How Ya Like Me Now?

In July of 1991, I was compelled by economic circumstances to move with my parents from Long Beach, CA to podunk Kingston, WA. The long-term relationship I was in came to an abrupt end as a concession to the fact that long-distance love affairs are folly. So I packed my guitar, comic books, and heavy heart into my VW Bus, and headed for the world of uncertainty a thousand miles up I-5. My best friend Sean Blake volunteered to go along for the ride without me even asking, for which I was grateful. I think he wanted to cushion the blow and see to it that I landed soft in my new life. He's a good egg like that. 

We were quite the pair, Sean and I. He was a tough-but-folksy-rockabilly type, who would have been at home in The Outsiders; leather jacket, white t-shirt and all. I was at the tail end of my Goth phase, black fingernails, Robert Smith-lite hairdo, and black everything head-to-toe. Together we were the founding douches of the band Sir Lawrence Of Blake Street, aka SLOBS. Our one and only gig had been at the Los Angeles International Airport, where we attempted to stop his girlfriend from leaving on a jet plane with the power of our acoustic guitars and smooth melodies. It went about like you'd expect.

A few hours into our pilgrimage to the great white north, the head on my Bus's engine cracked so we plumed thick clouds of white smoke out behind us continually, as we burned engine-oil like it was going out of style. If the engine weren't in the rear, or if it were water-cooled instead of air-cooled, the trip would have been sidelined immediately. Instead, every time we stopped for gas people saw the miasma of billowing smoke enveloping us and exclaimed that my car was on fire. Which they seemed to find alarming while we were at the gas pump. We just ignored them and added yet another quart of oil to stave off the inevitable heat death of the engine. Pure moxie and the benevolence of a God who loves fools and drunks were our only hope. 

After a ten-hour stint on the road, we stopped for lunch in a southern Oregon backwater called Wolf Creek. It appeared to consist of a restaurant and a boarded-up gas station. If there was more to it than that, it was out where the road disappeared into the trees. We weren't curious enough to find out. Although the restaurant was less than half-full, the American Gothic inn-keepers took one look at us and sat us all the way in the back right next to the kitchen doors, which swung open into my chair. 

The sparsely populated dining hall made it easy to tell when every single one of the children of the corn took their turn staring wordlessly at us. A cultish silence settled on the room, and the ting of cutlery was the only sound as we ate our meal. Our silverware was dirty, the water had floaters in it, the egg-salad was feverishly warm, and the service made it clear that we were as welcome as a couple of bastards at the family reunion. Rather than leave, we made our way into the dingy little lounge kitty-corner to the kitchen to play some pool before getting back on the road.

Like the restaurant side, the tacky, wood-paneled lounge was only moderately full. Maybe a half-dozen good ol’ boys in mesh-back trucker hats and muscle-car T-shirts, all pounding PBR tall-boys at two in the afternoon on a Thursday. But these guests had no compunctions at all about staring, pointing, whispering, and laughing at the two city-slicker goofballs that had obviously stopped in the wrong burg for lunch. The upside to being pariahs in Wolf Creek is that no one wants to join any of your reindeer games, so we had one of the three pool tables to ourselves for the duration.

9-Ball was our preferred game, and Sean and I were about evenly matched, although I got the sense that he let me win a few more than I naturally would have, in deference to my melancholy state of mind.  Especially that day, as I was incessantly mooning over my lost girl with all the subtlety of a chain-saw. The jukebox in the corner of the ratty old joint was braying a continual string of old-school country songs, which wasn’t helping. While Sean was racking for our next game, I went over to see if there might be any more palatable selections available. I wasn't holding my breath. 

To my delight, I saw that mixed in amongst all the Merle, Tammy, Hank, and Reba they had the Bonnie Tyler song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on tap. I dug for a quarter to put it on. Sean and I played for a bit longer, and then I went back and put the song on again. And then again. There's nothing subtle about it, as it is perhaps the most effective companion for self-pity ever penned. It's also seven minutes long, and I had a bottomless appetite for more.

The tension and annoyance in the room ratcheted up noticeably each time I went to the jukebox, until every move we made was tracked like a ballistic-missile early warning system. It became clear from their glares that if I put it on one more time them good ol' boys was gonna open a can of whoop-ass up on us city-slickers. Still, only when we were damn good and ready did we make our way to the door. On the way out, I dumped every last quarter I had into the juke, calling out "Total Eclipse of the Heart" a dozen more times. 

 

"I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark

We're living in a powder-keg and giving off sparks"

How ya like me now, Wolf Creek?!