Yesterday at 5 PM, I was sitting in my favorite local bar with my best friend Andy, drinking a couple of beers and bullshiting after a jam session. It was a good time, one that I've had more times than I would care to count. As I'm watching South Park on the television, wrapped up in reading the subtitles, Andy is reading a text message from his girlfriend on his phone. He looks over at me.
"Hey man, wanna go to Niagara Falls?"
"...What? You're serious?"
"Yeah, Jess wants to go."
I look up at the clock. It's somewhere around 6:30, on a dreary Monday evening that was threatening rain and thunder. I thought about it for a moment, weighing my options. I could either go visit a gigantic waterfall, or I could leave them to have a fun road trip and stay home playing video games and watching movies I've seen a dozen times over.
"Alright. Let's do it."
At this point, I had been up for a little over thirty five straight hours. I wasn't really tired, but I figured if I had to, I would sleep in the car. We finish our beers, pay up, and go outside to wait.
Jess pulls up to the bar and picks us up. We drive around, making preparations for our journey; picking up cds, grabbing a bottle of Captain Morgan's pre-mixed Long Island Iced Tea and a case of water, and picking up Jess's friend Laura. These things done, we hit the road right around 7.
The rain had finally come, pattering down softly on the car as we whisked our way through the gathering darkness, passing many familiar places and playing stupid car games like the Punchbug game. We have modified the game to include many other reasons to hit our fellow passengers, like Cruiser Bruiser, Grand Am Slam, and the dreaded Mitsubishi Punchy-Pinchy. We passed all the familiar landmarks that I know from my trips up to the Seneca casinos in Salamanca, NY: Ridgway, Johnsonburg and its awful paper mill, Lantz Corners, Bradford's Zippo lighter museum/factory. Andy and I were taking pulls from the bottle once in awhile, but the girls decided against it.
The road into New York is very distinctive for me. As soon as you cross the border on Rt. 219, the road immediately falls apart, riddled with potholes and large cracks in the pavement. We stopped at the gas station where my parents buy cigarettes to use the bathrooms and stretch our legs. At this particular gas station, there are wooden Indian statues, and Laura insisted on getting her picture taken with them. Andy bought a carton of non-filter Heron brand cigarettes, Jess bought a pack of Monarch menthols and a lighter leash, and as we were leaving, two drunk men were talking to us about how Andy and I should be paying for the things the girls were buying. "You know, if you're with them, you should buy their stuff." I didn't catch the rest of the conversation as I decided to go to the bathroom at that point. When I came out, my companions had left the store already, so I went outside to find the two drunk men standing around a dollar bill on the ground. I looked at it and said "Hey, you dropped something."
"Oh, it's not ours. It's hers." One of them points over to Laura. "I don't want it!" She says as she gets in Jess's car. Jess takes the dollar from him and we get in the car. Once we were on the road again, I find out the rest of the story. The bill had been sticking out of Laura's back pocket. One of the guys tells her about it and says that it's going to fall out. So she pulls it out and throws it on the ground. I smiled. It seemed like something I would have done if I were in a certain playfully apathetic mood.
Around this time, we start playing twenty questions to pass the time in a way that wasn't just staring off into the darkness in silence. It turns out that I'm not very good at that game, but it was definitely enjoyable. I stumped everyone by choosing to be nothing, and with sixty questions they couldn't figure it out. We stopped at a cemetery to find a tombstone that looked like a tree, then drove on. By now we were past the casinos and the road had become unfamiliar to me. I was beginning to get excited.
We finally arrived somewhere around midnight. Andy poured the rest of the Captain into a water bottle and we stepped outside into the chilly unfamiliar city around us. We went into a hotel to use the bathroom again, and Andy, Laura, and Jess went into the gift shop and bought matching hoodies that said New York across the front. I looked down at my dirty yellow and black Stearns rain jacket and felt kind of left out. There was another wooden Indian statue in this hotel, so Laura and Jess took another picture while I bought a one dollar lottery ticket. It wasn't a winner, so I tore it up and threw it away.
We left the hotel and walked to a park by the river, following the trail that led to the falls. Once we were within a few hundred feet of them, I began to feel the spray hitting me in the face, cold and refreshing. Once we were in view, it was beautiful. The water roared and rushed past us on our left, the Canadian side of the border's many tall buildings glittering beyond. Directly in front of us, the American side's tall buildings glittered back. I kept imagining it as if it were a part of Fallout 3, in ruins. Somehow, I feel like it would have been even more breathtaking that way.
It was around this time that I really began talking to Laura. While Jess and Andy were off making out or something, we stuck together talking about all sorts of things. She told me a little about growing up in Paris Island, North Carolina and I told her about stomping my sister's pet bird to death. We had made our way to another area of the falls, and right then, I was happy. I mean, here I was, five hours by car from home. In a new place, talking to a new person, loving the experiences I was having. I felt good. It was almost like I was a normal person.
Finally, we decided to head back to the car. For awhile, we couldn't remember where we parked. Then we caught sight of the hotel where I bought the lottery ticket, and from there it was a breeze. We drove to a nearby Denny's to get some food. Our waiter was an extremely cool black man whose name I didn't catch, but he was very patient with us in our near-delirious state.
We were laughing like jackals almost the entire time we were in the restaurant. I ordered two slices of toast, Jess got a grand slam, Andy got a double bacon cheeseburger, and Laura ordered pancakes. I sat there, drinking my coffee and smiling while they all talked about one thing or another. Jess and Andy got up to go to the bathroom, leaving Laura and I to look at each other from across the table. She picked up the creamer container and looked at Andy's coffee, contemplating. "I just wanna pour it all in there." she said.
"Go for it."
"Do you think he'll notice?"
"No, just do it."
So she does. We laugh about it, then I grab a little bit of salt from the shaker and dump it in. Shortly, Jess and Andy come back. Our food arrives, and the waiter gave me four slices of toast instead of two. When I tell him that he gave me too much, he just smiles and says "I know, I gave you extra." We continue talking and laughing while we eat. We start talking about Canada and how we wish we had our passports so we could cross the border. At one point, I remember saying something like "Yeah, stupid Canadians, calling ham bacon and stuff. I hear they even put salt in their coffee." Laura starts cracking up. I look at her calmly and say "What are you laughing about?"
We finish our food, leave the awesome waiter an $8 tip, Laura pays for my toast and coffee, then we start the long journey home. I tried very hard to stay awake the whole time, but at some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to us pulling into a Country Fair shaped like a barn and Andy telling Jess an awful joke that our friend Mason had told, centering around a play on words with Uganda as you're gonna. Andy and Jess go inside, leaving me with Laura again. I found out that we had both pretty much woken up at the same time, with the Uganda joke. We talk a lot, until Andy and Jess come back, then the conversation pretty much stops. I begin noticing a trend, where we have great conversations when we're alone, then it's basically silence when anyone else is present. I ponder this as we leave.
The rest of the ride home, I didn't say much. I was too worn out, drunk, sleep deprived, whatever. Jess, Laura and Andy were talking a lot, and the girls were reliving old memories as I thought to myself that I am basically just an observer, there to absorb the tragic stories of others. As we passed Lantz Corners again, I thought about telling everyone about how that's where my brothers died, but decided against it. I sing along to most of Everything Went Numb by Streetlight Manifesto, and just drift around my head until we arrive back in Reynoldsville to drop Laura off.
As she's exiting the car, I thank her again for paying for me at the Denny's. She slaps me on the arm and says "No problem. We're friends now." She shuts the door and we drive off into the night. Fifteen minutes later, I am being dropped off in front of my house. I thank Jess and Andy for a great time, then go inside to pass out.
Part of me didn't want to go, when Andy first mentioned going to Niagara Falls. I don't really know why, in retrospect, but I almost turned him down on the offer. I am very glad I didn't. This is the kind of thing that I need more of in my life. I need to get out there, do new things, go to new places, talk to new people. Long story short, I need to live. And yesterday, I did just that.
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