I met Stan while working at a restaurant in the Danbury Fair Mall called "Barnabee's." Well, actually I met him a little before that at a dive bar that pretended to be a nightclub, and we immediately clashed. I ran into him again at a friend's party, and we didn't get along. He gave me crap, and I gave it to him right back and next thing I know, we were totally BFFs. Stan and I got up to all kinds of fun and trouble, I spent a lot of 1990 hanging out at his apartment on Foster Street while watching the Gulf War on TV.
Right around the beginning of 1991, Stan told me that he wanted to see the rest of America before moving back home to England. I sighed and said, "Wow, I wish I could do that." and Stan said, "What's stopping you?"
I thought pretty hard -- I had some money saved for another semester at Western CT State University, I had a beat up old car, I had this amorphous relationship with a guy who didn't like me as much as I liked him, and I had a really stupid go-nowhere job that I loathed. "Nothing." I said, with dawning hope. "Nothing is keeping me here!"
The deal was I'd provide the car and Stan and Nikki (his good friend from back home who wanted to go, too) would spring for the gas. I sold a few things, got the car fixed up, had a very ignoble last day at work and in early March of 1991,we loaded up my ancient Toyota Corolla station wagon and we headed Southish. We wanted to stop and see stuff along the way. We hung around Philadelphia for a day then spent a night at my grandparent's house in York, PA where they made us a big breakfast and my grandfather let me know he was VERY CONCERNED about my safety and made me promise to stay in touch. We drove to Washington DC and spent a few days there and got our Youth Hostel Association cards, figuring we could stay cheaply that way. We had a copy of "Let's Go, USA!" which told us where all the hostels in each state.
From DC we drove across VA and saw the Natural Bridge and then took the Skyline Drive. We drove through to North Carolina where we found a youth hostel in a town called Blowing Rock -- it ended up being an Assembly of God Summer Camp, it cost us $6 for the night and for breakfast. It was a nice quiet place and we stayed there for two days, did our laundry, drank with the locals at a bar called Ichabod's were everybody was fascinated with Stan and Nikki's accents.
We left Blowing Rock and went to Atlanta, GA - we toured the CNN building and hit the blues bars in Underground Atlanta. Everybody sang "Ice, Ice Baby" when they saw Stan because of his spiked blond bangs. It was right around Atlanta where we started to hear "Losing My Religion" ALL OVER THE RADIO.
We didn't have a lot of music with us. I had my boom box and we had about 3 CDs between us. Stan had "Mixed Up" by the Cure, Nikki had "C+C Music Factory", and I had "Sticky Fingers" by the Rolling Stones. And we had the radio - and non-stop REM. We had very little overlap as far as our musical tastes, but one thing we could all agree on was the oldies station. Whatever state we were driving through, they ALL had oldies stations. The other song that haunted us was:
"WOOLY BULLY!!!" we'd shout along, "Wooly Bully!...Wooly Bully, Wooly Bully, Wooly Bully!" I cannot hear this song without thinking about being in the car, endless highway in front of me.
From Atlanta we drove all night (all of us probably too drunk to drive) to New Orleans. We left a major city in the pitch black and the sun rose as we were just passing Biloxi, MS, spanish moss hanging from the trees, egrets along the side of the very empty roads. We pulled into the French Quarter just in time to drink a ton of coffee, find our youth hostel and pass out all day. We spent a week there, and I barely remember it - just blurs of hazy drunken weirdness. I remember singing some karaoke and guys running up to me demanded I grab their asses.
We went to a unisex strip club where the men were incredible and the women were scrawny junkies sleepwalking through their routines. One of the guys pulled himself up on a pole with one hand, wrapped his thighs around it and hung upside down. Women were throwing hotel keys at him. We were sitting right on the edge of the stage and he was dancing right over my head, his banana hammock inches from my forehead, I didn't want to look up - he dropped down and whispered in my ear, "Am I embarassing you?" which of course, caused me to blush to the scalp. I have a million comebacks I could say now, but at 22, I didn't.
Nikki's Jamaican roommate gave her a huge sandwich bag of pot before we left and she didn't bother to pull it out until we were in New Orleans and we would walk up and down Bourbon Street with joints rolled as fat as cigarettes. I was so wasted one night I ended up buying one of those Ignatius Reilly hotdogs from the hotdog cart at four in the morning, it was ice cold, but I ate it anyway. I also ate cajun crawfish that was so explosively hot, I drank one beer for every crawfish I ate. We all had horrible cajun spice breath for three days.
From New Orleans we drove to San Antonio, TX, followed by Andreas, a German guy we met at our youth hostel. The four of us split a hotel room at the skankiest hotel I have ever seen and then split up. We went to Houston to visit my friend Kirsten from Valpo. In Houston we went to a happy hour at a bar that had such a huge spread of food, they even had a full Thanksgiving dinner. I watched people 2-step to INXS.
Houston in our rear-view mirror, we drove our longest drive from Houston to Carlsbad, New Mexico. I was dying to see the Carlsbad Caverns since my Dad had been talking about them my whole life. Every time we went to ANY cave, he'd say, "This is pretty cool, but you should SEE CARLSBAD CAVERNS!" I called him collect from the cafeteria one mile below the ground. We stayed to watch the bats fly out at sunset, thousands of them -awesome and kind of icky.
We drove from Carlsbad to Santa Fe, amused by the numerous signs about how hitchikers are mostly likely escaped prisoners, cautioning us to not pick them up. I fell in LOVE with Taos, the town and the pueblo. I bought a turquoise ring from a woman I could have sworn put a spell on me - her house smelled of pinon and when I walked out I felt loopy.
On the way to Flagstaff, we drove right into a huge blizzard, one minute there was nothing on the road and the next minute, visibility was zero. We spent the night at a youth hostel where I stayed up all night long playing a game called "guts" with two southern boys who kept saying things like, "Call, Sugarbooger!" and "All right now, little lady." I had to tell Stan and Nikki that I had to go straight to California, I was running out of money. They were pissed, but eventually decided to go up through Utah to meet Stan's parents at Yellowstone. They were over visiting. So, all alone, I drove from Flagstaff to Huntington Beach, California where I set myself up at the Colonial Inn Youth Hostel - because it was cheaper than the youth hostel in Venice.
Even though I was alone those first two weeks before Stan and Nikki showed up (and I was surprised they did, I thought they had ditched me for being lame), I was to busy exploring to really feel lonely. I felt such a sense of adventure about the whole thing - watching the sun set over the ocean, learning how wrong my misconceptions were about California (the water is COLD, people) and driving aimlessly around Hollywood, not believing I was actually there. "Losing My Religion" reminds me of all of that. It reminds me of how fearless I have been, and curious.
Right around the beginning of 1991, Stan told me that he wanted to see the rest of America before moving back home to England. I sighed and said, "Wow, I wish I could do that." and Stan said, "What's stopping you?"
I thought pretty hard -- I had some money saved for another semester at Western CT State University, I had a beat up old car, I had this amorphous relationship with a guy who didn't like me as much as I liked him, and I had a really stupid go-nowhere job that I loathed. "Nothing." I said, with dawning hope. "Nothing is keeping me here!"
The deal was I'd provide the car and Stan and Nikki (his good friend from back home who wanted to go, too) would spring for the gas. I sold a few things, got the car fixed up, had a very ignoble last day at work and in early March of 1991,we loaded up my ancient Toyota Corolla station wagon and we headed Southish. We wanted to stop and see stuff along the way. We hung around Philadelphia for a day then spent a night at my grandparent's house in York, PA where they made us a big breakfast and my grandfather let me know he was VERY CONCERNED about my safety and made me promise to stay in touch. We drove to Washington DC and spent a few days there and got our Youth Hostel Association cards, figuring we could stay cheaply that way. We had a copy of "Let's Go, USA!" which told us where all the hostels in each state.
From DC we drove across VA and saw the Natural Bridge and then took the Skyline Drive. We drove through to North Carolina where we found a youth hostel in a town called Blowing Rock -- it ended up being an Assembly of God Summer Camp, it cost us $6 for the night and for breakfast. It was a nice quiet place and we stayed there for two days, did our laundry, drank with the locals at a bar called Ichabod's were everybody was fascinated with Stan and Nikki's accents.
We left Blowing Rock and went to Atlanta, GA - we toured the CNN building and hit the blues bars in Underground Atlanta. Everybody sang "Ice, Ice Baby" when they saw Stan because of his spiked blond bangs. It was right around Atlanta where we started to hear "Losing My Religion" ALL OVER THE RADIO.
We didn't have a lot of music with us. I had my boom box and we had about 3 CDs between us. Stan had "Mixed Up" by the Cure, Nikki had "C+C Music Factory", and I had "Sticky Fingers" by the Rolling Stones. And we had the radio - and non-stop REM. We had very little overlap as far as our musical tastes, but one thing we could all agree on was the oldies station. Whatever state we were driving through, they ALL had oldies stations. The other song that haunted us was:
"WOOLY BULLY!!!" we'd shout along, "Wooly Bully!...Wooly Bully, Wooly Bully, Wooly Bully!" I cannot hear this song without thinking about being in the car, endless highway in front of me.
From Atlanta we drove all night (all of us probably too drunk to drive) to New Orleans. We left a major city in the pitch black and the sun rose as we were just passing Biloxi, MS, spanish moss hanging from the trees, egrets along the side of the very empty roads. We pulled into the French Quarter just in time to drink a ton of coffee, find our youth hostel and pass out all day. We spent a week there, and I barely remember it - just blurs of hazy drunken weirdness. I remember singing some karaoke and guys running up to me demanded I grab their asses.
We went to a unisex strip club where the men were incredible and the women were scrawny junkies sleepwalking through their routines. One of the guys pulled himself up on a pole with one hand, wrapped his thighs around it and hung upside down. Women were throwing hotel keys at him. We were sitting right on the edge of the stage and he was dancing right over my head, his banana hammock inches from my forehead, I didn't want to look up - he dropped down and whispered in my ear, "Am I embarassing you?" which of course, caused me to blush to the scalp. I have a million comebacks I could say now, but at 22, I didn't.
Nikki's Jamaican roommate gave her a huge sandwich bag of pot before we left and she didn't bother to pull it out until we were in New Orleans and we would walk up and down Bourbon Street with joints rolled as fat as cigarettes. I was so wasted one night I ended up buying one of those Ignatius Reilly hotdogs from the hotdog cart at four in the morning, it was ice cold, but I ate it anyway. I also ate cajun crawfish that was so explosively hot, I drank one beer for every crawfish I ate. We all had horrible cajun spice breath for three days.
From New Orleans we drove to San Antonio, TX, followed by Andreas, a German guy we met at our youth hostel. The four of us split a hotel room at the skankiest hotel I have ever seen and then split up. We went to Houston to visit my friend Kirsten from Valpo. In Houston we went to a happy hour at a bar that had such a huge spread of food, they even had a full Thanksgiving dinner. I watched people 2-step to INXS.
Houston in our rear-view mirror, we drove our longest drive from Houston to Carlsbad, New Mexico. I was dying to see the Carlsbad Caverns since my Dad had been talking about them my whole life. Every time we went to ANY cave, he'd say, "This is pretty cool, but you should SEE CARLSBAD CAVERNS!" I called him collect from the cafeteria one mile below the ground. We stayed to watch the bats fly out at sunset, thousands of them -awesome and kind of icky.
We drove from Carlsbad to Santa Fe, amused by the numerous signs about how hitchikers are mostly likely escaped prisoners, cautioning us to not pick them up. I fell in LOVE with Taos, the town and the pueblo. I bought a turquoise ring from a woman I could have sworn put a spell on me - her house smelled of pinon and when I walked out I felt loopy.
On the way to Flagstaff, we drove right into a huge blizzard, one minute there was nothing on the road and the next minute, visibility was zero. We spent the night at a youth hostel where I stayed up all night long playing a game called "guts" with two southern boys who kept saying things like, "Call, Sugarbooger!" and "All right now, little lady." I had to tell Stan and Nikki that I had to go straight to California, I was running out of money. They were pissed, but eventually decided to go up through Utah to meet Stan's parents at Yellowstone. They were over visiting. So, all alone, I drove from Flagstaff to Huntington Beach, California where I set myself up at the Colonial Inn Youth Hostel - because it was cheaper than the youth hostel in Venice.
Even though I was alone those first two weeks before Stan and Nikki showed up (and I was surprised they did, I thought they had ditched me for being lame), I was to busy exploring to really feel lonely. I felt such a sense of adventure about the whole thing - watching the sun set over the ocean, learning how wrong my misconceptions were about California (the water is COLD, people) and driving aimlessly around Hollywood, not believing I was actually there. "Losing My Religion" reminds me of all of that. It reminds me of how fearless I have been, and curious.
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