Catch up by reading PART THREE before reading PART FOUR.
Okay, I have to close this because I keep forgetting where I am and because of my hate for writing long hand. I can't bring myself to write as long or as detailed as I'd like to, anyhow.
Sada and I crossed back over the desert the same way I'd come. Because of the "puppy" and the violin, things went much more smoothly. There is something to say about the persuasions of women. It's easy, too. A set of tits will get you money for gas long before a set of testicles. Even if you can do cooler shit and pick up heavier stuff. It's a fact and it's never been overlooked, we get it. You can stop bitching about the raw deals you get and ease the lighter away from the lace.
The trip home was much loftier but nothing close to love or lust. It;s difficult to explain the way that this woman was, maybe because she was much like me. We found the same things irreverent and sometimes that can be much better than having too much in common. It definitely make for easier lengths of time staring out into the desert, tossing around the same doubt. Dear God, do you remember the Doors? What was up with them?
We discussed going to New York to meet up with her friend, Neva. We made a plan too tentative, everything was all very nihilistic. She didn't drink. I did -- to excess. The ride through the desert was very Raoul Duke in my mind. In her's it was most likely very annoying and boring. A Lumina is no shiny convertible, but it will still shudder at speed, threatening to turn you ass over tea kettle into the cold desert where the scorpions with sting you just to sting you, like a woman bored with the years and indifference.
We made it back to The Mitten with some gas to spare and I was in a hurry to show her my beloved Detroit. I was home in these neighborhoods. I pointed out my favorite spots and houses and buildings. She mostly just looked sad and far away and lost. The city can turn you off of humanity or turn you on to it's ugly truth. There was a famous smart man who said, "Nothing human ever surprises me." He'd never been to Detroit I'd wager, never been offered a blow job by a 70-year old black lady in a BP gas station parking lot. Never been nervous at a stop light. The rob children and rape reverends and vice versa. It is din. Everyone wants and nothing gives, they are ankle to eyebrow deep in the boiling Grand River of blood. An old black man at a liquor store told me something I'll never forget. His mouth stank and his teeth hung by threads. "That woman," he chuckled, "crossed me like Mack crosses Woodward." (for the uninformed, Mack crosses Woodward twice.) Pointing at a thick-thighed, stretchpants-bound woman wiggling across the street. I don't know what she did, but ain't that the truth of it? Detroit in a nutshell and woman to boot. The old man downed his beer and threw it at her overhand, showering the avenue in ghetto diamonds. I left before she could stab us both.
Sada was unimpressed and uninspired, and it was the sort of let down you feel when a small child opens a present he doesn't like. A half-assed almost appeasement and then discarded in retrospect. You can't make somebody lick a urinal and expect them to tell you that it tasted good. On the other hand, you can make them lick it, and you can make them tell you it's not so bad, but there's no hiding the bad taste that's left in their mouth. That, my friends, is an analogy of my relationship history.
We got to Howell and I dropped the car off behind Mancino's and let my aunt know where my mother could pick it up. I couldn't deal with her yet, I still had some shit to do. I hadn't finished whatever it was that was pushing me over these brinks. I couldn't see the end yet, but I think I knew what was there.
We spent a few nights at a friend's house where I overheard an acquaintance in another room ask why there was a nigger sleeping on the floor. We settled it outside but the fight I wanted didn't happen. I didn't want to be back in that town. Too much about Howell has turned me against her but I can't leave. I'm weak.
We had no money and little direction and slept outside waiting for the train. Hour after hour can pass waiting for those fuckers and I waited an hour too long. While we slid in and out of sleep, police approached us and I had a warrant. They took me to jail and I told Sada to go ahead, I'd catch up to her in New York.
I'm sitting here thinking about what it was that I went to jail for, what I had done to accrue a warrant, and for the life of me I can't remember. I went and spent about a month though. During this stay my mother forgave me like mothers do and I got out and kept it moving. I got a job with my friend Chris doing some tree work to earn a few dollars to get me to New York. I talked to Sada on the phone and she told me she'd found Neva and that they were on the Lower East Side. Fair enough. I put a pack together and I went.
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