squirt bottle of Lubriderm at his side.
Buck, sensing Wigs’ presence, opened his eyes and slowly turned
to his right. Why Wigs didn’t run away, I’m not sure,
but he actually got in the cab with Buck. Then Wigs told Buck that
he needed to make a phone call, so he circled back to the truck’s
tailgate.
A minute later, Buck reappeared, placed his forearms on the truck
bed, and held his latest Keystone Light in both hands. He looked
across the truck at Wigs and said, “I just wanna cum on a
girl’s face right now. We could all share her.”
Wigs pretended to talk into his phone and not hear him.
Buck then asked him (again) if he preferred blonds, brunettes or
redheads. Then Buck’s right hand reached below the top of
the truck bed, and his shoulder slowly started pumping. Apparently
he thought Wigs couldn’t see this.
That’s when I showed up and Buck, hearing me coming, quickly
shifted his leg up onto the tire so that I couldn’t see whatever
was going on down there.
Soon we were running toward the Shell station and that’s
where we are now, hoping that Ben and Matt will get here soon to
rescue us. We can’t believe the man we just encountered. Wigs
can’t believe what he saw. And I can’t believe I shook
the man’s hand.
---
1 hour later
Wigs and I are outside the Kangaroo gas station, about a mile east
of the Shell. Why are we here? Because the night worker at the Shell
called the police, fearing that the two guys who were reading a
book and working on a laptop might be up to no good.
Officer Kinsey appeared on the scene and asked us what we were
up to. We told him what we were doing in Florida, and that we were
waiting for our friend to show up.
“Your friend, huh?”
And that’s when we knew Officer Kinsey wanted to arrest us.
He asked for our identification and then ran it through the system.
We came up clean because neither Wigs nor I have killed anybody
recently, so Officer Kinsey kindly asked us to leave.
“Where do you want us to go?”
He told us about the Kangaroo and said we could walk there or ride
with him. So we rode in the back of his cruiser, staring at his
shotgun with our legs smashed against the metal partition.
We’re at the Kangaroo now and everything seems fine, but
we both just want Ben and Matt to show up soon, before any more
creatures rise out of the swamp.
---
A special thanks to Uncle Mike and Aunt Kit, Ben’s family
friends, who are taking good care of us in New Smyrna.
Back in four. Email adam@tyap.com
to be notified when new blogs are posted.
December 2
For some reason my blog days keep landing on our Habitat for Humanity
outings. I’m not complaining. It’s just weird. It’s
like when you’re at a mall and you run into an acquaintance
and you say hello, but then you keep walking past the same acquaintance
and it’s awkward because you don’t have anything to
say to each other anymore.
I’ll do my best though.
Yesterday we helped out in Slidell, Louisiana, a city 30 miles
northeast of New Orleans. Parts of the city got hit pretty hard
by Katrina, so new affordable housing is in high demand. We were
told to arrive at 7:30, but the morning didn’t really start
until around eight. That’s Big Easy time, I guess. Nobody
was in a hurry. Everyone was just milling about, saying hello to
each other and getting to know the strangers (us). Finally we were
assembled into a circle and we held hands while a prayer was said.
Then we got to work.
Or at least, we talked about getting to work. Glen, the guy who
was running the show, brought us over to a pile of two-by-sixes
and said, “All right, boys, let’s get to work.”
So we asked him what he wanted us to do. He said, “Well, let’s
see here.” He looked at the pile of wood, contemplated it,
then made up his mind. “Let’s get to work,” he
said.
Eventually he showed us what he needed – the boards were
to be cut into beams that would be used to frame a roof. And after
that, Big Easy Time was apparently over, and everybody really did
get to work on the houses.
We had an eclectic crew banging away on the houses. There were
a couple investment bankers from New York City who had taken a weeklong
vacation to work with Habitat in Slidell. There was a couple from
Texas. A crew of Virginia firemen had been helping out, there were
some retired Philadelphia schoolteachers, and lots of others. They’re
all devoting themselves to helping strangers find a new home, and
it’s inspiring to watch.
Ben and I helped frame the roof and got it all done in just one
day. It’s pretty tough work nailing all those beams into place
because they’re always hitting each other at funny angles,
but Glen showed us how to do everything and we kind of got the hang
of it by the end. All the beams are fastened to each other with
hurricane clips, which are metal brackets designed to prevent the
house from blowing apart in high winds. But the house is doubly
insured because Ben, after struggling to drive home one of the nails,
said that he would personally kick any hurricane’s butt if
it tried to knock over the house. I second that.
While Ben and I were working on the roof, Matt was learning how
to drive a Bobcat and Wigs was impressing the ladies by taking his
shirt off and digging a hole. Matt’s brother Zach also showed
up (he was in New Orleans for a conference) wearing what looked
like J. Crew’s fall catalogue. Coupled with Zach’s beautiful,
long, flowing locks and tortoise-shell sunglasses, his ensemble
made him look like Habitat for Humanity’s chief interior designer,
on the site to get a preview of how the living room might look with
a flower-print living room set. (J/K Zach. It was nice of you to
pitch in, and I know you have more experience with Habitat than
I do, and it turns out you do a damn good job measuring two foot
intervals on a roof line.)
By the end of the day, little flies were attacking my arms, I was
tired, and I had hammered every one of my fingers at least twice
each. But it was worth it because somebody will get to live in that
house, and they should be pretty safe if another hurricane comes
through because
a) the roof’s got those hurricane clips, and
b) we’re going to kick the hurricane’s ass if it tries
anything
Back in four (and I’m also going to post a longer, in-depth
blog about my time in New Orleans soon). Email adam@tyap.com
to be notified when new blogs are posted.
November 28
Yesterday we were in Austin, the Texan saloon that caters to the
state’s modest liberal population. Don’t worry, we’re
moving on to portions of East Texas where oil rules and W is king,
but we’re not there yet. For now, we’re in Austin, attending
brunch at a place they call “hippie church.”
Hippie church isn’t really a church. It’s an outdoor
concert held at the X-press Taqueria on Congress St., where Dead
Heads and free-lovers of all ages gather to eat tacos, drink, listen
to music, and do that hippie dance where they wind their hands over
their heads and slink and twist their torsos with their eyes closed.
The house band’s dueling male and female lead singers sing
Bob Dylan covers and songs about drinking and smoking. They’re
kind of like a fusion between Peter, Paul & Mary and The Band.
Meanwhile the crowd sits at old wooden tables, drinks cerveza, and
for a few hours at least, forgets that the 60s ever ended.
There are old people and young people wearing tie-dyed shirts.
Guys wear skirts. Mullets are cool, viewed as a kind of updated
Texas version of the long-haired Woodstock look. None of the females
worry too much about shaving legs or armpits.
Behind the tacqueria, in the dirt parking lots, the hippie churchgoers
openly smoke marijuana, and we’re not positive, but it looked
like there was some love-making going on in the little trailer in
the back.
We’ve seen plenty of granolas or crunchies, whatever you
want to call the outdoorsy people, but true hippies are a dying
breed. I’m not sure why. It seems like their M.O. would still
be applicable in modern times – I always thought hippies were
a group of escapists, running to upstate New York or Big Sur in
order to get away from the conformity of corporate culture, rigid
views of the American family, and strict definitions of a moral
life. Those elements are still very much a part of the fabric of
the United States. In fact, they’re making a comeback, especially
in Texas. Maybe that’s why there’s a need for hippie
church in Austin.
But most places we’ve been, kids seem happy to be (at least
relatively) mainstream. There’s plenty of discontent with
the system, the administration, the government, and the status quo,
but activism has become passé. It’s what our parents
did, so it’s not cool. Most kids would rather infiltrate the
system, hope they don’t become brainwashed in the process,
and then change everything from the inside. Or they figure someone
else will do it.
Peace, love, rock and roll – they’re all good things,
but not many people outside the hippie church still practice them
all at once. Not while they’re wearing tie-dyed shirts anyway.
Back in four. Email adam@tyap.com
to be notified when new blogs are posted. |
