One morning last month I woke up with a funny feeling on an unfamiliar couch, with an unfamiliar cat perched on my chest. On the wall hung a picture of a couple at their wedding and from far away the bride looked a bit like me. In the next room a baby was crying. Had I fallen asleep and woken up as a thirty year-old? I pretended to be asleep as a man—my husband?—shuffled through the room. I caught a glimpse of him before he disappeared down the hall. If he was my husband, and this was my house, I’d done well.
At this point I remembered where I was. I was in the house of my friend’s older brother on the second leg of a four-day road trip. Yesterday I’d left Santa Cruz, and now I was in L.A., the city, headed for LA, the state. Today there would be a long drive. But even as I oriented myself, the funny feeling didn’t go away. This could have been for any number of reasons: The fact that I didn’t have a job; that I had been living out of my car for three weeks; that I was thousands of miles from my home and headed towards a disaster zone, but these weren’t it. The reason for my funny feeling didn’t reveal itself until I got into my car. As soon as I put the key in the ignition, a song I’d queued the previous day began blasting. The White Album disc two, track one. “The Birthday Song.” And then I remembered; today I turned 23.
I spent much of my fourth birthday crying because I’d never be three again, something my mother reminds every year I get the birthday blues. But my funny feeling this morning wasn’t grief that I’d never be 22 again, nor was it the Eyeorish self-pity that has struck me on recent birthdays. This year the funny feeling was different. It that my new age forced me to reflect upon what I was doing with my life. Or, more importantly, what I wasn’t.
For a brief moment this summer I had a job in Manhattan, a savings account in the quadruple digits, and a studio apartment where I threw dinner parties. Initially, I was very pleased with myself and my new life, but as its novelty wore off, a panic set in. Just yesterday, it seemed, I was sitting on the belly of Foss Hill, watching the streakers go by, and now I’d boarded the greased-up shoot to grownupville. This was not somewhere I was in any rush to arrive, and so before my ass began to slip, I checked out of my new life as abruptly as I’d acquired it. I quit my job, sub-sub-let my apartment and moved back home. There I stagnated for a few weeks. This was not good. I would not let a bad summer turn into a bad life, and so two seasons of “Six Feet Under” and five pounds later, I decided it was time to do something. Something spontaneous. And the next thing I knew I was in my car barreling down I-80 headed towards California. As soon I was behind the wheel I felt much, much better. I’ve always loved long, epic car rides. It gives me the allusion that I’m getting somewhere.
When I got to California, I moved into a little cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains where my childhood friend Sarah was living. I unpacked as though I was going to stay for a while, but the first night I dreamt of truck stops and exit signs. When I told Sarah this the next morning she said “how awful,” and I nodded, although secretly I’d enjoyed my dream. Most people enjoy the arriving more than the driving aspect of a trip, but for me it’s the opposite.
My second day in Santa Cruz I rear-ended an ancient Volvo station wagon in the parking lot of a pet food store. There was no damage to my car, but the impact left a dent in the Volvo. It was completely, inarguably my fault. The owner of the Volvo wasn’t there and leaving the scene would have been easy, but I had to be Abe Lincoln and write a note with my name and information. God better be watching me right now, I thought, slipping the note under the Volvo’s windshield wiper. When I met with the owner of the car a few days later, she couldn’t remember the last three digits of her home phone number. She looked like a junkie.
“How will we communicate about the bill?” I asked her.
At this point I’d decided to leave Santa Cruz and drive to Baton Rouge, where I planned to volunteer in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Just that morning I’d changed my facebook.com profile location to Baton Rouge. Facebook only lets you change your location once a month, so this was for real. “I’m moving to Louisiana,” I told her, “How will we be in touch about this?”
“I’ll call you once I find out the bill and you can send me a check in the mail,” she said, struggling to keep the corners of her mouth from curling into a grin.
I felt an ugly contempt for this woman right then. Her car was already old and beat up, and I had my doubts that she’d use my money to repair the dent I’d made. She had yellow circles under her eyes and her hair looked unwashed. She probably didn’t have a job or much to do during the day. I wondered what she thought she was doing with her life when she woke up in the morning. She probably tricks herself into thinking she’ll just wake up one of these days, I thought, her life having come together. And those kind of tricks are for kids.
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