Journal 1

Old Entry Recovered from Lost Journal

The road is an endurance contest. I am constantly plagued by uncertainty and vexed by choice's necessity. Constantly analyzing while my choices are made thoughtlessly. I cling to fate, forgetting that in this world, I am free to do anything I want, and finished with any burden. But with luck so vital here, I turn to a tool I call destiny and follow the superstitions I build around it.

Body Lice rippled and weeded through the jungle of my Underking and his hanging castles, retreating toward the inner seems of my boxer shorts as I awoke afflicted and besmirched, in the same rare early morning I always found myself. Alone with a brand new problem and no aid to greet me, as they had greeted Germ the day earlier. To be fair, if I simply found them earlier I could have received the same help. Sneaky little bastards. They engrossed me in a feeling of queasy uncleanliness like greasy urchins from a toxic tide pool bubbling with stinky, seeping sweet rot ripe for the eating.

And upon my blood they feasted. But no one would wake, I was left to the problem alone. I attempted to replicate what they had done to Germ. They triple bagged his clothes, showered him, cut his dreads, showered him, shaved his head and showered him again. I found one, single garbage bag left and wasn't cutting my fucking hair.

"This will have to do," in the shower I decided to leave the Teatime Bus. I never meant to stay on that bus this long anyways. I would beg my Mom for a Greyhound ticket and get the fuck back home.

I found Germ awake when I left the bathroom; his head clean bald and his beard trimmed to the style of Mexican thug, donning a sheet in a failure of a toga as if the citizen of a parallel dimension where Greeks invaded the Gulf and built a statue atop Chichen Itza.

"I got them too," I told him. "I'm leaving."

"That's weird," he responded, "I just had a dream where you were leaving. You said your ride was here and told us you'd see us later."

Another precognition. To me, this one listed a choice. Just because Germ's unconscious predicted the procession of events did not mean fate ruled them. Perhaps I faced a crucial life decision. Some of my most important decisions appeared as insignificant as the flavor of jam on my toast (I never take jam) so for all I knew this single choice could dictate the rest of my life.

At first I merely relented if they got into my sleeping bag or back onto me I would follow through with my original impulse to leave. When I found one later that night squirming around my pubes I regained my firmness. I've been choked close to death by a friend over my nickname, robbed of the nothing I had, harassed, punched in the face a far above average amount of times. Drunk road dogs have tried to surround my dick with all four hundred hairy pounds of the glob atop their filthy cunt. My driver choked his wife out due to the escalation of an argument over who had to hold their crying infant. I did my best to ignore their screaming but found the wife with a lasting impression that our driver dosed enough synthetic mescalin to kill five full grown men or more and wandered off to the liquor store. Abandoned on a bus with no one but a crippled felon in flight to help watch a baby, everyone else having fled to hide from the possible incursion of the police. I promised to leave him, I swore to God I wouldn't go down too but wouldn't you know it I was hungry and stuck by to make stew. Strings hung around until six up rang from the woods then he disappeared as I spun in panicked circles and turned back to my stew, seeing the truck make the corner and realizing running ceased as an option. So I greeted the cop and stifled my quivers by staring down the meat in the pot, looking at my prop of a fire hopelessly tire trying to boil old water and the random crap I stuck in it.

And I got my heartbroken too. Enough to turn me into a villain. And now body lice. Enough, I decried. I'm leaving. There's nothing wrong with going home and recuperating. Getting a backpack to replace the stupid leather duffle bag I picked up after my pack was stolen, showering, resting, doing laundry, being in California trimming pot where I belong. Not in Buttfuck, Oklahoma.

I meditated over this in the shower. Maybe I manifested these body lice because I needed an excuse to go back home. I kept accepting more and more shit and the entire time all I want is to go back home, smoke weed for five bucks a gram and do some work for a new backpack. I made an impulsive decision to stay on a bus I wasn't even really wanted on. It was a mistake and the longer I stayed on the bus the harder it would be to go back.  But as water pressure washed all tension from my muscles and my Johnson leaked blissfully relaxing semen I began to reconsider. Did I just want dependably abundant and cheap weed? Once in my life, I needed to smoke to shit and smoke to get off the pot, and I foresaw a recurrence if weed remained the strongest lobby influencing my choices. And the road wasn't so bad, I'd also witnessed a DXM trip challenged by a jealous alcoholic that taught me the importance of surrender and unconditional love. (Her demons reacted at me, and I had to love them more than her to maintain a good high.) I'd witnessed an awakening of a stronger character when I chose to surrender, to continue sending her pictures of my trip and little emoticon hearts in the middle of the night even after forced back to the bleak, lonely world I've known nothing different from. Not because I held on to hope in our pairing, but because I could no longer visualize my eventual mate without gluing her face on top. I'd witnessed kindness, too, and such necessary kindness to cause profound gratitude when I begged a Truckstop Manager for a shower and she handed a ticket over without hesitation. I've witnessed the amazing, the savior and the maker squirm through like roots cracking concrete in the accumulation of simple this simple kindness growing trees of hope to burn as fuel for change. I've witnessed to way the world is saved, just as the sign I used to panhandle read: KINDNE$$ SAVES THE WORLD

Perhaps it's a test, I realized. A magic necklace hangs by my heart as I write this, imbibed with some mysterious power and inscribed with my destiny. Perhaps it chooses for me, and perhaps it chose to stay on the bus. To persevere.