I. DRUGS SET A TONE TO A TUNE THAT IS LISTENED
TO FROM COAST TO COAST BY THE EARS OF THE
WANDERING HOMELESS HORSEMEN IN SEARCH
OF WHAT IT MEANS TO FIND PEACE OF MIND
IN A LIFE THAT IS SLOWLY BUT SURELY
LEARNING HOW TO DROWN.
A friend of mine once told me about the last acid trip he ever took. He was at a rave somewhere in Tampa, and had taken a little too much. The next thing he knows, paramedics and police officers are handcuffing him and throwing him in the back of a squad car. Somehow he gets his hands free from the cuffs, and in doing so, cuts his hand. He tells me that he doesn’t remember doing this. I asked him to describe what he saw, and he could only sum it up in a few short sentences. “Imagine seeing your skin melt off of your body. And when it gets to the muscles, and soft tissues and veins, imagine those melting off too.”, he told me. He had spent a night in psychiatric because he didn’t tell the police or the paramedics that he had taken LSD. That was the very first thing he had ever told me. It had been on a car ride from Moultrie, Georgia to Florida. He reminded me of a short version of Corey Feldman, only with glasses. He had ridden to Moultrie with another friend of mine. They were celebrating his 19th birthday and the friend who drove was in a rush back to Florida to make it to his first morning class. They drove a total of 8 or so hours to get me in a small compact two door that had barely made the trip in one piece. We had set out around midnight or so, and before I knew it, 6 hours had drifted by. We rolled into a Burger King by the time dawn had begun to crack, and ordered a hashbrown, a cinnamon bun, and a little breakfast sandwich, each, and sat and joked about the long ride we had just endured. The fact of the matter was that I had been stranded in Georgia, about 5 states away from home, with no money and no one to call but a person whom I had met on the internet and hadn’t seen in about 2 years. Apart from him and his friend, nobody knew where I was or what had happened to me. Not my family, not my friends, not the people whom I had originally ridden up to Florida and was on my way home with before I got stranded, and not my then fiancee. Only by chance did I happen to have the notebook onto which I had written my friend’s number down 2 years prior, and only then by sheer luck did he not only answer his cell phone, he came and picked me up. The ironic thing about all of this being that not only 8 hours before getting stranded in the smallest town in Georgia (it would seem) we had not only driven by the apartment that my friend lived in on our way out, I had debated whether or not to stop and say hi.
I never stopped to wonder how a trip to pick up and deliver a car to and from Florida would turn into a one year residency in two of its cities. I don’t think it ever bothered me too much. My situation back home was a little depressing, to say the least. I had no home to speak of, no job, and no chance of the situation itself getting any better. I had been staying with a friend of Jon’s named Brandon. I had known Jon since about the 8th grade and had met Brandon through him. Living up the road from us was a friend I had known since the 3rd grade, Scooter. And all of us lived in a triangulatory stretch between each other and a church that I had spent a year of my youth on probation for vandalising with the help of my third grade pal, then in 8th grade when it happened. Living with Brandon wasn’t bad in the sense that I had a roof over my head, but it was bad in the sense that not only did everybody in that house do some drug or another, the parents of the house also dealt it out of their bedroom to just about everybody in town. There was that, and then there was the fact that Lindsey would come around to visit everybody. This wouldn’t have been a problem if Lindsey wasn’t an ex-girlfriend who not only did I go through hell for, but also brought into the mix an emotional situation into which I did not care to place myself.
It was in this house that I had met Billy, a man who worked for a repo business stationed about 10 minutes away. Jon and Brandon (another Brandon) went on rides with him out to different parts of the country to pick up and bring back vehicles. It was then that I started riding around with them, picking up residency from Brandon’s and moving it to that of the repo business and the truck we used to bring back cars. Our trips weren’t always to far away states. The most trips were spent rounding up about 8 different drivers to drive 8 different cars to Tennessee while Billy delivered 8 on the back of a rig hooked up to the truck. All in all, it was a round trip of about 8 hours. For me it was something to do. For the drivers, it was just another easy way to make a quick buck.
It was after about three of these trips that Billy got a California job. Jon, Brandon, and I hopped in the back of the truck, and we were off. I had been to California once before with another friend of mine. We had moved there for a month to live with his mom. Of course, that’s a different part of the story and we’ll get to that later.
Our drive to California was uneventful. We passed from state to state, blaring music and talking to pass the time. We finally reached San Fransisco, where we picked up the car. It belonged to some hockey player, and our job now was to deliver it to the east coast. On the way back, Billy decided to stop over in New Mexico to visit some family. Albequerque, to be exact.
If you’ve never been, you have no idea what you’re missing. It’s a beautiful city. The gas station we had stopped at to fuel up on our way into the heart of the city was stationed atop an enormous hill overlooking the entire span of the city itself. It was getting dark, so all of the lights were bright and colourful. And when we finally started our descent into the city itself, it was just as amazing. The whole ride must have taken only 5 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The city seemed to be rising from the very ground, as if coming into existence just for our arrival.
We spent a night in town, going out to eat. Brandon, of course, spent the night trying to hit on the local Sherrif’s daughter, who was only 16. She, of course, spent the evening paying no attention to him and payed more attention to us. We left that night full and satisfied, and started on our journey to the east coast.
As we were passing through Texas, Billy gets it in his mind to stop off in a small out of the way city. The significance of this being as follows: before we left for California, I had given him my mother’s social security number to run a trace with. At this point, I had been looking for her for almost 5 years and had no clue as to where she was. He returns with a list of possible addresses, and three different names. One of the addresses on the list was in this small town in Texas we were now trying to find, which was hard, because just about every city within San Antonio seemed to be a subsidiary of another city, which made the process all the harder. When we did finally get our bearings straight, we find our way to the address. Which turns out to be a church. Strike one address off of the list.
We leave Texas and make our way to the top Carolina, and drop off the car. What we forget to mention to Billy is that a few states back, Jon had broken off the antennae to unlock the door and look inside. He had half-ass fixed it in the hopes that nobody would notice. Of course, the owner of the vehicle notices right off the bat, and goes into a fury over it. This does not bode well with Billy, who upon re-entering the truck after dealing with the enraged hockey player, let’s Jon have it good. We return to Arkansas for a few days. It’s Valentine’s Day by now, and it’s snowing. On our way into Maumelle, we pass about 6 vehicles parked in the ditch, either by their own choice or that of the iced over roads. We stop in at Harvest Foods, which I had worked at for about two weeks before being let go because I wanted to work more than 8 hours a week, and picked up a bear, flowers, and candies for Heather, my fiancee. She was staying at her grandmother’s house at the time. We pick her up, and after driving around for a while, come back. I give my farewells and Billy and I are on our way out to the repo yard.
Ok, so here’s the super romantic part of that night: The driving around was Billy’s idea. It was his way of giving us some time together for our physical needs. Roll your eyes if you want. It’d been a while, and Heather and I both needed it.
We grab a Florida job and the next day, we’re off again. As with the last jobs we had merely done nothing but the job itself, this one had enough of a time slot to allow us some recreation. By the time we reached Florida, everyone in that truck was ready to jump off the wall. We rolled into Miami, grabbed a cheap room, grabbed an assload of alcohol, and layed back.
At this point, I feel that I should explain a few things about Jon and Brandon. They let their mouths talk alot of things that they either don’t do, or can’t do. For instance, I wanted to just kick back in the room and drink and relax in front of the tv, which I hadn’t been able to do for the past month. They, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up about a)finding a party and b)finding some ass. We wound up hitting the town, and, long story short, they found neither a nor b.
We spent the next day driving up the coast and checking out the scenery. It was a pretty nice day. Not too hot, not too humid, just enough cloud coverage so that the sun didn’t blast you into oblivion. A few hours later, we were picking up the car, and a few hours after that, we were crossing state lines. And as soon as we crossed into Moultrie, that’s when it hit the fan. Jon had been driving behind us, without a license and without insurance. The truck I was riding in with Billy turned up with fictitious tags. And me being the “innocent bystander” in all of this was left on the side of the road while the car, the truck, and all of its occupants excluding myself were hauled off to be both impounded and jailed. I had the foresight to grab most of my belongings and a carton of cigarettes before I jumped ship, as well as a loaded phone card. Now that I look back on it, out of all the things I was able to get, that phone card was the one thing that saved my ass.
My first phone call was placed to my father back in Arkansas. My father whom I had not spoken to in over four months. My father whom had no idea that I was even out of state. That conversation went well. I got him to wire me $200 and a ticket out of Georgia. Of course the kicker being that the bus station to which the ticket would have belonged had been demolished about two years prior to my arrival, and the only other bus station that was there was closed for the night. That’s when I rooted through my stuff, found my notebook, and called my friend in Florida. I grabbed a hotel room at the cost of about $56 , grabbed a much needed shower, and waited for their arrival. I gave $100 to him for his troubles and gas, and we were on our way back to Florida.
My original trip to Florida had gone somewhat differently. Years before I knew Billy, and years before I would return to Florida, I had met a guy online who was a fan of my webpage. We became friends. During the course of one of our conversations, he told me of the school he was going to called Full Sail. At this point in my life, I was living with Brandon (unbeknownst to his parents) and was looking for a path to take in life to get myself out of the rut I had fallen face first into. An hour later, he bought me a bus ticket to Florida. And exactly one week after that, I arrived. It was in the wee hours of the morning that my bus pulled into the station, a few hours off schedule, and I wound up bumming change off of somebody to make a phone call to him to let him know I had arrived. Turns out he had already been up there when the bus was scheduled to arrive, and had been asking everybody in sight for me. He came back to pick me up, we packed my suitcases into his trunk, and left for his apartment.
First off, not everyone you meet online is a total psycho. I’m still very much alive, and I still have all of my bits and pieces attached to me.
The month I spent in Florida was spent trying to get everything lined up for me to attend Full Sail. I met with the dean, toured the campus, and got the necessary paperwork. It all came down to a co-signature from my father and I was on my way to being enrolled. A few weeks of pleading and arguing later, I was on a bus back to Arkansas with no co-signature.
Upon arriving back in Arkansas, I moved in with my grandmother and enrolled at Pulaski Tech under an Internet Specialist program. I also tried to keep a job, which went from a local Tex-Mex restaraunt (which is now out of business) to the short two week stint at Harvest Foods. One near fatal crash in my father’s van later, I was out of Pulaski Tech and had moved out of my grandmother’s house. I took on a job as a dog washer for the local animal clinic, working strictly under the table for the groomer there. I had also moved in with her as she was willing to help me out with a place to crash. That place being her sofa, and me being a person who didn’t argue because it was a roof over my head. Then, one not so nearly fatal crash in her van later, I was out of a job and out of a couch. I was also out of my pay check and out of a really nifty portable cd player that had been a birthday gift from my father. (Stolen, not destroyed in the wreck.)
This of course led to my eventual stay with Jon’s friend near Scooter, and my eventual short venture into the repo business that led me back to Florida for a year of my life.