Leaving New Orleans

Jack and I decide to skip town because N.O. is like heroin, the first time is the best night of your life but a second night and we may never leave. Jack, who is working on his PhD and becoming a high school teacher, has already decided he’s going to resign and become a full time stripper or at least on his summers off. We are en route to Atlanta, but it’s a long drive and we’re hungover so we stop at a town in the Gulf Shores and relax by the beach. At first we are giddy and looking for hints of oil from the recent BP oil spills, but we don’t find any and are disappointed, which is pretty deranged. We walk out in the water which remains shallow far from shore, until we are surrounded and it looks like we are walking on water. The conversation deepens and we talk about my failed or failing relationship with Nathanial, which turns to my “Daddy issues,” which turns to just talking about my dad. I spill it out, his sickness, my fear of losing him though he’s already lost, my secret wish something (good or bad) would happen to change his situation, the mental illness that grips him. It’s as if I’m professing my innermost thoughts to God himself as we’re out there floating on the sea surrounded by pale blue water that dissolves into the sky.

Of course there is no where to go from there than Sonic. Jack takes an exaggerated bite of an onion ring to express his pleasure. I laugh and get out of the car, still shoeless from the beach. I step in what seems like watered down car grease, oil, gas, I don’t know. I see a stubbed cigarette dancing in the oily puddle. As a child I thought oil was the most beautiful thing. It’s rainbow hues and luminescence. Anyhow, I don’t freak out, I don’t jump in the car to clean up and put on my shoes. Instead I pause and take a minute noticing the breeze and clean air. My surroundings are natural and beautiful, except that I am standing barefoot in a mini oil spill. I look up and see an overweight elderly woman in a rusty Chevy truck smoking a cigarette and placing an order. What are we doing? I am so sad. Her wrinkly mole encrusted arms are tan and leathery. She seems like a regular here. Sonics are frightening to me. I don’t know how or what to order, if I should tip the girl on rollerblades bringing my food out, if I’m supposed to eat right there in the car, or take my food to go. Do “these people” really just not care about their health or the environment at all or are they ignorant? They ought to take a trip to NYC to see what overindulgence does. A once plush and environmentally diverse land was wiped out by cement and man made parks. I know I’m on a road trip, but cars and the way people overuse them just disgust me right now. I picture the videos we used to watch in kindergarden, a sad brown bear living in a forest covered in litter, asking “How would you feel if I dumped my garbage in your home?” And now images of cartoon cows burping greenhouse gases. These videos really brainwashed me. I remember after being dropped off at the bus stop, I was about 5 years old and a little boy kicked a piece of moss by a tree, and I went and put it back in it’s place, fitting the cone shapped dirt in to the hole and feeling the felty softness of the moss. I said a little prayer to G-d that it would grow strong. I feign superiority, but truly I'm like everyone else, a big hypocrite. I throw things out the window at will and then am disgusted when I see someone else do the same.