This blog will be deleted within a month. It has been a riot. I love you all.

I suppose it's about time I reveal all of my secrets. Well... not all.

I suppose in order for me to tell a story I'll have to introduce you to the characters first. There was Zhenya, the fiery Russian. There was me; you know me. And there was Billy. Billy was the best of us all. Most people try to manifest themselves above the pitch of who they are in order to appear strong. Billy does no such thing. Billy even seems like she's falling apart on the outside, but on this trip, I came to know how much integrity she really has. And that's mainly what this story is about. Billy's integrity.

I flew out to get Zhenya; to bring her and her stuff to California. We put our heads together and decided to buy a cheap, reliable car to drive. The story really starts in a town just southeast of Raleigh, North Carolina at a house in a black neighborhood. Earnest's house. That's where we met Billy. Billy had been in an ad online. $700 for a '78 Chevy van. We drove Zhenya's Mitzubishi up to check her out, and we fell in love as soon as we laid eyes on her. We drove her to a nearby mechanic to get her checked out, and met our first obstacle with her before we even got across town. There was rust in the steel floor. In some spots, it feels soft like you could step through. There are a few small holes where small things can roll out onto the street. Zhenya drove her first, and she had a lot of trouble at first. She's a tiny little girl, and Billy is a huge steel van. The front bucket seats are set way apart and there is just empty space besides, so it looks pretty funny when Zhenya drives her.

The van started backfiring on the way to the mechanic. At this point I didn't know much about old cars, but here at the end of the journey I can say I know a great deal. In hindsight, it was pretty obvious that the van had sat for a long time and that the distributor wasn't in time. If you have no idea what that means, then you have an idea where I was at that day on the way to the mechanic. The mechanic charged us $20 to look it over and tell us what major problems it had. Again in retrospect, I know that he really didn't look at things he should have, and that he didn't look closely at anything. He told us only that the rear drivers-side drum brake had not been replaced when it should have been, and that grooves had been worn into the rotor. This wouldn't cause a problem soon, but eventually it would need attention.

We loved this van and we bought it for $700 and a lot of faith in serendipity. We started fixing her up on our free time. First we had a referred Wilmington mechanic time the distributor with a timing light. After that she kind of purred. Except she purred with a really hoarse voice because the muffler wasn't really on right, and the engine cover inside the van doesn't fit on very tight anymore, so we have a lot of sound in the cockpit. We decided to keep her looking exactly as she was on the outside. Dented, faded, rusted dark blue with white decal letters on each side reading ROUND THE WAY DETAIL. I found a carpet guy in the next town over that was willing to give me some free scrap floor carpet to lay inside of her. We drove out to him, and he turned out to be quite a character. Not only did he give me ample plush white floor carpet and insulation, but he told us exactly where to go clamming up the coast and how to prepare what sounded like some really good cheesy clam food. If we hadn't been so busy those last couple of weeks, we would have gone clamming with him and tasted that yumminess that was legendary in his neighborhood. Round his way.

Next we found a solid wooden twin bedframe on the side of the road. The people in the adjacent house said it was garbage and that we could have it. I borrowed a drill and and woodsaw and made it so that it would fit sideways in Billy. A litte plywood placed over the top of the bed and a double-size mattress. I cut and fit the carpet and now there was a bed. A six-gallon tank for water. A propane stove. Blankets. Sleeping bags. Billy is a temporary home. I found a little plastic yellow toy in the rear door while I was fishing around for a dropped screw (I was removing the lock to get a key made; we had no door keys). It was like those army guy toys, but it was in the shape of a cowboy pointing two pistols. His arms were at a ninety-degree angle. He was filthy. I washed most of the dirt off, and taped him to the dash with electrical tape so that he points a gun each at the driver and passenger. I also found a light bulb back there. The locksmith we found made us three keys for ten bucks, and we got to watch him use the coolest gadget I've ever seen. Superlative.

We made a friend, Scott, at Advanced Auto, and he ended up doing a lot of little things on the van that helped us out. Scott had been a US Marine, but since he got out he'd grown out his hair and dyed it pink. He tried very hard to get sex with the girls to whom we introduced him, but I'm sorry to report that the man had very little game. On the bright side, he hooked up a cigarette lighter for us, so we could plug in Zhenya's CD player, and he drained the sludgy transmission fluid, and he insulated the doors so we didn't get rained on anymore.

There were a few other modifications, but I want to get on with the story. Zhenya finished up her degree in Communications Studies, and we hit the road. We stopped first in Fayetteville and had our first problem on the way there. The power steering started going out. And then it did go out. The fluid was leaking. I spent two great days at my old friend Jeff's house with his new wife and his new kid. He made us cheeseburgers and together we cut one of the unnecessarily long vapor hoses in the exhaust and replaced the leaky power steering hose. It still leaked slowly, but not nearly so bad.

The next problem happened on the way to Asheville. Driving a back road between tobacco fields, the muffler fell off. I got out and rigged it up with a coat hanger and some duct tape. Turns out duct tape burns off and is useless in high temperatures, but the coat hanger stayed awhile. In Asheville, it was hanging off again, so we just took it off and put it in the back of the van. Problem mostly solved.

Asheville was another wonderful couple of days. I spent the night with Laura, who was back on her feet and feeling great. It felt really good to be around her this time.

Walking downtown, we saw a couple of kids walking with backpacks. "Are you travelling? Where you going? Where you been?" I'm friendly to travellers after this year. We talked and it turned out they were headed to San Francisco as well, and they had planned to make almost exactly the same stops that we were planning to make. Taos. Sedona. The Grand Canyon. They even had resources along the way. So Jim and Melissa hitchhiked across the United States without sticking their thumbs out. We had a couple of passengers.

And luckily, Jim was a mechanic. Jim and Billy got along famously. The first problem Jim fixed was that pesky power steering leak. He told me to pour a quarter of a thing of radiator stopleak into the power steering... uh... place. I did. It worked. It still does.

The next place we stopped was in Memphis. We stayed a night with our friends Jill and Joy while our hitchhiker entourage stayed with a friend of theirs in Germantown. The next day, we repacked the van and started getting used to the motions we'd have to go through in order to keep our travelling comfortable. It was already kind of crappy with no AC, and Zhenya wouldn't let the hippy passengers smoke in the van, so we wanted everything else to be smooth. Packing ice in the cooler with food on top of it in freezer bags so nothing got waterlogged. Refilling water containers from the big jug so we always had fluids while the hikers were taking a smoke brake. Checking fluids and cleaning the windshield while we got gas. Despite all of that, our hitchhikers managed to really slow us down. As soon as everyone was ready, one of them would spark up a smokeytreat. Somebody else would end up finding something to do while they smoked, and then they would light up another while they were waiting for whatever that was. It was like taking eight people into a grocery store. Nobody ever comes out.

The next night in Memphis, Jim found out that his grandmother had died. We took him out to Beale street and we all had a blast. I danced the dance of mindless ecstacy.

Billy, on the other hand, seemed to do better and better as we drove. She'd sat for a long time, so I think that she was cleaning herself out of gunk. She's an inline six on a heavy van, so she isn't all that fast, but we felt more and more comfortable pushing her. Jim adjusted the air intake in the carburator so that she ran better, and then adjusted the idle down. Now she could take hills a lot better, which would be important in the West.

Arkansas and Oklahoma ended up taking a very long time to get through. Jim and Melissa are both Okees. We drove around Little Rock looking for a grocery store, and it ended up taking a few hours. For some useless trivia at a party, it's really fucking hard to find a grocery story in Little Rock. Apparently eating isn't high priority near the Ozarks. Before we got away from all those ticks and mosquitos, Jim and Melissa somehow talked us into getting a cheap motel room in Arkansas. This marked the beginnin of some tension in the rest of the trip. Jim is apparently a wanted man by the DEA for having a meth lab a long time ago. Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas were going to be shitty because if they caught him, they would extradite him. Once we got to New Mexico it didn't matter. The local cops were hounding us in that little town we stopped in, just looking for a reason to pull us over because our Billy looks so suspicious. And we all look like drug runners. Jeff dyed Zheyna's hair and then mine, so we look quite stylish. And we have a little collection of dollar store sunglasses on the dash on the white carpet upholstery. And just as a nice addition, I got a little bike horn for Zhenya instead of fixing the broken horn since she is way to horn-happy when she's angry. Now when she honks at someone in anger, it makes her laugh. And I blow a lot of bubbles. I blew bubbles in every state. I'm getting side-tracked. We look like drug-runners with that van. So the cops were always on our ass. Luckily we minded all our ps and qs and they lost interest.

In Salisaw, OK, we stayed to let Jim visit his family. When we went to leave that night, the brakes were totally out. I have a suspicion that Jim or his brother had untightened them so that Jim could stay longer. Jim, it turns out, is very passive aggressive and manipulative. So we stayed the night and tried to find a new master cylander at Jim's cousin's salvage yard the next day. No luck, but we bled the brakes and found the tiny leak and they worked fine after that. We just had to check the fluid often. It took all day to get out of there. Jim wouldn't be rushed. But before the day was over, his other cousin welded and hung the muffler and catalytic converter and an extension pipe so we wouldn't smell exhaust inside the already hot cab anymore. $20. Sweet. Three days behind schedule, we pulled into Oklahoma City. This is where Melissa is from. We spent the night at her dad's house and made ourselves busy the next day while she visited family and friends. Two more days sucked into Oklahoma. We finally left by the moon and drove into Texas.

We slept and a truck rest area and then drove down into Palo Duro Canyon. It's absolutely a stunning place full of rattlesnackes. Jim and Melissa decided that they didn't like the energy of the place. They were very dramatic about it. They collect crystals and talk about how they can sense energies. They do so with a righteous sensitivity, and they bullshit a hell of a lot. I have no idea how those two found each other. I tried to explain to them that places in nature have only the energy that you bring in. They wanted to believe me, and they started to think I was wise, but they still insisted that the place had the worst energy they'd ever felt, and they pressured us to leave as soon as possible.

Melissa: What's a salt flat doing out here?
Drood: Maybe it's an EVIL salt flat.
Jim (very serious): Smartass.
Drood: Good-lookin' too!

We drove up to Raton, New Mexico and ended a chapter. Six days in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. I had planned on spending a single day there.

New Mexico was a much happier chapter. Jim and Melissa had lived in Angel Fire for a few years. They met there. They knew a lot of people and a lot of places to show us. In Raton, they knew the owner of the Best Western, and we got a free night in a hotel. Robert, the owner, also took Zhenya and I out to the local bar, wherein I got my ass kicked harder than it's ever been kicked at pool. By the bar owner. She plays every day all day. They were still all impressed that I only had two balls left on the table each time. Usually she wipes people out. Robert bought our drinks and we got drunk. He's all about partying. I sang karaoke to Zhenya. Stand By Me.

They rest of those kids drank more and took a lot of pills. We hung out all night in the jacuzzi and the heated pool.

We stayed the next night in an RV park, and the following one at a campsite. Taos area is neat. There is a gorge just west of town that I could spend a lot of time in. What is more beautiful is the rest of northern New Mexico along 64. Bunch of backwards crazies out there, but beautiful. Where the Rockies dip down and end, there are forested foothills of red, blue, and white fir and aspen trees. We found a yard sale in the middle of nowhere with some real steals. I got two great shirts for .50 each. Zheny got a pair of Wrangler cordouroys that fit her really nice for .50. I got a copy of War of the Worlds for ten cents, and a little knife for ten cents. And fresh socks for ten cents a pair.

Before we left New Mexico, we had a major problem with Billy. Jim the Arrogant Driver had knocked a hole in the aluminum pipe that goes back to the transmission. This is an expensive part, and it's a hell to replace it because you have to open up the transmission to replace it and you have to line everything up perfectly, and it's hard to do even if you have a rack to put the van up on. Which we didn't. Jim and I hit the hardware store. He got a rubber hose and two clamps and some J.B. Weld. $10. A temporary solution.

Arizona was also beatiful in a "hi, i'm in a desert" kind of way.

Pause. I feel like I'm narrating a slide show at this point. Unpause.

We slept at the Grand Canyon, and then drove down to Sedona. I made a big mistake and left the parking brake on for about a quarter of a mile down in Oak Creek Canyon. The small amount of brake fluid that was leaking in the rear driver drum caught fire and smoked for awhile. The steel parts all got hot and swelled slightly enough to make the brakes act funny and make us all really nervous. We spent the night in the Hilton Resort in town because Zhenya's friend from Phoenix works at a hotel and hooked us up. The next day we spent trying to look at the brakes. We couldn't get the rotor off. We had AAA tow it to a nearby mechanic that Harmony, the concierge recommended us to. They looked at it and told us it was fine. We bought a used tire since we needed one anyway. Jim was still nervous about the brakes.

We drove to San Luis Obispo in one night. It took forever. Literally. Okay not really. Just a long time. In the morning, the brakes were acting up and so was something else. Jim and Melissa met up with some friends and we parted ways. I went and found Kaja. We hung out at her work and she gave us coffee and car advice. She also gave us fragrant flowers for the car and was a lot more friendly and cool than I'd expected. Warmer. I'm glad to know her. I'll have to go visit when I'm not full of problems.

We found a mechanic that was really nice and drove the van around a couple of blocks to tell us what he thought the noises could be. He assured me it wasn't the drive shaft, which is good. He thought it was the engine "searching." I knew Billy was spiritual. He was great and he didn't even charge us. Which is good because we're going broke and we still have to get jobs and live in San Francisco. We went to mechanics that weren't busy to get the brakes looked at. They looked at them and told us a lot of what I could at this point call bullshit. They said the footings were put on backwards and that there was a gastket leaking in the master cylander and that all teh brakes needed to be replaced or we would crash and die. They kicked a lot of dirt and rust down into the drums in the process and didn't bother to clean it before putting them back on. Assholes. I had driven all night and not slept, so I was kind of in bad shape. Zhenya dealt with them and they treated her like a girl. It sucked. We were very nervous and yeah actually scared to drive the car. We thought she was done for. She was also leaking a hell of a lot of oil, which she'd done only a little of before.

But we drove her anyway. We drove her up through the hills of California. The next time we checked the fluids, we found out what that knocking noise was. The transmission fluid had started flowing freely again. At least we knew what it was. The good news was the brakes felt fine again, and the oil stopped leaking so badly. I guess it had been leaking because the van was a little overheated driving through the desert the previous night. We got to Sacramento at eleven oclock at night two weeks and four days after we left Wilmington. It was a long strange trip. Zhenya flew out to Kentucky this morning for some job training thing, and she'll be back tomorrow night. We'll go rafting and maybe hiking and then I'll show her the Gay Area. She will fall madly in love. We'll get jobs and get a place and be responsible and married and all that. Maybe. We'll see. The road already calls again. I've worked hard to get these hobbit feet, and I'm not just going to let them go soft.

I love you really hard.

Drood

I just had one mutherfucker of a road trip. I'll try to write about it soon.

Aries: (March 21—April 19)
The jury won't buy your story of demonic possession. Which is no big deal, because the demon just wanted your Milk Duds.

I normally don't give any credence to zodiac horoscopes, especially considering that the position of our solar system gives us thirteen actual star signs, and I'm not really an Aries because of it. But this one from The Onion really was dead on, so maybe I should give them a second shot.

The answer is "No, you sick fuck!"

The question is, did I ever tell you about my cock-tassle? I made one and wore it for a few days once. Actually, Estrella did most of the work on it, but she didn't know at the time that her yarn tassle would eventually become my cock-tassle. I tied her colorful piece of craft to the base of a condom. I mean that I removed the condom and just had the little ring left. To which I affixed the tassle. Voila! A fitted cock-tassle. The yarn felt kind of good, and like I said, I wore it around for a couple of days. I told everyone that I was wearing it. A couple of my friends really wanted to see it, but were too embarrassed to press the issue. I laughed inwardly, but I laughed really hard and pointed outwardly. Eventually, my cock-tassle fell off in San Francisco on the way from a party. I sometimes wonder what ever became of it. If anyone actually figured out what it was. I can't imagine that they did. But I hope they did. And I hope they loved it as I did.

Do the Right Thing

It bothers me that I am always so noble about everything. I always find myself doing the noble thing in any situation, even if it's detrimental to me. Even if the people I'm helping are hurting me somehow. I'm passive when I really shouldn't be. I should assert myself. I really don't like myself sometimes because of it. If I were someone else, I wouldn't like that person at those times.

But I never regret anything. I never have anything to regret, because my intentions are always so fucking noble. I want to regret something. I want to do something really worth regretting. I want to hurt someone dear to me for no reason. Especially if they don't deserve it. I never feel this way. And I'll never act on it. But I want to.

Me and cruel Stagger Lee having a beer. Not shooting each other. We just know.

What did you think you would find here?

I'm not done offending people today. I had thought about putting one of those things on my site to let people comment on my posts, but when I get going, I don't like to pass the microphone around. This is one of the many things that has convinced me that I am very selfish. I don't dislike that about myself, and even if I did want to change it I probably couldn't, so it's a good thing I don't. I don't have any particular feelings about it. I spent my childhood and adolescence on self-improvement so I could be destructive as an adult. I wouldn't want to waste all that hard work.

Am I still talking about myself? Would you rather I talk about you?

Maybe I should talk about something more important. Is there anything? Politics are important, right? Except that today's politics will very soon become yesterday's and me having discussed them will have no effect whatsoever. I'll just have a record that I thought that somehow my opinion was important to the people around me, when I know very well it's not even that important to me. Maybe religion and philosophy. If you've read up on your Sartyr and your Calvin, I don't have anything special to add. And it you haven't, you'd do better to go read about it than to read what I have to say. I could write about my friends, but they are great in ways I can't trap on my keyboard. And they are thinking things from a point of view I can't crack into. So you'd only get a fraction of a story and the soup-film over the convection heat of their character. I could talk about music or film or something else that proves that I can remember a lot of names and usurp the opinions of others. So what's left? What will entertain you? What will give you the inexplicable compulsion to keep reading more because you are addicted like it was salt to the conflict between what I'm saying and how you think? Little movies in my head. Things that you don't like. But you do. But you don't. And I say it in a way that irritates you so much you want to tear off my ragged clothes and look into my smirk-mask and devour me from the outside because that's the only way you can think of to get in. If there is another way, I wouldn't tell you. A girl's got to have her secrets.

I get little movies in my head. Usually they are a comedic reflection of the world around me, which only thinks it's playing the straight man. For some reason I thought of "feminist pornography" today, and a little movie popped up in my head of a bunch of women dressed as Hollywood would portray stereotypical feminists (think PCU). They're sitting around talking about something, and it's obviously a bad script by someone who has never heard of Maya Angelou. And the actresses are obviously porno stars with fake breasts, and that porno star acting that I won't call bad because what the fuck do I know. Anyway, not much time goes by before the pool man comes in with a bucket of wet ashes to explain why the pump has been acting up (of course they are the remnants of a bra-burning party), and they make short work of dropping their roles and making with the sex. Voila. Feminist porn!