Out West & Beyond

I think it was November 1987, I was living with my mother in Chicago, near Wrigley Field selling beer during games, dripping wet, squawking;

beer, beer here, get your ice cold beer.

So go west young man go west, write The Great American Novel, get a job, get a boner, go surfing, be a bum, drink rum, walk in the sand.

I pack a duffle bag with toiletries; Toms' anise toothpaste, chocolate bars, flannel shirts, short pants, my combat boots and converse all stars.

I line the bed of my 80 Dodge Wagon with a mattress, then securing a Coleman Cooler to the driver side door with binding cord. 

By 11am I'm in Gary, Indiana at Bob’s Deli & Liquors where I buy Coca Cola, hard salami sandwiches and and five litres of Greek Metaxa.

At noon I pull into East Saint Louis,  parking in front of  Ned’s Love Club, goin in for a drink, the crowd is interracial.  

I perch bird like on a stool sipping Budweiser draft from a tulip glass with a straw.

Half in the bag I order a T-Bone steak, rice and read beans.

A young black girl taps my shoulder saying, 

I’m Mary Jane, 

Oh, I’m Henry, Henry Stone

and she says, 

I’m hungry baby, 

I slide my plate in front of her and she eats savoring every bite.

As we walk out I pay the cashier and she asks,

where ya goin baby? I say

California and beyond, 

take me to Kansas City, my aunty’s there,

sure sweetie.

At 9am I'm driving 80 West, the stars  burn red because of pollution. Mary Jane's asleep behind me, I sip Metaxa from the bottle praying and saying a loud, 

Praise  be Lord light the way.

I wheel the wagon into The Oak Ridge Prairie Forest Preserve parking under big pines, getting out of the car, peeing in the bushes, stretching, savory the scent of fresh cut pine.

I crawl over the front seat and lay down next to Mary Jane, passing out.

In the morning we drive 80 to the city for breakfast, walking into Stan's Deli sitting at the counter she orders, 

a tongue sandwich on rye, hash browns, a milk shack and and soda for my friend.

She eats like there's no tomorrow, I gulp down the soda, hungover.

By 10pm we're in Kansas city on Paseo Street, she takes a cab to her aunties, I'm thrilled she's gone.

I drive eight hours on Highway 30 turning into The Pawnee National Grassland Park, parking in high grass, sleeping for a six hours.

In the morning I drive to Cheyenne eating 

at The High Plains Grill; a steak sandwich,  hash browns, washed down with hot coffee.

Full, I drive eight hours to Utah, bypassing salt lake city, staying in Bountiful City, sleeping at the Big Horn Inn, eating burgers by the pool, swimming, drinking beer.

Poolside I chat with a older lady from Long Island, a accountant for a New York who's going to visit her sister.

It’s sunny and hot, she has a two piece suit on I see her erect nipples, she puts her hand on my cock, I get a hard she rubs it until I cum and we go to her room screw, talk about life, falling in love some.

That night in Liz's room we watch 6o Minutes, I ask her to travel with me to Colorado and she says,

I would love to Henry.

We check out at 5am, Liz pays, then we drive south on Highway 30, it's four hour to Denver, on the way we stop at Iron Mountain Hot Springs floating in the pool on our backs, shielding our eyes from the Sun.

In Denver we exit on Highway 30 and Liz gives me directions to her sisters place, It’s in Platt Ford, we park and go inside, we sit in her kitchen drinking coffee and eating donuts, I pour Metaxa into our coffee.

After eating Liz hugs her sister, hands her a check for 900$, saying, 

take care sis.

We stop in Las Vegas booking a room in the Flamingo Hotel, 25$ a night, cheap, but the hotel will take that and more from you in the casino

Our room is on the 12th floor and we can see the Red Rock mountains to the West, and Liz says, 

it looks like mars.

We fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

At 8am we shower, dress casually going downstairs to the dining room. The meal’s buffet style offering carved meats, chicken dishes, porridge, juices, cereals, coffee or tea.

Liz and I eat like pigs, then changing upstairs and going down to the kidney shaped pool, passing out in the lounge chairs. 

When we wake we're ready for drinks, we order frozen margaritas spending the rest of the afternoon there.

At 9pm we go to the casino, playing black jack, I quickly lose 200$, but Liz is wins 5000$, I convince her to hold fast. 

We check out at 5am after a quick breakfast, 

It’s a four hour drive to San Diego, we stop at Joshua Tree National Park to see the trees which seem human swaying in the wind like the Angry Apple Trees in the Wizard of OZ.

In a hour we are in Palm Springs were we float naked in The Indian Canyon Hot Springs, drained in a good way. 

Soon we're in San Diego were we book a room at Hotel 6 for 30$.

In the evening we walk the Gaslight Quarter  where we're approached by white haired Mexican who offers a quarter ounce of cocaine for 200$, Luci buys two, Henry smiles nervously, thinking it's too much.

At Jupiter & Ivory we eat ribs, broiled Mahi- mahi, Hawaiian poi, Caesar salad and yellow rice. 

After eating we walk a few blocks

to the Tipsy Crow at the bar drinking tequila and mango juice, going to the WC to snort coke. 

We  sleep late Sunday morning, waking at 11am and check out of Hotel 6, loading up the wagon and heading South to Tijuana, stoked  to escape the USA.

Liz shows a passport and I show my drivers license, the border agent who looks like Cantinflas the Mexican actor throws the documents back at us saying, 

don’t get the clap gringos.

We book a room in  Motel Rojas for 30$ carrying our luggage to room 3.

We lay in bed awhile on our backs hypnotized by the ceiling fan and she says,

Henry I have stage 4 cancer,

okay baby.

I ask the desk clerk,

Señora my lady has cancer can you help? 

Yes amigo, my aunty is a voodoo priestess  here's her address.

We take a taxi down back roads to a  wooden house knocking on the door, a dark skinned woman in a long dress invites us in, Liz lays on the floor naked, and the priestess rings the neck off a chicken spattering blood on Liz, rubbing  blood all over her spraying Holy water ever where.

The medium is irrational, Henry throws a  couple hundred pesos at the old woman, and the couple walks out. As they walk the boulevard Lucy grimaces, stooping over, he hales a taxi they go to Angeles  Hospital, 

Liz dies in the waiting area with a smile on her face, I see a spark floating up to Heaven, thinking; 

she'll miss sex, hot dogs with relish, and the occasional cigarette. 

I hire professional mourners, old women in  black I rent a small wedding hall, hire a priest, we have a service.

After Lucy’s cremated I toss her ashes into the Pacific.

Oddly, I feel nothing. I drive south to Chihuahua, book a cheap room, drink Jose Cuervo mixed with fresh lemonade, eat lovey meals at cantinas, sleep with putas.

Life is grand I love it.

Superman & Me

Sherman Alexie is a lionized Indian writer and filmmaker; I doubt you've heard of him. 

And, for sure, nobody on X has heard of him.

Family, friends, and publishers convinced him to open an X account, and he only got 4o followers because Tweeps are into horror, romance, and spy novels. 

He's a card-carrying Academy and Institute of Letters member whose pin is in the desk drawer under a pile of papers.

In his book Superman and Me, he talks about learning to read when he was 3, reading a comic book, and associating the panels with the written narrative.  

One day, he picks up a book and looks closely at the words. It's hard, but he sees the words on the pages as though they were cattle corralled into paragraphs. Sherman says it like this,

I didn't have the vocabulary to say, paragraph, but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence.  

At the age of 3, the prodigy sees the world in paragraphs. In his own words saying, 

This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south, and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, deceased sister, my younger twin sisters, and adopted little brother. 

By the age of 5, Sherman’s in kindergarten reading The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, laughingly, as his neighbors are reading Dick, Spot, and Jane.

Sherman, the wunderkind, was seen as an oddball on the reservation; Indian kids weren't supposed to be geniuses. 

In 1985 Alexie applied and was accepted to Jesuit Gonzaga University in Spokane, receiving an academic scholarship, the only Indian kid to make it to college from his reservation.   

His work focused on the troubles of Indians, life on the reservation, alcoholism, poverty, and despair, but he didn't cry about it, he wrote comically.

Sherman played guard on the Jesuit school's basketball team till his Senior year. 

One day, he calls the reservation to talk to his mom, who's in the bathroom, asking her,

is papa there? 

Henry, you know your father died 7 years ago. 

Alexie says, 

My mother laughs at the angels who wait for us to pause during the most ordinary of days and sing our praise to forgetfulness before they slap our souls with their cold wings; the angels burden and unbalance us, and da ride us piggyback. 

Alexie is also a filmmaker. He's produced and written screenplays for several low-budget films, including Fancy Dancing, Winter in the Blood, and Smoke Signals. 

As far as Skins go, Sherman is tops.