Cleveland Rocks!

3,200 miles of absolute amazingness. This week has been incredible. Looking back, deciding to stay in Dunkirk for a week was a great idea. I got to know people more intimately than I have so far and spoiled myself by having a home base for seven whole days - a shower, a bed, a kitchen. The friends I made are each terrific in their own little ways. It’s been such a fabulous trip so far.
I finally figured out what was bugging me the day John and I went to Point Gratiot Park - I could tell he was falling for me and I couldn’t stop it. It was just like when I fell hard and quick for Emmet. I felt bad, like I was leading him on. I told him no flat out, but it still seemed like he was falling, and it was killing me. My whole purpose is to make people happy, not make people think that there’s some big chance for us to fall in love and then split.

But it’s all good now. I sat John down the next day and explained how bad I felt, and why, and it
was like a weight was lifted. All that blackness and dread was gone. And he told me things too, how I had reminded him that life isn’t all about work, and that women aren’t all conniving bitches. It was great.

I somehow managed to leave Dunkirk without any of the goth kids duct-taping themselves to my car, a threat which was readily issued about four times a day since I arrived. I did, however, get a lot of little notes and letters from my new friends, including one that I would never have expected. It actually made me feel bad - it was from "the crackhead", the guy who promised he wouldn’t knock me up if I wanted him... the one I laughed so hard at behind his back. I had given him rides to the store and the gas station but never thought I had made a big impression.
Tuesday morning I came out of my room to see a bouquet of daisies and a small note on my windshield. I’m transcribing it just as he wrote it here:

"Jessica, please stop and say good by. You have been a good tenet. I will miss you vary much. You Brought me Rays of sunshine and hope. You are a very beautiful girl inside and out. It is a pleasure meeting someone like you. Again thank you for stoping in are lives. I hop you call and Let me know how you are doing. I do wish you wanted to hang around a little older group, Instead of the younger group. I do hope your Boyfriend know how Lucky he is to have you in his Life. P.S. I am out in back of the office. Miss you Much, Michael"

I immediately felt like an asshole for laughing at him, even though his advances were completely uncalled for. I mean, it means he got up early in the morning and walked all the way to the back woods, picked the daisies, wrote the note, went back to the office, got Scotch tape, and left them on my car, taping the paper. He didn’t have to do that.

I also got a note from Jojo that read, "Give me a call or me an sKrappy will find you and tape our
selves to you." Less flowery, but the sentiment is the same.

Leaving was harder than I thought it would be. I had made all these friends and was so caught up in just hanging out that it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t see them again the next day. Audri cried. David and I were both shaking as we hugged. I got a lot of hugs, even from the girl I wasn’t sure I wanted to hug, the seventeen-year-old who will remain nameless, the one who has slept with over 300 men and women, the one whose gynecologist actually refused to continue treating her, the one who was casually cutting lines of coke with a Wal-Mart credit card as she asked if I could pick her up a McFlurry on a McDonald’s run a day earlier. "Just... just..." I stammered. I mean, what sort of words of wisdom can you possibly impart to a girl that lost? "Just be careful, okay?"
"Yeah," she said, looking away.

Leaving town, I took Rt. 20 west through the remainder of New York before hitting Pennsylvania. I stopped at the Johnson Family Winery ‘cause I gotta support mi familia. Seven minutes and a bottle of Marchal Foch safely nestled in the back seat later, I was almost in PA. I lost my pepper spray outside Grandma’s Kitchen on Monday and was hard-pressed to find some more. I stopped at a few fireworks shops but no luck. Later on down the road I tried a bait and tackle shop. The man inside was cleaning fish, and the heads were stacked in a pyramid on the counter. "Are you the new employee that’s supposed to help me clean fish?"
"Are you paying?" I asked. "Because I can be."
He smiled. "Actually, you have to go to the other location in Lake City to train. Seriously, are you the new person?"
"Seriously, no."
"Well, what are you looking for, then?"
"Money."
We laughed together. He was an older man, with mischevious blue eyes and sandy blonde hair.
"Actually, I’m looking for mace. Or pepper spray."
He thought I was kidding and laughed harder. I didn’t.
"Oh. Oh, you’re serious? Oh. Oh, jeez, I don’t know!"

This led to a discussion of what I’m doing, why I need it and such and right away he launched into all the reasons that I should stay in Erie, PA for the night. Like, RIGHT away. Because he wanted to take me to his favorite bar. And he made sure to add that he was single. He paused for a second to call the state police on my behalf, to inquire about pepper spray, but then went right back into the diatribe of how he goes to the bar every night, how awesome it is, how he wants to show me around. He gave me his number, then came out to my car before I drove away to make sure I knew the area code. It was a little much, enough to make me not want to stay for anything. Why did he have to add that he was single?

I got my pepper spray and decided that I would never again visit Erie, PA, unless I was on the interstate. Rt. 20 snakes like a cancerous colon through the countryside, clogged with traffic lights and dusty strip malls, potholes marking every intersection. It was insane how quickly it went from being a peaceful country road to a suburban circle of hell. I fought to get on I-90 like it I was drowning and the highway was oxygen. I followed it all the way to Cleveland, marveling at the thunderstorm that poured itself over Ohio without the sun ceasing to shine. I still had to wear my sunglasses to keep from squinting in the middle of the drenching rain. Odd.

I made it all the way to Cleveland and had no idea what to do. The city borders Lake Erie just like Dunkirk does, and I pulled into a lakeside park just beyond the downtown area, hoping I could camp for the night. I couldn’t. The park closes at 11 PM. Then I pondered parking my car in an out-of-the-way spot and hoping I wouldn’t get caught. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a hot dog bun for dinner and sat down to write on a picnic table. I called Toby Radloff, my reason for coming to Northern Ohio, and hoped to God he would call back. Toby is a cult movie icon and real-life comic book character. Those of you who have seen "American Splendor" would know him as The Nerd in that movie. Toby has grown up in Cleveland, still lives here and works his regular job at the VA hospital despite his quasi-fame.

As his friend Harvey Pekar says, "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff." Harvey and Toby are living proof. They are everyday heroes. They’ve never saved a kitty from a tree or put their lives on the line for the greater good, but they inspire people. Just by making a simple comic book or being in a B-movie about nerds besting the jocks, they inspire people just like them to feel akin and empowered. They are great Americans. I hoped against hope that Toby would remember me from six months ago when I called him out of the blue and he had agreed to an interview. I left a message - two, actually, because his machine cut me off - and waited.

While I was waiting and writing, a man walked by and smiled, saying, "This is the spot to get work done, huh?"
"Yeah, really!" I said, and then stopped him before he walked away. "Excuse me, do you know where any cheap motels or campgrounds are around here?"
"Awww, I sure don’t," he drawled. He had a faint Southern accent, cropped blonde hair and blue eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. He was just beyond "guy" age, clearly in "man" age. I guessed mid-30's. His name was Brad. He told me about a Holiday Inn down the street but that’s too expensive for me. We went back and forth with ideas and decided that I should stay in the parking lot of a diner on Clifton Street, in the center of town. "I wouldn’t try to stay in the park," he said. "There was a rape here last week." Yeah, definitely stayed in the diner parking lot!

He handed me a business card. "Just call me if you have any problems with the local cops." The card read, "Deputy United States Marshal".

We got to talking about my trip and he asked to see my site. I pulled it up and let him go to town as I called Scrappy, David and the gang. Then Brad and I talked some more. He was very easy to talk to, and I guess he found me to be the same, because he opened up so much about his life.
His story amazed me. "My dad wasn’t around when I was a kid, only long enough to get my mom pregnant and then leave again. Then when she found out he had another woman and two kids behind her back, she left him. She raised us on her own."
"Whose us?" I asked. "How many siblings do you have?"
"There’s seven of us. It was hard. I’ve done the pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I’ve done spaghetti for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and baloney sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then there were some days where you only ate once. We moved back and forth between Ohio and Florida a lot ‘cause we were staying with different relatives. Then my mom moved us to Arizona, ‘cause she thought she could get a good job. It didn’t work. She was on the back of her friend’s motorcycle one day and a semi-driver was drunk, decided to switch lanes. He never saw them." He looked past me, at the lake. "She was gone when I was twelve. But she taught me well before she died. I still live by her rules: don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, and don’t put your hands on a woman. And your word is your life. If you break your word, you have no reason to live."

"So after she passed away, my older sisters moved us to Houston ‘cause otherwise we were gonna get scooped up by the social workers. While we were there, my dad showed up - ‘to take care of the kids’ - yeah, right. He only did it because there was a big settlement in it for him, because the semi that hit my mom was a company vehicle. Within a year he had molested my little sisters and back in those days nothing was done about that. They ended up at a reform school. It killed me to see them treated like that. I left home at 18, I couldn’t get away fast enough. I joined the Army Reserves. I wanted the regular Army but my recruiter filed the wrong paperwork. Anyway, I did my time and then became a contracted police officer in Kuwait for three years. Then I was a prison guard for awhile and now I’m a U.S. Marshal."
"You’ve done very well," I said.
"Yeah, I think so. That’s why I have no sympathy for people, like the prisoners I worked with, when they say, ‘Oh, I’m the way I am because of the way I grew up". Bullshit."
I immediately thought of the Dunkirk gang. Their homes lives seemed to wreak havoc on their abilities to thrive. Did Brad have an advantage because he had one good parent, even if she died when he was twelve? I may never know.

We must have sat there for almost an hour, just shooting the breeze, when we noticed it was really breezy! It was starting to get cold quickly, which sucked because it had been so balmy all day and I was sticky, then cold on top of it but the stickiness stayed. Gross! We said goodbye and I thanked him for the heads-up on where to stay. I headed to one of the bathroom pavilions and pulled in, grabbing fresh clothes. Since I would be staying in the diner parking lot, I figured I could go out and walk around the Clifton area of the city, just to see what I could get into. When I parked, I noticed a lot of really nice cars driving slowly around the grounds, and even more nice cars parked near the bathroom. Each of the parked cars had a well-groomed guy standing next to it, looking around, watching the other cars. The park is a cruising spot, I figured out. When I came out of the bathroom, I asked one of the guys if I looked alright, loving the assurance that I would get an honest, not-trying-to-hit-on-you opinion. We laughed at the situation.

I headed down to the diner and went in for some dinner. I was just biting into my bacon when my phone rang - it was Toby! I took a deep breath and said, "Hello?"
"Hello, Jessica," he said.
"Hi, Toby! How are you?"
He’s so easy to talk to. He told me all about his house, how he’s selling it and why, and then asked me where I was staying. I told him about the diner and not sleeping in the park and he said to watch it in the parking lot as well, because the cops patrol it checking for gay cruisers. "That’s probably the safest illegal contingent for me to sleep in the middle of," I thought. Toby told me an unfortunate story of how he used the bathroom in Edgewater Park once and the police accosted him as he came out, thinking he was cruising. Then we made plans to get together Friday night, at a coffee shop in Berea, right near his new place.
"Saturday is the Gay Pride Parade in Cleveland," he told me.
"Oh, that’s awesome! I had no idea!" I’ll probably stay in Cleveland on Saturday for that, I thought to myself. Then Toby said, "Yeah, we could also get together on Sunday if you want and I can show you my new apartment." I offered to help him move, so we may do that, too. (It blows my mind a little still, that I’m going to have coffee with Toby Radloff and maybe help him move! God bless looking people up in the phone book!)

So after my wonderful, magnificent, awesome phone conversation with Toby, I finished eating then called Max to tell him the good news. After pacing around the parking lot of a bank talking to him, I wandered over to a bar called Twist. I had no idea it was a gay bar.

I quickly realized that I was the only girl in there. I didn’t mind, honestly. It’s refreshing to be able to go to a bar and not worry about some cheeseball dude asking your boobs what your name is. I recognized the Edgewater Bathroom Parking Lot Guy and we gave each other the Hay-I-Recognize-You Chin Raise. I ordered a martini, happy that I knew where I would be for the night and could actually have a real drink. No one was talking to me, giving me a chance to watch VH1 and enjoy my Bombay Sapphire. I watched the other patrons and realized that yes, the cutest ones are gay.

Eventually I asked a guy if there were any other bars in walking distance. He said he didn’t know and asked the bartender. The bartender said to him, "Yeah, honey, there’s the Tick-Tock right down the street, and there’s -" he rattled off a laundry list of other pubs.
"No, bars for her," the guy said, pointing at me.
"Oh," said the bartender. "Oh, god, I don’t think so."
I laughed. "It’s cool," I said. "I like this place."

I got to talking with a couple of the guys and told them about my trip. "That’s fabulous!" they said. We took our drinks to a corner and sat on some of the black leather couches. They asked me about the trip and I asked them about the area. The Clifton/Edgewater area of Cleveland is pretty much the gay mecca of the city. Columbus and even Akron, they said, have larger gay communities, but the Clifton area is the best part of Cleveland. It really is beautiful - it’s clean and the houses are gorgeous. I stopped counting all the Tudor-style mansions when I got to seventeen.

One of the guys, a sweet, baby-faced man named Mark, told a story about a guy he had met that embarrassed him at a party, and even slapped him in the face! This led to a discussion about gay relationships versus straight ones. Mark leaned over to another guy we were talking with - I think his name was Steve? Forgive me, guy, if I get it wrong - and said, "Steve and I used to date, right, honey? We were together for 11 months!" Steve said, "Yeah, about 11 months." But they were so comfortable with each other, even though they were ex-lovers. I was surprised to see that - my roommate in Los Angeles was the same way, just totally comfortable with his ex and able to hang out without any drama.

I asked them about that, and I-Hope-His-Name-Is-Steve said, "I think it’s that men are just better at closure. I see women at work and they just want to hang on for-fucking-ever! But men are just better at closure. We break up, we have closure, and that’s that. We’re friends." Mark agreed. They were really cool guys.

We hung out for awhile, until I was ready for bed, and then I walked over to the car, wrote a note for the tow-truck guy in case he came by, changed into some PJ’s in the front seat of my car, and craashed out. It was a great day.