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Remember those Choose
Your Own Adventure books? The story starts, as it always does,
but you get to pick what happens next. There is no middle or end,
just a beginning. As some of you may have heard, Chase and I drove
across the country last month. There are people who like maps,
lists, dates, and times. And there are others, like us, who like
to just choose their own adventures. Chase smokes a pipe and I kind of like the smell. He has a glove that he sometimes wears, while driving. He is a horrible singer and likes to listen to certain songs on repeat. He likes Morrissey. He is unable to find things in his backpack or screw on Gatorade tops. I think he is too short. I am Sarah. Most are accustomed to seeing my panties on a daily basis. I make a weird sad noise when things go wrong. I own one bra that I usually am unable to find. I may have two open diet cokes at any given time. I am better at making conversation with strangers, than with my friends. I get up before 9 am no matter what time I go to sleep. Sometimes, I accidentally order a Margarita. Chase thinks I am too tall. We both impulse buy, get uncomfortable in social situations, have no idea what day or time it is, are easily distracted, call people and accuse them of having things we have lost, forget to listen when the other one is talking, find eating an inconvenience, and fear the mundane. Kiki is my cat. She stops being cute maybe 20 minutes outside of Boston. I take notes. Chase takes pictures. Kiki pees on us. This is our story. Mid-Summer, I drive back from LA to get my stuff out of storage on the East Coast, to drive back to LA once again. Yes, I see the lack of logic in this. Chase agrees to go with me. He books models along the way. I bring my laptop to do work. We get to LA without shooting a single model. The only time I open my computer is to check Myspace. Sometimes you get distracted by sitting by the river in New Orleans, or truck stops, or Indian City, or talking to Elvis’ biggest fan, or sitting in Will’s front yard, or the sunset, or sometimes you just realize everything can wait. I leave Boston on Friday morning at 9 am and get to Baltimore close to 11pm, a combination of traffic and probably some sort of cosmic sign that I should probably just turn around. There is nothing to go back to, so I said fuck it. I do the math, and yes, I actually spend more time in traffic than actually driving. I finally get off the highway in Baltimore and missed the turn to go to Chase’s. I am turning around, when I hear a cop on a megaphone going, “Do not perform illegal U-turns in front of police officers.” So we leave Baltimore for Charlottesville, Virginia, Friday evening. We arrive in Charlottesville even later that night to meet up with a girl Chase has an internet crush on. The next morning, we are up and off to Memphis, Tennessee to stay with none other than Supercult.com’s “Memphis.” We stop to go to a sidewalk fair in some little town in Virginia. We say bye to Kiki, get out of the car, and start walking. I realize I forgot my cigarettes, and go back to the truck. There are two trashy ass bitches standing next to the truck screaming, “There is a cat in there.” They are at the window of my truck flipping the fuck out. I walk over, and they explain to me that my cat is going to die. I go, “Oh ok,” and try to ignore them. I attempt to get the cigarettes and walk away. The fatter of the two tells me she is calling the Humane Society on me. So we go move the car…We check out antiques and Civil War memorabilia, for a bit, and head back to the relocated vehicle. There is a cop walking in front of us. The cop stops at my truck. He informs us that they were called to come check on my cat. Sue is more than glad to take us in and show us her fine city. We go to a party the night we get there, and to bed around 5 am. The next day, we do some antique and thrift store shopping. Not unlike the Xanax, Chase somehow manages to accidentally buy some sort of KKK emblem that he would now keep in his wallet to piss me off. We eat at a soul food place with the after church crowd. Chase is paying and I am sitting outside smoking a cigarette. A man still in church attire comes up to me and goes, “You know beautiful that (cigarette) is going to be your gravestone.” I smile and go, “That’s what I am hoping.” We end up sitting in a park for hours on end, lying in the grass and telling stories. Sue climbs a tree and pees out of it. She is so high up, the pee evaporates. That evening, we go to a weird bar. Some dude in a patchwork shirt, with exposed chest hair, grabs my ass as I walk in the door. Within the half hour, he comes back up to me and goes, “Well look it’s fucking Paris Hilton.” I think this is the point where I go, “Chase can we go.” We relocate. The next stop is a little lower key. We meet more of Memphis’ finest. One of the girls we are with starts talking about “Graceland Too” which I had overheard a little about, at the festivities the evening before. So the facts are in. It is the home of the dude that considers himself Elvis’ biggest fan. It is a half hour, or so, out of our way. It is better than Graceland. We are sold. The next day, after getting lost, or me not paying attention, we finally get to Holly Springs, Mississippi and the famous or infamous Graceland Too. The place is full of transcripts from every time Elvis has been mentioned in any television program ever, every TV Guide that has run his name, and a bunch of other crap that has little to no relevance to Elvis at all. The guy talks like an auctioneer. He spits out facts about Elvis, about his son whom he named Elvis Aaron Presley, and then tends to yell out “Paris Hilton” or “Jennifer Lopez” for no apparent reason. He is building an actual replica of the jail from Jail House Rock in his backyard. He insists that women have fainted and peed themselves at the site of his son, who is Elvis reincarnated. This is way better than Graceland. So the guy at Graceland Too thinks we were married, apparently. On the way out, he goes, “Do you have a sister as pretty as you?” I assume I am setting my sister up with this guy, which I think may end up being next Christmas and Birthday present rolled into one. He says, “Send her this way. We will have her marry Elvis Aaron Presley. He has had some trouble with the ladies. She can divorce him after six months. (He points at me and Chase) You two can take the money and live off it for the rest of your lives.” I promise to send her his way. Chase thinks we were there for 45 minutes and I think we were there for a couple of hours. Regardless, it’s later than it is supposed to be. We are off to New Orleans. We are stopped at a gas station in either Mississippi or Louisiana on the road to New Orleans. I come out of the bathroom and from what I hear Chase saying, I realize he is talking to a cashier girl and another woman working there about his penis tattoo. I walk over and the cashier girl goes, “Well can I see it?” She is all flustered and can not decide if this is a good idea or not. The other woman becomes skeptical about this happening in the store. The girl, finally, confidently says, “Let me see it.” Chase pulls out his dick. Both women are laughing, screaming, and throwing their arms up in the air. The cashier girl tries to get it together and asks me if I want the receipt for the gas. I go, “You keep it to remember this moment.” Chase is been having trouble with reception on his sidekick. He turns to me and goes, “How the hell does Paris Hilton get around the country?” We arrive in New Orleans. With my amazing sense of time, I am going to guess it is really late. We are staying with a girl named Amanda, who is sweet to take us in. She seems a little frightened at the sign of us, but she is kind of drunk. I think we scare her a little more in the morning. We shop a little. I look for jeans for Chase to try on. We go to an antique mall. I am sitting outside the antique store talking to a man that works there. He is telling me that he came down here from NYC with his girlfriend at the time. They broke up and she went back to New York. He stayed because he could not think of anywhere else to go. He has been there for 25 years. Chase lived in New Orleans after high school. So I drive around for hours, while he stares at street signs looking for ones that might jog his memory. It has been twelve years since he has lived there. To his credit, we find both apartments he lived in. Time is a strange thing. We decide to go down to the French Quarter. So, we are walking down Bourbon Street. There are horse drawn carriages everywhere. Chase asks me to get a picture of him with one. I am standing there holding the camera, looking down the street, waiting for said horses to roll into sight. He gets all pissy. Apparently, I am supposed to be framing said picture for like five minutes, while we wait for these fucking horses to roll into view. I roll my eyes and go, “What do you want me to do? I can’t move horses.” We decide to sit and get Benets and coffees. They do not have tea. Chase does not bitch too much about the coffee, because he is distracted by some underage waitress’ ass. I think we discuss her ass for the twenty minutes we sit there. Chase not really laughing announces, “I need to let you know, sometimes some of the things I think are wrong.” We get up and walk down to the water. Chase convinces me that the Mississippi River has salt water in it. I convince myself this makes sense due to ocean flooding. Then he tries to tell me there are sharks in it. We return to Amanda’s, after what I would guess is maybe four hours of sitting by the river. Getting out of the car, back at the house, we see a wallet lying in the middle of the road. Only a few feet away is a purse. We find a phone number, and call the girl about it. Obviously, she is thrilled it had been found. On the phone, Chase goes, “Well, what happened? Did you get robbed?” She starts laughing and responds, “No I am just retarded.” We watch the movie Ray. Chase convinces the girl we are staying with that Ray Charles had only one ball due to a “dishwashing accident.” ,,CONTINUED |
