While I blew out the candles on my eighteenth birthday, in the middle of the last summer I would ever have, credit reporting agencies were creating records and paving the way for paper trails. There was a new freedom within me, one that would let me roam without the threat of being forced back. Believing I was coming out of the hardest years of my life, I thought the things I had seen and done had prepared me to handle anything.
The world was mine for the taking, and I thought it would be easy. I thought I earned it. In my mind, I’d become an adult and stumble into an amazing job that would make me rich, famous, and better than everyone else. I believed there was an amazing life waiting for me at the end of summer, and I couldn’t wait to leave everything behind.
To bid my former self a solid farewell, Jackie and I decided to take a short road trip to Berkeley where her sister was in school. With all the time in the world, we opted for the longer and more scenic trip up the 101.
Before arriving to Jackie’s to grab her and go, I scored some good weed for the road. We decided it would be a fun idea to smoke a little every time we passed a city that started with San or Santa. How many were there? Three, maybe four?
We passed the pipe for the first time in Santa Barbara, nearly ninety minutes later, and again in Santa Ynez before stopping in Solvang for breakfast and Ostrich Land for some local culture. We got back in the car and Jackie passed me the pipe as we passed Santa Maria. She wore big black sunglasses and a scarf tied around her head that whipped in the wind. When the sun turned Jackie into a silhouette, it was as if Jackie Onassis smoked Camel Lights and read YM magazine.
Within four hours, we passed San Luis Obispo, Santa Margarita, San Miguel, San Lucas, San Juan Bautista, and San Martin. I thought we were going to die. Keeping my eyes open was a familiar challenge and when the sign passed letting us know San Jose was twenty miles away, we both pretended not to see it and hoped we would ignore it.
The possibility that a large city like San Jose would go unnoticed by both of us was short-lived when the four-lane highway branched out into a busy freeway and a huge sign passed overhead announcing, in huge bold letters, that we were in San Jose.
From a moistureless and exhausted mouth, I asked Jackie what time it was. She said it was twenty after four, and though it may have cost us our lives, we persevered through another, considerably smaller, pipeload.
The second wind I thought more depressants would bring me was clearly not coming as we passed Santa Clara, San Carlos, San Mateo, San Bruno, and finally San Francisco. Machine gun Saints and we were on the firing line.
Driving over the Bay Bridge, we were drained and useless placeholders for Brandon and Jackie. Stand-ins for the bridge scene. Jackie blasted music and the song was exactly the length of the bridge, entrance to exit, track start to track end.
Fifteen Saint cities later, we parked and marched up to Jackie’s sister’s place, eager for naps. Instead, we merely put down our stuff and got back in the car to go to an A’s game.
It was easy to admit our travel strategy was not well thought out. Even a brief glimpse of a map would have been enough of a warning, but we neglected to look at the map as a whole, and instead focused on the next twenty miles all the way up the coast.
Back then, I never saw past the next twenty miles. There was never a reason to. The idea of being eighteen and leaving home was the same as the map. No thought was put into where to go and how to get there. I just knew I didn’t want to be where I was, and once I got somewhere new, I was looking twenty miles ahead of there.
The destination was simply “away from here,” and it was a place I could never get to.
I still have no idea where I’m going and how to get there, but I’ve learned to toss the map in the back and just keep driving.
B
Posted by Peanut Butter And Jealous 
