The Scuzzy Sons-of-Bitches Who Light Up My Life Part VI: Jack Kerouac

Scuzzy Son-of-a-Bitch #6:

Jack Kerouac

My Future Be-Bop Boyfriend

(2004)

My high school boyfriend bought me a poster of Jack Kerouac during our senior year.  I had never even read any Jack Kerouac — I was more into Allen Ginsberg’s homosexual rages and Charles Bukowski’s drunken stupors.  Nonetheless, he found a Jack Kerouac poster and thought of me.

He brought it to me one night when all I wanted to do was sit around and feel sorry for myself.  The school year had begun with a bang, to say the least.  I was Drama Club President (go ahead and laugh at me), as well as Co Editor-in-Chief of the high school newspaper (laugh harder).  I had to prepare for our school’s upcoming “Cabaret Night,” as I was hosting the prestigious event and I wanted to do a good job.  There was also the issue of mandatory play rehearsal until 5pm on top of writing a Goddamn play for the spring Murder Mystery Dinner and performing in improv shows every other Friday night.  Add to all this the horrible fucking reality of college applications and yeah, I was one angsty 17 year old.

I was sprawled on my bed moping about how I was losing touch with my friends and blah blah when I heard the familiar knock at the door.  My boyfriend always knocked — he never ever rang the doorbell.  My mom let him in, and he came upstairs and presented me with this awesome fucking poster.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Cost Plus,” he said.

“What were you doing at Cost Plus?”

“They have the coolest chocolate,” he said.

He then procured a small tin of green tea chocolate and offered me a piece.  I didn’t fall in love with it, but I could understand why he did.  It was the same reason he chewed clove gum and ginger gum and got excited whenever he was in a place that carried Beeman’s.  He dug the weird sodas at BevMo and always opted for anything infused with chili powder or licorice.  He loved used record stores and antique stores and was always giving me dusty old Tom Jones albums because he knew my friends and I thought Tom Jones was funny.

I thanked him for the poster and told him why I was sad.  He gave me a back massage while I laid on my stomach, my bedroom door wide open for my parents’ peace of mind.

During Christmas vacation, I tried to read On the Road.  I got as far as Sal Paradise’s affair with the beautiful Mexican woman and their adventures in cotton-picking.  It was all very beautiful and very Beat, but once school started and it was time to focus on the next project, I had to put Jack down.

(2006)

During my freshman year of college I nabbed a brand new boyfriend who also gave me cute presents.  On Christmas he gave me ceramic figurine of a hummingbird, which was an inside reference to my very first panic attack — an event he got to witness one morning before the sun was even out.  On Saint Patrick’s day he gave me a ring that he had found when he was in middle school and vowed he would one day give to a special girl.  On Easter he sneaked into my room and hid candy eggs for me to find, which made some of the other girls in my dorm “Ooooh” and “Eeee!” and “You lucky bitch!”

He had never heard of Jack.  He didn’t read poetry.  He didn’t read.  I tried and tried to at least get him to read “Howl,” but he always refused.  One night, I finally got him to lie down with me and listen to a recording of Ginsberg reading it.  When it was over, the only comment my boyfriend offered was, “I liked the part about the watches.”  I tried to talk about societal revolutions and war and change, but the conversation didn’t last long.  I refused to give up, so I tried showing him Easy Rider.  When the movie was over all he had to say was, “You’re such a hippie.”

He also didn’t want to watch all the Beat Generation documentaries I rented on Netflix that year.  I couldn’t even get him to watch No Direction Home, even though his roommate had exposed him to Bob Dylan’s music, which my boyfriend claimed to like.  For the most part, anything having to do with poetry or music or counterculture was anathema to him.  This led to many nights of,

“You should come hang out downstairs.”

“No.  I wanna watch my movie.”

“Well come down afterward.”

“Nope.  I’m sleepin’ in my own bed tonight.”

“But I wanna see you.”

“Then watch the movie with me.”

“But I hate hippies.”

“The Beats weren’t hippies.”

Eventually he would go to his room and I would go to mine.  I would watch something about The Beats and he would do something else.  When the movie was over I would lean over to turn on the light, and Holy Metaphors!, I would be face to face with the Jack poster.

This behavior led to writing sentimental journal entries and scribbling short poems in the margins of my lecture notes and drinking way too much coffee and hoping that one day I would meet someone who really got me.  We’d go to San Francisco on the weekends and eat seafood and drink red wine and wander the streets tossing dimes to the bums and scat-diddly-dat-dat-datting back and forth in crazy love.

In August, one month before sophomore year started, I gave all the cute presents back and called the whole thing off.   One day, I came across some old CD’s of Jack reading his poetry with Steve Allen playing piano in the background.  I knew that we owned the CD’s because I had seem them in my mother’s bedroom before, but I had never thought to steal them.  Newly single and newly inspired, I brought them up to school with me in September and listened to “October in the Railroad Earth” while I pinned pictures of Johnny Depp to my bedroom walls.

Soon after school began, my mom took a trip up to Santa Cruz to visit me.  Well, okay, she wanted to check on me.  The split with the hippie hater had been a tough one, and my mom didn’t want me to spend my first weekend back in Santa Cruz sitting in my room and crying about some guy.  She drove up on Friday and spent the night, and the next morning she drove us to San Francisco.  We stayed in a small room at the Hotel Bohème in North Beach, and mom took me to City Lights and bought me Beatnik postcards.  We wandered into The Beat Museum, where we were given a tour by the owner.  He also showed us THIS:

On Monday morning, when mom drove home and left me to get on with my life, I felt absolutely cured.  I didn’t give a shit about boyfriend or ex-boyfriends.  Everything was going to be fine.  Everything was fine.  All I wanted to do was write poetry, and all I needed was my Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen CD.

(2012)

A few months ago, I quit my job and went on a road trip up north.  Before I left, I checked out an audiobook of On the Road.  I listened to it all the way to Santa Cruz, then a few days later I listened to it on my way to Menlo Park.  When it was time to drive to Alameda I put on The Dresden Dolls, and then when it was time to drive to San Francisco I listened to my new copy of Let Love In.

In San Francisco I ate dim sum in Chinatown and wandered around North Beach drinking Espresso and taking pictures of graffiti.  I had drinks at Cafe Vesuvio and scribbled in a notebook I bought on Valencia.  I was alone, and I was free, and I was happy.

One evening I crashed into the Beat Museum and asked the guy behind the counter if he had access to the Poet of the Month archives.  I told him that I had won Honorable Mention twice in 2007, and that I would like to have copies of my poems.  He explained that he didn’t have physical copies, but he could try to find them for me online.  He worked on his computer for about ten minutes before saying, “I found your poem from April.”  I said, “There’s one from May, too.”  He looked at his computer, then said to me, “That page has been corrupted.”  My face fell.  He said, “I can recover it.  Give me a second.”

About twenty minutes later, he announced that he had fixed the problem and I now had web access to my poem.  I thanked him profusely and bought some merchandise so I wouldn’t seem like a total asshole.

I was never able to find my poem online, but it’s okay.  Somehow, I feel that if I ever found it and read it, I would only see the stupid mistakes and the dorky word choices.  I would criticize myself, and I don’t want to do that.  Instead, I prefer to think that a perfect poem written by a romantic 20-year-old girl is somewhere out there floating around in the informational abyss, never to be seen by human eyes.  I think Jack would like that.

And I never finished listening to On the Road.  I think Jack would like that, too.

The Scuzzy Sons-of-Bitches Who Light Up My Life Part V: Allen Ginsberg

Scuzzy Son-of-a-Bitch #5

Allen Ginsberg:

My First Fairy

(2004)

I was seventeen-years-old.  I was up late doing homework.  I was stressed out to the maximum.  Everything sucked.  I needed A’s, I needed to finish a gargantuan essay, and I needed sleep.  In my angst, I went to my bookshelf and grabbed the copy of Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL I had boosted from my mom a few months earlier.  Actually, I hadn’t even boosted it — my mom had given it to me.

Those opening lines freaked me out in the best way possible.  I needed a good freak out.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

      madness, starving, hysterical, naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn

      looking for an angry fix

 

When I was done reading, I knew that my tastes had changed just a bit more.  I was already into Jim Morrison and Lou Reed, so I was no stranger to heavy writing (nor was I unclear about what an “angry fix” was).  However, despite their darkness, neither of them sang explicitly about being, “fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists.”  Not even Lou.

Who were expelled from the academies for crazy &

      publishing obscene odes on the window of the

      skull

 

Deep inside, I wanted to be a trouble-maker.  As a seventeen-year-old kid who had spent the first 3/4 of her high school career doing everything right, the idea of being “expelled from the academies for crazy” sounded like a blast.  In fact, that was why I was so behind on my gargantuan essay — instead of going home after school to work on it, I had driven to Malibu with my friend, Nicole.  No one knew where we were.  We got frozen yogurt.  Oh, how dangerous we felt.

Who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,

      burning their money in wastebaskets and listening

      to the Terror through the wall

 

I knew that America was falling apart.  We had been building elementary schools in Afghanistan since I was a freshman and we had been preaching Democracy in Iraq for a year.  The freaking President of my own country scared the daylights out of me.  I couldn’t stand the very sight of him when he came on television.  Even the five second clips Jon Stewart used to make fun of him on The Daily Show were almost too much.  An election was coming up in November and dear God, I was furious that I wasn’t old enough to vote.

I also knew that this kind of stuff — meaning “art” — especially stuff that included the word “Terror,” was just plain not allowed.  How can you put “terror” in a poem or a song or a screenplay and not expect government backlash?  You were just begging to have your stuff pulled from the stores.  Your concerts canceled.  Your books burned.

Your phones tapped.

I don’t remember if I got anything done that night.  I remember finishing the poem, and I remember crying.  Everything was different and I was terrified.

The next morning, while sitting in my English class pretending to listen to the substitute teacher drone on about the green light at the end of The Great Gatsby, I looked through the index of our American Poetry Anthology.  Holy Hell, Allen Ginsberg was in there.  I flipped to his section and read “A Supermarket in California.”  When I finished it, I tuned back in to the lecture just long enough to hear the substitute mention Walt Whitman.  How the Hell had she gone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Walt Whitman?  Did I miss a discussion about “O Captain! My Captain!”?

I took the Whitman tangeant as an opportunity to maintain the illusion that I was not only paying attention, but also brilliant.  I raised my hand.

“Have you heard of the poet Allen Ginsberg?” I asked.
The future English teacher shook her head.
“Oh.  Okay.  Because he has a poem called ‘A Supermarket in California,’ where he fantasizes about walking through a supermarket with Walt Whitman.  It’s actually in our book, on page 325…”

I analyzed the Hell outta that poem.  I talked about alienation and consumerism and The American Dream.  No one followed along with me — the idea of deviating from the curriculum was too scary, I guess.  Plus, this was AP English, where there was zero time for, ya know, thinking.

The substitute didn’t have much to say aside from, “Oh, neat.  Thank you.”

To say that I felt cool would be an understatement.  I went right back to reading poetry, and the substitute went right back to quoting from her teacher’s edition.

      Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close

in an hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?

      (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the

supermarket and feel absurd.)

      Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The

trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both

be

lonely

(2007)

I was twenty-years-old.  I had been up all night doing homework.  I was stressed out to the maximum…

Everything rocked.  I had one hour to finish my final essay for my 19th Century American Poetry class.  All I needed to write was my closing statement, and then I would be done for the quarter.  I got to choose my own topic, so I chose to compare Walt Whitman to Allen Ginsberg to Bob Dylan.  Instead of sticking to the 8 – 10 pages, I somehow wrote 15.  My title?

The Body Electric, Copulations Ecstatic, and the Heart Attack Machine:
An Appreciation of the Twisted Minds of Whitman, Ginsberg, and Dylan

When I finished the damn thing, I felt like a genius.  I was Joe College to the max.  Of course, when I tried to re-read the thing the other night, I could hardly handle it.  It is definitely not my best work, and I will never understand why my TA gave me an A+.  I am not fishing for compliments here.  I really, truly don’t understand.  However, I do think my closing paragraph shows potential:

      Last summer I had a dream that I was in a tattoo parlor in San Francisco brainstorming what kind of tattoo I wanted to get.  As I walked down the aisles of posters with samples of symbols I could choose from, I suddenly decided that I wanted to have one of Dylan’s lyrics emblazoned on my skin instead.  Of course in the real world it would take a long time to choose which lyric I wanted, but in my dream I instantly decided I wanted the line “Jeez, I can’t find my knees” from “Visions of Johanna” on my upper-thigh.  Soon after, when I woke up and realized it had been a dream, I felt a bit disappointed that I did not actually get the tattoo.  When I told my mother about my dream, she thought I was a genius for thinking of that in my sleep.  While I am still flattered by her motherly support, I must clarify that I am not the one who is a genius.  Instead, my dream was the result of a long line of brilliance that has just as much resonance today as it did over a century ago.  Whitman’s “gray-beard” appeared in Ginsberg’s supermarket, Ginsberg’s Howl echoed in Dylan’s brain, and now Dylan’s lyrics ring out in the tattoo parlor of my mind.  These three men, with their powerful voices and powerful minds, accomplished so much in their time that it would be impossible for America to ever forget them.  They will never be silenced.

I like knowing that seventeen-year-old Stephanie and twenty-year-old Stephanie weren’t two completely different people.  If time-travel is like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I think that those former versions of myself would get along with each other if they ever wound up in front of the same Circle K.

I don’t think present day Stephanie would shun either of those girls, either.  There is a decent amount of serious dorkiness going on here…

Well, all right.  I guess it’s fair to say I haven’t changed at all.  I’m still up late writing about Allen Ginsberg and geeking out over the copy of Planet News I bought on my last trip to San Francisco.  America still scares me and I still want the war to end.  My favorite poems and songs don’t explicitly contain details about being, “fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists,” but I do have a hard and fast “The Weirder The Better” policy when it comes to all forms of entertainment.

And while yes, my idea of “dangerous” has changed, I still get a kick out of driving to Malibu for frozen yogurt.

The Beat Goes On III, or: I Think I Get It Now.

What’s there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?
Think I’ll just DROP OUT

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco.  Progressive Grounds.  I had two mugs of black tea when I woke up this morning; I don’t need this giant cup of coffee.  This stuff is SERIOUS.  I’ve been nursing it for nearly an hour and I haven’t even finished 1/4 of the thing. With every little baby sip my heart starts racing like I just broke bread with George Jung.

I’ve been away from home for 11 days.  (Wait, Holy Cow, really?  I’ll have to celebrate…)  I’ve been in Santa Cruz, Menlo Park, Alameda, and, now, San Francisco.

Santa Cruz was a lot of  fabulous silliness that was briefly interrupted by an afternoon of dismal introspection catapulted by the misunderstanding that the bastards who stole my iPod from my car also stole my most prized nostalgic possession.  After Santa Cruz came a brief, much-needed low-key interlude in La Selva beach, where I got to spend two nights in an actual bed.  I also spent a lovely afternoon in Monterey taking pictures of headstones and crying underneath cemetery trees.  (Did anyone else just think of this song?)  Menlo Park was a brilliant afternoon and evening of Chinese Food and Catch Up.  I was back on the couch, but the couch was a comfy one.

When I got to Alameda I was ready to get silly again.  I stayed with a friend I hadn’t seen since July of 2010.  She studies Molecular Biology and she loves Judas Priest and Bridget Jones’s Diary.  She took me out for bratwurst and sauerkraut and I stole a drink coaster.  After lunch we bummed around downtown for awhile and eventually walked into a psychic shop.  We asked how much it would cost to have our palms read.  The cost was super cheap.  I went first.

The woman took me into a little room and sat me down.  She asked me my full name and date of birth, and then she looked at my hands.

“You have a long, full life ahead of you,” she said.

I was unimpressed.

“I don’t see any death or tragedy in your family.”

Cool.  Still, I was unimpressed.

The woman paused for a moment, and then her voice took on a more serious tone as she said, “I will say this: you’re procrastinating.”

I looked at her.  She was younger and prettier than I usually imagine psychics to be.  She had all her teeth and her skin was perfect and there wasn’t a single gray hair on her head.

“You’re creative,” she said.  “Every thought that comes into your head is creative.  But you’re procrastinating when it comes to work and school.  I don’t think you’re done with school.  But what you need to be doing now is focusing on your writing.“

I stopped breathing.

“I definitely see a book in your future,” she continued.  “You already have it completely planned in your head — you just need to get to work writing it down.

I took a breath.  I whispered, “I know.”  My eyes welled up with tears.  I apologized for being emotional and laughed at the contrived profundity I seem to encounter everywhere I go.

To give me a break from the heaviness she was layin’ on me, she talked about my love life.  She didn’t have anything monumental to say — she basically confirmed my suspicion that I’m actually completely fine with the fact that I’m single.  Once that was out of the way, she went back to the main issue.  She said, “Take a creative writing class.”

I held my breath again as I remembered an email I received a few days before my trip.  An author I met in December wrote to me and said she would love for me to participate in a creative writing class she was going to be starting.  I didn’t respond to her.  Why?  Apparently I’m a procrastinator.

The psychic asked me if I had any questions.  I asked about my location, and she said, “I’d like you to be closer to the water.”  Totally not weird.  Because, ya know, I never EVER fantasize about moving to Santa Cruz or San Francisco or Seattle…

She ended her reading by saying, “Write your book.”  I ended by saying, “How the HELL did you know all that?”

She only asked me for my full name and date of birth.  I didn’t show her my ID, tell her where I was from, tell her that I do, in fact, want to write a book and that I do, in fact, spend less time working on my writing than I should and that I do, in fact, want to live near water.

I don’t think I can continue to distract myself from doing what I really want to do.  Why it took a psychic to convince me that it’s time to get serious and declare myself a fucking writer is something I will never understand.  We’re all different, I guess.

Intermission.

That night my friend and I got in trouble at a Tikki Bar for causing a ruckus.  We were mainly disturbing the bartender, Jared.  At first we both thought he was a total babe, but at some point in the night when we asked him for more drinks, he told us he’d have to ask his manager first.  “Why can’t we have another drink?” asked my friend.  Jared gave us a list of things “polite customers” — customers who deserve their handcrafted Tikki cocktails! — don’t do.  He said that polite customers “don’t steal.”  My friend and I fell silent.  You see, I’d been sneaking pieces of pineapple when no one was looking, and I also had a purse full of Tikki God cocktail stirrers.  Jared then added that polite customers, “don’t say ‘The F-Word.’”  We fell even more silent.  You see, my friend had been saying “The F-Word” quite loudly, and quite a lot.  When the lecture was over, she said, “Fuck you, Jared.”  I took another stirrer.

We still got our drinks, and we still stole shit and swore.  It was all in good fun, and no one else at the bar seemed to be annoyed by our shenanigans.

That night we went to a house party in Oakland to see a band.  They played “DARK FOLK.”  They also wore long, black cloaks, which looked a good deal like long, black Snuggies.  I kept screaming, “YOU LOOK LIKE NICK CAVE!” at one of them.  The sight of their guitars made me miss my ukulele and I cursed myself for not lugging it with me.  Lord knows I could have at least busted out a mediocre rendition of “Creep” and made a few nickels on Pacific…

The next day we went to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and bought CDs and ate Indian Food.  I also bought a Rolling Stones T-Shirt in a thrift shop (and I’ve been wearing it for the last two days).  That night we went downtown and drank dark beers and I stole another drink coaster.

The next day we drove to Oakland to check out Lake Merritt.  We rented a paddle boat and rode around in the lake chasing seagulls and fantasizing that the pieces of wood we saw floating around were actually sea monsters.  Every time we saw a piece of trash floating by, we vowed to one day return to the lake with a giant net.

After one last meal together my friend made it clear that it was time for her to face the fact that she had homework to do.  This meant it was time for me to hit the road.

I’ll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley’s floor

I had bought a copy of Let Love In by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds while I was at Rasputin on Telegraph.  I was so amped while listening to “Loverman” that I drove right passed the toll booth when I crossed the Bay Bridge.

Can You Blame Me?

My first night here was spent watching Mad Men with my cousin and eating Chinese take out.  The next day, yesterday, I walked around Valencia and bought a coffee mug and a t-shirt and a note pad.  I grabbed a taxi to North Beach and got out on Columbus avenue.  I turned the corner to Chinatown and got some Dim Sum, which cost $1.30.  I was good and full, so I bought a book at City Lights and sat down inside Cafe Vesuvio to chill out.  Two guys sitting at the bar were singing “Ghost” and I felt completely at peace.  When they were done singing some freaking Decemberists song came on and Good God I will always be team Aeroplane.

Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I’m completely stoned

I was broke so I went across the street to The Beat Museum.  I asked the guy behind the counter if they were still doing the “Poet of the Month” contest, and when he said “No” I asked if there was any way I could check out the archives.  I said I was awarded Honorable Mention twice in 2007, and that I could only find one of the poems online.  He was really sweet and spent a long time searching for the May 2007 results, and when he found that the web page was corrupted (or corrupt?) he fixed it for me.  I felt bad for making him do all that work, so I bought some Allen Ginsberg poetry and was even more broke.

I tried searching for the poem earlier this afternoon.  I still can’t find it.

I’m hippy & I’m trippy
I’m a gypsy on my own
I’ll stay a week
& get the crabs
& Take a bus back home
I’m really just a phony
But forgive me
‘Cause I’m stoned

When I got back to my cousin’s place we went out for Vietnamese.  We ate garlic noodles and prawns with spicy green beans and more garlic.  Then we went back to her house and watched the last four episodes of the third season of Mad Men.  That show only gets better every time I watch it.  This time I enjoyed it all so much I was almost impressed with January Jones’s acting.

Still, it’s always been about this big hunk-o-gangsta.

I had a bizarre sex dream last night, and when I woke up this morning I kept my eyes closed so I could remember all the crazy details.  They’re still a bit fuzzy, but I do know that at one point in the dream I was very mad at the young man I had just spent the night with because he was ignoring me during a screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 3D.  This confused me, because he was more than willing to skip the screening of Cat People the night before just to be with me.  I think that the preposterousness of it all demonstrates a new all time high in Dorky Dreams.

When I got out of bed I thought I’d maybe go to Haight Street…

Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet

Buy another mug or three…

Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up every street

Instead I got up and went to a donut place near my cousin’s house, where I ate a maple bacon apple donut.  And It Was Good.

I never made it to Haight Street.  Instead I creeped inside a tiny coffee shop and did some writing.  And ya know what?  I had a great time.  It was fun and challenging and I feel like it’s time to take a walk.

I definitely see more writing in my future.  I also see Don Draper.  And an ice cream cone.

GO TO SAN FRANCISCO
How I love ya, How I love ya How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!

The Beat Goes On II

Ya know what happened to me yesterday right after I posted my blog about how I had a total breakdown when I realized that my Powerpuff Girls CD case was stolen from my car?

I found my Powerpuff Girls CD case.  I also found the Kerouac.  They were hidden underneath a towel in the back seat of my car.  Ya know what?  I’m glad I hid them.  Sure, I was upset for a day, but in the long run…wow, man.  Such a relief.

The iPod, however, has probably been sold for crack money by now.  Oh well.  The thing was starting to act up, anyway.

I spent most of yesterday bumming around the mountains.  Those mountain towns have always had profoundly calming effects on me.  During my last year in Santa Cruz I would sometimes drive all the way to Ben Lomond just to buy almond milk and kombucha.  Their stuff wasn’t any better than what I could get downtown, but the surroundings…wow.

I went into a little ukulele store on Highway 9 near White Raven and Don Quixote’s.  I’d never seen the place before — I guess they’ve only been open a little over a year.  I was already missing my cute like ukulele, but when I walked into the store I felt 100x’s worse.  I could have asked the guy behind the counter for a quick lesson, or asked him for some tips on quick and easy tuning.  ::Sigh::  Instead, I just basked in the glory of all the cute little ukes on the wall.

I took a lot of pictures of Felton, then drove a little further inland to get some pretty shots of Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek as well.  Boulder Creek definitely looked the most beautiful, and I had an absolute blast wandering up and down “the strip” taking pictures of the old timey-lookin’ buildings.  I felt 100% at peace.  I don’t know if I could ever live in the Santa Cruz mountains full time, but if I’m ever filthy rich and can afford to have multiple homes, I will definitely have a getaway pad somewhere over there.  I’ll decorate it with Jackalopes.  And Ukelopes…

Call me crazy, but I think the ukulele guy is having a laugh at this fellow Felton resident’s expense.  I’m not choosing sides — they both enrich my life.

After my wilderness adventures I headed back to the city of Santa Cruz, during which time Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty made their way to New Orleans to visit Old Bull Lee.  All the talk of saloons and sex and Benzedrine made me realize how much I wanted a shower, so I stopped at a house where a few friends of mine live to ask if I could use their shower.  Luckily my friend Dan was there to let me in, so I was able to clean up and relax a little bit before heading back downtown for a last-minute “Happy Birthday” drink with a friend.  After I was all clean I put on Dan’s VHS copy of Annie Hall and got comfortable.  I teared up a few times, especially when Annie and Alvy got back together after he killed the spider in her apartment.  When I finally got up to leave, Dan turned to me and gave me a speech about living life to the fullest.  I almost broke down and sobbed.  I didn’t, though, and I was able to get to the bar on time with my mascara in tact.

I had a Shirley Temple to toast my friend’s birthday, and then I was on my way to Watsonville to stay with my dearest, most darling friend Danielle.  I stayed up late screwing around on the internet and feeling ever so happy that I was in my dearest, most darling friend Danielle’s house.

Today we went to Monterey.  Danielle had an appointment there, so she pointed me in the direction of a pretty park near a lake where I could hang out and take pictures while I waited for her.  I crossed the white bridge over the lake and found myself in a cemetery, where I ended up taking pictures of strangers’s graves and crying over all the headstones that said things like,

Baby Winter

January 30, 1946

I was most overwhelmed by the baby that lived for two days.  So overwhelmed, in fact, that I had to sit down and scribble a few notes.  While I was doing that, I saw a woman praying underneath a nearby tree.  When she finished praying she made the sign of the cross, then she knelt down and set something on a grave.  When she left, I tried to figure out which grave she was praying at.  I narrowed it down to two possibilities.

After an hour I made my way back to Danielle’s car.  I threw my stuff inside and we sped off to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch.  When I went to grab my coat, I saw that I had forgotten my purse.

Yes.

I forgot my purse in the cemetery.

We drove back, and my purse was on the bench right where I set it when I sat down to scribble and watch that woman pray.

Wow.

The Beat Goes On.

It’s remarkable what nine hours of sleep on a firm mattress with lots of blankets can do for your outlook.

Today is Tuesday, January 24th.  I left for Santa Cruz on Friday, January 20.  During my drive, I listened to an audiobook of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.  Well, I got to Disc 3, anyway.

I stopped at Pea Soup Andersen’s in Buellton for breakfast.  I find that kind of thing whimsical.  After my eggs and toast, I got into my car to hit the road again, and, quite suddenly, I felt that dreaded sensation I haven’t felt in months.  My hands tingled.  My heart beat quickened.  “Oh, shit,” I thought.  “I’m anxious.”

I had felt anxious the night before, too, but opted not to report it to anyone.  I was watching the 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast with my mom and two of my best friends.  Suddenly, after “Tale As Old As Time,” I noticed that my arms felt tingly.  I tried to ignore it, but, for whatever reason, I just couldn’t.  I even made the deadly mistake of thinking, “If I suddenly have a stroke, someone in this theater will call 9-11.”  That is not the kind of thing I am supposed to tell myself.  I am supposed to tell myself that arm tingling doesn’t mean shit.  Why did I let myself get freaked out?  Out of all the voices that chatter all day long in my subconscious, why did I listen to the one that sounds like Woody Allen?  As I sat there counting down the minutes until The Beast turned back into The Prince, I made one more idiotic mistake.  I thought to myself, “I hope this doesn’t happen tomorrow during my drive.”

The human mind is…well, it’s bizarre, to say the least.  That little tiny seed of doubt was all it took to freak me out hours later outisde of Pea Soup Andersen’s.  I started the car anyway, but I was still feeling weird.  There I was, driving north on the 101, desperately trying to tell myself to chill out and listen to the soothing sound of, “The night air blah blah All I had was $3 blah blah Dean Moriarty blah blah Bottle of whiskey blah blah Beat.”

Had I made the wrong decision?  Was it really wise of me to take a trip rather than find a damn job?  Why did I feel I even deserved to do what I was doing?  What was the point?   

It was time for Woody Allen to shut up.  He was disrupting Jack Kerouac.

I pulled over in the tiny town of Los Alamos.  Yes, Los Alamos, California.  It exists.  There’s a gas station, and a Subway (as in sandwiches) that looks like an old saloon.  I usually stop there on the way to Santa Cruz to pee and get something to drink.  This time, I peed, got a drink, and took a walk.

Soon enough, I was back in the car, feeling relaxed and ready to kick the drive’s ass.  I turned off Jack, put on some music, and made it the rest of the way to Santa Cruz without a single hiccup.  It was a rather encouraging experience.  When I got to Watsonville it began to rain, so I put on Van Morrison and sang.  Loudly.

That was Friday.  Today is Tuesday.  On Monday morning I got into my car and saw that I had been robbed.  My copy of Blonde on Blonde was on my seat, which was not right.  My glove compartment was open.  The windows weren’t broken, nor was the lock broken.  “I…I think I left my car unlocked?”  I couldn’t believe it when I said out loud, “I’ve been…robbed?”

The bastards got my iPod.  Ya know what else they got?  The audiobook of On the Road.  Except Disc 3, of course.  Sal Paradise will forever be in Los Angeles with his beautiful Mexican girl.

After some anger and confusion, I accepted what had happened and moved on.  My friend said, “You’re handling this really well.  I would be crying right now.”  I took her compliment seriously, and even went so far as to say, “Hopefully I’ll be able to think of this experience in the future and tell myself if I can remain calm after being robbed, I can remain calm when other shit happens.”  Yeah.  I said that.

Hours later, I totally cried.  I realized that the bastards had also taken my Powerpuff Girls CD case, which contained the following:

1. A burned copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind
2. A burned copy of The Mother’s of Invention’s Freak Out!
3. Pete Doherty’s Grace/Wastelands
4. My friend Dan’s Woody Allen CD…
5. Jason Webley’s Cost of Living
6. Jason Webley’s live album In This Light (I will now have to buy this a third time…)
7. A burned copy of the freaking BIG LITTLE DIPPER DIPPER ALBUM

THESE BASTARD METHHEADS STOLE THE MOST WORTHLESS CD CASE KNOWN TO MANKIND.  NO ONE IS GOING TO GIVE YOU DRUG MONEY FOR THE CD THAT HAS “HOCKEY STAR.”

Here are the four things that actually HURT me:

1. THE BEST OF LEONARD COHEN
2. THE DOORS
3. SAM FRANCE’S GOD IS REAL
4. FOXYGEN’S KILL ART

After realizing these CD’s were gone forever, I took a deep breath and then said, out loud, “With the exception of the live Jason Webley album, I have all of this music on my computer.  What is not on my computer is on a flash drive.  I can get all of this…”

Then I realized that the Powerpuff Girls CD case also contained what I consider to be the single greatest radio show I ever put on.  It was one night in April 2010 where Dancing Barefoot was just unstoppable.  My playlist was kickass and my delivery was ridiculously strong.  There wasn’t a single technical difficulty and I never said, “Ummm.”  I sounded like a happy, level-headed, stable fucking person who was having a killer time putting on a rock solid radio show.

I turned to my friend.  I told her what I had just realized.  We sat in silence.  I then said, “I’m going to cry in front of you now.”

As it turns out, I may be able to get a copy of that radio show after all.  Apparently KZSC’s archive of shows just might go back as far as 2010.  I shall see.   Regardless, I felt rather strange for the rest of the Goddamn day.  To be completely honest, I suddenly wanted to just go home.  Why bother sticking around?  My freaking back was killing me from sleeping on a deflated air mattress.  My last pair of contact lenses were completely fucked and the rain was fogging up my glasses.   I was tired, I was cold, and I was still unsure whether or not I deserved to be taking a trip.

Oh, and I was robbed.

Oh, and that Goddamn Woody Allen voice had made an appearance the other day.

As I sat on my friend’s bed after a delicious dinner at Charlie Hong Kong’s, all I could think about was whether or not I should call it quits on the whole road trip thing.

That, my friends, was yesterday.  Today, after finally getting a full night’s sleep on a firm mattress with lots of blankets, I am a new woman.  Screw Woody Allen, screw the bastards who stole my iPod, and screw calling it quits.  That is not what I want to do.  Besides, I just noticed that at no point did I mention that I’m actually having a great time…

Lock your doors.  Sleep well.  Wear dry clothes.

Time to start my damn day.  In Santa Cruz.

I’m Free.

I did it.

I quit my damn job.

I put in my two weeks notice last Tuesday, and on Friday they told me to go ahead and leave.

So I did.

Yup.

I packed up my instant oatmeal

and my chamomile tea

and my finger puppet

and left.

I didn’t want to make a dramatic exit,

but I was forced to.

Let me tell, you,

it’s awkward to walk up to a co-worker and say,

“I put in my two weeks two days ago

but they’re asking me to leave now.

So, this is goodbye.”

It causes confusion.

None of it was my fault.

Nope.

None.

Oh well.

Today was my first official day

of being unemployed.

(I mean, I was unemployed after I graduated college

but that was different:

everyone I knew was unemployed.)

My mom took me to get Dim Sum.

And it was the best Dim Sum.

We had pork buns

and shrimp noodles

and Chinese broccoli with eel sauce

(I think),

and we talked about my former place of employment

and how it’s unfortunate that I had to leave

(because really, I had to),

and then I said that I should go to the dentist soon

but I hate dentists

because they’re so judgmental

but the dentist I went to see when I lived in Santa Cruz was so nice…

And my mom said,

“Go see him.”

I said,

“Go to Santa Cruz for a dentist appointment?”

“Why not?”

She then suggested I drive up north

and stay a week

(or more)

and have a blast

and clear my head

and go to the damn dentist

and look for a job when I get back.

I said,

“I actually came up with that idea  few days ago

but I talked myself out of it.”

“Why?”

“I convinced myself I didn’t deserve to go.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I beat myself up over these kinds of things.”

“Don’t do that.”

I’m going to take a roadie.

By myself.

I’m going to go up to Santa Cruz

to visit my buddies,

and then I’ll see where I end up.

Maybe I will take an extra week,

maybe not.

Maybe I will go to the dentist,

maybe not.

Maybe I’ll bring my ukulele

and play on the street corner

if and when I run outta money.

Maybe I’ll find a job in San Francisco

and never come back.

Maybe I’ll elope with some hippie.

Heh.

I think this is exactly what I’m supposed to do.

My trip isn’t for another week.

I have a lot of planning to do.

If you live up north and you’re a friend of mine, do contact me.

I need places to stay.

In the meantime,

being unemployed in my hometown is pretty fun.

Mom is taking me to the zoo tomorrow.

Yes.

The Zoo.

Tomorrow.

Life

Is

Good.

My Back Pages.

This is a facebook post written to me by my friend, Ellanee, circa January 2008:

i hope that one day, i am as cool as you. i hope that one day, i make convenience store clerks fall in love with me while i am wearing pajama pants and i hope that one day, i own a [VHS tape] of malcolm mcdowell as a paraplegic. and that i can drink 500 glasses of water in 2 seconds.

I copied the post and saved it as a Word document.  I was that touched.

I can’t believe it was four years ago that Ellanee and I solidified our friendship one afternoon over too much Captain Morgan and too much burnt popcorn.  It was Sunday.  The plan was to watch the Tim Burton version of Sweeney Todd.  That was it.

“Want a drink?” became, “Want another drink?” which became, “Pause this, I have to pee” and, “Pause this, I have to smoke.”  Finally, it was, “Pause this, we’re out of popcorn.”

We walked down the street to the neighborhood liquor store.  At the time, I found it obscenely convenient to have a liquor store so nearby.  Looking back, it was just obscene.

The walk to the store was really something special.  It was raining and we looked ridiculous.  My hair was thrown up in a messy, greasy excuse for a bun, and I was wearing black pajama pants with hot pink bunny rabbits printed on them.  I also had on a black t-shirt with cartoon monkeys playing guitars.  I believe Ellanee and I were both wearing fuzzy slippers, but I may be thinking of a different occasion.  Ellanee was struggling to light her cigarette while avoiding puddles and remaining upright.  We weren’t just two tipsy college girls — we were poetic.  We were divine.  We were a scene from Withnail & I. 

We were Rain Dogs.

We exploded into the liquor store like a Ralph Steadman cartoon.  There was no one else in the store, which left us free to stumble down the aisles in our solitary fancy examining the tiny plastic bags of gummy sharks, debating whether or not we should buy apple rings, arguing about Swedish Fish versus Sour Patch Kids, etc.  We managed to look through the entire store without finding any popcorn.

I ran up to the counter and roared, “Do you have popcorn?”

The hippie behind the counter smiled.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Over there.”

Our brief interaction was sobering.  I noticed he was young.  Then, I noticed he was wearing a beanie.  A beanie.  And he looked cute in it.  He looked damn cute in it.  A young, cute hippie in a beanie was smiling at me, the pajama-wearing, obscenity-spouting asshole who was drunkenly demanding popcorn at 3:00 in the afternoon on The Lord’s Day.

I managed to formulate a “Thank you,” and then stumbled in the direction of the popcorn.  I found Ellanee in the candy aisle.

“I know where the popcorn is,” I said.
“I want Red Vines.”
“Get some,” I said.
“Will you eat some?” she asked, raising her voice a bit.
“Maybe.”
“You have to eat some!”

I slammed the three-pack of popcorn down on the counter.

“You found it!” said the hippie.

“Yeah,” I managed.

He didn’t say anything; just smiled his hippie smile.

As soon as we were outside, Ellanee exploded with, “He liiiiiiiikes you!  He was kinda cuuuuuuuute!  He looooooooooves yoooooooou!”

I denied any and all accusations of winning the affection of the hippie behind the counter.

“It’s truuuuuuue!” she continued.  “He was lookin’ at you and smiiiiilin’ at yoooooou…”

“Bullshit.”

I used my hands to block the wind and rain from Ellanee’s lighter while she lit her cigarette.

“Nope,” she said.  “He fell in love with you.”

When we got back to my house we microwaved a bag of popcorn, mixed another pair of cocktails, and watched Johnny Depp kill a whole lotta people.

I was a junior in college and every little thing that happened to me was important.  All-nighters were news-worthy.  Class presentations were news-worthy.  I rewarded myself for making it to my 8am classes.  My idea of stress was having to write an essay and do laundry.  If I had a free evening, I spent it writing poetry or preparing for my radio show or watching some documentary about Bob Dylan or Nico and crying over music and history and my love for all that weird shit called “art.”

On January 17th, I will officially be 25 years old; my New Year’s Resolution is to act like it.  At the same time, I need to get back in touch with an earlier version of myself.  I don’t mean I’m going to casually get plastered on Sunday afternoons and start dating liquor store clerks (again), but I think it’s time I started taking myself seriously (again).  I want to think that what I do is important.  I want to reward myself for my hard work.  I want to set aside time for creativity.  I don’t want to cry about Bob Dylan and Nico because I feel shitty, but because I love Bob Dylan and Nico so damn much.

I hope that one day, I am as cool as 21-year-old Me.