the journey, part one

How do I begin to tell you about my move from North Cackalacky to New York? I guess I'll start from the beginning, since I'm not a fan of Memento and other time-warping bullshit gimmicks.

Wednesday: Still in North Carolina. Everything is packed and ready to go. I come home from running errands and the like in Greensboro to my dad, who is going out of town tomorrow (the day I leave). He explains to me, for the 500th time, how the truck is packed, how to drive the truck, things I shouldn't forget. I realize this is his way of saying "I love you." Then he gives me a hug and starts crying. Like, really, really crying. Crying as much as he did at his father's funeral. He was so choked up, and it made me cry. He told me he was so proud of me, that he loved me, and again - he's so proud of me. It was a really nice moment. And then I spent the next twenty minutes crying my eyes out. Twenty minutes later, as I was mid-sob, I get a text from him which says "Don't forget to save your receipts. Sorry about tearing up. I'm proud of you. Show them what a good hire they made. I Love You" which instantly makes me laugh, and I feel better. Daddy's back to normal. Then, 3 hours later, I get another text which says "Don't forget to bring your pocket knife." What. The. Hell.

I went around Greensboro saying my goodbyes to my special friends, and I was feeling positive. Things have gone really well the past week leading up to this moment, and I'm in a great place. I feel like an adult. So, as my luck would have it, I made incredible friends working at the restaurant this summer. I met everyone for drinks at Cafe Europa for my final night. I didn't realize how great of friends they were until I was sobbing in their arms as I left the bar. It was like my entire life in Greensboro flashed before my eyes, and here were my most recent friends... the people who I've come to love and got excited about seeing where our friendships would go, only to have it pulled out from underneath me. And then, the tears. As I'm going home, of course every sad song I have comes on my iPod. Eventually, in between blowing my nose into a sock (it's all I had) and howling like a dog (yeah, it was one of those cries), I unplugged the iPod and sat in silence. Silence minus the whimpering coming from me. When I get home, my little brother tries to console me in a rare display of affection. He offered to smoke hookah with me. I asked if it got me high, he said no, so I declined. I finally get to bed, crying myself to sleep.

Thursday: Wake up at the ass-crack of dawn. Mom asks "Are your allergies acting up?" I reply that no, I feel fine. "Then why can't I see your eyes?" Shit.

We drive. I take the Jetta, my mom follows in the 15 foot Budget Truck we've rented. We're a sight to behold. Really, the only thing I remember about the drive was that I went the whole way with my windows down, listening to the best playlist ever created (I didn't even cry, I was actually excited at this point). Beautiful weather. And oh, yeah: a billboard in Virginia that said "Aren't you glad your mom didn't abort you?" Well, I wouldn't be glad, or sad, or happy, or much of anything if I was in a trash can in a back alley somewhere or a biohazard bag, would I? And also, I'm glad that my mom didn't have to make the decision between her life and my life. I'm also glad she wasn't raped and impregnated by her father so she didn't have to decide if she should keep cyclops me with three arms. I'm glad for a lot of things, so thanks for making me ponder that, billboard in Virginia. I'm also glad I was able to work my pro-choice stance into this blog entry.

We stop in Bethlehelm, Pennsylvania and spend the night in a hotel. We decide to treat ourselves to a nice dinner. There is very little that is nice about Bethlehelm, PA but there was a Sands Casino and Resort. How they managed that, I'll never know. But what I do know is that when we got there the security guard checked my ID because naturally, you have to be 21 to enter a casino and naturally, I look 12. He asks why we're here. Not that it's any of his rent-a-cop business, but "I'm moving to Long Island." To which he replies, "Why on earth would you move there? Hah! Hahah! Everyone I know moved away from Long Island!" I've been in a car for 9 hours, and no matter how pleasant my playlist and the abortion billboard were, I'm hungry and in no mood for games, no less insults on my future home. "Yeah, I guess becoming a rent-a-cop at a casino in bumfuck Pennsylvania is a better place to be than Long Island." My mother gasps and says "Wesley!" like when I was a child, but my ass is already hightailing it to the restaurant cause I don't want to get "arrested." I say "arrested" because he was a "cop." My mom tells me what I did was okay because "he only had 2 teeth." I don't understand the logic there, but I accept it and we eat a nice dinner and head back home to bed. We only have about 2 hours more to drive till we get to New York!

Friday: Wake up, yet again at the ass-crack of dawn. At this point, I'm super excited. I guess I truly am one of those "out of sight, out of mind" people, because I wasn't thinking about NC at all. (Doesn't mean I don't miss you, I just don't know you exist.) So, we're about 30 minutes outside of New York city and the Jetta starts fucking up. By fucking up, I mean it decides it doesn't want to accelerate as fast as I want it to. We pull into a rest stop to figure out what the hell is going on, and needless to say it's a gay boy and his mother and we have no clue what the hell is going on. We call my dad, he says that as long as the "check engine" light isn't on, we can drive the car. So, we do. The car is being funky still, and maybe even a little bit worse, when we pull up onto the Washington Bridge. Which is basically the biggest bridge I've ever been on other than the Golden Gate bridge. And as we're climbing up it, the "check engine" light comes on.

I am on a bridge. Surrounded by New York drivers. No shoulders to pull onto. Water below me. Budget Truck behind me. Check engine light on. Honestly, I just wanted to open the car door, run through traffic like a maniac and jump off the bridge. It would have been way easier than the fucking stress I went through for the next 30 minutes as I drove through heavy New York City traffic for the first time in my life in a car that could barely accelerate and shook violently when it drove over 45 mph. I thought my car was going to explode. There was literally nowhere to pull over for 30 minutes, and even if there was, ain't an ice cube's chance in hell I was pulling my ass over in New York City traffic. I just know a taxi would have come and swiped my ass off the side of the road.

As I'm on the cell phone with Budget Truck Mama behind me, telling her that I think my car is going to explode and wondering if we'll make it the next 30 miles to my new home, the car starts working fine and traffic clears. Check engine light is still on, but I can get above 60 mph, and so I do... We finally get off the highway, get to my new apartment, I stop the car and see the smoke coming from the hood.

"Oh my God, Wes, the car is smoking." My mom says. I look at her, and shake my head. I don't say anything, I just expect her to know that shaking my head was to acknowledge that "I know, and there's no way I'm opening up the hood to see what's wrong, just get me inside my new apartment now or else I'm going to die."

We go up to the apartment, which is actually a house. My landlord comes outside and is super nice. She's a Long Islander, which means it's really hard to tell if they're nice because usually you're just like "why are you yelling at me?" I've since discovered that everybody yells here, or sounds like they're yelling, even when they're nice. My landlord is officially nice. A chatty Cathy, but she's nice. So is her partner, who my mother thought was her sister. Oh, you silly straight people.

They take us to the new apartment, which is on the side of the house and we go inside. I have to pretend to be excited, because the landlord, her "sister," and my mother are all there, and if I start crying (which is what I wanted to do), I think it might hurt everyone involved. So I swallow my tears and look around...

To be continued!