Creator1

Chapter 2
I pulled off the freeway and into a lone, massive monolith known as the trucker stop. The ever sleepy, yet always bustling concrete behemoths were a favorite of mine. Everyone was in a hurry, and the food wasn’t the best looking but damn was it hearty and yes, it will wreak havoc on you innards and arteries.

I, like the great late author Bourdain, am just a cheap, nasty, low-down, trailer park burger slut, and it’s one of the many things that attracts me to these places. It was just now in the ending stages of twilight, where the horizon looks like a highly orchestrated spill of blue and orange water colors.

I had spent roughly fourteen hours on the road and was simultaneously wired and exhausted. I was somewhere around Gallup, NM. Everything prior to and afterward of this was so flat and seemingly desolate. I was glad this strange land was not my final destination. There was something unnerving about being out in a space that was that open, so empty. As I looked at the horizon, becoming more dark as the blues became black and the outdated overhead lights lent its orange hue to anything that ventured in its path, I wondered just how unexplored this frontier was.

I unwrapped my burger and squeezed the burger bun, watching the grease transfer to my fingers. The fries scraped as I slid them out onto the burger wrapper and began amassing a pile of ketchup extracted from my horded packets. If you haven’t eaten long enough, anything can be heart warming comfort food, even if it came from a truck stop.

It was gone before I could truly savor it, and I was about ready to be comatose in my car. I chose to spend a while longer out of the car before I crashed, it was still warm out and there was nobody around, just multiple trucks filled with sleeping or resting drivers. I approached the car door, knowing full well that sleep was soon to follow. There was a loud thunk followed by a grunt. The grunt was a high pitched, probably a woman, this was followed by another loud thunk, this one more forceful, it’s amazing how you can hear anger in objects.

“Where the fuck you think you’re goin’?” a burly commanding voice boomed.

“I just need some space, I’m going for a walk!” The female voice replied. I looked around, and I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them so clearly. It was a bizarre experience, as if I was hearing them in my headphones.

“So you can shack up with someone else who will take you wherever you want!” He foreshadowed, this seemed personal. I lit a cigarette, one last vice before laying down for the night, leaning against the warm metal outside of my mobile bed.

Then, I saw both of them, they were slightly behind me, to my 7 o’ clock. They both caught me looking, it was very obvious from how my body was positioned. He was towering over her, and she was slightly recoiled into the truck, his arm was raised above her, leaning on the truck, a constant reminder of his size compared to hers.

Our eyes locked momentarily, and everyone attempted to shift their body language to prove there was no issue. The silence was deafening. I looked back down at my door and unlocked my car and swung my body in, throwing the half used cigarette to the ground. This wasn’t any of my business, for all I know, they are married.

Some people enjoy being talked to like that! I reassured myself, briskly shutting the door behind me. The reality was I knew she was a prostitute, likely with a drug problem who fucked a truck driver to get away from a dealer or pimp. The problem is, the truck driver is usually as fucked up or more than the first dude. I wondered if she had ever gone through that or something similar back in Texas. I guess it wasn’t really any of my business, even if we were roommates, kinda.

I wondered what her reaction had been to discovering I wasn’t there, maybe she just thinks I am out and won’t realize it until she gets home from work and realizes there are no more joints or any drugs really.

It was too dark to write, something I tried to make a habit of doing every day. The goal was simply to write something, anything, even if it wouldn’t impress your mother. In fact, I would be quite proud of the thought that something I wrote would make my mother recoil in disgust. To me it would be an absolute compliment that my thinking was so different from anyone else’s that it would make people unhappy, a harmless menace. However, it is a practice, so I believe in practicing it as often as possible even if it isn’t easy or good.

When it is too dark or inconvenient to write, I type or record on my phone. Inspiration doesn’t wait for pen and paper! – I’m sure Ben Franklin or some wise white guy said that or stole it from someone. I typed about the things I saw and thought about, not literary gold, but the quota had been satisfied and I could recline the driver’s seat, stretch my legs slightly and sleep.
My mobile shelter didn’t offer much room for me to stretch out, but I took up all available space momentarily, returning back to a semi fetal position under the warmth of my snuggie. I loved this car, it seemed to be the one thing that has stayed with me, certainly longer than any person in my adult life.

Not anything to make a YouTube channel about, a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT. It was red with a solid, small black racing tripe over the top and one that ran perpendicular to the ground that wrapped halfway up the car. I always liked to think this was bow wrapping on the car that was just for me. It had cheap 80’s hard plastic, with corporate gray carpeting. This baby had the tire and jack under the front hood and the engine in the back of the car. – weird flex, but alright.

The reason the car is so special has more to do with how it came into my possession. I was living in Boston, I had a serious drug problem after coming back from my trip to Spain and Boston was the place I could find work, nod off, and be part of the music scene. I lived in Roxbury, a neighborhood that seems more like a sleepy after thought bolted onto the greater Boston area, that was known as a ‘rough part’ of town. This of course, was laughable as housing prices were still astronomical and unattainable, they remain that way to this day. While out of town developers where allowed to ‘gentrify’ and build giant, soulless, ‘open-concept’ monolithic skyscrapers, the residence lost public transportation to the T and had to rely on the increasingly behind schedule buses. People were poor, angry, loved music, and wanted to nod off, I had never felt so at home in a land full of strangers.

I distinctly remember having this feeling that my father would not approve of me being in a place like this, let alone the activities and people I was getting involved with. I first was introduced to my new car as Deloris. Deloris was owned by Franklin. Franklin stood an impressive six feet three inches when he wasn’t hunched. The impressive height was dwarfed
by his contradictory size, weighing no more than a bag and a half of concrete.
Americans will use anything but the Metric system to quantify things.

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