We're in the Smokey Mountains to go Zorbing. Zorbing is when you get in a clear plastic hamster like ball and roll down the mountain. I've been looking forward to this for over a year and when we get to the top of the mountain my heart is pounding. An Australian dude straps me in to the mylar plastic ball and I am held tight to a chair inside the ball suspended by bungee ropes, similar to what binds suitcases and things to the top of your car. But the trip down the mountain is a dud. A few lame bounces, overall disorientation, mild head rush, but definitely not much fuel for the adrenaline junky. We had planned to camp that night in Knoxville, but it's a family town and we feel sort of silly, plus we find out that there's a Country Music Festival in Nashville the next day, so we drive three hours which feels like no time at all.
We pull in and Jack has picked out a hotel he wants to stay at on his IPhone. The hotel "happens" to be in the middle of gay central so we get fancy, and drink a few coronas in the hotel while we are getting ready. I don't remember much about the rest of the night except slurring. Good thing we were at a gay club where I wasn't a target, but I was trying to watch out for Jack. Muscular, fit, gay men in their white collared Alligator shirts were circling him like prey and trying to use me as an in to get to him.
These days is nothing like “On the Road.” We have maps, cell phones, GPS, every saftey net one could imagine. I enjoy the trip, but don’t feel that exhiliration one would get standing on the edge of a cliff. My cliff has a fence and a warning sign: “Danger Cliff, Don’t throw frisbees or your dogs will die. Don’t lean over or you will die. Don’t look down or you may panic, and die. Don’t do anything exciting or your heart will beat and you may suffer a heart attack, which may result in death.” We don’t go streaking in corn fields. We don’t get wasted (most days). We don’t have careless sex with others, or each other though Jack accidentally grabs my crotch or breast sometimes at night always moaning, “Tooooony. Toooony.” We meet a few new people, but mostly keep up our guard. We go to gamble in Tunica and each win a few hundred dollars and call it quits early because we don’t want to blow it all away. We only drink half of our free casino drinks, because you know they just try to get you loopy so you gamble it all away. At Paula Deen’s restaurant, I don’t even eat anything fried except for half of a fried green tomato (so good!). Two of the craziest, free sprited fuckers around and now we are clearly moving slowly to the other side. I tell Jack about my realization, and he responds, “I just wanted a safe, fun road trip, no problems.” So un-Jack like.
