Long Distance

The third day of my road trip and I hadn’t yet showered. It relentlessly poured rain, so I’d reeked of sweat, socks, and body odor so much that whenever I’d pull into a sandwich shop after gassing up the Nissan, the clerks would gather in a circle wearing orange HazMat suits, point hoses at me, and spray me with perfumed chemicals. I’d be pushed into a dance, moving against their violent punch, singing when they sprayed me, swallowing a few cups of those toxins each time. I’d race back to the car only to throw up all over its interior for 15 minutes – that kind of heaving, screaming retch that’s practiced only by the dead drunk. So, you see, their attempts to get me to smell better never worked, those assholes. I was continually covered in puked ham sandwich chunks laced with industrial meat packing gel, all of which became fetid in the humidity.

Yet, I’d say those were the glorious days of youth, swerving through lanes with the determined ease of a Canada goose flying north. This was when I was doing nothing but delivering boxes of word-finds and crossword puzzle books to local drugstores. One after another they greeted me, brooms in hand, smiling in their small town aprons smeared with newsprint. And like a vomit-covered seraph, I’d deliver dozens of distractions, share anecdotes, and waltz away with nothing more than a wet pack of cigarettes (my brand was Vantage). I’d jam another cassette into the tape deck, and race down the highway with such brazen fearlessness that I could shuck and eat a bushel of whelks without ever touching the brakes.

In retrospect, that is what defines freedom, like rolling in freshly mown grass on a late afternoon. I delivered crossword puzzles for six years until the whole business was taken over by a craven conglomerate run by a publisher bent on cutting corners and eliminating local drivers. I showered, moved to New York City, and began a new life as the ad man at a surprisingly lucrative poultry slaughterhouse.