How tremendously excited I was. An invitation to a literary event in Philadelphia, The 215 Festival. Finally, I had arrived. Here's something that really looks good on a resume. And I didn't even have to make this one up. I attended this event a few years back, when some literary cats I look up to, like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Ames were there, so getting an invitation to this thing was truly inspiring. I printed out the stories I'd be reading, packed some stuff, selected the musical ambiance for the trip, put my belongings in the car, and got going.
I leave Friday at rush hour on a Thanksgiving long weekend in a torrential downpour in my muddled composition of an automobile. Already, it is NOT a flight of fancy or an escapist utopia. All whimsy and hope are drenched as the q-tips, tampons and Kleenexes used to stick in multiple gaping holes in the ragtop convertible roof, totally suck ass. They magically turn into ginormous and excessively moist douche-bags of soggy loneliness shot at me from the periphery by Imperial Stormtroopers. They're blasted onto my head, attack the steering wheel, and drench a good deal of the clothes, and directions, I've jam-packed into the mope mobile. The best I can do, visibility-wise, is to use The Force, as there is no real way to see anything that's going on.
I figured to be at the border by about 8:00 (turned out to be 11:00) then get to Pennsylvania around 2:00 (turned out to be 5:00). Note for next time: fill up with sufficient gasoline to make it over any stretch of void ridiculous highway interplay that leads into mountainous spooky coyote regions far away from true destination. Also, do not back up into cement construction thing: it hurts my neck, jars the fillings in my head and brings on an avalanche of misery, making me feel monstrously unsuccessful. The lame nourishment may have had a hand in my daze and foggy inability to focus on the problem at hand. I didn't have time to prepare any healthy fare, so I inhaled the all too-typical road fare of cheap caffeine, multiple ju jubes and a constellation of Junior Whopper action, which did nothing but brew in me a tremulous sadness.
I've promised to stay sober on this trip. Stay out of trouble, no booze, no drugs, no fun. I convince my AA sponsor I've got it all under control, that I'll hit a couple meetings while I'm away, in order to ground me, to stay in touch with people like myself who've driven their lives into the ground and have risen from the flames with not much more than their ass.
Turns out the central number for AA for Pennsylvania is bizarrely, for some reason, disconnected. The area office that I had an address for is now a Strip club for seniors and the one meeting I manage to hunt down is an all-too-cheery and joyous lesbian and gay roundup love-in dance-athon kind of thing that made me feel angry, un-free, un-joyful and lonely, a real two-handed head clutcher. Disgruntled, alienated and grotesquely moist from the consistent and absurd storm activity that is seemingly, thus far, following only me, I sit at the back of the hall drying myself off with used happy birthday napkins, popping their balloons with a toothpick and sporting a very "Don't even try to talk to me" look. Such overachievers, they with their high-watt smiles and short-term relationships were foreign to me and made me think of The Poseidon Adventure, with the life-boat size Shelly Winters. I am Soggy South of the Border, Very Unfunny, out-of-date film reference Writer Guy. Good grief.
So, it's time to speed off to where I'm supposed to present my literary gifts. An artist has been generous enough to let the festival use his beautiful warehouse space for the evening. It's a stunning loft with windows all around. It was kind of pretty, the rain playing backdrop continuing, but to be inside was a gift. I had a great view of the two Philly cheese steak pricks bastards vandalizing the car parked a block away. Well, we needed a new car stereo and CD's anyway. My dreamy notions of a voyage filled with nothing but affirmative action and glee now diminished, washed away, the trip now reduced to getting home alive and in one piece.
So, I'm prepping in the bathroom for my performance and what do I find but amphetamines. Basically, speed in a pill. Now this gets me excited, hot under and over the collar. One magical capsule down my gullet and I'll be off to the races, absurdly joyous and free, free free to be me and me! But that promise. To myself and friends back home. This would count as a definite relapse, no question. So I do the right thing, put the bottle in my pocket and go to the host of the evening and say, "You might want to hide these, you never know who might want them". I am Sobriety Boy of The Month. Yes siree, poster boy for the team.
I was a little frantic by the time I got around to my set time to offer up my sparkly charms of self and gloom, which turned out to be the best part of the trip, the organic poet dude who organized this part of the event, the nice enough people from Opium Magazine and the fellow who's space it was were congenial and pleasant and devoid of any terrible awful artist ego sickness that sometimes comes with the package of being creative and artistic. I read a story about Thanksgiving (which it was in Canada, but not in the US) and a chapter from my book (which hasn't been picked up yet, in Canada or the US). I was a little jumpy…and sweaty, and I stuttered…and flubbed only ten or twelve lines, and I may have tripped once, but aside from that, it was smooth sailing.
It's getting late but we all decide to make it out to see this Neil Pollack fellow and his minions read sultry sex tales and then after such a draining day, decided to call it a night. I'm on my way back to my friend's house, who's been gracious enough to leave the key for us. I try this said key in the lock, that's been left for me on a tree outside their home, and it does not work. It has somehow rusted and tarnished (much like me by this point). I wrangle it feverishly until my fingers bleed and I'm shouting loud enough that the lamebrain apartment dwelling dweebs next-door are calling the cops because they seem to be under the impression - and for this, I really can't blame them - that someone is trying to break down the door. Now things are really getting good. I'm exhausted and broken, my cowboy pajamas I so desperately want to get into, just on the other side of the door. But I can't do this, because the key I have opens somebody's goddamn lunchbox or toolbox somewhere and now I must flee the scene for fear of being booked down at some drafty headquarters as a crazy drifter break ‘n enter junkie type. Which of course, I'm not. Anymore.
We crawl over to a remarkably brown Motel 6 and of course, they have no rooms because there's some fucking Amway freak convention deal happening. So after a couple more hours of the car making this off-setting creepy whirring sound, (there's also a smell of burning maple syrup coming from where I think the engine is) we make it to a dilapidated, aggressively third rate, Howard Johnsons. I inhale an entire bag of salt-water taffy because by this point I am insane and need to fill the emptiness and disarray I feel inside. It's a cart wheeling vomit-provoking, trauma moat I'm swimmin' in here, and oh yeah, then there's the nutrient-free breakfast included in the overnight package: moldy white bread, packaged oatmeal and damaged fruit served by a thick-wristed, dandruff-laden maid in a frightening jumpsuit with an unfortunate bronchial situation, making me want to crawl into the rock hard Murphy Bed back in the room - not a delectable palette pleasing affair, to say the least.
I head home, back to safety: my cushony comforter, the big bathtub, my Arrowroot cookies and tea, my books, all await me: this travesty of true nightmarish and epic proportions must be behind me, right? In the distance, I see almost feel the warmth of the orange opaque inviting skies that told me I was home, that said, ‘Welcome back, I know you've had a hell of a trip. Settle, my son.'
Just then, while God was sharing his pearls of wisdom with the likes of me, just when I've begun humming the theme to Welcome Back Kotter, from out of nowhere, I'm pulled over by a salt and peppery haired, doughy-necked New York State Patrol lady who says that I have three outstanding unpaid tickets from 1992 and '93. And when I say "outstanding" I don't mean, like, amazing in it's abundance or anything to do with my staggering talent as a driver, more like in the way of, "You just stay put there in your pathetic excuse for an automobile and sweat your ass off in agonizing fear and anxiety while I leap back to my trooper and call the good judge to see what he says about just what I should do with the likes of you," or something to that affect. This is no good. She also, surprisingly, showed no sympathy when I told her that I had no time for idle chit-chat and that there was no "editorial justice" (Admittedly, I had no clue just what that meant either). She, amazingly, was not swayed by the chunks of oversized Toblerone I had stored in the glove compartment for such situations and made me pinky swear I would take care of my 15 year old speeding violations and misdemeanors the minute I got back on the right side of the border.
The next few hours get kind of kaleidoscopic and itchy, but I'm guessing I made it home.
Maybe it will all seem funny, after more time passes. But I'm also thinking, maybe not so much.
Timber Masterson is a writer/actor/TV host-type-fellow who residesin Toronto. While finishing his first book, the mammoth personal-memoir, TimFoolery: Tales of a Third Rate Junkie, Mr. Masterson has been working on putting together his show, Life On Timber Street, organizing his website, and contributing his jazzy heartfelt epistles to such on-line literary journals as Über, Fresh Yarn Salon, Yankee Pot Roast, Girls With Insurance, Ghoti, Purple Prose, Somewhat.org, Wandering Army, 3AM Magazine and The Beat. He is co-producer of a literary interactive gathering called Word Substance Spatula at Toronto's Drake Hotel, that is now on hiatus. Check out his web site, www.TimberMedia.com.