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.

I give plenty of credit to the Blazers fans, too.  I haven’t heard such a consistantly loud crowd since I was in Oklahoma City.  Granted, I saw the Jazz and Golden State (both of whom have famously raucous fans) participate in blowouts.  The Jazz crowd was loud and engaged from the start, the day after Larry H. Miller passed away.  But the game wasn’t close, late, and that’s what really drives fans to lose their voices. 

Golden Staters were plenty fun, but they were an incredulous crowd, hoping, but expecting the worst.  Every time Corey Maggette hoisted a three, the section in which I was sitting groaned.  He made 3 of 5 attempts, but has made less than 25% of them, this year.  The second time Maggette put up a 3, a kid next to me said it plainly enough, “Common Maggette, nobody likes you when you take those.”

I was pretty disappointed when the arena emptied, with the Warriors down “only” 9, with 2:48 to go.  Don’t fans realize that those are the games you stick around for, more than any others?  I don’t remember much about the first 47 minutes of the Rockets/Spurs game on December 9th, 2004.  But I’ll remember that last minute, forever.

A little bit back, I came to realize that I had watched well over 1,500 movies, in my lifetime.  I was horrified, especially when I considered how many times I had seen Beastmaster.  I have such diverse tastes in movies that I bet I could probably pick a top 500 off that list and say, “time well (enough) spent!”  But the other thousand?  I only hope that on my last days I’m too demented to even know who Michael Dudikoff is, much less remember that I spent 90 minutes of my time watching him dance around in ninja garb.

Those minutes I want back.  But the many, many, many minutes I’ve spent watching my teams fail to come back in the last minute?  I consider that time well spent.  I suppose Golden State fans are just too used to losing.

The Starbucks  is closing and I’m being kicked out, so I’ll pick this back up, later.

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

Now I’m in Charlotte, to cover the Bobcats/Hawks game, this Friday. My plans have been a little up in the air because I was holding out hope for an unlikely trip to the All-Star game (Feb 13th – 15th, in Phoenix) and wanted to be ready to drop what I was doing and hitchhike to Phoenix. But now that I’m not going, I can plan the next legs of my trip a bit more closely.

I will be in Charlotte through the 7th, maybe 8th. Then I will head up to Little Switzerland, so I can write a sample chapter of the Free Ballin’ book, to send around. Then I’ll head out to Memphis to spend a week and catch a few Grizzles games. And then I go truly west from there. I’d actually like to hit OKC on the way, to catch another game (they were the loudest, most raucous fans thus far, and that was before they won three games) and I would like to see the  memorial for the OKC bombing.  The people I met there told me it was something to see.

***

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.

The first part of the trip was only very uncomfortable, but from St. Louis to OKC the big dude in front of me leaned his seat back and the woman sitting next to me was bigger than I was. Thelma and I became chums (as I’ll discuss) but my memories of her would be chummier if I hadn’t been pressed up against the window, as though I were in a Sir-Mix-a-Lot video, for the duration of our relationship.

At the OKC Greyhound depot, we were instructed to get off the bus and receive our luggage inside. The bus was continuing on to Dallas, however, and I wanted to make sure I got my luggage, so I watched them take each piece out from the bus’s underneath storage to make sure mine was among them. It wasn’t, and I went in to see if maybe they’d moved it inside before I noticed. They hadn’t. ”Nope, there was no red backpack under there,” they told me, and said that it must have been mixed up and put on another bus back in St. Louis. I was distressed, but maybe I was just too tired to panic. I was just so used to Greyhound’s carelessness after two days of misdirection and schedule bungling that before doing anything else, I went outside and told them to hold the bus and open up the storage underneath. My pack was there, of course.

Feeling quite relieved, I went off to look for the McDonald’s a Greyhound employee had told me had wireless. By that time, 6:45 or so, the sun was coming up and, as there were almost no tall buildings as far as I could see, the sky was as vast and uninterrupted as an ocean, and seemed directly overhead, dappled with sparse, swiftly-moving clouds.

Looking up at it, my first though was, “Wow, this is why they call it the Big Sky state.” But then I remembered that Montana was the Big Sky state; Oklahoma is the Oklahoman state. And then it occurred to me then that I hadn’t the foggiest fucking clue what, if anything, distinguished Oklahoma from Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska (mostly distinguishable by At Close Range, where Sean Penn and Christopher Walken play Cornhusker gangsters,) and Kansas. And hell, let’s add Tennessee and Indiana, for that matter. I’m not saying there isn’t a unique Oklahoman culture (though I admit I’m skeptical,) I just don’t know what it is.

And neither, it seemed, do they. One of the more excellent guys I met in Oklahoma, Mike, answered the question, “nothing, really,” except the significant iron content in the soil and, more significantly, the Oklahoma City bombing. According to him, and some other folks I spoke with, the bombing brought the city together and (my words) gave them a sense of unique identity. It sounds legit. Some 15,000,000 people of myriad disparate cultures in New York City seemed to achieve that kind of unity for a few months, after 9/11, and there are like 3,000 people in all of Oklahoma, so I can see their unity lasting indefinitely.

If the Oklahoma City bombing helped to unify them, their identity seems largely tied to football, both collegiate (OSU and OU) and high school. They are utterly fucking fanatical about football; it’s their lives from Friday (high school) through Monday Night Football. Mike said Oklahomans basically get work done between Tuesday and Thursday. If the Thunder can tap into that fanaticism just a little bit, they have every opportunity to be an extremely successful franchise.

That’s key to the Thunder’s prospects, I think. They don’t really compete with football for Oklahomans’ sports consciousness. In fact, basketball is perfectly positioned for success in Oklahoma, because right after the college and high school football season, Oklahomans are searching for something to fill the gap, and the Thunder have a chance to be their methadone.

******

The only other thing I know about Oklahoma is that the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the raaaiiiiin. I hate musicals, but when I was in elementary school, our high school staged a fairly competent performance of Oklahoma. I was skeptical, but I heard there was a fight scene in it, so I just waited impatiently through the beautiful morning, beautiful day, and beautiful feeling, for the blood to fly. There was no blood (this wasn’t quite a Rushmore-level production,) but the bad guy took a knife in the chest at the end, and that was enough to make me happy. Mom’s school (she was a teacher) also did Oklahoma that year and while it wasn’t as good as my school’s performance, the sweet, sweet poetry of the screenplay (“We know we belong to the land! And the land we belong to is grand!”) and the fight scene, made it work for me.

*******

I’ll go ahead and add one more thing to my initial take on Oklahoma city. I remember reading an article about Hakeem Olajuwon years and years ago, about the house he was building for himself. It was expansive and majestic, but only one story, after the Islamic ideal. Well, I thought about that, looking out over the city. It’s vast—the second or third largest city in the country, geographically—but apart from their business district, the city’s buildings keep low to the ground. It just seems ironic to me that the very brass buckle of the Bible Belt sits long and flat on flat land, in accordance with the Islamic ideal.

I spoke with a Thunder fan yesterday, a librarian at the downtown library, and he said that the excitement of having a new team in the city was contrasted with a shame they felt with the way Clay Bennett swiped the team from Seattle. Indeed, more than half the fans I’ve talked to here speak apologetically about the Thunder’s arrival. Also, the Thunder are here replacing a New Orleans team that had very quickly become OKC’s, when they came from New Orleans, after Katrina. In two seasons, they bonded with the team and watched Chris Paul become a star, and then the Hornets were gone, back to NO, and after an empty season, the Thunder arrived as the new puppy-replacements. I think it will take a while before NBA basketball gets real cultural attraction here. For now, the people seem to be perfectly happy cheering on the Sooners. Anyway, I’ll see if I feel differently after tonight’s game and some time with fans. If I can find a place to stay and one to which I can return on foot after the game, that would be just dandy, I can go get a beer or a club soda (motel ate two month’s beer/liquor budget) at Toby Keith’s bar and chill with some local fans. Yes, Toby Keith has a bar here. Hopefully, they’ll let me in with my NYC ID.

Of course I also need to find a place to stay tonight. That’s been a significant issue since I arrived. I didn’t contact people at couchsurfing.com for hosting until I got here, which has proven to be a real mistake. I suppose I took it for granted that I could find hosting very quickly. Well, also, I’d planned to write two or three days in advance, on Greyhound, but unfortunately, Greyhound did not provide the promised wireless internet access, so now I’m scrambling for a places to stay and went quite over budget by staying in motels two of the first three days here. Even the cheapest single motel in all of Oklahoma City (no hostels that I could find) is about 5 times what I can afford for a place to sleep.

Last night I stayed with Jodie, a couchsurfer, and a very gracious host, who cooked chili for us for dinner and let me use her washer and drier. When I know where I’ll be spending the night, I can fully focus on basketball, but shelter is always going to be my first priority, and I’ve spent so much time looking for it, since I got to OKC, that I haven’t spent as much time talking to bball fans as I’d like, and may have to circle back in a few weeks/months to learn what I want to learn. That wouldn’t be so tragic though; it’s the Thunder’s first year and comparing a young town in a new city at the beginning of the season and the end of the season would be a good thing.

I was first in line when the gates opened, excited as can be, and asked for the very best $10 seat in the house.  Apparently that’s in section 318.