Across the Great desert and into the Big Easy.

As of this writing, I am sitting a block off of Bourbon St. at a sidewalk Internet cafe in downtown New Orleans. Dan is sitting adjacent to me fuming over what happened about an hour ago. He hasn't touched his Po'boy sandwich. Larry is no longer in the picture.

Let me explain:

Yesterday morning we pulled out of Tucson very early. We slept well in the hotel and were all well-rested. I explained to Larry that I did not want to stop until we got to New Orleans, he said fine. So we chugged for hours across the Great Southwest Desert and I tell you it can drag you down with its monotonous boredom. And the U.S. drag closes around you like no other drag in the world, worse than the west Texas high mountain towns of El Paso, cold wind blows down from postcard mountains, the frigid air like death in the throat, river towns of the Rio Grande, vultures pecking through the mud streets.

But there is no drag like U.S. drag. You can't see it; you don't know where it comes from. A vast subdivision, antennae of television to the meaningless sky...passing suburb after suburb. America is not a young land; it is old and dirty and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians.

The evil is there waiting.

I started to already feel homesick from Mexico.

On through the peeled landscape, dead armadillos in the road and vultures over the swamp and cypress stumps. Motels with beaverboard walls, gas heaters, and pink blankets. Motel...motel...motel...broken arabesques...loneliness moans across the continent like foghorns over still, oily waters of black rivers.

The evening finally fell upon us when we hit San Antonio. The stars were bright on that moonless night. It was about this time that Larry informed us that he didn't have a driver’s license and the car wasn't registered in his name. The car was his father's and he had stolen it before he left Ohio. This really pissed me off. Dan didn't have a driver’s license. I didn't have a driver’s license and we were passing through San Antonio at midnight with all types of red-neck nigger killing sheriffs swooping around us! I sat in my seat, knuckles white and a growing fear that some patrolling cop would pull us over for just having the balls to drive that rattling eyesore at night. Soon the questions would spill out and after running those illegal tags, I would be tossed into jail! Branded for GTA. My cute white ass passed around cell-to-cell, being used for currency. A long night of fear as we glided out of the city limits and into the starry blackness of the open road. After that experience, the day broke and we still weren't out of Texas.

We hit the yahoo capital of Houston around nine that morning and that fucking car needing gas every twenty-five or thirty miles. This trip took more of my money than I thought.

We finally rolled out of Texas and into Louisiana. In Lake Charles, we stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast. I sat there steaming mad as Dan and Larry ate in silence. Dan assured me that when we reached New York I'd be making more money than I could possibly imagine. Right.

After breakfast, we continued our trek. When you come into Lake Pontchartrain across from New Orleans there is this twenty-five-mile-long bridge crossing it. First over swamps with moss-covered trees and crocodiles lying in the sun on little islands; then onto the great lake itself. Of course, halfway across, we ran out of gas. I went ballistic. We just gassed up before crossing the bridge and this big shark was gobbling up all my money!

Earlier, as a convenience to motorists that were in our situation, we noticed a van that passed around handing out free gas on the bridge. It of course was nowhere to be seen when we cocked out. I was forced to use the highway service phone and to my greatest horror, the police answered it. They said they'd be out in twenty minutes to help us in the stolen car with no I.D. and no license or insurance.

It was time to be cool as the squad car approached from behind. A lady cop came out and asked what the problem was. I informed her in a nervous squeaky voice that we ran out of gas. Dan and Larry waited in the car as she offered to take me to the nearest gas station to fill our gas can. I sat in the squad car, knuckles white, as she ran the plates. She casually asked whom the car belonged to and I said Larry Colckek. The plates were in his father's name. After I filled the gas can with a short lecture on drinking responsibly, the cop dropped me off back at the car and sped away.

That's all I could take. I blew up at Larry, screaming at him the whole way into town. When we reached a small park, his car staggered again, hungry for gas. I beat the living crap out of Larry, grabbed my bag, and with Dan in tow, marched away and down a moss-covered tree-lined street.

"What are we going to do now? You beat up our ride." Dan asked meekly.

"Don't worry! We will find a cheap motel downtown and things will work out from there!" my face was twisted in hatred and contempt.

We spent most of the afternoon looking for cheap lodging. But to no avail. We finally stored our bags in pay-by-day lockers at the Greyhound bus station and decided to spend the evening in the French Quarter.

After a short ride on one of the famous streetcars, we made it to Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. New Orleans presents a stratified series of ruins. Along Bourbon Street are the ruins of the 1920s. Down where the French Quarter blends into skid row are the ruins of an earlier stratum: chili joints, voodoo huts, decaying hotels, old-time saloons with mahogany bars, spittoons, and crystal chandeliers. The ruins of 1900.

There are people in New Orleans who have never been out of the city limits. The New Orleans accent is very similar to the accent of Brooklyn. The French Quarter is always crowded. Tourists, servicemen, merchant seamen, gamblers, perverts, drifters, and lamsters from every State in the Union. People wander around, unrelated, and purposeless, most of them looking vaguely sullen and hostile. This is a place where I can enjoy myself. I bet even the criminals have come here to relax and cool off.

Well, Dan wants to go walking around. I hope the queer bars here aren't a drag.