When I was twenty-two, I met up with my best friend Donald at his grandma’s house in a small Nebraska town, just one town over from my own. He was recently stationed with the Navy near New York City, and still had some of his belongings packed away at her place from his time living in her basement. A large part of our youth was spent over there playing video games, listening to Nirvana records and making prank phone calls to girls that we liked. I doubt that Leah ever knew that on one of our calls, her dad answered the phone and told Donald “That’s enough now” and Donald said “Okay” and simply hung up…
We had outgrown most of those activities by this point in time, now being in our early 20’s, but her house always kept a warmth and charm about it and it always smelled exactly the same way. His Grandma used to beg us to stop playing Nirvana so loudly as Kurt Cobain’s screaming was making her literally “sick to her stomach” and she used to mistakenly call his Nintendo a “MiTendo” - I always liked her a lot. I can still picture her sitting in her living room recliner next to the big window smoking an endless amount of musty cigarettes in the summer sun.
The details of our road trip plans were not at all complex. We’d meet up at her house around 10:00am and pick up a few of his things, then we would drive from there to New York City. We would spend one full day in the city - and I would fly back home alone the following day. I had a close friend in Illinois named Lauren. We had sorted out some plans to stop and see her as we were passing through. With some minimal snacks and one water bottle between us, our spirits were high and we were eager to hit the open midwest road for our summer road trip
The drive started off uneventful enough. From Sioux City to around Des Moines we talked about girls, music, books and ghosts (Donald claimed that his house was currently haunted and he always had really great stories about it that, coming from my closest friend, I was inclined to believe) - but right after we stopped for gas in Des Moines it rained on the interstate harder than any rain that I had ever experienced up to that point. It poured so hard that the windshield wipers on full steam only served for show - making no actual difference in our visibility. We didn’t pull over or slow down like we probably should have - as we had a makeshift schedule to keep, but I’ll never forgot that rain and Donald slouching back in his seat, driving comfortably with one arm up on the window ledge, listening to Op ivy and Pegboy mixed CD’s in the hammering rain.
Traffic got busy on the other side of Iowa as we got closer to Chicago, before the cars eventually came to a dead stop. We could see the tall buildings ahead of us in the distance and knew we were getting close enough to Lauren’s place for me to call her and sort out the directions to her apartment. Once the traffic started to move again, we found her place easily enough. It was around 8PM by now. Her warm and charming apartment was an incredibly welcome change from the hours and hours spent in Donald’s big out of date car in the pouring humid rain. The sky had started to clear up right around the time we pulled into her apartment’s parking lot. The clearing sky was an omen of what was to come.
I’d known Lauren for a good few years by this point, and she always had the best taste in music - so in no time flat she had a Jimmy Eat World record spinning. It was the perfect remedy for two punk kids that stuck out like sore thumbs in her otherwise warm and charming college neighborhood apartment. Lit with corner lamps and the pleasant smell of candles, Donald and I sat around slouching on her couch as the summer sun set, talking and laughing with Lauren and her roommate Andrea for few solid hours. They gave us a few snacks - our first bites of actual food that day.
Andrea and Lauren were both incredibly pretty and sweet, and it was easy for me to tell that Donald was interested in Andrea - but being on his way to be stationed on the other side of the county for the next few years, it felt fruitless to try to facilitate much between them. Lauren and I did share a number of knowing glances back and forth to each other though. We also gave them some time alone to talk while Lauren showed me some artwork in her bedroom, but Donald later told me that he mostly just sat there, the curious and shy guy that he was. After a couple of hours lounging around in the cozy space, we said our goodbyes and were gassed up and back on the road. It was pitch black on the interstate by this point, and the drive was starting to feel long. I had dozed off near the empty city lights of Cleveland. I was startled awake by the car’s stereo system getting a little bit louder. Donald’s favorite Danzig song came on, and he was singing along loudly in tribute to Andrea…young love.
The sun started to rise in the clear sky right around the time we were entering New York State. This was also around the time that we realized harshly and abruptly that we hadn’t packed a single bite of food, and hadn’t really eaten much since the previous morning - unless you count the few light snacks that were given to us by the roommates. We decided we would wait to eat in Albany as it’s skyline was fast approaching - but entering Albany right at lunch time wasn’t a very pleasant experience…at all. The city was hot, humid and hazy, all at the same time. I kept getting the feeling that we were being stared at and sized up at every opportunity. A car parked next to us at a busy intersection felt like they were watching us, sizing us up. It also could have just been delusions brought on by my lack of nutrients and plummeting blood sugar.
We pulled into a Denny’s right outside of downtown and found a table around lunch time. Now, I was certain that it wasn’t just my blood sugar, as the four large guys at the next table over certainly were sizing us up, waiting for a reason to ask us what we’re looking at. We were committed to keeping our heads down and getting out of there as soon as we finished our food. I sat in our booth fighting thoughts of Lauren’s cozy apartment and her living room. Strong contrasting thoughts about how much more pleasant it could have been to just stay there in Illinois instead. I could have spent a day or two on their couch and hitched a ride back to Nebraska where I belonged. But I forced those thoughts away as we had made it this far - now so far from home. A few thugs in an Albany Denny’s restaurant weren’t going to make me regret this road trip. But it wasn’t easy to accept.
We were able to luckily escape lunch without incident, and got ourselves checked into the hotel room supplied to Donald courtesy of the United States Navy. Luckily his room had two separate beds, along with a lot of stains on the carpets, water dripping from the ceilings in the hallways, and strange new odors around every turn. All of the staff were finding creative reasons to yell at us during our check-in process. We were way too tired to care.
We eventually made it into the room and pulled the heavy curtains shut, where we both crashed for a few solid hours in the darkness to the hum of the rooms wobbly air conditioner as slivers of outside light cut harsh lines through the dark room. We woke up a few hours later and found the closest place to grab dinner, an Applebee’s within walking distance. The huge meal I ate there finally had me feeling a bit more like myself for the first time that day, or two ,and I slept like a baby that night.
We woke up really early the next morning. We grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel (the lady working the breakfast area yelled at us) and we drove to a train station that I don’t remember a single thing about. I Simply have no memory of the process of getting on the train, but I remember that the ride lasted for about two hours - and it absolutely flew by. This was before smart phones or tablets, so we just sat there looking out the big windows and telling stories. Donald always had great stories to tell. The next thing I knew, we were walking up a stairway out onto the streets of New York City on bright summer day in August.
We were immediately swept up into the flow of foot traffic like a rivers current. It felt hard to escape once you were walking with a crowd of people all heading to the same place as the same speed. I remember specifically the buzzing short bursts of car horns every few seconds. I also remember a bad smell every single place we stood. Think the grease and garbage area right behind a restaurant. That’s what the whole city smelled like to me.
While caught up in the flow of people, it felt hard at first to gather ourselves enough to determine a proper destination, but we saw the Empire State Building on the skyline - and began to walk in that general direction.
Somewhere on the street, we found a very crude kids menu style map of New York City. Donald folded it up and put it in his pocket. We ended up using that map for the entirety of our day as our own official guide to NYC. I must admit that it worked surprisingly well. We followed the skyline to the Empire State Building, waiting in long lines, and arrived at the top. It had gotten more cloudy and humid by now, so there wasn’t much to see up there, but it was neat enough. This was the first time I remember wishing that I had brought a camera.
From there we walked to Central Park (thanks to the drawings of our kids menu map, we knew which way to go) and spent some time wandering around the pathways near the City. Then it was time for lunch, so we found a big hamburger place in Time Square where I sat right next to David Lee Roth’s pants. I have to assume it was a Hard Rock.
After lunch, we tried and failed a few times to hail a taxi to the other side of the island to see the Statue of Liberty. Most cabs that came down our street already had passengers in them. The very few that didn’t would see us and just keep Driving. A few would stop long enough to ask where we were headed, and then drive off as their voice trailed off, usually a sentence that they weren’t heading that way - nice.
We eventually sorted out a ride down to that end of the city, but I can’t remember anything about the ride. This was around the time that we decided specially not to take the subways at all because we wanted to cram in as many visuals of the actual city as we could - only being there for this one day.
The ride to the Statue of liberty and waiting in lines there took a large piece of our afternoon. It was mid afternoon by the time we were on the small island with the famous statue. I remember being pretty blown away by it. This was the second time that I remember wishing that I had brought a camera, as the size and scope of the Statue of Liberty up close was pretty breathtaking. It’s probably where we spent the most time. The ferry ride back offered some neat sites of the city from the water, along with just about any language and accent you could imagine hearing on the short ride back.
Once back in Manhattan proper near wall street, we hit up an absolutely enormous used book store that had some of the best natural light that I had ever seen. The third time I wished that I had taken a camera. Donald was hugely into really obscure books and records (just like his dad) so he had a lot to look at in that shop. When I visit the city again, I plan on trying to find it again. It was worth it.
We had better luck this time catching a Taxi back uptown to Penn Station - where we would travel back to Albany. We got some New York style pizza in the train station (I remember liking it) and boarded our train. It was really the first time we had sat that whole day and the two hour ride back to our hotel in Albany was a sanctuary. I spent the entire train ride back writing in a notebook with a Bic pen that I had in my backpack - spilling out fast words about my day. Pages and pages. I think at that time I just wanted to remember the details of my day in the Big Apple. Writing in that notebook and noticing a punk rock girl with dark hair and thick rimmed glasses are the only things I remember about the train ride back to our scary hotel. The train made a lot of stops letting off people between there and Albany that worked in the city.
Our day in the city felt fast, and frantic. I wish I had more details about what we did there, but I wrote it just as it happened. Fitting that much activity into one late-morning through late afternoon didn’t allow much time for refection. It didn’t really allow much time for anything - as we spent basically the minimum amount of time at any one spot in order to check it off the list/children’s menu map. Our day was more about seeing as much as we possibly could in the time we had. The downside is that I don’t have many memories or much to say about any specific thing that we saw that day. It was just - fast.
I can’t remember anything about arriving back in Albany or eating dinner that night. I remember Donald told me a funny story about his dad in the hotel room that I laughed about for a solid hour.
My only remaining memory was getting dropped off at the airport by Donald really early in the summer morning darkness that next morning. TSA was curious about my huge, solid bag of change that I brought along for the toll booths from Nebraska to here, but they were nice enough about it.
I remember sitting on those flights home just putting my head down into my arms on the tray table in front of me as streams of light from the small windows and strangers sat all around me. I sat like that for hours and hours. I also remember sitting next to a guy on one of my flights that looked just like William H Macey. I didn’t get a book or anything to actually do on my flights home. I just sat there, with my head down, sometimes wondering the name of that punk girl on the train back to Albany. It was that curious thought that carried me all the way home.