Day 5 Three Ways: Kansas City (or Cambridge) to St. Louis
We're back. This onesa doozy
What’s up everybody it’s your boy Lucie — that’s right, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I rose with the sun (9am) and the excitement of reuniting my body, which had been stuck working on the East Coast, and soul, which was already on the road with my girls.
I tried to take advantage of my personal-item-only domestic flight and get to the airport as late as possible, but the process was so expedited that I still had to sit at my gate for an hour, painstakingly attempting to start a new book while my ears were assaulted with a mishmash of full-volume airport trivia, Ed Sheeran’s latest reggaeton collab, and final boarding calls. When I couldn’t take that anymore I put in my airpods and tried to drown it out with my Relax Melodies rain sounds medley. Nope, still hell. On the plane I got hungry so for my complementary accoutrements I selected tomato juice for its proximity to gazpacho and two bags of mini pretzels. I sat with my thoughts and wondered about the career of the woman sitting next to me typing something about “queer ecologies.” Damn, I should’ve networked.
I got picked up by Saul, our St. Louis host, who I had briefly met in Cambridge a few weeks prior. Apparently the girls I couldn’t wait to see had slept in and didn’t make it on the road in time for my 2pm pickup. But Saul greeted me with a big hug and a cold beer — he explains this is airport-pickup tradition, as Missouri Law allows drinking and driving for the passengers.
On the way he tells me about how hectic it’s been since the worst tornado St. Louis has seen hit the northern part of the city. While me, Alma and Abby were ignorant to even the fact of this happening until a few days ago, Saul had been running around the last two weeks coordinating community relief efforts. The conversation jumped around as we passed landmarks or certain parts of the city or a specific style of brick he had facts to drop about (Harvard history major). The great Gateway Arch came into view and I wondered about how they did the elevator, “like a roller coaster” he resolved.
We pulled into their neighborhood, rows of one-story red brick homes wide enough for two tall windows and a door. There was a distinct feeling to the uniformity and quaintness, emptiness of street, fortitude of brick and of numbers. The city was lush and green and had a stillness about it. It was a city that embodied the quiet of late autumn, whose bare branches told stories of its once blooming potential, its heartbeat now a murmur in the ears of those who choose to hear it. Or maybe the feeling was just of being in the middle of the massively expansive U.S.
The girls were still two hours out. After dropping off my bag and meeting Saul’s partner Liv, it was straight to the neighbors’ house for the former mayor’s son’s forty-something board game birthday party. Shelves of yarn and other various crafts and books and games lined the walls. The attendees were us three, the two hosts, an adult niece, a mom and a kid. Everyone was nice and didn’t seem to mind my utterly random presence. We selected a game called Cat Lady and played it on top of a covered pool table while their four cats roamed at our feet. Of course I was engrossed in the game, but I wondered if the girls were getting close. Maybe they’d catch the end of it. Nope, somehow by the time we left they were still 30 minutes away. I summoned some more patience so as to maintain my Super Chill Vibe, and soon enough, they were in my arms.
Yeah, we woke up late – you could call it a Kansas City 10:00, I’d call it a Granby 9:00. The night prior, Abby had insisted I finish the Day 1 post before going to bed. I hit her with ol’ reliable, “I’ll do it first thing in the morning,” but it didn’t work on her like it does on me (that is, like a charm :D). After some cutting but fair remarks about my work ethic and a few flashes of her notorious “crazy eyes,” she could sleep soundly knowing I wouldn’t stop writing till I was DONE – in other words, till the wee morning-hours of this, our fifth day.
Our wakeup time was only a problem insofar as we had promised to pick Lucy up from the airport. It had all sounded incredibly reasonable at the time, especially without thinking it through for five or even one minute. But in our defense, when you’ve been on the road for as long as we have, time does, of course, take on a new quality. On the road, the only plan you got is keep your foot on the gas and try not to piss yourself before the next rest stop. That’s presence, mama. That’s what everybody’s after. On the road, you can’t be sure that tomorrow will come – and you sure as hell won’t be setting any alarms to wake you up for it.
Thankfully, everything worked out due to the forgiving and generous personalities of Lucy and Saul, not to mention the group chat I put them in. Yup, not to mention that. At this point I still had some loose ends to tie up on the blog post, and, as I was walking into the breakfast place, it dawned on me that I would have to channel David. Along with being my dad, David is known for his groundbreaking work in the field of disregard for others in shared space (it’s all love tho!) Obviously, regretfully, I too was a once-in-a-generation talent. Laptop-out and taking full-volume calls in the sit-down, full-service restaurant. And I was more productive than ever. Before long we were out to press! I did a line of coke and put my feet on the table and everybody cheered.
I drove the 4 hours to St. Louis while Abby fought demons (blogged) in the passenger's seat. Saul greeted us from outside his home and swiftly oriented us to the night's plans: dinner and a show, just my speed. We girls lounged in the tasteful living room while Saul rose intermittently to (1) apologize profusely (2) take phone calls (3) pace around. The good life. Then we drank and drived to friends John and Ani’s drop-dead gorgeous home for dinner. Conversation mostly lingered on “modes of transportation” – the great common denominator.
Much of the rest of the night is a bit blurry. You see, when we got from John and Ani’s to the concert venue space, Lucy and I partook in some weed on the rooftop patio. It goes without saying that weed these days is really crazy and should not be smoked. To orient you to our state, we’ve adapted this helpful drunkness scale from my friend and sister Cory: You can either be Tipsy, Drunk, or Blackout, and within each of these three levels there are three uh… levels. T1 is just above sober and B3 is just below death. For high, the tiers become Wavy, High and Zooted:
As I was making this graphic it became clear that it was way off. If nothing else, the rows and columns need to be transposed and switched, but ideally it would really be more like a pyramid to indicate some sort of hierarchy. But even still.
On second try, this is the best I could do. Of course in reality it’s not a thermometer, it just looks like one here. This is just a representation. Anyway, this is all to say that Lucy and I were both Z1 for pretty much the entirety of our time at the concert, and thusly I have nothing much meaningful to add about what happened there except that the music sounded inexplicably good.
Some important context for Abby’s section: I originally wrote only haikus for this post, one of which included the word “spatchcocked” in a way that made no sense but also, gotta hand it to me, was pretty innovative. Mental health always comes first so they will remain unpublished, gob bless.
– Alma
In response to Alma’s Haiku’s, I have little to add. The first half of our day was pretty much devoid of any event whatsoever, especially in comparison to the second half. The only comments I have are 1. What the hell does spatchcocked mean and 2. She left out the part where we called Leela, told her we were driving through her hometown, and proceeded to make no effort to stop there because we were 2 hours late to pick Lucy up. It was like why did I even tell her we were there? Because I believe in honesty, that’s why.
When we arrived in Saint Louis, I greeted Alma’s friend Saul and then immediately walked into a room in his house where I probably wasn’t supposed to be. I decided it was the perfect location to call my second cousin (on my dad’s side this time!), Zayne, to try to set up a visit with his mother, my 94-year old great aunt. “So you want to see the grizzly bear?” he answered the phone, referring to aunt Carrie, and explaining how one year she got so mad at him she tore down the Christmas tree. I considered the fact that I may have inherited my craziness from both sides of the family.
When we arrived at John and Ani’s, Lucy, Alma, and I stood in the entryway in awe. Their house was the perfect mix of bright colors, vintage appliances, and millennial culture. I stacked my plate high with vegetables making sure to not leave very much for my friends, ate quickly, and got up to leave for my aunt’s house. “Should I wash this plate before I go?” I offered, knowing I should, but was not going to wash that plate.
I drove 30 minutes North, listening to Bob Dylan and thinking about my father and his father. At the door of the house on Parrot Lane, I tried to channel all the Panzica energy I could. I searched for spaghetti stains on my shirt, and visualized spilling more spaghetti on myself. When Zayne opened the door, he was cursing someone out on the phone.
“Ya so I’m at 207 pounds but I really need to get down to 193,” Zayne tells me, after talking for around 30 minutes straight. I stared at my aunt, and sometimes she stared back, and I fantasized about the moment I would finally be able to get a word in and we would have an instant connection and all my questions about my family and myself would be answered. Finally, when Zayne finished telling me about various acts of violence he committed towards my father when they were children, I had a chance to speak to my aunt.
“So did you grow up in Northampton,” I asked her, already knowing the answer is yes. “No,” she responded, and turned towards Zayne. “What did she say?” she asked him. He proceeded to repeat my question at the exact same volume and with the exact same intonation that I had spoken. “Oh. Yes,” she said. And then Zayne rediscovered his interest in misogyny and I could not speak another word for the rest of the night. “No one should be a Mormon, imagine having seven wives and they all have their period at the same time,” he began.
“You should marry a [redacted] girl because their [redacted] will make your [redacted] [redacted]” he finished, nearly 3 hours later. I looked down at my phone to see a text from Lucy saying “where are you” a text from my mom saying “get the hell out of there” and a text from my dad asking if meeting my cousins felt like the part in White Lotus when the Americans meet their distant Italian relations. I told him it felt worse.
I called my parents to inform them of every offensive thing Zayne had said. Then I drove through a homeless encampment to meet Lucy and Alma at a punk show.
Whaddup, your boy Lucie again (also just want to name the inconsistency of spellings — we’re a stubborn bunch). The show was “punk” in the sense of its location, tucked between abandoned warehouses down by the Mississippi River. The space was converted from an old bath house, its cucumber green walls retaining the energy of clean relaxation. On the rooftop deck, which was also a garden, white tufts floated in the air, joined by our exhales of marijuana. As Alma explained earlier, we got Zooted Level 1. My enjoyment of the space and the pre-concert energy was made all the more heightened; the local experimental orchestra set up and I was in sonic landscape heaven. I am a video diarist at heart, and as a white person from Cambridge I am absolutely obsessed with the aesthetics of abandonment, so I had to document the scene. Alma didn’t appreciate the vision, but Nevertheless I Persisted, to give you, our dedicated and patient readers, this video:
Thanks to the weed Alma and I realized pretty early on in the night that we were starving, but luckily for us the sign “Cookies Available” alerted us to this guy Reese’s homemade burnt bottom chocolate chip cookies (amazing). We shared one and prayed for Abby’s speedy arrival to take us to the drive thru before the last act, but alas she was held up at the Great Aunt’s. Turns out god’s plan was to make us wait and reward us with something even better: a midnight trip to The Buttery.
“No one comes here for the food,” Liv says as we sit down at the table, and my eyes well with tears. Because I did come for the food. The Buttery is a classic diner vibe, with red booths and sinewy employees, each of whom could conceivably be an ex of Alma’s in their own particular way. One boasted two guns - one on his ankle and one on his hip, and honestly it was pretty hot.
Alma, Lucy, and I stare at the menu for a good while, unable to decide what of the bad food looks best. Saul encourages us to try “T rav” which sounds like the name of a friendly dinosaur, but is actually the title of a Saint Louis classic: toasted ravioli. The Italian in me gets excited.
We talk about something or another I honestly forget because the food was so much better than our lovely hosts had made it out to be: the eggs were almost runny and the meat inside the ravioli was almost identifiable.
“I’ve been working in diners since I was 6,” said one of the skinty little employees. “I used to pour my mom Tanqueray while she entertained the customers.” Saul and this man continued to have a lively and powerful conversation that Lucy, Alma, and I failed to understand any of. The two men (?) looked deeply into each others eyes and seemed to know each other from another place or time. Saul seemed like he was good at making people feel that they were seen and truly heard, and the Buttery employee was reflecting this energy back at him. Me Lucy and Alma contributed by directing all our energy towards our food.
Yours,
Abby.
Listenings:
Relax Melodies rain sounds medley (custom)
i by The Magnetic Fields
Bob Dylan Discography
Maps:
Hi Lucie and Alma and Abby and Saul and Aunt Carrie and other guy I forgot the name of! I love you all.
And St. Louis!