Breaker, Breaker
After 3,000 miles on interstate, I found my exit.
by Jami Attenberg
July 7, 2008
I had been planning the trip for months, a cross-country drive from New York to Portland, where I would be housesitting for six weeks. I would leave my live-in boyfriend, Jon, behind, but had promised to return. Then, a week before I was supposed to leave, we broke up. When I return this fall, he will be gone. Never have I needed a road trip more in my life. Cue a Sheryl Crow song. (But don't, please.)
Day 1: Brooklyn, NY to Cincinnati, OH
I leave at six a.m. I cannot get out of the apartment fast enough. This last week of living together has been a mess: days of silence, and one awful screaming match. We hug goodbye in the kitchen, and when I tell him everything is going to be okay my voice cracks.
In the car, I want to exhale but I am wrapped up tight inside. It's impossible to feel strong when I'm this exhausted. I start driving really fast, and make it from Brooklyn to the Holland Tunnel in fifteen minutes. Suck it, New York City rush hour. I may be down, the future may look bleak, but I am going to make awesome time on this trip.
It's eleven hours to Cincy. For the first hour, I parse "lonely" versus "alone." Also, I wonder why they haven't invented another word for "single" yet. Could I call myself a soloist? A solo artist. I am totally Prince.
For about three hours I fantasize about making out with an old lover, which gets me through New Jersey and part of Pennsylvania. This is my first act of defiance, and it's less fun than it sounds. I never actually get to the sex part. I guess that's as far as I'm willing to go right now.
In Pennsylvania, I fill up my tank and it costs sixty-three dollars and I almost pass out.
For about two hours I think about how I am totally going on a diet starting right now. When the fighting started, so did the cheese and wine consumption. At a rest stop, I decide to go on the Subway diet. I look at that grinning picture of Jared on the sandwich board and I wonder if when he was five hundred pounds he would sit around wondering if he were "lonely" or "alone" or just "fat."
For the rest of the day, I play every Sleater-Kinney album I own really loudly.
Day 2: Rest Day, Cincinnati
I am staying with my old college roommate and her husband. She is six months pregnant and it is a joyous mood in the house. She and her husband call her belly "Lumpy" and we all take turns rubbing it during the two days I am there. I say things like, "I'm never getting married, ever," but still I envy that happy belly.
I do not feel burned by love but have given up on it nonetheless.
In the afternoon, I get an email from Jon that is kind, gentle and beautiful. In it, he asks if we might give our relationship another shot when I return.
My friend says, "You know, you don't have to email him back right away." And so, I do not reply. This is my second act of defiance. I always reply to emails. But this one will have to wait.
That night, my friend has some girls from work over. They're all married with children. They talk about work. They talk about marriage. They talk about children. They are all pleasant, but I have nothing to contribute. I am fully numb. So I do all the dishes, for like, a half-hour straight. I am way too into doing the dishes. I wish there were more dishes. I want to walk across the street and knock on a neighbor's door and ask them if I can tidy up their kitchen too.
At the end of the night, one of the party guests asks me about the New York apartment that I am leaving behind and I explain that Jon is still there and that we've broken up and then the whole room explodes with, "Oh you poor thing," and I say, "This is why I didn't bring it up."
But don't worry, I say. Because I am never getting married. Ever.
Day 3: Cincinnati to Iowa City
Three hours out I drive by the exit to Jon's parent's house in southern Illinois. I always really liked them. Once, we visited them at a beach house in Delaware, and we went on a nice walk after dinner and I admired their wry senses of humor and Midwestern clarity. I will miss them. But you don't get to keep the in-laws, right?
Why did we break up? Same as anyone else. Communication issues. Disappointment. Dishonesty, emotional and otherwise. The specifics are unimportant.
Every radio station is playing a different Genesis song and I know all the words and I sing along and they all have meaning. Oh, Phil, you got me good.
I think about a conversation I had a few weeks before with a friend, a sly, dirty, funny boy who has an endless supply of naughty stories. It is important to have friends like these when you're in a relationship. So you can remember what it's like out there, good and bad. He told me this story about going to a strip club, getting an unsolicited hand job from a stripper, tipping her anyway, missing the last train home, then ending up at a Taco Bell with a fistful of dollars and damp jeans at three a.m.
He ended the story by saying brightly, "Well, at least stuff like that only happens to me once a year. If I were really fucked up, that would happen all the time!"
And I took him by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes and said, "You have to find a girlfriend. Immediately."
And now I realize that this is the kind of trouble I might get into. Strippers and handjobs.
Once I hit Iowa I start to see dead deer everywhere on I-80. I count. Eight.
In Iowa City, I stay with a nice couple I had recently met at a literary festival. They run a small press together, and are obsessed with their work. They have an adorable beagle, which I am highly allergic to, but which I cannot stop petting. We take him for a walk at night, and I notice the sandbags from the flood. There are fireflies everywhere. Having a dog is not the same as having a baby, but it's pretty close.
Day 4: Iowa City, IA to Omaha, NE
Three dead deer.
Iowa has a lot of NPR stations, so if you lose the signal in one part of the state, it's easy to pick up the thread quickly. Fresh Air is playing a repeat of a George Carlin interview from a few years ago, focusing on the discussion of his past heart attacks. He says he's most afraid of losing his power of speech. But as long as he has the ability to write, he might be okay. If he died he would miss his wife, he says. "We share a good life together."
I burst into tears. Thanks a lot, Terry Gross.
There is a sex shop on I-80 before the Nebraska border that has a sign: "Buy 2 get one free." Buy two what? Two handjobs? Two strippers?
I stay with the kings of Omaha, my friends Timmy and Rodney, and their two dogs. The boys take me thrift shopping, and Timmy ends up buying me a weird Christian youth album from the '70s to cheer me up and it works. Later, I drink too much wine in their backyard and get New-York-book-world gossipy. Everyone has backyards and babies and dogs and happy relationships. What do I have? Gossip about other writers.
Day 5: Omaha, NE to Marquette, NE
I head to a residency program I stayed at two years ago on a farm in western Nebraska. Nebraska is lush and green right now, especially after all the storms, and the corn is knee-high. In a month, it'll tower. In a month, anything can happen.
I realize I still haven't replied to Jon's email from a few days before. I text him that I received it, and that I'll reply to him in a few days. And I wish him well.
I drive down back roads and listen to old mix CDs. The old lover I was imagining making out with used to be in a band, and one of his songs comes on my stereo, only to start skipping. Good. I throw the CD out the window. I don't need male distractions anyway.
I wish I had brought a copy of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville with me. It's the definitive chick-road-trip album. If you're not screaming "Fuck and Run" on a highway in the middle of nowhere, there's something missing from the experience. I remember that album as being incredibly defiant, but then I think about "Divorce Song," which also could be read as wistful and apologetic. I need to listen to it again, it's clear.
There are trees felled by tornadoes everywhere. I hit thrift stores in small towns and get three dresses and four shirts for ten dollars. My agent calls to tell me there is a final deal from my publisher for my new book, the one I started writing at this very same residency two years before. A month before I met Jon. I tell my agent to accept the offer, then I let out some air in my lungs.
Day 6: Marquette, NE to Laramie, WY
At six a.m., the sunrise is behind me. I stop on the road and look back at the pink glow behind the cornfields. There are bugs everywhere and birds swooping in on them and the sound of crickets and quiet. I listen to NPR. There is NPR everywhere in this great country of ours, even on the back roads of Nebraska, or maybe especially there. There may be hope yet.
On the Laramie border, a bird about the size of a turkey, and yet not a turkey, flies into the side of my car, bounces off, and lies miserably flopping on the road, certain to be killed by the next car. I am now one of them. I am a road killer.
The topography changes again. Wyoming is craggy and substantial. It's also fast; the speed limit is seventy-five. Wyoming rules. I keep slipping into the 100-mph zone. I stop using turn signals because I am the only one on the road. Whenever I have to get off the highway I am suddenly a bad driver, with no awareness of anyone else around me. I wonder if this is what this summer will turn me into, emotionally. All that freedom, all that alone (suddenly not such a bad word!) time, might make it impossible for me to share my space with anyone else, at least any time soon.
I round a corner on the highway, and then there is Laramie, mountains and sky all around. I check into a hotel near the highway. It's awful, but the clerk gives me free tickets for dinner, breakfast and a drink at the bar, and there's wifi and cable in the room, and I am totally going to get naked and roll around and be happy. And alone.
Day 7: Rest Day, Laramie
In the morning I go to the free breakfast at the hotel. The hotel employee monitoring the food supply is wearing a cut-off t-shirt and shorts. He has long, bleached hair down to his shoulders, and his face is pock marked and has the swollen red color of an alcoholic. He casually eats a banana in between restocking cereal boxes. Someone asks him how he's doing and he replies, "Living the dream."
I hang out with some Laramie locals and learn the ways of love in that town. Lots of people have "secret" relationships, for years at a time, where they consider each other boyfriend and girlfriend, but never go public with it. It's a small town, they explain, and people get in each other's business. "They mess things up," someone tells me. It's never fully clear to me what exactly gets messed up, but it makes me a little sad that people can't be exactly who they want at all times. We're spoiled that way in New York. Never underestimate the power of anonymity.
But Laramie is beautiful! The skies are wide and open and it's quiet except for vague white noise in the distance from the highway and the sounds of the trains, always the trains riding through town. I find out later that throwing yourself in front of a train is the preferred method of suicide in Laramie.
It gets rough in the winter.
I buy a red-white-and-blue skirt with nautical buttons at the Goodwill for fifty-three cents, which almost makes up for the fact that I spent fifty-five dollars on gas that morning.
My hostess drives me fifteen minutes out of town, and suddenly there are antelope. We talk about writing, then we go to a small hole-in-the-wall bar and drink whiskey. Later, we go back to her quaint house and I meet her boyfriend, a massive, hunky tattoo artist who helped her move out to Laramie nearly nine years ago and never left. I ask them how they met — he was giving her a tattoo and remembered liking her hips — and I flip my head back and forth between the two of them. They finish each other's sentences. They do all those things you do when you're in it.
Day 8: Laramie, WY to Boise, ID
It took till western Wyoming, days longer than I had thought, but finally, there is bliss. The roads are empty, the cows are everywhere, the land is green, and the Shins are on the stereo. Is that clichˇd? A car commercial? It doesn't matter. I drive by a perfect mountain at seven a.m. It is my mountain. It is the mountain I leave all my bullshit on. It is real and large and I leave behind my problems and start anew right then. I am living the dream.
All the way to Boise, there are perky signs for something called Little America, which is basically a full-service travel stop attached to a hotel. I get suckered in and stop there for gas. There are homeless people sitting with signs and a baby running around pantless by the gas pumps. Little America, indeed.
Around Rock Springs, I turn on the radio and listen to the married DJ duo of John and Cindy. John is talking about a Men's Health survey where 66% of the women surveyed had dumped men who were bad kissers. John starts talking about the first date he had with Cindy, and how he was so nervous he had to ask her if he could kiss her.
"It's a good thing you did," said Cindy. "I don't like it when people push themselves on me."
"Well I think it worked out just fine," said John. "We got married."
"And now we're having a baby!" said Cindy.
I reach for the Sleater-Kinney.
In the early evening, I arrive in Boise and check in with the brother of a friend from Brooklyn. We sit out back on his porch and drink cans of Budweiser and talk about breakups. I tell him what went wrong with my relationship, and I realize nothing has changed at all, about how I feel about the breakup or what I want in my life. It happened for all the right reasons.
My friend's brother takes me to a record store and I buy the Exile in Guyville reissue. The clerk tells me she also teaches fiction-writing at Boise State, and I realize I have just met the coolest girl in Idaho. Then we go to a bar and watch a teenage hooker in a skirt the size of a bandeau do lines off a tiny mirror. Later, a broken-hearted methadone addict with a surprising amount of charm joins our table. Sweat pours out of his head. Boise's kind of fucked up. I dig it.
Late at night, I reply to Jon's email, the one he had sent me a week before, asking me to reconsider the breakup. The one with all the romantic words. Those words a girl loves to hear. But I tell him, in as kind, gentle and beautiful a way as possible, that my answer is no.
Day 9: Boise, ID to Portland, OR
Liz Phair is just as defiant as I remembered. She takes me through Oregon, the curves of the mountains, the rivers, the gorges, the breathtaking tumble of land. There is some regret in this perfect album, a little sadness, but mostly defiance. That was what I was looking for anyway. We seek in art what we seek in ourselves.
I get off the highway in Portland after seven hours on the road and I am steady. I am aware of the traffic around me and I follow the directions perfectly and I parallel park like a champ. I am a good driver after all, on or off the highway. But I don't need to drive anymore to figure that out. I am ready to get off the road. n°
©2008 Jami Attenberg and hooksexup.com