Roadtrip

This October, I drove from San Francisco to New York City. Practically, I drove so I could transport my dog in the least stressful way possible. Metaphisically, I drove across America to see America. I wanted to understand something about it after I was done.

I wrote a lot. Here are three stories from the road.

Screwed and roasting and terrible

San Francisco, California

It’s 90 in some parts of the city today. Jojo asked me if it always gets this hot in October. It does. While the rest of the country is buying scarves and pulling on boots, I am baring my legs for the first time in months.

San Francisco is funny like that. I saw a graphic last year about how the country was screwed and roasting and terrible, while San Francisco’s summer was full blast — a bone-chilling 55 degrees. I understand how San Francisco became a city for deviants, for rebels, for nerds and outcasts. While America is united in the plod of seasons, San Francisco meteorology is an excercise in whims and micro climates. We are not on the same schedule as everyone else. Time passes in a non-narrative mish-mosh of second winters and fourth summers, calendar dates be damned.

There’s a cool breeze and I’m in the parking lot of Facebook eating a piece of dried mango. We’re waiting for Lee to wrap up and come out to join us. Packing up was hard. Driving away was hard. I keep thinking of all the things I already forgot, my checkbook, doggy poop bags. But I also forgot to go to all these places, these pockets that keep me sane in San Francisco.

For lunch I made a simple pasta, with frozen peas and lemons I preserved and won’t eat again until spring. This being my choice of how to spend my time here, my last meal, is indicative.

I had hoped there was some simplicity possible in San Francisco, but after living here for five years, I’ve struggled to find and keep it.

Jesus loves you

An exercise in paranoia somewhere in Texas

I’m officially a guest in God’s country.

The high concentration of churches rivals the density of restaurants here. After driving past a 190-foot cross, a friend comments, confusing it for another giant cross I’ll see later near Indiana.

I pass a truck plastered in Jesus information. Jesus saves, printed in tightly kerned all-caps across the stainless steel tanks. Jesus loves you, every waving mudflap informs.

Jesus Truck gives two little honks as I pass. Okay.

It’s a two-lane highway, so I pass a couple more cars and merge back into the right lane. There are some very serious local Ford and Chevy trucks that need to bustle, thousand horsepower engines growling behind Bernie. I do not relish the idea of getting stuck in front of one.

I check my mirrors again. Jesus Truck is approaching. My heart jumps. I am for a minute sure that he has seen my California plates, a little Asian girl driving alone, far from home. Liberal scum, or at the very least, a potential convert.

Begin paranoia.

I start to book it. This is the reason my parents tell me to stick to the coasts, where I’m not so ‘funny-lookin’. I do not want to prove them right. I do not want to get kidnapped by a Jesus truck. I do not want to be on 60 Minutes.

Most of all, I should not have listened to Gone Girl on audiobook.

Though I am speeding, Jesus Truck continues to follow. This is too fast a speed for a truck towing tanks. I am not aware of Jesus granting better gas pedals. There would not be so many atheists if this were the case.

I freak out for about ten more miles before I finally lose Jesus Truck. The irrational adrenaline still pulses through me.

Of course this truck was not chasing me. It has already forgotten I exist. But I am so afraid of sticking out. I am afraid of being memorable. Different is dangerous.

But different is also fun.

This is the story of my life. It is classic middle child: “Why isn’t anyone paying attention to me? …Why is everybody looking at me!?”

I have grown too used to wanting to belong. I put too much energy into determining who my people are and sticking with them. And suddenly I understand why San Francisco has started to frighten me. San Francisco demulsifies its population, with its niches and tribes. Everyone looks at you and does the mental calculus. Hippie? Homeless? Techie? Hipster?

This never used to matter to me. I never wanted homogeny. I wanted Republicans and hippies and Jews and blacks and Asians. I wanted to be in a melting pot because I wanted to be able to melt away at will. I hated that my face could determine whether or not I was recognized or easily described. I wanted the power of invisibility with none of the radioactive consequences.

Stories

Finding home, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I swing down 376 and everything feels right. The steering column is steady and I am singing at the top of my lungs. I exit the tunnel and see that nightime Pittsburgh skyline. I audibly gasp and it wakes Nuri up. He rustles in the backseat. I am remembering the exits to take. I want to turn off Googlina. College kids line the gray streets and I remember that it is Saturday night. I was one of those kids at eighteen, swaddled in the warm comfort of new friends.

I am rooted again. Our generation seems so stunted as adults. College is adult kindergarten, a part of childhood. The late teens, when our grandparents were shipping off to world war — and we try to find ourselves and hang onto our parents’ corporate insurance plans.

But we were made by these generations. Because of what they witnessed, we don’t have to worry about things that terrorized their consciousness. We are gentler creatures, barely hardened by tragedy.

I think of these narratives. Then I think of all of the narratives, hundreds of stories I could tell myself. Some of them are from the mouths, bodies and raised eyebrows of other people’s books. They are stories I did not write.

How her mother said I’d be pretty if I would just lose weight. How he turned up the volume on his music when I sang in the shower. How she only liked me when I agreed with her. How they repeated my ignored words and were heralded as mavericks. How he said I didn’t deserve the money. How she said I’d do anything with legs. How she was selectively honest when frightened. How he cheated on a school trip I couldn’t go on. How the coffee jitters made me interview like a nervous moron.

But I can write stories, too. It is the only real power I have. I can choose which tales stay and which ones die as I do, slowly, like shedding cells. When my head hits the cool pillow, when I stare into the city light patterns on the ceiling or the quiet dark of the country — I am the sieve. I am the narrator. I have the power.

How I run toward. How I am learning to be wild again. How the interstate opens up like a tulip to accept us. How Nuri transforms from a coward to a guardian who notices intruders in the hallway. How I dyed my hair purple so they’d know to step back. How she and I share a bond because nobody would ever believe what happened to us. How his eyes wrinkle up at the corners when he looks at me. How my muscles stopped hurting after every session of yoga. How we eat the pizza even though dairy makes us gassy. How she says I am a column, says I have a backbone. How I am a guest in God’s country and the deep left’s land alike. How my home is inside of me always, a little haven.