My Nomad Years

Austin to New York - I'd lived in Austin long enough to know that if I didn't leave right then, I'd never do it; I'd be working at the video store for the rest of my life, drinking all the time, hiding it from my close friends (I was more intimate with breath mints than I was with my girlfriend), and trying to talk loud enough to be heard above the swirling, sucking sound of my life going down the drain. So I decided to finish up my schooling in New York. Sure, why not... I'd never lived farther than a couple of hours away from home, but hey, I was a street-smart kid who knew a thing or two about a thing or two. The Big Apple could suck it; I was about to show up and blow up and soon it would call me, "Master." So I went to a bunch of Bon Voyage parties, left a girl crying in an apartment complex parking lot thirty minutes before her shift waiting tables at an Italian restaurant, and I took off to New York, New York, because I'd already made it just anywhere... it was time to make it there. I arrived at La Guardia on a Tuesday night with two giant suitcases, an overstuffed duffel bag, my laptop in a leather satchel, and the sudden realization that I had no idea what I was doing. It was like trying to watch a movie with the VCR stuck on fast-forward; everyone zipped around me, told me to get out of the way, to hurry up, to watch where I was going... I started hyperventilating like a soldier about to storm an enemy bunker... I was sweating like a linebacker in a sauna... I was scared. Very scared. I was also the Webster's dictionary definition of "Fresh Meat." My taxi fare from LGA to my hotel in the East Village... 80$. That, for those of you not from the area, is an anal raping worthy of only the finest, most secluded prison showers. When I finally got to my room (at the Seafarers International Hostel on the corner of 15th street and Gross), which was smaller than most tanning beds and as fragrant as a homeless man's socks, I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling and couldn't breath and couldn't think and couldn't do anything whatsoever for about an hour. Then I got up and headed out to walk around for a bit, hoping to clear my head. The first thing I saw when I got to the corner was two taxis run into each other, followed immediately by the cab drivers, having emerged from their damaged vehicles, fist-fighting in the middle of the street. I went back to my room and cried and cried and cried until, eventually, I decided to stop.

New York to Arlington - Film school was over. Typically, I'd wasted the experience; sure, I went to class and I crewed on film shoots and I even bothered to shoot a couple of my own films (they weren't very good), but rarely was my whole heart or mind ever really into it. Let me put it to you this way... I started most mornings by drinking beer in the shower, and on the days that I didn't drink beer in the shower, I drank vodka in the shower. The less said about those days, the better. But anyway, film school was over and it was time for me to do... something. Get a job, maybe, or at least an apartment in Brooklyn. But I couldn't. Because, typically again, I was broke. Rather than spend the next couple of months surfing friend's couches and digging myself deeper and deeper into a shame hole with a sadness shovel, I decided to swallow hard, bite whatever bullets were available, and move home. In the end, it wasn't all bad... I love my family and they (for reasons unexplained) love me back. But still, moving from a place like New York to a place like Arlington, Texas... it was like switching from whole milk to skim; you're used to the richness, the fattiness, and then suddenly you're drinking what amounts to grey water and you're thinking, "Wow, I used to live here? Really?"

Arlington to Los Angeles - Otherwise known as the You're-Making-a-Giant-Mistake Tour Across America. My stepmother, kind and benevolent lady that she is, gave me her car so that I wouldn't have to suffer through the indignities and humiliations of the LA public transportation system. This, of course, meant that to get to LA, I would have to drive. This wouldn't have been a problem (I dig road trips), save for the fact that this car was a Standard and I was an Automatic kind of guy. My father elected to make the trip with me, seeing as how I couldn't as yet operate the vehicle, intending to teach me the mysterious arts of gear-shifting and clutch finesse as we went along. That didn't so much happen. What I mean is, he certainly put forth a yeoman's effort towards getting my slow brain and uncoordinated self to master his instructions; that I learned almost nothing during the course of our trip was my fault entirely. So this was my introduction to LA... I'd just dropped my father off at LAX, and now I had to drive this car... this confounding machine that wouldn't just fucking drive, dammit... the fifteen miles back to my newly acquired apartment. In rush hour traffic. While only barely, barely knowing what I was doing. That trip from the airport to my house took at least five years off of my life and thinking about it now makes my stomach hurt like I've got a tapeworm. My father has since told me that he, as he took his seat on the plane, felt like he'd never see his son alive again. His prophecy nearly came true at least five times, by my count.

Los Angeles to New York - I knew after about a month that having moved to Los Angeles was a fuck-up on my part similar to the White House staff letting Kennedy ride in a convertible through downtown Dallas. I hated everything about LA and I wanted to leave, sooner rather than later. New York was where I wanted to be and the fact that I didn't move back there immediately after my time at home will forever remain the biggest boneheaded move I'll ever make in a lifetime of boneheaded moves. So for six months, I saved all the money I made waiting tables at an Outback Steakhouse, thinking only about a single word: Escape. Finally, I was ready to split. My father, once again, offered to drive from California to Texas with me (where I would then, after a couple of R&R days, catch a plane to NYC). Now, I'm not sure where the idea of driving from LA to Dallas in one straight shot came from... we hadn't done it that way on the previous trip, and we weren't in any particular hurry... but nonetheless, we concluded that a 22-hour marathon ride was the way it should be. So I picked my father up at the very airport where I'd left him fearing for his son's life six months earlier, and then we hit the highway, middle fingers extended as we exited LA county. The original plan had been to switch off driving duties every couple of hours; the original plan got chucked, however, as my father ended up punking out on me because he was too sleepy to drive. Of the 22 hours on the road, I ended up driving 19. That, kids, is a looooooong time behind the wheel, any way you slice it. Fortunately, I'd been smart enough to stop by the local CostCo and pick up a case of Rock Star energy drinks. During the course of my 19 hours of road time, I drank fourteen of them. By the time we rolled into Tarrant County (home, in other words), I was shaking, rattling, and rolling like a 50's rock song, all while cursing my father up one side and down the other for not holding up his end of the bargain (once I got some sleep, I forgave him... begrudgingly). A few days after that, I flew back to New York, thus bringing my Nomad years to a comfortable, finally-home close.

It's going to take fucking dynamite to get me to move again.