Return-Path: <bigo@cruzmail.ucsc.edu>
From: "Oliver Phillip Nicholas" <bigo@ucsc.edu>
Subject: Oliver's Travelogue, Part 2
To: bigo@ucsc.edu

Compatriots, cohorts and collaborators-

I hail from the sunny region of Ft. Lauderdale/Miami, Florida. I hope none of you ever have the misfortune of having to do the same.

Heh, it's not really that bad, but I suggest strongly that you never try driving down the West coast of Florida on US19/27 unless you want to get really, really depressed. A line I once wrote about another place applies even more strongly to the region I mention: "This coast is a supply line of desolation" or somesuch. The entire thing is a six lane highway lined with gas stations, car lots, motels, pawn shops, check cashing / paycheck advance companies and the occasional strip club. Gavin Wallis offered, astutely: "kind of like a white trash suburb slash ghetto." But more about that in a future installment.

I last left you as I was driving off of Ocracoke, after an evening of Marine snipers and oyster-shucking-knife fights. We'll pick it up from there:

----bloop*bloop*bloop---- [obligatory time warp]

I made my way down from Kitty Hawk along US17. I couldn't make it all the way to Charleston in a day (I left Ocracoke a little late), so I ended up turning off the highway and searching for a campsite. The act of searching for a campsite is always a weird one for me, especially since by "camp" I mean "park my car somewhere and sleep in it". Most of the campgrounds you encounter, unless lucky enough to find your way onto a state or national park, are RV parks; at this time of year, they are mostly filled with permanent/semi-permanent residents in their trailers. These places are people's homes, and the proprietors usually live in a house on the campground, so it's a little weird driving up at midnight and trying to find a place to sleep. Plus half of them look really intimidating and I frequently find myself, starving and bone-tired, passing up yet another campground and saying "next one, next one". At some point you gotta give in, though, so I found myself a campground in southern North Carolina, somewhere around a place that I think was called Seaside. There was nobody in the office, and the CLOSED sign had a few phone numbers on it with the words "Nov. - March, Call:". I tried one of them but got no answer, so I figured: what the hell. It's just a parking space and enough water to brush my teeth with. I found a spot to park a little ways off from some trailers, killed the engine, and sat in silence with a paranoid alertness, waiting for someone to appear with a shotgun and ask what the hell I was doing on their property. No one came, and I was hungry, so instead of risk attracting attention with my camping stove I cracked a tin of Tuna and enjoyed it on an English Muffin (which are incidentally neither muffins nor of English origin). Every time I saw a flashlight I sat stock still, waiting for it to go away. Of course all this paranoia was completely absurd, since it's a fucking campground for crying out loud and people camp there. I hadn't paid, but that was because I didn't know how much it was or how to go about paying. The CLOSED sign had said the office was open at 9am, so I figured I'd take care of it then. Whatever, I folded down my seat and went to sleep.

Now morning rolls around, I have some cereal and brush my teeth, and the office still isn't open. I figure it's not opening, so I take off, all the time looking overhead for the police helicopter coming to force me to remit. At any rate, thanks for the parking spot, anonymous-campground-I'll-never-find-again.

So I rolled into Charleston and through a deft series of completely random lane changes and turns, I came to the famed waterfront area of the city. It is here that all the most regal, decorated and expensive houses of the town are, replete with wonderful ironwork and a whole lot of ivy. I took a walk along the waterfront and got attacked by some seagulls (picture me going up to a seagull and being all like "what" as a stick my chin out at it, and the seagull kind of flaps its wings like it's gonna do something and I buck like I'm legal tender. Heh, that means flinch to all you rectangles out there). Then I made my way to The Battery, a corner park that looks out into the bay and has all kind of Civil War memorabilia (this is where the first shot of the Civil War was fired - Ft. Sumter). I also got attacked by a swarm of pigeons there. As I was walking around, I had this weird sense about the people around me - like they were weary of me, avoiding me. This developed into a real theme while I was in Charleston, but I don't think it was because of me, specifically. I'll finish that thought in a moment, but first, after The Battery I found the main drag in town and walked around, people watching and such. Then it was off to find Charleston's NotSo Hostel, my chosen place of rest. I walked from King and Calhoun, the main intersection, about 8 blocks up King, and then another six blocks down Spring St. till I found the place. I was damn near out of breath. I walked in and found two girls I had seen roaming the same drag I was on earlier in the day ("friendlies!", I thought). I registered for a room and then trudged back to recover my car.

The people at the hostel were cool enough. The two girls were Brits, from the township of Bristol, so there was no end to the conversations about differences between our countries (since I already seem to know most of them). They were on their gap year, traveling for several months in the states, and were perfect story prompters - I swear, every five minutes something they said reminded me of a great tale of adventure I've had in the past. They made for very good companions over the next five days. My bunk mate (that is, the only other guy staying in the main part of the hostel) was an extremely odd early-40-something bible-thumper named Glenn. Bible thumper is actually not the right word. He was of the "saved" variety (born again?), and I sensed from the highlighted bible passages regarding forgiveness on the cover of his book that he had lived a life of considerable sin in the past. Or at least, perceived it to be such. Could've been an alcoholic, could've just had some neurological problems, probably a little from column A and a little from column B. He was a well-meaning soul, I think, but god (no pun intended) was he weird. When I first came to the hostel he was watching a televangelist on a TV station in the main room that got basically no reception - audio was decent, picture was a terrible mess of warped black and white faces and gray static. After it came up that I was a Jew the first thing he said was something like, "so you'd be 'completed', right? Isn't that what they call jews when they accept jesus?". Sure Glenn, whatever you say.

Glenn did indeed turn out to be a weirdo. Again like I said, harmless, but he creeped people out. I woke up the first morning to the sound of him flogging the dolphin (read: masturbating) across the room. I decided next time that happened I was going to remind him that god kills a kitten every time you masturbate so please, think of the kittens. It didn't happen again. But enough about Glenn.

Okay, so it's getting a bit late and I gotta do some stuff (like find a place to sleep tonight), so I'm going to get back to the thought I was expressing earlier about feeling like people were weary of me. The concrete observational companion to that feeling was the fact that no one would make eye contact with me in the street. This is abnormal. Most places (in the world, I would think), you can walk around and actually encounter other people. You walk by them and make some eye contact, maybe even crack a very slight smile or a nod - I mean, sure, you glance away when the interaction starts to actually seem personal, but it still happens. You still get the sense that you're all doing the same thing - walking around, being normal people. Not so in Charleston. I mean, people would look at you when you were really talking to them, but they pointedly avoid random eye contact. I've the feeling they'd look every single other garment of clothing or apparel before they'd make eye contact for a moment, even a fleeting glimpse. it's funny, too, because you can't tell anything about a man from his clothing - but you can tell everything from his eyes. i mean, what do my clothes tell you? do they say that I'm black, white, straight, gay, homophobic, anti-semitic, calm, irrational, kindly, simple-minded? They don't tell any of that. Just because I wear a head wrap, does that make me Muslim? or a keepah, am I a Jew? And what of it, if they do? Do they speak to the compassion with which I hold my values, or if I even hold values at all? My clothes are nothing -- they represent an aesthetic, my attempts to harmonize with the physical world around me. How that speaks to the content of my soul, the essentially important facts about me, I will never understand.

THe eyes, on the other hand...you can't conceal what's in the eyes, or rather it is an extremely complicated task, requiring one to probably take on foreign characteristics to complete the charade. A look doesn't lie -- it carries its own weight, its own means, it has depth and breadth and can be deconstructed and reassembled in all of its meaningful glory. But "The signs are there, we just choose the ones we see". Keep this in mind while I brief you on race relations in Charleston.

The first thing is The Citadel. As you may know, The Citadel is a highly lauded military college, and it's in Charleston. You see meaty kids with clean shaven heads in plain Citadel shirts jogging in groups around town. You see Citadel license plates. Fair enough. But I was at that central square, at King and Calhoun, and found a big plaque describing some city history. Turns out The Citadel was erected in the mid-1800's following a slave rebellion, as a fort to subdue further insurrections. And now it's a military college, training kids to subdue the world over. That's the thing about the South. They're so proud of their Southern heritage, but so vague about what that actually means. I saw a great bumper sticker today, actually: A rebel flag with a red circle around it and a line through it, and in big bold letters: YOU DIDN'T WIN. GET OVER IT.

Charleston's pretty segregated. I was talking to this kid Ishmael who was staying in a back house at the Hostel with his fiancŽe - they're both young, she's 19 and he's 26 or so, and both black. I mentioned the whole Citadel thing and asked what their experiences had been. They both said that they hadn't had any problems in the South with racism, despite warnings from friends back home about it. The one thing they noted was key, though. Ishmael's fiancŽe said that when her parents came to visit, they attracted a lot of negative attention. The reason? Her mother is white, while her father is black (or the other way around, I can't remember). And with that, it clicked.

People in Charleston won't really look you in the eye, I think they're afraid of how truthful eye contact is. It's much easier to lie and live a lie if you're not constantly confronted with a contradictory truth, or perhaps - with truth in any form. So they say that there's no more racism, that everyone is happy, but really, they're just content living on different sides of a line. Cross that line - as this girl's parents did - and people start to get really uncomfortable. I said that Charleston's "pretty segregated". I realize that Charleston's really segregated. In fact, they have an entire town - North Charleston - for poor black people. So my only recourse is to assume that this situation has evolved into such a pathos - a guilt, perhaps - that it has bled into everyday life in Charleston, with the result that people won't even look strangers in the eye.

I confirmed the eye contact thing upon leaving Charleston. Next stop was Savannah, and the environment was immediately more friendly. Actaully the next stop was Columbia, SC, and even hanging out with amateur body building (5'9", 180lbs) flag waiving church-going republican frat boys, the environment was immediately more friendly. Go figure.

More about all that later, though, in my next installment. Tomorrow I'm attending a large (350+ vehicle) Volkswagen enthusiast car show, and then I kill a few days until 2:05am on Tuesday the 2nd, when I fly from Miami International to San Jose, Costa Rica for a three week odyssey. Hopefully I'll get to fill you all in on the rest of the US portion of my trip before then.

So, my fair friends. Be well, stay safe. Stay well and be safe. Drive it like you stole it. And in the words of my companion Thoreau: "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world". It's not true, but gosh it's a nice, empowering thought. Here's to the dreamers.

Adios,
Big o