I leave Hoboken behind. In the rearview is the Statue of Liberty, where a beautiful woman is projected onto its copper surface as part of a marketing campaign for slime. The woman winks at me. The car drives, it drives along the New Jersey turnpike, down the coast, I grab a burger in East Philly, pretending to fall asleep at the table. I'm wearing round mirrored sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt.
I pump the rental so full of gas it spurts out. I drive down Beaumont, Gladstone, take a left on 93rd. On the sidewalk people are playing dice. Behind them is a billboard for euthanasia. I stop at a red light and the truck that pulls up next to me rolls the window down.
"Are you British?" they yell. I shake my head.
"I've
had extensive plastic surgery, I'm American." I call back. The light
turns green and the car lurches across the junction. In the seat next to
me is a bluetooth speaker that is playing an audiobook of The Art Of
War, whilst I also have music playing from the car stereo. I had
purchased a single CD at a Walmart, Ultimate Driving Songs 2, and was
getting confused by the whole auditory experience. I pull over, turn the music up
and try to fall asleep.
After
a restless twenty minutes I'm back on the highway. I head West on the
'95. Baltimore. The very word conjures up prestige TV two decades ago. I
start doing The Wire impressions to myself, like "Sheeeeyit", take a
detour, the sun is rising behind me. I'm hungry, thirsty, tired. There is an Evian bottle filled with my blood that rolls around the bottom of the car. I pull up outside a motel. I was switching to vampire mode, not able to
handle seeing America in the daylight just yet. I needed the dark.
I
spend a couple of days in the motel, curtains drawn, eating crap from a
vending machine and watching television whilst lying on the bed. I
started getting visions, strange signs of things to come. I
left the motel as soon as the sun went down, driving into central
Baltimore and getting myself an executive suite at one of the hotels
there. I do pushups with HBO on in the background. I order infinite lobster from room service. I gaze out of the window at the Baltimore skyline, drinkng from a
can of carbonated vodka.
"This is one helluva
city." I say to myself for the eightieth time. I watch the people below
walking in the streets in the night and I feel good.
