The road trip

It is the night before we will hit the road in my yellow Rabbit, odometer 221,556 miles, inherited when my Dad got a new company car. My backpack, guitar and diverse camping gear are piled up by the front door. But tonight, I feel as if I am saying goodbye forever to Hotlanta, like I already know that I’ll never be coming back, even though there is no actual plan of the kind.

At Grady’s request, I have promised to go out for a farewell drink with her then-girlfriend, who works in production for a major television network. I secretly think that Fran is pretty screwed up, but in a mostly-likeable way. In addition to her day job, she is a punk guitarist who has taken me under her wing as a newbie on the local lesbian music scene. She is also a serious coke-head. Once Grady and I begin to hang out, Fran’s supplier of choice becomes Cody, my even-more-deeply-fucked-up, drug-dealer roommate, the charming and cute — but gravely depressed — son of a Bible-thumping deacon from rural south Georgia. Cody is also a roofer, the only one in town willing to strap on a harness and rappel the terrifying pitches of church steeples to dress them up with new shingles that will hopefully last another thirty years. It isn’t easy to find people willing to do this job, but he is just crazy enough. I can’t even remember how he arrived in my life, but arrive he did, along with Gilda, his Doberman pup, named for the late Saturday Night Live comedian. Gilda is an adorable, goofy creature who loves to curl up on top of my very chill mutt Bobbysox, because of his four white feet. Gilda’s un-cropped ears and permanent doggie smile take away all of her potential for looking tough; she will never be taken seriously as a guard dog, and as if to prove this, she is stolen from his pickup bed not long after I leave the South for good.

I sometimes make Cody’s deliveries to Fran’s house, a rambling Victorian-ish three-bedroom with high ceilings, on a cul-de-sac in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Usually I do this late at night, in my pyjamas, sometimes doing a line or downing a glass of champagne (the preferred house beverage, always in stock) before returning home to my humid, midtown duplex with its perpetually scraggly, push-mowed backyard.

On this night pre-departure, Fran and I meet up at a favorite bar where we listen to a set from a local girl group with an ironic feminist…

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