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 year-old brother named Saul Junior, and then there's Saul Senior, the late-40-ish father figure. They would all be described as being one of those Russian dolls, the type of which when opened, reveals another pear-shaped Russian doll of smaller size.
At the worksite, Saul Sr. already has ripped off his shirt, revealing a semi-tan body and an enormous belly that screams Fast Food Diet and Dashboard Diner. Junior is operating a piece of heavy machinery like his younger sibling. All three of the Greaseball Asphalt Gypsies look grotesquely overweight, the younger two having baby fat to make their New York-esque Italian features seem squintier.
Thor the Maryland Redneck (a good man, my friends) is backing up an enormous dumptruck to empty hot asphalt into a paver. The paver is an older model picked up in a pinch after one million dollars worth of equipment fell off a trailer. The current trailer doesn't look much better, with cracked wood plants splintered underneath the weight of the paver, the bulldozer, and the steamroller. In fact, I begin to feel that I am doing the job of many men, being underpaid, my suntan becoming cancerous, and my belly rapidly expanding. When Saul Junior offers me a half-drunk strawberry-banana smoothie, I down it in unquenchable thirst and hoping that my obesity to come will be rectified if I use the appropriate amount of guilt to digest the food into "good fat" and "low cholesterol".
Its all surreal. Even the mechanic, whose lot that we're paving, looks confused, grinning at the serious-faced youngster atop the yellow steamroller. Saul Sr. saying, "No, honey, slower..." and the worse notion that Saul Sr. is keeping his son in a blue collar job when they should have been two months deep in grade school. Thor is a two-time convicted felon for attempted murder, and me? I was walking down the street in St. Joseph, Missouri a few days prior...
"Hey, do you want a job?" asked Saul Jr. from his white Ford pickup truck.
"How much does it pay?" I replied.
"$50 bucks a day and a place to stay."
-----------------
Earlier, during the same day, Thor was asleep at the wheel of the dumptruck. He smoked a joint and snorted an Oxycontin, inhaling the white powder from a cardstock canyon and licking the bottom of the orange Bic lighter he used as a pestle. I was sitting in the driver's seat of Thor's red Chevrolet pickup talking with Adam, a new recruit for this job. In the interim of waiting for both Saul's to find work around Springfield, Missouri, Adam and I bullshitted. Bear in mind, this was Adam's first day--he had not been promised any work besides "hey, do you want to work today? Hop in."
We are parked in the big-rig parking lot. Adam is ranting about how he hated jail, but it did wonders for his writing. Writing piqued my interest--another writer! Excellent, we can talk shop. Well, that was until he started to say he was writing a musical based on the life of Merlin and King Arthur.
"Its true, you know. Merlin was real, and there historical facts that prove it. He was real... I'm almost done with it."
"Really," I say, "why don't you get it performed at some local theatre?" Our conversation continues onto the plot of King Arthur and Merlin, but really, its just to kill time.
"I'm kind of crazy," admits Adam.
Later in the day, after a grueling but short work day, Adam and I are sitting by the indoor pool of our hotel, which was a converted Holiday Inn. All the old infrastructure is there, but poorly maintained. Tropical plants are dying, Sharpie-and-torn-paper notes are Scotch-taped to windows reading "Maintanance {sic} Closit--Keep Out", and soiled red carpeting has turned the bottom of my socks black.
Adam lives at this hotel for $225 a month, a $450 split with his roommate. His roommate is a former EMT who one day had a nervous breakdown after "seeing too much", but Adam insinuates that their relationship goes a bit deeper than he overtly describes.
We bond over travel and a can each of Natty Ice. Adam is lisping drunkenly, trying to tell me that he had traveled across country. Three or so times he had arrived in Los Angeles, only to fail as a movie star and fail as a drug addict. Then, we talked of New Orleans, describing how the town--gutted by Hurricane Katrina--made NOLA a perfect haven for squatters.
"Yeah, I lived with this guy named Bear. Bear was a good guy, he put me up. We lived for a while until things got bad. But I admit it, it was awkward at first, you know, being gay, but I guess you have to do that traveling."
I tried to make him feel comfortable at admitting something as emasculating as that (male prostitution!), and said that, yes, in Key West, its known as a place that's "okay to be gay". This social cue went over his inebriated mind. He began to describe that he used sex more times than his tenure with Bear in NOLA to "get by".
Our night devolves after this. He offers me another beer in his room, and plays me a song about his ex-girlfriend called "Hatem". Or, "Hate 'em". At any rate, the song began with a nice fingerpicked introduction--I'm partially impressed at the prettiness until he begins moaning words that sound otherworldly. But its embarrassing at the same time--the front door to his dirty "apartment" is open, revealing the two of us sitting close while he plays me a horrendous song. I feign a countenance of deep thought with my chin in my hand. "Hatem" turns out to have extended instrumental sections, in which he says over them, "yeah, I'd scream over this part, but its late now." I bid my goodbye, he offers me some stale food which I decline, and I retire back to my room with 350 lb Thor watching an episode of Law and Order.
At six in the morning, I answer a pounding door to reveal Adam. He steps into the room past me, starts spewing nonsense about how he wants me to have his clothes and that he's owed $70. Thor yells "get the fuck out motherfucker or I'll beat the fuck out of you." Adam challenges Thor by staying, only to see all of Thor's gigantic belly and perforated silver-dollar nipples charge him. Adam leaves, crying that we were going to rip him off of his money that he worked for...
At eight in the morning, Thor and I arrive to the dumptruck to find that it has been covered in mustard packets. We narrow our field of suspects to Adam immediately. Saul Sr. and Saul Jr. arrive, I demand my pay, and soon enough I'm out of the clutches of the Greaseball Asphalt Gypsies. Saul Jr. tells me that they're changing their orignal plans of total-warring it to Brownsville, TX. Instead, they're heading specifically to St. Louis and then up north to the Michigan area. Thor confided to me the day before that Saul Sr. was facing federal time for money laundering and fraud in Michigan.
Before we parted, Saul Jr. smiled at me from his white Bronco and asked, "So, Tom, will I ever be in one of your books?"
Sure, Saul.
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 year-old brother named Saul Junior, and then there's Saul Senior, the late-40-ish father figure. They would all be described as being one of those Russian dolls, the type of which when opened, reveals another pear-shaped Russian doll of smaller size.
At the worksite, Saul Sr. already has ripped off his shirt, revealing a semi-tan body and an enormous belly that screams Fast Food Diet and Dashboard Diner. Junior is operating a piece of heavy machinery like his younger sibling. All three of the Greaseball Asphalt Gypsies look grotesquely overweight, the younger two having baby fat to make their New York-esque Italian features seem squintier.
Thor the Maryland Redneck (a good man, my friends) is backing up an enormous dumptruck to empty hot asphalt into a paver. The paver is an older model picked up in a pinch after one million dollars worth of equipment fell off a trailer. The current trailer doesn't look much better, with cracked wood plants splintered underneath the weight of the paver, the bulldozer, and the steamroller. In fact, I begin to feel that I am doing the job of many men, being underpaid, my suntan becoming cancerous, and my belly rapidly expanding. When Saul Junior offers me a half-drunk strawberry-banana smoothie, I down it in unquenchable thirst and hoping that my obesity to come will be rectified if I use the appropriate amount of guilt to digest the food into "good fat" and "low cholesterol".
Its all surreal. Even the mechanic, whose lot that we're paving, looks confused, grinning at the serious-faced youngster atop the yellow steamroller. Saul Sr. saying, "No, honey, slower..." and the worse notion that Saul Sr. is keeping his son in a blue collar job when they should have been two months deep in grade school. Thor is a two-time convicted felon for attempted murder, and me? I was walking down the street in St. Joseph, Missouri a few days prior...
"Hey, do you want a job?" asked Saul Jr. from his white Ford pickup truck.
"How much does it pay?" I replied.
"$50 bucks a day and a place to stay."
-----------------
Earlier, during the same day, Thor was asleep at the wheel of the dumptruck. He smoked a joint and snorted an Oxycontin, inhaling the white powder from a cardstock canyon and licking the bottom of the orange Bic lighter he used as a pestle. I was sitting in the driver's seat of Thor's red Chevrolet pickup talking with Adam, a new recruit for this job. In the interim of waiting for both Saul's to find work around Springfield, Missouri, Adam and I bullshitted. Bear in mind, this was Adam's first day--he had not been promised any work besides "hey, do you want to work today? Hop in."
We are parked in the big-rig parking lot. Adam is ranting about how he hated jail, but it did wonders for his writing. Writing piqued my interest--another writer! Excellent, we can talk shop. Well, that was until he started to say he was writing a musical based on the life of Merlin and King Arthur.
"Its true, you know. Merlin was real, and there historical facts that prove it. He was real... I'm almost done with it."
"Really," I say, "why don't you get it performed at some local theatre?" Our conversation continues onto the plot of King Arthur and Merlin, but really, its just to kill time.
"I'm kind of crazy," admits Adam.
Later in the day, after a grueling but short work day, Adam and I are sitting by the indoor pool of our hotel, which was a converted Holiday Inn. All the old infrastructure is there, but poorly maintained. Tropical plants are dying, Sharpie-and-torn-paper notes are Scotch-taped to windows reading "Maintanance {sic} Closit--Keep Out", and soiled red carpeting has turned the bottom of my socks black.
Adam lives at this hotel for $225 a month, a $450 split with his roommate. His roommate is a former EMT who one day had a nervous breakdown after "seeing too much", but Adam insinuates that their relationship goes a bit deeper than he overtly describes.
We bond over travel and a can each of Natty Ice. Adam is lisping drunkenly, trying to tell me that he had traveled across country. Three or so times he had arrived in Los Angeles, only to fail as a movie star and fail as a drug addict. Then, we talked of New Orleans, describing how the town--gutted by Hurricane Katrina--made NOLA a perfect haven for squatters.
"Yeah, I lived with this guy named Bear. Bear was a good guy, he put me up. We lived for a while until things got bad. But I admit it, it was awkward at first, you know, being gay, but I guess you have to do that traveling."
I tried to make him feel comfortable at admitting something as emasculating as that (male prostitution!), and said that, yes, in Key West, its known as a place that's "okay to be gay". This social cue went over his inebriated mind. He began to describe that he used sex more times than his tenure with Bear in NOLA to "get by".
Our night devolves after this. He offers me another beer in his room, and plays me a song about his ex-girlfriend called "Hatem". Or, "Hate 'em". At any rate, the song began with a nice fingerpicked introduction--I'm partially impressed at the prettiness until he begins moaning words that sound otherworldly. But its embarrassing at the same time--the front door to his dirty "apartment" is open, revealing the two of us sitting close while he plays me a horrendous song. I feign a countenance of deep thought with my chin in my hand. "Hatem" turns out to have extended instrumental sections, in which he says over them, "yeah, I'd scream over this part, but its late now." I bid my goodbye, he offers me some stale food which I decline, and I retire back to my room with 350 lb Thor watching an episode of Law and Order.
At six in the morning, I answer a pounding door to reveal Adam. He steps into the room past me, starts spewing nonsense about how he wants me to have his clothes and that he's owed $70. Thor yells "get the fuck out motherfucker or I'll beat the fuck out of you." Adam challenges Thor by staying, only to see all of Thor's gigantic belly and perforated silver-dollar nipples charge him. Adam leaves, crying that we were going to rip him off of his money that he worked for...
At eight in the morning, Thor and I arrive to the dumptruck to find that it has been covered in mustard packets. We narrow our field of suspects to Adam immediately. Saul Sr. and Saul Jr. arrive, I demand my pay, and soon enough I'm out of the clutches of the Greaseball Asphalt Gypsies. Saul Jr. tells me that they're changing their orignal plans of total-warring it to Brownsville, TX. Instead, they're heading specifically to St. Louis and then up north to the Michigan area. Thor confided to me the day before that Saul Sr. was facing federal time for money laundering and fraud in Michigan.
Before we parted, Saul Jr. smiled at me from his white Bronco and asked, "So, Tom, will I ever be in one of your books?"
Sure, Saul.
