...The story of three people,
only one week and one car.
I apologize for the lateness in this story's completion. I don't know how long it's been since i first wrote it, but i know it's been quite some time. but now I'm here to finish the job.
It was one night in early January. Doug called me from cali with in idea. He was planning on moving back to Massachusetts. This was great news! But then he came up with an even better idea. instread of flying back to Massachusetts, he was going to save some money and drive back, with stops at Las Vegas and Bourbon Street. And, even better, he planned on having me come along too. I was going to fly out there, spend some time on the west coast, and hop in the car with him and drive back with him across the country via Vegas and Bourbon Street. It was a great idea. it'd been awhile since i'd had a great vacation, and this was going to be it. Hitting a party town of a million lights like vegas and then hitting bourbon street was going to be the greatest trip of my life.
The idea of going to see Doug in Cali was one I'd always wanted to do. But, due to a constant shortage of funding, i was never really able to pull it off. That is, until last April. Thanks to the good folks at the IRS giving me a substanial tax return, as well as a hefty bonus check from work, i was able to pull the right finanical resources togetherr to take a week off in the end of April. The plan me and Doug had discussed was me flying out to San Diego and staying there for a night or two be fore him and I packed up his car and started a cross country trek back to Worcester, Ma. via Las Vegas and New Orleans. At the time we saw it as more of a week long party and not a rather tedious expedition. As the time got closer, i began to talk on the phone more with a mutual friend of ours, Jen. The more she heard about the trip, the more she wanted to go. long story short, she ended up going.
On an early, cool, drizzly Sunday morning, after deing driven to Logan Airport by my sister and her family, i boarded the plane and headed west. After landing in LAX and gettting picked up by Doug and Jen, I got my first taste of life on the west coast. We left Los Angeles as soon as i retrieved my baggeage, at the request of Doug, who claimed the city really reaked as though all the septic systems and sewers had somehow clogged up and overflown. "Ahhhh.....Welcome to Cali."
After a two hour drive back to Doug and Jared (doug's friend,coworker, and roommate)As we drove up to the front odf his apartment, the street was covered in a vast amount of shards of glass. My first thought was "maybe there was an accident." Nope, just Doug and his Jared getting drunk and having a good time smashing there old drinking glasses on the street.
After a brief and enjoyable stint in San Diego which included a dip in the Pacific Ocean, we loaded up the car and headed east,...Next stop, Las Ve----BARSTOW??
Now entering: BARSTOW
Well, things don't always go as planned. As it turns out, one of Jen's friends was supposed to meet us in Cali for a day or two. But, being in the army, he couldn't get his leave. This posed as a problem. Jen wanted to see her friend, and the friend wanted to likewise see Jen. Problem. We were on our way to Las Vegas, Sin City, and Barstow was NOT on our way. Barstow is nothing more than a truck sotp the size of a town. A final, dismal, redneck trucker oasis before heading of into the dessert once again.. But, we ended up going anyway. The visit wasn't going to be for long, though. As it was we were three hours behind schedule due to Cali traffic. Seeing that it was 8:30 in the evening and we were still a few hours away from Vegas, Jen knew we wanted to be out of Barstow by nine the latest. After a tense fifteen minute wait, her friend showed up. Upon her friend's request, they got in her friend's car and left me and Doug sitting in his car in a Denny's parking lot in the middle of God-Foresaken Barstow. Not quite what I'd expected out of the vacation.....
We waited another twenty minutes before Jen and her friend returned. Doug was heated as it was, and the trip to vegas was mostly in silence. By silence, i mean, no talking. other wise, the raido was blasting my ears with techno. Now, the Important thing to understand about doug's car, a Toyota Corolla, was that most of the trunk was used to house one big ass speaker, This speaker was what doug used to crank the music through. Through some oddity of science, whilest sitting in the cramped back seat loaded with everyone's stuff, the music was twice as loud. To the persons sitting in the front seat, the steroeo doesn't sound that loud at all. Doug's choice in music was mostly techno, house, hard house, trance, Paul Oakenfold and the like. So there i was, riding trhough the desert at night with a large, window shaking, techno-bass blasting speaker inches behind me on our way to vegas. That was one of the only sounds the whole ride from Barstow down to Vegas.
We Finally pulled into Vegas at around half past midnight. it's incredible pulling in for the first time ever. even if it is in the middle of the night. We made our way to the stratosphere. If you are not familiar with it, you can see it in most movies when they do an arial shot of vegas. It's the tall-ass tower with the red trimmed light on the top.
After checkingin and bringing our bags up to our room we quickly get changed and cleaned up for a night in Sin City, We ended up at The Palms at around two in the morning where we hit the slots. I hit for about five bucks on my third spin. That was not a good thing. That was my first official bite from the gambling bug. and i gotta say it was a big one. I even started playing five machines at once! mostly just for the fun of it, and partly because I wanted to win more money. We gambled like this for the better part of the night into the crack of dawn. I was hooked on the slots. I just kept hoping i would win a shitload of money. It never happened.
I also was disillusioned with vegas on a hole. Though it was awesome pulling in, it waswn't the endless sea of lights i'd imagined. Also, in all the movies, you see nothing but people dressed up in nice clothes, and it's always packed and such. It looks so fucking fancy on tv. But when you get there, it's nothing like that. The people in the casinos aren't dressed up. there's no dressing up there. you see the same people in a casiono as you do in a walmart or a grocery store. And they're even dressed the same. And it's mostly empty at night. And you don't win on slots. You just get back some of the money you've already lost, which you'll probably use to try to win more money with on slot machines.
Now as a tourist spot, Vegas is great. there is so much to see and do. There is one image from vegas i will never forget. We were going from casino to casino when we came to New York, New York. The whole concept was that it was just like New York, New York. the casino was built to look like the classic New York skyline. But in front of the casino was a scale model replica of the Statue Of Liberty. We went in APril of 2002, seven months or so after the 9/11 attacks. BUt there, on the gate surrounding the Statue Of Liberty, were T shirts and cards from various fire stations from around the world covering (literally covering every inch) the gated fence around the staue. It was a great tribute to those lost, and i know it's something I'll never forget. And, though I've not been to vegas in three years, I would like to think most of those t Shirts are still there, with more getting added as we speak.
We continuted touring the cainos, looking at the different sites of the city and taking quick tours of the "gimmicky" casinos. It was fun to see the sights, but i just wanted to gamble. And Gamble I did. In the end i think i lost almost seven hundred dollars thanks to slot machines. Those drity, one-armed bandits. (Yes, they are drity, due to the fact that after dealing with countless quarters from countless other people my hand had turned black. that's gross.) That wasn't much, but it was most of what i had saved up for the trip. I left Vegas with close to two hundred dollars out of close to a thousand dollars. Doug had lost a bit of money himsself at the balckjack table, and I'm not sure what Jen had lost.
Next stop: Armarillo Texas??!!
Now came the long stretch of our trip. Doug felt we could make the trek from vegas to New orleans in one striaght run with the driving split between himself and jen. Not quite. Doug, to his credit, drove most of the wasy from Vegas, but after ten hours of driving, he'd had enough. Plus, most of the trip was back through more of the desert wasteland. Now again, through this stretch of the trip I'm in the back seat betting every bone in my body vibrated by the trance/techno. The only escape from the music for me was to emmerce myself in thoughts of Tracy, who I had been talking to and seeing a lot more of. Long story short, it gets to be three in the morning, we're in the middle of Texas somewhere and doug has been driving for over 15 hours with only an hour (give or take) break in between. we're at a gas station, me and Jen and noticed he's looking really out of it. You may have heard of white line fever, but he looked borderline crazy when he got out of the car to pump the gas. Needless to say we decided it would be best to bed down for the night in someplace called Armarillo Texas (Another town which is nothing more than a truck stop) and make the stretch to New Orleans in the morning. we got a few hours of much needed sleep before heading back on the road.
NEXT STOP: NAWLEANS! AWWHH YEAH!
it was another 12 hours before we pulled into New Orleans. And, thanks to Mapquest, it was another hour or so of driving around the bad neighborhoods of New Orleans before we got to our 5 star hotel Le Pavillion. What a place! This was what all hotels and motels should be more like. To actually want to sleep in a bed like thiers was a welcomed treat. It sure as hell beat the stone slabs of the casino beds, which were just as comfy as the motel trck stop beds in between. Not to mention a huge bathroom with walk in shower and everything. It was a place you could spoil yourself in very easily. But we didn't. as it was we were more than a day behind schedule, and it was time to check the bags, freshen up., and go out to party. It had to be one in the morning. We headed out the door. Doug asked the frist person he saw (who looked rather partied out himself) where was a good spot to go and praty. The man got excited and told us to go to the end of the block, take a right, and two blocks down on the left was Bourbon Street. all the party we could ever need. and then some. I couldn't believe it. We were just a few blocks away from the biggest party of all time. Doug had also booked and planned for us to be in New Orleans during Jazz fest, which added to the anticipation for me.
After only five or ten minutes of walking, we got to Bourbon Street. It was lined with bars and clubs on both sides It was as wide as a two lane highway, and seemed closed off to traffic. It was also crowded with trash and filth and waht i like to call "Mystery Liquid".That was one thing I'll never get out of my head. What the fuck was this liquid? you knew it wasn't rainwater, all the other streets were dry as bone. you knew it was too much to be just spilt beer, it would've taken several kegs to have spilt for it to be that wet. Not that some of it wasn't beer, I'm sure it was. But what was the rest of it? water from somewhere? vommit? *gulp* URINE? The streets were covered with empty cups an empty beer bottles EVERYWHERE. Not even 8A got this bad, and 8A got bad with empties. (we once did a bottle return that totaled about 100 dollars. Having made the bad choice of wearing sandals out, i had to watch my step veeeery carefully. Trash cans overlfowed to the point where they were buried in trash themselves. The big Easy was reallly the Big Sleazy.
We ended up parying there for about four to five hours and headed back to the hotel. when we got back, we were so keyed up and very drunk. it was around 7 30 or so in the morning, and we'd even raided our more than well stocked mini bar. I'd called home to check in with my sister and let her know everytthing was going ok. hse couldn't believe how drunk i was at eight in the morning. But by now we were getting hungry for real food. Instead of going for room service, i had this idea (i don't know why) that a place like this would have a free buffet. I was wrong. We headed downstairs, Jen wearing nothing but sleepwear like a tank top and boxer bottoms with "Perfect 10" across the ass. We headed to the 5 star hotel resteraunt, and ended up sitting down for a morning breakfast, drunk off our asses. I honestly felt ashamed, but they acted like they didn't notice. I'm sure they've seen worse.
After that, we headed back upstairs for some more sleep. when we awoke, we went back out to bourbon street and enjoyed a day on bourbon street. That is, until we ran into some on artists. The problem with this is you don't even know you're in sometiing uyntil it's too late. they rushed up to us, and said something stupid to us to get our attention. next thing we know, they've sprayed shit on our shoes and are wiping them. or just the tips of them. it happens so fast you don't have time to react. then they tell you you owe them 20 bucks for the shoe shine. that's when you protest and they get in your face and hound you down the road in the middle of everyone. They start getting very threatening and you end up paying them the money just to get rid of them and not get shot or something. New Orleans, at the time, was the murder captial of the world at that time as well, so you don't want to take the chance. That got me fuming. I hate feeling that i was vunerable like that. I t made me feel like i had a sign on my forehead that read "Easy Mark". I was fuming for quite awhile after that. But after an hour or so, i decided to mellow out and have a good fucking time. THIS WAS MY VACATION! THIS WAS BOURBON STREET DURING JAZZ FEST! THIS WAS THE PARTY CAPITAL OF THE EAST COAST!
So i proceeded to get drunk and have a fucking blast. we walked all around and saw the sights, took a horse drawn tour, drank hurrianes with everclear from the bar the invented the damn drink, i went to "the house of the rising sun" and got my picture taken in front of the palce with a dumb, drunk-ass grin on my face. we went to some kick ass clubs and drank so much beer. we even got a bunch of souveniers, including a black and white poster i'd gotten from the house of voodoo.. this was a purchase that took me a half hour of browsing to decide upon. Jen had gotten some shot glasses and we all got the cups fromt he oldest bar on New Orleans, the birthplace of the Hurricane. by now it was the vening, and we'd all been drinking for several hours. we decided to get some dinner at a place on bourbon street where i'd gottne fried gator. Tasted just like chicken.
I was having a BLAAAST. I was hammered out of my mind, having a recklessly great time. little did i know what was to come. After eating we went to a few more bars before heading to a strip club. Jen didn't mind. We stayed there for a bit and had some more drinks before heading to another bar. Now, when you go from bar to bar, you usually keep your ID seperate from your wallet since you have to take it out constantly to get into places. We were in this bar and I was going to buy the next round for everyone. So I reach for my wallet...
Hmmm...not in the pocket I usually keep it. I check the other. NOPE. I start to panic. Not in my back pockets. I REAALLY PANIC. I check our bag of souveniers. NOT THERE! MY GOD! I DON'T HAVE MY WALLET! EVERYTHING WAS IN THAT. MY ATM CARD, SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, MEDICAL CARDS, EVERYTHING EXCEPT MY OLD ID CARD WHICH I'D KEPT OUT OF THE WALLET FOR THE BOUNCERS. MOST IMPORTANTLY TO ME, AN ORIGINAL, WALLET SIZED PRINT OF MY FATEHR'S SENIOR PICTURE WHICH HE'D HAD AND KEPT IN PRISTINE CONDITION FOR CLOSE TO FORTY YEARS, AND SOMETHING I'D GOTTEN ONLY A WEEK PRIOR TO MY TRIP.
We scoured the area looking for the wallet. We even backtracked to the previous bars. No Luck. it was gone. Possibly and presumed stolen. my stomach was tying itself into knots. I felt miserable. Really miserable. I will say this now, and i don't care who reads it. Everything, at that moment, from the past week, being overtired from sleep on stone slabs for beds, including losing almost all my money in vegas, to riding in the back seat of doug's cramped Corolla for fifteen hour days, to getting duped by con men. And that past month, having to go through my dad's one year anniversary to having to go back to wal mart for work to not knowing where i stood with Tracy to fooling myself that it was okay for me to have a good, carefree time.
So, in that instant of realizing that my wallet and the picture of my dad was gone for good, and feeling i was the one thing i hated most, a genuine, stupid, fucking idiot, it all crashed down on me. I will say this with no shame. I broke down. Yeah, Mr. 8A, Mister big beer drinker, the party man, i cried uncontrolably. Doug i know was very uncomfortable, but I don't expect for him to understand my mind set then and there. Jen tried to cheer me up. She said she was sorry for me losing my wallet but at least i had the souveniers.
I looked up with a shocked look on my face. HOLY SHIT!!!!! In all the comotion of losing my wallet, I'd actaully placed the bag with all our souveniers from New Orleans somewhere and now they're gone too! This is when Jen turned from sympathic to angry. She shouted at me for losing them and that only made me feel worse. (TIP TO READER: IF SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS HAVING A COMPLETE EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN INDUCED BY TRAMATIC LOSS DO NOT, REPEAT DO NOT SHOUT AT THEM MORE, IT DOESN"T HELP ANY. IN FACT, IT MAKES THINGS WORSE.)
So there i was, sobbing like a bastard, I couldn't help it any. I felt like shit. I couldn't get over it. any of it. I felt like crap and continued to feel like crap the whole rest of the night, which lasted another four hours. For me it was hell. I just wanted to head back to the hotel. I'm sure it brought doug and Jen down some but i was having a fucking breakdown for fuck's sake! Jen Tried to cheer me up but it was more than just my missing wallet that had me upset. It was a lot of things culmanated from the past year. "The Year Of Hell" as i call it. i was a wreck. I wanted to disappear right then and there. become invisible or something. I'll even admit this for the first time ever, I even thought of just up and disappearing forever. No, not by killing myself, by getting back to the motel and gathering my shit and just disappearing. I dunno, i had no money on me. All the mony i had left, 70 bucks even, was now gone. But i did still have a Valid ID. All I would have to do was somehow find a fleet bank and access whatever I had in my bank accout and bingo, i could fall off the face of the earth and only resurface when i needed to access m account for some money. Maybe i would make my way back up someday,.........well, these were the thoughts running through my head at the time, and yes, they were wrong. But under the circumstances, and under the influence, they sounded like a good idea. Only problem was, I didn't have a key to the room. I knew if I asked, Doug and Jen probably wouldn't have given me the key. At least, looking back on it, i hope they wouldn't.
We staggered back to the hotel. I was still depressed. i'd soberd up hours earlier, but that didn't stop the nightmare in my mind. Plus, in my absence of thought, I accidently stepped in a huge puddle of the mystery liquid. What a fitting ending to what started off as one of the greatest memories for me but ended up being a real shitty night. i stumbled my way back to the hotel and fell right on the bed and stared out the window until i fell asleep. I woke up and the nightmare was still real. not cool. Jen asked if i was feeling any better. I told her no. She started to get on my case, but she was quiet when i told her about the photo of my father that i'd lost and what it'd meant to me. I don't think either of them understood my mind set , but what the hell? That day we headed up the east coast and headed home.
NEXT STOP: MASSACH--- SOUTH CAROLINA....?????!
umm. shouldn't it be Worcester?
And yes it should have. Hovever, the driving was a lot longer than we'd anticipated. For example, we were supposed to be in New Orleans for three nights, not two. The night in Amarillo slowed us down a bit. But we figured one solid push up the east coast would solve the problem and we'd be back home in one day. Not quite. I don't think we made it out of South Carolina after heading out at around 12 in the afternoon. we ende3d up at another bed of stone hotel for the night. I was due back in work the next day, too. not that i cared. i ended up calling in from a truck stop. I called my jackass, dickhead, coke fiend boss and said I wouldn't be in today. He asked why, and I told him the truth. we were two days behind schedule, and I was in South Carolina. i don't know if he bought it, but fuck him. he was a prick anyway. we ended up driving all the next day, and, at around three in the morning, a more than a day and a half later, I was finally home. Not that i felt any better about anything, but what the hell. At least i still had my keys to get in to good ol' 8A and my own soft bed and collapse. I WAS FINALLY HOME!
Now, I know what you might be asking, "Would I do it all again? Well, let me just say this.... FUCK NO! what are you nuts?! Did you not read this story??? the money lost in vegas, the 12-17 hours in the backseat of doug's Corolla with a big fucking speaker blasting techno/trance music all the time? the Mystery Liquid on Bourbon Street? what the fuck are YOU thinking?!!!!!
Note: It was two weeks later when i got a call from my sister.
"Hello?"
"You fucking idiot!" (yep, she had me dead to rights there)
"what?" ( i played dumb)
"WHY DIDN"T YOU TELL ME YOU LOST YOUR WALLET?!"
at this point I'm speechless. How did SHE know....?!
"ummmmmm..."
"I got a call from someone in New Orleans. they have your wallet." They tracked me down through my sister's barbar shop. I had her business card in my wallet. They'd asked if she was related to a Michael Bello. (God bless you ancient identification card tor the Massachusetts Commonwealth For The Blind!) She said yes and they'd told her I'd lost my wallet and they had it. they'd asked her for my address and had mailed it back to me. This was on May 14th, 2002, the same day Tracy and I had become a couple. At that point I'm glad i didn't run away from shit on Bourbon Street. Let this ba a testimonial. When the shit hits the fan, stay strong and stay in the game, coz your luck might just change in the blink of an eye.
p.s. The wallet came back complete with cash, and everything except that photo of my dad. But, i would like to think that, being the fan of jazz that he was, it's only fitting that picture is floating around somewhere in one of the greatest jazz cities of the entire world...NAWLEANS!
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HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN
(note the puddle of liquid on the ground in
front of me, and no, i didn't do it.