I-94 W.

Last weekend, I returned to Minneapolis: the location of the optimistic start to my college career, the height of my days of independent living, and the cold, miserable drudgery that forced me home to greener pastures.

I’ve gotta tell you: I was stoked for the car ride. I used to make that 5.5 hour bitch at least once a month for two years and I had my playlist all picked out, my coffee mug at the ready, and visions of gas station doughnuts in my mind. Of course when I took off at 7:30 in the morning, my car encapsulated in a block of ice, I realized a few miles out of the city that my cruise control had broken, and my windshield wiper blades were too frozen to even bother sweeping away the slush, salt, and melted snow leftover from the previous night’s storm. Fan-tastic.

However, I did not let that deter me. I got my black-booted right foot situated in the most comfortable pedal-to-floor position,  gave myself a great impromptu concert featuring all of my current favorite songs, and did not mind pulling over to wipe the crust of salt off my windshield every half hour or so. Unfortunately, when I reached the longest stretch of the trip, between Eau Claire and St. Paul, I was forced into bored, random thoughts of which celebrities I would want to adopt me if I was a wayward orphan. Immediately Samuel L. Jackson popped into my head for a dad, but I couldn’t pick a mom that I wouldn’t either A.) Want to be best friends with or B.) Have wayward lesbionic thoughts about. Instead, I decided on Honor Blackman circa. 1965 in Goldfinger. Afro Samurai and Pussy Galore? Quite the pair.

Not much had changed along the highway in a year. There was considerably less construction and a huge new hotel outside of Eau Claire, but otherwise pretty static. Of course, the Twin City skylines were familiar scenes, and boy was it good to be back. I believe my relationship with Minneapolis is like that of a woman with a pair of insanely hot high heels. You put them on at the start of the night: you look great and feel like you can take on the world. But by the end, you have five blisters, your legs hurt, and you never want to wear them again. Yet the next time a special occasion rolls around, you dig them out of the closet with undaunted enthusiasm.

I love and hate that city.

What was different about this trip was the number 21. As in, age 21. What was also different was that one of my best lifelong friends transferred to the U after I left, and thus gave me an intense sense of comfort and familiarity in a place I used to simply not fit into. Together “Xenia” and I visited my old coffee shop where I met up with old friends, was recognized by old regulars (wtf, right?), had a mini-party in the old house where I used to live with one of my bridesmaids who still lives there, and drank up a storm in Dinkytown. As I sat in the Library and downed a Long Island with Xenia, I looked at all the UMN memorobilia on the walls and felt a twinge of regret about leaving.  I remember driving up to the city on moving day, 9/4/05 and looking at the skyline with all these romantic freshman thoughts in my head–I specifically said to myself, ” This place knows where you’re going to end up. Who you’re going to be, what you’re going to see, and who you’re going to meet.” Kind of lame I know, but it was a big life day, okay? And as Forth and I drove away from the city on 12/15/07 in our loaded vehicle caravan, I couldn’t even look at the skyline in the rearview mirror. I had conceded defeat and was retreating tail between legs.

However, when Sunday morning rolled around, city seen and fun had, I was eager to toss the empty whiskey bottle into the recycling, pack up, and head home. A ton of fun was had, and what’s the point in sticking around if visiting is so fucking awesome? As far as the Minne-apple goes, I enjoyed the dance, but simply have to give my feet a rest until the next time around.

**Back.

Lit. Life.

I don’t have any blog ideas for Forth and Back at the moment: only Cup of Angst. So, here’s some fiction:

The morning was holding its breath.
Audrey leaned over the balcony just outside her discount hotel room and puffed a clouded breath of air into the misty Illinois morning. She couldn’t quite remember the name of the town, but she knew where the Greyhound station was, which was all she really needed.
The early breeze blew a few strands of wet hair across Audrey’s cheek and she realized they were beginning to turn crisp with the frosty air—she had just emerged from the shower after all. Even after showering, Audrey didn’t feel clean. This hotel room was by far the sleaziest dwelling she’d ever encountered, on the road or otherwise. The toilet was cracked, the tile in the shower stall was yellowed and peeling, the linoleum floor was stained with rusty-brown water spots, and that was just the bathroom.
Spots of flaky-white crust topped the tacky queen-sized bedspread, the two watercolor portraits of frolicking kittens on the wall were cracked and askew on their nails, the desk lamp was missing its shade, and there was even a wad of chewed pink gum stuck in the folds of the green vinyl window curtains.
As far as Audrey was concerned, the $33 a night room was brilliant. Though she was certain she’d contracted leftover syphilis from a two-dollar hooker who rolled around in the unwashed bed sheets with a long-haul trucker, this sort of hotel room was the stuff that first-time solo journeys on the cheap are made out of.
Half an hour later, Audrey was standing in line to board the early bus to Memphis. She inhaled diesel fumes and bounced on the balls of her feet, clutching her yellow-canvassed backpack tightly to her chest. The right pocket of her faded Levis shook with the vibration of her cell phone, no doubt about to deliver the fifth worried message from Nathan.
“Look—,” his digitalized voice spoke angrily, “I don’t know what this is all about. Are you mad? What did I do? It’s not going to help if you don’t talk to me. I’m standing outside your apartment right now so if you’re curled up in bed ignoring me again—I’m here. And I’m gonna stay until you come out. So…just…please——
Come out.”
Audrey figured it would be another two or three messages before he realized that she wasn’t mad, and could possibly be in danger. Of course, she was in no danger and if she happened to get into it later, well—that might be okay.
Slowly the bus finished boarding, and Audrey nestled into a window seat on the middle left side. There was a sparse crowd, so there was no worry of someone sitting next to her. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to talk to someone, or if she should continue to avoid human contact. Then again, a Greyhound bus in Bumfuck, Illinois at 6:45 a.m. probably wasn’t the place to find friends. It was, however, fodder for a good solo journey.
As the bus slid on and off the freeway, darting between other small towns and stations, Audrey focused on the window. It was southern Illinois—of course there was nothing to see. However, it was nothing she’d ever seen before. She could see a whole city from her desk at work. Actually, the reception desk at Unicare Insurance Company in Madison had quite a stellar view for the droll work that was done there. She could see a good chunk of the capital building, a colorful strip of State Street, and even one of the M lakes—Monona or Mendota, she always forgot.
The bus came to a railroad crossing and stopped, opening its door and crawling across the tracks, a move required by law but ridiculous by reality. Fields of sharp, stubby corn stalks coated the brown land, as far as Audrey could see. The Wisconsin landscape was familiar, but then a dilapidated barn, painted in a disgusting cobalt blue hue snapped up on the horizon and Audrey smiled. Distance was growing.

***

Late afternoon sunlight shone in the windows of Audrey’s bedroom on the third floor of a converted shoe factory near the UW-Madison campus. Her white bed sheets were twisted around her smooth waist, and damp with sweat. Oscar, her tabby cat, was curled in a warm ball beside her.
Audrey twisted her head to the right side of the bed and her ponytail flopped loosely over one eye as she spotted Nathan reading in the rocker near the window. His brown jeans were rolled up to the knee and he wore no shirt. A pewter cross hung lazily on his bare chest, rising and falling with his steady breathing. Nathan was reading Tolstoy and rubbing his chin, which was cupped in an ink-stained hand.
Dust swirled in an eddy of sunlight and Audrey sneezed. Nathan’s eyes rose from the text and he smiled, never particularly startled by anything.
“How long have you been here?” Audrey asked, rubbing her nose.
“An hour or two.”
“Man. Have I really been out that long?”
“I guess so.”
Audrey noticed a vase of fresh daisies sitting on her kitchen table. The white and yellow flowers blended together and swirled gently in the water with the breeze. Nathan saw her looking and smiled.
“It’s your half birthday,” he said. “Thought I’d celebrate.”
Setting the book down next to the flowers, he crawled onto Audrey’s bed and began to kiss the side of her neck, down her shoulder. Sensing an intrusion, Oscar hopped down from the bed and up onto the windowsill, ready to watch all the people sifting up and down the sidewalk below.

***

“Miss? Miss??”
Audrey awoke to an intrusive finger poking her in the knee.
“Miss? It’s St. Louis. You have to get off now. There’s a break.”
Groggily, Audrey sat up and looked around. Familiarizing herself with her surroundings once again, she smiled at the elderly woman who had roused her from sleep. The woman smelled like onions and sweat, and was lacking at least half a dozen teeth.
“Thank you,” Audrey said as the woman shuffled down the aisle and out the door.
Checking her cell phone, she saw that she had one missed call from her mother and one from Nathan, though no voicemails were left. It was 5:37 in the evening, which meant it was time for dinner.
The bus depot was located in the heart of downtown St. Louis, so cheap food was not hard to find. Audrey walked a few blocks to a sub shop and ordered a footlong turkey on wheat. As she ate, she watched dozens of people flutter by, mostly oblivious to the fact that she was dining in the window. Absentmindedly flipping her phone open and shut, Audrey’s finger hovered above #2—Nathan’s number on speed-dial—but refrained from dialing.
As the early autumn sun dipped lower and lower in the sky, Audrey nursed her soda, wondering how to kill time until the bus departed again at 10 p.m. The trip from St. Louis to Memphis would be an overnight journey, requiring a night of uncomfortable sleep, all crunched up in the sticky upholstery of her bus seat. However, it would almost seem a luxury after last night’s dwellings.
Even though the bus had only crept slightly closer to the Gulf, Audrey noticed a significant increase in temperature. From outside the sub shop, she spotted a large park across Market Street. Tucking her jacket into her yellow canvas bag, she strode across the still-green grass and sprawled out under an ancient oak. The chill of the ground seeped into her skin and Audrey shivered under the quaking leaves of the tree. A jazz band was performing near a fountain in the center of the park. Each member was blowing furiously into their brass, donning maroon smoking jackets and Stevie-style sunglasses. The rush of the fountain molded with the blare of the trumpets and created a sound that added a little extra rush to Audrey’s blood.
She looked to her left and saw a grungy-looking middle-aged man propped up against a shopping cart full of black plastic garbage bags, munching on an apple. When he was finished, he tossed the core to a couple of quarreling squirrels that immediately stopped wrestling and focused on stripping the fruit of its last bit of detectible flesh.
The wind blew, sucking all the air out of Audrey’s lungs. She shivered.

La Fleur des Caraibes.

Most regrettably, I don’t have much to blog about here on my turn. I’ve been thinking of little besides working, school, and my new internship at a local magazine. I shall be quite the busy bee here pretty soon….because there’s nothing like getting a jumpstart on a career in a dying medium.

Perhaps it’s my escapist tendency, but my mind has been wandering south and by south I mean–the Caribbean. Forth and I have yet to decide on a honeymoon locale and since my dreams of St. Tropez and the Grecian Isles have been tossed out the 38th story window, screaming and flailing and having their brains splashed out in an astounding bloody radius on the sidewalk below by the reality of our shitious economy and the fact that we’re poor to begin with—-well…that was a really long run-on sentence.

A place that I have given great thought to based on the fact that it combines both my and Forth’s geographical cultural preferences, is Martinique. For those of you who have not heard of this tiny French-Caribbean island, why, let me enlighten you!

Martinique is located in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles, or “Breezy Islands.” Basically it’s in the island chain between Puerto Rico and Venezuela. It was landed upon by Christopher Colombus in 1502, settled on by the French in 1635, occupied by the British a couple times in the 1700-1800’s, and was finally declared a French department in 1946.

Essentially I want to be able to sit on the beach and have people bring me drinks and look at pretty things and get to speak a little bit of a differnent language so essentially–Martinique would be perfect. The average temperature is 79 degrees, which is tempered by tradewinds. I wish Milwaukee had tradewinds. *Sigh.

There are all your usual things to do on a Caribbean island–snorkel, scuba dive, parasail, jet ski, etc, but also many historical attractions that allow you to slip back into the French colonial era. You know…minus the slaves.

There was concern about the Caribbean being in the direct path of nearly every hurricane or tropical storm that develops during honeymoon season, but apparently Martinique got nailed by Hurricane Dean in 2007, and thus should be good for another 7 years or so. Besides, I would be okay with waiting until December or January and take a delayed honeymoon, when all of you losers are up to your necks in icicles….Tee-hee.

Planning the honeymoon is one of the things I am absolutely not looking forward to but…there is no denying I crave the beach and the sun more than words can POSSIBLY convey. If Forth can plan a trip to the other end of the United States in an afternoon’s time, I’m sure he can handle getting us to the Lesser Antilles with little to no trouble.

That said, “Merde alors, et au revoir.”

*Back.

“Bark twice if you’re in Milwaukee.”

Well folks, it’s been awhile since I had a decent blog, so I’m going to attempt to make this one good, especially since I have begun an online opinion-writing class, so some practice on you miscreants would be favorable.

I’m not sure that Forth or I mentioned it at all, but last weekend (the 19th), we were in San Diego for a cousin’s wedding. I’ll take any excuse to jet off to Cali, and the wedding was a good one. I have only been in California once before, and that was the LA area when I was the young, impressionable age of 9. Taking a young’n to the center of the Hollywood underbelly (I remember lots of dirt and graffiti) or gallivanting down Rodeo Drive seems a bit of a waste, but we crammed some Disney and Universal time in there too, so at least something made sense.

The point I’m attempting to make here is that there is little to complain about in San Diego. Sure the mornings can start off a bit foggy, but the weather is always so great that newscasters soil their Dockers at 20% chances of rain. Yeah excuse me Pam, but call me back when you’ve got an 80% chance and some red on that radar. As the always hilarious Lewis Black says, the easiest job in the world is a weatherman in San Diego.

“What’s the weather like Lou?”

“Nice. (pause) Back to you.”

Perhaps one of the best features of San Diego is that it played host to the movie Anchorman, which Forth, Viana_17, and I milked to the extreme by casually dropping quotes into normal conversation and situations.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts for our descent into San Diego.”

“Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means ‘a whale’s vagina.’”

“Are you going to do your hair like that for the wedding?”

“Yes. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.”

“Check out that huge wave!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I’ve just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you’re doing and listen……….Cannonball!”

You get the picture.

The architecture of the city is also remarkable in a both modern and ancient Spanish style. Depending on where you are in the city, you can feel like you’re in Tijuana, San Francisco, New York, Fort Knox, or Key West. Forth and I were lodged in a Key West-ish area that was near the airport and Naval Base. We’d like to extend a thanks to the F-18s for that early-morning flight practice. Right back ‘atcha fellas. We did venture into the Tijuana-y area, otherwise known as Old Town. Here we partook in some late-night Mexican food which probably would have been a pleasurable experience had we not been waited on by a rookie busboy trying to cover the rush with limited English. Some tequila in the margaritas might have helped too. Despite that, Forth, Viana_17, and I had fun rolling in the Pacific waves and taking in the friendly critters at the renowned San Diego Zoo.

Something I was shocked to discover there was the beer carts set up along the zootastic nature trails hawking Corona and Sam Adams at ridiculous prices. There is little better in life than beer and orangutans (aside from cheap beer and orangutans), but I was suffering from a headache and poor-itis, and so had to pass up this strikingly Wisconsin-ish marvel and save the boozing for the reception, which could have been one of the most divine experiences EVER.

Forth and I nibbled on hors’deurves and sipped wine while looking out at the San Diego skyline as the water of the bay lapped up against the rocks below the restaurant deck and we were entertained by a British DJ. This little Midwestern girl has never felt so darn classy so I’ll let you in on a little secret: Forth and I even ducked out onto an empty corner of the balcony and slow-danced in the white moonlight to some song I think might have been “Wonderful Tonight” but had already downed 8 too-many glasses of wine to clearly remember. Either way it was THE definition of romance and I just wanted to let the world know.

The only downside of San Diego? The airport, which contains approximately eight seats spanning five or six gates, making lying in hungover misery in the middle of the airport even more unpleasant. Props to the rest of Flight 512 for not needing to use the bathroom directly after takeoff. I’m pretty sure Row 32 would not have appreciated bile stains on their souvenir sweatshirts.

We’ll be back for sure but until then, You stay classy, San Diego.

**Back.