Goode Vibrations Read online

  “Well, I’d best be off,” I said. “Thanks for the hospitality, Dillon.”

  “Where ya headed to?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “No real destination. Just exploring. I’m a photographer for National Geographic.”

  “You on some kind of assignment?”

  I shrugged. “Sort of. My project is something I’m calling ‘The Unseen America.’ Weird stuff, out of the way places, unusual perspectives. That kinda thing.’

  Dillon laughed. “Well, it’s a big ol’ country, friend. You could spend a lifetime and not see a quarter of it.” He scratched his jaw. “We saw a hell of a lot of it when we were Deadheads, doing sorta what you’re doing.” He eyed me. “If you got no plans, you want an idea to start you off?”

  “Sure, bro. Hit me with it.”

  “Head down to the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It’s a nice drive down from here, and the caves are worth seeing. From there, you’re in a good spot to head north, south, or straight west. My advice to you, if you’re interested in unusual and unique perspectives, and ain’t in a hurry, is stay off the freeways. Stick to state and local highways, the little two-lane ones. Ain’t the most direct route anywhere, but that’s where the real America lives. Won’t see shit going eighty on an interstate.”

  I smirked. “Will the van even do eighty?”

  Dillon laughed. “If she will it won’t be for long. I wouldn’t do more than sixty-five, if you want to keep her healthy.”

  “Brilliant advice, my friend. Thanks again for everything.”

  “Pleasure. Safe travels to you, Errol.”

  Still exhausted, but refreshed by the break and the home cooking, and energized by the prospect of a whole country to explore, I tossed my gear into the back of the van, shook Dillon’s hand, and headed out. The radio was tuned to a local country music station—weird stuff, you ask me, but I didn’t mind it, mostly,—and I heard a phrase: “…get in my old Bronco, point the headlights south…”

  No clue about the band or song, but it fit, so I turned it up and did what song said: pointed my headlights south, consulting my phone’s GPS for directions—sticking to the small highways, county lines and two-lane roads in the open country.

  Windows down, stars overhead, bitter American drip coffee in a Styrofoam cup from a gas station, munching on oily crisps and jerked beef, nowhere to be, no one to please but me.

  I’d a feeling this was going to be a great holiday.

  Poppy

  I had a stuffed-to-bursting belly, thanks to Delia insisting on making a three-egg omelet, a full pound of bacon, and two thick slices of homemade bread, along with coffee so thick I wasn’t sure she measured the grounds so much as poured with her eyes closed. She also insisted I call my mother while she drove me, as promised, thirty minutes west from her house.

  “Poppy! How nice to hear from you, honey.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the sound of her voice. “Hi, Momma. How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m spectacular, darling. In between showings, grabbing a bite of breakfast with Lucas. What are you up to?”

  I hesitated over my answer, especially when Delia gave me a hard, expectant look. “Oh, well, you know. I, uh, officially dropped out of Columbia yesterday. Thought you should know.”

  “I suppose this is a bit odd coming from your mother, but I must say, it’s about time. So what are you doing?”

  “I’m traveling and exploring my options.” A nice, neutral answer.

  “Exploring your options.” She sighed. “I suppose that’s teenage code for something I probably wouldn’t approve of if I knew the full story.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Just make me a couple promises, Poppy. No stupid stuff. No hitchhiking on the side of the highway at midnight. If someone gives you the creeps, you run fast and far. You get into trouble, call your momma. Just be smart, Poppy. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you’re invincible. And honestly, with your looks, you need to be even more careful.”

  “I’m careful, Mom. No creepers, no dumb risks.”

  “A huge part of me is screaming to demand you get on the next airplane to Ketchikan, but I know better. I think I did a little too good a job of raising you girls to be strong and independent.”

  “By the way, I gave my art department advisor, Mrs. DuPuis, your address. She gave me her old vintage Minolta, and I’m going to be mailing my rolls to her to develop, and she’s going to mail the processed photographs to you to hang on to for me until I get there.”

  “Am I allowed to look at them?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Yes, Mother. Just don’t get fingerprints on them.”

  “Darling. You do know film cameras were the only kind of cameras we had until rather recently, right?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Will there be anything in the photos that will shock me?”

  I hummed. “I don’t know. Maybe? Probably not, but you never know.”

  A pause. “Is this the right thing for you, Poppy? Is this going to bring you joy and happiness and purpose?”

  I didn’t answer right away, because when Mom asked a question like that, she expected a thoughtful answer. “I mean, it feels like it. I was suffocating in New York. Artistically, I was being hamstrung at Columbia. I had friends; you know I’ve always made friends easily. But…I’m leaving them all behind and they don’t seem to miss me nor I them. I don’t know. I’m not going to say I’m looking for something, I’m just…”

  “Eighteen and spreading your wings.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Just be safe. That’s all I ask.”

  “I will.”

  I ended the call and slid the phone into my purse, and then looked at Delia. “Satisfied?”

  She shook her head. “Well, I wouldn’t have let my daughter go hitchhiking across the country at eighteen, but then I’m old-fashioned.”

  “If you think about it historically, though, this is the way of life, Delia. You strike out on your own. Find your own way. It’s all I’m doing.”

  “Men did that, dear—we women stayed home and raised babies.”

  I snorted. “True. But there were women who did go out on their own. And anyway, it’s what I’m doing. I really do appreciate your concern. I know you mean well.”

  We drove a while longer, and then we reached a junction where two highways met. Delia pulled to the shoulder and put the Buick into park. She pointed one way. “That way takes you to US-40, which will take you to Ohio.” She pointed the other way. “That way takes you to US-119, south toward Kentucky by way of West Virginia.”

  I looked around—four-lane highways, a Sunoco, a maze of entrance and exit ramps; endless possibilities. “This is perfect, Delia. Thank you for setting such a wonderful tone for my trip.”

  “I think what you’re doing is foolish, and you ought to go home straight away. But I’m also a bit jealous, if I’m honest. I was never brave enough to do what you’re doing.”

  I leaned across and hugged her. “Thank you again for everything. Be well.”

  She patted my cheek. Reached into the pocket of her cardigan and held something in her hand—she took my hand in hers and pressed something into my palm. “Take it and no arguments, if just to soothe my conscience that I’ve done everything I can to help you be safe.”

  It felt like cash rolled up, and I knew I couldn’t refuse it. So I pocketed it and shook my head. “It’s not necessary, Delia. But thank you.”

  She just patted my hand. “Be safe. Be smart.”

  “I will.” I got out, shouldered my backpack and arranged everything properly. Waved. “Bye, Delia.”

  “Goodbye, dear. Safe travels and Godspeed.”

  She pulled a U-turn and headed back the way she came, and then after a moment was out of sight and I was alone. Ohio, or Kentucky? North or south?

  Either direction was the wrong way for my eventual destination, but for some reason my gut said south, so south I went.

  I followed
US-119 on foot, on the shoulder, for a long time. Hours. Miles. A truck stopped for me, about three hours into the day, then later on a cube van marked with the logo of a local plumbing service pulled over. The gentleman within was middle-aged, rounding, balding, sweating, smelling of chemicals and tobacco. The interior of his cab was cluttered with Mt. Dew bottles, empty cigarette boxes, and McDonald’s bags, but his brown eyes were kind and he offered to take me three exits down, a good forty-five minutes drive for him and hours of walking for me. He told me about his daughter, my age, a journalism major at Penn State, who had a serious boyfriend he didn’t like, and about how she was a cheerleader and he went to all the football games just to watch her cheer even though he was more of a basketball fan…I had a feeling he was talking about his daughter more to put me at ease than anything, which was sweet. He eventually got around to introducing himself as José, and I told him my story, leaving college to explore as I headed for Alaska on foot.

  I got the usual disbelief and warnings and such, but then José started telling me about when he was sixteen and living in Mexico and his parents decided to emigrate here to the States. They got separated at the border and he ended up going through immigration alone, and how hard he worked for his citizenship and how he built his plumbing company on his own from nothing…

  We reached the exit, and he stopped at the stop sign at the top of the exit and I got out, said goodbye, and headed back onto the highway.

  So it went. Hours on foot, a ride for a few miles or a few hours, conversation with interesting people. A long-haul trucker named Jerri—with an I—took me from West Virginia halfway through Kentucky, and good grief Jerri was interesting. Jerri didn’t identify as either gender, and wore…his? Her? Their?—Their, I suppose, hair in a long, thick, wavy, mass of glossy blond that wouldn’t have been out of place in a shampoo commercial, but also a heavy stubble beard, lipstick and eyeliner, masculine tattoos on burly arms, a girly pink tank top with a jean skirt…it was confusing, but Jerri was sweet and soft-spoken and bought me lunch at Sonic and talked my ear off about everything from how Rogue One was the best Star Wars movie, to the effects of political policy on living as a nonbinary transgender person.

  Along the way, between rides, I walked. I ended up discovering that I was much happier sticking to local county highways than interstates and major highways. It was safer, for one thing. Fewer semis barreling past at seventy-five, less risk of some distracted asshole veering out of their lane and turning me into toothpaste. Perhaps, being more remote and less traveled, the smaller county highways carried a bit more risk of being picked up by skeezeballs and creepers, but hey, there was a trade-off to everything, right?

  And the other benefit to sticking to small, deserted, rural roads was that there was a hell of a lot more interesting stuff to photograph. I got cool shots of all sorts of things. Roadkill twisted into pained contortions, old abandoned cars on the side of the road off in the tall grass with stickers and wheels missing and weeds growing out of the wheel wells, toppling old barns that had probably been standing since the Civil War, giant six-foot-tall sunflowers growing by the acre, all angled to face the lowering orange sunset; I photographed ancient oak trees standing tall in hayfields like lone sentinels, tiny farmhouses next to industrial-sized barns and silos, and train tracks like endless fingers vanishing into distant points, and trestles over rivers smeared with impossible graffiti, and overpasses like abbreviated tunnels casting patches of shade on the sunbaked asphalt.

  I shot at dawn and dusk, noon and midnight, mostly in black and white. Compulsively, obsessively. I shot the cars that picked me up, the semis as they waited for me to climb up, I shot the drivers (with hand-scribbled releases in case I ended up turning the photo into a sellable piece) as they smiled at me awkwardly or naturally, with even white teeth and meth-fucked gaps.

  I reached Louisville at four in the morning in the cab of a long-haul dairy trucker named Jeb, who let me off at a motel he knew was safe and cheap and near a nice little local trunk line that would put me through to Missouri, eventually. The next morning, or, rather, late afternoon, I mailed several dozen rolls of film to Mrs. DuPuis and purchased more from a local supermarket.

  I then set out on foot, feet aching and legs tired, but finding a bizarre joy in the journey. The long hours on foot shooting everything I saw was sparking my creativity; there were a number of shots I’d taken that I just knew would end up on canvas. I was more inspired than ever to paint, which was tricky since I’d sent my painting supplies to Ketchikan. I had my iPad and stylus, so I could sketch and do digital stuff, but it wasn’t the same as putting on my dad’s old white button-down and standing in front of a freshly stretched canvas.

  I wasn’t even lonely.

  Mostly.

  I had lots of fascinating conversations with lots of fascinating people. The only real skeezeball I’d encountered was Donny, that first day. Everyone else who had stopped for me and given me rides had been kind, generous, honest, and good. Jeb, the trucker who had taken me to Louisville, had been one of the most foul-mouthed, vulgar, strange, and offensive people I’d ever met in my life, but it wasn’t directed at me, it was just…him. Every sentence featured at least two F-bombs, minimum, and everything he saw and thought was verbalized through a filter of vulgar jokes. It was honestly fascinating, once I realized he wasn’t being intentionally offensive, he was just a lonely old man who lived his life in the cab of a semi talking to himself and occasionally to the other truckers via CB radio.

  I wasn’t lonely.

  I was horny, though. Good shitting mother of demons, I was horny. And no mistake, I took the time to alleviate the pressure on my own frequently. I’d discovered masturbation at thirteen, and until I’d managed to get myself a vibrator at sixteen, I’d learned a lot of creative ways to pleasure myself. Mornings were for coffee and jilling off. Of course, waking up in a motel was not exactly conducive to coffee access, and without consistent Wi-Fi access, I couldn’t reliably find any visual stimuli. And god knew my memory banks of hot sexy times were a little fuzzy, seeing as the last time I’d had sex with a boy was my dumb ex four months ago. I’d sworn off men at the time, and then I’d been so caught up in the drama of what I was doing with my life, and my art, and if I was meant to go to college at all, that I’d avoided hookups to focus on sorting myself out. And now, this road trip. And no, I was for damn sure not about to get jiggy with a long-haul trucker in the back of his sleeper cab. Most of them were old enough to be my father, for one thing.

  I mean, if I managed to meet a hot guy that didn’t feel like a skeeze, I’d possibly be willing to let some fun times roll, but mostly I wanted to just do my walking, and find rides with truckers, and take my photographs. But god, I was horny.

  I needed something more than my own fingers, more than my little silver bullet vibrator, which was the only sex toy I’d felt was easily transportable. I needed a man. But I didn’t want to need a man.

  I also didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with hardening my heart and mind for a one-night hookup, which I mostly loathed. I’d do it if I got desperate enough, but I preferred to cultivate…temporary, short-lived, low-emotion flings. The barista at a coffee shop away from my usual stomping grounds, for instance. Or the TA of a class a friend was in. Or a construction worker doing welding on a building I passed on the way to the subway station. It wouldn’t be a one-night hookup but, instead, a couple days or a couple weeks of decently arousing fucking that didn’t involve a lot of exchanges of life stories or anything. And when I was done, I could alter my routine a little, and that particular fling would be over. No phone numbers, no texting, no explanations of why this was only temporary.

  On the road like this, hookups were the only possibility and I just wasn’t feeling it. I needed something more. Something better. Something different. What? I had no clue. Thus the problem.

  Would I have to wait until I arrived in Alaska to find what I was looking for?

  What was I, in fact, ev
en looking for?

  God, I had no clue.

  All I knew about myself at the moment was that I liked walking the county highways taking photographs. I liked hanging out with long-haul truckers and old grandmas and kindly plumbers. I liked blue skies and cheap motels and greasy diner food. I liked being on my own. I liked the feeling of an endless world to explore.

  What I didn’t know about myself was how to fill the hole where my heart was, or even how the hole got there. How had I’d gone eighteen years without realizing there was a giant, gaping hole in my soul. Further mysteries included why I had to be cursed with a wickedly, insanely, mind-bogglingly out-of-control sex drive, but also with a fiercely independent nature that refused to depend on anyone and refused to ask for help and refused to let me even, for a moment, let anyone in to see the soft tender center of my soul.

  I didn’t have any answers to any of that.

  I also didn’t want to admit I’d possibly started this wild-ass adventure in search of answers to questions I didn’t even know how to articulate.

  Errol

  The only thing this van didn’t have that I knew I’d miss was a shower. But being a bachelor, I didn’t mind going a while between bathing. Also, I was a photojournalist used to living in remote locations with scant access to civilized amenities like western bathrooms, and often went long periods of time smelling like yak sac. I mean, the only person I had to impress with smelling good was myself, right?

  I’d stopped in the next major town closest to where I’d bought the van and spent several angry, frustrating hours negotiating a maze of impenetrable bureaucracy getting basic insurance so I could register the vehicle and not get pulled over by local law enforcement. I found a grocery and stocked up on basic food items, meat and cheese and bread and beer, mostly.

  Then, I’d hit the road. Headed toward the caves my mate Dillon had mentioned, by way of two-lane roads winding through the countryside. Good old Google told me it should take me about twelve hours driving time to get to the caves from where I was outside Utica, but the slow winding back roads route I took added several hours to that. Plus, I stopped to snap photos of whatever caught my interest. For the first time since I’d started working for Nat Geo, I wasn’t hyper-focused on one thing. And there was no adrenaline. It was nice, actually. See a nice old barn? Stop for a photo. Stretch the old legs, bask in the sun and enjoy the peace and quiet and solitude.