3000 MILES AND DRINKING

The Green Tortoise is a San Francisco-based adventure bus tour service that prides itself on an unconventional experience of the people and landscape of the United States. I signed on for the northerly route of the East-to-West cross-country excursion, expecting a heady twelve days of hiking, camping, and hooking up with random girls. I was not disappointed.

The first day in New York City set the tone. Getting lost somewhere in Harlem, our drivers, a rail-thin Djembe-playing know-it-all named Rob and his diminutive unshaven Aussie co-pilot Sue, took us down a side street, directly into the path of a group of African American kids cavorting in an opened fire hydrant. The kids blocked the flow and waved us by, then released a torrent of Manhattan tap through the open windows of our ancient green monster. We dried off with a few beers in a local dive bar by the bus terminal before plunging into the night through the Poconos to our first liquor store stop in northern Ohio the next morning.

A budding writer couldn’t ask for a better character study: there was Henry the epileptic Irishmen with the mismatched eyes; Jody the bisexual albino everyone hated; Alastair and Mark, two English blokes having the time of their lives; Will, a Welsh farmer with a knack for vodka and cards; Jenny the gorgeous-yet-boring German nanny. We had a rich Indian girl from South Africa, a gregarious balloonist from Melbourne, a radical feminist in black army boots, a 50-something Vietnamese heiress with night terrors, and an apprentice archaeologist on his way to tap the Mayan runes. We even had a molester—a thirty-something Latino we kicked off the bus in Wyoming after he touched one of the girls in her sleep.

Since we were allowed to drink on the bus (where we also slept, thanks to the copious top bunks and convertibility of the first-level seats), most of the journey is a 65-mph blur, yet a slew of images remain: the Australians skinny-dipping in the Mississippi on a cold wet morning, the sun setting over flattened Nebraska plains on our way to Carhenge, Rob discussing “donkey punching” on the top of Arches National Park’s “Double Arch,” me and Jenny making out in a hot tub in front of a bunch of Mormons, the view of Las Vegas from a hurtling roller-coaster a thousand feet in the air, the entire bus singing Spandeu Ballet’s “True” on the last stretch to San Francisco….

A week later, up to my eyeballs in picturesque landscapes and romantic trysts and gourmet vegetarian fare and more servings of alcohol than there are Chinese people taking pictures of the Grand Canyon (or so I’ve heard—we skipped it), I was sitting on a pristine beach in Northern California in the middle of Redwoods National Park, sharing a bowl with a pretty girl from Sacramento and her boyfriend. Great piles of rock sat tremendous a hundred yards out into the Pacific, home to joyous seagulls and the occasional lithe blue heron. The storied old growth forest stood behind us, mammoth trees centuries older than anything else in the world kissed by Pacific mists, dense with rich foliage and a breathtaking diversity of unspoiled wildlife. My head beheld a pleasant buzz, my legs were strong and tan, the sun was high and spiritual, and all I could think was:

This is total bullshit.

The title of a recent book by Moscow-based American poet John Dolan says it best: “People With Real Lives Don’t Need Landscapes.” I had experienced the heights of sensual thrill, been to the most coveted natural wonders in the world, danced naked with the Goddess Earth licking my balls with her fiery Love, and found it all lacking.

When the Sacramento kids said goodbye and left me alone on the beach, I unearthed my long-ignored notebook and started writing, resuming the same project I felt bearing down on me three weeks before: The Book to Save the World.

THE QUEST FOR DEMEANING

It didn’t last long. Two weeks later I was on the train home puffing Oregon kind from a one-hit in the bathroom of the Amtrak Empire Builder, hanging out with other rudderless twenty-somethings in the lounge car, and passing out in my seat with a bottle of Sam Adams. And not writing.

Two weeks after THAT I was fighting parental pressure to get a job, going to the local Zen center every Thursday for two hours of sheer knee pain, and not writing.

And then Harborfest came along; I spent three days at Kevin’s place eating barbecued chicken and gawking at fireworks and chugging Molson Ice from lukewarm cans… and not writing.

Nothing kicks you out of such a rut like demeaning labor. I caved to the parental pressure and took a job at the local bagel place, earning $6.20 an hour to serve toasted everythings and cinnamon sugars and sundried tomatoes with provolone and smoked turkey to former teachers and classmates.

My biology teacher thought I was in grad school. My art teacher was surprised I didn’t have a gallery show coming up. Mike D., my arch nemesis since the advent of Air Jordans in the sixth grade (he could afford them, I couldn’t), ordered a dozen bagels and smirked as I ducked under my beige company hat and pretended to be just another high school kid working for mall money.

And then Buffalo beckoned. Dave and Jason were starting a literary journal, and I moved there to help out. I took a salaried web design position to support myself and began writing once again in earnest, planning to serialize The Book to Save the World within the pages of our Hegemonic.

But THEN, George W. Bush came to power, and a bunch of local activists were going to his inauguration to protest. They needed me to design some flyers, and suddenly I was spending all my free time in consensus meetings with other Buffalo lefties, discussing the finer points of neo-liberal economic policy and contemplating the ethics of armed dissent.

We were going to save the world, and The Book to Save the World would have to wait….