A Fresh Start

 “Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves. You have a feeling that something is wrong, that you can't get a grip.”

—Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

    Nerves like rusty razor blades chipping away at my spine.  A mind rattled in thick hazes of fog and nervous stupor.  Trembling hands and a shaky stance.  The fear was setting in.

    Four months.  Not a weekend visit or even a week-long vacation, but a change in setting and routine for four long months.  I started to feel uneasy about it.  What had I just agreed to?  But I’d come too far to turn back—there would be no retreat, no surrender; my only choice was to charge headlong into the fray, bayonets gleaming in the sun, and “embrace the absurd, and take the plunge.”

    At 7:45AM, I cracked open a chocolate-flavored Buzzball, shot it home, and chased it with a Monster.  My mother stood on the front porch sobbing uncontrollably.  I’m her only friend.  And she wouldn’t see me again until July.  I put the Yaris in reverse then pressed the accelerator and hopped onto the road, popped it into drive and watched my mother disappear in the rear-view mirror.  In front of me was opportunity, a future, adventure, and the uncertainty of the unknown.  Suddenly I was on interstate 74 heading towards South Carolina and the Laurinburg exit signs gradually vanished from my gaze when the liquor began to hit my brain and settle my nerves.

    What was that feeling I had?  Something I hadn’t felt in a while.  I felt freedom and confidence, bravery; I was a risk-taker again, an adventurer, a man with a life worth living.  My tiny foreign car became like a great seafaring ship in search of new lands to rape and pillage, people to conquer, and fortunes to be discovered.  A fearless privateer in the image of my ancestor Sir Francis Drake, a man like Mencken says, willing to “hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”  I was alive again after seven years in the void, awake and whole, anxious and lustful of every ounce of this earth I had denied myself.  Three hours to the New World, three hours to a new life, three hours to victory or death.

    I was still buzzing when I stopped off at Buc-ee’s outside of Florence, South Carolina.  Everywhere I looked there were beautiful women digging through breakfast burritos and bags of trail mix.  I ordered a half pound of Korean barbecue jerky from a young girl with braces who told me to “have a blessed day.” I believed her that I would.  Soon it was back to the highway and the roar and rumble of tractor-trailers, souped up diesel trucks, flashy sports cars with grumbling tailpipes, and hundreds of lackluster vehicles like the millions of souls in this world who are content to live uninspired and uninteresting lives.  But that lot was no longer for me.  I despised them.  I was southbound on I-95 and unshackled.

    The traffic flowed smooth as a calm sea as the wind hit my sails and hurled me along 80 miles an hour.  The alcohol long out of my system, my nerves were like the tranquil waters of Lake Marion beneath the bridge.  The skies were cloudy and gray with occasional shards of lightning but my mind was bright and vivid as if it were a sunny day.  I wouldn’t let the fear take hold.

    I-26 was more congested as I hit the edge of the Low Country and the thick forests opened up into great swamps.  I grew nervous again as I exited the interstate and found myself in the midst of Charleston traffic.  It’s just something you’re going to have to get used to, I told myself.  With the right mindset, a man can adjust to anything.  Eva’s so-called “Turn of Death”—the left-turn at the light that leads onto John’s Island—was surprisingly free of much traffic and I barreled through a yellow light.  “Aggressive driving!” Eva had instructed me on my previous visit.

    Shortly after the turn was my apartment complex.  I had been so worried about how to manage the gates, but they were opened like a warm embrace.  The numbers to the apartments were easily visible on the buildings so I found my spot and parked the car.  I started to shake out of excitement and unease.  Who would be behind that door?  I pulled up the doormat and removed the key from an envelope scratched with the number “3” on the front and replaced the mat on top of two other sets of unused keys.  I walked in to loud rock music blaring from a bluetooth speaker, but there was no one to be seen.

    Empty pizza boxes were stacked on the kitchen counter.  The trash overflowed.  Half-eaten Dorito bags, half-drunk two-liters of Coca-Cola, and assorted candy wrappers littered the apartment’s tables as piles of unwashed dishes and pans filled the sink.  I expected my roommate to be a young, obese kid about four or five-hundred pounds, probably covered in thick, matted hair and smelling of musk and mildew.

    I walked around for a bit and checked things out, then returned to my car to retrieve my belongings.  When I walked through the door this time, here was this scrawny kid with long brown bangs standing in his boxers, fresh out of the shower.  He seemed startled.

    “I’m your new roommate.  I didn’t know if y’all were expecting me today or not.” I explained.

    “I thought you weren’t supposed to get here until the first.”

    “Nope.  Today.”

    He put some pants on and introduced himself.  

    “I planned on cleaning up before you got here.” He apologized.

    “I don’t care, man.  It’s cool.”

    He was twenty years old, just two months shy of his twenty-first birthday.  He sounded eager and excited.  He loved it here, so much so he didn’t plan on leaving.  “The vibe, man.” He said.  “I dig the vibe.”  All people come to a strange place, particularly the beach, for one of three reasons—there are those running from something, those running to something, and those simply there to revel in the chaos.  I placed him as the first after he rambled on about a former job he despised, a recent break up, and the fact he claimed to hate his home city of Greensboro and the state of North Carolina in its entirety.  He wanted a fresh start, and this place was going to be it.

    Too young to know better, he latched on to dreams of becoming a musician.  The world hadn’t tainted him yet or left him bitter and sarcastic; he had never tasted true depression or despair.  He still clung to hope and I admired him for that.  Hope was something I lacked, something I had lost a long time ago.  I had watched too many dreams crumble, too many relationships and friendships shatter, too many loved-ones die.  I had failed so many times I was afraid I would never pick myself back up again.  But in his eyes I saw a flicker of who I used to be, before I met the world.  And I wondered if maybe here I could find that flame again in spite of the world, and flip my middle finger in fierce defiance.

    When he left for work, Eva arrived to pick me up.  We laughed and joked and plotted all the way to the Tattooed Moose, with her pointing out the churches where I could find a “good, Christian girl” for the summer.  I opined that Christian girls give toothy blowjobs.  I hate driving in big cities, so we agreed she would be my chauffeur for the summer if I pay for her oil changes.  

    “Dawson and I really want you to move down here so you can be closer to us.” she said.

    “I know.  But I might have an opportunity in Fayetteville.  I want to be a manager again.  I don’t see meat-cutting lasting too long with this company.  I’ve seen the same thing happen before.  And I don’t want to jump ship like I did the last time.  Maybe if I could find a Market Manager job around here.  I’d rather do that than be a Seafood Manager.” 

    We discussed the future and all the possibilities.  “Hell,” I told her, “if this kid wants to stay down here, maybe I already have a roommate lined up?”

We pulled into the dirt parking lot of the Tattooed Moose, kicking up clouds of dust in our wake.  At noon the parking lot was already fairly crowded.  A good sign.  We sat at the bar and I ordered the famed duck confit sandwich I had salivated all over my keyboard for ever since discovering the online menu.  It was everything I dreamed it would be—duck, cheese, lettuc, tomato, mustard, and bacon on three tiers of toasted bread.  Taxidermy deer heads, and of course a moose, lined walls littered with bumperstickers, handwritten names and phrases, slogans and mottoes.  The atmosphere was inviting and open like the windows that let in the cool breeze of a rainy day.  I had two local beers that tasted like honey.  Eva had the duck fat fries and a gyro.  With each bite of the slightly spicy house-made pickles and green tomatoes, I finally felt more and more confident in my decision to relocate.

    We left and headed to Angel Oak, the four hundred year old Southern live oak on the island.  We traveled down this dusty road to this tourist trap and looked at all the license plates—New York, Florida, North Carolina.  Not a South Carolina plate in sight.  I snapped a picture of the sprawling, green leafed branches, then high-tailed it out of that Yankee death trap.

    We stopped by KJ’s grocery for some basic food essentials for my apartment.  I decided I would stick to salads and sandwiches.  The whole store seemed empty.  Few customers and even fewer employees.  The shelves were bare and everything seemed dirty, the produce old and wilted.  What little meat they had in the market was brown and uninviting.  The selection was basic poverty brands like Bar-S and King Cotton.  It reminded me of my former employer.  They sold the same off-brands.  I wanted out of there fast and decided I’d never return.  I had the tremors of PTSD from my time running a market for that god-forsaken hellhole I once called a job.

    Back in “Big Bertha,” Eva’s SUV, I noticed the striking disparities on the island.  There was the extremely rich upper-class of Yankees with summer homes and a decidedly impoverished underclass sectioned off in certain areas.  There was no middle-class.  You had nice upscale shopping centers with high-brow bars and restaurants and a section a few miles down the street with Family Dollars and bargain Chinese food.  Surrounding every large-scale housing development is a looming swamp of wilderness.  Everything here is fresh and new, but has shades of the past hanging onto every inch like curtains of Spanish moss.  For every inch forward, I thought, there’s still the echoes of the past watching and haunting your every move.  You can never get rid of the past, it will follow you.  I thought about what that meant for me and my time here on the island.  Would I push the past into some small corner and ignore it as it screams and begs to be visible in a world moving forward.  Or do I embrace it and move with it, like meeting up with an old friend?

    Now I’m back at my apartment, alone with my thoughts, and writing.  I have a novel to plot.  I’m going to call it “Something, Somewhere” unless I can come up with a cooler name.  I have beer to drink and leftover duck to eat.  My roommate will not return until late this evening.  I’m trying to stay up late enough to talk to him more and find out all he knows about this place.  He seems to have learned a lot in his short time here.  

Tomorrow I start work, which I’m assured I will have plenty of.  My roommate is working 56 hours in the Deli.  I’m told, including me, there are a total of six people in the meat department.  That’s fine.  I’m here to make some money.