hypothetical tale of a trip to New Orleans

This is how it could all go down. This is how one man could come to a conclusion that serious resistance is the only option. Let me tell you what I remember. Ah, yes it all comes back to me now, like it is still happening. We are rocketing through the hot, sticky substance that is the Louisiana atmosphere. It has been a rough couple of days and is not about to get any easier. At about 105 miles an hour in a Toyota Camry that would need about ten thousand dollars worth of work to be on its last leg, to feel like anything else than a juiced up coffin on wheels, a vague realization that there is no doubt as to what happened during the last few days but an overwhelming confusion regarding the reality of those days passes over me like the first waves of some sort of acid attack. There is no doubt that the realization has not been attained by any of the other whack’s in the car because the driver is still driving in a more or less straight line and the other is not raving on the floor, frothing at the mouth and making vague allusions to alligators emerging from the glove compartment and men in navy suits dripping off the rear view mirror. Very soon, I think, there will come a time when certain facts shed their lights on these people and when it happens, god help me and every other poor soul on this road.
About 80 hours and $200 worth of booze earlier, we were somewhere in Alabama, having made our way through the majority of the east coast of this land of disillusion that is America. We left early from New England, and now about 3 or so in the morning everything that was once exciting and classic about a road trip has blended into one long strip of black tarmac that never begins, never ends, and will never stop until it consumes you. 20 something hours on the road, time is lost and intervals between drugs is only measured by where you were when you last partook as in “how long has it been since the last joint?” “Tennessee!” Holy monkey, get rolling, mister!” Then something is rolled, some smoke is inhaled and you forget where you are, what you are doing, and any inclination that might keep you from stopping in a rest area in Alabama to catch a few hours sleep when there are truckers that wink at you and fiddle with their bayonet sized switch blades in the cab of their big rig one spot over.
As you try to fall asleep with the charming image of the trucker that could, at any second, leap from the cab, through the ever so breakable windshield, and slit the necks of all three of us from ear to ear with one deft swipe of his samurai switch blade, you realize that there are no pieces that seem to fit together. You are in a rest stop 20 or so hours down the road but it could be just next door to your house. There are no distinguishing features, nothing that says loud and clear “hey, you are in Alabama”, except the bum at the gas station that asks you for chips and other “favors” refers to you in a somewhat southern tinged mumble. Furthermore, there is nothing that gratifies the ever present thought in the back of your mind that says you are just wasting your time, that there is nothing down here that you won’t find down the road from your very own home, and it is costing you every thing you have, your very sanity, which is in short supply these days, to find out.
You wake, more like give in to the fact that there will be no sleep in this rest stop, and clear your mind of everything except the task in front of you. It is a hot, sticky but extremely welcome New Years Eve day in Alabama and that will soon give way to the mugs, the bugs, and the drugs of Bourbon street, New Orleans that is the final destination, that is the point where justification for this trip will hopefully be found in long stemmed glasses, large plastic mugs, and women that feel they have nothing better to do than to show their tits for beads.
But when we get there, it is not what I imagine when daydreams take me to more wondrous places than the one in which I currently exist. The brightly painted houses with their pristine porches interlaced with roses and various exotic flowers where beautiful southern belles sit and sip whiskey on ice while endlessly deliberating with their equally gorgeous friends on whom they will accompany to the ball that evening are absent. Oh, it is true that I find some of the houses of my dream but their porches feature fat middle-aged men, sipping cognac and producing nasty looks, odors, and ways of speech. They glare at me as I walk by and why not? They are the ones sitting on those pristine porches, they’re the ones that can pick the topic of conversation and do not give a flying fuck about who is taking who to that evening’s imaginary ball. These people have the say and all I can do is stare wistfully at the houses and try to think of a time that may have never existed, when the country was freer and the south was as picturesque as the one that I see in my dreams.
We reach Bourbon street on that bright, balmy, sunny New Years Eve and if it was not what I imagined, my ability to focus and pinpoint what exactly was lacking was severely impeded by just about everything. Bourbon street is what the world would look like if there was no such thing as government, if there was no such thing as a police force and no such thing as work except for those skilled enough to doll out liquor at the rate of two drinks a second which I imagine was the rate of consumption here. We plunged in. At this point, there is nothing more than hazy recollections of the following several days but I will, to the best of my ability, attempt to relate the sounds, sights, smells, injustices and travesties that occurred down here in the “Big Queasy.”
My accompanying wacko had to relieve himself in the disease ridden bathroom of some gas station on the fringe of the devils playground. It was then that the move was made. With wild accusations of trespassing in areas and conducting business maneuvers that were too hideous and horrible for the likes of us, we were felled by the police and then carelessly discarded.
Later on that night, I was walking down the street, chugging down some booze, smoking some shit, swaying to and fro, not wondering which way to go when the man comes up to me and he says “you been doing things I don’t like, I see the shit, now get arrested or take a hike, you be goin’ away for a long time if you don’t listen boy, I will play with you like a little toy. Yeah, and I was like, Whatever!!! Cuz this is my United States of Whatever. Or something along those lines as I found my way into handcuffs as one of the accompanying whack’s and I made our way down the sidewalk as drunk and disorderly as two fellows are allowed to be at the stroke of New Years. A few minutes previous to greeting the new year with a drink and a holler, this wacko and I found ourselves in a monstrous pile. We were smoking something. It must have been weed but for some sick suckers sake I do not remember. The following events seem to be quality assurance that it was..
I had this burning stick of something good in my hand as the man drove his car and its flashing lights straight at us like some blue winged demon. I tossed the stick to the ground but the portly devil swooped in with its chains and had us both in its grip before we could chant, baptize, or do whatever it takes to send devils back to their personal hells.
The devil greeted us bound innocents with threats of eternal damnation (at least 3-5 years or $10,000 worth of fines) as he waved the still smoking stick in our faces and then let us go because of the many other innocents that he felt he needed imprisonment that night. We were not friends of the devil but now we knew its face, having avoided its evil grin earlier that night and having now faced it again.
These 2 meetings with the blue devils provided evidence then affirmation, as my face was ground into their sleek, dark chariot, of what was calling me to this place. I had felt the likes of it before but had never reason nor rhyme to put it to paper. Now, as I was witnessing it first hand, I cannot believe that I never had.
This realization that reached its cold, dead hand out of the netherworld to grasp my jugular and throttle me for all I was worth was that of the nature of the blue devil itself. For they are everywhere, they take many forms, and they are on the hunt at all times. They never sleep, never rest until good citizens such as you and me are defiled and overthrown. We are members of a generalization that they have formed, one formed by those unknown to us, those in dark corners committing unknown acts of pure evil. These darkness dwellers have existed and, through the reasoning of the devils, provision of a so-called service, producing wild accusations on a whim, taking whatever liberties they feel like in order to route out these subterraneans, is what they make claims to. And now, I am onto them. I know them, know their true faces, their true colors, and they are shining the fuck through.
Yet the previous events only hinted at their true nature. One must realize their true colors when an angry mob of them in dark suits, with helmets and large, submachine guns bust through your door of the Monte Carlo Hotel, outside New Orleans at 3 that morning, with snarling dogs that snap just inches from your face and mace that stings the eyes and reduces you to one of those sniveling generalizations, the ones that writhe on the floor like some kind of fish, out of water and begging for mercy to the unforgiving hook-holder that stands above it. There will be no mercy, no release to the cool, life giving ocean that is the regaining of your once intact credibility. Mercy, release, understanding, believing? These are not the true colors of their rainbow. Lies, deceit, cruelty, accusation, generalization, misrepresentation. These are the make up of the rainbow and you are the little fucking dip shit trying not to be crushed underneath them. Good luck.
These men will produce a story. “Where is the child? We know you have him somewhere. Under the bed? Speak up and thank your lucky stars I didn’t bring my club, you son of a bitch!”
They see the ripped children’s t-shirt in the trash that my friend had bought earlier because he was out of shirts and then ripped apart, disgusted that he bought ones that were too small. They see the juice boxes, the individual helpings of yogurt, the toy from the Frosted Flakes box and they put it all together. Who is to say that these two fellows and I, working our way through the effects of twenty or so Mai Tai’s and Jagermeister shots and cold Miller Lite’s together in a one person room in the middle of the worst part of Louisiana, did not, at some point of our drunken revelry, kidnap and force ourselves on some defenseless little girl, defiling her over and over again, strangling her, and tossing her in some dumpster around the corner, where she was found? This was the closest establishment so, “Hey Guys, let’s check if those worthless fuckers didn’t just stop in here for the night before they continued their rape and murder spree clear across the United States like so many self-righteous young Americans have in the past”.
“They say they didn’t do it, huh?” one says to the other. “50-life”. And that’s it. No more return trip. No more chucking beads at hot chicks with big tits. All the tits you get to see belong to your 350 pound cellmate, the one with a bald head and 3 teeth. He gives his tits away for free. He only needs beads to choke you with until you show him yours
But…an escape. Some hackneyed, slacker motherfucker has taken little pride in his work and has been left alone with 3 blood thirsty bastards who have now come to like nothing more than to shine the light of sweet retribution into the clotted bowels and charred heart of any one in uniform that they can find. It is done and so the whack’s make a break for it. No pictures, no fingerprints and no proof of the bound and gagged official individual crying for his mother in the trunk of a Camry that is speeding down the road at 90 miles an hour. There will be no going back. Only steady and speedy progression from one ultimate punishment to an other. We whack’s will see if the devils blue is more than uniform deep. But no, not punishment. Purification through fire. The brimstone will hurtle through the sky today, my friend, until none will be left singe-free.
But then, everyone in the beat up Toyota gets distracted. It is time for work, time for menial, soul sucking activities, time to take a place in the pile of fools. Just one more American face in an ocean of bile and disillusionment with a starving officer still locked his trunk.