It's been over a week since last I posted something on here, and I suppose that I've fallen victim to the stagnation of not putting my hands to the keyboard with the intent to type as I have been swept away by the profundity of each day's experiences. I'm also lost in the specifics of what's going on, that I haven't had a moment to step back and look at things objectively. Last night, or rather very early this morning, brought me that opportunity.
The day began like any other: with a knock on the door at 8am by a lovable, yet infuriating and hopeless crackhead. She woke us up and yelled at us for not being awake yet. In fact, she thought to yell at us for all manner of different things throughout the day, not the least of which was her spilling a cup of Frank's Red-Hot all over the comforter on the hotel bed. The fierceness of her anger at us for the strangest and most irrational things was surpassed, if only for brief moments, by her bouts of remorse and depression. She was jonesing. Hard.
At the same time, we were compelled to keep interacting with her, if not for those moments where she realized that she could let her guard down and just kick-it with us, then because she managed to produce a solid scene with three other people who are already characters in the film. The tipping point came when she smoked crack with a lumper who's been using our shower these past couple of days. It was his first time.
Alex and I both sensed a change in his personality, and we both felt guilty for introducing him to our crackhead friend. We decided to stay with him in the room instead of leaving to meet a trucker friend on the lot. No sooner was our friend gone--having long since outstayed her welcome--than we realized how tenuous this moment with the lumper was. He pulled out a dollar, which he said was a gift from a man whom he had helped out with a little gas money. I noticed that the bill was folded strangely in his hand, and as he revealed its origin to us he gently unwrapped it. I turned away for a moment to discover, upon looking into his hand again, that he was displaying a small mound of crystals and powder. Meth.
Alex and I, realizing the gravity of the situation, started talking to him about how dangerous it could become. As we talked to him, he had a glint in his eye whenever we made contact; he had a sense of purpose that would otherwise have been inspiring, if not for the destructiveness of its likely ends. Even as we spoke to him to bring him down and away from thoughts of using the meth, and even as he was engaged with what we were saying he was methodically gathering the crystals and placing them delicately into a piece of aluminum foil.
"Give me the foil man, it's not worth it," I said worried that I was about to witness the pivotal moment in one man's destruction.
"I hear this is how they do it," he said almost as a response as he moved a lighter underneath the foil to produce a tiny puff of smoke. At that moment Alex and I realized that he was locked into an intensely personal moment of addiction, and that he wouldn't be brought out of it by ordinary means. We both worked on bringing him back into the room, and brought it to the point where he seemed willing to give up the foil. He extended the paraphernalia in my direction in a gesture for me to take it away from him. When I grabbed ahold of it, he held tight. Even though the foil was already ripped I did not pull hard enough to tear it further, but just hard enough to sense his resistance.
I was only compelled to let go once he stood up and appeared prepared to dump it down the toilet. As he walked over I sensed that if he went into the bathroom to dump that meth, he would likely shut the door and breathe it all in. Alex managed to get him to hand over the foil willingly, and then walked into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.
~
There are clear experiences in all of our lives where, if only for a moment, our purpose becomes profoundly clear. In these moments, which sometimes seem mundane and without a trigger, we are compelled in an unknown direction by an equally unknown force. The inclination to choose a path, to resist the usurpation of our will, only serves to deny a spiritual experience which can only come to us through submission to the unknown.
~
After walking across the I-10 overpass, and grabbing an In-N-Out Burger with our lumper friend, we walked back towards the TA. From a distance we saw her, standing on a merger-strip leading the Northbound traffic across the overpass. I suspected immediately that she was, like the girl we met on our first day in town, trying to hitch a ride away from the truckstop and back to some other lot to turn a few tricks. When we walked over to her, having bid the lumper fare-well, I noticed immediately how well-drawn her sign was. It said Los Angeles in funky, and steady lettering which fit nicely into the cardboard square.
She had a lot of red hair and freckles, and she didn't appear to be dirty at all. I was surprised to see her there, and equally surprised that, upon reflection and after five-hours of sleep, I did not read her as a prostitute off-the-bat. Nonetheless, I was confused as to why she was there, and I was determined to blow up her spot and block her eye-line to the oncoming traffic until I found out more about her.
Apparently, if you can believe this, she is an international fashion model, and she hitchhikes all over the world. After speaking with us for a few minutes, and regaling us with her story at a lightning pace, we attempted to interject bits of our background into the mix. Once she told us that she had family nearby who could pick her up, and despite the feeling of camaraderie she instilled in me when she talked about her 'hitchhiker's pride' of wanting to walk up to her family's door and see her journey to its seeming completion, I was determined to keep her from getting a ride.
At the time, and in retrospect I feel embarrassingly hypocritical for acting so protective of her. It's one of the aspects of hitchhiking that irk me the most; those moments where someone tries to whisk me away from my life of danger and destruction. A veritable 'captain sav-a-ho' but for hitchhikers. Regardless, I felt informed by my time working and living at the single largest site of truckstop prostitution in America, and how so many of the truckers here see a young (or old, or fat or skinny or . . .) woman as a piece of meat. We essentially blew up her spot until a meth-addict came by in a rather disturbing manner and offered to get her a ride into LA. She promptly gathered her bags, and we collectively began walking back towards the hotel room. No sooner had we crossed the street, then did a city police car pull over and the officer, upon removing himself from his vehicle, order us to all sit on the curb and produce our identification.
After briefly haranguing us for information, he sent us on our way with a warning about the hotel we were staying at and the truckstop which abutted it. He essentially profiled us as three lost white kids and told us to find a different hotel.
Having already called her family up, the young woman kicked it with us in our room and drank coffee. We spoke, for what seemed like an hour about our film, and about hitchhhikers and squatters. Having never encountered a model in the flesh, I thought that the visceral experience of being in her presence was shockingly juxtaposed by the plasticized images of her in the portfolio which she carried. All-in-all she was a person, no more or less real than any other I had met. The unreality of the situation was in the circumstances which brought us together.
No sooner had the gravity of the situation settled down upon me, than did her cousin and ex-husband enter the room. Her cousin and I spoke for a deceptively short amount of time about hitchhiking, Rainbow Gatherings, and New Orleans after the storm. Each time they attempted to extricate themselves from the room, we found ourselves delving deeper into our conversations--exploring the full extent of our connectivity, while only really scratching the surface. Before they finally left, our lumper friend had returned and was probably just as floored by the parties gathered as by the circumstances bringing them together.
By the time they had left, I was deep inside myself pondering the plethora of impossible moments of the day. I probably would have done well by myself to have written last night. The fresh perspective that follows a five-hour nap atop a day of utter chaos and synchronicity, I suppose, is good for me to have taken the time to step into in order to do justice, at least in writing, to the events of one extremely long day on the set of Lot Lizard, the feature documentary.
Peace and Love,
Dan
She had a lot of red hair and freckles, and she didn't appear to be dirty at all. I was surprised to see her there, and equally surprised that, upon reflection and after five-hours of sleep, I did not read her as a prostitute off-the-bat. Nonetheless, I was confused as to why she was there, and I was determined to blow up her spot and block her eye-line to the oncoming traffic until I found out more about her.
Apparently, if you can believe this, she is an international fashion model, and she hitchhikes all over the world. After speaking with us for a few minutes, and regaling us with her story at a lightning pace, we attempted to interject bits of our background into the mix. Once she told us that she had family nearby who could pick her up, and despite the feeling of camaraderie she instilled in me when she talked about her 'hitchhiker's pride' of wanting to walk up to her family's door and see her journey to its seeming completion, I was determined to keep her from getting a ride.
At the time, and in retrospect I feel embarrassingly hypocritical for acting so protective of her. It's one of the aspects of hitchhiking that irk me the most; those moments where someone tries to whisk me away from my life of danger and destruction. A veritable 'captain sav-a-ho' but for hitchhikers. Regardless, I felt informed by my time working and living at the single largest site of truckstop prostitution in America, and how so many of the truckers here see a young (or old, or fat or skinny or . . .) woman as a piece of meat. We essentially blew up her spot until a meth-addict came by in a rather disturbing manner and offered to get her a ride into LA. She promptly gathered her bags, and we collectively began walking back towards the hotel room. No sooner had we crossed the street, then did a city police car pull over and the officer, upon removing himself from his vehicle, order us to all sit on the curb and produce our identification.
After briefly haranguing us for information, he sent us on our way with a warning about the hotel we were staying at and the truckstop which abutted it. He essentially profiled us as three lost white kids and told us to find a different hotel.
Having already called her family up, the young woman kicked it with us in our room and drank coffee. We spoke, for what seemed like an hour about our film, and about hitchhhikers and squatters. Having never encountered a model in the flesh, I thought that the visceral experience of being in her presence was shockingly juxtaposed by the plasticized images of her in the portfolio which she carried. All-in-all she was a person, no more or less real than any other I had met. The unreality of the situation was in the circumstances which brought us together.
No sooner had the gravity of the situation settled down upon me, than did her cousin and ex-husband enter the room. Her cousin and I spoke for a deceptively short amount of time about hitchhiking, Rainbow Gatherings, and New Orleans after the storm. Each time they attempted to extricate themselves from the room, we found ourselves delving deeper into our conversations--exploring the full extent of our connectivity, while only really scratching the surface. Before they finally left, our lumper friend had returned and was probably just as floored by the parties gathered as by the circumstances bringing them together.
By the time they had left, I was deep inside myself pondering the plethora of impossible moments of the day. I probably would have done well by myself to have written last night. The fresh perspective that follows a five-hour nap atop a day of utter chaos and synchronicity, I suppose, is good for me to have taken the time to step into in order to do justice, at least in writing, to the events of one extremely long day on the set of Lot Lizard, the feature documentary.
Peace and Love,
Dan
Thanks for bringing me into the story. The details were real, ugly, and beautiful. In the wilderness of this truck stop, only the unusual can happen.
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