Don't Mess With Texas

Don't Mess With Texas :Pt. 1

Our rented silver Buick chafed on through the sandy Texan roads and rang like a tin can from insects crunching into its grill, but it seemed they were coming at us, and it was too dark to blame them. By the time Austin was only a smudge in the rearview we could barely discern the signs as they’d blur by: “Don’t Mess With Texas,” but we felt invincible cutting through interstate 10, our moods slightly off-kilter from the excitement of our 7 hour energy shots and fifteen dollar paintball rifle.

Jesse snored loudly while I steered us through the derelict terrain,my chaufferistic impulses clocked into high gear. He appeared to be in a serene state from the smothering August heat, and the orb-shaped drool puddle on his left shoulder was my confirmation.

We were on a mission to California: a strategically jagged yet endearing attempt to leave behind our comfortable surroundings in NewYork and explore the America we had only envisioned abstractly. And now, we found ourselves in God-fearing Texas, a hefty 600+ mile obstacle to any road trip; fast food, gas stations, cattle, dry foliage, missing teeth, buy 1 firework, get 11 free! We were 120 miles northwest of Austin and deep in Fort Stockton, which we’d soon know as dry mouth central.

“I think it’s time” I heard Jesse yawn in his chesty tone, his head still cocked left – something like a freeze frame out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

“Should I get it?” he spoke, one eyebrow raised over his clear spectacles. He knew what my answer was going to be. We were alone for leagues around and felt dangerous that night.

“Sure,” I nodded happily, passing him a blue bic lighter so he could light the joint I’d rolled earlier that morning in Austin’s Red Roof Inn. We felt great, having spent the whole day absorbing sun and taking wrong turns down dusty country roads to photograph timid cows and goats. The car soon filled with smoke and our nerves settled slightly from the 5 hours of driving we’d already endured.

“240 more miles to New Mexico” Jesse read on his Blackberry. ’We should probably stop soon.” I flipped on the high-beams, teasing slivers of desert from obscurity.

“Fine by me, whenever” I conceded, although I remember wishing togun it all the way to California that night.

The joint had soon become the size of a newborns fingernail, so after trying to light it for a few seconds, Jesse rolled his window down slightly, making sure the clip didn’t blow back into the car and burn through yet another of our car’s seats. I wasn’t satisfied until I saw the white nub spark and bounce behind us on the road, at which point I promptly rolled the windows down with the icy night air sweeping through the cabin in a mangled stream.

The open road had sucked us in. And it had become a giant airport conveyor belt, our busted vehicle pulling its Pennsylvania – plate bumper 80 mph past staring desert hares who prostrated themselves like lawn ornaments at the edge of the darkness on their hinds and quickly mutated into cacti tree as we flew by. To be young and free, I marveled.

I tried pointing bunnies out to Jesse, but the silver-blue Chevy must have seen us coming for miles because it shot out from the service road with its siren already blaring. I slowed down hesitantly ahead of the traffic cop, a stifling cotton-ball of panic rising throughout my throat and mouth. I watched Jesse stiffen up like a dying centipede. I tried to laugh it off, with the success of someone trying to swim in a bathtub.

“It’s okay, man,’ I must have sputtered to him nervously. ‘ We smoked half an hour ago and used the air freshener, not to mention my driving is perfect – we’ll be fine” my sandpaper throat echoed.

But would we really be fine?, I thought. We were two musician twentysomethings with a modest stash to get us to California: nearly 10 perfect joints nestled in a heap of flavored tobacco, then sealed in a caviar tin I borrowed from my grandmother, and finally stuffed into a suitcase in our locked trunk.

We weren’t Cheech and Chong, by any means, but Jesse’s long hair and hipster attire certainly wouldn’t draw us the right kind of attention, I figured. We sat there silently, two Jewish neonates with guppy-guts and most cowardly allergies to adrenaline, our muted breath pausing until the figure in front of all the spinning lights had made its way to our window,

The cowboy-hat-bearing policeman approached us cautiously. I kept my arms on the steering wheel patiently until he came over, at which point I felt my stomach twist like a coiled rubberband.

“How are you, Officer. Do we have a flat tire?” I asked as innocently as a doe. Instead of responding right away, Officer Honesto, as his tag read, shone his flashlight in my face.

“Please step out of the vehicle,” he instructed me. I stepped out of the car, my legs as slippery as stilts above my flip flops, my hands sweating feverishly on the door handle.