After packing my freshly cleaned clothes and eating a breakfast prepared by Gerald's father, we set out in the U-HAUL.

I don't appreciate long drives and I'm not a road tripper. So, as soon as we hit 95 North, I GOT HIGH, and attempted to remain that way the entire 19 hour drive to New York.

Gerald and I conversed and had fun, but for the most part, Gerald stared silently forward down the road, like the determined hood ornament of an Eagle, Talon, leaning into the steering wheel of the U-HAUL as if doing so would get him to his new apartment in New York that much quicker.

I mostly stared, stoned, out the window at the orange and white barracades and flashing construction lights: Florida is perpetually under construction like an ant mound on a daycare center playground. Everything is new. Always. Florida's buildings and roads are immediately replaced when they are no longer brand new. Florida is old people, dying on brand new landscape.

I wrote about Florida's construction habit in my notepad before realizing that every state on the way to New York might very well be the same way. Maybe every highway in America, in the world, is in a state of building and rebuilding and maybe I only think it's exclusive to Florida because I've never been anywhere else. I closed my notepad and looked back out the window.

Imposing, static, curtains of tall green lined 95 North the whole way. In Delaware, cement walls appeared between the trees and the road. The trees pushed against and hung over the tall cement and it looked like, if the walls were removed, the trees would burst forth and violently overtake the road. Aside from the walls, the view rarely changed. 'They must have saved all the 'different' for New York,' I thought.

The only signs that we were ever out of Florida, were lightning bugs hitting the windshield with glow-in-the-dark splatter (we don't really have lightning bugs in Florida), and hills (which we don't have either). Once outside the complete flatness of Florida, the road rose above the trees, unveiling a desert of treetops stretching out into the horizon as if 95 cut through a rain forest. I had been under the impression that America was at a loss for trees, but after the 700th mile of greenness, I wrote in my note pad: 'America has nothing to worry about.'

STONED SYMBOLS: forward and back

My intellectual development ended in college and I am an arrested undergraduate.

Between refreshing my buzz in the cab of the U-HAUL, I projected importance onto everything. The projections revolved mostly around issues of growing or not growing, changing or not changing, moving or not moving, going forward or not going forward etc… The whole drive was one amtuerish novel with too many heavy-handed, obvious symbols. Here are a few:

- A billboard on the side of the road advertising makeovers with a 'BEFORE & AFTER' photo: the 'AFTER' looked far worse than the 'BEFORE'. In the 'BEFORE' picture, the woman looked simple and pretty. In the 'AFTER' she looked gaudy and overdone.

- A discussion between Gerald and I about a friend of his, who catalogues his music collection chronologically by year.

- The weigh stations we drove into with the U-HAUL had those giant metal spikes that lay down when you drive over them forward, but rip your tires to fuck if you back up.

- A new N.W.A. reunion song on the radio.

- Outside of Baltimore I asked a convenience store clerk for matches. He handed me a box of farmers' matches and demanded 10cents. I complained and he pushed them toward me, "They give you free matches in New York," he said, "but they're little thin packs…this is a BOX." I hadn't told him I was going to New York. I gave him the dime and took the box.

- A billboard for a seafood restaurant featuring a giant picture of a crab, reminded me of the crab traps I had as a child in Ft. Myers: crabs climbed in the hole to get at the sweet, stinky, bait, but then became entangled in the wire mesh on the way out and weren't able to leave.

- During the night I awoke as we crossed the bridge over Lake Clairndon in South Carolina and sleepily thought we were on the St. Pete bridge on the way to Gerald's parents' house: 100's of miles away and it looked exactly the same.

- A discussion between Gerald and I regarding electronic keyboards: "I'll buy a keyboard that has 100's of sounds," Gerald said, "but then pick two or three I'm comfortable with and stick to those. I never find out what the keyboard can really do…it's almost not even worth buying a nice keyboard."

SKYLINE

We rolled into New York at 2:30 a.m. and the Holland Tunnel was impeded with construction. Gerald maneuvered the U-HAUL effortlessly into the single file line and through the tunnel without one car honking at him. He glowed for a while after. It was a personal victory: a symbol that he would survive in New York.

The skyline was beautiful but didn't overly impress me, which made me feel better. It was just a cluster of buildings like all the other clusters I'd seen in my limited travels to Chicago, Atlanta, D.C. and wherever else.  I had been afraid that the strange alien beauty of New York skyline would move me, astound me, overwhelm me, make me cry. But I was o.k. Thank God.

Once we reached Lower East-Side Manhattan, we met up with Gerald's brother/roommate and began the arduous task of moving Gerald's life into his 1000 square foot apartment ($2400) in the wee hours of the morning: out of the truck, into the small dingy-grey elevator, up to the 5th floor, down the hall, to the left. It went by surprisingly fast.

I stood outside, on the back bumper of the U-HAUL's trailer, with the door open, waiting for Gerald and his brother to come back down and finish moving.

I reached up and grabbed the cloth loop handle used to pull the sliding door up and down, and wrapped it around my wrist. Around my other wrist was my tape recorder. With the door's handle supporting my weight, I leaned out, in an arch, over the road below, with my toes still on the bumper.

A rat scurried in front of me and I turned on my tape recorder to expound: "The rats are big and brave here," I said into the recorder as Gerald and his brother came out the front door. I yelled: "Dude, you've got rats in this city!" My tape recorder captured their laughter.

Swinging myself back into the truck, I lost balance and reached for the box spring inside the trailer, which lay atop some boxes, level with my eyes. As I grasped the box spring for balance, it slid out of the truck fast and smashed me in the face, knocking me off the bumper. I hung painfully by my wrist for a brief second until the vertical door crashed down and I hit the pavement with the back of my head.

I lay on the concrete with my eyes closed, knocked drunk and emotional. "I shouldn't have come here!" I screamed at myself, activating the pain in the back of my head and smashed nose. My mouth filled up with blood from my split lip. My arm and wrist were also in amazing pain. The tape recorder documented my curses as Gerald and his brother ran over and untangled my wrist.

As blood poured from my nose into my eye craters, I thought of the hotdog cookout I'd written about in the Religion Calendar at THE PAPER, before I left Tampa. I remembered typing out the phrase "all the fixins" and I wished I was at that hotdog cookout, or at that bake sale or garage sale or even at the fucking church: anywhere but laying in the middle of Stanton in New York staring up through a film of my own blood. 'Or maybe it's ketchup.' I thought, hopefully.

Tears of pain rolled down my cheeks as Gerald and his brother helped me up. I screamed and sprayed blood at them for taking me away from the hotdog cookout. "I shouldn't have fucking come here!"

"It's O.K." Gerald said, he and his brother leading me toward the apartment.

"Seriously Gerald," I continued, drunk with pain and confusion, "Women do this sort of thing."

Gerald's brother laughed.

"It's not funny!" the air from my scream spraying him with blood as the tape recorder documented my delirium, unbeknownst to me. "I shouldn't have come here. It's just romantic bullshit! Women do this: they'll leave their lover if some other guy comes along and makes them feel swept off. Just because some other guy made them feel swept off, they think it's alright to just go!…to just leave…like I did…I just left Tampa like a whim…like a capricious little bitch." With the hard 'p' of 'capricious'; I saw a brief flower of blood mist from my mouth like a firework. I turned to Gerald's brother, and repeated that hard 'p,' several times, spraying blood in his face.

"Fucking quit it!" He commanded, still holding my arm and helping me into the apartment. I was out of it.

"They feel like they can get away with it if they're swept away," I moved my tongue around in my mouth and thought I felt a loose tooth. I continued my speech, "They feel like (affecting a female voice) 'it's not my fault…I was just swept away in the moment. It's not my fault.' (ending female voice). Romantic BULLSHIT!'"

As we entered the glass doors of the building and a seemingly endless river of blood ran down the front of my shirt, I pondered women I'd stolen from their boyfriends. How I'd made them feel that our situation was inevitable and wild and uncontrollable. I'd made them feel it was not their fault, when secretly I'd resented them for what they were doing (while simultaneously admiring their sense of adventure). It made me very sad.

Gerald pushed the elevator button. Some of his records and clothes still littered the lobby and through my delirious blood and tears they looked like a pile of bones. The three of us stood shoulder to shoulder, Gerald and his brother holding me up.

The elevator door opened up, and before us stood the most beautiful red-haired women I'd ever seen in my life. The world was blurry, but she was perfect: her straight hair was tied back tight and she wore a baby blue tank top. I stopped crying and sobered at the reflexive thought of sleeping with her.

Her arms were long and white and exposed. She looked like a blurry angel and I wished she would reach out and touch my face, E.T. style, and heal my fucked bloody nose. And maybe give me a healthier hairline. And make me an inch taller. And maybe smarter. Just with a touch of her pale fingers. But instead she hurriedly got out of the elevator and walked around us, out the front door into the rat-infested street.

The elevator went up and up, until the doors opened up and we were outside again. It was dark.

"Fuck," Gerald said, pushing the elevator buttons again, "We went too far…we're on the roof."

"Let's go!" I yelled, stepping out of the elvator and changing moods like an erratic drunk.

"You're covered in blood" Gerald's brother reminded me. I almost punched him.

"Actually, it's just spit…," I said, calming considerably and stepping out onto the roof, "Trust me…I know the difference."

The blurry panoramic view of New York was overwhelming.