ATLANTA HAWKS:

You give a team enough lottery picks and it’s difficult to not be a good team.  If you draft  fairly well, your team will be very good, or better.  Or you could be the Hawks.  Ugh.  What a wrecked franchise.  I’ve written about it ad nauseam so I won’t go into it too much, here.  It’s just that whenever I watch the Hawks, I can’t help but to see how the players got to be Hawks.

Marvin Williams: “Hey, that’s Not Chris Paul/Deron Williams!  He’s sure making progress!”

Al Horford: ‘Hey there’s the outstanding replacement for the previous year’s botched and subsequently exiled #5 overall pick, “Seldom Seen” Sheldon Williams!’

Acie Law: “Hey there’s…who’s that slow squat lefty getting garbage minutes?”

Josh Childress: “Hey, where the hell is Josh Childress?”

And to be fair, Josh Smith: ‘Wow, they got him with the 17th overall pick?  What a steal!  I guess it’s true what Uncle Joe says: “Even a blind pig stumbles upon a truffle from time to time.”‘

And of course their best player for the last several years, Joe Johnson, was acquired in a sign-and-trade where they gave up three first round draft picks.  Just for the right to give Johnson–who was pining to leave the Suns–a max contract.  I don’t quite get how some teams are able to convince other teams to give them first round picks in a sign and trade.  How does that conversation go?

Phoenix: We offer Joe Johnson $X and not a penny more.

Hawks: Well, we can offer him $X, too.  But how about we give him X + 30% and we give you three first-round draft picks, too?

I’ve never understood that.  This was such a stupid move (regardless of how good Johnson became) that it caused a nasty litigious schism between co-owners of the franchise.  And I think the fight is as yet unsettled(?).

I don’t know what’s going to happen with the Hawks.  It’s hard to approach objectivity when I find them so depressing.  I never used to care all that much–they were just a waste of a potentially excellent franchise, but then so are the Grizzlies and Clippers–but then I had such a terrific time in Atlanta last year, during the Free Ballin’ stroll, and met so many awesome people, they deserve a real franchise.  Well, at least the Hawks’ PR people are pretty dope.  If only I could have been dope too…

Before I even got to the city, the Hawks communications department was amiable and generous, telling me about good bars to go to for Hawks games (Stats or Dantanna’s), introducing me to a website boasting a community of (all 500) passionate Hawks fans (hawksquawk), and hooking me up with outstanding tickets to the Hawks/Toronto game.  It was a nice reception after a rough patch in my journey.

I also got to play basketball for the first time in ages, and got my ass kicked twice: first at Georgia Tech and then at Run N’ Shoot—which was actually renamed Metro Fitness, because it’s in an area of the city that’s…well, they thought it would be best to change the name.  And yeah, my game wasn’t quite polished after the long layoff, but I avoided being posterized by the 16 year-olds at Run N’ Shoot who were catching and slamming alley-oops one-handed.  So that’s an accomplishment.

And Bill Simmons was right about the women of Atlanta.  In fact, they were so lovely and charming and other things that I almost flubbed the professional aspects of the trip.

So on January 19th the whole city was in a celebratory mood because it was MLK’s birthday and the following day was the Presidential Inauguration.  And I was in a celebratory mood, because I was going hiking with the pretty girl who had taken me to Run ‘N Shoot the previous evening—sometimes it’s great not having a car and needing a ride—and I was taking her to watch the Hawks play the Raptors that night.  And then, well, I felt fairly confident that…much good would transpire.

Though I was hoping to get up to the Smoky Mountains while I was in Georgie, we went hiking down south of Atlanta instead, because it was much closer to the city and that way we would have plenty of time to get back for the 7PM game that night.

But it wasn’t a 7PM game.

That afternoon, the Hawks were hosting a special MLK Day celebration in Phillips Arena, followed by the 2:00 PM game against the Raptors.  I could be wrong, but figuring our schedule, I think the pretty girl started feeling nauseous and dyspeptic somewhere deep in the woods of southern Georgia, around the same time Joe Johnson hit the game winning jump shot, with 12.5 seconds left on the clock.  I can’t remember whether she was still feeling ill when we got back to the city, just that at some point we put on the radio for traffic reports, and the game results were announced.  And in that instant, I lost both my breath, my plans, and my mojo.

[Oh, what was also exciting about that game, they mentioned that it was the first time that more than a hundred people had showed up to a Hawks game since Dominique Wilkins retired.  They actually reported over 17,000 attended, but I don't think there are even that many people in Georgia.  But who knows, I could be wrong.]

That was my only hugely unprofessional f#ck up of the season, but I felt pretty lousy about it.  Fortunately Atlanta folk are swell and helped me out.  Missing the game threw off my schedule entirely; I had planned to leave Atlanta for NC the next day, but I needed to catch a Hawks game before leaving town.  So my couchsurfing host said no problem, I could stay as long as I wanted.  And the same night I missed the game, a new friend I’d met a few days before said he would try to hook me up with tickets that floated around his office (there were, ahem, a few seats that had not yet been sold for the upcoming Atlanta/Milwaukee game.)  And then the day of the game, a friend of my host hooked us up with amazing tickets (there were, ahem, a few amazing seats that had not yet been sold for that night’s Atlanta/Milwaukee game.)

Granted, instead of beating Toronto in the last minute of the game, the Hawks were up 30 on Milwaukee early in the fourth quarter, but I still had a grand time.  So I left Atlanta with a smile on my face.  Actually though, the Inauguration had something to do with that, and so did spending my last night in town Hotlanta style, going for “some” drinks and dancing.  That evening was terrific and would have been perfect if I hadn’t (again) fouled things up by going for one pretty girl (a different pretty girl) 10 seconds after she told me that her almost pretty best friend wanted me to take her home.  (And there are some lines decent girls don’t cross, even the pretty ones.)  I promise you that I’m not normally that stupid (well, not that stupid), but I don’t normally drink that much either.

So yeah, yeah, the Hawks will make the playoffs and somehow continue to disappoint all 350 of their fans.  I’ll write some other time, soon, about Marvin Williams, and how he’s a model of a struggling tweener who takes his entire rookie contract to find his way.  And then he eventually sorta kinda finds it, and is paid huge money to maybe hopefully but probably not someday be a star.  And how we have to hear from announcers all the time that we need to appreciate him for whom he is and not blame him for not being Chris Paul or Deron Williams.  I’ll get into the details on that at some point, and about how his game and improvements should be a model and measuring stick for similar tweeners like Tyrus Thomas.  And maybe how teammate tweeners Thomas and Luol Deng demonstrate with crystalline perfection the difference between what happens when a tweener works his ass off to find his game and when a tweener doesn’t work his ass off.  And I might even mention how my mouth fell open when I was reading a chat with a guy (who now works for ESPN) who used to coach one of those Chicago tweeners, and about how when he was asked what aspect of that tweener’s game they’d talked about that tweener working on when they last met, the former coach said: consistency and energy.  Ugh.  Yeah, I’ll write about that some other time.

I should mention, sometimes I’m not quite connected to what’s…going on.  It isn’t that I don’t pay attention; I just pay attention to what’s important and fliter out some/most of the other stuff.  I came to Miami to write about the Heat (important) and meet their fans (important), especially the ones in string bikinis (imperative).  That the popular tourist city of Miami might be booked the f#ck up for the week of New Years didn’t occur to me until I found out that almost every hostel bed in Miami was booked for days.

I finally found a bunk, on Miami Beach, for $24—but for just one night; they were all booked up for the 29th-Jan 2nd.  That was fine, because I’d find a couch to surf.  But I didn’t, and before I went to sleep on the 28th, I booked the only hostel spot I could find for the 29th.  They also had an opening for the 30th, but thaat place charged $45 a night—double their normal rates—through the 5th of January.  I needed it for one night, but just couldn’t stomach it for two.  I figured I’d give myself another chance at couchsurfing for the 30th and after.  And if that didn’t work I’d sleep on the beach and cover myself in patchouli oil to keep away the muggers.

My spirits were bolstered when I received a couchsurfing confirmation from Brian, for Jan 4th, 5th, and 6th (and we later added the 7th).  Then, after some craftying, I found a place in the interim. There was a couchsurfing New Years Eve outing that I said I would attend, but I wrote on the event page that I didn’t have a place to stay yet.  That’s how I met Agata (and Jamil, her boyfriend), who agreed to host me through the 3rd.

I have couchsurfed every night since that first with Agata and Jamil—74 straight nights.  Until tonight.  Alas, I’m in a Comfort Inn, now, in The Dalles, OR.  It was a crappy day for hitchhiking, including a late start and persistent rain.  And there was no couchsurfing available tonight.  Tomorrow is Sunday, so I don’t know what kind of luck I’m going to have.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, if I can piece it together before I fall asleep, I thought I’d list the Dates, Locations, and (first) Names of the people I’ve stayed with, during the streak:

12/30 – 1/3 – Miami Beach – Agata and Jamil

1/4 – 1/7 – Miami Beach – Brian

1/8 – 1/13 – Orlando – Alex

1/14 – 1/15 – Atlanta – Jarrett

1/16 – 1/18 – Atlanta – Kimbi and Karl

1/19 – 1/24 – Atlanta – Ehsan

1/25 – 2/2 – Asheville – Patrick and Johanna

2/3 -2/4 – Charlotte – Robert and Sassha

2/5 – Charlotte – Jason

2/6 – 2/7 – Charlotte – Robert and Sassha

2/8 – 2/16 – Little Switzerland (NC) – Susan

2/17 – Eli’s car, passing through Nebraska – Eli

2/18 – 2/21 – Salt Lake City – Travis and Wendy

2/22 – San Francisco – Alana and Michael

2/23 – 2/27 – Los Angeles – James

2/28 – 3/1 – Mountain View – Brent

3/2 – 3/5 – Sacramento – Charlotte and Caleb

3/6 – 3/13 – Portland – Sarah

~ Fin ~

That people go to Portland for its own sake isn’t unique among the cities I’ve visited. People go to Miami because it’s Miami, Asheville because it’s Asheville, even Atlanta, to a certain extent, because it’s Atlanta. In each case, there’s something inherent to the city’s ethos, it’s ineffable “vibe”, that draws people. And it’s a positive feedback cycle; when a bunch of people go to the same place, looking for the same vibe, they find it, and that vibe becomes ever more robust by virtue of their additions—which in turn makes the place even more attractive to the like-minded. But unlike Miami and Atlanta, who struggle to create an NBA basketball culture, the Portland vibe draws Portlanders to the Rose Garden Arena and fuels their enthusiasm for the Trailblazers.

I was an exception, by the way. I didn’t move to Portland because it’s Portland. I lived in Portland last year because that’s where I was when I ran out of money; I think this is largely why I remained a visitor. Even now, the irony that I am couchsurfing in a city in which I have an apartment—sublet through the NBA season—is appropriate, given my relationship with Portland. It’s a queer relationship, I think, being an unintentional resident (seemingly the only one) in a place so many people long to inhabit. It isn’t that I don’t like the Portland; I do, but I found it a might difficult to truly integrate myself in a place the primary attraction of which is drawing together people who want to be there. Instead, I was a visitor in a city that has nothing for visitors. Indeed, my father came to visit me a month after I arrived and the first day he asked me where we should go. What was there to see in Portland? I started, “Well, there’s…” but I couldn’t think of anything; I still can’t. Save the roses, when in bloom, there’s almost nothing must-see in Portland. It’s the inverse of New York City: a great place to live, but not to visit.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask any Portlander what there is to see in the city, and 90% of them will list Powell’s in the top five. That’s Powell’s, the small chain of large bookstores. “Well, have you been to Powell’s yet?” Powell’s? I should go to…buy a book? Indeed, Powell’s is the answer to many questions, in Portland. Just go on Citysearch and look for a great inexpensive place to take a date in PDX. That’s right: Powell’s, because nothing says romance like loitering in a bookstore.

Of course I don’t make a practice of telling locals I feel this way, or even saying it aloud, because any time I’ve said anything remotely ungushing about Portland, someone looks at me with terrible hurt in their face, as though I had just said their newborn baby looks like an embryo chicken. They shouldn’t feel that way. Being a great place to live, but not visit, is a boon to everyone in the city who doesn’t work in the tourism sector. Trust me, I’m a Newyorker who loathes the subway and walks everywhere. But even I find it necessary to take the subway from West 59^th street to West 23^rd street, to avoid the gridlock of tourism hell that is Midtown Manhattan.

Oh, I have affection for Portland, as well. Decent Ethiopian cuisine within an hour’s drive of great hiking and skiing, and under two hours from the pacific ocean? Gotta respect that. In general, I find Portland to be a nice place to spend one’s time when not luxuriating in the Oregon outdoors. Also, it’s hard not to find Portland’s earnestness charming—and highly amusing. I’ve never been to a place more desirous of distinctness; and that need spills into every conversation you’ll have with a Portlander about their city. It spills into the stands at the Rose Garden, too.

Some Portlanders speak of an all-but-imaginary tension between neophytes and natives, but I don’t see it. Or if it’s there, the locals certainly aren’t helping to keep newbies away—not even dreaded Californians. Whenever a local tells me about how things have changed, aren’t what they were, all these new people, they conclude by giving me a sales pitch for the city. That’s why I feel comfortable anthropomorphizing Portland: every last person here gives the impression of being something more than a shareholder in their city. In fact, Portland would best be defined as a city in which Portlanders live. And I feel that watching the Blazers, whether at the Rose Garden or Claudia’s, is even more about celebrating Portland than basketball.

Oh, that isn’t to say they don’t love their hoops here; 814 straight sellouts attest to that. I am curious about the reasons for the end of the streak and ebbing attendance, following it. You might figure it was because the Rose Garden has 8,000 more seats than the Memorial Coliseum, but they remained close to capacity in the new arena those first few years, despite the team’s decline. But I still recall reading about empty seats. Maybe there were a bunch of new corporate seats that weren’t regularly filled, when they stopped winning? I’m not sure. If it was difficult to get new Portlanders interested in the team, it may well have had a lot to do with them not winning, and the whole Jail Blazers thing—but I don’t think that quite covers it. Every single Portland immigrant I’ve met in the last year-and-a-half is so excited to be here. Finding a job—any job—friends, a place to live, a place in the community, for them just being here is destiny manifested; it’s winning. It seems perfectly understandable then, that those new Portlanders, without any Blazers roots, weren’t filling the stadium for a losing team. Losing was incongruous with their Portland experience. They couldn’t identify with something that wasn’t on the way up.

They do now. But I don’t think they’re fair-weather fans; they’re new fans, discovering something. The Trailblazers marketing department knows it. Their Rise with Us slogan is canny, but longtime fans don’t need it. Rather, it’s a message that resonates with the transplants and their desire to immerse themselves in the local culture of the city.  They all want to be Portlanders.  And Blazerness, the team encourages, is synonymous with Portlander-ness. The Blazers’ attendance figures indicate that it’s working, and so do other indicators of popularity. I have no idea what the Blazers television ratings look like, but I’m told the Blazers Edge is the most popular NBA team blog around, and my Portlander friends who couldn’t care less about basketball, when I met them, are talking Blazers. And I think the new fans will stick, long after Brandon “Beaver Cleaver” Roy retires. [Seriously, is there an NBA player more likely to say, “gee, shucks”? I think that's why they didn't trade for Richard Jefferson. An NBA locker room can only sustain a certain number of non-cussing players before what's endearing corrupts the warrior spirit. Those two and Greg Oden would have taken it over the edge.]

The combination of old faithfuls and new fans certainly makes for a great arena experience, a cacophony rivaled only by Oklahoma City and Utah, among the teams I’ve seen on this trek. It’s a significant component of my holding on to my Portland apartment. I’ll certainly never be a Blazer fan—I have a team—but it’s plenty fun to be in the thick of the movement.

“We think he could fit in well here and contribute,” added Morey. “He’s a very good defender and rebounder on both ends. He is one of the top ten guys in the league in getting to the line and can kick it out to shooters. He knows his role and will know he needs to get the ball to Yao. He is really going to do what coach Adelman asks.”

That sounds A-OK to me.

Brian Cook Isn’t Nothing

And he might be something.  On the one hand, he looked awfully slow when I saw him a few weeks ago, against Atlanta.  Cook played a role in the most serious basketball ass-whooping I’ve ever seen, on any level, but  it wasn’t a huge.  He only got garbage minutes, and even against the Hawks bench-enders, he was a step slower than anyone on the court, and looked soft, as in pudgy.  Still, he has an arsenal of skills, his three-point shooting the most significant, by far.  If he gets back the minimal athletic prowess he needs to utilize his skills on an NBA-rotation level, he could be a real asset to the Rockets.  He may not, but he might.  And adding a distance shooting rotation-worthy big man is a nice addition to a trade for an everything-but-shooting PG.  Furthermore, the Rockets only risk $3.5 million in cap-room, next year, if Cook takes his player option.  If he sucks, he’ll take it.  On the other hand, if he does well with the rest of this season, I think he probably still takes the player option, since everyone portends a very tough market for free agents, even those who don’t suck.  Regardless, he won’t get the minutes necessary, this season, to miraculously play himself to a higher salary bracket.  But maybe he can get in shape enough to do just that for next season .  All in all, a very solid addition to the trade, with upside and no downside.

Aaron Brooks is Small, but Who Cares?

This promotion for Brooks also gives me an opportunity to discuss, ever-so-briefly, something I’ve been thinking about lately, regarding small point-guards.  You always hear in scouting reports for Brooks how his size makes him vulnerable to post-ups from bigger guards.  In fact, you hear that about all small guards.  Even Chris Paul’s scouting reports sometimes say something like, about his only weakness is his size which can allow bigger guards to post-up on him.  I find this logic suspect.

How many point-guards have post games?  Players don’t succeed in the post merely because they have size; they succeed because they know how to utilize their size.  Point-guards generally don’t have experience exploiting size-advantages in the post.  Most of the time I see a bigger PG take a smaller one in the low post, they mostly just try turn around jumpers; these guys don’t have drop steps and jump hooks.  It’s the same at any position.  Sammuel Dalembert is much faster than Zydrunas Ilgauskas, but it certainly it isn’t advantageous for Dalembert to try and take ZI off the dribble on the perimeter, because he doesn’t have the ball-handling ability to leverage his speed advantage.

Sure, there are a tiny handful of pointguards, like Jason Kidd, who have very effective post games, but it’s probably because they’ve always had a physical advantage, over virtually any opponent.  So I don’t know if it’s a big deal that they have an even bigger size advantage over Brooks.  Furthermore, I say “they” of PGs with post games, but I can’t really think of almost any, other than Kidd.  Well, Baron Davis seems to know what to do in the post, but Deron Williams and Chauncy Billups don’t seem to gain much by posting up.  Generally speaking, I suspect PGs’ size advantage in the post is largely irrelevant.  And I think Aaron Brooks is therefore far from a defensive liability.  I have only my eyes to go on, not being privy to any defensive data I trust, but I see a guy who moves well laterally, and is quite adept at staying in front of his man.

I don’t see bigtime upside for Brooks, but I think if he can become a better finisher (a reasonable if not certain expectation/hope) he can be a better-than-average NBA starter.  Yeah, I think it’s reasonable to expect a skill-based ability to improve with time, but how much, I don’t know.  But I would pretty much say that his upside is defined by his ability to finish in the lane, and isn’t limited by defensive liabilities.

My next game is the Clippers/Celtics, on February 25th, in Los Angeles.  My plan is to stay in Little Switzerland for a few days, doing some writing work, filling in some blanks on this blog.  I have things to add, from Oklahoma City to Atlanta, and I’d like to make sure the blog is entirely up to date before heading out west.  During my time in Little Switzerland, I’ll post on ride-share boards, couchsurfing, craigslist, maybe some other I might find online.  I’m not sure whether I’ll wait for rides.  That is, if someone on craigslist is going all the way to LA, but four days after I want to leave, to I go?  It might take me three or four days, or more, to hitchhike out there.  But I don’t like waiting, period.  It’s a big part of why I don’t like taking public transportation.  You’re just sitting/standing there, waiting to be some place, traveling slowly, stopping, stopping, stopping at other bus/train stops along the way.  Sure, sometimes I can read, but sometimes being on public transportation makes me so restless I can’t read.  For any reasonable distance, when I have the time, and am not carrying a 50 lbs pack, I like to walk.  3 miles, 6 miles, 8 miles, whatever.  I have legs; I walk.  It helps me think, helps me write.  But that’s neither here nor there…

I’m a little concerned about the hitchhiking today.  The exit I need off I – 40 to get to Little Switzerland is on the way to Asheville, and that’s the only major attraction on my trip.  Traffic density is, rather obviously, an important part of hitchhiking; the greater number of cars that pass me, the more likely I am to get a ride. If you take a look on google maps for Charlotte (on I – 85) out to Little Switzerland, you’ll notice a good deal of highway changing, a lot of small cities and towns.  That means I’ll quite possibly need a number of rides to go where I’m going, especially as people frequently go to Asheville via another route, well out of my way.  Furthermore, it’s Saturday, cutting traffic density, and, worst of all, I’m starting late, very late.  It’s 12:51 PM and I should have left 5 hours ago.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get to sleep until very late and then I (probably foolishly) am waiting for a ride from my couchsurfing hosts to get to a good entry ramp to I – 85.  And it’s winter, get’s dark early.  Basically, today’s hitchhiking trip entails almost everything I try to avoid.  I like to get out on the road before 8 AM (latest) get on a major and keep to major, heavily trafficked, highways.  And if I can I hitchhike on weekdays, to try and catch truckers.  But what are you going to do?  This is my plan.

I’m five minutes from calling it off and starting tomorrow, dawn.  I can spend the rest of the day getting lots of work done here, writing up last night’s game…ummmmmmmmmm, yeah.  Yeah, I’m going to wait until tomorrow.  See, just blogging the situation out helped me figure things out.  I’ll leave it up as is, maybe give you a sense of considerations you make when hitchhiking.  OK, off to the library.

- Michael Mandlin

Well, actually I think I did OK, but I certainly didn’t light the room on fire.  My first time on radio, I’m not sure I quite had my normal verve, the charisma that makes women weak in the knees.  (Of course it’s only honest to admit that I have a strong attraction to women with knee problems.  I think I’m really an orthopedic surgeon at heart.)  He asked me a few questions to which I gave answers only Crash Davis would be proud of, but eh, it was the first time, and I’ll get better.  I’ll find out if there’s streaming audio of the interview I can provide, or perhaps an MP3 I can upload to the blog.

It was also fun to meet Holman and Martin.  Martin played in Turkey last year and has been scoring 20 a game this year in the NBADL.  Martin is listed as a 6’7″ power-forward, which (surprisingly) makes me 6’6″.  That’s two inches taller than I’d always thought I was, but hey, I’m sure NBA doctors have some really accurate measuring devices.  So I guess I have pretty good height to be an NBA shooting guard.  If I can just add some 10 inches to my vertical, triple my lateral quickness, lose (ahem) a few (dozen) pounds, and improve my handle some, maybe I can get a tryout.  It’s a stretch, but hey, who knows?  Martin probably has a better chance of sticking in the NBA if he can continue to shoot 50% from three, regardless of his height.

This afternoon I’m meeting up with Bobcats blogger David Arnott and possibly joining him for a Bobcats execs meet-and-greet.  And then covering the Bobcats/Hawks game.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

- Michael Mandlin

I was at the Atlanta Something or Other Medical Center in the Who the Hell Knows district, and I was looking for a wifi connection.  Actually, I was looking for a few things.  I was looking for a place to replace my semi-busted $6 headphones with another pair at that price point.  The Walgreens in the hospital had failed to deliver.  I also wanted to know where I was, relative to where I was staying (Midtown) and where Trader Joe’s was (Midtown.)  I had spent a good part of the day doing chores, getting shitty directions to various locations.  In a car and decent directions, my chores would have been 30 to 40 minutes.  They took me four hours on foot.  And I was really tired of shitty directions.  That’s why I wanted wifi, because google maps can tell me how to get from A to B and most Atlanta folk can’t.

I couldn’t get a signal in the Starbuck’s, so I asked her if there was anything around, a library perhaps?  There was, three lights down, but she wouldn’t advise me to go by foot.  Is it very far?  No, but it’s dangerous.  The Starbuck’s woman said she’d lived there for seven years, and her mother always begs her to move away from Atlanta, but she loves it there.  She just doesn’t go to certain places on foot, or at night.

I’ve heard that a lot lately, in Atlanta.  Places not go on foot, places not to go at night, places not to go alone.  I’d like to think people aren’t just saying this about every predominantly black neighborhood in town, but that’s the strong impression I’ve been getting.  So I asked the Starbuck’s lady, ok, what’s the problem with the neighborhood?  She said they’re just rough neighborhoods, not to go through at night.  At least, maybe it’s different for me, but she’s a girl, and a – she mouthed “white” – girl.  (Presumably she didn’t want the middle-aged black customer reading the newspaper to know there was a lily white dye-job blond girl behind the counter.)  Does Starbuck’s lady think it’s more likely she’ll be raped and murdered in a bad area than a black girl?

I told her I heard about these areas in Atlanta a lot and always wondered, are these places really dangerous?  What’s the problem?  I’m going to get killed going through?  She asked, if I didn’t mind her asking, where I was from.  I said I was from NY.  She was surprised, NY?  She’d've thought I’d know about rough areas, being from NY.  I told her, eh, there really aren’t any, not anymore.  I hope she goes to NYC and gets mugged by a redneck from upstate.

I found a wifi connection just outside Starbucks, enough to get online and figure out my position.  I was 1.2 miles walk from the place where I’m staying, and 1.1 miles from Trader Joe’s.  Both walks took me right through the area she warned me about.  Walking through them pissed me off.  Black people.  Just black people.  That’s it.  Old black people, young black people, just black people.

Look, it isn’t that I just discovered bigotry, OK?  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s worse in the south, though I had a professor from Atlanta once who said it was just as bad up north, just different, and subtler.  I don’t know.  I know my two buddies (one black) and I got a lot of hostile stares that I’d never encountered before, when we were hanging out in Boston.  But I looked for those stares, really looked for them, when I walked around NYC with my black ex-girlfriend, but I never saw anything like it.

I started to get pissed off about this a few days ago.  I went hiking with a girl, a black girl, in southern Georgia.  Rather, she took me hiking, as I didn’t know where the hell we were going, and she did.  She walked in front, leading the way, me happy to walk behind.  She’s normally drove to where we were hiking though, and she wasn’t sure how many miles it was.  At one point, we came across a guy, his wife, and their kid.  My friend asked for directions, and the guy replied to me.  She asked him another question, a few questions.  Each time he replied to me.  It took me a moment to notice it, but it was pretty blatant.  What’s weird to me is that this guy’s wife was Asian, their kid biracial.  I’m sure there are plenty of racist white guys who still dig Asian women, but somehow…I don’t know.  I guess it’s silly to expect assume that because a guy has an Asian wife and biracial kid, he wouldn’t be a racist.

Anyway, it’s been on my mind.  Probably since Oklahoma, when I was chilling with this really assume guy, watching TV.  He hadn’t said anything to indicate that he was a bigot, until he had a dozen beers in him.  We were watching Sportscenter and he said of the Texas Tech quarterback in the highlight, “Damn that’s one fast nigger.”  I don’t know what to think of that either.  Is the word not meaningful to him?  Is it just an emphatic way of saying something, the way that nobody really intends to “take the Lord’s name in vain” when they say “goddamnit”?  I don’t know.  Either way, I don’t like it.  But I like that guy.  I still like him.  But I didn’t like that, or that dumbass Starbuck’s woman.

***

Nobody wants to take the 1:25 AM Greyhound from Orlando to Michigan. Some need to; others have to. This dude behind me, across the aisle, is definitely a ‘have to.’  He moves back and forth between Florida and Michigan, but, unusually, prefers summers in Florida and winters in Michigan, for his skiing and his ice-fishing. Skiing?  I always think of skiing as a sport of the affluent, and this guy is not affluent.  He doesn’t look healthy enough to ski, either.  He’s got gray brown teeth in all directions and looks like he hasn’t changed his skin in too long. He doesn’t have time for the skiing and ice-fishing, this time around; he’s heading up tonight, Tuesday, and back Saturday. He’s said it a few times, now, not having time.   Definitely not a visit.  Don’t know why, then; he’s not saying, and I’m too tired to get into a conversation with him.  But there’s just something to it; it’s the difference between having compelling interests and being compelled.  This cat is compelled to take this bus.

I don’t know what he’d be doing, in my story.  Some writers might have him going up for a funeral, or because someone was sick, or to borrow money, or to deliver a bag of crack he’s swallowed.  If he didn’t look so used up and smile with those wretched teeth, he could be a Louis Lamour character, going up to Michigan to kill a man, with justification, a thing that needs doing.  He’s going to say it, at some point.  He can’t poke at it for all 9 hours of this trip without spilling it.  If I could stay awake and eavesdrop all the way through the conversation he’s having (more of a monologue) I’d know.  Sorry, I’m shot.  I’m so tired.  I’m going to sleep as soon as I finish typing.  And there’s always another guy on another Greyhound.  More and more, there’re so many stories, like those movies where they find the buried treasure and it’s a room’s worth, clearly more than they’ll ever be able to carry.  I just have to fill my pockets with these stories and go to sleep when I need to sleep.  But I always feel irresponsible when I don’t follow a conversation with something in it, like I’m slacking off on the job.

***

Thelma from a few weeks ago had needed to take the 2:45 AM out of St. Louis to Oklahoma City. She wasn’t compelled, but she was kind of sneaking away, in her own head, at least. Poor Thelma, she was a pretty unhappy lady, and I didn’t help, at first.

I suppose that the empty seat next to me looked like her safest option—I was the only one with an available seat who wasn’t wearing prison-issue sweat suit (yes, I’m serious) but lord was she big, she was bigger than I was, and I’m freakin’ big. The only reason we fit next to each other is that my hips are actually pretty narrow for my body.  But my shoulders go half way into her space unless I’m pressed against the window like one of the girls in the “Put Em on the Glass” video. Thelma had me pretty smooshed up against the window.

I had been talking quietly to my father on my cell, sort of whining (but in a manly way) about being on a Greyhound for almost 36 straight hours. I knew some of the people on the bus were going on longer trips and had done it before, and were, for the most part, poorer than me and more downtrodden.  Because I’m really not downtrodden, unless you compare my situation with that of a European whose unemployed rambling is government subsidized.  My poverty is mostly a sacrifice I choose to make, so I don’t complain.  I just whine (but in a manly way) to a few choice allies.

This time, on the bus, so I didn’t sound like a complete prick to the other passengers, I justified my whining (but in a manly way) by saying the Greyhound trip would be totally fine, except the buses had not been built for me-sized people.  They aren’t.  I was sore and stuff and cranky (but in a manly way.)

Anyway, after I got off the phone line, Thelma whispered to me that she would switch to another seat as soon as there was room (all the other seats were taken at that point) and it just made my heart bleed. I felt really bad, hadn’t even thought about her sitting beside me, listening to my whining (but in a manly way,) Oh, no, no, not her at all; I wasn’t speaking about her, had been uncomfortable without anyone next to me, the seats, the hours, yadda, yadda. I think I actually convinced her, and I changed the subject, quickly enough, made her laugh, chatted the rest of the way to OKC.

Thelma was going to visit her daughter, who was living with some guy in OKC, and whom she hadn’t seen for six years.  She had been taking care of her disabled mother for ten years. She wanted a break. Her siblings resented her for it, had the fucking gall to say “what about Mom?”

I got the impression Thelma didn’t have enough money to take a Greyhound back.  But I guess she needed to leave more than she needed to be able to come back.  She didn’t come out and say it, but though her trip was three weeks, she didn’t want to go back, ever.  She was running away.

****

My favorite Greyhound compatriot was actually only taking an 11PM out of D.C., but she still badass, because she was riding all the way to Trailer Park, CA.  And she was first class material.  The first night on the trip, she had sat in front of me and provided a helping hand for the guy who sat next to her—whom (she told me later) she had never met until they sat down together. They were still sitting together the next morning, providing me with some high comedy.

They napped, his back to the window, her back to his chest, her feet on the edge of the seat, knees bent. I was doing some work on my laptop that morning and noticed, glancing in their direction from time to time, that the position of his hand would change slightly. The seat, her hip, her stomach, her thigh.  Seat to thigh took over an hour.  Then, at some point, when I looked back, I didn’t see his hand for a second, until I noticed just the tips of three fingers poking out from between her fast-locked knees. Denied! Defied! It was awesome. They held that position for hours, eyes closed, serene. Poor guy, just looking to return her favors from the previous evening, and his arm must have been ready to fall apart by the time the bus stopped for McDonald’s. Awesome, awesome. So awesome, in fact, that when nobody was looking, I fished my camera out and took a few covert shots to put up on the blog—faces obscured, of course. I can’t find them now, damnit, but if I do, I’ll post them under the title, “The Locked Knees And Swollen Fingers of Despised Love.” Oh, for the record, I’m not a peeping tom except in the way that any responsible writer is a peeping Tom. And I’m a consummate professional.

Anyway, this chick may have needed to stop those ambitious fingers, but she had to be on that Greyhound as much as anyone I encountered. She started chatting with me when she woke up and saw my laptop, “oh isn’t that cute,” but the dude with the sore fingers was jealous—he was kind of hugging her, trying to pull her back into his lap–she said, “you’re jealous,” jackass said, “uh huh”—so she waited until he got off the bus, in Ohio, to tell me all about her life and transgressions. Like Thelma, she was on her way to see her (four-year-old) daughter, for the first time in more than a year. Unlike Thelma, this girl had used a fake ID when she bought the Greyhound ticket, to avoid the D.C. sheriff who was after her. Escape made her cheerful, and chatty. She never said exactly what she was wanted for, but probably for something not dissimilar from previous difficulties she’d had—at least half of which were totally bullshit charges. How was she supposed to know that the girl was going to stick her head right where my Greyhound friend had thrown the chair? (And yes, that was her excuse.)

She’d always liked to move around, got uncomfortable living anywhere for more than four months or so. It was also a good lifestyle for avoiding arrest, I guess.  But considering the number of different prisons she commented on, when chatting with some of the other recent convicts on the bus, she wasn’t terribly successful.

***

And me? I took this Greyhound because I couldn’t find a ride-share and (as previously noted) Florida ain’t so cool about hitchhiking. I’m taking the 1:25 AM bus because I’d rather give up my night and sleep like shit than wait 7 hours to get up and kill my day. Also because the late night Greyhound is a 9-hour trip and the daytime Greyhound was a 13-hour trip. So I suppose you could say I need to take this Greyhound to avoid feeling cheated for time, as well as fucked for $72. However, there’s one benefit. Along with the exhaustion of a sleep full of awareness, there are periods of dark, beautiful silence, which I couldn’t purchase anywhere else, for any price. Yes, I can hear wheels turning on wet roads, cars passing, being passed, the occasional spattering of rain against my window, but silence isn’t the absence of sound; it’s the absence of noise, the absence of all but breathing from every living thing around me.

Through eight cities in nine weeks, late-night Greyhounds are the only places where I can achieve this particular peace. My face gets a rest, for one. I don’t smile, I don’t crease my brow or raise one of them, squint slightly to show elevated attention, shrug or frown in agreement, or shrug, palms up, in gentle disagreement, or form any of numerous stupid expressions that (I have been told) are distinctly mine. It isn’t that I’m faking it; I’m a fairly genuine guy. It’s just that I know I have a tendency, sometimes, to be kind of hard to read, maybe very hard to read. I think I actually have a pretty animated face, when it’s animated, but I guess sometimes, maybe a lot of times, my expression and inflection don’t really change much. All I can say is that I recognize it enough to be careful with people I don’t know well. I mean, I’m staying on generous people’s couches and if they say, “It isn’t much, but I think it’s pretty comfortable,” and I say, “No, not at all, it’s great,” in deadpan baritone, people are going to think I’m an asshole, right? Sarcastic maybe? Unappreciative? Mononucleotic? I don’t know, but I make an effort to make myself understood. Well, over nine weeks, I’ve shaken some seventy-five new hands, couchsurfed in fifteen different households, and that doesn’t include the endless polite interactions with bus drivers, cashiers, bartenders, hookers, etc.. It can get a little tiring, being polite.

I have no idea if my poker face tendencies have any impact on my friendships or romantic endeavors, though I wonder. I’ve never conducted a regression analysis of my relationships, but maybe I should. I know it’s definitely part of why I haven’t always had the most luck with office jobs. They love me in interviews, love me at the start of the job, but eventually (what feels like) the Chotchkies waiter routine is impossible for me to maintain, especially when I hate my job—and I’ve almost always hated my jobs—and can’t nod enough in a thirty second span to please a micromanaging supervisor—I almost always have an unpleasable micromanaging supervisor. It’s not that I’m ignoring them, not registering them, not understanding them; I’m just not doing so in a demonstrative fashion.  It’s not like I’m any less competent than I was when they hired me.  I try to give them what they want, but if I slide, if my reponsive expression goes from attentive gopherness to…blank, well, being sort of poker-faced is better than saying to them, when they’re being incredulous, “Hey, remember when you studied all week for that exam and got a B+ on it? I slept through that class and got an A on the final, so stop worrying, leave me the paperwork and go manage your fucking Skype account.” Nope, never did that. I performed all of my tasks with crystalline subordination. Well, now I like my profession—one from which, of course, I derive no income—and I really like the people I’m meeting, the friends I’m making, and after a year and a half of couchsurfing, I remain surprised, each stop, at how awesome and generous these people are.  But they’re all new, so demonstrative cordiality is my job, or at least the lingua franca. Yeah, gets a bit wearying now and then, and then again.

So as much as I hate these awful late night Greyhounds; I do so enjoy the privacy, and as uncomfortable as the seats are, it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about them. I don’t flop down on people’s couches, I don’t swing my legs over the arms or remove the pillows from the back, to give myself more room, without asking, and I try to be careful not to dislodge the sheets when I sleep (I am quite the sheet dislodger and hosts surely don’t want a bunch of people sweatying up their couches.)  And I’m fairly sure I’ve never accidentally (or otherwise) exposed myself, but it’s something I do keep in mind. But I could give a fuck about whether I rest my shoes on the godawful seats on a Greyhound. And if I feel like exposing myself, well why not? I haven’t, yet, but as everyone else on the bus is regularly stripsearched by prison guards, I can’t imagine it would be a big deal to them.

I think I’ve even begun to unconsciously anticipate the easy slide into Greyhound sloth because I find my demenor sagging into I Could Give a Fuck mode as soon as I purchase the tickets—making only an exception to muster some neighborly gratitude for the “thanks” I give the baggage handlers, to whom I trust my pack, hoping against hope that they won’t lose it between the time I hand it to them and they put it under the bus (ten seconds later) as is their custom. I have nothing left for the bus drivers though, unless it’s the one who isn’t an asshole. I know what you’re thinking, but there is one, the Highlander of late night Greyhound drivers. I encountered him in Ohio.

***

So I had nothing, tonight, for the girl behind me, when she tried to start a conversation. “Excuse me, is this the right line for this bus?” Smiles, shows me her ticket, “It’s my first Greyhound.” I could approximate the conversation, how it was to unfold, right then; I’ve had it ten times in the past two months. But she’s beyond me. She floats by me. I answer her question. It is, the right line. And that’s it. She seems perplexed that I don’t say more. She says something else I forget even before I reply, “Oh yeah, first class all the way.” She tries again, or twice, before giving up when my responses are entirely devoid of flirtation, of playful irony, of anything. I am beyond flirting. No, flirting is beyond me.

She is a few years younger than I am, blond by choice, her face only beginning to fall, her tone still something of unabashed expectation in it. Sorry darling, it isn’t that I don’t find you lovely—though in fact, I don’t—I’m just beyond pretending that our exchange might end up in something meaningful for either of us. I don’t mean I’m beyond flirting as in I’m above it; I mean I’m useless for intelligible conversation, tonight. I don’t have it in me to charm you, kiddo, and you don’t have it in you to inspire me to charm you. If I were the type, I could tell her that if cared about what she was talking about, or pretended that I cared, I wouldn’t be worth her time anyway. But I’m not.

Maybe I sound bitter, but I’m not.  It’s not that I have (complete) contempt for the process; I play the stupid game all the time, and I’m pretty good at it. I’m not claiming Casanoval success or anything; I find legendarily creative ways to trip over myself on the way to a pretty girl’s bed. But I can talk. I can discuss just about anything with a pretty girl, almost regardless of my condition (we all have our limits.) And I have a remarkable ability to sound like I’m not bullshitting, whether or not I have a fucking clue what I’m talking about. Seriously, I can chat engagingly with a pretty girl about Turgenev, photonics, Goodie Mob, energy efficient windows, or yarn if there’s a chance the conversation will end with my hand on her breast. The only time I can remember being totally stumped was when I was introduced to this pretty girl who told me she was in dental school. All I could think was, “Why?”

No, even tonight my brain wasn’t quite formaldehyde enough for me to totally break form, just enough to do some basic calculations as we took our seats: she started the conversation with me (plus); she’s going to where I’m going (plus); meeting people there (unplus); other girls (plus); including older relatives (unplus); doesn’t have a place of her own in Atlanta (ununplus); and (glancing over) she has a bible on her lap, which borders on kinky for a secular Newyorker like myself, but contextualized (her formless PJs/sweats, minimal makeup) it adds nothing to the equation. No, it would take a lot to make me care enough to even give it a shot, and she doesn’t have it.

Maybe, if she wanted the silence as much as I did, I would find her alluring; I would wonder what noise she was leaving behind in Orlando. If she were uninterested in company, soul drawn, needing of quiet, expressionless, contemplative (and much prettier) I might have…nah, OK, I’d definitely have been interested; fuck it, I’d've been putty. But she wants to chat and smile at the newness of Greyhound at almost 2 in the fucking morning and tell me about the something or other she’s attending in Atlanta—which I gather, from her brief pause, was worthy of comment from me—followed by the vacation she’s taking.  She doesn’t mention any definite vacation plans, which means “hey, anything is possible.” Maybe, but I’m not a kid anymore, and I know this isn’t a freethrow. It isn’t even a three-pointer. This is 8 points down with 11 seconds left, without possession of the ball. Sure it’s possible, but there’s a reason they’re still playing clips of Reggie Miller doing it, fourteen years after the fact: because it’s really fucking unlikely.

Of course, it isn’t her; it’s me. It almost always is. I’m sure she’s a very nice…whatever, I don’t care. I’m tired. I’ll save it for another day, maybe take a few three-pointers in Atlanta, on inauguration night, during that champagne burst of possibility. “Hey, who knows?” is the optimism that got a Black man elected President of the United Sates; maybe it will get me laid.

Nah, I’m not worn thin. I’m not contemptuous. I’m just tired. Or maybe after two months on the road, interrupted briefly by a trip home that left me feeling much loved, but homeless, loneliness is starting to creep in, foxing around the edges of my pages. I think the only thing that makes me think I can do this for five more months is that I really ought to move forward, because I have nothing behind me to which I can return. People are wrong. This trip takes no courage, just a paucity of alternatives. But I know I’m still not old, because that’s enough for me to be hopeful, and because I have conviction that there’s something here that’s worth my efforts, if I can get at it. Worth what wells of pride I will dry between now and whatever I’m looking for. Worth something, anyway.