horizontal with the world’s tallest filing cabinet (/worked to the point of exhaustion by the bureaucracy)
Burlington, Vermont to Bangor, Maine. Five and a half hours on the road.
Stayed with my dearest friend from high school, Joe, who, as he rightly says, has been “getting horizontal with Lila since the 90s!” We went to Pinellas County Center for the Arts, a magnet school in St. Petersburg, Florida. I majored in Drama and he majored in Visual Art. He reminded me that we used to loll around on the carpet in front of Mr. LaMore’s writing classroom. And that we also used to lie down and cuddle and chat in the back of his tiny truck, The Brat. (I loved that truck. It was blue.) And that the last time we saw each other, nine years back, he was also horizontal, L-base assisting me for my AcroYoga workshop.
I had forgotten how long and illustrious my history of horizontality is. Good thing Joe is like an external hard drive.
Joe and I recorded an episode together in the wrought-iron, whitewashed bed that his wife’s grandmother was born in.
I haven’t seen Joe since he met his wife 9 years back, and he now has a two year-old son. He’s my first guest who is a father, and, having known him for about 20 years, it feels to me as though he is fully Joe now. That he was always meant to be a father and now he is and everything feels right about that and my heart swells to see my old dear friend content. We speak a bit in the episode about how someone so nonmonogamous and counter-culture by nature/nurture would end up happy in a monogamous, highly traditional marriage, in which he works as an osteopath and has a housewife at home.
We also talk about why we never dated. (I’d never told him. It’s a little embarrassing.)
horizontal with joe in bangor, maine
He shot the whole series of pumpkin photos with me the morning I drove out of town. It’s such a boon to have someone so compositionally-gifted take my horizontal photos instead of asking a non-photographer or using my 10-second self-timer. When I took the shots with the world’s tallest filing cabinet, I raced back and forth from tripod to art piece, which meant that I was running, in order to lie down).
horizontal with pumpkins at Treworgy Farm. Yes, that is it’s real name.
Bangor, Maine to Portland, Maine. Two hours. Stopped for lunch at the gorgeous worker-run Local Sprouts Cooperative Cafe, exactly my kind of joint. Reclaimed wood and seasonal food and an old piano – basically any cafe that looks like it belongs in Portland, Oregon tends to tickle my fancy.
Leaving my mark in the restroom at Local Sprouts
Portland, Maine to Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Two and a half hours. Sturbridge, where (unbeknownst to me until the next afternoon, when I had already driven to Connecticut), I spent the night in a cabin (thanks Danielle!) in the same tiny town where my gorgeous, hunky ex-boyfriend from freshman year of college was doing a show. *shakes fist at open sky* Nooooo! Quick overnight at the cabin, where I hunkered down and edited the second half of Zed’s episode.
[Note: I seriously considered backtracking a couple of hours just to see PJ’s handsome, married visage, but couldn’t make it work, itinerary-wise. (It’s probably for the best…)]
I was gunning for Baltimore on the 8th and had an episode to record in Rhinebeck that night.
Sturbridge, Massuchusetts to Rhinebeck, NY. Two hours. Stopped in Hartford, CT to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream and eat dinner. Like you do. Arrived so late in Rhinebeck that my host fell asleep before I got there. (He has 4am wake up calls for his shift work at the Omega Institute). So I spent a bit of time chilling in the parking lot before he woke up, came to collect me, and showed me the way to his trailer.
We recorded the next morning during a rainstorm. Essentially in a tin box. (Here’s hoping it sounds lovely instead of deafening.) Josh and I talked about realizing that he was gay, his coming out, using porn for energetic sexual practices, demisexuality, and the woman he was recently attracted to.
demisexual (noun, adjective) = a person who is, or the quality of being, sexually attracted to people only after some amount of familiarity and emotional intimacy has been established.
Rhinebeck, New York to Baltimore, Maryland. Technically four and a half hours. Took me six and a half with stops and traffic. Cleaned myself up at the hotel my friends were staying in. Got to the wedding party right as it was ending. Sad trombone. “Go get food right now,” my camp friend from the summer of 1995, Pete, the groom, barked at us. “Go go go!” Ate up the dinner leftovers with my lovely friend Kristi Ann, who made a day trip to be my plus-1 for 15 minutes.
We opted out of the Irish bar afterparty and spent time talking about romance in her rental car, which felt just about right. At the hotel, I recorded my intro to Zed’s episode by making a tent of the bedspread draped over the two nightstands that were bolted to the wall and crawling under it. The mic was too close to my face. Sorry about that. I’m still learning.
The newlyweds came back. I hadn’t seen Pete, my friend from CTY (Center for Talented Youth, or, smart kid camp) since the summer of 1995. He now lives in New Orleans and sings in a barbershop quartet and has a mustache that he can CURL. Pete and Erin didn’t eat anything at their wedding dinner party (which is par for the course, I imagine), so they wanted to go out for food. But I was committed. I HAD to get my episode out on Monday. I had managed to release an episode every Monday since I launched on May 21st. So I stayed in the hotel room to finish up my editing, with the promise that I’d meet them at a diner later.
There was no diner.
Kristi Ann went to the diner with them, and I passed out. I abandoned my friend to the company of newlyweds. Oops. She had to drive back at 5:30am, so after some hoopla with the Mormon brigade of Pete’s family and the “losing” of one of their nine children in the hotel, Pete and Erin and I got to spend some time together in Hampden.
The last time I was in Baltimore, I cherished the afternoon I spent in Hampden. It was on my first cross-country road trip. This time, I went back specifically to go to the store that sells only shoes and chocolate. Thank goodness, it was still there. And open. Nine years ago I bought a pair of teal crushed velvet dreams there. I walked back in … and they had the very same shoes.
In red.
And on sale.
Kismet. Kismet!
horizontal with ruby slippers in baltimore, maryland
Look at these two…
Pete & Erin in Baltimore, MD. This is what newlyweds look like.
I lingered long in Hampden. Mostly lying down on the sidewalk. The koi enticed me. The cafe worker was not entirely thrilled with me. Not entirely thrilled.
horizontal with koi on the sidewalk in Baltimore, MD
When you linger, of course … traffic may befall you.
Baltimore, Maryland to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Two and a half hours.
I went to Carlisle specifically to shoot with my friend from Portland, Julie Savage-Lee. We met in Portland, Oregon. She was my yoga student. She lives in a small town now and has a husband and a two year-old. What is with all these two year-olds? I wondered.
Two year-olds seemed to be a theme on this voyage. What do you think it means? I think it’s about tantrums. About emotions like flash thunderstorms. About taking what I can get. About wanting to be cuddled, and maybe also, coddled a bit.
I had been allowing myself to yell and cry and wail and emote in the car. It was such a relief to have a place where I wasn’t concerned about disturbing anyone! Inside the glass-and-metal box of my borrowed Honda Civic, doing 70 on the highway with no vehicle on either side of me, my hyper-awareness of how I’m affecting people falls away. That conscientiousness isn’t given the opportunity to mutate into self-consciousness.
I so often imagine I can take care of other people’s feelings and worry about how others are impacted by how I’m being. This keeps me hypervigilant about the volume of my own feelings— even in my very own home, even with the housemates that I trust with my most intimate information, that I trust with most anything about me.
And yet, what I’ve actually noticed is: when I release my emotion at its dawning with the full ferocity and volume it requires of me, the release is actually quite brief. The reward for my timely self-expression is brevity. It’s when I carry it and carry it and partially forget about it or assume I’ve transmuted it when really all I’ve actually done is stuffed it back in, or pushed it into my organs or the fibers of my muscles, that it turns into something semi-toxic, extensive, and exhausting.
My housemate Kenneth has remarked on this several times — that if I need to cry, it will be loud and quick and then it will be over, and if someone just holds me through it, it will go much more quickly. He suggests that I tell this to all my new partners. It will comprise an entry in the Operator’s Manual that I write for myself.
horizontal at the truck stop, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Photo by Julie Savage-Lee.
In Carlisle, Julie and I co-created one of the most elaborately gorgeous photo shoots I’ve ever done, out of exactly what was there. Carlisle doesn’t have a lot, Julie warned me before I arrived, but it is the trucking capital of the United States. So I planned accordingly. I brought my Wonder Woman outfit.
(And before you say anything: yes, yes I do. I do have one of those just lying around… I will resist the urge to make a bad horizontal pun about that now. You’re welcome.)
truck stop wonder woman by Julie Savage-Lee.
truck stop Wonder Woman with matching rig (can you believe it was just there?!) Photo by Julie Savage-Lee.
Carlisle, PA to Pittsburgh, PA.
Technically three hours, took me more like four.
I left after dinner (they fed me steak!) and I must have taken the “scenic route.” Translation: I had Google Maps set to “No Tolls” and I’m pretty sure it cost me that hour, plus the roads were verrrrry winding. I was so tired. (I know, I know, Billy, “Don’t drive drowsy!”)
A quick overnight on a couch and then Pittsburgh, PA to Chicago, Illinois. Seven and a half hour drive. Took me nine plus. Drove all all all day.
In Chicago I learned that I may be allergic to long-haired dogs. As soon as I got there, I began ferociously sneezing, and after the second night I spent there, I woke up with my right eye all puffy. I thought it was going to be like the sty that my ex-boyfriend had and I almost became highly anxious. The skin around his eye still hasn’t entirely gone back to normal, a year later.
I attempted not to freak out and decided simply to not to put on any eye makeup that morning.
I think my horizontal in Chicago images are pretty lackluster after Julie’s magic, but…
horizontal with the bean in Chicago, Illinois
Just before I left Chicago, as I was doing the dishes, a glass jar slipped out of my hand and slid, butt up, precisely down the drain. It was like a live action representation of that Tumblr account, things fitting perfectly into other things. The butt of the jar stuck up only about half an inch below sink level. There wasn’t enough room around the edges to have my thumb on one side and my four fingers on the other around the jar edge at the same time. I looked for silicone tongs. They didn’t have any. I started cursing. “Fuck. Fuck! Am I going to have to call a plumber for this shit? I have to LEAVE! FAWWWK! I can’t leave it LIKE THIS.”
I dried off the edges of the glass with a paper towel so that I could get a better grip. I tried using the skinniest fingers on both hands, in the hopes of getting a grip on both sides of the jar. No go.
Of course, I had just finished telling my friend’s mother, a touch sanctimoniously, that I try to adhere to the policy of “leave it better than you found it.” GAHHH. I CANNOT GRIP THE THING. The dog, sensing my distress, started to come over with its long hair, and I’m sure it meant well, but this only distressed me even more!
Finally, the glass lifted up a little on one side. Yessss… Come to meeeeee….. I tried it around the edges again. I was fully sweating by this point. And then, then at long last, not unlike a harrowing adult-person game of Operation, between my slender pointer fingers (which are stronger than they look), I LIFT THE FUCKER OUT.
And then I left Chicago, as quickly as I could.
horizontal with art institute lion #1: the climb
horizontal with art institute lion #2: the crawl
horizontal with art institute lion #3: the drape
horizontal with art institute lion #4: the getting my ass in trouble (but it was after I got my shots! muhahahaha! phenomenal cosmic power!)
In my next missive, Nebraska, South Dakota, the terrible horrible no good very bad birthday, and, Montana.
By the grace of my friends go I.
Lila
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