part two, glue to part one.

Blow jobs, slappies and five sets, weed and tequila. Turning 18 was fucking rad!
When my family sat me down and told me of plans to visit new schoos for my senior year, and that the school I was attending had asked my parents to please not send me back I was actually impressed. I was stoked even to feel the fire and anger it brought into me, to know that whatever they could bind me to I could untie myself, that no matter what they attempt to inflict upon me I had proven that I could undo their best. I felt liberated to tell them to fuck off, and let me be. I wasn't hurting enyone, I wasn't violent or dangerous, i was an 18 year old behving like one on a skateboard with my friends. But the one they pulled next with a little help from an ADD expert was a doozy.
On August 4th or 5th, 1994, I was told about a flight to virginia I was going on with them to visit an art school, and that was it. no detailed pitch in glossy brochures, no test to take for placement or aptitude, just get on the flight. I was nursing a pair of bruised heels and a hangover when they told me so I just went back to sleep, woke up around 9 at night, ate a box of cheerios and walked out the door with my board and 10 bucks I stole from my mom the day before. The rest was fun, skate up hill, stop by friends places while skating, take a nap in the wee hours of the morning on the waterfront, hit mcdees for a juice on the way home in the morning.
Ten or so days later I am at the airport, didn't pack a bag, didn't give a damn. Halifax,N.S. to Dulles intl, to Richmond, VA. and it is fucking HOT! the sweat on the back of my neck ran straight to my heels when we stepped into the early evening air of the north of the south. Richmond blew me away, I wanted to run out of the car and just skate into the heart of it, find the shitty parking lots with yellow curbs, steal beer from kmart and get shot at, Hah! The south, the fucked up backwards and still too dumb to give a shit south. I loved it. I wanted to go wherever it was we were going.
That night my mom had a headache as usual and my dad and I went for drive into the city. He dug it too, I sensed it in him and he did too. We drove a rental car through the city, down once thriving 50's and 60's main drags, cement pillars supporting covered roofed blocks of storefronts, shaded by dead trees. Cars I had believed extinct parked at angle to the sidewalk in a way I thought forgotten and only recreated in hollywood. There was an evening shade, a color I'd never felt before. It was glowing and red, as the sun dripped molten plasma of orange and red atop the city scape on its way to below the horizon. My dad and I talked of what we saw, he talked of u.s. policies and history, of civil and american movements. I saw failed america again. I was used to seeing it wherever I was in the states. Boston, New England, New York. An east coast of references to what supposedly once was, but has never actually been.
Richmond looked tough, gruff and dirty. I saw spots to skate, I liked their asphalt, nobody would give a shit about a skateboarder here.
My dad drove us back to the motel on the highway behind the airport, screen doors that slammed shut, green carpet in air conditioned rooms with blue porcelain bathrooms. More diagonal parking below our second floor room. they had their own room attached to my broom closet of a bedroom. I took my twenty bucks u.s. and went outside once I knew the old man was asleep next door. Walking on the outside of each foot, always keeping one foot firmly planted while moving creates a focus and awareness about the noise you make as you move through a space. I left my room and shut the screen door silently, breath bated until sitting on the highway curb below.
We choose things and we don't choose other things. SOmetimes the choice we make is to not do something in front of us, something all signs are pointing towards fulfilling. And when we choose not to, instead of choose to, we are acting in warrior fashion. As I sat upon a crumbling concrete and gravel curb alongside Williamsburgh Rd. also called the 60. I just looked it up on Google maps and found myself standing there using the tools available now. Holy shit.
I smoked marlboros, about seven or eight over a few hours of deciding if I should get into a vehicle and split. Just split, leave them all wondering for years to come where I went, what became of me, gone.
I felt a pull in my chest towards that road, to stick out a thumb, to try and see what I was made of, what I could become from nothing but a lighter and some smokes in the south. I wanted to get into a semi and get as far as I could, go as far as I could on nothing. take the road to nowhere and let it go where? This was compelling, in the exorcist sense, I felt a pull to do this very strongly and had little to do but smoke cigarettes until my thumb went up into the air on its own.
I felt fear though too, I felt temptation and fear all at once, and in the middle of that is where I sat smoking. I drank cokes out of the vending machine, and thought about it for hours. How would I get home? Would I ever get home? Would I want to? I knew that the point of doing something like this, of taking off for good like this was a commitment. It was deciding to never go back, to never have family again, to let go of them all forever and be alone, something I actually was desperate for. Alone to be able to find out who the hell I was. I knew it then, I was ready to do it and do so without much remorse, but my thumb never went into the air. I just kept lighting smokes and sitting on the curb, waiting for something else to happen instead.
I din't have to wait long, as the morning came and I slept in the back of the car for hours as my parents and I drove west on the 60, to the 45 south towards Farmville, but not quite. Remember, we were on our way to visit an arts high school in the woods.
I fell asleep for a while and woke up to a pair of grocery bags being thrown in the back seat and a stern and angry looking pair of parents.
A tour was given to me, displaying their one room schoolhouse in which students were upgrading their schooling or studying to challenge the g.e.d There were no art classes. Of any kind.
Next I saw a campsite? large pine a-frame structures 25-30 feet tall, numbering around five or six of these surrounding a central tent witha concrete hearth and four large logs to sit on. Obviously a circle for something to happen within. Then the tour was over and we all went back to the car, where my parents handed me two bags of clothes and said good-bye. Stunned I sadi only thank you, and good bye. They left, I was in virginia.