I'm Not High Maintenance, But I Do Draw The Line At Boogers.

I asked Earl for $100. I knew that would probably not be enough, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for more. Asking for money is still very, very hard for me. I’ve been screwed over so many times where people ask for money and then skip out. I know I’d never do that, but I don’t even want to give my friends the opportunity to even think that. So I asked for $100 and prayed that it would float me.

It ended up being just fine. Helen and Roy gave me a little money for my trouble, which was amazing considering that they had also put me up and paid for all my food for five days. But I hated to see them leave - I felt very alone. They left North Carolina on a Thursday and I didn’t have anywhere to be until that Monday when I met up with April in Cincinnati. "I guess I putter around Hendersonville for a few days?" I wondered. Not having money really decreased my options significantly.

Then came an offer I didn’t want but couldn’t refuse. I got a text message from Earl that Thursday that read, "Lisa and I have talked and we want you to move to Sandusky with us. You can get a job and save some money." I messaged back, saying, "I’ll be there Tuesday and thanks."

The thought of moving to Ohio was both a relief and terribly depressing. "I was supposed to be in Montana by now!" was the only thought going through my head. I hadn’t wanted to stop and get a job until October if I could have helped it. I was planning on stopping for a month in Idaho, after seeing both Wyoming and Montana. "DAMMIT!" I kept repeating over and over. The thing that worried me - that still worries me - is the idea that stopping in Sandusky, OH would totally sidetrack me and I wouldn’t be able to get back out on the road again. With gas prices the way they are now, I still worry about that. That, and that the weather will be so bad in Montana by the time I get some cash together that I won’t be able to go. Montana winter + Honda Civic = NO.

I stayed in Hendersonville another night, until Friday morning. I got to talking to one of the waiters at the hotel café, Adam, and he took pity on me, giving me a free room for a night. That saved me so much money I was able to go to the Waffle House again for dinner because they were having a special on burgers. It was great. (Seriously, when you’re living on the road, the littlest things, like Waffle House specials, can make or break your whole day.) The only problem was, after I went to the Waffle House, I went to the hotel bar, where Adam was bartending. He kept feeding me free drinks all night and I got pretty rocked. Luckily, I only had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to my bed.

The next morning I was pretty hung over but fought it like a champ. I threw on MTV and danced out all the alcohol before checking out. Then I..... wandered around. Literally, I just got in my car and drove the streets of Hendersonville for a couple hours. I had no idea where to go, couldn’t afford to go to the movies, and ended up at the park. And it was..... a park. I swung on the swings, walked through the nature trails, and sat.... and sat. "Screw this!" I thought, utterly bored. I jumped in the car and headed to Asheville.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find when I got there. Helen and Roy had told me that it was a very liberal town, which basically meant a lot of hippies live there. That meant it would be a lot more fun than driving around Hendersonville all afternoon. I got to Asheville around 5:30 and parked in a pay lot. Parking was expensive there but the downtown area seemed cool enough to warrant it.

I putzed around a used book store and then a few vintage clothing shops, wanting to buy everything. I was so proud of myself that I managed to not spend anything. At the last vintage shop I stopped at, a big guy with red curls and a beard was behind the counter, talking to a brown-haired guy with glasses about used jeans. The brown-haired, glasses guy was wearing a dark plaid button down with the sleeves rolled up. While I looked at courds he came over wearing a pair of sunglasses. They were huge aviators, and being in the South all I could think of was "Smoky and the Bandit". But I have to hand it to him, he could pull it off.
"Do these look ridiculous?" he asked, his head cocked to the side.
"No, actually, they look pretty cool!"
"Really?"
"I wouldn’t lie."

I was exhausted and foggy and a little anxious over where I would stay that night. To ease my mind, I looked at Bush-bashing buttons. (It’s always nice to know that somewhere someone with a button-maker is speaking your language.) Glasses Guy came over, asking, "Are you gonna buy me some buttons?"
I was too tired to think of a witty retort. I just stared at him with my mouth open, wanting to ask six dozen questions and deflect getting hit on in the process. I failed miserably.

"No, I can....I can’t buy you....them...but....where’s a cool, cheap place.....to go?"
"There’s an awesome show tonight at Broadway’s with two awesome bands, The Reigning Sound and The Makeout Room. You wanna go?"
"Is it cheap?"
"It’s on me, so yeah."

We talked for a few minutes and ended up outside by our cars. His name was Justin. I was really skeptical of him at first, thinking he just wanted to get in my pants, but I softened a bit when he told me about his job as a special education counselor. He offered to let me stay at his place, in the driveway if I preferred. The more I talked to him, the clearer it became that he was completely harmless. Soon I was following him to his place, where we decided I would work on the computer while he took a nap before the show, but in actuality we just played guitar and spent hours talking. Justin was an excellent guitar player. He was so cool - a painter/musician/record producer/special education counselor/yard sale junkie/collector of random crap.

I was so excited to actually go out that night I got balls-to-the-wall pretty. Justin took me to meet some friends of his before the show, where we built crazy sandwiches out of chicken breast and beef patties and drank cheap red wine on the front porch. Justin’s little brother came over and we played a joke on him - when he walked up I acted like I knew him and hadn’t seen him in awhile. I cried, "Jeremy? Jeremy! Oh my god, how’ve you been? It’s me, Jessica! God, I
haven’t seen you in forever!"
Jeremy looked really confused at first, and then said, "Oh, yeah! Hey, how’s it going?", giving me a huge but awkward hug. Justin and his friends were cracking up! Jeremy sat down and I just kept going.
Me: "You never told me Justin was your brother!"
Him: "Yeah, well....hey! I... didn’t think you...knew...him."
By this time Justin was about to snarf his wine and Jeremy finally got it, it was hilarious!

Asheville was such a welcoming place. Everyone was genuinely friendly, although I’m sure it didn’t hurt that I spent most of my time there with Justin, who is apparently some sort of godfather of the town art scene. Walking into the club that night, he knew everyone and everyone knew him. Maybe that’s just the small-town thing at work again, but I doubt it. He definitely had something, some spark of individuality that people gravitated to. It was like watching a politician campaign and baby-kiss but far less creepy.

Justin’s friend David was really interesting, too; a doctor’s kid who moved to Budapest "just ‘cause I wanted to go, y’know?" He supported himself by teaching private English lessons until he could get clearance to move to Spain, which he did, and at some point before or after that he lived in Colorado. He told me great stories about his American roommate in Madrid, a guy who would date Spanish women with no knowledge of English, then bring David along as a translator. Cyrano deBergerac, thy hast not been forgotten...

Justin kept introducing me to his friends like this: "Hey, have you ever met a hobo? This girl is a real, live hobo!" Luckily no one believed him. (My secret would have been out for sure)

That night I crashed at Justin’s and got an early start the next day. Justin went a-yard-salin’ with his friend, No Girls Allowed, so I wandered around, finally setting up shop at a coffee house for a few hours. It was 8:30 on Saturday morning and downtown Asheville was a ghost town. I walked up and down the street, waiting until 9 for the local coffee shop to open. I was stopped by a hefty older man in a red car; he pulled up to the curb as I was strolling, watching the mountain fog cling to the bushes lining the crevices between buildings. "You ain’t from ‘round here, are ya?"
"Um, why?"
"You must not know - this here is the red light district! People’re gonna think you’re trickin’! I’m surprised the cops haven’t stopped ya!"
"Great!" I thought. "That’s all I need. I’m already on probation for a DUI and a certified drifter. I’m one sex-solicitation citation away from acheiving the White Trash Triple Crown!"

I thanked the man and then hit up the coffee shop, grateful that street whores don’t ordinarily sit in window seats with soy lattes and laptops, so my behavior wouldn’t be suspicious. A few hours later, bored with Asheville sans Justin, I set out for Cincinnati. I wasn’t supposed to meet April until Monday morning, but figured getting there a little early wouldn’t hurt.

It was very important to me not to miss seeing April again, for a number of reasons. The main one I found out when I was still in Wisconsin, when I called her at work. I hadn’t talked to her in a few weeks; this is what we said:

Me: Hey, babe! How’s it going? How are you?

April: I’m pretty good. Where are you?

Me: Oh, DUDE! I’m in Wisconsin right now and it’s so pretty and I drove through Milwaukee and it’s huge and I was just in Chicago this morning and I saw my friend Dave and this is totally totally awesome because there’s all kinds of pretty farms up here and I love it and I am the luckiest girl ever seriously I totally am!!!!!!! What about you?

April: Well, I’m alright now. One month ago yesterday my dad killed himself, he shot himself in the head.

Me:

April:

Me:

April: I’m glad you’re having fun.

Me:

April: You there?

Me: I am so sorry.

I felt like such an ass. I made up my mind at that moment that I would definitely visit Cincinnati at the end of August, just like I had planned the first time I left the city. So there I was, in Asheville, thinking, "I’ll just go now. This is getting lame." I had tried to make plans with Justin but he was really busy that day and I didn’t want to be a bug in his ass, so off to Tennessee went a caffeinated little girl in a dirty Honda.

I took the long way, sticking to my rule of IOWN: Interstates Only When Necessary. The backroad route I took through the Blue Ridge Mountains was gorgeous, even though it was quite gloomy out and most of the vistas were shrouded in fog. My windshield wipers slid lazily back and forth as Amos Lee trickled out of the speakers and I leaned my head to the side to feel the gray plush of the driver’s seat brush my ear. I nuzzled into the fabric, pretending it was that sacred space between a lover’s neck and shoulder and knowing it was nowhere near as warm.

Traffic was abysmal thanks to the weekend’s NASCAR race as I played merge chicken with a dozen "BRISTOL-BOUND, BABY!" and "GIT-R-DONE!"-emblazoned pickup trucks, but the further north I got, the better it got.

I made it as far north as Kentucky by the time it began to get dark. I followed a sign for a National Park so I could set up camp, even though it looked like rain. However, the sign was completely misleading and I ended up miles away from the highway, not knowing where to turn. The money situation was still tense, but with the money from Earl I had a bit of a cushion, especially knowing that soon I would have a new home in Sandusky and (hopefully) a job, so I splurged on a motel.

I saw a handwritten sign for the "College Motel" and ended up in Barbourville, KY - or as the locals call it, "Barvull". The town’s claim to fame is a small college near the center of town, white-and-brick buildings nestled on neatly-trimmed bluegrass lawns. The center of town had obviously undergone some rejuvenation, with new-fangled shops lighting up the windows of older buildings, although most were closed on that Saturday evening. Overall, the town seemed quite quaint - cute, even. And then there was the College Motel.

Ah, The College Motel, the only motel within 30 miles of me, the motel that will live in infamy for the rest of my days. The motel where I was charged $38 for a single room with a leaky toilet and furniture that matched the wood paneling. The motel where my room came standard with not one, not two, but three signs asking me, "Please No Smoking In Bed." The motel with cigarette holes in the pink bedspread and unidentifiable stains on the orange carpet. The motel where I regretted looking too closely at a stain on the curtains - it was boogers.

Yes, boogers! Without a doubt, no need to question, unmistakable BOOGERS! Someone had obviously picked their nose and literally WIPED THEIR BOOGERY FINGER ON THE CURTAINS!!! I am not making this up. I would not toy with the seriousness of Booger Curtains - that is something the magnitude of which cannot be denied! And there is no possible way that these green globs could have been anything else - I’m no Marge Helgerberger on "CSI", but one of the fuckers had a nose hair still stuck in it. I mean, come on!

I wasted no time in trying to get the motel manager to come see for himself, and in doing so attracted the attention of several of the residents. I don’t mean visitors, I mean residents. I think I was the only person in the place that wasn’t permanent. I knocked on the office door and was intercepted by a small blonde woman behind me who said, "He ain’t there. He went to play Bingo. Whatchoo need?"
"I need someone to come look at my room and give me a refund. NOW."
"Well, I’ll tell him to come see ya when’ee gets back from Bingo." She was leaning on her car, a fuschia Ford Mustang with white leopard-print seat covers, magenta super spoilers all the way around, and a pink decal that read, "HIGH MAINTENANCE" across the windshield. High maintenance and living in a motel room. Yessir, I was in Kentucky.
"Good, I’m in 8. Tell him it’s an emergency." I wanted a goddamn refund.

I went back to the room, closing the bathroom door in a vain attempt to avoid the leaky toilet smell. I popped in my yoga DVD and closed my eyes as I stretched through the moves, not wanting to see the carpet stains that close-up and forgoing deep Ujaiyai breaths lest I be assaulted by the ashes ground into the carpet. "Good thing I’m not ‘High Maintenance’," I thought, cracking my spine in Chataranga.

Good living conditions were never high on my list when I set out on the road. But I draw the line at Booger Curtains. I got my damn refund.