TACOMA TO NEW YORK AND BACK — Nobody can accuse me of not being careful. I make very few real mistakes, instead opting for piles of wasted opportunities. Inertia takes me behind the woodshed. Anything worth doing is worth planning out within an inch of its life, and I spend an embarrassingly long time deciding to do anything at all. Applying to this internship was actually one of the most impulsive things I have ever done. At 26, I had finally started to make some progress. I wanted to write, I had gotten the school newspaper job at the local community college, and so one could be forgiven for taking me half-seriously at this point. I was making steady progress. But then the crash happened, and I kind of decided I needed to see my life deliver some sort of payoff as quickly as it could.
About a year ago, on my commute to my silly little community college job, I was almost undone by a little old lady in a Corolla. I had the straight green, she had a flashing yellow turn signal. When I swerved to avoid her, I set myself on course to give a telephone pole a 40-mph hug. In the half-second before impact, I knew for certain I was going to die. I didn't really have time to be upset about it, but this is not the timing I would have preferred. I would be annihilated by a not-quite communicative enough traffic-control device, in a truck I hated driving, just before I really got around to doing anything in the world.
As it became clearer I might have a legit chance at getting the Defector gig, I realized I would need some way to get to New York. By that point, the Democrats had lost to Donald Trump again, so I found myself on the wrong end of an administration that had gained so many concessions from the opposition party that they basically ran out of evil shit to do, and then remembered trans people exist. We can't get passports now—or maybe we can, but have to put ourselves on a list?—and due to the Real ID Act of 2005 finally kicking in (or not?), I couldn't just hop on a plane. I either needed to subject myself to facial recognition technology, or the whims of the U.S. State Department. I am stubborn as they come, and decided that I didn't need to do either. But I did need a new car. Something reasonable on gas mileage, reliable, comfortable for long distances.
Technically the Miata checks all the boxes. However, I bought mine at least thirdhand, and it is a real pile. It is noisy, uncomfortable, unreliable, and, of course, fucks up my hair. There also is no better way to get anywhere, let alone across the country. Sorry to the trainheads out there, this shit is just more fun.
But then I got the job, and Miata had to actually get my ass to Chicago, where I would pick up the Amtrak for the second half of the trip to New York. It immediately broke.
The first day on the road went "fine" (got hailed on), but when I left Missoula for day two, the car's torque curve was less a curve and more a shelf. Drivable, but nerve-racking. Once I finally limped into Minneapolis, I checked the spark plugs and found that they were fouled, and one was completely shattered. My aunt and uncle in La Crosse offered to get the thing looked at for me while I was in New York. So I rented a pickup from Enterprise and a tow dolly from U-Haul, towed my shit a full state, and caught a commuter train down to Chicago. Meanwhile the shop told me that the crank pulley key had broken and fallen into the engine, that it would cost several thousand dollars to fix.
After all that, the sheer triumph I experienced at getting on the train to New York was sort of absurd. It lit out east at what felt like a reckless pace. Every time we hit the slightest bump in the track, every passenger would achieve brief weightlessness, our asses floating half an inch off the seat cushion. We were hauling tuchus. The girl in the seat next to me was having some interminable conversation with the most boring person on Earth, but as we passed a refinery glowing in the night, we shared a moment in marveling at its beauty.
New York City is the coolest place I've ever been. Most places have their stereotypes played up, and when you actually get there it is much tamer. The cabbie from the train station asked what I was here for. I had just barely started to mumble that I was gonna write about sports when he interrupted me to scream about BUM-ASS KARL-ANTHONY TOWNS, and the LOSER MINDSET that had led to the FUCKING KNICKS' recent playoff exit. I counted four separate near-crashes on the drive to downtown Brooklyn. This city rocks. It agrees with my position on sleeping, and caters to you in this regard. Anyone that has ever wondered why so many writers live in New York needs to understand that in New York, you are never more than a block or two away from a really good, really cheap, hot meal, at any hour.
My first week as Defector intern was productive: David Roth gave me a bunch of Mariners cards, and there was a pretty wild fight outside the office. Then I spent the second week writing a deranged shit behemoth that eventually had to be killed, because to make it publishable, it would have needed to be chopped to a slower, maybe even more painful death. I lived, but god did that one knock me down a bit.
In a blink, I was back on the train, headed back west again, to work the rest of the summer remotely. The time had evaporated. I was smoking cigarettes again somehow.
Wisconsin time turned out to be just what I needed. When I arrived, I found out my car had played me. They pulled it apart only to discover that, in fact, the timing belt was one tooth off. Easily fixed. My mood was so improved that I didn't really even mind the stress it had caused me. La Crosse is breathtaking that time of year, and I had a lovely spot to write in my aunt's sunroom. It's kind of funny how much easier my writing came there.
When I hit the road back west, I had a real paycheck in my pocket, everything I needed to survive for a few weeks, and zero plans to speak of. I was on top of the world. Then I hit South Dakota.
For some time I have wondered how anyone could end up as unpleasant as Kristi Noem. Most of the current administration's numbskulls can be sort of understood, because there are a lot of men you meet in normal life that would be dangerous if they had any power. Marjorie Taylor Greene also sucks, but she just seems massively credulous and racist, which aren't exactly uncommon traits. Noem strikes me as unique: a not-unintelligent person who would go broke if there were a charity for kicking the already downed. How can such a freak come to exist? Spend about 15 minutes in this state, and it might start to make more sense. That was how long it took for me to get pulled over for going 70 on the emptiest of highways. The cop was oncoming traffic, and pulled a U-turn to chase me down and welcome me to the state. As I sat there waiting for him to deliver me the $170 present with every bit of smugness he could muster, I developed the very first sunburn I have ever had in my life.
When I finally got to my campsite, I was informed that I could not sleep in my hammock. I could rent a camping spot, and I could hang a hammock, but I could not sleep in the hammock overnight. When I went to a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes to cope with the rotten luck of Being In South Dakota, the woman behind the counter laughed at me about my sunburn.
I sort of slept twice in the state, but how you might sleep if you knew that Ted Cruz was in your house. Mostly, I kept driving.
I almost ran out of gas in a place called Newell. I don't think I've ever been in a place so deprived. I went to a grocery store there that had less food in the whole place than I do in my pantry, and most of what they had was those ill-conceived candy flavors that end up at Grocery Outlet. Pumpkin Spice Warheads, SweeTARTS Soft & Chewy Nooses, Now and Laters—just the mistakes, really. Everything in this town appeared to be broken in some way. Every building, every road, every vehicle, every face.
The thing is, though, I didn't really have anywhere to be. Nothing better to do. My pretensions were laid so incredibly bare out here. There was nowhere to hide my freakishness. No point.
When I reached Wyoming, it was heaven on Earth, except for the fact that I was blind. My response to my horrific sunburn had been to slather my forehead, perhaps belatedly, with sunscreen. Every single drop of it had managed to leak into my eyes. I drove, squinting, on an hour of sleep all the way down to Casper. Casper has a C'mon Inn, and at this point in the trip I just wanted any place with some familiarity, no matter how far out of the way. At a stop light, a lone lady of probably 60 pulled up alongside me on a Harley. She told me she loved my car, and I told her that her ride also looked pretty fun. I was out of the woods.
When I headed north again, there were digital signs warning of high winds and extreme blowover risk. The storm looked like something from Fury Road. For once, I kept two hands on the wheel. It was fine.
On the Fourth of July, I stayed at the DoubleTree in Billings for free off the loyalty points I had gotten from my New York stay. I wouldn't bring this up, except for the part where that hotel is really nice for the sticker price. Legit hidden-gem status. No free clout though, so I will also let you know that the Hilton in Tacoma is a pile of shit, and being hit by an airport shuttle is preferable. Stay anywhere else.
On the way east, one of my aunts had been crestfallen to learn that I had missed the Beartooth Highway. On the way back, I did not miss it. Having done them in that order, I would recommend the reverse. If you are unfamiliar, it is one of the paths into Yellowstone National Park. The trouble with Yellowstone after the Beartooth Highway is that it legitimately makes Yellowstone less impressive by comparison. It is just that cool.
I thought, very briefly, that I might have picked the wrong day, because upon entering the mountain pass that the highway lies upon, my view was partially obstructed by clouds and fog. However, as the road winds its way up into the mist, I realized I was a fool. There was no way to ruin this.
A neat thing about the Miata is its refusal to isolate me. If there's rain, I get wet. If there's hail, I get thwapped. If there's people nearby, they hear my conversation on the phone or with myself, and I hear theirs. Everyone and everything is in my business.
I often lament how much of life a lot of people seem to steal from themselves for no real great reason. I watch people, you know, just sit there in unhappy marriages, with jobs they don't really love, cutting themselves off from huge chunks of life for fear and shame's sake, or just inertia. One thing that really came into focus on this trip is just how much of a hypocrite I've been in this regard. Relatively, I might seem pretty emancipated. Out there, with nobody watching, no plans at all, I'm just about as much a bottled-up square as the rest.
I know that in due time, I will look back and regret every wasted second of this internship, the hours spent anxiously staring into spare space. I know now that I am not really capable of doing anything other than being myself, wasting time, only occasionally remembering the capacity for brilliance every person has long enough to sputter off something approaching coherence. I'm utterly predictable in this way.
Sam Miller had a George Stigler bit he used to like to paraphrase, that if you never miss a flight you are getting to the airport too early. This is slightly stupid, but that is sort of the point. If you never buy a busted-ass car, never have a piece spiked, never have a [redacted] moment in South Dakota, you aren't trying enough stuff. Careful or no you'll make mistakes either way, but, as a matter of process, you ought to frequently be looking like an idiot.
