"If you see a police, do you have to stop stop? Or can you just do the roll stop? Or do the slow down stop? You don't really have to stop? In France nobody stops."
- Corinne on stop sign etiquette
Our plan was to leave on Monday morning, because Cheryl was the only one in the car who was obliged to an employment schedule and she only had a couple of days to spare. It was preceded by 5 straight nights of dancing to house music until dawn and afternoon skate sessions sweating out the hangovers, I had been living on a steady diet of beer, crepes, nutella, bread and cheese and ganja. The harvest moon had brought a fevered pitch of hedonism - everyone we knew was in rare form, hooting and howling at the moon, cute boys were everywhere bringing us drinks and spinning us around on the dancefloor. I had moved on to drinking whiskey and my head was so full of beats that I found myself boogying everywhere I went even during the day, dancing down the aisles singing at the grocery store, getting props from bums on the street.
The harvest moon is way more fabulous than I had ever known. My friend in Japan emailed me about how people there have always stayed up all night to watch its glow, it being the most luminescent light the moon makes all year. Then someone else told me that it is called the harvest moon because it was so bright that people could use its light to work in the fields and harvest the fields that grew under the sun all summer. Wow. So it's an ancient time of bringing in the fruit of your labors. Then I remembered another thing about the month of September. My favorite story from Hesiod's Theogony is about the birth of the muses, and their birthdays are nine days in September.
Zeus and Menosmene (the goddess of memory) had a torrid love affair which lasted for nine days. During this time, she had a break from carrying the weight of all the world's memories on her shoulders. Nine months later she bore nine daughters, each of whom were bestowed with a creative force. They are: Euterpe (music), Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), Tersichore (dancing), Thalia(comedy), and Urania (astronomy). As daughters of the king of all the gods and the goddess of memory, they evoke the most divine inspiration out of human artists to preserve for the rest of history. When I found myself partying for nine days straight with people whose energy I found overwhelmingly inspiring, I was like, "what a coincidence!"
By Monday morning when we left for Ohio, my blood already felt stewed like the weird elixir for healing up muscle aches and pains and channeling energy my old roommate Gautam used to distill with herbs and alchohol. Only these herbs came from British Columbia not China and they only stewed with the alchohol after I drank it in shots at the bar. But it seemed to be a pretty good recipe for longevity anyways. The rental car guys could sense the fragility of our mindstate and handled us very gently.
Corinne and I threw together our essentials. Having lived mobile lives lately, we basically just zipped up the bags we've been living out of and grabbed our skateboards and some pillows.
Travelling light helps you to appreciate the small things in life. All weekend before we left I marveled with morbid fascination at how little planning went into this journey. As the sort of person who tries to arrange all movements and calculate the costs in advance, I found it shocking that Corinne and Cheryl were prefectly comfortable with the idea of just going to Ohio and crashing wherever. We didn't even have car reservations. I was mystified. We had agreed over dinner at the Thai restaurant that the three of us had a reasonable amount of wits amongst us to figure out how to get around one we got there.
So we just prepared by boogying down and getting in shape, getting ready to skate and toning up our legs and stretching out. We had smoked through the tightly packed past week with long pulling drags. I had gotten an average of like three hours of sleep every night, just disco napping, and I'd given up the illusion that I might ever find personal time to catch up on my sleep. Life has been too much fun for snoozing. So it is nice to finally get a chance to just sit still in the car listening to music. Corinne is so stoked about being at the wheel of her own vehicle after all the directions she's been taking from everyone since she's gotten here. She handed me a couple of sheets of notes and a huge North American atlas, then wondered what R N D meant on the gearshift. In France its 1 2 3 4 and R. Then she tried out the horn.
"In France you can't do this. They put the horn over here," and she gestured to the side of the steering column, "Lets make some noise!" as she beeped out of the alley.
I said that its probably in everyone best interest to put the horn a bit out of reach in the hands of Parisian drivers. I pictured the sound of all that reckless horn blowing. In Chicago I noticed that most people normally have a disciplined hesitancy when it comes to honking their horns, avoiding it until it is absolutely necessary.
Cheryl has the whole backseat to herself, decked out with pillows and airplane blankets. Its a break for her from driving the party train around and time massage some tiger balm and heal up from the shoulder collision she suffered at the skatepark.
As we cruised, I recalled the events that lead us to be currently hurtling down I-90. Corinne knows exactly where she is going now, and I don't need to give her anymore directions or interpretations.
The Love Refugee
14 months ago she showed up solo at the greyhound station in Chicago and called up some friends she had met the summer before at the skatepark when she visited with her boyfriend. They brought her over to my house and I very cornily brought out some bread and cheese and put on a French movie to watch as I tried to understand what she was talking about.
She got her story across and I managed to piece together the story somewhat. She was from Paris, seriously dated a guy from Cleveland (?!) for a few years. After arriving in Ohio ready to spend the summer with him, she found that he had changed his mind. A terrible falling out happened, and she found herslf having to bat the hell out of town just a couple of days into her months long stay in the U.S. Chicago was just the next closest town and she knew Jen from the skatepark, so that's where she headed next. It was a very somber story and the only thing that she would ever talk about. I was like "Get over it! Moving on is the best thing you can do!" and tried to change the subject to something more fun.
She was collapsed fatigued and jetlagged still on the couch and five minutes into L'Auberge Espagnole she was snoring with chipped hot pink nails and black mascara streaked with tears smudged over her eyes. The heavily accented skater girl passed out on the couch was just as much of a marvel to me as the many oddities that cross my path, so I took it in stride and pulled a blanket over her.
For the next few months I checked in on her every once in a while. When I hadn't heard from her in a while I'd ring her.
"I'm in Pennsylvania. I'm with some friends and we're sleeping in somebody's mansion. We did motor skis on the lake and did inner tubes," I remember her whispering into the phone one late night.
"Ummm... yeah, sure. Well ok then. I was just calling to make sure that everything is ok. It's cool. But how could you forget to invite me!?"
She would tell me about baseball games, fashion show, skate spots, beauty salons, people's parent's houses. I'd been working a lot during those days and had a crazy busy schedule so all this talk about fun vacation time got on my nerves.
We kept in touch after she went home to France and a few months later when I found myself in Paris for a few weeks I called her. She was the first person in France who understood what I was talking about. We walked all over the city taking photos and skating, and two guys sang "ooh baby baby its a wild world" to us accompanied by guitars in the Metro. I stayed at her parent's house outside the city for a weekend to recuperate from the flu I caught in Paris and was so grateful for the warm bed and holy shit the food. It was a warm cushy oasis between planes and trains. She was still talking about the ex, and I was still just trying to change the subject. But when she's got something on her mind it rules her world.
"I hope he sees how happy I am and how much I have changed the next time I see him."
"Who cares what he thinks?"
"I've learned so much English and I skate so much better now."
"It's not healthy to keep thinking about him anyways."
"I wonder what he'll think if he ever sees me again."
"Will you just get over it?!"
"Will you come with me to Cleveland in September to pick up my stuff? He never mailed my boxes to me. We'll take a road trip and skate at all the parks I know."
"Well I guess I'll go skate and make sure you don't get lost. And I've been meaning to slap that dude since that day I met you."
I wondered why she wasn't just jumping for joy that she had met so many new friends and got to know a city and party like a rockstar, instead of staying in Cleveland being someone's skater beeyatch. And why hadn't she gotten a new boyfriend yet? Guys were calling her up all the time and trying to hang out with "the French girl" before she left town. Did she honestly expect to get back together with the guy who abandoned her in a foreign country like Theseus did to Ariadne on the island of Naxos? I decided I wouldn't allow it.
The Rest Stop
When we got out of the car, we got hollered at five times as we slinked towards the bathroom. "Mamacitas!" some creepy breath hissed in the corner by the doorway. Cheryl hasn't eaten at McDonalds in three years and we're making her start again now. Everyone at the rest stop stared at us with zero inhibitions and they all had potbellies. We didn't even get into the "That's Your Boyfriend" game, we just put our heads down and ate as fast as we could.
The car was a mess just half an hour out of the city. Mineral water, cds, makeup, pillows, notebooks and birth control pills flew around when I tried to find some lip balm. I was alarmed by the amount of estrogen in the car, so I played Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.
We were half an hour outside of Cleveland and the ex or any of his friends still hadn't called Corinne back. She paced by some faraway picnic tables checking her voicemail again. She was on the verge of tracking him down through his mother. Cheryl and I stretched our sciatic nerves next to the car and waited for a word.
"Plan B is I hijack the driver's seat and we drive straight to New York. Then we'll stop in Toronto and go shopping! Then lets go to Louisville," I whispered to her.
Coco came back to the car in tears. "His stupid friends hung up on me! They wouldn't tell me where he lives! They are always trying to keep me away from him! They always tell him things and turn him away from me!"
Cheryl and I rolled our eyes.
"We decided that I am a pirate and I am taking over the car, Corinne," I said after a long silence. "We're going to New York instead."
"That's not funny!!!" She stormed into the drivers seat and we hit the road in silence.
oHIo
In Cleveland, Coco drove us straight into the middle of downtown. It was 8:30 pm and she finally got a call back around the time we entered the city. "Where do we go?" she asked into the phone. Then she threw it into my lap like a hot potato. I wasn't prepared for that.
"Um hello. My name is Brenda Lee. I'm just a passenger in Corinne's car. We drove to Cleveland, now we're here, we are trying to meet up with some dude that has Corinne's stuff. Now we appear to be downtown. So do you think we should skate around here or is it a bust?"
"I'm that dude."
"Oh." I paused, drawing out the uncomfortable silence. "You are famous. You're the dude, huh? You should meet us somewhere."
"Ok, go to the middle of the city, where all buildings are, the brick area, and park. I'll call you when I get there."
"So just go to where the brick area is?"
"Yeah."
"Ok."
I wondered what he meant, while staring at all the terra cotta tiles on the buildings as we drove past all lit up. We were driving towards a monumental building that looked like Chicago's Board of Trade at the end of the street.
Cheryl woke up and looked around. "Where is everybody? This town is dead! Ghost Town!"
She was right. There were no cars, buses or people anywhere and all the businesses were closed.
Coco seemed to know what that dude meant by "brick area" and parked. We got out and stretched our shoulders backs and hamstrings while Corinne took out her makeup bag. 
Corinne had said, "If you see a guy with tattoos, that's my ex!" A guy with tattoos on the street. Got it.
"Ooohhwee! YeeeeHaawww!"
"Can you believe he wanted to meet us in a safe rendezvous point?"
In mid-stretch, we noticed a guy slink up quietly out of the empty silence of the street. She was putting on red lipstick and changing into a pink tank top. It was him.
We looked up from touching our toes and just stared at him for one long moment. We could instantly sense his discomfort. He stopped too, but when no one said anything he proceeded past us and walked up to Corinne to hug her.
I lit a cigarette and gazed at the architecture. Cleveland has a few blocks of tall office buildings that look finely statuesque in the streetlamps. The street glowed like a movie set. The building in front of us had greek columns, a pediment and caryatids of nine goddesses lit upwards from their feet, holding sheaths of wheat books and instruments on top of their upswept hair. I tried to find my camera amongst the wreckage inside the car. Finally Cheryl broke the silence,
"Hi, I'm Cheryl."
He jumped out with a handshake.
"I'm Jeff"
I introduced myself and shook his hand limply.
"We can go to a bar down the street," he suggested after we had nothing more to say.
As we walked down the street Cheryl smiled evilly.
"I just think you should know, I know karate."
I giggled quietly in the back, remembering how we planned this moment out over dinner last week. I had suggested that we wear black suits, carry briefcases and pretend we don't speak English. Or better yet, Corinne could tell him we were rockstars from the Philippines. But upholding charades is way too tiring and he was being so meek that we eased off the menacing vibe. I pulled my hat lower and we proceeded to the bar.
Partytime.
As we rolled into an empty bar with woodpaneling and Irish football flags draped all around I noticed a sign that said Happy Hour $2 Beers. Alright then. I ordered a Harp.
Cheryl and I huddled and wished we spoke Cebuano better so we could gossip amongst ourselves. Corinne and Jeff were staring at each other talking non-stop and smiling.
"Look at her. We should slap her. She's grinning ear to ear."
They were thoroughly engrossed with each other and she twisted her back to us so she couldn't see the faces we were making at her. Her Bacardi and Cranberry was gone in three sips.
Cheryl and I amused ourselves by having a burping contest and lamented the lack of good looking young men. She busted into their conversation after a minute.
"Hey where are all the cute boys in this town?"
"Yeah, just point us towards wherever they hang out!"
Jeff didn't even crack a smile. "There are no cute boys in this town."
"Booooooooo," she said.
After a second they resumed their conversation.
"Well that didn't go anywhere."
The boredom was gaining on us and we watched the bartender stack some glasses.
"This sucks. I wonder what they're talking about."
Cheryl leaned into their space again.
"Where can we go dance around here?"
"Tonight? It's a Monday night! ... so, nowhere."
"Ok then. We are officially bored."
They resumed their conversation again as some terrible music from the light rock station droned.
"Look at that guy. He's drumming his hands. He likes this stuff!"
Finally Jeff took us to another bar when our beers were empty after consulting with his phone a few times. We thanked him for the drinks.
Partytime!
The next bar was way cooler, outside and on a deck. We all got carded by the bartender, who took the time to learn our ages and names.
"So what's your name?" Cheryl asked.
"Jude. Like 'Hey Jude!'" and he sang it.
We sang it back to him and we ordered a round of beers. Jeff had made some assurances that he had another friend coming by so we wouldn't be bored. Corinne told us in the car that she asked if he had a girlfriend and he said yes. So that's why he was acting so weird.
Then she said, "He's being so nice to me, I can't believe it!"
"Did you ask him why he never shipped your stuff?"
"Well he was mad at me because of the time I broke his window."
"What? You broke his window?"
"Yeah. And then I broke a bottle when I threw it at his couch."
"Girl, am I hearing you correctly!?!"
"Then I called him from a sailboat at five in the morning after a party in Chicago and told him my life is so much better without him. But he's not mad at me anymore!"
He told her he had to be home soon, but he stayed until the bar closed. Jude brought out a bottle of Jameson and Jeff's friends showed up. One of them was scared of us, but the other one warmed up to us instantly. Dan listened sympathetically as I described the travails of life and we drank shaking our heads at the cost of insurance. I asked him if we could crash at his house and he said yes. With that settled, we carried on, met people from Kentucky and Florida, Cheryl spilled her drink, the local muscle meathead beat his chest, clinked glasses and partied.
We all walked out into the street. After Jeff loaded the boxes of Corinne's stuff into the trunk we each hugged him and thanked him for all the beer. The next thing I remember was taking long swigs of tap water, collapsing on the corner of a futon and the room was spinning so I curled into a downward fetal position and crashed out.
The Next Day
I awoke to the sounds of a shower wrapped in my soft airplane blanket next to Coco who was wrapped up in hers. I was smiling before I even opened my eyes. We had so much fun! The pillows we brought came in handy - I was so glad to have my own drool stains under my face at that moment. Dan tiptoed gently around and got ready for work, it was 7:30 in the morning.
"I've got all Aveda products," Dan said as I headed into the shower.
"Oooh!"
"My mom's a beautician. So Jeff called me last night and was like "You gotta come out! I need help! These girls wanna dance!!!" We collapsed into giggles.
A sweet botanic smell wafted around as we woke up. Miraculously, my bag was neatly organized at the foot of the futon with my camera, cigarettes, hat and purse tucked away. How did I manage to remember to put away my stuff last night? While towelling my hair I chatted with Dan as he added me as his friendster.
"How the hell is a guy like you single? You're so nice, I am shocked that you don't have a girlfriend!"
"You asked him that like 20 times last night already!" Corinne protested.
"I did?"
"Yeah, and stop bringing up bad memories of girlfriends. You're making me sad. It didn't turn out so well the last time," Dan said.
"She must have been crazy, or psycho then."
Dan let us take our time getting ready and called in late to work as he escorted us to the diner. A skinny old hippie with beads in his hair waved to us as he passed us on the street.
"Watch out for all the weirdoes around here," he warned.
"Naww, we're the weirdoes!" Cheryl said as we all wrapped around Dan to thank him. I forgot my notebook at his house so we planned to meet up later. For now we would just eat and then go skate.
But as the day warmed up and we choked down our breakfasts the plan changed. Our hangovers - building up for the past six days at that point - were beginning to creep into our brains and our bodies and the orange juice and bacon were not helping.
"I think I'm dying!"
We decided to go to the skate shop afterwards, got lost a few times and had to call Dan to help us. We were quickly developing a real fondness for him every time he patiently answered our crazy questions.
"We don't know where we are! Where do we go? We're by a bridge!"
We skated at the skatepark in the hot afternoon sun which was a mistake, considering that my sweat felt fumey like alchohol was evaporating directly off of my skin. After a while I lay down on my stomach on the bench and wrote my story. The local skaters were weirded out by our presence, but in a good way.
Afterwards we went to a coffeeshop. We got smoothies and sat around a table and checked out some surprisingly good local artwork. Various instruments lay around, including 2 bongo drums, a cowbell, a mini piano and a big one, various percussion in every corner and a didgeridoo that I thik I misused. A five year old boy totally kicked it to Cheryl after he saw her play a few notes on the piano.
She told him to finish his pastry before he could play it with her. He flipped out his mini chair and sat down at the mini piano. "I like your song!" he told her.
He took her into a sunny nook and then crouched down as he made her a design on the Lite Brite. When he went back to finish his croissant she came back to the table.
"Dude," she whispered, "that kid just stroked my arm with his finger."
"Whaaaat?"
"I didn't think he'd do that! He's five!"
He was totally making the effort to bond with Cheryl, calling out "NO!" when his mother asked him if he was ready to leave.
I made them pose for a picture out front and took a moment to look through the lens.
"Goodbye!" we sang as the boy's mother as two sisters dragged him down the sidewalk.
Cheryl came over to me. "Dude, that kid put his hand directly on my ass when you took that picture!"
"Did he squeeze?"
"Yes!"
When we looked in the camera, her face indeed had a startled look of confusion. An old hippie on the sidewalk lit my cigarette.
"I wish I had a picture of that kid's hand on your ass, girl!" he told us before we pushed away and skated some banks and hills that we found.
We met Dan after work and toured his office, the coolest place in Cleveland. He took us to another bar where they had free food? We were like "Free food? What?" and it turned out to be pizza. Funds were running low all around from all the going out, so we were like "word!". Jeff had mentioned that there was a bar in town with free beer the night before. What the hell is going on in that town? The energy level was running low too, so we decided to not ask Dan if you could crash for another night and made plans to hit the road. This whole time, Corinne was off in the clouds in some faraway place where she must have been thinking about Jeff. We consoled her, and I was secretly glad that he had a girlfriend because it intimated a finality to everything.
We skated one more time at night, under some flood lights, when all the kids of Cleveland come out to skate. It was pretty crowded, but the strange thing was the silence. None of the loud groaning and moaning and complaining and hooting and hollering that I am used to in a skatepark. It was like a science fiction town where all the kids come out like zombies and skate without uttering a single word. Then I thought about the UFO sightings in Ohio and was glad that we weren't the strangest visitors this state was said to have. Finally after we were so tired and beat and cranky we decided to just head back. We gave Dan another hug and more kisses and honked our way out of town.
Home to Chicago
The Cebuano word for what I felt is "Kapoy". It just means thoroughly worn out. Cheryl was passed out in the backseat and I wrote in my journal and Coco steered us home.
After an hour or two, Cheryl spotted the cop behind us. "Poulet!" she called.
Coco pulled over to the side of the road and we turned off the music. The state trooper waddled up to my window. My eyes were so blown out and cashed that I considered pretending that I was crying. Allergic, I decided on, as I rolled down the window.
In a robot like voice he recited the following after looking all of us in the eyes:
"I'm gonna need your license and your registration I clocked you a few miles back going 85 miles and hour in a sixty five zone I will have to give you a ticket it will be a $100 fine of the violation and you can post a bond or you can give me your visa or your credit card."
Corinne reacted very slowly, pulling out her purse.
"I'm from France."
In Chicago, those three words got us into every bar we went to for free, plus rounds and rounds of free drinks. In Indiana, the trooper did not even react. She gave him her universal driver's license and a credit card and I pulled my hat over my face. We were paused for an eternity in front of those bright headlights and flashing red and blue. I was afraid of opening my mouth and getting us into more trouble. After what seemed like forever, he let us go after swiping her card.
"What a jerk."
No one said anything and the air was so sad. Cheryl rolled back over and went to sleep. I changed the cd and put on Coco's radiohead album before I put away my notebook and reclined my chair to do the same. As the music started and washed over the whole car I looked over and saw the tears start coming down her face as she stared directly forward. I searched around, then handed her some tissues. She cried even more and I almost started crying. I gave her the whole pile of tissues and closed my eyes and crashed out.
I woke up as we headed into Chicago, coming from the south. Chi-town! We're here! Coco steered us through the last toll booth and I peered at her face. We were listening to Snow Patrol now, and there were no tears in sight. But I swear that there were some new lines near her eyes and her face was just a little bit more angled than it was a few days ago. She didn't look like the same helpless waif that I met her as as she sat low with one hand on the wheel. She looked lighter, and just a bit older too. We dropped off Cheryl who was sleepwalking into her house and got home alright, we crashed completely.
And we have never again discussed her ex.
