January 1: Woke up in state park in Texas, USA. Don’t remember how I got there. Can’t even remember the past three months.
January 2: Hitched a ride with a couple on their honeymoon. Helped them remove cans dangling from the back of their car and scrape off the chalk on the windows saying “Just Married.” I could tell the marriage wouldn’t last.
January 3: The couple dropped me off at an airport in Dallas. I saw a guy who looked like me and pickpocketed him. Got his passport and credit cards, booked a flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
January 4: Arrived in Sao Paulo. Used credit card to withdraw three hundred dollars at Brazilian foreign exchange bank. Took a taxi to the slums of the city. Walked aimlessly through trash-filled streets until I found an old lady who agreed to let me sleep in her hovel for 20 bucks.
January 5: Ate breakfast with old lady and asked if there was anywhere to find work. She didn’t understand me because I was speaking Spanish and she only understood Portuguese. I rubbed my fingers together and said, “dinero.” She shrugged so I left, roaming once again until I found a young boy of ten who spoke Spanish. I asked where I could find work. He said, “No work, but you American, you have money, I give you place to sleep.” It was true. I had money, but I didn’t trust him so I walked aimlessly through the night.
January 6: I wandered back to the airport, but I didn’t have much money for a flight. The cheapest available was a connection to Rio so I took it. When I landed I took a cab to the Copacabana. I ate dinner and drank beer. I was nearly broke so I slept under a nearby bridge.
January 7: I walked northwest along the beaches until I reached Leme Beach. I spent my last dollars purchasing water and food. When I was finished eating, I climbed up the cliff and, when I reached the top, I saw children and teenagers running and diving off the cliffs to water below. There were so many of them that they seemed like lemmings. It appeared they were all surviving, though, so they made room for me to try it. I ran and jumped, flailed my arms and spun around in circles midair while plunging toward the ocean waters below. I crashed against the water and everything went black. I woke up on the shore with several children and teenagers hovering over me. I couldn’t move my right arm and when I tried a shooting pain knocked me out cold again.
January 8: I woke up in a room walled with cardboard that smelled like a sewer. An old woman was tending to me, applying a damp cloth to my forehead and rhythmically chanting in a language I did not know. It wasn’t Portuguese or Spanish, that I could tell. A small boy stood near her and I tried to speak to him, but only rasping air escaped my throat. He said, in English, “You are sick and you break your arm, try to rest. The Bajiju will help you.” I drifted off listening to the Bajiju chanting over me.
January 9: I woke up feeling mildly better. I was alone, though. I tried speaking again and this time was able to form words: “Hello? Is anyone here?” I laid still looking up at a ceiling for what seemed like hours. I spent most of that time trying to figure out what type of materials the ceiling was made of. I couldn’t tell, but the murky brown and yellow stains made for interesting patterns. If I hadn’t been beneath it I might have thought the uneven surface was interesting. Instead, I worried it would collapse on me.
January 10: The Bajiju was back. She rattled off words as she sprinkled dust all over me and then made clanging noises banging a spoon against a metal pot. The boy was present, too. He said to me, “Bajiju make you a turnip and we will send you to America so you can be home again.” A turnip?
January 11: Exist as a turnip
January 12: Exist as a turnip
January 13: Exist as a turnip
January 14: Exist as a turnip
January 15: Exist as a turnip
January 16: Exist as a turnip
January 17: Exist as a turnip
January 18: I became conscious again. I was standing, encased in glass in what appeared to be an art gallery. Dozens of people were gawking at me. I looked down and realized I was naked … but a naked woman. I turned around to hide my body from the onlookers only to peer into a mirror the length of my body. I was a young woman, strikingly beautiful, long and lithe. My pubic hair had been shaved or waxed and my breasts … they were proportionate. I cupped them with my hands. They were soft but taut. I was deeply confused and disoriented, but also highly aroused. I turned around again and yelled for someone to let me out. The crowd broke into applause and the more I screamed and banged on the glass the more they cheered and clapped. Exhausted, I finally slumped to the floor and eventually fell asleep.
January 19: The gallery was empty, the exhibition apparently over. After several hours simply sitting and staring straight ahead, a well-dressed woman walked to my case, produced a set of keys, and opened the case. She offered her hand and I took it. I began to speak, to ask what was happening, but she put a finger to my lips and told me to follow her. We went into a back room and she handed me a robe. I put it on, amazed by how sensitive my skin was. My body seemed so light, almost like air. All of my movements seemed effortless. How strange to be a young woman. The woman handed me a bottle of water. I drank from it and, not long after, lost consciousness.
January 20: I woke up in a king-sized bed covered by a satin sheet. There were floor-to-ceiling windows just to the left of the bed. I sat up and looked outside. I was up high, clearly in a high-rise. Central Park spread out before me and I looked at the distant buildings soaring in the New York skyline. I got out of bed and walked across the hardwood floor and around a corner into a kitchen. An elderly man stood naked eating a piece of toast. Before I could scream, he said, “There are some clothes in the closet for you.” I asked him if we had sex? He laughed hard and said, “No, no, no. I haven’t had sex in a decade. Besides, I’m gay.” I walked to the closet, clearly still a woman, disgusted by not knowing what was happening. I had no idea how to choose clothing for myself. I had never been a woman. The man, now wearing a robe, came in to help me and fitted me into a simple black dress with shoulder straps, a tight waist, and a hem that hung mid-thigh. He provided me with high-heel shoes which were remarkably painful. “How am I supposed to walk in these?” He shrugged his shoulders. When I asked him how I had become a woman he simply stared at me and said, “I’m not at liberty to say.” The old man accompanied me by limousine from sight to sight, taking me to the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty, MoMA, restaurants, and a Broadway play. I fell down more times than I could count and broke the heel on three different pairs of shoes. At the end of the day we returned to the penthouse apartment and as I crawled into bed I wondered, “How the fuck do women walk in shoes like that?”
January 21: I woke and tried to move. I couldn’t as my body was wrapped in cellophane. A large Asian man, possibly seven foot tall with a shaved head, picked me up from the bed and laid me down on the couch. He stood silently as I berated him, demanding that he unbound me. After what may have been an hour, a very tiny middle-aged woman wearing a fur coat and fur hat walked into the living room and told me, “You are not a turnip any more. I know you’ve been wondering. When one receives a turnip from a South American favela, one never knows what one will receive once the turnip transforms. It is very rare for the turnip to resemble the person who existed before being turned into a turnip. And yet, the memories and thoughts and feelings of those previous lives always remain.” She turned and walked toward the front door. Before she left, though, she said, “Don’t worry. You won’t be a young woman forever. We all age.” I didn’t feel any better having heard this and I cried out, “What are you going to do with me? Why am I here?” She turned and said, “I won’t be doing anything to you and you’re here because someone decided you should be.” When she left the giant man picked me up and took me to what I thought was a trash chute. He stuffed me inside and I slid … and slid … and slid … until finally I came to rest on foam pads only to be picked up again by a team of men wearing drab green uniforms and gas masks. They stuffed me into the back of a van and one of them inserted a needle into my arm, injecting me with … something that made me pass out.
January 22: I awoke in a bed in a rundown apartment. When I sat up, I realized I was in my old body again. I had been so freaked out I hadn’t even had time to appreciate being a young woman. Now I was a middle-aged man again. I didn’t like it. I could feel the aches and pains in my body as if I had never had them before, everything broken or run down within me that I had gotten used to was new again and the pain was horrendous. To be born again as myself at my age was not the blessing I imagined it would be. The only good thing was that I was alone. I dressed in clothes that fit me and found a passport in my coat pocket. It was my face, my name, my country. I also found a wallet in my pants pocket filled with 5000 euros, all 100 euro bills. I left the apartment and went to a corner cafe. The waitress spoke to me in French. I ordered an espresso and asked her the name of the city. She looked at me strangely, but said, “Colmar.” I spent the rest of the day wandering along the cobblestone streets past the idyllic half-timbered houses and lingering on bridges overlooking the canals. It was surprisingly warm considering I was in Alsace in January.
January 23: I woke in the morning with an angry Frenchman screaming at me. I surmised that I had been sleeping in his apartment and he did not want me there. I had no way of knowing, though, because I didn’t understand French. I dressed quickly and left as fast as I could. I figured it would be best to leave the city so I took a bus to Freiburg, checked into a hotel, ate dinner, then went to sleep.
January 24: Things seemed different. Something changed, something big. I took a dump.
January 25: Still disoriented. Not sure what happened. Time to move.
January 26: A train to Frankfurt. A flight to Chicago. Slept at an airport hotel.
January 27: Rented a car. Drove to Arkansas. Slept in the car on the side of a road in the Ozarks, middle of nowhere.
January 28: Bought a pig from a farmer. Drove to Texas with “Sandy.”
January 29: Dropped off rental car in Lubbock. Walked out of town with Sandy. We slept under the stars. I was cold.
January 30: Sandy was gone when I woke up. Pigs are not reliable pets.
January 31: Walked into a small town called Smyer and asked an old woman for directions to the bus station. She screamed for help and a man walking on the other side of the road pulled a gun on me. A sheriff came and arrested me. I asked what the charges were. He said anyone not local was most likely a terrorist and locked me up in the local jail.
February 1: I asked to make a phone call, to see a lawyer. The deputy said I was lucky he didn’t shoot me then and there. I ate gruel and drank rust-colored well water.
February 2: I complained that the rotten food and contaminated water was making me sick. The sheriff laughed and said to the deputy, “Looks like we got one of them crazy eco-terrorizers on our hands.”
February 3: A lonely day in jail.
February 4: A lonely day in jail.
February 5: A lonely day in jail.
February 6: I puked all over my cell. Probably food poisoning, but the deputy thought I was trying to escape so he beat me.
February 7: A lonely day in jail.
February 8: A lonely day in jail.
February 9: Diarrhea so bad I only spent an hour off the can all day. Between the food and the water I wasn’t sure I could survive much longer.
February 10: In terrible agony all day.
February 11: In terrible agony all day.
February 12: In terrible agony all day.
February 13: In terrible agony all day.
February 14: In terrible agony all day.
February 15: In terrible agony all day.
February 16: The sheriff and deputy told me my skin was turning green. They were convinced I had hidden some type of biological weapon in my anus so they stripped me down and “probed.”
February 17: Sent to hospital in Lubbock because the sheriff thought my excessive rectal bleeding might be the biochemical attack they had been sure was coming. The deputy said he knew it would only be a matter of time until the terrorists attacked Smyer.
February 17: Unconscious.
February 18: Unconscious.
February 19: Unconscious.
February 20: Unconscious.
February 21: Awake. I was on an IV. A doctor came to see me and told me I was lucky to be alive. He said I had so many different toxins within me that he thought I had been living off of the trash at the local landfill. I was barely able to speak. I tried to tell him about the jail in Smyer, the food, the water, the anal rape, but he said to the nurse that it appeared I was delusional from the shock to my system.
February 22: Recover in hospital.
February 23: Recover in hospital.
February 24: Recover in hospital.
February 25: Recover in hospital.
February 26: Recover in hospital.
February 27: Recover in hospital.
February 28: Recover in hospital.
March 1: Recover in hospital.
March 2: Recover in hospital.
March 3: Recover in hospital.
March 4: Recover in hospital.
March 5: Recover in hospital.
March 6: Recover in hospital.
March 7: Recover in hospital.
March 8: Recover in hospital.
March 9: Recover in hospital.
March 10: Discharged from hospital. I received a hospital bill for $450,000.
March 11: I went to see a lawyer in Lubbock. I told him about the sheriff and the hospital bill. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Hey, this is Texas. You’re lucky you didn’t get the electric chair.” The he laughed. “Just kidding. They use lethal injection now. My advice is to leave the state as soon as possible. You didn’t hear that from me. Anyone asks, I don’t know you. Now get the hell out of my office before I shoot you.”
March 12: I had no money, no change of clothes, no nothing. I didn’t want to hitchhike, not in this state, but I had no choice other than walking. I figured sticking to the Interstates might be safest. The state patrol had to be better than the county sheriffs. They had to be. Prayed to a God I didn’t believe existed that the state patrol would be better than the county sheriffs.
March 13: Hitchhiking on I-27. No luck. I had wanted to go south, to Mexico, but I-27 ended in Lubbock. The only way out was north. Probably for the best. The further south one travels in the Western hemisphere, the more likely one is to be put in jail or killed for no good reason. Wound up sleeping near a rest stop. Made sure to be conspicuous. Never can be too careful with law enforcement in Texas. I figured if I was going to be found, it would probably be best if they were outlaws. Better chance to survive and be treated humanely.
March 14: Hitchhiking again. Saw a patrol car coming down the road so I scrambled for cover. Too late. I had been spotted. The officer, a huge burly man at least six foot six, stepped out of the car and leveled his gun at me. “Come out where I can see you and keep them hands high.” I stepped toward the shoulder of the road with my hands above my head. “You illegal?” I was covered in dirt, unwashed for days, so I guess he figured I had crossed the border heading north. “No.” He took off his aviator sunglasses while holding his gun steady. “You look like an illegal to me.” I shook my head. “No, sir, I’m a U.S. citizen.” He asked me for ID. Shit.
March 15: Locked up in customs. An officer came to talk with me. He spoke in Spanish. I said, “Whoa, slow down. My Spanish isn’t that good. I was educated in U.S. public schools so I’m lucky to be able to read and write let alone learn a second language well enough to get by.” The officer said, in English, “You being smart with me, hombre?” I shook my head no. “Next time you give me lip will be the last time.” This guy, too, was a big burly guy. Everyone in law enforcement in Texas was apparently big and burly. Not everyone who played high school football was able to get a scholarship for college so I guess the rest of them signed up to become police officers and state troopers. It was the smart thing to do, really. There weren’t too many professions where one could be legally violent. I guessed the military was the other option, but being a trooper meant being able to stay close to home.
March 16: I was told I would be loaded onto a bus to be sent “back to Mexico.” I pleaded with the big burly guy who was escorting me, “Hey, look, I played football in high school, too.” He stopped in his tracks and asked me where I played. I said, “In Arizona.” He smirked and shoved me forward, “So you’re a damn commie, too, huh?” What?!
March 17: Loaded off the bus and walked across the border into Juarez, the most violent city in North America because of the U.S. War on Drugs. Luckily they hadn’t let me shower or given me a change of clothes so I was filthy and smelled like piss and sweat. If I had been clean I would have smelled like money and that would have been a death sentence right there.
March 18: Lived on the streets begging for food and drink. Received a little. It got dangerous as the sun went down so I hid under an overhang in the alley, tried to sleep, but the stray dogs kept me up, either barking or growling at me as they came near.
March 19: Pretty much the same as the previous day.
March 20: I got sick of begging so I went to a grocery store and stole some food and bottled water. The employees or owners chased me down the blocks screaming at me and a few people on the street tried to stop me, but a man hungry, fearful, and desperate is hard to stop. I found a safe place in a parking lot, squatted between two pickup trucks, ate the readymade cold burritos and drank water. I rolled under one of the trucks to get out of the sun and sleep. I woke when I heard the engine starting and crawled out from under then waited until the truck was gone. Once the coast was clear I wandered through the neighborhood, found a park that had a good hiding spot, and waited until dark to sleep. No dogs so I finally got a good sleep.
March 21: When I woke it was sunny but cold. I needed new clothes. Hell, I needed a shower. I wandered through the neighborhood aimlessly, keeping an eye out for a department store or anything that might have a bathroom or clothes. I knew I was going to look suspicious to anyone in a store because I was filthy, clearly homeless, and therefore a likely thief. Turns out, homelessness is not all it’s cracked up to be. I was unsuccessful finding any new clothes, but I found an El Pollo Loco and washed up in the bathroom there. The dumpster had some decent chicken patties that were almost warm, too. All in all, it wasn’t a bad day.
March 22: I had gone back to the same park to sleep. Apparently, it’s not a good idea to sleep in the same place twice because some youths found me sleeping there early in the morning. They were drunk, possibly hopped up on something, and still up from the night before. They harassed me, but luckily they didn’t beat me. I hit the El Pollo Loco again and then made a long walk to try to find a new area of town. It was a risk; there was a good chance other neighborhoods would be more dangerous, but I was beginning to feel conspicuous and the employees at the chicken restaurant eyed me with suspicion. Found a new park and slept.
March 23: That was not a good park for sleeping. It appeared to be the place to go for young people who wanted to drink, get high, fight, and fuck. Very early in the morning, well before the sun rose, a young guy, maybe 16, maybe 18, found me and he and his friends forced me at gun point to get in the back of their pickup. It was a nice truck, brand new, decked out with rims and speakers that could have drowned out an airplane staking off. We arrived at a house and the guys were saying things to me, motioning for me to get out. They kept talking as they led me through a gate and up a long driveway. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand them because they were speaking Spanish; my ears were still ringing from the music. They made me strip in the driveway, they sprayed me with hoses, and threw me a towel to dry off. They were laughing and exclaiming, all seemingly shocked that I was a gringo—well, they said “gringo” with such surprise that I assumed that was what was going on. They threw me some clothes, a sweatshirt and sweatpants. As I dressed they argued. I wasn't sure why, but it appeared I had been picked up for a reason besides their own amusement; a white guy may not have been what they had in mind. They took me around the back of the house—really, mansion—and sat me in a chair next to the pool. I fell asleep waiting for what was to come next. Later, with the sun shining, I was awoken. A tall man sat down next to me and began speaking in Spanish. I heard “drogas” and “Estados Unitos.” I didn’t want to assume, but it seemed he wanted me to smuggle drugs across the border. I spoke haltingly in Spanish, gave up, and said in English, “I don’t think I’m the right person for the job. I’m homeless, I have no ID, no papers, no clothes, nothing.” He said, “No problemo,” and in English said, “It will be okay. For today. Rest. The gardener’s shed, you stay there until we ready.” I was escorted away and locked inside a shed. I sat next to bags of fertilizer all day and then fell asleep.
March 24: I was taken from the shed, made to undress, given a bar of soap, and then was sprayed with a hose as I washed. I was given clean clothes: underwear, socks, blue jeans that were too big for me, a belt, a Hawaiian shirt, and bright red Nike shoes. A guy, maybe 30, maybe older, drove me in a van to a spot next to a park. The back of the van was packed front to back and nearly floor to ceiling with boxes marked “Dole Foods.” He told me to get out and motioned for me to get in the driver’s seat. He pointed toward the northeast and said simply, “Border. Cross.” He paused and became more sinister, “We watch. No border?” He ran a finger across his neck. I understood so I drove, following the signs, and then waited in the long line to cross the border. I desperately wanted to buy a coke from a kid selling them from car to car, but I had no money. They had given me a passport and U.S. driver’s license, but nothing else. When I finally got to the crossing, I was sweating even though I had the air running. I rolled down the window and the customs agent asked to see my ID. He looked at it for a long time. He finally leaned in the window, looked at all the boxes in the back, and then asked me to put the van in park. I thought I was done, but then he asked to see my shoes. I pulled one leg back far enough for him to see. He handed me my passport and said, “Take I-10 East then get off at the exit near the Walmart. Drive to the south side of the Sam’s Club and park near the Red Box. Get out of the van, leave the keys, and walk to the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Find the men’s room and wait in the first stall.” After that, he waved me through. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so worried, that the whole system was rigged, but it was my first time. I found the Walmart easy enough and after circling the parking lot behind Sam’s Club twice I saw the Red Box, parked, left the keys inside, and walked to the Supercenter. I sat in the first stall in the men’s room for about an hour and then a hand slipped an envelope underneath. I grabbed it and opened it. There was $200 cash, a car key, and a note that read, “Go to the third row of the parking lot, get into the blue Civic in the third parking space on the right, and drive west on I-10. Take the exit for the Motel Six and tell the receptionist you want room 109.” I waited a few minutes, walked out, found the car, drove to the Motel Six, and asked the old woman at the counter for room 109. She looked me up and down, but gave me the key. I went into the room and found a note on the table: “Sleep here tonight. Someone will come for you in morning. Wait for the knock.” I ordered a pizza, ate, watched TV, and went to bed, glad to be alive and not in jail.
March 25: A guy picked me up early and we drove back into Mexico. I had thought about making a run for it during the night, but the idea of running from the Mexican mafia didn’t sit well with me. When we got back to Mexico we went to a warehouse. This time they had me drive a commercial truck, a Wonder Bread truck. Luckily it was an automatic. I didn’t have a CDL, never drove a big truck before other than a moving truck. This was pretty similar. I assumed it was also loaded with boxes like the van had been, just a hell of a lot more. I still had on my red shoes. I clicked them three times and said, “There’s no place like home,” but nothing changed so I drove to the border. This time I had to get out of the truck, but turns out it was only because the customs guy couldn’t see my shoes from the outside. He told me to get back inside and then to drive to Wal-Mart again. I did the whole thing, only this time there was a guy at the Red Box who told me there had been a change of plans. He told me to drive west on I-10 to a particular exit and then to stop in the DEA parking lot. I looked at him like he had lost his mind. He said, “No worry, okay. No funny stuff, bad things happen. You never out of sight.” Shit. My choices seemed to be death or prison. I drove on I-10, the whole time going back and forth about whether to ditch the truck and make a run for it or just hope that nothing bad would happen at the DEA headquarters. I finally pulled up to the gate and sat there, wondering what the hell to do. Why the DEA? Before I could even think of getting out of the truck, the gate opened and a man walked up to me. He flashed his badge and motioned for me to roll down the window. “Drive it around back and park.” I did as told. There was team of men waiting there when I drove up and parked. One motioned for me to get out of the vehicle. I did so and he said, “You got papers?” There was a clipboard with papers. Just a bunch of numbers on it. I handed it to him. He said a few things in Spanish to the guys in the back and they started unloading, putting boxes on pallets, and then moving them inside a warehouse. I stood there watching. The guy came back to me and said to go into the office and relax, have some food and coffee. He pointed the direction so I went. When I got inside there was a receptionist and she asked my business. I said I had just driven a truck into the parking area. She said, "Okay, there’s a break room down the hall. Second door on your left." I walked down and went inside. There were breakfast burritos on a plate and a microwave. I heated one up and had a cup of coffee. About an hour passed and then an agent, his badge on his shirt pocket, walked inside. He heated up a burrito and sat across from me. “So, you’re the new guy?” I shrugged. “You shouldn’t have to wait much longer. They’re just checking the product. Takes a little time to process, make sure everything is up-and-up. Protocol.” I asked, “So … what do I do after this?” The guy finished chewing, swallowed, and said. “I don’t know. You’re probably done for the day, make another run tomorrow.” Huh. He was right. I stayed at the Motel Six again, room 109.
March 26: Was driven back to Mexico, drove another truck across the border, back to Wal-Mart this time, then was driven back to the Motel Six for the evening.
March 27: Same as the previous day except they provided me with a change of clothes.
March 28: Same as the previous day. New clothes again.
March 29: Same as the previous day except new clothes.
March 30: Same as the previous day with new clothes.
March 31: Same as the previous day. New clothes.
April 1: No April Fool’s jokes. Same as the previous day. New clothes.
April 2: Same as the previous day, except to the DEA again. New clothes.
April 3: Same as the previous day, DEA again. New clothes.
April 4: Same as the previous day, back to the Wal-Mart run. New clothes.
April 5: Same as the previous day. New clothes.
April 6: Same as the previous day. New clothes.
April 7: Same as the previous day. New clothes.
April 8: Made a run back to the DEA. I was getting to know faces and they seemed to be getting to know mine. The receptionist always smiled at me. She was pretty. It was always the same agent who came into the break room to eat lunch while I was there. We hadn’t talked much before, but this time he was chatty. “Have you ever wondered why you make deliveries here?” I said, “Nope.” Then he asked, “It doesn’t seem weird to you to drop off the truck at DEA headquarters?” I said, “I’ve never thought about it.” He kept at it, “You must have some strange thoughts about what’s going on.” I sighed and said, “Whenever I start thinking, I just turn on the radio or watch television.” He went at it for a while, but I kept deflecting. Finally he said, “This was a good talk. We should do it more often.” I preferred the trips to Wal-Mart.
April 9: We heard gunfire as the driver neared the warehouse in Mexico. He drove right past it and called someone on his satellite phone. It was a heated exchange and then his voice turned to panic as he slammed down the phone and put his foot down. We were flying through intersections and I was pretty sure we were going to die in a fiery car crash. From what I gathered we were driving to a safe house, but when he started to finally slow down we heard more gunfire so he floored it again. He didn’t bother calling again and pretty soon we were headed west out of town on Highway 2. We drove the better part of the day and stayed in a hotel in Aqua Prieta. I didn’t ask anything the whole trip and he didn’t say anything. That was much better as far as I was concerned. The damned DEA agent was way too mouthy. This guy seemed to understand what was important: Silence.
April 10: After filling up with gas, food, and water, we spent most of the day driving again, following Highway 2 to Highway 37 to Puerto Penasco. We drove down a strip near a beach where a string of high-end resorts populated the shoreline. This was a far cry from what the place was in the 1980s when it was visited by Arizona weekenders, mostly burned out drunks and druggies with boats and ATVs (didn’t matter the economic class; from poor to rich they were all burnouts and they all partied together, blacking out on benders and then starting up again when they came to). The only time it wasn’t like that was during spring break when students from ASU came down in droves to drink and fuck on the beaches. Now, though, the tourists and spring breakers all had to have money. This wasn’t the wild Mexico of old. This was one of a string of Mexican beach towns that had become the Gulf of California’s version of Cancun. There were no hippy beaches any more, no beaches where the wild and lawless could raise hell without anyone noticing. Lawlessness still existed everywhere in Mexico, but not along the coasts. The coasts were corporate resorts now and that meant oversight and strict private property enforcements. Freedom, for good or evil, was not available near the water. Everything worthwhile had to be bought. It hadn’t always been that way, but it was the way of the world now. The “special spots,” the places of beauty, had all become corporate. Maybe there was somewhere left, somewhere undeveloped, but if there were it would only be a matter of time. The only places free and wild that would exist in the future would be nearly uninhabitable and, yet, would be occupied by ninety percent of the world’s population. The future had been rubber-stamped; there was no unpredictability left in areas of beauty. You had to go to places like Ciudad Juarez if you wanted to taste chaos and uncertainty. Used to be a place like Rocky Point could provide the same type of unpredictable violence, but the scenery was better and you could go for a midnight swim while camping on the beach with a bonfire. No more. The driver finally stopped outside a bar called The Point and handed me an envelope. I looked inside. US$1000. I had left all the money I’d made at the Motel Six in room 109 so I was grateful. He said, “Asta la bye bye,” as I got out of the car. I watched him drive off and realized I was finally free of the Mexican mafia … and hopefully the DEA. A thousand bucks wouldn’t go far in Rocky Point any more, though. Thirty years ago that could have kept you fed and filled with beers for half a year. Now, probably two or three nights at a resort if you didn’t eat or drink too much. I had a beer at the bar and asked about cheap hotels. The bartender, blonde, blue-eyed, and tan, laughed and said, “You’re living in the wrong century, man.” Indeed I was. I found a place a couple miles from the beach, at a place equivalent to a Super 8. It was $200 for the night, but I was too tired to keep looking and I didn’t want to sleep on the streets.
April 11: The question was what to do now. Try to get into the U.S.? I had the fake passport and driver’s license the cartel had made for me. I could head north to San Luis Rio Colorado and try to get across there. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to the U.S., though. Arizona was better than Texas, but only by inches. Truthfully, I wanted out of the Western hemisphere. It had been nothing but hell since the beginning of the year. The other side of the world had to offer something better. It couldn’t be that much worse, could it? With only $800 in cash, though, I would be tapped after a flight. And then there was the question of whether airlines would let me fly without a credit card. Something had happened in the 1990s with airlines and other corporations in the “first world” requiring credit cards even if you had cash to pay for things. Rental car companies, hotels, etc. Mexico was a safer bet in that sense, but the idea of running into trouble with cartels loomed. Small towns out of the way might be safe, but I was a gringo so I was never going to be safe except in resort towns and I couldn’t afford to live in them—and they’d round me up off the streets and throw me in jail if I slept outside in a place like Puerto Penasco. I finally decided to take a bus north to San Luis. If I could get across the border then I could take a job washing dishes somewhere. I needed to head north, out of the Republican states of the south. The problem was that the cost of living in the states run by Democrats was so much more expensive than the Republican states. It was a tradeoff: Get busted by thug law enforcement in Texas or Arizona for doing nothing other than not being a local or tourist or … buy a loaf of bread for $6.00 at Whole Foods in Oregon or Massachusetts. There didn’t seem to be a happy medium anywhere. I thought better of thinking and just checked into a cheap motel when I arrived in San Luis.
April 12: I woke up with a question. Are there only two choices now? Being a natural man or an institutional man? Can I live freely on the streets, come and go place to place, on or off the grid? Or do I have to live within the confines of law and order, of institutional rules? If everything is recorded, documented, digitized, is it even possible to create myself in the present or does the accumulation of the past determine everything about who I am or could become? It would have been similar in older ages, when peoples lived in the same village their whole lives, the accumulation of their actions being recorded through the memories of the township and the stories told in churches or pubs. But in those times, it was possible to travel without any trace of who one was. Now, though? Well, with forged documents, maybe. That’s what I was looking at while waiting in the pedestrian line to cross into San Luis, Arizona. Who might I become on the other side? For how long? It was enough just to slip across the border that day. For a moment, at least, I was able to be someone I wasn’t to get what I wanted. Once I crossed I went to a bar and drank myself silly then found a dive motel to crash for the night.
April 13: Getting what you want isn’t always a good thing.
April 14: I had thought in the past that there might be a right way to think and a wrong way to think. Rationality and irrationality. Increasingly, though, I thought they both led to a distortion of reality. Irrationality, in its own special way, seemed to provide a clearer image of the way things were in the sense that it didn’t wipe the grime off the windows. It was quite possible that windows were most naturally grimy. I thought this was true in the same way that wearing glasses and contact lenses fool people into believing they have better eyesight than they do. I might be glad to see more clearly, but maybe that was what made me most delusional. There was no way to know. Maybe being wrong was the only thing that was right. Maybe truth was always obscured and acceptance of that was the only way to go through life without being disappointed. Expectations were more difficult to come by when you knew that you just don’t know. That was neither here nor there as I passed through the industrial farm culture of the inland Imperial Valley in southern California. Not a stitch of desert left for miles on end. I had hitched a ride from some migrant farm workers and was watching the endless fields and both the big and small canals connecting all of those fields together. Endless square miles, visibility almost nil, just a whiteout haze of dust, pesticides, and who knows what airborne chemicals. It was difficult to breathe. Some people in the U.S. don’t realize that this was where many of their fruits and vegetables originated, the spinach leaf lettuce that was supposedly so good for them, the broccoli, the watermelons, the oranges, the grapefruits, and so on. All of those foods were marinated in a toxic stew of contaminated air and water. I’m sure there were nutrients, but they were competing with a lot of toxins to stay alive. I got a motel in yet another hellhole: Bakersfield, California. I still wasn’t able to see and the only respite from the hazy hell during the trip was through a brief mountain pass. But otherwise, I was wishing I was back in the comparably eco-friendly land of Mexico. How ‘bout that? Mexico was less of a toxic cesspool than the southwestern United States. The company we keep nowadays.
April 15: I woke to a haze of whitish sunlight. Again, I found it hard to breathe deeply—nor did I really want to breathe deeply. Still, I was lightheaded and getting a migraine. I had around $500 thanks to staying at shitty fuck-joint motels, places where hookers and tweakers made and spent their money. These were the only places I could stay, anyway, because even dumps like Motel 6 wanted a credit card on file in case you skipped out on the bill or trashed the room beyond repair. I had no idea who owned motels like the one I was staying at, but they were probably used to launder money. I checked the walls of the room and bathroom to make sure there were no glory holes. I was pretty sure I felt a cockroach scurry across my face in the night. I laid out all the towels on the bed spread to sleep because I wasn’t sure if there were bed bugs everywhere--or dried cum, for that matter. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep underneath the sheets and blankets. I saw at least a half dozen cigarette burns just on the bed spread. None of that compared to the horror of the air quality, though. Even the rusty water that poured out of the sink and shower head was less upsetting. Bakersfield was a rough town. Really rough. There were dry oil derricks everywhere, transients passing through, criminals of all stripes, and probably the highest per capita use of meth in the entire world. There were other factories polluting the air, paying workers shit, but the biggest reason the air quality was so bad was because Bakersfield sits at the south end of California’s San Joaquin Valley. All of the industrial farm pollution just sits there with nowhere else to go because to the south, east, and west are mountain ranges preventing dissipation. There were at least half a million people, maybe more, living in and around Bakersfield, and I had no idea what type of mongrel race had formed from living in such a place. I didn’t want to find out, really, but I wound up buying clothes, toiletries, and a bag to carry the stuff at a Wal-Mart and while there saw grotesqueries of bodies and faces and personalities that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a zombie movie. I didn’t hate these people; no, I felt sympathy for them, for having had the misfortune of either being born in the center of American evil or having run out of money and hope at the worst possible time. I’ve found it impossible to hate the miserable no matter how vile they come across in person. Something about them made me want to stay. Either that, or I had run out of money and hope myself and would become just as hideous as them in short order. I walked a few miles until I found a dive bar—I’m not sure there were any bars that weren’t dives in this city, although I did see an Applebee’s which, in its own way, was the same damn thing. But I felt right at home at the bar with all of the misfits, outlaws, dropouts, burnouts, dregs, mopers, and losers. No one was smiling and there was barely any conversation at all. No one looked anyone else in the eye or even in their direction. It was like southwestern Arizona—you look in someone’s direction and that’s a violation of personal space likely to result in a beer bottle busted over your head. Nope, this was a place for people to be lonely together so I sat all afternoon and night, until closing time, drinking silently and thinking about nothing. Sure enough, there was another godforsaken motel less than a block down the strip and I paid my $30 for the night, fighting off cockroaches, poison gas, and cum-stained bed spreads.
April 16: I wasn’t sure if I could leave this city. Only factory cities in China could outdo the pollution and hopelessness. This was a Disneyland of despair, the raw thing as it was, the grimy window of human civilization that had never been and never would be cleaned. There weren’t many places built so well to prevent a person from being able to look away from the heart of darkness. Whatever loathing that had been lurking within me had become completely fulfilled in this place. It wasn’t likely I’d ever find joy again and something here said, “Stay. Stop pretending there’s something better for you in this world.” And I believed it. I knew if I left I wouldn’t be able to believe that any more, not all the way through my bones as I did in Bakersfield. I felt as if I had become so consumed by toxins that my psyche was adding to the pollution around me, both physical and emotional. It was as if I was inhaling poison, refining it, and exhaling it in a more concentrated form. Maybe the whole city was doing that, maybe the old guy at the end of the bar the night before had lived here his whole life and, by having done so, was capable of exhaling the most toxic fumes to have ever existed on earth. It was possible, the only type of possibility that could actually exist here. I didn’t check out of the motel. Instead, I paid for another night then went back to the same bar and drank the day away in silence, absorbing the loneliness of those around me into a greater and greater state of alienation. I was drifting so far down the spectrum of misery that I was crossing over into a universe where bliss had begun. How total ache can become a thing of beauty was a mystery to me, but I finally thought I understood what the saints and mystics and martyrs had been getting at all along: pure suffering is pure and far more accessible than pure joy. The only reason so few realized the absolute agony of being in the worst form imaginable was because they fought so hard to try to attain the unattainable. By letting myself sink into the abyss I was disappearing as a self, as a being with any differentiated qualities. Like those around me and throughout Bakersfield, I was becoming a black hole where nothing human could exist. The defining quality of the city was its inertia. The longer you stayed, the less motivation you had to leave and only then because the environment wasn't conducive to motivation of any kind. I was beginning to love Bakersfield by being absolutely disgusted by it.
April 17: Wake from motel, drink at bar, very little thought.
April 18: Wake from motel, drink at bar, no thought at all.
April 19: Wake from motel, drink at bar, questioning whether I exist.
April 20: Out of money. I grabbed my bag and hoofed it down the wide road of boarded-up strip malls, fast food joints, grungy bars, dilapidated motels, pawn shops, check cashing predators, car washes that looked like they might make a car filthier than it had been before being washed, and empty desert lots with scrub brush, broken glass, and trash. There were homeless people pushing shopping carts and sitting against walls of buildings, some blank-eyed, others asleep. Cars and trucks barreled down the roads revving their engines and pumping out deafening noise. Tweakers and drunks, teenage and middle-aged alike, it didn’t matter the time of day or night, they raced around in cars that were probably worth more than the shitholes they rented—and certainly didn’t own. There were neighborhoods blocked of by half miles of walls before an entry way appeared in the form of a broken down road. The houses were all rentals, that much was clear. I could see the trash and cars and toys in the yellowed lawns with overgrown weeds, some of which were being overseen by lumpy, disheveled women of indeterminate ages sitting on lawn chairs next to the front door while chain-smoking, presumably to suck in fumes that were slightly less toxic than the air. On my walk, I saw one woman across the street sitting outside her corner house light and smoke three cigarettes in the time it took for her to come into and disappear from my view. It wasn’t like I was walking slowly, either. She inhaled each of them in about two puffs and I thought, rather disturbingly, that she could suck the cum out of a cock in one good pull and I was pretty sure she could suck a boy into manhood in the time it took me to crack open a can of beer. This fucking place. God, I loved it. This was the last honest city in America. Of that, I had no doubt. It was ugly and it knew it and it had no intention of hiding it.
April 21: I awoke behind an abandoned building on a different road of strip malls and abandoned buildings that once housed stores like Walgreen’s and Famous Footwear. The day before I had eaten from dumpsters: a lukewarm chicken wing from KFC, half a cold burger and stale fries from Burger King, and a surprisingly fresh Chalupa from Taco Bell. I went inside to get the free cups of water. The slack-jawed kids working in those places didn’t give a fuck. I probably could have hopped over the counter and stole a bag full of food without them giving a shit. Of course, they had probably spit or pissed on every other burger or taco they made. No matter when hungry and what was a little piss in food that contains far more dangerous chemicals than urine in a city where you can grab particulates from the air with your bare hands? I decided breakfast was in order so I checked the trash can next to the drive-through lane at McDonald’s and found four hot bags of hash browns. People order the value meals even for breakfast but no one likes those shitty hash browns they throw in with McBiscuits. Sustenance is sustenance, though. The only problem I had was the glare I got from the driver waiting for his McFat Patty and the checkout girl who looked like she had seen a serial killer. No matter. I ate, wandered the streets, and found another vacant lot to sleep. Bakersfield was proving to be a decent place to be homeless, but then again I had yet to have a run-in with any tweakers. I knew they were there because I heard them in the motels I had stayed in. They would rage—everything was loud and they let everyone know “how good this shit is!” Then of course there were the fights and the crashing furniture and sometimes the arguments at full volume in the parking lots, the threats to kill someone’s girlfriend, and so on. All in all, a very festive environment. Vacant lots? Much better, although there were sometimes cars coming through, pulling up side by side for a couple minutes, and then taking off. Drug deals? “Where’s the party?” I didn’t know, didn't want to know. I chose pretty good hiding places so no one like that could see me. In Bakersfield, that wasn’t a problem. It was like private property didn’t exist—certainly not enforced—because there were more businesses that had gone bust and more homes that had been foreclosed than there were occupied buildings and residences. Fucking heaven for a vagabond like me.
April 22: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 23: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 24: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 25: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 26: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 27: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 28: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 29: Vagabonding in Bakersfield
April 30: Too fucking hot in Bakersfield. Hitched a ride north to Fresno on Highway 99. Thank God for migrant workers.
May 1: Fresno, another industrial farm town, but not quite as seedy and disturbing as Bakersfield. The smog was somewhat lesser, but the visibility was still close to white-out. Still hot, but the north end of the San Joaquin Valley wasn’t quite as bad as the south. Fresno was also at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Not sure if that helped with the heat, but at least getting out of the heat was feasible within a thirty minute drive. The first night I had slept beneath a bridge, but I wanted more quiet so I found a road of endless strip malls—any one of the intersections easily could have been from R. Crumb’s “A Short History of America.” After rummaging through dumpsters, I found a good spot behind a K-Mart that had gone out of business and set up camp … so to speak.
May 2: Slumming in Fresno.
May 3: Slumming in Fresno.
May 4: Got cleaned up at a truck stop gas fast station. Changed my clothes. Still a little smelly so I walked to a mall and doused myself with cologne samples until an employee asked me to leave. I had collected quite a bit of change in Bakersfield and Fresno over the past couple of weeks, mostly from collecting cans, but some from camping out at the top of Interstate off-ramps. Counted it out—about thirty dollars, give or take. Hit a cheap bar and wasted half of it drinking before calling it a night.
May 5: Passed a coffeeshop advertising a poetry open mic and got an idea. Kept walking down the road until I hit a sleazy drive-by attorney’s office, went inside, and asked if I could have some blank legal documents. They gave me a handful, anything to get me out of there, I suppose. Went back to the coffeeshop, signed up for the open mic, drank coffee, and read a free newspaper, mostly filled with reviews of bands and the times they’d be playing at local dives. Well, that and advertisements for 800 numbers claiming they could add three inches to my cock. The open mic started and I listened to earnest young men and women recite bad poetry and applauded them for having the balls to get up in front of everyone like that. When my name was called I went to the small stage and announced to the audience, “I am going to do an impression of Lenny Bruce during his later years.” I proceeded to read the blank legal documents word for word. There was silence ... which I expected. Finally, I said to the people there, “You can impersonate Lenny Bruce’s audiences from that time if you wish.” Fortunately, there were a few middle-aged and older people in attendance so they understood and began booing in earnest as I continued reading. The younger people had no idea what was going on and began shouting down the people booing me, which clearly amused those booing. This type of “art” (it’s not fucking art) was what was known as “meta-art.” Once my performance was over I went to the men’s room and took a dump. A few women and men invited me to come back to their place.
May 6: Couch surfing with aimless young people who were able to pay rent somehow.
May 7: Couch surfing.
May 8: Couch surfing.
May 9: A couple guys at the apartment asked me if I wanted to go to Tahoe with them. I said sure. It had been nice being able to shower, do laundry, and cook food, but I could tell that my presence in the apartment was no longer wanted. We drove up to Tahoe and I stayed with the guys at a very nice resort on the lake. Where do young people who don’t work get their money? Millennials: the most fortunate generation in history. Not true of all Millennials, of course, but there sure were a lot of them in California living well off mom and dad.
May 10: Relaxing at resort.
May 11: Tired of hanging out with the young pseudo-vagabonds. No sense of adventure at all. Witty, but banal. Hitched a ride with a trucker to Reno. I was a little nervous going homeless in Reno as it was such a rough city with a ton of homelessness, but there weren’t any other options. Stayed on the fringes, away from the strip, and found an abandoned building. No evidence of squatters so I set up camp.
May 12: I had about ten dollars and some change left so I walked to the nearest casino, a fairly grungy place. I got a ten dollar chip, went to the roulette table, and put my money down on number nine. It hit. Three hundred and fifty bucks. I thought about letting it ride, playing with house money and all. Thought better of it and went to the poker room to play no-limit Texas Hold’em.
May 13: Played poker.
May 14: Played poker.
May 15: Left the table after fifty-six straight hours of poker. Cashed out about six hundred bucks and got a room for the night at the dive motel next door. Slept all day and through the night
May 16: Slept all day, paid for another night at the hotel, went next door to play poker again.
May 17: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 18: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 19: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 20: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 21: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 22: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 23: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 24: Played poker and slept at motel.
May 25: Made about four thousand dollars over the week. I wanted to fly out of the country. I finally had the money to do it and I had the passport and driver’s license, but without a credit card I couldn’t. Went to the post office to get a P.O. box, a permanent address. I could use that to apply for a credit card. Wasn’t sure I would get one since I was in debt to other creditors and hadn’t had an address for so long, but it was worth a shot.
May 26: Checked P.O. box. There were eight letters from credit card companies begging me to sign up for a card. Credit card companies are like cockroaches; they thrive when everything else goes to shit. I filled out all of them and mailed them then went to play poker.
May 27: Played poker, slept at motel.
May 28: Played poker, slept at motel.
May 29: Played poker, slept at motel.
May 30: Played poker, slept at motel.
May 31: Played poker, slept at motel.
June 1: Played poker, slept at motel.
June 2: Checked P.O. box. Four letters from credit card companies. Four new credit cards. Called from motel room to activate them. All told, five thousand dollars in credit. Had about $4500 from playing poker. Bought some new clothes and a backpack then took a cab to the airport. Cheapest, quickest flight was about $1700 to Amsterdam. Layovers in L.A. and New York. Left the next day. Booked it, took a cab to the strip, and played poker at a table with a bigger buy-in.
June 3: Had won some big pots the night before so was back up around five grand. Took a cab to airport and spent about twenty-two hours on planes or in airports before arriving in Amsterdam. Too exhausted to take train so I took a cab to an airport hotel and slept.
June 4: Slept all day at hotel. Called to book hotel in canal district. Nothing available. All the hostels were booked, too. Found a place in the Plantage. Booked it for a week as it was incredibly cheap considering it was summer. It was barely outside the heart of the city. Got lucky.
June 5: Checked out of hotel, took train to Amsterdam Centraal. I discovered they didn’t sell strippenkaarts any more. Now there were OV-chipcards. I felt nostalgic for a bit, the same way I felt when the euro replaced the guilder. I found the number for the tram I needed (I had to make two changes on the way) and left for my hotel. I checked in and then went to a coffeeshop to buy a few grams of weed and some papers. Back to the hotel, rolled a joint, smoked, and crashed for most of the day. Woke up, went down to the cafe next door, ate, drank some beer, back to hotel room to smoke another joint, slept.
June 6: Hooked up with old friends, had a great time.
June 7: Hooked up with old friends, had a great time.
June 8: Hooked up with old friends, had a great time.
June 9: Hooked up with old friends, had a great time.
June 10: Hooked up with old friends, had a great time.
June 11: A friend was leaving for the summer, needed someone to house sit. Life is good.
June12—August 30: Hung out with friends, partied, painted, danced, biked, smoked dope, ate truffles (shrooms had been outlawed), made love, explored, worked part time as a dishwasher for scraps of cash, and lived life the way it was meant to be lived.
August 31: I hated to leave Amsterdam … so I didn’t.
September 1—now: Stayed in Amsterdam and lived the good life.
