stories

Travelogue #8 Stuck in Portland until VooDoo Doughnuts The concept of sticking to one's word--something I'm adamant about--is now manifesting itself in my life's outcome. For instance, I asked my friend Ines and her boyfriend Richard what doughnuts they must have at VooDoo Doughnuts...

Travelogue #9 #9 #9 #9 #9 #9 #etc. Wild Bill and the Japanese Phenomenon Eugene, Oregon, without college students, is desolate. With a few dollars procured from a random guy who asked me about a stabbing, then thrusting $10 in my face, I sought out some place to relax from the constant...

Travelogue #11 Greg's Gift The ride with Greg was unusual. First, he was playing medieval music which skipped on an old 10-second delay CD player. Second, our conversation went along in a way that's similar to Good Morning America when two correspondents have a brief tape delay by location...

Travelogue #12 $3 for Carrying Groceries Normally, one would suspect that street derelicts are out to swindle people. And you'd be correct but neglectful to notice that sometimes they rip themselves off. After meeting this wannabee musician/junkie who ripped off old men in the Castro as a...

Travelogue #13 $8 of Eastern-European Venture Capitalists in The Castro "You're very good," said the two eastern-europeans. I performed a bunch of Beatles songs for them (by request), and they in return taught me some Russian songs--one about and by a 40 year-old man who leaves his wife in...

Travelogue #14 (I'll do my best to get this shit written about when I get... somewhere) Delaware Police "What the fuck are you doing? Why the fuck are you on the highway?" said a violent-looking once-removed-from-immigration police officer. His crew cut was as trim and cropped as his speech...

Travelogue #15 Logan in the Morning In the backseat of a car, at 7am, I began my career as a teacher. The student was Logan, a young boy with a construction paper crown-hat, green-crayon'd leaves attached with Elmer's Glue. After answering jovial questions from the mother (driver) and...

Travelogue #15b Its For Your Wellness and Being Stupid hippies. Stupid me. From inside her van, a girl named Melissa assembled something for me to eat in the morning, outside of downtown Flagstaff, AZ. We--her husband, a streetbum drunk, and myself--had just pushed their van onto a curb in...

Travelogue #16-ish Email of NYC Debauchery Let's see... I just got back from NYC, living up in Washington Heights with my good friend Grundy.. He lives with Carole "I felt the earth move under my feet" King's grandson. For NY, it was relatively serene. I went to my cousin's wedding...

A cyclone of a tweaker caught in the wind of mental decay... (Quick travelogue #22) Okay, I admit it: I was looking to buy some marijuana on Market Street, near the Tenderloin in San Francisco. Its been said that when one goes looking for a drug instead of serendipitously being handed said...

Travelogue #23 ....BERKELEY "I don't like people who play Devil's Advocate" said Giggles. Giggles was pissed that I asked why a dedicated busline down the major drive of Telegraph Avenue would be a bad thing. Meanwhile, my friend 300 was passed out on the City Hall steps, his shopping cart...

Travelogue #24 Plastic-Sealed Rectangles Does anybody else do this: Okay, suppose you're walking in a strange town. Perhaps you've just disembarked from mass transit. Not only are you poor, you're broke. Not even enough money to make a phone call to relatives. Maybe you do have enough...

Travelogue #26 Staying at Sally's in Tampa (pt.1) I frequently get the "homebum" title from other traveling types. "You faggot homebum!" has been said more times than I care to remember, and these are my friends. A homebum is simply someone who doesn't travel, gets stuck in a town because...

Travelogue #27 (You would pay money for a book, why not buy me a McChicken on Paypal?) Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!!! Bang.. bang-bang...BANG!!! Down goes Kodie-bear, keeling over. Paws tucked in, and then a rub on the belly. "Good Kodie-bear," says Christopher, and I join in the rubbing of...

Travelogue #28 Will They Still Love You Now That They Know? Gustav Mahler entitled one of his symphonies with the sub-text "The World Has Abandoned Me". When you're looking outside of a Lowe's Home Improvement Center, wondering if the night crew looks in the shed's they use to advertise their...

Travelogue #29 The Measure of... Did you ever hear someone describe themselves as "crazy" and thought that they were gloating? Crazy people often try not to out themselves, so here's this person, all like "I'm crazy" and shit, and you're just like, man, I don't know ca-ray-zee, but I do know...

·Travelogue #30 HOME "Where is your residence?" asked to police officer while my belongings were displayed on the trunk of his police cruiser. Somewhere in Arizona. I rattled off a few of them, but my thoughts yelled contrary opinions to every stated location. "The last place I was living in...

Travelogue #33 (you're thinking "what happened to #32"--well, #32 got rained on by his own .38) Poor Jaybird From Jay's speech pattern, I could tell he was a stoner. And that he wasn't a very bright person sober, either. That Jay was doomed by fate's idea to cast stupidity on him like a...

Travelogue #34 - (I've got a boner for some jello and that's just all sorts of weird) Loner's Prayer "We're gonna go make some money, so we'll see you later, asshole," said these girls I knew. They were going to spange some cash from the passing tourists. It doesn't matter what town, for they...

Travelogue #35 (Dispatches from the plunderground, love of life sliced by knife at age of five) Who Needs Grammar When You've Got Schizo-Emails? OR (I'm sorry, Mom and Dad, but your son is a philanderer) 1) I'm in Denver, missed my train that I was trying to hop towards Chicago, woke up in...

·Travelogue #36 Jaybird's Confession "I always thought that I'd be famous, that I'd be a rockstar or something, or..." Jaybird trailed off. It was Frederick Jay talking to me as went north from Sacramento to Grant's Pass, OR. He said it with a look of resignation, of a man overlooking his...

poems to burn down the river. The Moving Company Blues Goddamnit, don't break my fucking door says George The passenger side door is separated in two, the plastic sheathing hanging loose on the inside makes a tremendous rattle and George threatens me with paying for the door. George, goddamnit...

Invalid Subject Line - (you cannot leave this line blank) You're the Lloyd Center of my recollection with the buttery pretzels and underpaid cashiers beckoning you with bullshit and internship-grade enthusiasm The mall, the congregation of commerce and the accomodations for the handicapped the...

·Travelogue #37 (Its high time to start writing again, to get out the mental dialogue into something more tangible. Stories are fictionalizing in proportion to the truth like a soup--does it need more false-salt, or is it past the point of no-return, and should I just throw it in down the...

Travelogue #38 "It's Pronounced 'New Ark'" After escaping a punk house infested with young alcoholics, Newark, Delaware was looking better in the rearview mirror. The inverse proportion of "the further, the better" (our well-being) that only travellers and criminals have in common. Sharmini...

Travelogue #39 A Quick One fo--err, from the Road En route to Fredericksburg, VA via I-95 southbound ME: "How much money did you make street-fighting?" DOUG: "Oh, you could make two-hundred, three-hundred for whoopin' some ass." He laughed. "I got rolled around in some glass a few times."...

Travelogue #40 How We Change "There" to "Here", and "Here" to "There" with Time-and-Distance Ingredients With the loud highway roar and the quickly fading memories of a place embraced fading to sarcasm and nostalgia, why, we stand on the side of the road with thumbs pointed skyward. The...

Travelogue #41 - I want to play spontaneous semen checkers with your gingham dress. King me. Outsmarting is Not Necessarily Rewarded April Fool's Day in Reno, Nevada. A group of desperate, tired men are sitting in an emergency shelter because of the freezing temperatures. The movie Speed is...

·Travelogue #42 - "Fuck you, too?" Fuck you to the power of three, as well. TERRORIST!!!!!! "Spare some change for a terrorist?" said Nick, dressed in a towel around his face, bandit-style. He was sitting indian-style. I was sitting beside him, viewing the Key West night along Duval Street...

Travelogue #43 (Coldcuts sing out!) An Excerpt from the Greaseball Asphalt Gypsies Traveling can put your mind into the state of surreality. In one instance, you can find your hands lubricated with diesel and beige dirt while a 9 year-old operates a steamroller. The 9 year-old has a 20...

Travelogue #44 - Roly-poly holies are a challenge to the foley artist When the racist dropped me outside of Live Oak, Florida, en route to Portland, Oregon--3,000 miles, folks---it was 40 degrees of Fahrenheit at 6pm. Dark came soon after. It was January, 2010. This must be one of God's...

·Travelogue #45--when the going gets tough, you've cooked it too long It took several attempts at sheer poverty until my wallet was absolutely extinguished. New Orleans scared me, Austin was too yuppy, Minneapolis too homoerotic. Economic desperation seized me—no safety net! Where the fuck...

As Throw Away Girl walked down the street; her blood began to boil. What a Crazy ass Goat Man! She went directly to the payphones, in front of the post office; where she called her parents to tell them what had happened. They already had some idea that Goat Man was crazy. When her mother...

When we left Throw Away Girl and Crazy Goat Man; they were at an impasse. Throw Away Girl decided at that point to make herself as scarce as possible. She went about her chores and kept to herself as much as possible. During the next month or so; she and Soul Starer got to know each other...

When we left Throw Away Girl and the Crazy Goat Man, they were knee deep in goat shit. By this time Throw Away Girl had been broken in, and had fallen into a routine. Since most of her time on the farm was solitary; she would get up when the turkey gobbled in the morning (which, incidentally...

Just being bored I figured I'd share some short stories. A few years ago in Motgomery I was hanging out with an old dude, and he seemed cool enough. Well, it was christmas day and he was up for crack and a prostitute.(NOT my M.O.) He ended up pulling a hatcthet on me and thinking my options out...

I'd like to hear about anyone's experience with this storm on the east coast. I'm sitting up here in New Hampshire looking at all the places i've been before and wondering whats really going on down there. NYC is getting it right now. I love the chaos of it all. Don't want no one to get hurt...

In a "free country" shouldn't a person be able to just buy some dirt, build a lousy shack, and be left the fuck alone? Nope, you can't have that. Property taxes, building codes, the man. Even if you did find a way to do it things often change. Who wants to commit to buying into some utopian...

I Live in gilmer county in North Georgia Not far from Springer Mountain Where Georgias Atrail starting point. I am going to hike the trail to PA in this up coming Spring of 2011! I have never before hiked the Atrail and Any Tips,Stories,Advice etc anyone is willing to feed me I am ALL EARS! Any...

We've all heard them,the stories about the fabled tough neighborhood/town where no-one has anything but trouble,or the locals will bust your head,or the cops will roll up on you.My fav has always been about Oregon Hill here in RVA.Everything from a Klan outpost to a secret Weatherman cell to the...

I don't know where to put this but here seems appropriate enough. A little back story I work as a caregiver. I work for the state and for a private company. I get a great variety of patients. Here are some things that I think the rest of the world just overlooks. Which is sad because I think...

so i've done my homework. i know all about the property i want. the owners are out of state. the neighbors are not friends or relatives. i've been there. i've unlocked the doors. today i snagged some bolt cutters and a new padlock. my plans tonight are to find some muscles (i don't have...

(second half of a travel story I once wrote). The next way, we caught a minibus to the edge of the city and then a truck to the border, where the police tried to set us up with a bus, while I came to the stark conclusion that I had left my eyeglasses on the previous ride, which was now long...

So I've been hard at work today trying to get everyone's old stories out of the database for the old StP site... i basically had to cut and paste them by hand, but at least i got them! The only bad part is that I couldn't recover the username that went with the story, so you'll all just have to...

Does anyone have any hitchhikging horror stories? Ones where the ride pretty much ends in "Look mother fucker, You either pull the car over or im steering is into on coming traffic!"?:ohmy:

Im not rushing anyone or anything (*coughcough-matt-coughcough*) But the sooner Chapter 2 is up, the better. I've been waiting on that like a little kid waiting on a comic book. I'm seriously not trying to be rude man. Great job on the site so far!