Chapter 11: All That Road Going (Part One)

If Summer is understood to be the spirit of celebrated excess, if we permit ourselves to thematize it as the triumph of life, brash and verdant, over the contemplating autumn, the immobile winter, and the still-thawing spring, this summer of which I speak is the source, the summer in which all others participate when they approximate it here and there and in certain parts. But this summer was not fragmentary, as the rest are—it was whole and entire, it was Summer at every single moment and in all of its hidden pockets, a tidal wave of solar surplus, radiating itself for its own sake, a time of recklessness, freedom of movement, unending festivity, all with a pulverizing feeling of intensity behind every action and decision, the harvest of our upbringings and the reward for enduring the cold necessary months of adolescent education. From whirlwind beginning to salvational ending, the season found me immature and grew me to full form like a plant in a hothouse; it spat me out the other side like from the spume of a Leviathan. But here, at the outset, was the time to caress the weighty spiritual spoils we had forged in ourselves.

The Resurrection I underwent in Québec, and the Pentecost that visited New Jersey, folded together into this third movement of the spirit, greater than the sum of its parts: the road-going, the Revelation. The life made for me, measured out with coffee spoons, was interrupted now and forever, because I beheld, face to face, the dragon that says Thou Shalt, to which I said, I will. But revelation never unmasks a common thought, never proceeds along easy predictable lines, and right at the consummating cusp of this cross of Affirmation I found instead the jewel of great Despising…

I was the driver, as I would be for most of the trip: beside me was Alexandre, in charge of the music; in the backseat was Red, manning the GPS, and Henri, writing his private fragments in his little ironic flowery-pink notebook. I pulled out onto Route 17 South, as too many times before… the Empire State peering over the horizon, the city of cities—but we veered away from that beast and headed for the Delaware Memorial Bridge, talking and talking, talking the great conversation of perpetually young Noontide, taking great caution and care when dealing with directions (a trait soon to be shed), — getting to know each other almost, for we knew a comradely conscience would be needed for the length of time we’d be in company, like the crew of a Viking ship. Deaths Grips’ “Hacker” beat at the mild morning air as we drove passed the endless rows of corporate stores, embarking on our long way to New Orleans.

We passed a Burger King, stopped there for Alexandre, of course, and Henri grabbed his soup ingredients he had bought from Walmart out of the trunk. He was called a “subhuman liberal faggot” for this by the BK crown-wearing Alexandre. Henri scowled at him and shook his head.

Alexandre turned up the volume on the car stereo. “Shut da fuck up and listen to dhis shit. You will love it Red. It’s real fuckin good.” It was Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven. It reached its first crescendo as we drove over the great Delaware bridge, the golden sun sending its high beams up into the sky before it descended for the day, firing off at us like fireworks. The sun matched the post-rock orchestra, filling the dome of the sky with quaking optimism. We were unlocking the next frontier: if the frontier days were denied to us 21^st century latecomers, it was all the better, because we were forcing open a new one for ourselves on the very roads and towns they claimed would eternally prevent such adventure. We would turn the concrete maze into our own battlefield, make it new. Everything was possible. We were bleeding the sweat of days. Our minds were running faster than speech. I could see the vast panorama of my life opening up before me. My heart was pounding in my chest, I could taste the salvation of the world, we were following the bend of Time to the paradisal destination of the other shore, all our dreams would come true, our throats sang out in joy at the wonderful promises of a poetic existence!... the first crescendo caved into a tenderness, now just a soft guitar picking over the winnowing naying background strings… the forests of America were still just as beautiful as they were in the days of the pioneers. We were young and filled with hope. We didn’t care where we had to sleep or what we had to eat. Our bodies burnt off all the fat like vapor. Slowly the second crescendo started heaving up on us. The first peal broke over the horizon like a shining Hawaiian wave, crashing into a vortex of ancient power. Like arrows fired from a Greek bow we shot out from a tunnel into the plains of these States, raining death upon the sleeping Danaans. Gods showered us with good omens from the mountain peaks, coursing down like avalanches of ambrosia. The bass petals pummeled at our veins. All the venom of cloistered schooling was drained. We were free men.

On that Fourth of July we rolled into nations’ capital, following the Garmin GPS to the address given to us by Richardson, the great CLT. He was the soft-spoken, mature, literate mind of our cultural trio, five years our elder.

It was not his apartment we would be visiting; he lived further into Virginia, in Herndon, so he decided we’d hang out somewhere more fun. In fact, it was a Capitol Hill townhouse shared by a woman named Maria and very liberal recent graduate named Tom Huang who was working for a Democratic Senator. Not a crowd ready for 4chan humor, but they were alcoholics like Richardson so he assured us it’d be a good time. After arriving and introducing ourselves, Richardson suggested we take a trip to the grocery store for beer.

We proceeded with the drinking before we walked to the Capitol Building, debating politics and morality the whole way. “If human rights were inalienable, how can they be taken away?” Richardson asked Tom. He was stumped. “Fuckeeng owned,” Alexandre said, starting a debate with him about secular democracy versus Christian fascism. “Christianity is virtuous, dhus eet is no problem to have eet run a dictatorship; I cannot say de same about your measly nursing home deemocracie.” Tom fumed, he was “rustled” in Richardson’s parlance. He criticized Richardson’s flirtations with reactionary politics. How tame they were then! Richardson and I explained to our French-Canadian friends how America self-consciously styled itself on the Roman Republic and the city states of Greece, pointing to how this reflected in the national architecture. “Our Capitol is a Basilica, not to any theology of old, but to the theology of freedom,” I said with triumph.

As CLT later reminded me, Alexandre went on a rant about how he’d rape and then kill a tripfag on /mu/ known as “poly,” an annoying guy who ruined the board by spamming the godawful composer Schnittke.

“I have no idea what they’re talking about half the time,” Red said to Maria when we got back inside. “But I just go with it” I looked over at him. What, does he want me to feel guilty for finally being able to talk about this stuff instead of babbling about weed and bullshit back home? He was able to get along with Richardson just fine. But he was no match for Henri, whom Richardson later called “a great conversationalist.”

Richardson was fascinating, very smart but very kind, a mediator between our rugged boyishness and the more mature and timid tastes of the friends of his friend. These were adults; I observed Tom’s bookshelf and was impressed with the thoroughly creased spine of his copy of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and the way he actually applied his book learning to engage in the world of legislation and policymaking. We were manifestly not adults, and Richardson could not compensate for every off-color comment we made. Alexandre was whispering to us about the hosts’ friend, a hefty African American. “Ee’ve never seen one dat large.” “Shut the hell up, man,” Richardson said. Alexandre set off a downright nuclear bomb at the end of the night during a conversation about Game of Thrones, causing a riot of horror in Maria and Tom. “Dis is absurd, dis is absurd,” he kept repeating as they raged. I will let Richardson explain the story as he later reported it on 4chan:

Late into the night he started ranting about how he would rape Ellie Kendrick of Game of Thrones as punishment for being so ugly. It really bothered the hostess, and I told him to apologize because she'd been so nice to let all these strangers crash at her apartment, so I called him on it and told him to apologize. He refused, on the grounds that he wasn't sorry and stood by what he'd said. However, in a bizarre display of backwards integrity, he declared he could not stay under the roof of someone who disapproved of him, and that he would sleep on the sidewalk of Washington D.C. instead. We tried to talk him out of this on the grounds that he didn't really deserve to be raped and murdered (as far as I know), but succeeded only in convincing him to sleep in Finn’s car instead. He wanted to bring the handle of rum and the keys to just “drive around for a while, maaayn,” but only got to keep the rum. Entertaining guy, honestly. He behaves exactly how he does on 4chan, and is rich enough to get away with it.

So yes, rather than forsake his honor by apologizing he chose instead to sleep the night away in my car with a handle of rum. I pointed out to the hosts that the irony of it all was that Game of Thrones was filled with rape; their outrage was performative. They had calmed down, and Richardson and I went outside after him. Despite being told he could sleep inside, Alexandre, too drunk to respond, stumbled about and insisted I give him my keys. I told him to fuck off. We chatted about Don Giovanni, and Richardson shared his intricate opinions on Mozart’s other operas under the dull glow of a streetlamp till midnight. He went back inside and I opened the car for Alexandre. He bid me to sit in it with him and have a cigarette. Then he started hatching plans. “Just stay outside here wit me, let’s go for a drive.” “No man, we’re drunk and you are fucking hammered.” I went inside and hid the keys safely under the cushion of the couch I was to sleep on. The next morning we denied the offer of breakfast, not wanting to overstay our welcome, and said our goodbyes to Richardson. He couldn’t come with us, as he had to perform—singing in his church and acting in the town theater. He saw us off, my old Mercedes rattling through the D.C. streets.

* * *

We drove on, pummeling into the south, wicked-looking bugs kamikazing themselves against my dashboard, Jim Morrison’s voice bellowing about blood in the streets on the cassette rotating in the ancient player. We hadn’t had any food, and the tank was almost empty, so we took a stop, and as I stood at the pump I noticed oil leaking out of my car onto the pavement. They all gathered to take a look except Alexandre. “Lazy fuckeeng piece of shit,” Henri said glaring at him through the window as he flicked at his tablet in the back seat. “I’m not getting out, dhis is bullsheet, everydhing is fyne,” he smugly returned.

We started the car again and hoped for the best. A small town in Virginia named Buchanan approached our vision and we decided to head in search of a mechanic. None were open—it was Sunday in the lazy, Christian south. But at a nearby general store a kind old man named Cecil helped change our oil and pointed us to a mechanic near Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke.

Following Cecil’s botched directions, we eventually found the Firestone mechanic, likewise closed; we parked the car in front but felt that four people sleeping inside would be uncomfortable and that the police of the town would bother us for loitering. So we locked up and took our sleeping bags with us. Descending into trees on the outer bend of the mall lot, we tracked through the woods until a clearing arrived: train tracks.

We crossed the tracks into another wood and stopped in a treeless spot where we kicked some rocks aside and set our stuff down. We cooked some of the MREs Red brought. “Oooh, peanut butter M&Ms,” Alexandre said with his flashlight headset on. Red cracked up. Sleep did not visit us, listening to the cicadas drifting off and the owls beginning to hoot, so we took the handle of rum and walked the tracks just outside the clearing for a while, chainsmoking boges and talking about girls and the Divina Comedia. “Tell us about de end of Inferno, Fiyn,” Alexandre said to me. “Dhis shiet was so fuckin’ good when he explained it before, mayn.” As I was summoning the scene before us, in which Dante and Virgil barely dodge Lucifer’s three faces, their chomping Cerberusean teeth feasting on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius—one punished for Jesus, two punished for Caesar—before the poets swung themselves into the tunnel to Purgatory, we saw some flashlights shining furiously from above, about twenty feet up, flashing their beams over the gravel we were stomping all over. We could hear dogs too. We hid in the brush, not making a sound, until they went away. “Some wild west shiet,” Henri said. Crouching, we silently snuck back to our camp, avoiding a run in with more hounds.

Alexandre could not stand the bugs. “FUCKEENG CENTAPEEDES” he complained, “dhey are all over me!” A moment of silence, then he shouted violently: “I SWALLOWED A FUCKEENG BUG!” We laughed so hard. Alexandre didn’t get any sleep. The rest of us did though, and we rose with the sun to bring the car into the garage as soon as they opened.

The mechanic had no idea why the power steering reservoir was flooding. He said he barely knew how to fix a car like it, so we took it to a German car service down the road. The repairman there assured us the oil was fine and that the reservoir shouldn’t cause a problem as long as it wasn’t spraying fluid. He told us to buy a bottle of engine oil if we saw the levels were low.

“Well dat was a waste of fucking tiem,” Alexandre said. “No it wasn’t you fucking idiot,” I said. “We don’t want to have to worry about breaking down.” We tried to stop at a local diner but that was somehow closed too, so we went through the drive thru of a Hardee’s. “Eet’s okay, but eet’s no Burger Keeng.”

Alexandre insisted on getting a carton of Camels, knowing cigarettes were cheaper in Virginia. “We MUST, I weel smoke it all in a couple days anyway.” We pulled up to a truck stop and convinced the guy to sell us one. “Finn, I am getting dhose Camel Royals. Dey are fuckin’ god-tier.”

We finally got back on the Interstate. Alexandre decided he would take the wheel to give me a break, chugging Monsters to offset his sleepless night. “See, dhis is how you drive.” He was going 95 miles per hour, but it was “all fyne” because he trailed people going faster. When he didn’t have this option, he would swerve in and out behind others not going fast enough. “Get da fuck out of the way, bitch!” When Alexandre would go to shift lanes, he used his entire head to look behind him rather than using the mirrors. I looked in the rearview and saw Red and Henri eyeing each other in looks of slight terror, holding onto the ceiling handles.

I popped Morrison Hotel into the player, skipping to Maggie McGill. I’ve been, SINGIN’ THA BLUES, ever since the WOORLD BEGAAN! “Aaah hell yeah,” Henri said ashing into my car’s built-in ashtray. We watched him put a whole cigarette out in it. “Ah man, don’t do that, I can’t get them out. It’s fine though,” I told him. “Did you really just fucking do dat?” Alexandre said. “You are fuckeeng retarted.” Henri glared at him through the rearview mirror; Red tried to hide his laughter.

We pulled up to a rest stop near Chattanooga, Tennessee where we were greeted by a dirtied young couple, Ted and Rachel. “Welcome to the south” they said. “We’ve been hitchhiking freighters since New Orleans––oh you boys are headed there? Well, have fun. We can’t have fun no more. No sir. I gotta visit my dying grandmother back up in Michigan, where I’m from, and I got my girl with me and my dog. We’d take a bus if we could, but they don’t want animals on board. So we gotta hop freighters, don’t we boy.” He patted his salivating dog, soaking his head in a water bowl on the hot July afternoon.

* * *

A little while later my “Check Oil” light turned on. I didn’t say much because I thought it would pass, but it didn’t. I took the closest exit to a city called Gadsden, Alabama. We parked on the side of a local highway leading there. When I lifted the hood, a mountain of smoke burst into the humid southern air. The dashboard showed it was almost a hundred degrees in the boiling sun. There was almost no oil left in the tank, and I figured it was far too hot to pour anything into it, so we waited two or three minutes and then emptied a quart of oil into the tank to keep driving.

A small gas station just down the road was our rescue. We went inside, started asking questions to this stiff, glum old southern lady, hardened by all the nonsense she had seen in her days. “What kind of oil, how do we fix this, how do we do that ….” Just then a man no older than twenty-five, a Confederate flag tattooed on his arm, dressed in beat-up work clothes, wearing a cap that kept the sweat stuck to his greasy hair instead of dripping down into his faint blue eyes walked in; the woman behind the counter asked him, Kyle, to help us out, but he was already on his way over to offer after overhearing.

He went straight outside with us behind him, asking us what was wrong. All of a sudden he dove under my car. “Look guys, you got some hose unplugged.” Red and I got down on the ground and watched him wrench it together. “Not a big problem but that’ll probably save ya some gas.” Then he popped back up, opened the hood and added some transmission fluid, diagnosed my tank, filled it with some oil. “Just buy 10W-40 and whenever you stop to fuel fill it up with a quart. There’s a leak and it’ll probably be near empty every 300 miles or so. Don’t buy the expensive stuff, s’all the same.”

He did not answer to one word of thanks until on sudden impulse I said, “God bless you.” At that his eyes lit him up and he replied, “God bless you too!”

I thought back to the colossal white cross we saw rising out of the ground near Roanoke. Earlier Red was asking, “Why is everyone so nice in the south?” I wondered if it was because they were Christians. I had been told growing up by teachers, redditors, and late-night talk show hosts that southerners were rabid, angry, dumb fundamentalists, and out of a contrarianism toward what I knew I wanted to sympathize with whatever was different. I discussed this explanation of their generosity with Alexandre, who agreed, saying, “Yees and not because he’s expecting a reward, but simply because he tinks helping peepal is a good theeng.” I started imagining his possible childhood, being taught by his father how to work and by his pastor how to be hospitable to strangers. I wondered if, perhaps, he had never had joys like the ones we were about to have, and I felt a pang of guilt at this possibility.

He didn’t want any money. But he didn’t turn down a pack of Busch Lite. So he wasn’t without payment or joy after all.

“It’s a bad, bad, rituuuall,” Red hummed as we got into the car, packing Marlboro Southern Cuts against his palm. “But it calms, me, dooown.”

We zoomed back into the rush of images of long highways and road signs and mountains and meadows and truckers scooting out of the way for us: these scenes burned their way into my head; it was all that appeared when I later closed my eyes. The AC was broken, so we just kept the windows down, even when going at high speeds, and got blasted by the wind, chainsmoking the whole way. The air was so warm, so lush with fragrances of pollen, pine, the tree bark and campfires mingling into the summer air, traces of barbecue too. Whenever I ride in a car now with the windows rolled up and the well-oiled AC system running I just sigh.

We were coming up on Birmingham, Alabama. “What’s dhere?” Alexandre asked. “I dunno, maybe some southern stuff, saloons or plantations.” “Let’s go check it out.” He rolled down the exit into the city streets—nothing but “Popeyes and black peepal,” Alexandre said. “Dhis place fucking sucks. Let’s get outta here.”

Later, we pulled into a truck stop in Mississippi for gas and to check the oil. I poured another quart in. Here were some REAL southerners, all in trucks, heads of deer in the big mart, a portly older dude in overalls talkin bout “pig huntin’” to a cross-eyed hillbilly. I loved it. Despite the insults northerners might throw at them, I thought they were more polite and poetic than some of the wound-tight teachers from home. My prior thoughts about their Christianity seemed to be contradicted though when I went into the bathroom and saw a dispenser with four 75 cent options: “HUGGER: Slimmer Condom for a Snugger Fit”; “Genuine Horny Goat Weed: Increases Sexual Energy, Enhances Desire & Performance”; “Now… The Ultimate in Stimulation and Visual Appeal! Glow-in-the-Dark TINGLER RING”; “Genie’s Deities – Politically Incorrect Novelties: 12 Adult Assorted Surprises!” Or perhaps this shows that Freud is right, that repression begets creativity.

We drank beers in the car as Alexandre drove us into Louisiana. It was late: we were almost there but we were getting tired. We decided to get a room at a cheap motel near the border.

“Fiyn, we must write some fuckin’ poetry, as you said.” I didn’t remember saying this but he kept quoting it back to me through the whole trip. “We’ve gotta WRITE some Fuckin’ POETRY.” He showed me Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters” in this little hardcover volume he brought from home while Henri strummed a guitar. “You ever read dis shit? :

In the afternoon they came unto a land / In which it seemed always afternoon. / All round the coast the languid air did swoon, / Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. […] And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, / Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore / Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, / Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. / Then some one said, "We will return no more”; / And all at once they sang, "Our island home / Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam." / There is sweet music here that softer falls / Than petals from blown roses on the grass, / Or night-dews on still waters between walls / Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; / Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, / Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; / why should we toil alone, / We only toil, who are the first of things, / And make perpetual moan, / Still from one sorrow to another thrown.

“Eet is mellifluous. Eet reminds me of some French poetry. Do you hear the Last Man in it? I’ve been re-reading Nietzsche, mayn.”

“Oh shit, that’s good. Yes I hear it is palpable, the languid air of the microwaved souls. And the mus—”

“Can you guys see an outlet over there? I’m trying to plug in my Xbox,” Red said. We ignored him.

“I wish to write dhis book called The Hymns of Orpheus. In fact I’ve already begun writing some verses for it. It’s of Orpheus walking around the earth, bidding mankind to wake up from its slumbers, but also with this acceptance that some never will: “blessed are the Lotos Eaters, who will soon sleep their last sleep.” “Blessed are those who will, for they shall will evermore.” It goes on like this, like the Sermon on the Mount.”

I picked up my copy of the King James Bible, which I had stashed in my bag along with selections from Goethe’s poetry, Kerouac’s On the Road, and Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass. I began to read the Gospel of Matthew, admiring the freshness and realism of the prose compared to Greek epic.

As I read of Christ walking amid markets and wildernesses, we heard rain pattering at the glass before it picked up into a whipping fury. We opened up the door: it was monsooning, whole vats of water deluging from the skies, a black lake swallowing up the parking lot and the loudest thundering the god could muster. “Hol-lee fuck” Henri said. “I’ve never seen anything like eet.”

Alexandre picked up his tablet and started posting on /mu/. “Im with 3 friends it could really do some good to you basement dwellers to come out and do something with actual human people that arent anime,” he wrote. “I have unlimited funds for the summer [his parents deposited money in his account every few days] and we’d go anywhere if we can stay there.” “No one wants to hang out with you,” an anon replied. “Mayn, what fuckin’ faggots.”

The next morning we stepped out into the pale dawn and I saw a gigantic moth on the ground. I placed a quarter down next to it to reveal its size to the camera. “Why the fuck should a bug be that big!” We were waiting to see gators crawl out of that prehistoric land’s haunted swamps. The air was like heated blankets, smothering us in volcanic humidity… the sun was shimmering with Mesozoic sounds as it rose overhead…

* * *

New Orleans was an intensity. We crossed the bridge over Lake Pontchatrain and rolled into the French Quarter, found a parking spot on Canal Street and jumped out. Moseying through the early morning crowds, we came upon a big jazz band, eight players strong, howling their brass on the wet pavement of Jackson Square outside St. Louis Cathedral. We were sold hash by a black hobo off the French Quarter; we walked over to Elysian Fields Avenue and strolled up and down under its big hanging canopies, letting the faint haze of the weak grass wash away our stress. On the windowsill of a corner store sat an older man, originally from Morocco who had wandered across the world but who was presently nursing a beer in a brown bag and begging for cigarettes because he couldn’t return home to his wife, who had his tobacco but refused to let him drink. He told us about a hostel called India House uptown, cheap lodging and a bar out back.

We made our way back up Bourbon Street, now relatively quiet in the soaked afternoon. On the way we were stopped by a portly Texan boomer wearing aviators and a white blazer over his bare chest, telling us that he was Tito of Tito’s Vodka. “You look like sharp young men, why don’t ya take a picture with me for a new vodka ad?” he said with flamboyance. A Google search later revealed that he was not, in fact, Tito of Tito’s Vodka.

We drove to India House—such hostels were key to saving drinking money on the trip, as they only cost about $15 a night and provided a simple bed as well as a perpetual party of the pilgrims from the world over they sheltered. We parked down the street and walked up to its edifice, two massive palm trees in front of this rickety old Victorian house with the flags of America, Britain, Australia, Ireland, Louisiana, and New Orleans dangling off the balcony, five Ionian columns lifting it up above the front porch. Welcome graffiti stained the bathrooms, scratchings from liberal pot-smokers backpacking with their parents’ money. The tattooed lady at the front desk gave us a room for four for $45. “Fuck yes.” We threw our bags in the lockers and went out to the back patio. There was already a rager going on, and we sat ourselves in an alcove of the scene, plopping our 30 of Busch Lite on the big square wooden table. We instantly got to talking with two travelers, Maurice and Laurianne, a pair from France who were taking the summer off to explore America. They showed us pictures of them in Detroit and D.C., equally delighted with the slums and the monuments of the country. Maurice, a less sociopathic Mersault, was a graduate student of political philosophy in Paris, working for politicians in between classes. Laurianne was a freelance journalist who had a copy of a Hunter S. Thompson book with her, and was telling me to read him and consider becoming a journalist for a living. “It’s a good way to make cash as a writer,” she said.

* * *

We were ready to take the whole city and break it over our knees like a plank of wood. By nine we were on the streetcar heading to Bourbon. Construction, hot dog stand, a cop with his head down rushing the opposite way, pink-red lights and the first pleadings of horns reaching our ears.

Strippers and drug dealers were more plentiful than cops, prostitutes tugged at my shirt, alcohol was openly being consumed everywhere. The few cops there were on horseback, ready to plow through the mob in crowd control mode but presently they were flirting with tourists. Drunken hicks pissing in trash groves whose curbs were packed with blacks sipping Hennessy out of McDonald’s coffee cups, the degeneracy, the beautiful aching worthlessness raging against itself under the Cajun moon.

I passed three middle aged New Yorkers in suits working their way to cheat on their wives. We yelled back and forth over the music, recommendations on jazz bars and strip clubs; I nodded, lit a cigarette and kept walking. Up above were bachelors hanging over hotel room railings, blowing smoke over the whole scene: rich southerners giving passerbys their iPhones to take pictures of themselves with old whores, who stumbled in black dresses; jazzmen behind windows blowing through their instruments at students drinking gin straight out of bottles in the middle of the street; “weedorcoke weedorcoke” I hear in mumbles quickly passing, gone before we could understand.

“Ay, Nikes,” shouted a disheveled black man at Red. Red looked where the voice came from. “I can tell you where ya got your shoes just by looking at them. Wanna bet?” Red said, “Alright man, try, highly doubt you’ll guess.” “You got your shoes on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.” We all laughed; Red hung his head with a “really?” expression, and turned away, ignoring his protests to give him twenty dollars.

Red discovered that this one bar was selling these bong-looking shooters of beer with fake grenades on the bottom without checking ID, so we bought four of them. “Damn, that shit’s expensive,” I said. “How much money did you breeng?” Alexandre asked. “A good amount, that I made from tutoring, but damn man if we wanna keep driving we gotta slow down with this shit.”

It wasn’t all just vice. The beauty of New Orleans is that, unlike Vegas, the strippers and the decadence are built not around gambling but around music.

A little black kid was banging on plastic buckets with drumsticks, beating out the most amazing rhythms; you could hear him from a block away, sounding like a full marching band following a militia. We turned the corner and found Alexandre and Red mesmerized by a guy on a slide guitar sitting on the sidewalk, hammering away in woeful agony singing about his girl stealing his last dollar; Red was laughing with hysterical joy, and Alexandre was covering his mouth, agape, entranced in rapturous awe, hooting him on. I stop and stare as he cuts his strings with unstoppable momentum, belligerent and in solitude against the crowds. We stood there and listened to him play; but Henri thought the scene was nonsense. “Alexandre is full of eet,” he whispered to me.

The guitarist took us to this delicious burger place, Clover Grill, an old-fashioned diner with checkered floors. We jumped up on the red stools and watched them make it right in front of us on a flat stove with decades of grease caked on it, covering the burgers with hubcaps. This shit was miraculous. The bacon and cheese and hefty patties soaked up all the alcohol and we felt renewed.

Then, turning off onto Dumaine, Alexandre went up to this black dude and asked him if he knew where to get molly. He said sure and sold him what turned out to be Xanax. We came shuffling back up to Henri like zombies an hour later at India House. “We’re so tired…” we said forlornly, Eyeore-like. Henri made fun of us to the hostel guests.

* * *

Early the next morning I woke and sauntered outside for breakfast. I found the guys sitting at a picnic table with some Australians. There were Australians at every hostel we stayed at throughout the journey: the two at this bench told us they get three weeks of government-guaranteed paid vacation every summer. And so these former prison colonists scrounge up their socialist cash for cheap cars to crash in the swamps and valleys of their continental playground. Heavy drinkers themselves, they observed Alexandre pour himself a tall Red Solo cup of straight vodka for his morning meal. “Jeeesus ma’e, I nevah sawr such a thing.”

We went to a liquor store with Henri and he used his ID to get a bunchload of booze that we all chipped in for. The entire day was spent drinking in the alcove of India House. We got to know Marius and Laurriane more; they were looking for a ride to Lafayette. “There’s native French speakers still there, leftover from the Arcadian diaspora.” We told them we had nothing else planned so we would drive them there and check it out.

The last night in New Orleans was spent drunk around the town with our friends from India House. As we passed under the awning to a strip club two strippers started chatting and implied they wouldn’t ID us.

I opened the purple storm doors. To my right, a small little green plant and some security. To my left, a counter with a girl behind it, a bouncer next to her.

We paid the five-dollar cover and walked in. A semi-circular stage with a pole in the middle greets you; the hip-hop conducting the dancer to its rhythm; the smell of perfume; the A/C blasting on my arms, exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of my button-down. I sat down slowly in a large, cushioned chair that faced the entrance, watching the black girl climbing herself to the ceiling with her legs. A waitress came up and served us a dish of snacks: I tell her “a shot of whiskey, please.” I got the bill and wanted to shoot someone. The song ended and the dancer climbed down. A tall, slender young brunette, beautiful body, walked up the stairs by my side.

Rihanna began to play as she wrapped herself around the pole, then descended, shaking herself in the faces of a group of yelling young guys; I looked at them in disgust: these yuppie cocksuckers, Australians by the looks of it, with angry eyes drooling their sights at this girl. I see it all in their faces: millennial, awkward, fixing pretensions of decadence and intense desire to ward off nerves, each one of them trying to impress the other with their salacious catcalls.

The dancer fell into increased ease and led herself closer, closer, advancing the sexuality in each stride. She lowered herself to the ground, placing her palms flat on the stage, stiff-armed, straightening her legs toward us.

“What's your name?” she says loudly in innocent seduction, “Finn, and yours?” “Krystal.” "Mh." I take a shot off the table. “How old are you?” Alexandre yells up at her. “Nineteen.” “You know, you don’t have to do dhis,” Alexandre says, playing the save-the-prostitute trope. “Oh, honey, ai know. Aym from the sticks of Alehbaema. Ain’t no where ta make money up thur. This jawb pays great!” “I wish we could breeng you away from dhis decayed playce. Why don’t you come with us on the road?” “Ohoh, I don’t know about thayt, I gotta work tomorrah.” She didn’t see the romantic lure Alexandre was attempting to conjure; this was her Walmart shift, and she had a car to pay for.

She got up and twirled again, singing sweet merriment against the drowning death bells.

“Ooh, there's some cocaine in the back room I can show y’all, if you wanna pay extra,” she crooned down to us. We knew it was a scam and left.

While we were in the club, Henri was out on a “date” with a black chick he met. They went over to Lafeyette Square and sat in the park; she made out with him but after that began asking for money to pay her rent. When he said no to this, she asked him if he could at least buy her some hotdogs for dinner. He was confused by it, and we laughed at him saying that’s how hustlers roll.

Henri wanted to see jazz on Frenchman Street; for this Alexandre called him a “total faggeet.” I convinced him to come. Marius, much calmer than us, chuckled as we ran up to tourists talking to them, waving hands and screaming, jumping around them, watching them back-walk in fright. Alexandre and I run into a bar, down some whiskey, and buy what’s left of the bottle. Henri and Red down shots and Marius buys a bottle of beer. The place was eerie; we were close to the end of Bourbon Street, which gradually fades into darkness, away from all the flashing lights, into poor begging for change. By the time you see the green road signs it's pitch black, save for the rear glimmer and one streetlight illuminating rusty garage doors. But just around the corner is Frenchmen, which links darkness back into civilization.

Frenchmen Street, much better than Bourbon, the authentic spirit of the south winding around dirty hippies waving to pirate-looking drunks as they walk their several leashed dogs salivating onto expensive heels.

We head into a jazz bar. Out from the madness. A long row of stools turns into a corner that hits the far wall; beside it is the band area: husky guy on the stand-up bass, pulling the strings against his baritone woman; little guy on saxophone jumping around in weightless improv, courting the piano player who slams the keys flat-fingered; the whole band follows these three, who, all together, mate with their waving music and pour it onto the street through the hollowed-out windows. We sat down and ordered a pitcher of beer.

Alexandre got tired of the music and went off. We later went outside for a cigarette and found him in a fight with drug dealers over more fake drugs. “This is the most depraved place in the world,” he said.

* * *

Red, Henri and I took a tram car back to the hostel some time after Alexandre had left us. When we got back to the hostel, he was in the midst of full-fledged argument, causing a ruckus.

“Immigrants. Built. This. Country,” said a huge islander man with tribal tattoos, barring down at the seated Alexandre. “Samoans like me built this country.”

“Your peepal didn’t build shit,” Alexandre replied flatly, not deigning to make eye contact. “Dhis is some bullshiet you were served.”

“OH MY GOD!” the Samoan yelled in exasperation. A Colombian woman with him, or maybe just a guest at the hotel who was on his side, chimed in. “Jou can’t say that, jou don’t know da history. Do jou realize how privileged jou sound right now?!”

“I am privileged, I acknowledge eet, and I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a fuck about immigrants and I don’t cayre for your sob story. You didn’t build shiet.”

“You’re just some rich kid bitch and you don’t know the meaning of real work!” the man yelled.

“Work is for poor peepal. I’m not buyeeng what you’re selling. Go hawk your wares someplace else, my friend.”

The man flung himself around like he was ready to tear the tree behind him up by its roots. He stopped himself and went into the bunkbed room and slammed the door.

“Jou are dead wrong. Dead wrong,” the woman kept going.

“There ees no truth, only who ees loudest in de room. I don’t care for dhis discourse of crying clawing mediocritee. Nodhing worthy can be raised on dhis soil of ressentiment.”

Henri broke in. “But what dhey’re saying ees objectively correct, you realize, Alexandre.”

“Objective ees for autists. Subjective ees for de weak. De real answer is being always raight.”

With that he departed from the table, too heated to hear anything from Henri. At once, the Colombian woman, Henri, and Red all jumped down my throat telling me to disown Alexandre as a friend.

“This guy, jour friend, is a real aiss-hole, he is not ay good pehrson.”

“He may not be a good person but he is a great person,” I replied to her.

Henri rejoined: “Ay but Finn, man, he is really no good, I mean I’ve been so tired of him dhis trip, his insults are just out of haend, he is a real pieece of shiet.” I thought this was strange—how were these two going to get back home together if they were secretly at each other’s throats?

“Yeah, Finn, nah man, like, what he just did here.. that wasn’t cool, man.” I observed Red up and down: his Nike shoes, his Sublime t-shirt, this really is a man of “the people,” he fundamentally doesn’t get what Alexandre and I are after. “I don’t see what the problem is. You guys had an argument about politics. Did he hurt anyone? So he ruffled some feathers about race or whatever. Plenty of immigrants talk shit about white people all the time, complaining about our country and whatever else. Who cares?” “Oh, this is really enough,” the lady said. She went into her room. In silence we stamped out our cigarettes and went inside to sleep.

The next morning we found Marius and Laurianne on the patio and asked them if they wanted to leave for Lafayette. “Yees, zis shall be great! Let us just pack our bahgs.” Henri suddenly dropped on us his plan to stay at India House. Apparently, he had told Red outside the Burger King all the way back in Orville that he wanted to murder Alexandre, and he didn’t seem to be kidding. Red brushed it off laughingly, but began to keep watch of how much Henri would get enraged by Alexandre’s insulting remarks, which Henri said he wasn’t doing in Québec, only here to impress his audience. He had had it, and was taking off. His plan was to find this art collective in New Orleans living in a warehouse, and then to go to Austin, Texas, and stay at a hostel there he had heard of from a girl at India House called “The Firehouse.”

Later, Henri told us what happened to him, but it wasn’t until years later that he told me the full story. He befriended the hostess of India House: she was improvising poems on her typewriter, saying to passerbys, “what would you like me to write about?” and then clacking away—real fake hipster crap. He said they had turtle soup and then he left for Austin by Greyhound bus. In Austin, he first stayed with a guy in his RV he found on some backpackers’ Facebook group. The guy promised to show him the “real” Texas. Turned out the guy was gay, and tied Henri’s hands up while Henri stared at him with eyebrows raised; when he told him to untie it, the guy sheepishly said sorry and Henri jumped out of the camper into the street. Reading Desolation Angels in a coffee shop, he said he experienced the first panic attack of his life, a condition to affect him for some time afterward. He thought people were trying to hurt him; he dug through trash hallucinating; he bought a bottle of wine and then just gave it to a homeless guy. He was wired, he refused to talk to people out of paranoia. When a man noticed he seemed lost and offered him his cell phone, Henri ran away thinking the guy was a fed.

He checked in at The Firehouse and asked people for help. A girl gave him a ride to get groceries. Then he binge-watched YouTube videos of Call of Duty for three days straight. When he noticed he was running out of cash, he couch surfed at a Navy guy’s apartment. Finally he decided to get out of there, and so took another Greyhound to Laredo, on the border of Mexico. I remember he had uploaded a picture of the chilly white moon illuminating some sand-covered train tracks in what looked like a Wild West outpost. He wanted to go to Monterrey, where some artsy hipster types were, so he tried to pass into Mexico, by bus or by foot I don’t know, but the Border Patrol took him in for questioning. They asked him if he ever smoked pot; he thought if he was honest with them they would appreciate it, so he said yes, maybe four months ago. They locked him in a cell overnight; he could hear Mexican women crying. The agents thought he couldn’t understand English well and he could overhear them laughing about his plight.

Upon his release they told him he had to get out of America or else he would be arrested. He chose his method of deportation as another Greyhound bus, this time taking him all the way up to Vancouver. He met up with his friend there and they crashed at a massive couch-surfing house, an abandoned hovel with more than twenty people, spraying it with graffiti and smoking pot. He met his now-girlfriend there, and after hitchhiking across Canada over the course of nine days he finally made it home to Québec City in peace.