9/29/10

          I caught a ride with Laura when she left for work. On the days she didn’t have class she sat behind the front desk at the Buffalo JCC. Not a member of the tribe herself, we spent the ride discussing the ridiculousness of Jewish tradition.

            “But I don’t get it. Isn’t walking up the stairs more work than taking an elevator?”

            “Of course it is. But that’s not the point.”

            “Then what is?”

            “It’s what their parents did so its what they do.”

            “But wh…”

            “Because their parents did it. And somewhere up the chain someone decided that electricity equaled work. It’s all about keeping the culture separate. God forbid we assimilate and loose our identity. An inquisition? No problem. Hitler? Close, but no cigar.  Carrying money on Shabbos?! Game over.”

            I hustled from the JCC to the greyhound station quick enough to run back out and grab a buffalo bagel for the road. (Note. Buffalo is not known for its bagels.)

            The benches for the 9:40 bus to Columbus Ohio were crowded, but not full. As I plopped my bag down I noticed two elderly ladies politely engaged in conversation with the man sitting next to me. His tattered UCLA sweatshirt and paint-splattered jeans complimented his ginger stubble and British accent. I put him at 28. When an awkward lull in their conversation arouse, Ferran turned to me.

            “Headed to Columbus?”

            “Nope. Cleveland bound. You?”

            “Louisville. What’s in Cleveland?”

            “A friend of mine. How bout you?”

            “Well, it’s the last place I called home I guess. To be honest, I jut got out of prison.”

            “No shit?”

            “Yeah. At midnight last night.  Three months in the Niagara County Jail.”

            “Well damn. Congratulations. How was you’re first night of freedom?”

            “Spectacular. I found a twenty-four hour Walmart and spent the night checking out the ladies.”

            He wasn’t kidding. “What were you in for, if you don’t mind me asking?”

            “Well, unbeknownst to me, I stole a thirty-rack from a gas station three years ago when I was blackout drunk. I guess I got away with it at the time, but I was pulled over a few months back for a busted tail light, and when they ran my license they found a warrant for my arrest. I had no idea what they were talking about, but it went to trial and I was found guilty. So that was that.  What’s the deal with the backpack?”

            “Well…”

            For the next five hours Ferran and I were fast friends. On a bus half empty we became seat-mates. (In retrospect, I should’ve jockeyed harder for that seat across  from the two cute backpacking Dutch girls.) He was born in Liverpool and had moved to the states in his twenties.

            “You go back to Europe much?”

            “All the time. But I’m not allowed in Germany any more.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah. A few years back I got spotted blowing up some tractors in the Black Forest. Monkey Wrench Gang type shit. Not that I care so much. I mean, I’m down to save the planet and all, but I was getting paid for this one.”

            “Of course.”

            “So anyways, I got caught. And they were like ‘we can either arrest, you or you can never come back to Germany.’”

            Somewhere around Fredonia he pulled a few miniature ceramic animal figurines out of his backpack and offered me one for safe travels. I took the falcon.

It was about that time that Charity slipped her way into the conversation. She was a skinny dirty-blond of nineteen, sitting across the isle in the row behind us. I’d noticed a double cherry tattoo on the side of her naked abdomen as she frantically taped up cardboard boxes of toiletries and tank-tops on the floor of the bus station.

              Charity was from rural West Virginia and had the twang to prove it. She took great pride in being white trash (her words): loved to shoot squirrels, ride ATVs, and drink copious amount of Corona Light. Fed up with her mom, she’d followed a boyfriend up to Batavia a month earlier. Around the same time Ferran was released, Charity was having a knockdown dragout with her boyfriend. He’d kicked her out of his apartment at seven that morning. Her mom had no idea she was on a bus home.

“I’ve never been to England.”

“I’ll take you. We can stay with my mother. She’ll love you.”

 While buying a bag of chips from the vending machine at the Erie, PA bus stop Ferran walked up behind me.

“I think you and Charity are gonna switch seats for the rest of the ride.”

As rural landscape morphed into suburban sprawl I youtubed The Presidents of The United States of America's version of “Cleveland Rocks." [The sentimental sound-tracking was more powerful two weeks later on the ride into Detroit; the bright orange of an un-obscured setting sun through the blown out windows of Michigan Central Station was as inner city a blues as I'd ever seen]. As I pictured Drew Carry and throngs of his friends gallivanting along spotless downtown streets, Charity’s bags were crowding my feet. Ferran’s tong was decidedly down her throat.

[By way of introduction: I applied to one college: Geneseo – early decision. I got the acceptance letter on my eighteenth birthday, December 15, 2004. Four months later, as my friends started hearing back from schools, my enthusiasm for the choice had waned. Dissuaded, I turned to the internet and began pursuing LiveJournal (a pioneer of social media for which you didn’t need an account to stalk others) for profiles that mentioned my college of choice. I ran across one dude who looked like my kind of cat. His pictures included the funeral of a pet centipede, as well as a group of friends on a broomball team, decked out in makeshift red uniforms with the letters “CCCP” cobbled across their chests in yellow duct tape. I could tell these kids loved each other, and that they were having the time of their lives. I put on the third track of the West Side Story soundtrack and decided that life was going to be all right.

The first weekend of college, a few friends I’d made during orientation and I decided to check out the school’s radio station’s informational meeting. Sitting in the back of a full lecture hall I watched the radio staff introduce themselves – music director, underwriting director, station manager - eight kids total, mostly juniors and seniors, and all clearly friends. Their dynamic was wonderful; their whit quick and their joviality contagious. One of my buddies turned to me:

“This is awesome. We should totally do a show.”

“Yeah man. And those guys seam crazy cool. I kinda wanna be them.”

            That night I experienced my first Radio Party. The kids at the front of the room were even cooler in person. And the radio community at large contained the warmest, happiest, most trustworthy group of cats I’d met in Livingston County. Those early radio parties are still some of the mot cherished memories amongst many of my college friends.

            And soon, I was hanging with the radio upperclassmen on the regular: swinging by their apartments after classes, attending birthday parties, giving toasts at pre-thanksgiving dinners – after a few months I felt as if I’d been friends with them since their freshman year.

            Lying in bed at home after that first semester I thought back to my pre-college anxieties and the subsequent good times. With a sudden realization I darted up and ran to the computer. Pulling up that same livejournal page, I laughed out loud. Those kids playing broomball, mourning their long lost centipede? I knew all of them. Fuckin’ radio kids.

            Turns out I met Neil a good five months before I actually met Neil.]

            “Welcome to Cleveland dude. So what do ya wanna do?” he asked as I tossed my bag in the trunk of his car.

            “I don’t know. What’ve ya got?”

            “There’s the Rock Hall of course. Have you been?”

            “Yeah actually, when I was here a few years ago with family. It was cool, but if memory serves, it wasn’t quite all that. Think its worth going again?”
            “Eh. If you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. And its crazy expensive.”

            “Yeah. Totally don’t need to go again. So what else is there?”

            “Well, I’ve got some shit to do in a few hours, so why don’t we just drive around for a while so you can get a sense of the town.” 
            Driving through Cleveland felt bizarrely like driving through Syracuse. The scale was larger, but the views afforded from an elevated I-90 were remarkably  similar. Neil pointed out the Jake and Browns Stadium while informing me that Key Tower was the tallest building between New York and Chicago. I was particularly awed by the Lorain–Carnegie Bridge. The truss was flanked by two epic art-deco statues on each end: the "Guardians of Traffic." So mighty and mammoth were they, I could've sworn we were passing through The Gates of Argonath. 

           
           Neil had a studio in a condo complex on the outskirts of Cleveland and spent most of his time in the law libraries of Case Western Reserve. Staying with him felt more of an imposition than other places; a studio apartment meant tight quarters and an intense lack of privacy. Setting up the air mattress in the middle of his one room I was taken back to the early days of Geneseo. The life size posters of football players and flags of Italian city-states that adorned the walls brought me back to living rooms past.

            “You’ll be proud of me” he said, “I’m on the board of Case Western Law Students for Social Justice.”

            “Yeah? That’s awesome.”

            “It is. We’ve actually got a few events this week for our awareness campaign on child sex trafficking. We’re showing a movie and then facilitating a discussion this evening, and then there’s a ‘walk to end child trafficking’ this weekend.”

            “What’s the movie?”

            “It’s called Holly. It’s a drama about a Cambodian sex slave. I think Ron Livingston's in it. Good film. And there'll be free pizza. You down?”

            “Totally.”

            We got there early to help set up the law lounge, Neil introducing me to his colleagues as we swung around chairs and un-wrapped paper plates. The turnout was descent with around half a dozen students in attendance on-top of many members of the group. The movie and discussion that followed were high quality. The pizza slightly less so.

            We stayed late to help clean up the law lounge, me schmoozing with Neil’s colleagues as we straightened tables and tossed empty pizza boxes. When all was copasetic we headed out, dropping a few of Neil’s friends off at their houses on our way home.

            “So how long are ya in Cleveland for?” one of them asked.

            “I’ll probably be around for three or four days. I think my next stop is Oberlin where my sister’s in school, but I haven’t nailed anything down yet.”

            “Well, if you’re around Saturday, you should totally come to the ‘Stop Child Trafficking Now’ walk. It should be fun.”

            “If I’m around, I’ll be there.”