That time I went to CA for a wedding part 1

                                                

                                                                                Leaving

The low point starts on the day I am to fly home. It's a feeling that I usually describe in fiction, but I suppose, like most works of fiction, the truth is grounded in reality. The ache is mostly in my stomach, though its actual placement I suppose is either in the mind or approaching soul level, depending on your belief system. It's the feeling of having lost something that you can't retrieve, like waking up from a dream of childhood in old age. It's happened before a few times in my life, a sort of awareness as something is happening that reminds you that it is good to be alive and in the company of such damn good people with the simultaneous awareness that this too shall pass. And at times, I confess, even as the event is happening, I’ve already begun to regret its passing, though I still manage to be a lot of fun at a party.

The feeling gets worse at the airport, which should be no surprise. Airports are no place, reminders of our anonymity. How is it possible that so many people could be gathered together in one place and yet not know one another? It's strange to be headed back to DC, a city I've lived in for years, in the company of so many strangers. Traveling home is like this, having left behind the expectations of the trip to come, and not yet in the company of those you love, it's wandering the skies like Odysseus on the seas.

I've read enough studies to know that what I should be feeling as I leave the weekend behind is gratitude. It's mentally healthy and a reasonable response to having spent the weekend having a great time, and I'm not sure why exactly I'm incapable of feeling that way, though I'm willing to speculate. There is a fleeting nature to these moments in time, an awareness that lies just beneath the moment that it will not last, cannot be recovered. Lord knows there are plenty of moments in life that we'd be just as happy to not recover. For instance, I have no desire to go back in time to get my finger dislocated again, or to wake up at six am after a night of throwing up to head in to work at JC Penny's. Those I could do without.

On some kind of larger scale perhaps what we’re talking about is a fear of death, though I have a tendency to take things to too large a scale, and perhaps what I was feeling was just a normal sort of letdown, or, to use a fancy word, sad. It was Wittgenstein who said, "I do not know why we are here, but I don't think it was too enjoy ourselves." I suspect now that Wittgenstein was probably wrong and definitely German. I suspect that one of the reasons we are alive is to enjoy being alive. I suspect that it’s not only good for our mental health to assume so, but probably at least one of the myriad of reasons to soldier on. I’m using solider on loosely here as I’m a middle class westerner living in Washington, DC, not exactly subsistence farming in Africa. Thank god for existential dread, otherwise, I’d have nothing complain about.

This is all at odds with the weekend that I just had, and if you'd seen me shimmying across the floor at 8 PM on Friday night to "I'm sexy and I know it" or serenading the newly married couple in a circle of friends with arms all tossed around each other in a dive bar singing "Wagon Wheel" you'd probably be a bit confused. Or maybe you wouldn't be. Maybe life is just strange and personality and circumstances contingent things. There's much more of a focus in Eastern religions on the dying of the old man that happens each evening, or each moment, in which a new person is born. The wedding was at a beautiful Japanese garden, so you'll forgive me, a westerner, for briefly considering the idea and its merits. 

I’ve waxed on long enough about what it felt like to leave. If I learned anything from reading two stories from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” it’s that the interesting part is what happens on the journey. Arriving home is nearly always a given. It’s what you experienced along the way that’s worth reporting.

                                                            The Trip

To leave, I wake up at five and have a leisurely breakfast. The best part about waking up at five AM is that it is not 4:30 AM. Beyond that, I find nothing redeeming about it. By 5:30, I’m totally packed and ready to get on a plane to CA. When the cabby calls and I walk downstairs, we do that awkward thing where I start to put my suitcase in the back and then he takes it from me like we are on our honeymoon. Figuring that everything might as well join in the fun I slide my backpack into the trunk, and he looks at me like I’m either an idiot for putting it in there, or an idiot for not letting him do it. I don’t know what to do with any type of service culture that doesn’t involve me shelling out five to seven dollars and then receiving a bag filled with burgers and French fries in return. I start sweating sometimes when the check arrives, trying to figure out how exactly to have the final tally end up at a round number, as if my credit card is incapable of making change, I’m sorry I only spend in increments of twenty, and trying to keep it close to 20 percent.

He asks me how I get to the airport, and I tell him North Capitol. He asks if I’d be okay to take the parkway instead, which roughly translates to a request to rip me off, but I say yes, because I’m paying him for a service. In the morning, the feathered moonlight on Rock Creek makes it look like cut glass. In the car, on the board where my fare is displaying a series of images is running of people being shot in movies, often violently. It is just image after image of bodies being riddled with bullets, heads blown apart and spurting blood. I watch for a minute or so, transfixed and horrified. Eventually, I look away, and back out into the night. I do not know what was being advertised, but I know I didn’t care.

The driver and I exchange witticisms along the way, such as, “which airline?” followed by, “Southwest.” We have the easy camaraderie of two guys thrown together in a buddy copy comedy who never speak and then exchange money after a car ride. It is, in some ways, reminiscent of the story of Cinderella.

When I was younger, I used to try and look half decent on flights. Particularly Southwest, where people are actually choosing whether to sit next to you or not based on your appearance. In fact, for a couple of years I used to engage in polite conversation fairly often with people who sat near me. We’d talk about sports, or cities we lived in, the people we were visiting. At some point in time I realized this was stupid. Now I put on my glasses early and where a sign that says, “I am just looking for a place to drool.” I don’t remember my flight to Houston, which is just as well. Okay, I remember occasionally waking up and thinking, have I been sleeping with my mouth open for an hour, only to fall back asleep with my mouth open for another hour.

In Houston, I walk around the airport looking for a meal under ten dollars. This is always hard to find in an airport, because they have what is called a monopoly and can therefore price fix. I use the term walk around loosely, as most of being in the Houston airport, which is enormous and can be seen from space, is dodging carts, driven by people who say, “Cart! Cart!” in a way that tells you that leg severance awaits you if you don’t move out of the way of the cart. After a while, you start to realize that not everyone on the carts are old or disabled, and that rich people in the Houston airport are probably just paying extra for rides to pass the time, yelling, “Cart! Cart!” in the way that the gentry used to splash mud on the poor in the streets. Sometimes, I think about not moving, but then I think about my family, and how much they’d miss me if I went in a cart accident and I move aside, mentally castigating the rich cart folk.

I eventually settle on Subway as they are the one restaurant offering anything under ten dollars. The sandwich is actually quite good, and I follow that up by sneaking over to steal WiFi as a guest from a restaurant that I’m not frequenting, sitting suspiciously close to said restaurant, and sometimes walking by and asking the wait staff where I can pick up the best signal. The thing about the Houston Airport is that it’s fine once you learn its ways. Eat cheaply, steal WiFi and dodge rich people carts, and you’ve got it made. I might even move there. From Houston I post to Facebook saying things like, “I’m in Houston,” because I could tell people on Facebook were all wondering where I was and were relieved to know that I was in Houston and were earnestly texting friends to let them know that I was okay, everyone could calm down, I was now in Houston. I don’t understand social media even though I use it somewhat frequently. It’s the sort of thing, like hot dog meat, or why it’s so easy to pass people asking for money on the street after I’ve just eaten an expensive meal that’s best not interrogated.

Sadly, as in most great romances, I was forced to leave Houston. From there, I flew to Vegas. I’d never flown in to Vegas before, and I will tell you what I learned about people flying to Vegas: they are much older than you’d think they’d be. The median age on the flight is somewhere around sixty, and the atmosphere as everyone is waiting can only be described as jubilant. The majority of the people look tanned, retired, and happy to have the opportunity to get away for the weekend to see some shows and gamble, or, lord help me, have sex in some hotel room with their spouse, partner, or someone they met at an old folk’s home. I’d always thought that everyone in Vegas would be younger, but I’m starting to realize that all that stuff about rat races etc, turns out to be somewhat true, in that you don’t really have time to get away to Vegas when you’re younger because you’ve got only a certain number of days off and families and obligations etc. taking up your time, which just means you’re probably not getting to Vegas until you are sixty, though luckily, from what I’m seeing, by then, you will be immensely excited about it.

On the flight to Vegas, I sleep and drool against the wall quite handsomely. Sometimes I’ll wake up to make sure that I’m not leaning on the person in the middle of the seat, and to see what kind of shape the drool’s made. My partners on the plane are a couple, woman of sixty or so and her partner, who looks to be late seventies. At one point she says she has to go to the bathroom, and he says that he can’t move. She orders him a whiskey straight, and I can just tell these people are going to watch some tigers jumping through fire in Vegas. Yolo.

When the plane lands, those of us who are flying on to San Jose are vociferously told to remain seated until they can get a proper count to see who’s staying on. I remain seated, because I am afraid of authority. The rest of the passengers on the plane do not share that healthy fear and start milling around and mumbling about the Gestapo, an act that causes the steward to get back on the line and tell us all to sit down again or there will be hell to pay, which just makes the natives more restless, and they start taking down bags and changing seats anyway. I feel like pulling them back and warning about the dangers of defying stewards on a flight, but no one seems interested. I’m eventually counted and wind up with a much crappier seat than I would have if I’d just braved their disapproval of me moving around the aircraft.

The flight to San Jose is mercifully not full, and only an hour or so. Now that I don’t have middle passenger to drool and sleep on I lose all interest in sleep and wind up cranking out a few extremely short stories. When we finally arrive in San Jose and my dad drives me back towards his house I cower in fear at the large shapes in the distance. He explains to me that what I’m seeing are called foothills, or small mountain ranges, and I ask him why all the trees aren’t really dense and close to the freeway and why everything is so far apart and big, which is the overall feeling of California, it just seems like people have a lot of room there.  

I don’t know if some secret metaphor lies in the space, in the last vestiges of light turning the brown foothills a pale gold. I’ve been gone from California long enough to no longer recognize all that space as my own. Now when I look at it I know that a metaphor lies somewhere out on all that open road, those widely spread apart houses, but I don’t think I’ve been gone long enough yet to grasp it.

I was in CA for a wedding--a friend of mine who I’ve known since kindergarten, which turns out to have been a hell of a long time ago now, is getting hitched in Saratoga. A city, that every time we pass my dad asks if I’d like to stop and visit the house he grew up in, and I say no, either because I think we’ve already seen it once, or because I’m in a hurry, or because I’m a bad person, I can honestly never remember which it is.

I spent the previous night trying to prepare a Halloween costume because we’ve been asked to wear a costume to the rehearsal by the bride. I haven’t dressed up in six years or so, and every time I think of what I should be my mind just yells out, “Ninja! Ninja!” because I was a ninja from ages 2-9 and have always wanted to learn how to throw a pair of ninja stars around a corner, because, obviously. Instead, I wind up sneaking into my daughter’s room and stealing back a cowboy hat she’s commandeered since it’s the only thing that qualifies as any sort of costume. I go through a series of shirts, insisting that I’ll look just fine in the vest only, though S tells me that I would look like a bit of a “wh—e” and I tell her that if she thinks that’s a bad thing then she’s misunderstanding the spirit of Halloween. I finally settle on something more demure, which turns out to be clothes that I wear every day with a cowboy hat attached, so, less a costume than a hat.

Luckily, when I arrive at my dad’s he’s able to outfit me in some authentic cowboy boots, a nice long brown leather jacket and a bolo tie. My father has these things, as I understand fatherhood, because he is a father. The thing about being a dad is that you need to have all sorts of strange things, particularly hats and clothes lying around. It is one of the many ways in which I feel deficient, however, it was a large reason why I held on to that cowboy hat for twelve years. I knew someday my son would need a cowboy hat for some dance, and I’d be able to provide it. My Christmas list this year is going to consist of fishing tackle, cowboy boots, a large knife, and three different colored jackets of leather, pleather, and vinyl, as well as a collection of hats ranging from Michael Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt.

Properly outfitted, I prepare for the next morning of fun by waking up at 4:30 AM, because my body, my stupid, ill-suited for this brilliant mind of a body, decided to wake me up on east coast time despite the fact that I went to bed at 11:30 west coast time. I try reasoning with my body, but it’s an unreasonable creature, and we wake up together and pee, and eventually wind up falling asleep hours later and stumbling down to breakfast around nine, though I’m ready to tear the leg off a live pig and gorge myself since it’s noon east coast time, and I haven’t had anything to eat.

After breakfast, I walk across the street to grab a cappuccino and walk down the wide avenues near my dad’s house and talk to my mother while looking up at the mountain that my dad walks nearly every morning to collect trash and occasionally fall spectacularly or wrestle a balloon from a patch of poison ivy. I talk to my mother less frequently then I used to, but, if she catches me in the right mood I’ll still tell her things like: I’m considering that the meaning of life is that there is no meaning and that we’re all just bits of cosmic dust flung together by random chance for a flicker of a moment. You know, the sort of thing any mother loves to hear. I’m funny too though, and I suspect that’s what she remembers.

After breakfast, I walk back to my dad’s house so we can go get the rental car. I’d have a conversation with S that went something like this before I left:

S: Can you borrow your dad’s car?

M: Definitely.

S: Does he drive an automatic.

M: Oh yeah. He drives an automatic.

Upon arriving in San Jose the first thing I actually noticed is that my father does not drive an automatic.

M: Did you ever drive an automatic?

D: Not for about twelve years?

M: So I only missed it by a decade or so.

S tends to be the one who organizes things, diaper bags, the house, our finances, our trips, rental cars etc. However, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m occasionally funny, so I feel like she made out like a bandit in this deal. Anyhow, as such, I took it upon myself to rent a car once I’d decided that my dad and I shouldn’t spend our precious time together grinding the gears of his Nissan in a parking lot and probably coming to blows, because I don’t take well to being corrected, particularly when I’m wrong. I’m just going to tell you that the iPad keys are smaller than you want them to be and the screen isn’t as useful as it could be on Kayak either.

I’d originally planned on renting the car closer to my dad’s home, but I couldn’t keep it for long enough. Like many people who live near cities, he fears traffic as other people fear the grim reaper. However, I’ve convinced him to drive back out to the San Jose Airport for the express purpose of renting another car. It takes about twenty minutes or so, and when he drops me off, I assure him that he can leave, and I’ll just pick up the car. He seems concerned, but I am definitely not.

I love rental cars. How are they so cheap? How can I get an entire car for the price it took me to get a cab twenty minutes to the airport? What is happening here? I don’t understand it. And the forms, the forms! Am I over twenty five? Yes I am kind form, thank you very much. It’s like the last bastion of adulthood that you get to reach, and every time I check that box I realize that I’ve done some things in my life and that I’m accomplished, and, according to this form, probably responsible.

When I finally get up to the counter and request my reservation the guy asks for my license, looks at the computer, types furiously, looks confused, types more, and then asks when I made my reservation. “I made it last night,” I told him, knowing that he’d be proud of me for planning ahead. “You made it for November 4-6.” I told him that the car would be less useful to me when I was in DC, but he wasn’t able to help me. Okay, actually he was very helpful and told me to use my smart phone, “Do you have a smart phone?” I told him no, because smart phones, like the internet are fads that will pass away soon, and I won’t be caught up in rushing into new technologies like Beta tapes. He tells me that I should book a new reservation but definitely not with his company as they won’t honor it in less it’s made at least 12 hours out. I know that somewhere a small business man is rolling over in his grave and bemoaning Obamacare’s clear socialistic tendencies, but I’m enthused that this guy is just trying to get me the best deal as opposed to trying to upsell me to an SUV.

Outside, where it’s colder than I want it to be, I report the news to S, who is taking care of our two small children. “I’ve rented a car,” I tell her, “in November.” She’s able to quickly snag me a reservation at a reduced rate from Enterprise, and I remind her at least a couple of times about how I told that one funny joke at a party, and I’m pretty sure she’s overwhelmed with gratitude to have me, sometimes she hides it well.

I do love rental cars. I love the open road. I love driving by myself with a destination in mind, but not quite getting there yet. I love fiddling with the dials on the radio until I’ve found a couple of suitable radio stations. I like the feeling of being some place new. I suppose, if I’m reflecting, this is the mythic west that I’m a fan of. In general, I love people, and yet, my God, to be truly alone, even if only for a few minutes, what a rush. In more defined terms what I mean by, rush is, driving around in a nice Chrysler GTO 300 with the windows down listening to whatever pop music is playing on the satellite radio and driving back to my dad’s house. I suppose our definition of the wild open road may differ.