As I boarded the bus in Sacramento, on my way to San Francisco, every nerve in my body fought tooth and nail against my impotent and dwindling will to split the scene in South Lake. True, the girl had been manipulative and cruel, and a liar. She was a borderline personality with a persecution complex and what seemed to be a vendetta against anyone who actually tried to reach through those defense mechanisms and the walls she had erected- those meticulously fortified, protective barriers. That artificial smile, the smile of a waitress waiting to clock out before she could go back to hating the morbidly obese patrons that tortured her so. The pathologically insincere demeanor and mannerisms. And the eyes. Always darting, glancing down and to the left, down and to the left. Those eyes, glimmering and dewy with tears the day I finally split, always concealing something even when in the genuine throes of emotion or passion. A facade. All of these things were true, but she was my girl.
And this story, like most, started with a girl. Although it didn't end when the last mask of pleasantries between us was ripped down and trampled under foot by our savage passion, our endless questions and our mutually exclusive need to be right. It didn't end when I realized, with a dreadful finality, that neither of us had really ever loved the other. And it didn't end when I came to understand that the foundation of our relationship which had lured me so many miles from the safety of my home was a lie, and that she was, in a sense, my mythological Siren. It didn't even end with my final relapse on smack while I was in Frisco, which lead to my nearly losing an arm to a particularly nasty "spider bite". (Bill had asked me why I wasn't dead by the time I showed it to the kids in Southern California for the first time. "Don't brown recluses kill people, man?")
Yes, they do. And so does black tar heroin, apparently. But we won't dig too deeply into that right now.
The story on its surface seemed to be about a girl. It wasn't. And the deeper I dug, and the deeper I dig, sitting here sipping Old Crow from a coffee mug writing this at a friends desk the evening before departing for Oregon, the more I see with clarity what this has always been. A story about me. My life, my Odyssey. Nothing more, nothing less. I suppose the real reason for my leaving was a sense of running from the past, disguised as a journey to "find myself". Funny to think I would be looking so hard for something that has been carrying me around all along.
The year is 2012, if not the year of the Mayan Apocalypse, it is certainly the year of the Personal Apocalypse. They say you have to hit a complete bottom and be destroyed before you can rebirth yourself voluntarily, like the phoenix rising from his own ashes. I still drink entirely too much, and smoke a hell of a lot more, if you want to know the truth. I've always had a fondness for both, and since my departure from the midwest at the beginning of the year, the frequency of both vices has waxed and not waned. There is something comforting about being able to return to a bottle of Kentucky bourbon that will always be there for you at the end of the day, regardless as to whether or not you know where you will wake up, or if you will wake up, in the morning.
But that is neither here nor there.
I am writing the great American novel. Only it's not great. And it is Anti-American. And it can hardly call itself a novel. And it is probably derivative of Kerouac. And most of its action takes place on a bus.
What follows is the travel memoirs of a sinner, a journalist, a musician, a lover, a manic depressive, an addict and a mystic. It is, by necessity, disjointed and rambling, and in the true fashion of the beats, I refuse to edit it. I never claimed I was a great American writer. I make no apologies. Fuck you, pay me.
-The narrator, somewhere in Southern California, June 2012
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