5 Things I Meant To Write (But Obviously Didn’t)

— So now I’m playing catch-up.

In my mind, driving cross country with occasional bouts of socializing left a lot of time for writing. I thought I could pull off some regular words-making considering the schedule I’d been used to before getting laid off and the sheer amount of stuff I’d be seeing, doing, experiencing.

But, realistically, I spent a lot more of that time watching mid-2000s romantic comedies, eating from the same tub of stale pretzels and making desperate attempts to Facetime with my dogs; otherwise the hours, days, weeks were spent talking to new people, driving long hours and wrestling with the guilt of not writing (which is a very important part of the process, if you don’t think about it at all).

Since I feel like the ship has sort of maybe a little bit sailed on a few of those drafts due to self-imposed deadlines, I thought I’d pour some out for my fallen homies that in another life might’ve grown into something fully formed.

1. The one with the seasonal affective feelings

— kill me if I turn purple, pls.

While trying to race Winter Storm Jonas forced us to do a lot more sketchy motel hopping and a lot less aimless wandering off of I-40, I will say that we managed to find a few of the roadside wonders we were looking for.

Driving down Route 66 with the sun in our eyes and Oklahoma’s favorite classic rock station blaring turned what could’ve been an agonizing detour on a too-long day into something magical: Like we’d hit the fast forward button on springtime and hit rewind on our frown lines, like we were becoming our younger summer selves.

It’s hard to write about nature and the road or good music and good friends without sounding hokey and overly-sentimental (particularly if you’re someone like me who came 0ff the assembly line just a little bit prone to the schmaltz) but I’ve also always thought that letting yourself love the hokey and sentimental things without the wink-and-nudge of irony is one of the rawest things you can do.

Inch by inch, mile by mile, the trees were greener and the skies were bigger and the air — while technically the same air we’d been breathing all along — still felt better (more like air is supposed to feel) in our chests. It was a tiny little victory as we kept picking up hours and degrees, crossing time zones as the temperatures rose.

I’m sure there’s a word somewhere for the feeling: something sharp and scary and probably German, something that sounds like a sneeze.

2. The one where we basically backpacked through Europe

— but much cheaper and creepier (very #OnBrand for us.)

We czeched out Prague, Oklahoma, a impossibly tiny town with an adorable little main street (that, naturally, was like a ghost town of empty storefront windows surrounding someday, maybe shops and gastropubs). There were old buildings with these intricate murals depicting annual Czech dance festivals that stepped back and forth across the Uncanny Valley in the best/worst kind of way.

We let the wind burn our cheeks as we took our super tourist-y photos with the murals, the Euro-inspired architecture of the drug stores and vape shop (We get it, Middle America. You vape.) and the national shrine dedicated to the Infant Jesus (no, really).

We’d started keeping track of all the tiny European cities that cropped up along our route. Wondering what wrong turn we could’ve made became a deadpan car game in the same vein as reading Cracker Barrel billboards, mooing at herds of cattle or asking one another if we’d developed a craving for a “damp sandwich” whenever we passed a Subway.

“Huh, damn. Prague. We’ve gone pretty far.”

3.The one with the aliens

— and how, yeah, main street is still dying.

We rolled in to Roswell, New Mexico, with the theme to the 2000s teen melodrama of the same name blasting through our speakers because of course we did.

While I was deeply disappointed to find out that the Crashdown Cafe [1] no longer exists, we did get our fill of alien kitsch through the tiny Area 51-themed gift shops or Alien Zone restaurant (kinda like a stripped-down, economically depressed alien version of Chuck E. Cheese.)

It all came about in the sad way, though, where the used-to-be’s and could’ve been’s litter the streets. We knew (they all had to have known) that the rubber aliens throwing up “live long and prosper” signs, the “bad antenna day” glow-in-the-dark T-shirts and the “Roswell: Green since 1947” bumper stickers would one day fill dusty cardboard boxes as more and more of the gimicky businesses close.

Maybe the summer time — with promises of a zombie walk and some of the tin-foil hat-wearing intergalactic kinfolk — is more lucrative and exciting for the main strip. But, as we browsed the tiny shops that seemed to understand that most travelers were there to look (read: gawk) and not touch (read: not buy), it’s still pretty hard to imagine.

If the mostly nonexistent foot traffic in front of the local art gallery, antique stores and the small space-themed coffee shop — each displaying identical fundraising signs begging donors to “Save Roswell” by building an amphitheater nearby — is anything to go by, it seems that anything that landed 69 years before has long-since fled the crash site.

4. The one about the hot springs

— and being the ‘yes’ people.

We spent three days put up in a way-too-nice-for-us suite of a room in Las Vegas, New Mexico’s historic Plaza Hotel. It’s stupidly beautiful with just the right amount of spooky energy you’d want from an old Victorian hotel.

Maya’s family friends were willing to put us up for her birthday in the too-nice, too-pretty, too-much room, giving us a break from the dry motels (that almost blend into a single musty crash pad in my mind.)

On our second day, we were desperately trying to stretch our legs and were hoping we’d find a good hike. Unfortunately, the ice along the ground (oh hi, high desert) kept that from being a safest option. Instead we wandered around the beautiful campus, blowing off some steam along the winding, scenic roads that surrounded the “amazing, healing hot springs” that everyone kept raving about.

When we actually decided to check out the hot springs, there were two locals — a husband and wife — camped out in the middle pool (apparently they’d been there a while), submerged up to their necks with just their toes poking out. The wife poured a funny looking tea from her thermos while the husband held on to a pair of light green prayer beads mumbling out a stream of words that we’re assuming may have been tongues. They were very nice and let out the most delightful, joyful shrieks as they ran from the ice cold river to warmest hot spring pool (dubbed by the locals as “the lobster pot.”)

At best it was 47 degrees and we were both decked out in clothes that weren’t exactly warm and weren’t exactly bathing suit-like either. But, after Maya took a less-than-graceful dip (okay, she fell) into one of the smaller pools, we decided it couldn’t hurt to go all in while the water was warm. Fuck it: Clothes can always dry. The car has heat.

In Vegas, we found some of the best coffee, the creepiest antiques and the friendliest people — so friendly, in fact, that our initial plans to leave before sunrise on Saturday were dashed by their insistence that we go bar-hopping on Friday night (or bar-to-bar-to-motel/apartment-house-party hopping.)

Before we went down to the ‘hotel saloon’ that night for one last goodbye drink with our hosts, we agreed we’d turn down the bar-hop and have one beer before bed. We laughed about how there are two kinds of people in the world: The kind that “say yes” and the kind that go to sleep.

In our defense, we really, really thought we were the latter. We’ll call it another less-than-graceful dip.

5. The one about the real world

— and how it never really stops chasing you.

I got an email somewhere between the border of Oklahoma and Austin, TX — a follow-up to a job application I’d sent out two weeks before my last day of work.

“What fucking time zone are we in anyway? Is 2 p.m. even do-able?” I tried to remember what a professional, non-lizard human sounded like via email and on the phone but it’s truly astounding how quickly that part of your brain atrophies.

We still had plans at that point to hit New Mexico, bum around California, work our way somewhere up north and keep the momentum going. We were still on that first leg of the drive where all that adrenaline and energy left us high on the possibilities, willing to ignore the toll the miles took on our bodies and wallets. When would we be home? Hell, if I knew.

But creeping back through the excitement and seemingly endless stretches of road between gas stations was a reminder that I would eventually hit a point Z, begin that loop back to point A and be in the market for some kind of plan, any kind of plan — which is how I ended up fumbling through a phone interview outside a tiny waterfront coffee shop on the outskirts of Austin, trying my hardest to remember how to sell myself.

“…I would eventually hit a point Z, begin that loop back to point A and be in the market for some kind of plan, any kind of plan.”

I didn’t have a good answer when friends asked how it went. All I could remember really was apologizing for the noise as a storm started to take shape (the raindrops giving the shop’s metal roof a real beating) as the tiniest part of me wondered whether circling back to whatever came before point A was such a good idea.

[1] That’s the ~hip~ hangout where the alien teens went to eat tabasco sauce and brood about unrequited love/longing for their home worlds.

Miles: Lol, like I’d know by now. 
Cups of Coffee: Pleading the fifth.