After telling this part of our journey several times, I feel as if I've got it down to an art. Some people don't find it that funny, but I find it hilarious. I guess maybe you had to be there? Oh well, I'm going to tell you anyway.
We made it to St. Louis with good time. The trip was going pretty well so far. We were only four hours in, but damn it felt right. We had already driven through a pretty nasty storm, so I felt as if the craziest thing had already happened to us. The sky was split in half. Light and dark. You could see where the storm ended as if it was crease in the sky. Like a cancer, it moved slowly across the horizon and it was pretty clear we were driving into it.
Following Facebook posts, it seemed that this awful storm was making its way via Oklahoma, which only two weeks prior had suffered from some pretty obliterating storms. I didn't remember this until we hit Oklahoma City, which is good because had I remembered earlier, I may not have gone on this trip.
If people from Chicago were worried and predicting that their power was going to be out, I felt it was a pretty silly idea to be driving directly into the storm. I wasn't behind the wheel, so I didn't have much of a say in the matter. Plus we were making such good time.
We ended up only seeing the storm from afar, and as the freeway curved out of the jet black clouds I realized that this was just one of those storms everyone hypes up. We were safe.
We started to see bits and pieces of St. Louis, so we were getting close to entering our second state. I get excited about stupid shit like that, but I tried to contain myself for Neil's sake. I figured I would spare him the yelling of "FUCK YEAH MISSOURI!! WE ARE FUCKING IN YOU!!!", and just keep that to myself.
As we started to clear the freeways, we began to see the Arch as well as a bit of their tiny skyline. Then I saw the lights.
Red and blue, almost blinding. I had been in that situation before. It never turned out good. The police officer came to the window and asked Neil for his registration and drivers license, pretty standard practice. He mentioned the reason he was pulling us over was because of expired tags on the plates.
"Well, I'm moving to California, so I figured I would just get it registered when I got there", Neil told him. He responded by telling us that "You can get pulled over in every state for not having correct tags", even though his plan was pretty fool proof. Why spend money on something that you will just have to spend more money on in three days? I didn't make much sense.
The cop took his time, and although Neil didn't have his license on him, he let us off pretty easy. You could tell he was a little hesitant to give us the ticket anyhow, seeing as Neil would most likely never be driving in the state of Illinois again. He knew he wasn't going to pay. He was just being a dick.
We were one mile from the border. We almost made it.
After discussing the conspiracy that cops sit right on the border and pretty much pull everyone over, we decided to stop in St. Louis for a drink and some food. A tradition that would follow us to every city and state, this was definitely the most memorable one.
We had decided on a place called the "Angry Beaver", but they were closed. There was a place right next door with a patio. It was warm out, so we hit it. Neil hit the bathroom right away, and I ordered a drink. They stopped serving food already.
"Damn", I thought, and proceeded to scope the place out. In the far back, there was a guy with an acoustic guitar playing some pretty bad covers. It was hard to tell if he was just drunk, or geniunely bad. People were dancing though, so I guess it doesn't take much in St. Louis to get people moving.
Neil took a bit longer than expected, and I began to get nervous. Social anxiety sets in pretty quickly for me. Not to mention being in a place I've never been before in a city I hadn't been to in years. I felt as if everyone was going to gang up on me.
Before they could, Neil returned from the bathroom and asked me a question. A question that would spark a debate for the rest of the night, even after we confirmed it to be untrue.
"Is this a gay bar?", he whispered, making sure no one heard him.
I had just scoped the place out and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. There were guy/girl couples, as well as women by themselves. A few of them seemed like young single ladies, but then I remembered about the term "fag hag" and began to second guess myself.
I did a second scan of the place. Still, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Drunk people dancing to a cover band, a couple of lonely spinsters. Nothing crazy. Then I noticed the far left corner of the bar, almost tucked away as if they didn't want anyone to see. There were about ten of them, and they were definitely gay.
Now in Chicago it is not uncommon to run into large groups of gay men. We have Boystown and plenty of gay bars even in the smaller towns, so it is not an uncommon sight. Still, St. Louis doesn't strike me as a town with a giant gay population. I figured that every single gay guy was in that bar that night.
"No, I think there are gay people here, but this definitely isn't a gay bar", I responded. Pretty confident in my assessment of the whole situation. We decided to not worry about it, and we took a seat on the opposite corner away from everyone else. We figured as much fun as it would be to try and offend the St. Louis locals, we had better stay out of everyones way. There bouncer was on point, and we didn't want to spend the rest of the trip with stitches.
We hadn't even sat down for a minute. Out of no where, and definitely not from the corner pocket of gay guys, a tiny little Asian guy comes practically running towards us. He is wearing short shorts, and some kind of fluorescent pink tank top. I started to once again rethink my assessment.
While I was the closer of us, he completely ignored me. Now I began to get jealous. What the hell?!
You could tell he was nervous, which once again made me rethink everything.
"Pardon me, this might sound really weird, but are you gay?", the tiny little man-boy asked Neil.
Neil responded "No", and the Asian began speaking at an incredibly fast rate. He explained that him and his friends were from New York, here for a "show". One of this friends in the corner had fallen madly in love with Neil. You could tell the guy felt let down. He started backtracking and thinking of something to say. This wasn't the first time either of us had been hit on by a gay guy, so to us it wasn't that big of a deal.
Neil offered to meet him, shake his hand and give him a hug. Our little friend was shocked. Apparently they have never been to Chicago.
The guy who was smitten, Tony, came over and was extremely nervous. Neil seemed more comfortable talking about gay sex than he did. It was a pretty odd experience.
Neil is the type of person that feels comfortable talking to anyone. It is almost as if he doesn't even see or think about anything else than what the person is saying. It is pretty cool, I admire that. While I enjoy meeting and talking with as many people as I can, but I still have something in my brain that makes me think about the person themselves almost non stop.
What does this guy do when he is home alone? Has he ever done crystal meth? What about his parents? Are they still together? Should I not talk about Father's Day in front of him?
At this point, I almost blacked out from thinking about what I should say, and I noticed they were pretty much completely ignoring me. I tried to fit a few words in, but Tony didn't care. He was fixated on Neil, and Neil was trying to figure out a way to get free drinks out of this guy. He began asking about why he was here, where he was staying, and most importantly, what he was doing later.
Tony grabbed Neil's phone and punched in his number. Under "Tony the Tap Dancing Sailor", we began to find out that he was in town for a play. A hah, he was an actor from New York. Typical.
But as Neil pushed to learn more about our tap dancing friend, he clammed up. His friends were begging him to leave. He was torn. I've had that feeling before. It is your only chance to spend time with someone you just met, and although you will probably never see them again, it would be worth it.
...Although Neil is not gay so I doubt it would have been as romantic as he thought.
Tony ended up departing, and although he seemed a bit reserved while talking to Neil. He was most definitely NOT while texting Neil later that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment