I'M AWAKE I SWEAR!!!
Charting wakefulness over time during the first leg of our cross-country move.
My partner, my dog and I recently drove from Chicago to Los Angeles in four days. It was a fast trip, and we didn’t start off as primly as we had aspired.
We ended up staying an extra day after the movers left, running around dropping off donations and cleaning our apartment. We got rid of our mattress, somewhat deliberately painting ourselves into a corner to force ourselves to leave.
The following is an annotated graph of my wakefulness during the first leg of our trip. (Out of an abundance of caution, a content warning is appended to the following footnote.)1
We are strapped in and ready to leave. Symmetry is settled in the back seat, confused why we are all in a vehicle but tolerating the change well. Our road trip audiobook, Ice Planet Barbarians, is queued up. I don’t know anything about the book but it’s supposed to be great. We pull out of our parking spot and hit play.
It’s 3:30. We’re on the Dan Ryan going south, no cars around us. I’m fixated on the book, which opens on an alien slave ship where the heroine is imprisoned after being kidnapped from Earth. The other 22-year-old girls she is held captive with frantically warn her not to scream. A new girl doesn’t obey the rules, and hollers her red-headed French heart out. Temporarily frozen in horror, I hit pause a few seconds too slow as we realize the punishment for screaming is alien gang-rape.
We sit in silence, shocked. I’m more awake now because I’m upset. The audio form makes the discomfort worse, and the words echo around my head. My partner and I discuss how fucking unnecessary this is. I flail at ways to explain my frustration. M makes the much wiser point that the author has established that these aliens understand sexual violence and consent. These aliens understand that unwanted sexual congress is a punishment. It’s something that causes pain. What an utter lack of imagination of other worlds.2
Our car entertainment schedule is in shambles. We boot up a different book, the next in a historical romance series M is reading. Something safe.M is asleep and has been for a while. We’re getting close to our road trip MVP goal city, and I’m really starting to feel tired. I can see the sky turning gray and then light pink. I wake up M to look for a hotel to plug into the GPS.
I trudge into a Best Western and ask for available rooms that can accommodate pets. The attendant pauses from setting up breakfast, and after a quick call to management confirms that they do not allow pets. This is contrary to the ads M sees a million times a day while playing their favorite phone game, where Best Western preens over how dog-friendly they are. (In hindsight, not a reliable source.)
I ask if I can grab a cup of coffee before I leave, and I know how bad I look so it’s unsurprising when the attendant acquiesces. I get back in the car and navigate to the next Best Western after calling to confirm availability.We are in the car. M has returned from the front desk of the second hotel, whose attendant informed us also does not accept pets. Apparently, franchised hotels can set their own rules. We call another hotel in town, specifically ask if they allow dogs, and are relieved when they confirm. We ask if there is any availability, and after a pause the attendant apologizes and says they are all booked.
I laugh maniacally. M looks concerned. The coffee has kicked in. There are no other hotels in town, so we decide to drive the extra hour to Springfield, Illinois. I misapply a Bible quote — deny me three times before the rooster crows, Peter! — and we are off yet again, riding high on a temporary caffeine rush.We are at a beautiful rest stop with exhibits dedicated to Route 66. It finally feels like a round trip. We take turns talking Symme in the brisk morning air. We see the sun rise, and I score some Swedish Fish and Cow Tails for the road.
Suddenly, M can’t find their phone. We look all over, and call the receptionist at Denial #2 to ask if a cell phone had been turned in. We don’t know where else it could have gone. It is dead so hot-spotting to try to ping the location isn’t working. After 20 minutes I finally pull it out of the depths of the passenger seat adjustment hardware. We set off again, riding high on adrenaline.The caffeine wore has worn off. M is napping and I am desperately trying to stay awake.3 Remembering California’s drivers education, I blast loud music to sing along to and turn the AC to freezing.
We are 20 minutes away from the confirmed dog-friendly room-available hotel. There is now a motorcyclist in the lane next to me on this stretch of highway where we are all going (legally) very fast. I cannot swerve and kill this biker. Obviously I won’t, but I am irrationally terrified of doing so anyway. I am so alert and aware of where I am on the road compared to just minutes ago. Every one of my neurons is concentrating on where my car is and where the motorcycle is and how long I can go without needing to switch into their lane.
8:00 a.m. I pull into the hotel parking lot, turn off the car and slump down. Utterly exhausted in mind, body and spirit. M has gone to check us in because I can barely unbuckle my seat belt, never mind flex my fingers enough to open a car door.
Five minutes later M returns to the car with room keys and the news that breakfast is served for another hour. The sugar from the Swedish Fish wore off quickly and my lizard brain recognizes the importance of food.
8:45 a.m. Sated, I am ready to sleep. But there is a shower, and it’s been days since I felt (and likely was) actually clean.
Lulled to sleep by warmth and a full belly, the last thing I do before slipping on my eye mask is set my alarm to go off in five hours. Boo-yah, baby.
I love that I thought of this as a graph while we were on the road trip. I love that I drew the chart in Google Keep with my finger. I love that I noticed the hours weren’t spaced perfectly on the axes and didn’t let myself re-do it. I love that I forgot to add in our stop to see the enormous statue of Paul Bunyan holding a hot dog and I told myself it was okay to not capture everything.
All of my newsletters start with a template in order to make it easier to focus my thoughts. I have a spot for takeaways — what I want the reader to carry with them after they close the tab — and for this essay I wrote “I want them to chuckle.”
I hope you are able to smile today. Tell me what prompted it, as a reply or comment. I smiled several times while editing and searching through my photos of the trip.
Take care and as always, thanks for reading.
Jasmine
I mention reading a book with a sexual assault scene, and then relay some of the conversation my partner and I had about it afterword. You can skip item #2 and the second footnote if you do not want to read this.
I found a great review of Ice Planet Barbarians by Alexis Hall that explains more of what happens to the redhead (spoiler: she doesn’t live much longer) and breaks down why this was an unnecessary plot device. The author has since revised the book to remove some of the more…descriptive language around sexual assault, but most of it is still present per this detailed Reddit post.
I very much insisted that I drive this first leg of the trip so that I wouldn’t have the drive the next one! I got to sleep through a good chunk of Missouri.
Well, I certainly chuckled. Quite the beginning for a road trip.