My band Japanese Karaoke Afterlife Experiment had recently played our first out of town show at a bar in Brooklyn called Hank’s Saloon, which aside from our transportation situation had gone reasonably well. The mistake that we’d made wasn’t actually taking the Greyhound bus there, but choosing to bring all of our gear on it; amps, drums… the whole lot. We fumbled around with it awkwardly, inching the mess forwards piece by piece in the taxi line outside Port Authority in Manhattan, unaware of just how costly riding one of those to Brooklyn would be even before the baggage fees. Which is why for our second out of town show, which was to be held in the commuter train station of the suburban Philadelphia town of Wayne, Pennsylvania, we decided we would need a car.
It was 2002 and I’d recently turned 18, which even if it hadn’t already been financially prohibitive made renting a car a legal impossibility for another 7 years, so my bandmate Charles and I began to look into some alternatives. We knew a guy named Crazy Joe who owned a 92 Geo Prism, but after brief consideration thought better of asking him to borrow it. We entertained the possibility of buying our own car to use for future gigs, but again we just couldn’t afford it. At the time we were both working at a bakery/cafe on the west side of Providence called Daily Bread and as we spoke of our predicament a co-worker chimed in to say we were welcome to borrow her pick-up truck. Having recently moved across the country from Oregon in this truck, its bed currently housed a camper unit which she had slept in along the way. She informed us that it was mechanically incapable of exceeding 50 mph and would experience violent tremors the closer it got to that speed. She asked that we got an oil change, and let us know that it needed to be returned no later than 9am Sunday morning so she could pick up her aunt from the airport, and with this knowledge imparted we were handed the keys and sent on our way.
This was my first time as the driver on a journey of such distance and it turns out there’s a certain level of proficiency in regards to ‘the ways of the road’ that can only be attained through experience. For starters, I failed to understand the concept or practice of an oil change and simply poured a few extra quarts into the engine thinking that would do the trick. Secondly, we left without first printing out several pages of Mapquest directions and just headed south imagining it’d be self explanatory from there. It wasn’t, and we ended up battling stop lights on Route 1 as we wound through Philadelphia’s vast northern expanse in a large arc, adding hours to an already much slower and shakier trip than we’d expected.
The show itself didn’t make a whole lot of sense and was hard to tell if it had been actually authorized in any way, as both the ticket booth and coffee shop were closed and there wasn’t a SEPTA employee in sight. Aside from the performers — which included hardcore band The Funeral Bird, US postal employee and noise musician Newton, synth punk duo Abiku, and ourselves — only a sparse handful of scraggly attendees were present.
It was after Abiku’s set, needing to let the haze from the fog machine clear out of the room, that everyone spilled out into the parking lot and caught their first glimpse of our truck, which during the show had fallen victim to a heinous act of vandalism. The delinquent riffraff of Wayne had — in a thick black spray paint — adorned the camper with an extensive assortment of vulgar phrases and accompanying crude illustrations, and a meager audience now encircled the vehicle to gawk at its defilement.
In a bold declaration to all oncoming traffic, “WE FUCK A LOT!” had been written across the front of the camper’s loft which curled onto the roof of the truck. An arrow had then been added along the side, winding its way down to where it eventually pointed into the cab where Charles and I would soon be sitting. Above a primitive depiction of breasts, “TITS IN HERE!” had been written on the door in some sort of invitational ruse. Similarly crass announcements were printed on all sides including the roof, and the paint leaked grotesquely downwards in suggestive streams from each of the many genital portrayals which bespeckled the vehicle.
In an attempt to look at the bright side, Charles conjured up a memory of our co-worker saying something about not wanting the camper back, and how if we could get rid of it somewhere along the way that would be a bonus. I personally didn’t recall her saying this whatsoever but I dearly hoped he was correct. It was beginning to get late and we’d need to be leaving soon if she was going to be picking her aunt up from the airport in the morning.
Stress sweat poured from my palms, generously lubricating the steering wheel as we puttered up Interstate 95 trembling unsteadily at an inefficient 45 mph. Eager for a look at the barbarian who dared to helm such an obscenity, heat from the stares of each passing car could be felt on my skin. A liberal honking of horns seemed to surround us for the entirety of the drive, although whether this was done in solidarity or protest couldn’t be determined. I kept my eyes glued to the road, wide awake with nervous energy as I pondered fretfully over the legality of driving something in such an offensive condition.
A truck in a less than desirable state such as this wouldn’t go unnoticed in my parents quiet neighborhood, a place I still called home, and so we parked it out front of Charles’s apartment just after daybreak. His apartment was in Providence’s rather drab North End — essentially a repetition of various faded shades of vinyl siding, which aside from a Walgreens and CVS across the street from each other offered little in the way of commerce. As Charles was the only person in my immediate friend group who had his own place I would end up spending a lot of time there, but the vibe was bleak. In a bizarre glitch in reality the actor Jason Mewes (perhaps best known as the Jay half of comedic duo Jay and Silent Bob) had moved in after meeting Charles’s roommate at the Providence Place Mall. He had likely seen better days and was being followed around by a film crew for a documentary on his heroin addiction. His presence only increased the already steady traffic of random teens into the apartment, excited to sit around a video game console shrouded in smoke and ‘party with Jay’.
Everyone was asleep when we got in and I brushed the blunt guts off the futon before taking a seat. We took a moment to try and put ourselves in our co-workers shoes. I closed my eyes and imagined the arrivals area at TF Green Airport, full of recently disembarked passengers all looking in the same direction towards the entrance ramp, waiting to spot the car they would recognize as that of their friend or loved one or business associate coming to pick them up. I then imagined the way that their facial expressions would change when from over the horizon became visible the phrase ‘WE FUCK A LOT!’ as our jalopy shambled forth into clearer view. Everyone of course would be exceedingly curious about who this monstrosity had come to whisk away, and I imagined my own Aunt Margaret and the shock and embarrassment she would feel when she saw me, her nephew, behind the wheel beckoning her into the passenger seat with an encouraging wave of my hand while the crowd watched. When my eyes shot back open it had become obvious that even if she hadn’t said anything about getting rid of the camper, at this point it was the only humane option.
We headed to the most desolate place we knew of which was behind the Atlantic Mills building on the Woonasquatucket River in Olneyville, an area built perfectly for illegal dumping. No longer under the cover of nightfall we navigated the cop magnet across town as stealthily as one could, sticking to side streets, wracked with anxiety and fearful we’d be spotted by someone we knew. We backed the truck up against one of the walls and with some spare rope that just happened to be part of the natural refuse of the area, tied the camper to a rusty hook that protruded from the bricks. I felt sick to my stomach sitting back in the drivers seat preparing to floor the gas, having been awake all night behind the wheel and knowing full well that the course of action we were taking wasn’t the mature or responsible one, but having failed to think of any solutions that could be categorized as so.
An aggressive metal on metal gnashing ricocheted between the buildings when the truck lurched forwards and was followed by a dull thud as the camper landed hard on the concrete. Adjusting the rear view mirror I could see it slouched lazily to one side, injured from the fall and sitting humiliated in the dirt. My heart was filled with sadness and a sense of wrong-doing as we hustled to move it up against the wall and out of the pathway. Even if she hadn’t wanted it back (which was still unconfirmed), it must have had at least some sentimental value and wasn’t deserving of the callous burial that it was receiving. The problem of its proper disposal was passed on to someone unknown as we fled the scene, leaving it broken and degraded against the side of the building.
I parked the truck outside of Daily Bread about ten minutes before Charles was scheduled to start his 8am shift, left him with the keys and the responsibility of handing them over to their rightful owner when she came to collect them, and began a contemplative several mile walk back to my parents house. My next day at work contained an uncomfortable interrogation about the whereabouts and condition of the camper as well as a chastising for not having actually gotten an oil change, although I genuinely believed that I had. In retrospect I can see that our co-worker had mistaken Charles and I for adults, a stage in life that was many many years away. Her kindness had been misplaced and unfortunately it was the camper who paid the price. I quit working at Daily Bread later that week.
