THIS WAS MY 1ST REAL NIGHT OF TRUE BARSTOOL drinking-'til-you're-drunk and philosophizing with my fellow barflies about love and marriage. I met a character from Pink, Oklahoma who left an indelible impression after he juggled 5 pool balls and told me about the hole-in-1 he had just buried a few days days ago. He also had some interesting opinions about love.
A dozen years later, I caught up with Kerwyn thanks to the odd magic of Facebook.
From the Road Trip Journal:
DAY 3
Destination: Prescott, AZ to Flagstaff, AZ
Date: 7.10.97 (Thursday)
Mileage: 19,602 to 19,700 (98 miles)
Bar(s): the Blaze Club & the Monte V.
Imbibed: 4 screwdrivers and half a rum & Coke
Check out time at my fancy digs was 11:00, but I'd strewn so much of my shit around that I didn't get my last over-packed bag out 'til 11:15. But not before Uncle Joe's cleaning lady, who resembles someone named Dot working at a truck stop diner, sneers as I ferry my modern home electronics to my antiquated vehicle.
"You almost outta there? You're running way over already, and I gotta get in there. I got lots of stuff to do and I'm in a hurry."
No problem, lady. Thanks for your hospitality.
After spending $40 bucks for the tools necessary to do a home valve adjustment, I sputter into Flagstaff, where I descend onto Beaver Street, looking for the SAE chapter at Northern Arizona University. At this point, I just want to give my wheezing red box the day off, so I check into the Downtowner hostel on San Francisco St.
After a delicious dinner spent watching Dog Man [who we'll hear more about later], followed by a trip to the village book store, where I ruminate on the legacy of infidelity in the Kennedy family, I went to the Blaze Club across the street from the hostel. I got there early, so I chatted with the doorman, who, it turns out, is friends with Neil Preston, [the photographer] who I worked with on my Tom Jones story [for Who Weekly].
I ended up hanging out with a pair of cool locals — Kerwyn, who juggled 5 pool balls for me, and Jonas, [who told me he moved to Flagstaff on a whim from Pennsylvania, never having been here before]. After they were largely responsible for my maiden 1-4 pool hall ass kicking, we retire to the Monte V. for some barstool poetry.
.
..
...
From the Pocket-Sized Notebook:
1:35 [p.m.] Pit stop in Jerome, AZ. Walking around the "Ghost Town," athough it seems to be prospering as a quaint little town, full of southwestern art galleries and ice cream shops. The town is built on the side of a hill and it's got the feel of Berkeley or Laurel Canyon, except that the view looks out onto orange Arizona desert and limestone hills.
I'm having a $4.00 cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice. This place is frozen in time, more '60s hippie retreat — with flashes of the Old West — than turn-of-the-century cowboy town. I'm at the Flatiron Cafe, run by a pair of Melissa Etheridge-loving lesbians with hairy pits. A flyer on the door announces an event at the pizza joint next door. "Recylings, Misappropriations and Flights of Fancy: A 3-person, all pizza box art show at The Wedge on the Edge. Come to the least pretentious art opening ever!" promises the flyer.
Time to blow, on to Sedona, where I think I'll spend the night, wake up and adjust the valves, then move on to Roswell tomorrow.
In the 1st of many examples of how fluid and flexible my life was, Sedona got scraped for Flagstaff. It would be another 6 years before I made it to Roswell.
Later that evening. Flagstaff. Eating a Mexican food dinner at an outdoor patio area that could just turn into the happening rage place later that night. Cell phone alert, cell phone alert! A cute blonde in an orange summer dress is making small talk a la L.A. Land of the "I'm cool if I'm cell phoning in the loudest, busiest place possible" creature. Yet another reason to flee mighty L.A.
Strange to read this 13 years later — when cell phones are everywhere. Now you're a freak if you don't have one. The day is approaching in the not-so-distant future when there won't be anyone left who remembers what life was like before cell phones. This was the early days of cell phone use. When they were still a novelty and people seemed to be showing off when they used them in public.
...You go to bars long enough and you have some odd realizations. Like how chips — that quintessential bar nosh — are, essentially, edible eating utensils. Like [how] this trip is the adult version of Let's Go, Europe [the backpacker's bible that I'd toted with me 13 summers earlier after I graduated from UCLA in 1984].
...Overheard: "I prefer to think of training a dog like building a foundation."
This guy is in the middle of walking a client's 2 dogs when he breaks off and pitches Cell Phone Girl and her boyfriend on his program for their beloved black lab. I gotta say, the man's got passion for his work. Gotta admire that. Still, it does seem odd to be talking dog training — and loudly — in the middle of the [restaurant's] crowded outdoor patio. He's even got his Dog Guy T-shirt, complete with a goofy/cute dog cartoon on his proud Dog Guy chest.
"$350 is what I charge for puppies. $400 for adults."
3 minutes later he brings over his client, a cute woman in her late 20s, and her 2 dogs, an irish setter and a mangy mix of greyhound and other mysterious strains of canine, for a testamonial. She raves to Cell Phone Girl. Another satisfied customer. Thanks, Dog Guy. You saved my marriage!
Things you notice: The train that runs intermittantly 100 yards away across the street. And it is loud. The guy at the hostel warned me about it. (Did I mention I was staying at a hostel?)...
I sometimes get the feeling that people who have peculiar dogs are starved for attention. Like the guy across the way, who strikes a pose in the Cool Guy Half-Squat-With-Thumb-On-Chin. Smiling, chatting to the couple walking by who've made the mistake of commenting on his goofy basset hound...
Another train barrels through town. That horn is fucking loud....
I don't believe it. Dog Guy is back. Boy, this guy's got some nerve. Now he's pulled up a chair and joined Cell Phone Girl, her boyfriend and 2 of his buddies. Dog Guy brings out the dog training story in everybody.
"Hi, I'm Mike Vaughn," he says, extending his hand to the 3 young dudes who are a good 10 years younger than him.
Is Dog Guy really a pathetic weasel? Or am I having a subconscious kiniption fit because he's a) about my age b) going bald and c) striking up a conversation with the Barfly Youth, something I've been unable to do yet. I've felt a bit self-conscious so far. I've travelled like this numerous times, usually with equally challenging budgetary constraints.
But I've never been this self-conscious, aware of the fact that every single person I encounter could end up being a story to be shared with the whole world for all of eternity in a book. That's fucking weird. And the fact that I will be forced to face some potentially ugly truths about myself also has, I admit, fanned the flames of my anxiety. I'm in early denial now, knowing that the potential for some crash-and-burn realizations looms somewhere out there on the horizon. And the fact that I'll find some semblance of "the truth" in a loud, smoky bar strikes me as twisted and absurd. So maybe that's why I'm content to sit back and observe for now.
I don't need to be Dog Guy, selling the Barstool Youth on my product — me — quite yet. I just finished off a lard-heavy Mexican meal and I need to get back to the hostel and throw on some jeans. There's a slight chill blowing in the wind. And I'm cold.
After this hour-long run of restaurant voyeurism, my Flagstaff pit stop turned into a night of pool playing and barstool philosophizing. Kerwyn and Jonas shared their stories with me, in between games of kicking my ass in pool. My last few scribblings from the evening were a series of quotes, the 1st one from Kerwyn in response to my question of what he did when he worked at an ice cream parlor in Aspen:
"Scooped ice cream and embellished."
Another quote from Kerwyn about a girl he'd been involved with:
"She turned me into a misogynist." ~Kerwyn.
I wrote down another snippet of conversation, where he confesses to having a "philanthropic penis" before serving up this piece of wisdom: "Abstinence makes the dick grow harder."
With a good buzz in a strange bar, this stuff sounded brilliant. When I got back home I spent many hours writing and re-writing about my Flagstaff pit stop, mostly because Kerwyn was such a wise, funny barstool sage. Though you'd hardly know it by the quotes I'm sharing here. "You gotta make the Tijuana donkey show on your last night" was the last Kerywn quote I wrote down. Then someone named Josh (or was that Jonas?) said:
"When's the last time you had an emotion that wasn't sanitized and nice-ified for your career?"
I'm not quite sure in what context this was said or why I felt compelled to write it down. Maybe I was talking about how fortunate, and a little anxious, I felt about getting the chance to be truthful, without pulling punches, in this Big Break.
Several months later, while in the midst of trying to write The Book, that chance to be brutally honest had brought out all my fears and self-doubt. I found out it wasn't so easy to be unsanitized.
Share
No comments:
Post a Comment