Liz Eldridge

Getting Away With It

Mile 102 (truck stop)-

I emerge, joyous almost to the point of light-headedness. Better than great sex, better than the expensive drugs, sometimes taking a shit is so deeply satisfying that the world feels renewed. Lights are brighter, but yet also less harsh. Now I know that this is a pretty personal thing, but I must say that I like a public restroom best. Not too public of course - though Barnes & Noble usually has great ones - but there's got to be that little danger. The perfect shit followed by a chance meeting with someone you don't want to see? Or someone you want to see way to much for it to be healthy or for it to possibly work out well? Now that can ruin the whole effect. But when you get away with it, oh, now that is so sweet. In fact, that might just be the very best part. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, quite so life-affirming as getting away with it.

But I don't often get away with it. Some people are lucky, and some people lock themselves out of their apartments and fall down the stairs a lot. I try not to be bitter about it, and I certainly wouldn't want anybody to pity me for it. Pity is absolutely the most despicable emotion out there. I don't know all that much about philosophy, but I'm pretty sure that pity is just a way of building hierarchy, or I'm pretty sure that that's what I read anyway. Of course, this isn't to claim any legitimacy for the "oppression of the unlucky" or some crap like that. My life's pretty easy, I recognize that, I'm just trying to explain that a lot of unusual things happen to me or that regular things come at me in ways I don't expect and that it's not always so nice. What I'm trying to say is that I'm just like everybody else.

Mile 265 (Cracker Barrel)-

The steak here is not actually all that bad!

I feel sometimes that I speak my own language - I'm using all the same words as the people around me, but they all seem to mean something entirely different resonating around inside my mouth and head than they do once they escape. And words do escape me, escape from me, erupt out of me uncontrollably - it's like that movie Alien. What must be, to any unfortunate passer-by, garbled and inexplicable speech discharges and I can feel the exit wound growing, bleeding, festering, flowering into maddening, unstoppable existence. Maybe everybody feels this way, I don't know if I hope so or not, but I'm just done with this. Nobody ever knows what the fuck I'm talking about. I get desperate, I force strangers into listening to me at bars (drunk people are more skillful at the art of pretending to listen, I've found) and effectively whine to them until they finally escape. I don't blame them.

I wrote my first boyfriend a telegram about a month ago. I haven't spoken to him in about seven years, but I like to keep tabs on people and I still had a pretty recent address. Did you know they still send telegrams? I hadn't realized. "In desperate, desperate circumstances! Help me! Caught in a trap." I don't know if he likes Williams, or if he even knows who Tennessee Williams is, and it was silly, I was just trying to be clever. Shit cost me almost twenty bucks. He didn't reply, and it is entirely possible that he has no idea who I am anymore, but it's okay because it helped me to decide to change things up. Same old story, right? Pawn everything for cash and drive until...what, exactly? So I've got five hundred dollars cash and fifteen hundred bucks on the ATM card - I'm pretty responsible, usually, and I've been saving most of my tips for a couple years and I never really buy much except booze and food. And I'm driving.

Mile 412 (gas station) -

I like this part. The driving is nice. I've been avoiding cities, favoring the mythic, enormous proportions of the open road. I like to smile at the people in the other cars, it freaks them out. I like public radio because it makes me feel smart, I like the Christian radio stations because it makes me feel smarter than other people, and I like listening to people talking without having to talk back. No translation necessary. So I'm in the best mood I've been in in years. I'm free, completely free and easy, windows down, I've been hanging my arm out the window remembering learning about lift in high school. And I see the sign - I'm almost in Portland. City? Is it time yet? We'll see, we'll see.

Mile 453 (Super 8 Motel) -

I drove through Portland, couldn't stomach it, don't know why. I know a few people who live here, and there's no reason to think that I would run into them. But like I said, I'm unlucky, and really holding to this fresh start business is tough. Got this room in a little place off the highway because I was getting antsy about where I was going. What a fucking night. Small towns are deceptive. I look back on it and it feels like it's happening again.

I dress up cute, but not, like, suggestive. Just cute. I don't know if I've ever been more inoffensive in my fucking life, actually. I figure that's the way to meet the faceless people. And I walk down the "Main Street" of this podunk town, stop in at the Mini-Mart to get a pack of smokes and get directions to the three or four bars. I waltz into the one with the funniest name (The Drinkery! Brilliant!) and order a shot of Jameson. It's ladies night and I get a double. I play Lee Hazlewood and Nancy on the jukebox, and find out it's only a buck for five songs. I think my luck is changing. I play Ghram Parsons and the Rolling Stones and two more Nancys.

When I get back to the bar, there's another shot waiting for me. I will say this for a small town: it certainly is not very tough to find somebody to whine to. And he's nice enough. Good-looking enough. It's actually kind of perfect. I can go back to his room and then drive away and out of any complication that might arise. Any communication we lose is just water under the bridge and nobody will ever, ever have to regret it. And it is all so comfortable, we both know what's going to happen, but we are both creatures of patience and wait until last call. We can walk to his place, and it's not ugly and it's not very exciting, it's just a place. And then we are having beers and then we are in his bed and it's really not bad and then, no warning at all, he flips me over and he just up and shoves - yes - literally, the word is "shove" ---

Listen, isn't that really more of a second date kind of thing? I mean, I know I'm the girl who's all about shitting and all, but that there's an example of a situation where you use your fucking words, right?

And it is suddenly all so revolting, and his room is filthy and I am getting dressed and he really isn't trying all that hard to get me back into bed. I guess girls like me drive through all the time. So I'm walking home and I am still drunk and the air is too cold. There are cars on the street, which relieves me at first, but then it is just like walking back to my old apartment late at night. The same cars are slowing down and honking at me. The group across the street whistles. It is the idle threats that really get to me. So far as I can tell, none of these people mean me any harm, they are just enjoying the fact that they walk around carrying what you might call a loaded fucking gun all the time. I hear a fatherly voice coming from a car that has slowed down next to me.

"Do you need a ride, there, huh? Awful late to be out walkin' alone, isn't it?"

I look into the car and he is smiling. I smile back, tentatively. And then he pulls up and there's his fucking old man cock staring at me. I stop in my tracks and bust up. I can't stop laughing and he just drives off tossing out a couple of "Fuck you"s. Shame on me for thinking that there was anything pure left, right? It's too funny. It's too perfect. Just too perfect.

So now I'm back in the motel room, safe and sound. I only tripped once, and it was on the stairs coming up here. I have almost no mystery bruises to ponder. I'm still drunk and I can't sleep. I want to go home but I don't want to go back. Everything is the same everywhere I go and I'm thinking that maybe I'll sell the car and use the money to buy a house on a tropical island. And I will eat specially imported Big Macs all day, just like Marlon Brando. But I probably don't have enough for that.