Vote Your Future

Sparkle Ditch - #20

If you’ve been with me here before you’ve likely encountered mention of a character named Georgie, who features in several adventures alongside an unnamed narrator.

There is a longer story in which Georgie and his, uh, partner, are driving from California to Massachusetts—well, they intend to get to Massachusetts. “Vote Your Future” centers on the two leaving behind a life in Los Angeles to go help Georgie’s sister with her clam shack/seafood place in Gloucester.

The majority of the story is set on the road, and is at times warming and reflective, though also irresponsible and ridiculous, much like the characters themselves.

I’ve chosen a small piece from the story to share—this portion in particular as it encompasses all four of the aforementioned descriptors.

Hope you enjoy the ride.

xo—JO

Vote Your Future [excerpt]

Most of America looks the same. Especially when you drive through most of it with the same person. Strip malls get longer, corn fields get wider. Hairs get longer, tempers get shorter. Roads thin then open up again. Conversations fade then glow again from boredom. There are a million burned down barns and millionaire mansions. Towns come and go, cities swell and shrink. It’s hot, it’s cold. It’s sunny, it’s dark. It’s silly and sad, and it’s all we have.

We killed some miles during an afternoon in Texas laughing about what we’d legally change each other’s names to. I settled on re-naming him Colostomy. Georgie chose to christen me Dorsal. Then we moved on to what we’d put on each other’s gravestones. I hope my suit is still in style. Dig me up and let’s see if I was poisoned. It smells weird in here. Whoa, that’s my bone. A joke’s a joke, but this has gone far enough. I’m freezing. Don’t fuck my wife. My clothes are too big. You could’ve given me some magazines. There was so much I didn’t want to do. I can’t see a thing. The worms are talking to me. Tell the guy next to me to stop whistling. My shoe is untied. Leave your money and go. Flossing was a waste of time. Jesus says Hi. We were silent for another few miles then Georgie, said, I want to be cremated anyway. Yeah, me too, I said.

We weren’t in any rush. We’d often pull off the highway into a town and sit for a bit at a coffee shop or have a beer at a bar. Just get a sense of where we were. What else there was. We liked to read the local paper and we met all kinds of people. We had a nice balance of keeping to ourselves and singling out folks who actually had something to say. Maybe it was a story about how they’d escaped death, or maybe just how they hated the mayor or peanut butter. Usually the stops were under an hour, but if there was a good jukebox going we could easily lose track of our mission.

I worried about us missing L.A. It was sure to happen. That city was a big part of us. A month or so before we left I remember Georgie had been asleep on the couch since the night before. It was a Sunday and well after noon. I said hey come on get up, it’s beautiful outside. With his face still buried in the cushion he said, this is Los Angeles, it’s always nice outside. I guess that said a lot about where we were. But also, hey, get the fuck up. It’s not always going to be nice outside. I’m sure whatever comes next for us will be a fun new world we make for ourselves where we subsist beneath the shit, but really who knows. I get comfort though from having lived what we consider to be life to the fullest in L.A. There’s no such thing as fuller. Something gets full then that’s it. There’s no room for anything else. I’ve always thought a good motto would be: do it until you don’t want to anymore. Besides, we could always go back. Los Angeles was going nowhere.

At a chicken place in Oklahoma Georgie and I talked about movies. What was the last movie we saw? Neither of us could remember because it had been so long. Funny to live in Hollywood and not see any movies. We talked about finding a movie theater there in Oklahoma but decided we didn’t want to waste two hours of road time on a shit film. I said to Georgie, isn’t the abbreviation for Oklahoma OK? Was the OK Corral in Oklahoma? Georgie replied by saying he hates western movies.

There were two women at the table next to us. One of them was talking about a summer camp she used to go to when she was little. She was talking about these berries that grew on vines and were only good during the camp time. When the girls arrived the berries were just maturing. Then by the end of camp the berries were perfect and ready to be picked. All the girls got to pick berries toward the last day of camp to take home and share with their families and make pies with and eat on the bus ride back. By the time the camp was cleared out, the berries that hadn’t been picked were already dying.

Then the woman that had been talking about the summer berries started painting her friend’s fingernails. The polish made her fingertips look like I imagined the berries, shiny soft and dark purple. But the stink was too much. When the waitress came over and asked if we needed anything else, Georgie said loud enough, could we just get a little bag for throw up? As we climbed back into the truck we decided one of the first things we’d do when we got to Gloucester was find a movie theater and go see something. I wondered if there was a movie ever made of Moby Dick? That would be a great movie to see up there with all the boats and clams and shit. Georgie said, I hope so because there’s no fucking way I’m ever gonna read it. We laughed and pulled out.