Roadtrip 1992

There was a van full of punks outside of Chicago's Belmont Ave Punkin' Donuts (yes I used to hang out there- I was fifteen ok?). Julie Unruly, who later changed her name to Sammy Salami and then back to just Julie, told me about the kids. She said they were going to NYC. Didn't I want to go too? So I said goodbye to whatever drugged-out Goth boy I'd been fucking, fought it out with my mom, and climbed in the van.

The weeks that followed were spent in ebullience, getting high, drinking, scaring people, and listening to bad punk tapes in the vehicle. I smoked crack for the first and last time, bathed in Philadelphia's fountains, and went to a most inspiring Tribe 8 show, later following them to my future home Knot Squat to drink herbal tea and beer. It was total teen freedom, the kind filled with the power of hating everything and refusing to hold back. With this gang, I could let loose my disdain for society and only be rewarded for it. By the time we landed in NYC, I felt so at home at ABCNoRio and in the park (Tompkins, duh) that I decided to stay.

We slept on sidewalks when the cops swept the park, and in the grass on more laid-back nights. Every night I got some weird offer- a guy in a fancy car opening a white envelope to show off more hundred dollar bills than I'd ever seen, Dee Dee Ramone trying to get me and my other sixteen year old friend Gwenny to have sex with him in a hotel room for a piddling $100 - there were a lot of chances back then I didn't take. Like Tracy Quan writes in Diary Of A Manhattan Call Girl, I wish I had known I could have charged extra for being underage. Oh well. Probably better off. Regardless, Gwenny and I both ended up at Flashdancers, the strip club chain with a main hole on Broadway. When they asked my age I gulped and said twenty-two. Luckily, my roommate at Serenity Squat, a smart but occasionally coked out older girl from Bogota, had worked there for a while and vouched for the age thing. It was the beginning of an era.

Roadtrip 2001

In Canada it was freezing. Each city, though, had a way of comforting our chilled bones. Toronto warms you up with vegetarian hot dog stands and memories of the GB Jones homocore era. Ottawa was overtaken by the Radical Cheerleading Convention, with hairy pigtailed feminists swarming the coffeehouses of Carleton University. We were stuck everywhere we went because it was too damn cold to wander freely. When it came time to move on, a half-empty van of Victoria cheerleaders offered space. We piled in and headed for the land of ooh-la-la.

Montreal is great because people actually speak another language. It's not like, say, Berlin, where EVERYONE speaks English and they don't want to be bothered with your pathetic mangling of their language- in Montreal there are large populations of people who are completely French speaking and that's it. I like to get lost in crowds of sound, unable to decipher harassment or banalities. But eventually it was time to check in, so Mel and I found the local radical bookstore, which was stacked above the Sex Workers drop-in center, so we hung out at both and did cheers for the hookers.

In every town I've visited, from Greensboro, NC, to Prague, to Silver City, NM, the objective has been finding a central meeting space. Where do the punks go? Once that's conquered, where do the women go? Where do the people come together for no reason at all? In those places, information flows easily between strangers, and a plate of no-cost food is likely waiting around the corner.

Roadtrip. The hitchhiking and the waiting and the foot dragging and the sleepiness that overtakes the body once it's reached a destination. It's not about getting there and doing things once you're there, like traveling is, it's about the things that happen out of nowhere when you're on your way. There is no destination but observation.

- Mary Xmas