Homesick

A little over two years ago, I was on the front porch of the Hope Hotel in Idaho, looking out over Lake Pend Oreille.  I was sitting next to Jeff, who was an infrequent patron of the bar.  I mostly served food there, so I had never served him, only talked to him in passing, or while we were both indulging our nicotine habits.  Servers have a habit of remembering who a person is by what he drinks (we know where the money is), and there were a lot of Jeffs that came in, so we would refer to this particular Jeff as Guinness Jeff. 

So Guinness Jeff and I were on the porch together on the peeling white bench, companionably smoking, and somehow, we got around to my leaving that September.  I told him I was going to Cheney to get my English degree now that my son was grown up. 

"And what will you do with that?"

This is when I give my flippant answer:  "Hang it on the wall and admire it."  "Make a paper airplane."  "Tattoo it on my butt and work at McDonald's."  I hate that question.  I'm not here to get a degree for a job.  I'm here to learn, period.  That's all.  But Guinness Jeff had never been rude to me, and he had always been respectful, so being flippant to him would just have been arrogant and unkind. 

I told him that when I had my degree, I was going to pack the car with clothes, the dog and the cat, and I was going to start driving.  It didn't matter which direction I went.  I was just going to drive and when I felt like stopping, I would stop.  I'd try to work in diners and bars, just enough to pay to eat and stay clean, and I would write.  I would stay on the road and write. 

I don't think he believed me at first, and I'm sure you don't believe me now, but I meant it.  I lived in London for about 10 months.  I got a Eurail Pass and stayed in a hostel room worse than a jail cell, and got somewhat better rooms in Brussels and Paris.  I flew from London to Bangkok on Aeroflot, the Russian airline, before the Berlin Wall fell.  I lived on the beach in Koh Samui back when you could live comfortably on $2 a day.  And I stayed in two roach-infested gaijin houses in Tokyo for about 11 months.  I don't mean itty bitty roaches.  I mean black three-inch fliers that will attack your face. 

I was tired of Idaho.  I was tired of the conservative politics and the religion.  Before the Hotel job, I was an Admissions Clerk at the hospital.  One day during the Presidency of George W. Bush, the wife of one of the doctors came in and sat down in one of the booths next to mine and started talking to one of her friends.  The two of them were talking about the struggles with Israel and Palestine, and the deaths, and how it was under siege from all these Arab countries. The doctor's wife suddenly started crying.  "It's all coming to pass," she said. "The prophecies are coming true.  Israel is coming to power, and that means Jesus is coming back.  I'm so happy!  I can't wait." 

I was just getting sick.  Honestly, at that point, I wanted Israel obliterated from the earth.  I thought maybe, if those prophecies were proven false once and for all, this nonsense would stop.  People would stop exulting in other people's suffering because it would no longer be some sign to them that they were right and that other people were wrong, and they were going to heaven and everyone else was going to hell. 

I hated Idaho at that point.  I listened to people like this every day.  Very few of them went as far as the doctor's wife, but you could still hear the sanctimony in their voices.  I finally left the hospital job, not because I could get away from these people, but because I needed a night job to go back to school.  Once I did, I realized that I could go to school in another state, and I could escape the neoconservative politics and the evangelical Christians.

The night job at the Hotel, waiting tables, put me into contact with different people.  I met people with broken lives and addictions.  I met people who talked casually of having been in jail, usually for DUIs.  I met an artist who set up her studio next to our restaurant and bar.  I reconnected with my son's grade school teachers.  The publisher of Lost Horse Press was a regular patron.  I met musicians and drunks, fishing boat captains and crews.  Pool sharks and millionaires who played dice for thousands of dollars spread on the weathered wood of the hundred-year-old bar. 

And one night, I sat out again with Guinness Jeff, who I had learned was from Alaska, who had been a carny, a salmon fisherman, a prankster, a roofer and in all kind of trouble. I learned he was a little shy of me, but that after a Jack and Coke (yes, he switched his drink on me), he would loudly declare my praises.  And that night, I deliberately left my coat in the server station, sat on the bench with him, lit up my cigarette, hugged myself and shivered.  "It's cold tonight," I said.  He smiled and hugged me to him. 

That was how it began. 

I got my wish.  I got out of Idaho. 

Now I just want to go back.