That morning, I gave the taxi driver the best tip I have ever given to a taxi driver. It was the least I owed him for getting me further from that parody of a relationship.
I stood on the kerbside of an Austin suburbia, with an address scribbled on a piece of notepad paper. I was staying within a rather artistic area, it seemed. Having no solid understanding of how American streets were arranged, I started wandering around the matrix of plots.
The houses were overgrown with creepers. Raised porches fronted with fences were enveloped with plant life. A sort of deserted beauty. These may not have been designed to be integral with the greenery around them, but it didn’t seem like they put up much of a fight. After much admiration of the dilapidated and tired grace of these homes, I struck gold and found the street, within walking distance of Congress Avenue I later found.
I knocked on the door. I had no idea who was going to answer, at this point, I’d just like to make that clear. I was meeting a friend of a friend who would be putting me up for a short while. The connection was a photographer, who I had built a rapport with but never met, of Mexican origin, but lived near the West Coast.
This third party was a woman named Jan. On closer inspection, she was a spitting image of Tracey Emin. Although I was undecided on Emin’s approach and message, the faintly British link was much appreciated.
Thankfully, she lived alone, as it was just her who was to answer the door. Her cat was not nearly interested enough to greet me. Welcomed in, wielding suitcase and much insecurity about my near future, I entered her front room and took off my sunglasses, that I cherished. Their sentimental value cast a great shadow over their physical value. In fact, any amount of sentiment would.
“Just leave your things in the room on your right.”
I did exactly that. “Well, this is my humble abode” she sighed with relief. Presumably relief that I wasn’t outwardly or obviously crazy. Aside from her desk being a bit messy, where you couldn’t see the veneer surface for the balls of scrunched paper, I wouldn’t have described it as humble, in the kindest sense.
The place was fairly post-modern. She managed two large flat screen televisions in the living room, which must have been shoehorned into the building. On her walls were framed canvasses that had been erratically and unreservedly, but meticulously, covered with splashes and dribbles of paint, with varying colour schemes and depths. A style known as something relating to Expressionism, but I knew I wouldn’t get without researching it.
“So I hear you’re trying to get away from a bad wedding?” Jan asked
“Quite right” I informed, “in fact I don’t think I’ll ever work out why it’s happening. Or what my dad sees in the woman.”
Jan offered a cigarette. I turned it down after last time.
“Watch out, you might end up sounding like an angst-ridden teenager, caught up in a web of confusion and feelings of betrayal.”
“Betrayal?” I didn’t see how betrayal fitted in.
“By your dad, for not choosing a woman you like, rather than one he likes.”
“Wouldn’t you though? In fact I think most would in this situation. Anyway, it’s more about choosing a woman who didn’t despise me.” Thank you for your insight though, Freud.
“In what sense?”
In every freaking sense.
“In the sense she isn’t outwardly a cow. Just a bit of an old battle-axe. Sorry I don’t mean to be grouchy. This isn’t me. It’s just not a cool topic.”
“I see.”
Jan left it at that. I think she realised interrogating someone she had only just met about the relationship they have with their future step-mother wasn’t a fast-track to friendship.
“My bad”.
Yes your bad. “Get your stuff sorted, yeah? How are you feeling?”
“A tad tired. I’ve spent more time in the air than not the last couple of days.”
“Alright, this evening we’ll just go out for a drink. I found this pretty awesome bar with my brother and sister-in-law not long ago. Moon something something or… something shine. They’re linked somehow. Anyway, tomorrow we’ll hit the town, I’ll show you around. I love this city so much, and I’m sure you will too.”
I got changed. Texas is pretty warm. Although, in all fairness, the air was cooler in Austin. It had that feeling of “it’s going to rain any minute.” Whether or not it did, I can’t remember.
I hung around in the living room for the rest of the day. I was a bit nervous about missing the wedding, but Alison knew I wasn’t going to be there. She expected as much anyway I didn’t need to tell her. With that said, I watched American day time television instead. Boy, that stuff sucks. As casual as I thought I was, Jan dorned a knee length coat, patchwork and fur-lined. I got on my leather flight jacket. We stepped out to Jan’s modest sized SUV. We got in and she switched to an independent rock station. We listened to some fairly well known bands, but none you’d hear on a British radio. It was so weird, but somehow adorable.
“I hear pianoes forever, like a scar.
My beloved daughter would sing whilst I played,
when we entertained.
Taken so young, her loss is a crippling tragedy.
My only consolation is that she is now an asset within the pearly gates.”
-
“If only I had stopped that cursed woman.
The alchemist would never have gotten involved.
That damned alchemist!
I never trusted a single one, with anything.”
-
“He got lost in the garden of his decency
the other day.
It is truly overgrown,
as he does not tend to it as often as he ought.”
Sitting in the hotel lobby, I took a matchbook, courtesy of the Hotel, from my inside jacket pocket. I lit up a cigarette and put on a pair of black plastic sunglasses I bought in India, during my last excursion. Cheap knock-offs of a major brand, no doubt.
I turned and looked around to see if anyone noticed how ridiculous I appeared. Knowing full well smoking didn’t suit me, I tutted at myself and promptly stubbed it out. I always thought smoking was a mug’s game. The weather was typical. The sun was relaxing, the air was warm and balmy. It was nearing six and it felt like midday, but I loved this part of the world. Those who slate the States and its ‘lack of culture’ have generally never visited.
The Texan fey of rocky landscapes, retired, conservative cowboys and incredibly generous portions encroached on my preconceptions. This wasn’t the first time I had been here, but it was only the second.
I waited at a Doubletree for the night. My flight from the George Bush Intercontinental Airport to San Antonio was rescheduled for the next day. After admiring the vivid sky, American sunsets are so much more impressive, I went to my room for a quick rest. The rooms were good, high quality but nothing elite, I’m only here for one night.
The day passed and I got a taxi to the airport. Terminal D, gate 9, my passage to a new experience. After spending an hour or two reading last month’s copy of The Economist (slightly tatty and of course out of date, but interesting all the same), I was called up, my seating group was next.
The aircraft was modest compared to the one I took over the Atlantic, naturally. I ordered just a coke. This small craft would feel the turbulence and I wasn’t up to motion sickness combined with alcohol, certainly not at ten in the morning. The flight was over in an hour and a half, and when I got out of the departure lounge, that repulsive woman was there waiting for me. The look on her face was one I could always rely on to be forlorn. She was sick with it.
I wouldn’t expect her any other way.
“Is that all you packed?” she was always fairly cynical. And monotonous.
“I prefer to travel light” I replied. It was the best excuse I could give. The fact is my suitcase had little in it and I didn’t have a reason. Maybe I was just poor at packing.
I got in her monstrosity of a vehicle and she drove me to another hotel. It had nothing on the Doubletree. This is where I’d be staying at for the night.
“Don’t you dare do anything unplanned. Your father has been waiting for this and only recovered in time to get the flight here. I will not let this wedding slip at all. It will happen and it will go on without a hitch.”
“What do you take me for?” I smiled. My use of rhetoric saved her asking further. This saved me having to tell her anything.
I didn’t like the woman. At all. We got to the hotel and she said she was getting someone to pick me up at nine the next morning.
Just as well my flight to Austin was at seven. I was meeting someone there and I sure as hell wasn’t going to watch my dad marry that beast who drives a four by four like her kids went to school in The Outback.
“Trying to engage a sense of urgency,
I find myself creating an artifice
rather than enjoying a well earnt rest…”
-
“I have no worry. But why should I?
Avoiding a discourse into the existence of the future, may I just remember with you,
there’s no point crying over an upright glass
which,
as far as I can see,
is pleasantly still very much full of milk.”
-
“I should have let myself go long ago!
For now I fear I will be weary in the morning.”
