Misspending Youth

Six Months Spilling Ink

Sometimes, what’s old and shitty is old and shitty for a reason. Other times, using old and shitty things
recreates 1985 or 1935 or something in between or something outside. All of a sudden, personal
experiences look like historical documents. As soon as something arrives on paper, in the physical world,
it leaps from the realm of the personal into the realm of the collective. If other people can touch it, it can
become part of the sum of their lives that constitutes culture and will grow into history.
Our host Florence led us up the stairs past a wooden
door too old and gnarled to represent security. A
room with a view of the sea, a room without a view of
the sea, and a living room where a watchful sketch of
Picasso looked with one eye approvingly at the sea
and another disappointedly at us and our wine.
Florence gave us a free bottle of champagne. If the
only way in or out is the ferry, does that mean they
don’t recycle, or that they have to? “When I read the
part about how Van Gogh got this beautiful yellow
house in the South of France for all the other artists,
and only Gauguin showed up, that was the saddest
thing ever.” But there we sat, in the open windowsill
of our yellow house, glad nobody else would show up.
We looked out at the restaurant below, but we only
decided to go down there once one of us noticed the
free bread and liter jugs of house wine.
I slept with the windows open to try to soak up as
much of this expensive sea air as possible. I woke up
while the sun was rising because I had become skinny
enough to slip between the back of the couch and the
cushions and because cats and seagulls outside
sparred in a shouting match. I took a more scenic
route on the way back from the bakery, along the
shore past the castle tower to the left of our window. I
walked by a tour group, and with two baguettes
under my arm, my short shorts, espadrilles, and a
resting look of disdain, I felt like a real local. Cruise
ships? Bah! I passed through this covered walkway
with mosaics all over the walls that turned out to be a
fish market. Flounders are damn ugly, and either
most French households are more adept at filleting
their own fish or around here everybody’s got a
private chef except us.
My grandfather offered me an extra large ice cream if
I made it across the pool without my water wingies. I
know for a fact he didn’t say “swim” specifically,
because I held myself up on the side of the pool and
shimmied across the width without letting go of the
wall. I was denied my ice cream and not rewarded for
my precocious semantics. A year or two later, I would
jump off the diving board only if my mother treaded
water down below, waiting to catch me on my way in.
Of course when I landed on her, I would push both of
us down below the surface for a moment, but it must
have still felt safe. Now, I’m too afraid to run down
the diving board when it’s wet because I’m sure I’ll It was the 70s. Tom drove his girlfriend and a buddy
slip and crack my head open and scare the children. If in his orange 1973 Chevy Camaro to go see the Dead
I’m afraid of one thing it’s making a scene. That outside Philly. My uncle spent an entire summer
would be horrible. trying to restore a Mustang. He could never get it to
start and sold it to some guy for $150. After three
minutes in my uncle’s driveway on Bobsled Drive, the
buyer started the car and drove off in it. He could’ve
at least offered the sucker a lollipop. My parents let
me use the family car in college. My stomach fell
faster than on a roller coaster whenever a warning
light went off. I had nightmares about crashing it
with the entire family riding with me, yelling at me.
Driving creates meditation by requiring full attention
but minimal thought. Just look ahead. Check the
mirrors. Adhere to the four basic stimuli of brake
lights, turning signals, shapes and colors of lines, and
dashboard dials. Sing along, loudly.
 There was a couple in the corner near us at dinner
All of a sudden, it was 4:00 AM. Pat and Hartley had
who were rather old and hard of hearing. I could
finished wrastling, and it was just me piling
imagine Holden Caulfield describing them as so old it
cheeseballs on Willem’s face while somebody took a
was depressing. I did hear him tell her he loved her at
video. I had fit at least eleven, and I had one more in
least twice, which seemed super sweet, except that I
my hand when I pulled it away and decided that I
can’t be sure that she heard him say it. People in New
might’ve reached my limit, so I’d better eat that one.
York seem to get older than anywhere else. I’ve seen
Just seven hours ago, the woman at the ice cream
the most infirm old ladies roll up the sleeves of their
shop had pitched us on investing in real estate here in
cascading fur coats to mail checks to grandchildren
Wildwood. Was I really the type of neighbor she
in recycled envelopes at the post office. Ancient
wanted? I reached down and picked up the probably
widows stop in crosswalks to wave canes angrily at
filthy motel ice bucket to have another sip of beer.
taxis that roll forward prematurely, trying to
The trip down from Williamstown left the keg
convince their passengers they care about getting
impractically foamy. The next morning, he would
there sooner so that they can get a better tip. Even
wake up in a pile of fine orange powder, thankful it
when it looks like they might not be able to walk back
was neither white nor blue. Monday, I’d try again to
to their elevator, they find the energy to scold people
explain that Ultimate is indeed a sport.
for not picking up after their dogs.
While taking a pit stop in some Beijing hutong, I
discovered a pressing need to check out the public
restroom. At the Roman ruins in Ephesus, visitors can
see an ancient latrine, where a rectangular room had
two walls of benches with at least 20 holes in them
plus a trough for running water. If even the Romans
sat on toilets, one could question the fact that over
4,000 years of continuous civilization, nobody in
China decided that they’d rather sit than squat. Yet,
the Gwyneth Paltrow type celebs ditched western
toilets for squat-friendly apparatus. Nice restaurants
and shopping malls in Beijing offer western toilets
both as a comfort for foreigners and a treat for locals,
seemingly joining “the future,” but it’s less healthy to It took a while to grow accustomed to seeing people
use a western toilet. You could say most people here out of uniform, sometimes not even wearing shirts,
were frozen in the past, but I think they achieved opening and jumping into manholes, climbing
nirvana with Gwyn in the squatting future. scaffoldings made of bamboo, painting fire hydrants
red, and doing other construction and maintenance.
Nobody around me seemed to question their
authority, so I figured I’d better not think too much
about it. Who needs things to look official, anyway? It
wouldn’t be the worst thing if they’d at least wear
shirts, though. At no point in four different Chinese
cities, however, did I see a single street sweeper or
trash collector out of uniform, usually a brightly
colored and reflective jumpsuit and matching cap. The
brooms themselves looked mostly like handfuls of
branches with leaves that each worker had cobbled
together moments earlier, so maybe they dressed in
uniform to compensate.
 I hadn’t gotten around to learning the word for beer,
but people tended to look at me and know what I was
looking for. The polite way to drink was to pour out of
a big bottle into little cups. It’s rude to drink alone,
and it’s best to say something that means “drain your
glass!” and then drain the glass. I avoided this
rudeness by never pouring into the glass and just
draining the bottle. I sat down after my hike along
the Great Wall, managed to communicate beer, and,
parched, I negotiated for the bigger bottle and drank
a third of it right away. I and the stand’s owner
started making jokes about how big I was, using
mostly our hands, right up until the largest bee I’ve
Near the northern gate of the Forbidden City are two ever seen flew over. I put down my beer, grabbed my
peculiarly noteworthy statues of elephants, or so I am bag, and backed away slowly. My friend just laughed
told. I didn’t look that hard for them because I felt a and made more faces at me. Two nearby women also
pressing need to move on and escape the heat and the fled, because these are the commonalities we have.
crowds, but I am told that they are there. Some
nitpicky observant westerner would likely pat
themselves on the back by noting that the manner in
which the elephants bend their knees is anatomically
incorrect and impossible. According to the
audioguide, they do bend their knees in a fashion
impossible by the standards of nature. They do so,
however, because they bend to the will of the
Emperor, who has the power to make them bend their
knees however he pleases. That one might presume
the sculptors erred in their construction seems not to
have occurred to anybody. Obviously they know it’s
unnatural.
I just wanted coffee. Vietnamese iced coffee, I’d been
led to believe, was the real good stuff. It was 6:15 in
the morning, and we’d planned on sleeping the night
before on our plane from Beijing in order to save the
$6-12 we would’ve spent on a hostel. The plane had
landed at 4:30 rather than 6:00AM, and my sleeping
pill hadn’t worn off yet. I took a shower in the
bathroom attached to where the hostel served
breakfast. Why was there a shower in there? I looked
at the kitchen area and decided it was self serve. All of
a sudden, a hiss and a scratch on my arm. The elderly
woman in charge of breakfast didn’t speak English
but wouldn’t let that lead her to let me sleepwalk
through her kitchen. She wore the classic conical hat We stumbled into a bar with beers for VND 25,000
and matching floral printed tee shirt and cropped and a live band that shredded. We both love a live
pants. I tried to apologize, and she made me a life band, but we spent the entire time sitting on tiny
saving cup of coffee. plastic stools some 8 inches above the ground,
essentially squatting. We’d sat on these same stools to
eat our dinner, too. These seats are extraordinarily
either popular or common or cheap. They’re as
ubiquitous as motorbikes. This band is great. It seems
like there are tons of Vietnamese people here, too,
we’re really in it. We alternately stood up, sat down,
finished our beers, and looked at each other. “So that
was as painful for you as it was for me? I don’t think
this is gonna work.” We elected to move on to a place
with chairs our size. Such are not as common as you
think. When we did find one, we met an Australian
who used to be a crewmember on some billionaire’s
yacht, where he was the daughter’s favorite.
The hotel manager who introduced himself as “James
Bond 007” plugged his phone in to play some music
and put on “No Woman, No Cry” because I guess
people at isolated beach hideouts expect reggae
regardless of what sea they’re floating in. Seven
chickens and roosters wandered past, and the guys
who I thought worked here played soccer beneath the
volleyball net on the beach below. The house cocktail
included rum, Malibu, orange, and enough fruits I had
never heard of to turn the whole affair bright green.
Alex approved and had a couple. I sat in the shade
after 5:00pm and continued to sweat, feeling
betrayed. I bumped into the soccer playing staff
behind the shack with the kayaks. They offered up a
big old bamboo pipe, but didn’t speak much English.
This must be what authenticity looks like. A woman
on the steps nearby laughed at us.
We tried to book the tour that offered snorkeling and
swimming instead of hiking. Since we got off the
plane, I hadn’t stopped sweating. A bout of nameless
fever, too, had only amplified the problem. My
headaches and chills had mostly gone, but I decided
I’d be better off floating and looking at fish in the
body-temperature water than I would be hiking
through jungles in this furnace. A day later, we ended
up clinging to rocks sharp enough to tear some girl’s
shirt as we hobbled to the top of a limestone
outcropping on some island. People moved up and
down the whole time, because every boat ever to set
sail from the island has sent people to climb this rock.
The British folks we’d met, who asked the waitress for
“proper food” instead of bun cha greeted us as they
descended, all wearing the too-thin rubber flip-flops
British men inexplicably love.
 Every receptionist and teller told me to try my credit
“I can’t believe nobody’s fishing in these canals. I bet
card at the Bank of China, and each Bank of China
there’s so many fish down there.” “Dude are you
manager guffawed and said I’d better try a grander
serious? That’s so disgusting. Those fish probably
branch. It seemed that the baronet’s fiefdom was too
have no fins and at least four diseases.” “I dunno man,
small, and I needed at least a count, if not a prince.
if this were China, everybody would be fishing in these
Nobody would exceed their purview to help me.
canals.” Two and a half months later, I wandered
Indeed, I shocked most of them by exceeding my own:
Hanoi gaping and mulling about, hoping to
I gave the Intercontinental’s concierge a stroke after
accomplish some tourism before that day’s monsoon
he brought me to the reception desk only to learn I
began. I’d tried egg coffee, and I didn’t much fancy it.
was not a guest. That a street urchin such as myself,
I’d heard the train station was notable, but I walked
button down and driving shoes worn for the occasion
right past it because I subconsciously didn’t think it
notwithstanding, would dare enter a fine hotel
was so notable. I just killed time as Alex tried to jump
without a room was concerning indeed. At the park, I
through enough hoops to receive a new Chinese visa.
offered to Venmo two Patagonia-clad white folks in
Lakes and ponds dotted the city like swiss cheese. In
exchange for cash. They turned out to be Canadian
every body of water, I found at least one fisherman.
and didn’t have the app. So, I walked past a chess
This wasn’t China, though.
game and sat down to watch the elderly dance..
“For a country with notoriously heinous air quality,
they really have amazing parks here. It really makes
you wish you could’ve come here a few hundred years
ago before people burned so much stuff and made it
so hazy with smog. Imagine how beautiful the
Forbidden City had been for the Emperors,” I thought
on my second day in Beijing. Three weeks later, in
Shanghai, I felt myself drawn to all of the parks. I
watched all of the people sitting around talking,
playing cards, flying kites. I wanted all of them to
explain to me the minutiae of their routines, but I
didn’t even pack a phrasebook. One guy stopped his
friends to point at my notebook and try to ask me
questions, speaking extraordinarily slowly and clearly One day, every single person walking down the Bund
the way people do when they hope their audience will in Shanghai decided to turn around. All of a sudden,
suddenly learn their language. I could tell they were the western-built beaux-arts brick buildings blew
mocking my handwriting. away like straw in the face of the future’s glass and
light. The attraction changed overnight, and it even
became more convenient. At no point in the walk was
it easy to take in all of these surprising western
buildings at once, but every step now offers
panoramic views of the new skyline of Pudong, the
business district across the river. Pudong exists for
each of us to look at it, and its position on the other
bank lets us gawk at it from afar, without ever having
to enter it. It’s hard to catch the ideal view of the New
York skyline from within Manhattan. Shanghai has
made a life sized diorama, like a Hollywood set, that’s
easy on the eyes and doesn’t make anybody wander
too far.
 All of the major tourist sites in and around Kunming
offer the opportunity to pay between ¥20 and ¥100
to borrow a costume and have a photographer take
pictures of tourists and their families dressed in the
styles of this or that ethnic minority of Yunnan
province. Edward, the hostel bartender, worked there
for an internship while studying hospitality at the
University of Huangzhou but found the food too spicy,
though he did love the weather. I never got around to
asking him if he’d ever dressed up and taken photos
as somebody else. His friends all spent their
internships in fancy business hotels where they could
practice their English more, but he just served me
I spoke with a “Building Science” student from Hunan. fried noodles with pork and inexplicably German
I’m not sure if he didn’t know how to say architecture beers. Hopefully I augmented the elements of his
or engineering or if they just have disciplines we don’t lexicon. I bet he’s at least worn one of the big floppy
have. I asked him what types of buildings he liked and felt hats one of the ethnic groups wears.
he studied, and he said the Ming Walls of Nanjing and
the Great Wall, though I wondered how much science
there is to study behind brick edifices with a handful
of arches. They’re colossal, but I can’t help thinking I
could build one if I had the time. His girlfriend spoke
better English than he did, but she was shy and barely
spoke. Three of his friends have Facebook accounts
despite living in China, and he asked my thoughts on
Mark Zuckerberg. He wouldn’t or couldn’t comment
on the abysmal air quality. I was delighted to be the
first American with whom he had ever spoken, but I
am sure that I let him down because I forgot my
cowboy hat and my gun at the hostel that day.
It seemed possible, after 20 minutes of waiting, that a
bus might not come back up this snake of a mountain
road towards this remote temple until it reopened the
next day. I waited haplessly, knowing not what else to
do. I didn’t know how to pay for the bus when it came.
I held up a ¥5 note and tried to look inquisitive. The
driver and a vigilante rider understood and told me
the obvious answer in Chinese. I didn’t understand,
because I don’t understand anything. I put the ¥5 note
in what was likely a coins-only receptacle. They
started giving me more information, speaking slowly
and clearly, so I pulled out a ¥10 note and shrugged.
The whole bus gesticulated and screamed at me when
I went to put it into the same hole. The driver waved The most fascinating view at the Stone Forest was
me towards the back, disappointed. At the temple, I’d neither the elephant shaped rock nor the pond
thought that a family loudly eating meat while a surrounded by sheer walls of limestone. Officials had
dozen monks tried to pray behaved disrespectfully. meticulously filled out the details of a rendering of
the incomplete visitor center renovation. Louis
Vuitton, Fendi, and other European brands fancy
enough to be called “fashion houses” would fill the
storefronts. What that spelled for the dumpling shop
where I watched the cook sneeze directly into the
dumplings remained unclear to me. This, after all,
was not just a site of natural beauty but was one of
the 248 AAAAA rated tourist destinations. Such
esteem supersedes nature, so the Stone Forest must
have all the trappings of competing attractions.
Minibuses and tour guides make the pretty rocks
accessible to people of all ages and abilities. If the
Ming Tombs sell handbags, so must the Stone Forest.
 As the lead in some kind of disappointing movie
I had completed, essentially, my last stop. From then
reimagination of the story of Marco Polo, I made it
on, I was just on my way out. Everything left met some
from China to Amsterdam, the Venice of the North, to
logistical necessity: collecting luggage, eating, or
Venice, the Venice of Venice, in an amount of time not
drinking some coffee. In my last moment in Kunming
easily quantified due to sleep, time dilation, and time
for its own sake, I sat, smelled the incense, enjoyed the
change. The whole time in China, I assumed I spoke
rarely blue skies, and tried to figure out what the
more Italian than I do. I figured that once I got to
point was. I tried not to think about walking the rest
Europe I would be able to communicate with anybody
of the way down the hill, finding the subway, stopping
and everybody as much as I wished, and I would leave
at the hostel, getting back on the subway, reaching
my isolating language inabilities behind. I realized I
the airport, and trying not to break a sweat in the
didn’t know how to say please, correct, or this, the
process. I tried not to think about how I’d spend the
latter of which two words made up my most essential
next 34 hours in or near airports. I told myself I’d buy
Mandarin vocabulary. The food seemed more
books about Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism
familiar, but we got more lost looking for our first
when I got home so that I’d know what I’d seen. I left
restaurant in Venice than I had in all my time in
the temple, positive I would see nothing more.
China. Letting my guard down was fun, though.
I realized that there are rather few other places to see
such Byzantine art in situ because the Ottomans
inherited nearly the entire Byzantine footprint and
did not look kindly upon the quintessential
ecclesiastical mosaic renderings of human forms so
integral to it. The city looked like a tree made entirely
of thick, wide rings revealing perennially successful
growing seasons. No readily visible building lacked
ornamentation. During centuries when the Northern
and Western Europe built mud huts and simple brick
churches, Venetians built grander and grander
palaces and marble basilicas. It’s possible no two
windows in the city look alike. Now, the buildings all
sink. Beyond rising sea levels, the foundations When I grow up, I want to wear polo shirts and
themselves are rotting wooden pilings driven into aviators and drive a Venetian water taxi. A water taxi
unstable mud that’s getting tired after 1000 years of driver rules his own kingdom and personifies
hard work. authenticity in a city known to have lost it. This will
require me to be Italian, more tan, and have shorter,
gelled hair. I’ll need to learn how to drive a boat, but
I’m sure that comes with the outfit. The only trouble
is that some of them wear those weird European
rolled up jean shorts. That, and not all of the boats
come in the timeless wood finish. What if I jump
through all the necessary hoops and get stuck with
one that’s a distasteful early 90s white fiberglass? Did
they really think that would be the future? Did people
ever like those more than the wooden ones? I’ll have
to answer the phone and say “pronto.” I’ll have to go
home with a jug of wine, because I’ll only drink wine
that comes in large volumes in large volumes.
 Less than an hour before, I had stood looking out into
No mountains or cliffs I had ever seen semed
a vast moonscape 8,475 feet above sea level, where
comparable now. Somehow, the ponds appeared
the glaciers had, geologically speaking, barely moved
genuinely emerald, and the streams ran clearly
out and the moss had barely begun moving in. I had
enough that, looking down, I might not have realized
thought I stood alone at the edge of the world with
that there was any running water at all if I hadn’t
only 25cl of wine to sustain me. Now, I sat with the
been able to hear it. Underfoot, the path shifted
best Apfelstrudel ever, a serviceable cappuccino, and
gradually but sharply between desert remains of
half a liter of weissbier, 2000 feet lower. The chances
former glaciers, garden-variety meadows, dried up
of survival now seemed a good deal higher. The next
former lakes, and the soft needles fallen from
hut served lasagna, just like the Carter Notch hut had,
towering pine forests. Later, when I went to buy
where a cute girl incorrectly loaded a new roll of film
chapstick and another bottle of wine, the woman
into my camera. Everything I had eaten in those
checking me out slipped as deftly between German
mountains had been better than I could ever have
and Italian, knowing it made no difference to me. I
imagined. The need for context cannot be overstated,
paid and said “graci,” to which she said “auf
I decided as I ate a finer piece of lasagna with less
wiedersehen.” I reconsidered and said “danke
satisfaction. As I waited for change, my bus pulled
schoen,”and she said “ciao.” I felt an itch on my head.
away, and I realized my camera had broken.
I went down to the sacred store where my mom had
her bachelorette party. I guess not enough people
have been drinking enough tequila to swear off it for
fifteen years recently. They were closing, but no, they
wouldn’t give out menus or sell any decorations until
tomorrow. Somehow, it’s shocking every time it turns
out that more than one person in New York has fond
memories somewhere. They just don’t make places
that tacky anymore. They brought me here when I
was five, and I learned the words to the chorus of
“Hey Jude” pretty easily. In all likelihood, the landlord
will have raised the rent too high, and the restaurant
will sit empty for the next few years. It’s been seven
years, and the landlord who drove out Soup Burg still In sixth grade, the school newspaper conducted a
hasn’t gotten his precious TD Bank. He’s had to survey about how all of the little middle schoolers
change the brown paper hanging in the windows at fared as New Yorkers and how much they interacted
least three times, though. with the wider aspects of the city. How many of the
subway lines had they ridden on? How often did they
ride the subway? Had they ever been to Staten Island?
Could they name all of the Manhattan crossings? Had
they been to the Bronx except for a Yankees game?
Had they been to Queens except for a Mets game? Had
they been to Brooklyn except for steaks at Peter
Luger? The next year, administrators decided that it
would be fun and educational to institute the Great
Buckley Scavenger Hunt and send teams of eighth
and ninth graders, with faculty supervision, up and
down the island of Manhattan exclusively on public
transit to check boxes and see the city. No outer
boroughs allowed, though.
 I walked past fancy stores selling shirts and pants for
hundreds of dollars as well as a place claiming to sell
the original Mission-style burrito. Everything seemed
to trade on a neighborhood authenticity that their
mere presence undercut. A couple streets over, I ate
three carnitas tacos on hand-made tortillas from a
lovely Mexicatessen before going to a place only for its
Pozole, the existence of which I just learned about.
Each time a bearded white guy in horn rimmed
glasses passed me, I couldn’t help but imagine a
latter-day Paul Revere galloping by screaming “The
gentrifiers are coming! The gentrifiers are coming!”
That I knew to eat at these places was a bad enough
In the morning, we had gotten permission from the sign, but hopefully things don’t need to be secret to be
cops to drive the wrong way down a one-way street distinct. I did my part for society, and I bought a fancy
because they didn’t feel like moving their car, which pair of pants I’ll wear on my first day of work. That’ll
blocked the correct direction. It didn’t have the same show’em.
thrill as I’d always hoped it would. Running up the
down escalator had always seemed more exciting.
Two gas stations about three miles apart claimed to
sell the last gas for dozens of miles, but I didn’t
believe them. We drove past a pasture between the
road and the ocean where at least 50 cows stood
grazing and swishing their tails as they always do.
Nothing about them indicated that they knew how
nice their home was. Maybe somebody should move
them to Kansas and see how that affects their eating
and growing and everything, and then try New Jersey
to figure out whether animals care.
After the airport, we drove a little too fast along the
windiest part towards the Petersburg Pass. We all
agreed that we’d always wanted to stop at the pizza
place but had always been in a rush. Usually it was
class or practice, but this time it was just our own
expectations preventing us from stopping. We figured
we’d give it a shot on the way back. We crested the
ridge, crossed the border, and decided we’d better
pull off. We didn’t actually know where we were
going once we showed up, and we figured we’d better
reconnoiter and see who was around. Plus, everybody
had to pee, and we wondered why they call those
things in cars cigarette lighters. We talked about how
we’d always gotten lost when we’d tried to hike the Eggnog season begins right after Halloween. Nobody
ridge. On the way down the hill, we wondered why drinks eggnog at Thanksgiving, but it’s permissible.
rolling up the windows didn’t get rid of the draft. We Homecoming usually belongs to the peppermint
hit a bump and learned that the trunk was open. schnapps and hot chocolate, the Irish coffee, and the
Fireball and cider. This year’s big innovation was set
to be the Breakfast of Champions: Wheaties with
Evan Williams eggnog. Lab scientists show a
tendency to dive too far into their work and slip away
from the actual possibilities of reality. They imagine
possible what people on the street, in society, could
never tolerate. When you got nothing you got nothing
to lose, though, so I played lab rat, but my breakfast
got away from me, and I wasn’t enough of a champ. I
had forgotten that Brian had perfected the breakfast
of champions by ordering Clam Chowder at the Chef’s
hat at 10:00am on the Sunday after an unforgiving
Saturday. Maybe he’s born with it.
I ate my first Wisconsin meal at the Culver’s in
Johnson’s Creek. Johnson’s Creek, as far as I could tell,
was a prefab highway town that seems to make its
living off of drivers running out of gas or becoming
hungry enough to mumble “whatever, let’s see what’s
at this exit. No, we’re not there yet.” Culver’s is one of
those fast-food chains where customers order at a
counter but get their food at a table, and there’s a
carpet. It’s a version of Friendly’s from the Black
Mirror episode where you go to the Midwest. This
branch offered free cupcakes on November 11th in
celebration not of Veterans day but of its 19th
anniversary. Trained in the city, I disregarded the
impossibly kind staff and assumed the treats were Sauk City, WI, boasts the original Culver’s, which I
baked with either razor blades or cyanide, so I found remarkably exciting considering I had only
skipped them. These are the places where coffee known about Culver’s for about 45 hours when I
comes with a choice of heavy cream or half and half. found out. Though a four minute drive from
downtown reveals seemingly endless farmland and
emptiness, Turn of the Century Wisconsinites built
relatively grand buildings right on top of each other,
here in the middle of nowhere. Either they thought
they would be something, or they wanted to be able
to walk because they didn’t have cars. The quest to be
something probably led to over a hundred years of
adorable Fourth of July parades and might culminate
in a time-lapse ad for Coca Cola or Budweiser.
Baraboo reminded me that every American town
feels important, as it is home to one of the world’s
largest circus museums in honor of its onetime
residents, the Ringling Brothers.
Emmett had fallen asleep as the sun went down. 45
minutes later, the fog had thickened and the darkness
was complete. I could see at most ten feet ahead. Each
overpass jumped out of the fog with horrifying
suddenness. The speed limit was 75. I switched the
music to keep myself awake but dropped the phone
and caused a ruckus, waking him. We decided it was
time to switch drivers, and I nearly didn’t see the exit.
The gas station, too, only became visible at the last
moment. I walked inside and wondered if they sold
saltwater taffee in Kansas as a joke. As I paid for my
snacks, the rather tall cashier, with 40% of his teeth,
scraggly hair, and crooked wired glasses, asked if I
was scared driving in the fog. “It was so foggy when I
came to work this afternoon that I thought it was one
of those horror movies!” He said. I stared back at him,
wondering if he saw the irony.
The bizarre thing about a road trip is how familiar it
all feels. Not just because everybody’s spent hours and
hours of their life wasting away in cars, but also
because everybody has so many preconceived notions
from these sitcoms and cartoons. So, as we pulled into
a Pennsylvania gas station after passing through the
surprisingly pretty, snow-covered Alleghenies and
through the impressively long Allegheny tunnels, I
thought to myself, “Ahh. This must be the part of the
trip where we get gas!” When we stopped to use the
bathroom in West Virginia, I thought “Ahh, this is
when we go to West Virginia and take a rock back
home so we can get credit for going to West
Virginia!” In Colorado, the kid whose room we
crashed in collected Pink Floyd paraphernalia, model
military vehicles, and empty Monster Energy cans. He
had outgrown his TMNT toy chest.
 The counterparts to the “Leaving Nevada” signs
didn’t emerge for over a mile. What showed up
instead were nine different signs about all the laws
and regulations we now agreed to by nature of our
entering California, followed by signs about an
impending stop at 200 meter increments. Cones
diverted us into one lane, as a California Highway
Patrolman leaned out of his toll booth and warily
waved us onwards. California had its own border
patrol and all the infrastructure needed to secede
from the union. The taxes, the so-called price of
paradise, were high enough that gas jumped by a
Two consecutive dinners here informed me that we dollar per gallon, and dinner and motel rooms by a
had landed in a part of the country where bars chef few dollars. We expected rainbows and sunshine
up a pork burrito far more deftly than a when we set out the next morning. Paradise, however,
cheeseburger. Apart from the guy at the bar in Limon, looked like cloudy flatlands, oil rigs, and truckers.
Colorado who decided he’d take it upon himself to
just start talking to us about how he liked all music
except rap, which he just couldn’t get behind despite
“giving it a chance,” we didn’t have too much luck
talking to strangers. When we pulled into the
Frontier Restaurant in Albuqurque, we looked to our
right and jumped in our seats when we saw a man
standing right there, silently staring into our car,
waiting for us to get out. We waited until he walked
off, seemingly moving away from the restaurant.
When we went in, he had teleported to right ahead of
us in line. The christmas-style enchiladas come with
both green and red sauces.
 Covered wagons, railroads, highways, airplanes and
now the Honda Civic. The middle of the country is a
terrifying backwater of Evangelical creeps. The
middle of the country is the real America where
people still care about down-home values. These
people are beyond salvation. We are the ones who
need salvation. Talk to as many people as possible,
but don’t talk to strangers. Relate to people about
their background and experience without revealing
the worth and quantity of personal property
tenuously locked in the car. Spend as little money as
possible but enjoy the food in each distinct part of the
country. Subsisting off of PB&J is about as American
I decided that the southwest was always hot and dry. as it comes, but Arthur Bryant’s is renown across the
For Arches, trail reviews warned that ice and snow country for its BBQ sauce. When we saw the diner in
made hiking extremely dangerous without proper St. Louis called a three egg omelet little girl sized but
footwear, which didn’t include Asics runners old offered a chili topping, the decisions simplified.
enough to lack tread. I wound up sliding up and down
several rock fins on my butt, certain that my feet
couldn’t hold me. At Bryce, the ranger suggested we
buy crampons, but we turned around without even
looking in the store, patting ourselves on the back for
not being suckers. Packed snow covered the path, but
it required less scrambling. At Zion, the ranger again
warned us to buy crampons. We made it to eight feet
from the register, each holding a pair of $25
crampons. We paused, looked at each other, and
asked why this would be the first time we listened. We
later stared down sheer cliffs from dizzying heights,
holding on by the soles of our shoes.
I’m sitting in a Christmas tree market in the square
between Lafayette and Cleveland. It’s really a
triangle, but I think folks would tend to call these
spots squares. I feel like market is a big word for
three dudes selling various evergreen accoutrements,
but oh well. It entertains me that nobody ever seems
to steal from these places. I wonder if there’s an
economic term for goods that it’s commonly agreed
one ought not to steal. The thing is people of other
religions would probably be the only ones not guilt
stricken over stealing a tree, but then they wouldn’t
really have anything to do with it. I bet it’s
surprisingly challenging to sell just one tree. Plus, I
guess people could just steal from the park. It turns
out they start around $125, which seems high. Now,
the guy is sweeping the pine needles off the sidewalk
to make sure New York doesn’t smell too good.
Before the ShakeShack opened, every movie on 86th
street came with a trip to Papaya King. I could eat
two hot dogs without ever having to remember that
I’d just eaten two hotdogs. For a few years between
high school and college, I’d fallen out of practice and
almost never stopped at Papaya King, Papaya Dog,
Gray’s Papaya, or anything of the sort. It remains
unclear whether they’re affiliated. My last night in
New York, we went to two of the same bar by
accident. We decided the first one was lame, set off to
look for another place, and found ourselves in a
different location but back where we’d started.
Luckily, there was a Papaya Dog halfway between the
two of them. When we decided our time was up, I
knew it was time to have three with mustard, but I
told myself I shouldn’t get a soda because those are so
bad for you.
I hadn’t even known there was a bus until I saw it in
the Netflix series filmed down here. This year, I began
noticing the bus more than ever before. Every time I
walked down Route 1, it seemed there were clusters
of people every third of a mile or so hanging out,
trying to find some shade, waiting for the bus. I could
almost use them as mile markers if I went for a run.
We stayed almost exactly in the middle of the island,
four miles from the southern end and three and three
quarters from the north. Each way, I ran past groups
of waiting people who had finished their shifts at the
hotels and restaurants. Usually, it felt like I passed
everybody twice, and the bus never seemed to come
while I was out running. When the people sat in Some time between six and nine I had reached the
silence, it seemed like they were bleakly killing dead age where my motor skills were refined enough to try
time, but when they chatted and joked, I figured it to catch some of the hundreds of little geckos that ran
could be nice to have built in time with friends. all around where we stayed in the Keys. The first time
I caught one, I’d been sitting in a kayak and saw this
two inch long lizard swimming through the ocean
right next to me, so I scooped him up and let him run
all around our life raft. I caught a couple more after
that, but one day I tried to catch one but missed and
scared it into detaching its tail. I brought the
wriggling tail back to my parents, sobbing about how
guilty I felt because all of his friends would now make
fun of him for having no tail. I decided I would swear
off trying to catch lizards because it seemed cruel.
Now, I think maybe he looked tough, though, for
surviving a runin with a giant monster. I pivoted and
spent more and more time fishing.
Diners everywhere from Missouri to Monterey to the
Florida Keys offered biscuits with sausage gravy. In
Missouri, the menu puts them alongside chili-topped
omelets, in Monterey their neighbors include avocado
toasts and avocado eggs benedict, in the Keys they
come next to anything key lime flavored. Somehow,
outside the Northeast, biscuits and sausage gravy
serve as four-word shorthand for a diner’s hominess
and authenticity, even if I would have associated
them with the deep south only. None of the eleven
diners I remember eating at in New York served
biscuits and sausage gravy, so as soon as they appear
on the menu, I can’t help but think that I’ve made it.
I’m no longer not in Kansas anymore. Lately, I’ve
stopped ordering them because I’m sure they’re
taking years off my life. I go for the cheese-covered
hash browns instead.
For those tall enough, it’s possible to stand on the
beach at the end of a road on the ocean side of the
island and look directly across to see the water and
mangroves on the bayside. The land never rises over a
couple feet above sea level. It’s hard not to think
about how the 70s relic motels and fishing shacks will
be swept away not by the sands but by the waves of
time. Already, we sense weather patterns and winds
have changed from years past. This year, we had an
eight day long gale out of the Northeast that made
swells large enough that dive boats only went out one
day. The guy at the shop asked if we had seasick meds
with us, but we boldly insisted we didn’t need them.
Even when the rocking looked mild, I felt like I was on
the floor of a bathroom on a Sunday morning. The
biggest rule is never ever get sick in your regulator.
The purge mechanism can’t handle solids.
 One day, about six or seven years old, I picked up a
spoon, and I realized I had no idea how I was
supposed to hold it. I had already been placed into
remedial handwriting, so this shouldn’t have come as
a surprise, but I had definitely held spoons before that
day, I just must never had thought about it before.
Our babysitter brought us to the wrong restaurant to
meet our parents, and that remains the only time I’ve
ever entered the place on the corner. As for the right
restaurant, I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve
eaten there. How could we have known how
irrelevant the one place would be and how important
the other? Was that the first time we’d ever gone to
I once read on a Lululemon bag to sweat once a day. I eat there? Even then, I knew the right place was fancy
think they meant deliberate, exercise-related because they dimmed the lights as it got later. That to
sweating rather than crowded subway or nervous me was true class. We saw Paul McCartney there
interview sweating. I saw a poster, too, that said to once, too.
scare yourself once a day. Swimming in the ocean
here used to terrify me because of all the seaweed and
the lack of waves. I knew lots of fish and eels and
crabs and lobsters hung out down there, and I figured
if I swam near them or touched the bottom, they
would bite me. Once, my sister and uncle took me out
in a kayak and made me swim back to conquer my
fears. I kicked so hard I pulled a muscle in my back.
This year, I started jumping off the dock where the
water was deep enough that I wouldn’t touch the
bottom or the scary seaweed. I swam out until
thoughts of “everything’s fine” became “I’m pushing
my luck.” I made it surprisingly far.