captain’s log. six twenty-one eleven.
the Pimp & Ho Tour part deux began a few days ago in an inauspicious manner. i fell down the stairs in the middle of the night on my way to get a cold beer. the flight of stairs are wooden and one of the glued-on strips of fabric gave way as i tromped down in the dark. i’m sure if it had been filmed, it would be comical: feet slip, body flips up and lands flat on stairs. ha ha.
i quietly said, “ow.” got up, and got my beer.
the six-by-four inch square black bruise above my **** cheeks appeared the next morning, the day before i was to begin four months in a car, truck and occasionally on motorbike touring the country from new york to seattle. phoenix to tampa. new orleans to billings. f**k.
here is my la-ti-da tale of the glory that is experiencing america with a bruised back…
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| flammable, indeed. |
the metaphors are killing me. please stop the metaphors. i’ll pay good american money to make them stop. please. and windshield shots. them, too. and my left ring finger nail hurts. owie.
we hit alabama and i dig ‘bama. the bars are open late in birmingham and montgomery. the patrons are smiling and glad to see you. they drive like f***ing maniacs so you’re kept on your toes. i was making a left with a green arrow guiding my way and i saw the car lights on the inside lane were not slowing down. i hesitated. almost two seconds after my green light a chevy suburban ran the light at 60, in the third-and-last lane of my left turn. i swear to ***, am i forgiven of my sins, or is it that i’ve been a daily motorcycle rider for 12 of the past 23 years? i would have taken off at the light and gotten t-boned in a pontiac when i was 21.
last time i saw that happen i was on a honda cx500 running a red light at 45.
numbers make me crazy, not words. words are coffee whitener and none of that half-and-half s**t. watch. i’ll get there in a minute. honda isn’t the point and pay no attention to the societal observation. metaphors. words. meaningless. they’re merely substitutes for consciousness. what we share until we shake hands or glare at each other over isn’t even it. doing both is. for a long time. probably. let me check the numbers.
wait! the suburban is a substitute for consciousness. no, i mean the five years i rode in northern california. yeah. that’s it. that’s what kept me from just going because the arrow light said so. san francisco is to motorbike riding what montgomery, alabama is to having a roller coaster in a bar. it’s why eric clapton playing “while my guitar gently weeps” in 1969 is reading einsten’s theories of relativity in 1922. it makes perfect sense. now where is that beer?
sometimes a town is sweet and sometimes it isn’t, but never have i wished to leave one in a mushroom cloud, or at least a cloud of poison gas so it’s inhabitants have a few moments to get right with their lives before they die the sorry and painful death they deserve.
today i went to a “pub” and they were out of guinness. a pint of smithwicks was $6.25. i whip out my phone, download a “bar app,” and call one nearby because this place sucks. “do you have a smoking section inside or outside?” thus began a lecture by some bartender on how bad smoking is.
anybody who has met me knows i interrupt regularly. “really,” i interrupted, “don’t you sell alcohol in a state which constitutionally outlawed slavery in 1996? 1996, you liver-killing, bladder-bleeding f***ing hypocrite b**ch.”
click.
this happened right after the dumbass who sat next to me at the “irish pub” i foolishly walked into started telling me about how some aryan brothers aren’t all that bad. after i told him i wasn’t one. after i said, “i have no desire to understand their hate nor guide them out of their ignorance.”
once again, i spat and left an establishment i came to enjoy myself within.
such was jackson, mississippi. in three hours i had enough of it. with my love of riding motorcycles and their parallels to sailing, let me offer a song that should you ever come upon this town, you may wish to play as loud as possible as you roll by:
yesterday we visited meridian. it’s an interesting part of the world, equally courteous and unhappy. i love when quicky mart women start preaching to me about jesus and their blessed life because of him. sometimes i smile and move on. sometimes i tell them my day is as good as theirs. then i get into the car and complain. i don’t like to be proselytized.
the inexplicable woman always tells me i am better than to bother being angry. she tells me the next time someone thinks i’m a white supremacist i ought to simply say “i hope your life is better than your character judgment.” it isn’t, and i become angry because telling them won’t change their minds. you cannot teach stupid. once infected, there is no cure short of a near-death experience. i tell her it all ends in a fight unless i walk away cursing, but she’s sure that with the right words, my “presence” would preclude any physical altercation.
i can only invite death so often before death is finally going to win the hand. even captain kirk dies.
i prefer f***ing to fighting as much as i prefer to talk s**t on my way out a door rather than sticking around to see what happens after spitting and cursing a place. christ’s messengers of judgment were not everywhere and where they were not, i found meridian an interesting place, at least one corner of it. nobody was there. it was peaceful but to stop and listen to the rain fall and the branches sway at night i’d imagine those wooded acres to be haunted.
that structure was behind the hotel we stayed in. royal land. it’s fifty or sixty acres of used-up drama. been there. done that. it’s premise was doomed to failure 35 years ago, as it was made of left-for-dead carnival rides from the county fairgrounds nearby in the late 1960’s and closed in the early 70’s. not much was left of royal land when i braved it’s tick-infested jungle but the entry above and this below:
that is an old train station. the train, also left by a traveling carnival, spit soot on children and traveled in an oval track about 40 yards around the station. it was cool but the grounds are now the hidey place for kids and bums where old blankets and beer cans are strewn throughout wild rose bushes and vine-hidden trees. a hundred yards into the woods, i discovered this:
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| creepy mississippi reject carny park hanged baby |
the confederacy that fought the union in the civil war had it’s capitol in montgomery. before meridian and its haunted carny forest behind our hotel, we spent a day and night in montgomery, alabama. i didn’t like montgomery when we first visited in may. i’m not touring the country to discover what somebody already has. i am traveling to live what nobody has. only a white guy with a shaved head and “freedom or death” tattooed on his neck in the south can tell this story. i’m a factor in a concept that has yet to be proved alive, much less sentient and which you are a part of. we are our own mass hallucination. can you look into the mirror and not know we are the same? not black or white, but spectacles invisible to the sun as it accidentally toys with the earth? as members of earth we are only good as one, still individual, accepting and loving society, you f***ing hippie a**hole. it’s your fault i can’t smoke in a bar in jackson, mississippi.
so far it seems that in mississippi it’s inhabitants are so unhappy that even at subway, you won’t get a napkin with your foot-long poem. poetry isn’t something to be taken seriously. seriously. the woman also says i have to let s**t go. dwelling upon an incurable illness is only funny when viewed on fox news.
it was better in alabama and best in montgomery. there was free pizza and talk about motorcycles with an old man who could no longer ride due to his health. they took pictures of me and said i’d be on their new “wall of fame.” i’m sure it’s what they do to all the travelers/suckers who step through their door. look for my photo on a demotivational poster soon. they were spies and recorded my conversation with the old man about politics and morality. good. prepare for me.
just joking. i’m already here; a virtual human on your internet receiving machine.
so far our tour has helped me better understand my anger about what is wrong with amerika and empathize with the sad souls who possess no dream they are striving to achieve. sentience demands more care for more than is perceived. not only what you choose to believe. yes. it had to rhyme.
cha-ching is also the sound a hammer makes when dropped on cement. depending on if the metal head hit first, or the wooden handle does. relativity? yes.
thank you montgomery and meridian for your showing me something of your past and your fun-loving present.
as for jackson, your american money will be no good one day. only gold and silver. and dark-haired, blue-eyed hungarian **** stars.
it’s been five days since i wailed myself on the stairs in tennessee and i’m getting better. tomorrow we’re in new orleans for a few days. that’s always good. alex’s latest installment of “how to build your frame” will be, um, installed. i’ve had it for weeks to edit. it’s about time to get it out here for you guys.
these trips can be exhausting so i hope this makes no sense but somehow reveals a universal truth to a few of you. for the rest, welcome to the carny show. slip a dollar under the window and grab a box of kleenex as you enter. the the bikerMetric Pimp & Ho Tour is in your face, sticky with mad biker poetry and beer…
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