Chasing Sunsets

Chapter 12

2009-01-28T08:33:00.001-08:00

XII.

Outlined against a California backdrop

The Mojave Desert lined each side of the car, as we raced down expanses of land chartered by wagon wheel operators to Charles Manson’s followers and now three hungover travelers. I’m adding about two or three hours to my trip by stopping in L.A. to drop Eric and Marisa off.

When my car first reached the California border, I had mixed emotions. I hadn’t pictured the desert view I was seeing; where were the palm trees? Now my trip was almost complete. I set out for California about two weeks previous, and now I was there. A new start, a new life. I didn’t want my past to be ending though. The future was so open-ended, it scared the shit out of me.

I got the two of them dropped off at their hotel and we said our goodbyes. I don’t know if I ever could thank them enough for the company that they provided on the way. Of all the people in the world to make such a long voyage with, I counted my blessing that I got to do it with two friends that were long overdue for a visit. Regardless of where we end up in this life, I don’t think the trip from Joliet to L.A. will ever be forgotten.

The Massachusetts license plate on my car allowed me to drive ignorantly around Anaheim until I found the freeway, Rt. 5, south to San Diego. I wondered what people around me were thinking when they saw the old Mass plates. Was this person coming out to be a star? Just visiting? What an asshole! Once I found a clear path going south, the butterflies hit me hard. I would be at my new home in less than two hours. I called Brian.

I met Brian Dean the first day we stepped onto campus at the eastern university we both attended. He was hard to miss the first day of orientation in our group of twenty or so incoming freshmen, about 6’3 wild blonde hair, with an ostentatious laugh constantly bellowing from his stomach.

My older brother was also currently a student at the same university a couple years ahead of me. I had the convenience of already knowing a few people from coming up to visit him in the previous couple years, so I was coming into school with an outward brazenness of being a big man on campus, but with an inner sense of fear, knowing I had gone into high school the same way, finding it hard to make friends my own age.

From the onset, it seemed like Brian had already made a number of friends, all consumed with something I was yet to know about. When getting to know everyone in the group, he was always the loudest and most outgoing person. When bragging of my television show I hosted in high school, he was the first to respond. When we finally got a chance to talk one on one, I think we both realized we were going to be fast friends. We engaged in a conversation about college football, something I was passionate about, and something I would find out later is just one of the things he is as enthusiastic about as I am.

We stayed friends throughout college. I guess I can’t even say “friend” because it really wouldn’t do justice to how close we were. We lived next door, across the hall, or in the same apartment all four years of college. We shared the same interests, same work ethic, and same ideals. If one of us wanted to skip class, go out to the bars downtown, or some combination of things that would not exactly benefit our academic integrity, we found it pretty easy to convince the other to do the same. At the same time, we were both dedicated and intelligent enough to be amongst those with the highest GPA’s in our apartment, so we got along, too, by knowing we were the smarter ones of the group. At least that’s how we saw it.

When graduation came in the spring of 2004, it was hard to say goodbye to people that I had grown so close to. Mostly everyone else would be sticking around the east coast, a close enough drive for me to visit with friends. Brian was the only one was going far away, back home to San Diego. We had talked about visits, and jokingly about moving out there to be roommates again.

Eventually I conceded.

The weather and the prospect of the world’s prettiest women provided most of the allure towards southern California. Brian did a good job of sensationalizing his hometown throughout college, and the simple idea of living in an area ripe with palm trees was enough for me to grow an ignorant fascination about San Diego. One of my lifelong rules is that a person can only complain about one type of weather. In New England, or any of the other northern cold states, I would surmise, there are people who complain regardless if the weather is too cold or too hot. I feel this way of living is wrong. Pick the type of weather you like the least and complain about that. If you’re a winter person, then you should have to sign through city hall your weather affiliation. Just like you register with your political party, you must identify with a certain season. For me, I’d be a summer person. Though it gets outrageously humid and unbearable at times in Massachusetts during the summer months, I try my best to follow the rule. In the winter time, however, I have all the right in the world to express my disgust for the falling snow and temperatures, just as I have the right to denounce anything the Democratic Party says. Moving to San Diego, where the average temperature for the year is in the mid-70’s, would be a perfect solution to my winter-hating ways, though I’d still have to tolerate the California liberals.

Pulling into the driveway of Brian’s apartment complex was overwhelming. The rush of emotion was overpowering. In fact, the place was so much like I had imagined it to be that I felt as if I had been there before. The entrance was surrounded by palm trees, which in turn branched off to circle the pool and Jacuzzi area. About 50 yards in, there Brian stood, to the left, standing on his back porch, a place where we would spend countless hours laughing, joking, cussing, and smoking. He hopped over the fence towards my car. My friend with whom I had embraced good bye and good luck to on the other side of the country almost two weeks ago was standing in front of me, outlined against a California backdrop.

Reality had set in. I had been living out of my car, and relief came when I realized I could unpack for good. This wasn’t a vacation. This wasn’t a temporary stay. By arriving on Shoreline Drive in University Town Center, my move to the west coast was complete. Brian showed me around my new home, including the place I was to sleep, which was a pullout couch, but I cared very little about where I was to spend my nights. There were people to meet, and places to see, but switching the arrangement of the verbs in that statement would do it more justice.

When my stuff was unloaded, we hopped in Brian’s car to go have a couple of brews. By Brian’s explanation, I deserved one, and I didn’t disagree with him. We smoked a joint and headed off to a bar where we’d eventually spend incalculable happy hours. My recollection of the night is foggy, not because we were too intoxicated, but because I began ascending the crest of a memorable wave in my life that night. My adventures in California would involve unique serendipity and stress, happy hours and heartache.

Chapter 11

2009-01-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

XI.

“Split them.”

We found ourselves awake pretty early on the next morning, a Friday, and we relocated down the strip a mile or so to Treasure Island. We tied up some loose ends as far as essentials – smokes, a new map because ours flew out the window on the trip down Rt. 15, some deodorant – at a local CVS. We intended to spend our day by the pool at Treasure Island, then heading off to dinner at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant for some “boat drinks” to get the night started.

We did much of the tourist stuff early in the evening. We went to the wax museum and pondered whether or not we could convince people that Marisa actually met Ben Affleck, or more unbelievably Eric and I had met Britney Spears. The three of us squeezed as much activity into one day, including seeing a press conference for the weekend’s boxing match at Caesar’s Palace and getting kicked out of the Tiger cage at the Mirage for smoking cigarettes.

We followed the same strict rules for the second night as we did the first. We did as little gambling as we could unless we were drinking. In Vegas, a gambler can try his luck at the most elementary, but uncontrollable game of “war.” There is no strategy involved besides hoping your six can beat the dealers’ card. It, to me, seemed like a waste of $15 a hand. Regardless, I played.

Again playing blackjack, again playing $25 a hand, Eric and I sat down while Marisa ventured off to recreate the previous nights brilliant plan at the slot machines by the bar.

Eric was a great sport this night because of my luck and his lack thereof. I cleaned house, for an amateur, while he took the brunt of the beating, retreating for his wallet on a few different occasions. I asked him why he’s staying. He’s just losing more every time he brings out another $100 bill.

“Because you’re winning,” he said. “If I leave, it’ll fuck up your luck.”

I was at the $25 a hand table, but my arrogance was getting the best of my winnings, and I upped each bet to $50 each. My best score of the night came when I drew two eights.

“You have to split them,” said the bald Asian guy sitting to my right.

“Yea?”

“Yes, split them.”

I split the eights, meaning I needed to throw another $50 into the fray. When the dealer came back around to hit both of my eights, she threw another eight, which I “should split” says the same guy, so I do. To make the cycle complete, on the next eight, I drew another one.

Now I’m sitting with four eights and $200 in chips in front of me, a crowd now amassing because of the cheers from the helpful and encouraging, yet astonished group at the table. Inhaling a cigarette, I waited for the action to unfold. While I can’t remember exactly what all four hand in front of me ended up being, I do remember that the dealer busted on each hand, putting me up $200 on just those hands alone. The whole table and the surrounding masses applauded, and patted me on the back, and I felt like I had just won the Super Bowl as I thanked each person at the table for talking me through a game I still wasn’t completely familiar with.

When the dealer left the table, I tipped and thanked her, and waited for the next sucker to approach the hot table. After he arrived, I realized the karma at the table changing, and decided to step off the table, a grand total of $375 ahead. I opted to quit gambling while I was up, and offered to buy rounds for the remainder of the night.

Eventually we settled in for the night, as we were scheduled to head out early in the morning for a drive to Los Angeles, where I would drop my friends off in Anaheim at Disney Land, and I would continue my trip down the California coast to San Diego.

People go west for a variety of reasons. In the 1800’s, the expansion of the country was in full-bloom, and was helped invariably by the prospect of gold and riches. The Mormons headed west in exile of their previous homes in Kansas and Illinois, eventually settling in Utah. By the early 1900’s, people were drawn to the west coast because of the potential for land, which, by all account was outrageously picturesque, and the overgrowth of the eastern part of the country was making living much more modern. The “wild west” was an aptly named epithet for an area where the land expanded almost endlessly, and ruthless gunmen ruled the street.

Eventually, people saw the glitz and glamour emerge from Los Angeles, a place, ironically, built based on strict religious principles. Movie stars started to shine brightly, talking of this mythical place where anything can happen, and anyone can be someone. It seemed like a lie, boundless opportunities for stardom, perfect weather year-round, and beautiful people everywhere you look. They started building on the hills and by the beach. You didn’t know what you were missing.

Nowadays, people have the same image of Los Angeles in their head, though people are bound to feel either one way or the other. You’re either turned on, or turned off by the big city, the prospect of bumping into celebrities seen only in movies on a regular basis, and the fast life that accompanies living the stereotype that personifies the City of Angels. In my time spent in southern California, I went to L.A. on a number of occasions. I was awestruck by the size of the city and the famous landmarks. Everyone seems to know one another – or pretends to. “Yea, I’ve seen Leonardo DiCaprio out a bunch of times. He’s friends with my friend.” Everyone is an actress, an agent, a model, a writer. When partying along the Sunset Strip, one tends to sit in the role of a Paris Hilton or other celebrities partying as hard as you can. The rounds of drink accumulate and you don’t mind spending like you’re a millionaire because partying in L.A. is almost taboo, like you’re doing something that only a select few CAN do. And everyone acts like that, which makes the environment the place to be.

In Los Angeles, the people on the big screen are not the only actors in the city. The actors can be the men and women at a bar, dressing up in suits and dresses and in makeup, telling each other lies about what they do for work, or what kind of car they drive, all to end up in one another’s bed, all because this guy is an executive somewhere, or knows an executive and can get you on the way to millions of dollars.

Californians, by nature or by definition, are contradictory people. Though viewed as entrepreneurial and brave, the travelers of the westward march adopted a selfish attitude, marching forward despite illness and death even in their own family; husbands, wives, even to their very young sons and daughters. Upon the death of one, the burial would be immediate so the group could keep west, keep moving on to a life under the golden sun ripe with riches undefined. Nothing like finding the best piece of property to replace a dead child.

Despite the capitalistic ventures, the farmland seen so prosperous and ingenious was built on land so arid that the rest of America, through way of paying their taxes were the ones who funded the “dreamers of the golden dream.” I found this similar to the way that movie stars now make their movies in California, yet they have 49 other states to help put money into their pockets. The travelers, so inexperienced, let taxpayers fund the railroads, the distribution of water to their deserts for irrigation, and their levees to prevent flooding in areas like the San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento River. Their “hard work and fortitude” funded elsewhere, like the girl who “pays her own rent” living on her own with a check from dad every four weeks.

The underlying theme, though, to all of these things is that the city in itself is a pretentious place. Everyone came from somewhere else, to find stardom or to escape in some way, to start anew. I could be counted among those, I guess, who wanted to find something else out there in southern California, whether it was in L.A. or down “The 5” about two hours in San Diego.

We started out of Vegas around 9 a.m. The drive to Los Angeles was only going to take us about five hours, all desert, but I wanted more than anything else to hold on to those last few hours with my friends who I had spent so much time with in the past week. At least I knew what to expect with them. I had no idea what was ahead of me.

Chapter Ten

2008-12-21T08:32:00.001-08:00

Ed's note: No pictures exist from this journey into the heart of the American Dream. It's a good thing, too. Here's chapter ten of Chasing Sunsets, my novel.

Blissful ignorance almost always trumps over-thinking

“…For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood not desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Travel no more than two miles outside of the Las Vegas strip and you’ll believe you’re centuries away from the fun. North Las Vegas is run-down, low income homes, a liquor store on every corner, the dry desert heat smashing the pavement. The extremely poor living just a stones throw away from a place where billions are made every day. Few people see this part of Las Vegas because of the conveniently located airport a few miles from the strip, which doesn’t shuttle taxis past this part of town. The tourists would never know it existed. You won’t find directions to the Thai restaurant on East Washington Avenue on any map you buy on the strip.

We checked into New York, New York and brought our stuff up to the room. We would only be staying there one night, then we would move down the road to Treasure Island.

After sitting down for a relaxing dinner, we headed back into the room to shower and change, something the entire city of Las Vegas should have thanked us for. The air conditioner was used rarely on the drive during the day, so we essentially let the hot air into the car all day long. Combined with other stenches, we probably didn’t smell as good as we wished. While Marisa took her shower and did the essential “girl” stuff, Eric and I ventured down to the lobby for a drink.

The things people can get away with in Vegas blew my mind. The best words to describe the extent of the trouble a person can get into is that Las Vegas is a place where you can drink outside and smoke inside. A drink bought at one casino can be brought onto the street and into another. ID’s are checked as often as you see clocks, which is never. Flyers advertising “late-night visitors” to hotel rooms were passed out openly on the street, and I figured that the $49 an hour for “La-La” would probably end up with me getting way more than that in medical bills for an itchy dick. So, while the girl on the flyer looked like a tempting late night phone call, it’s best that we didn’t take any of these things too seriously.

After we all had cleaned up, we spent a good time wandering the streets and having drinks at each casino within a reasonable walking distance. Limos raced passed us, groups of girls – probably lawyers, teachers, and bankers in their other lives – screamed as they were hollered at by cars of guys trying their best to present themselves as high rollers. The real high rollers flaunt it very subtly.

Eric’s rule was that no gambling would go on unless we were suitably intoxicated. The idea, on the exterior, sounds like a terrible one. In essence, it suggests that you should risk winning or losing a large sum of money while unable to think logically or coherently. However, having a few drinks before sitting down at a table involves the logic of trusting your initial instincts. There would be very little second guessing. Trusting Eric based on his call to stop in Denver, we sat down at the MGM Mirage for a round of blackjack once we had sufficient drinks. Once we sat down, we would be getting free drinks anyway.

I’ve always been a recreational gambler. This started with my father bringing home “football cards” for me to play since I garnered the ability to read and understand football. Once those two things came into play, I was filling out cards, betting on spreads, and being all the more immersed in who was winning, who was losing, and by how much. The bets were never very big – maybe $5 to win $20 – but I won despite the fact my picks were based solely on the big name teams. When I started getting older and what I thought to be wiser, I started to up my bets, sometimes looking too deeply into the games and I began to lose more than I won. The truth of the matter is blissful ignorance almost always trumps over-thinking.

Now, I’ll bet on anything. Again, since I was very young I have been filling out an NCAA March Madness bracket. I’ve succeeded on numerous occasions in that arena, winning the entire pool a couple times in the past five years. I can make educated wagers on who’ll score first in the Super Bowl and who’ll win the French Open. I bet mostly on sports, but it is not entirely out of the question for me to bet on politics or whether or not it’s high tide or low tide. I’m beginning to think I have a minor problem.

So naturally, in Las Vegas, though I was inexperienced, I had to sit down at the table and pray for beginner’s luck.

We played at the $25 tables, starting with just $200. This way, we would either be out really early, or keep on for just the right amount of time. We’d play eight hands regardless. Eric and I had comparable luck, up and down, up and down for about an hour while Marisa wandered off to play slot machines. In a stroke of genius, she chose the machine closest to the bar so when the waitresses walked by, she could just pick up drinks right away. She disclosed this plan to us later when she stumbled upon our game smoking Marlboro menthols, a glassy look in her eyes.

Both Eric and I were up about $100, so I took my $200 and put it in my pocket. At least I could leave with what I started with. He was a little more liberal with his spending and let his winnings dwindle. I think he broke even that night. If not, he didn’t lose too much money.

Around 3:00 in the morning, Eric and Marisa were ready to hit the bed. We had been up for a good 20 straight hours. The drinks were starting to kick our asses, but I decided that I’d go for the gold with my remaining $50 or so. As they headed up for the hotel room (we were back at New York, New York at this point), I stopped in for a final couple hands of blackjack. My luck was running out, and I had lost the last few hands at the previous table, so I wanted to try my luck with another dealer.

I propped myself down for a duel with the dealer. There were about four or five other gamblers at the table. For those unaware, swearing at the tables in Vegas is strictly enforced. One strike gets you a warning, but depending on the dealer and the level of the offending word, they could boot someone off the table.

The pit boss was standing around the dealer just watching the action around. The first hand, I remember, I busted taking a chance on a 16 when the dealer had a 19. “Bullshit,” I mumbled to myself, but audibly enough that the pit boss gave me a discouraging “watch your language” look.

I placed my final $25 on the table for the next hand. Two queens, a 20, and a swipe of my hand to say “I’ll stay here, thank you” as the dealer moved around the table. I figured I had just won myself another hand, maybe even another Southern Comfort on the rocks, which I was drinking consistently since I landed a spot at the tables.

The dealer then drew himself a blackjack.

“No fucking way!” I screamed, motioning my hand in the direction of the dealer as if I was throwing a deck of cards directly at him. Realizing what I’d done, which was get myself thrown off the table, I threw my hands in the air as the pit boss politely walked in my direction and lifted his index finger, motioning my removal from the table.

“I’ll leave,” I said begrudgingly. Once I collected myself, I smiled at the pit boss and told him “sorry, I’m just a competitive person. I thought I had him beat.”

“Go to bed,” he responded.

This wasn’t the first time my language had gotten me thrown out of a place. My sophomore year in high school, my relay team was ranked number one of all the freshmen and sophomore teams in the state. Heading into the annual state freshmen-sophomore meet, our team was pretty cocky. Since the relay wasn’t the only event I was entered in, my first race was the 300 meter dash. I ran a pretty good race, in the lead heading into the final stretch in the preliminary heat. As the final ten yards approached, I hit a wall and was subsequently passed at the finish line. Again, the f-word got the best of me as I screamed, “Fuck!” upon crossing the line. I was thrown out of the meet for lack of sportsmanship, and, amazingly, my coach, much like the pit boss in Vegas, didn’t buy the “I’m a competitor” excuse as the relay team couldn’t compete due to lack of a full squad.

I got lost on my way back to the room, but I had two $100 chips in my pocket, which was a moral victory for me. Once I found my way back to the hotel room, Eric and Marisa were out cold. I put my chips on the nightstand, so that I could wake up to the sight of two black chips staring me in the face, reminding me that beginners luck wasn’t a bad thing after all.

Chapter Nine

2008-11-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

IX.

From gray to reddish rust colored

People are liars. We’ve learned this through generations of time. People lie because repercussions of the truth can be far worse than attempting a lie and possibly getting away with it. In this case, the clerk at the desk told Eric, Marisa, and I an extremely brutal lie upon us leaving the hotel.

We woke up as planned around 9:00 am and lingered in to the lobby for some coffee and breakfast. The lobby was set up like a ski lodge with couches and stone fireplaces, which were lit. People were already awake, wrapped in winter clothes or three-piece suits, aiming, it looked, for either the slopes or a business meeting. The weary travelers, dressed down as comfortably as we could, stood out as the ones who clearly didn’t belong.

Our hotel nestled in a tiny hamlet in between two towering mountains. In the morning, the snow sprinkled the Denver air, just enough to force us to shield the roofs of our eyes to take in the spectacular view; the mountain tops carefully layered in an early autumn snow.

After breakfast, I weathered the light rain/snow mixture falling on Vail and brought my car up front. I told the busboy I was stopping just to get my bags, and I jogged back into the lobby, where Eric and Marisa were waiting for me. I returned my key and asked what I thought was a really simple question, which I wanted to be answered truthfully, no matter how much it may have stung my ears.

“I’m checking out,” I told the clerk, a woman about 45 years old, seemingly miserable from her early morning shift. “How far is it to Las Vegas?”

“Vegas huh?” She looked at me. “You have an easy day in front of you. Once you get out of here and onto the highway it is a straight shot.”

My optimism for the day became evident, as I told my two partners what she had said. They, too, had been restless during the previous day’s trip. The best thing for the three of us was that night’s rest. We had begun to find a level of annoyance with each other, which will happen to the best of friends stuck in such a small place for an extended period of time. We needed to regroup. With the four hours rest, and uplifting news that the worst driving was behind us, we were all ready to begin the trip. We, in the upcoming hours, learned that the information she gave me was true, that is, if by “easy” and “straight shot,” she meant “really hard, arduous, dangerous, and miserable.”

The skies blended perfectly with the colors of the highest peaks. We were ready for our day.

The goat sat on the side of the road, ignorant of the speeding traffic zooming past him. Still half-asleep, the sight of the gray goat perked the three of us up. The snow was still falling, and the black-gray rocks lined the highway, which winded on the Colorado River still about 500 feet below us. Whistles of trains blew, and highway cops lay lazily at the wheel looking for violators. Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fat City” lay all around us; I wondered just how many of the houses and condos we saw belonged to native Coloradoans, or to the real estate companies trying to make big bucks off the land.

The reality of how high in the air we were hit us when we kept descending still about an hour of our drive to Vegas. The farther south we got, the color of the rocks began to shift, from gray to reddish rust, as did the sky, which turned from a bluish-gray to sky-blue.

I began, during this trip, to record my thoughts each night. However, the stay in Colorado was the first time my notebook had gone blank. The toll of the trip began to weigh on me, I figured. Sometimes my journal entries would examine my thoughts on my thoughts, leading me to query on where in my life I had become so introspective, examining the metaphysical part of my existence in this world. Sometimes the entries would talk of the surroundings and the people I was with, putting into question where along the lines I became so involved with descriptions of people and places. Other times, the entry would just be one or two words, summing up my days with a minute detail, like when I wrote “Gatlinburg!” as my entry one night in Kentucky, as if I was anticipating some greatly epiphanic praise or prose that was yet to be constructed in my mind. The journal had become less of a hobby and more of an autobiography.

Colorado had definitely been the hardest part of the drive so far, though it seemed to disappear the quickest due to the level of alert we had to keep. We watched locomotives scream alongside us on the Colorado River, but the grey rocks, overcast sky, and chilly climate kept the mood morose.

We hit the Utah state border about two hours after we left the hotel. The cliffs rose magnificently, and shone brilliant displays of brownish red clay. We couldn’t help but bring up the irony that Colorado’s nickname was the “Colorful State” and that Utah, despite what we considered having more prevalent color was left, at least from the sign, nickname-less. The meeting to nickname states, we envisioned, surely went something like this.

Colorado state representative: “We’re going to nickname our state ‘The Colorful State’.”

Utah state representative: “That’s bullshit! We are way more colorful than Colorado. Fuck it, we don’t even want a nickname now.” Turns out Utah - and I’m sure it was begrudgingly – chose the Beehive State. I would have lobbied for “The More Colorful State – and fuck you Colorado.”

Our good mood and view of incredible red, brown, and sand-colored cliffs and roadsides carried us through the morning hours. We stopped for pictures of plateaus that seemed like only God could have created. The air was dry, but friendly, the hills of the highway brought on a different landscape to marvel at ten miles at a time.

What did this land look like 50 years ago? 100? These thoughts entered my mind as I envisioned wagons heading west across the barren landscape; they crossed my mind as I was crossing the Mississippi through the still desolate Midwest. What was now rich landscape for homes and businesses, cities and sports arenas was once a land inhabited by very few. Solace was granted by the very few country roads I chose to take, which would still create clouds of solid gray from kicking gravel behind my wheels.

To the credit of the area, one of the most remarkable feats of the American west is its ability to remain remarkably unblemished by humans. From the highway there is little to remind drivers of Capitalistic America; there are no chain malls, McDonald’s, or manufactured tourist attractions, just the sights of incredible plateaus of orange and brown skyrocketing on each side of the road. The roads aren’t crowded with wanderers which allows for ample opportunity to marvel at the natural beauty. The car remained silent for stretches of time save for an occasional “holy shit,” “look at that one,” or an audible gasp in amazement. Marisa sat silently snapping pictures out of open window in her perch in the backseat.

The sign for the exit read “No Name” with a disclaimer underneath informing us that there were “no services available” as if we assumed there would be in a town so inconsequential and remote that it didn’t even necessitate a name. There was no visible sign of life in the town of No Name, just an exit toward nothing. Road signs along the highways become increasingly bizarre the farther they go into desolate areas. There were signs that read No Name, signs that had just a number, and my personal favorite, “Eagles on the Road.”

“No way, not the fucking Eagles,” said Eric, referring to the classic rock band, we clearly were overtired. “I hate the Eagles.”

“Maybe they mean the Philadelphia Eagles,” I countered.

“I hope so,” he said. “If I see Don Henley I will get out of the car and fight him.”

Much to our chagrin – and luckily for the aforementioned band member - we never encountered any large birds, football players, or guitarists playing “Take it easy.”

Marcus Camry, what I named the Camry I bought in honor of the former UMass basketball player, glided easily over the faded gray pavement, worn from years of unyielding sun and wandering travelers. The three of us played as many “car games” as we could have, and the sight of endless desert and rising mountains became tired.

The sun still beat strong in the middle of the desert. Though it was the middle of the afternoon, we were about to gain another hour due to the time change, amazingly, it seemed, to Pacific Time. We would finally be on west coast standard time. Eric didn’t agree with Marisa and I that the change would give us another hour to enjoy our time in Vegas.

“The time change gives us another hour to gamble and drink,” I announced.

“What? No it doesn’t,” Eric argued, his deep voice raising a little. “We’d still be drinking the same amount of time.”

“No way,” Marisa chimed in. “Whereas it would have been four o’clock, it will only be three, so in essence, it gives us another hour.”

Eric vehemently disagreed for a good twenty minutes. With Vegas just over an hour away, we ended our long trip through Utah, hitting the Arizona border.

The drive was short, but the scenery was amazing. The highway winded through cliffs on both sides, rising heavenward. The road, though, is almost like a bridge where the sides fall off into an abyss of nothingness. If we were to crash and fall off the side of this stretch of land, no one would find our remains – if there were any – for a million years. Just another casualty of the desert. At least, I pointed out, the weather was sunny. Fortunately, we weren’t traveling this dangerous road at night, or in inclement weather, and if luck would have it, it’d be a sight we’d never see. Little did I know.

There is a strikingly similar sensation of having a full tank of gas and a full pack of cigarettes at your convenience. With both, the feeling of endless resource ensues, it feels as if you have miles to go before the needle hits the far left and the last match is lit. And so with both a full tank and full pack, Las Vegas, Nevada came up out of nowhere, sitting in between mountains and desert, screaming for attention like an overdressed woman in an otherwise casual bar setting. There couldn’t have been a prettier sight to see for the three travelers who had been surrounded by the same barren landscape for the past 24 hours. While the western part of the country had its shining moments of beauty, the time had come for rest and relaxation in the amusement park for adults.

Chapter eight

2008-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

VIII.

If you haven’t called your parents lately…

“The plains ignore us,

But these mountains listen,

An audience of thousands holding its breath in each rock”

-Ted Kooser, “Visiting Mountains”

“I think we should go for it,” I announced, blowing the cigarette smoke out of my window. We argued for a few minutes, while I pulled off the road for the necessities to make a night of our driving.

It’s not like we didn’t have options for a place to stay. I had a cousin who was living in Colorado at the time, who would have gladly housed us for the evening. Regretfully, I never got around to making the phone call to let him know I’d be in the area. He probably would have implored us to stay with him, or at least warned us that we may not want to traverse the roads.

Truckers stopped and stared as we entered the truck stop. The time was fast approaching 10 o’clock, and even with the entrance into the Mountain Time zone, we seemed to be facing a daunting task. Both Marisa and I had dedicated ourselves to driving, so we loaded up on caffeine pills and a couple of large, strong coffees. Marisa took a seat behind the wheel with me sitting beside her in the passenger side. Eric sat in the back of my car, trying to position himself comfortably so he could get some rest. Marisa and I caught up on what was going on with each of us. She drove for about four hours before we stopped for gas and a snack. There definitely should have been a warning sign upon entering the highway, letting us know we were in for the worst few hours of the trip so far. If we weren’t too blind to consider the signs God was giving us – the winds, the flurry of falling snow, the altitude – regular roadside signs would have worked fine.

In the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” the two imbecile protagonists head westward to Colorado in order to return a lost suitcase to its’ beautiful owner. However, on the way there, one of the characters, played by funnyman Jim Carrey, accidentally veers in the wrong direction, leading the two into the plains of Middle America rather than their mountaintop destination.

Upon waking in the flat landscape of Kansas, Jeff Daniels’s character muses, “I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.” To which Carrey replies, “That’s what I was thinking. That John Denver’s full of shit, man,” remarking on the late singers’ tune paying homage to the fabled mountain range.

Throughout the trip, even as we entered Colorado and started to roll up and down hills, we continued to make this joke. I think we may have angered the mountain gods.

After the rolling hills through the city of Denver, a lull of highway is laid out, giving a driver their final option to pull off. It’s kind of like a girlfriend taking a deep breath in an argument; you have just a moments notice for a reprieve before the real problems to begin. The skyline jetted upward in front of us despite the darkness.

My preconceived notion of what mountains were suddenly withered away compared to what I was looking at. The rolling hills of my youth were suddenly just memories, memories I had to shake for the moment as I buckled my seatbelt, repositioning myself upright as I ascended up the mountains.

I couldn’t even see the top, as the peaks of the Rockies were hidden by the most ominous looking clouds I had ever seen. Drivers well-traveled in the area sped by me, as I looked incredulously at the terrain. We navigated through tunnels, all the while driving straight towards the clouds. The rain began to fall, mixed with the already swirling flakes of snow. Around every corner was something new, but I looked in utter amazement as the signs displaying the altitude passed me on the right and on the left.

5,000 feet.

7,500 feet.

Finally reaching 10,663 feet at the Vail Pass Summit, where I almost felt like I should get out and take a few breaths of the cleanest air my lungs would ever taste – God knows I needed that - and knowing I may never be this high above sea level ever again.

When hikers reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the lack of oxygen at that altitude limits their mental capacity down to that of a ten-year old. Those successful enough to reach that point have stayed there for fewer than 15 minutes. Looking out upon the Himalayan Mountains, on top of the entire world, even the most articulate and intelligent adventurers are literally at a loss for words, rendering months of arduous climbing and adventure seem as climactic as meeting a rude celebrity. For the most part, they just desire to be back at base camp, safe from harm, and free to coherently collect their thoughts.

Jon Krakauer, a favorite writer of mine, and the author of two of my favorite books, Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, in the opening words of the latter novel, wrote about reaching the summit of the world,

I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I’d been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn’t summon the energy to care.

On a much smaller mental and physical scale, this is how we felt, yet we just sat in silence, the radio turned all the way down, not a cigarette was lit. Mentally strained from the voyage up the mountain, the descent should have been a coast for us. As we turned the corner atop Vail Summit, we realized that the voyage down was to be as onerous as the trip up, if not more so. The first sign we encountered asked drivers who might be doubtful to pull off and check their brakes. Soon after, we were warned of falling rocks, animals on the road, and slippery conditions. We mustered up jokes that the Colorado officials should have put up another sign at the peak, suggesting, “If you haven’t called your parents recently to tell them you love them, you should probably think about doing it now.”

The driving was slow down the mountain as snow and rain pummeled the windshield. I road the brakes the entire way as well-seasoned truck drivers sped past the tiny Camry inching its’ way forward. The three of us sat upright, our eyes attached to every detail of the road in case something went awry. I clenched the steering wheel tighter than ever before, my heart raced, and the only words out of my mouth were to inquire whether or not my passengers has their seatbelts fastened. Eventually, after almost an hour of driving, my brakes began to smoke and I could smell the burning brakes pads.

We hadn’t even reached the bottom of the mountain when we pulled off to a gas station. Once the air was clear enough to navigate, we exited I-70. The weather was violently cold for mid-September, and we decided to re-evaluate our decision to drive straight through to Vegas. Even Eric, who is never reluctant to take credit when he is right, was drained enough to remain mum on his assertion.

Once the fear had ceased and complete control of the senses was regained, Eric finally did speak up.

“You know who is definitely NOT full of shit?” He asked.

“John Denver,” the two of answered with a genuine laugh.

It was almost three in the morning, and being in the heart of the tourist communities would make it difficult to find a place to lodge for a few hours on our budget. I drove around in the snow, and we found a bed and breakfast with the lights on. We parked and readied ourselves to bunk for the evening, but no one was awake at that hour. We entertained the idea of crashing on the couch, but left, fearing the consequence of the owner awakening early and finding three complete strangers, who reeked of an 18-hour long car ride sound asleep on the couch.

Eventually, we found a Holiday Inn, where we swindled the female clerk down a few bucks, claiming I was a Toyota employee out on business, a fact I asserted by showing them my warranty card on my recently purchased family sedan. Since Toyota was one of their accounts, she gave me their cut rate. I’d be long gone before anyone from the company realized one of their “employees” used their discount.

The snow and the cold really started to hit us, as we crossed the courtyard for our room. It was 4:00 in the morning, and all we really wanted was a couple hours of shuteye. We turned on Sportscenter and stretched our legs out on our beds. Each of us smoked the day’s final cigarette and drifted very quickly to sleep.

Chapter Seven

2008-10-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

VII.

The farthest west I had ever been

“I know what we call it

Most of the time.

But I have my own song for it,

And sometimes, even today,

I call it beauty.”

-James Wright “Beautiful Ohio”

The hustle and bustle of Chicago trailed off in the rearview mirror, as the terrain started to get a little flatter on Interstate 80 through western Illinois. Sweeps of infinite cornfield erased memories of strip malls and skyscrapers haunting the corners.

Marisa had decided to nap in the backseat, which was packed to the roof, leaving her just enough space for a seat behind the passenger. It also provided her with ample cushion to easily drift away. Her sleeping became a major theme for the first ten hours or so on this trip.

Eric and I had a lot of catching up to do. Only twice since Florida had we seen each other: one time when he and a friend drove to Massachusetts to surprise Concord, NH native Marisa, and another for his 23^rd birthday for a weekend of drunken behavior at my college.

The airport was still reeling with security six months after the terrorist attacks on New York City. Eric was arriving in Hartford to stay with me for the weekend, which I was sure would entail telling old and creating new stories. As I pulled into the short term parking lot, I was driving my girlfriend’s car. A stone faced soldier waved me towards him, and as I crept up to him, my good mood clearly shown.

He asked me to place my hands on the wheel, and interrogated me.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“I’m picking my friend up in terminal B.” He scanned the contents of my vehicle, which were various papers and boxes containing research material for my girlfriend’s thesis paper.

“What’s all this stuff?” He asked. When I told him he shifted his attention to the concealed objects in my trunk. “What is in the trunk? Do you have any weapons in the car?”

With a swift flash of martial artistry, I swung my hands like a ninja, struck a karate-style pose and laughed, “Just my hands, officer.”

He didn’t laugh at my joke, nor was he amused when he motioned the gate to open to let me in. I had survived my first militaristic interrogation, barely, but I picked Eric up at his gate and brought him back onto campus.

A few of my friends from home came to visit that weekend and we filled my trunk with drunken expectations and a few 30-packs of Bud Light. We played drinking games, almost knocked over a statue on campus right in front of the President of the college, and narrowly avoided coming to blows with members of various athletic teams. We shut off circuit breakers in the dorms, and tried to push each other down the 30-foot hill on campus. The latter part of the first night we spent binge drinking and concocting plans for the subsequent evening, an evening in which we might become criminals.

Due to the outrageous success of the Playstation 2 game Grand Theft Auto, we decided that it must be relatively easy to steal a car. (Who says video games are harmless? Here we are, twenty something college students planning to steal a car. Of course, we meant no harm by it. We just wanted to joy ride and say that we did it.)

“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We call for a pizza, and when the delivery guy comes to give us our pizza, Eric, you go and steal the car. We’ll all jump in.”

The plan seemed foolproof until we botched our first attempt. Apparently the delivery guy caught on to our plan. When we ordered another pizza to the same address, the guy came again. When he saw us sitting behind bushes like a lion devising his attack, he took off toward his car. We chased after him to the car, which was idling in the driveway. He sped away and my friend Ted threw a full beer can at the disappearing taillights. The latter attempts yielded Dominos telling us that they were no longer delivering to our house.

Back in the car we had a good laugh about these incidents. We laughed at how ridiculously young we were then, and how our plans would definitely be more elaborate nowadays. By this, I think Eric and I were hinting that we would have succeeded at stealing that car given another chance. Maybe it is better we failed our first – and last - attempt at grand theft auto.

We continued west toward the signs that read “Des Moines.” With each mile west we traveled, we encountered land I had never seen. Each second, each inch of land was the farthest west I had ever been. Upon entering Iowa, we approached the Mississippi River. A longtime favorite book of mine, like many English aficionados, has been The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The brown water seemed to stretch forever at this point in the river. Steamboats were still traveling up and down the river, and motorists sped around on jet skis. I felt myself looking back in time to when Huck and Jim crept away in the night, and all the real life slaves who made the escape on these very waters. Everyone, throughout time, has made escapes over, around, up, and down this river, whether the circumstance be the harsh condition of slave labor, or just looking west beyond the life we knew previously. I smiled as I passed the setting for some of the most remarkable literature, and made a mental note that as I sit down to write soon, I make note of how impressed I was by the natural phenomenon. Little did I know that a few of these things would be visited upon me on this day-long trek.

All I knew about Iowa could fit on a post-it note. I expected the cornfield and plains, but not the vastness of them. The rolling hills carrying miles of cornstalks elicited as much awe as any coastline, landmark, or mountain did; houses miles apart, embodying a combination of Don Quixote’s swaying windmills and the land I drew in my head while reading In Cold Blood in college. There is not an ocean for a thousand miles either way, nothing significant besides the utter lack of silence in the car. More than any mountain or ocean in the country, the stretches of land throughout middle America impressed me. The land rolls on forever, with nothing but fields of green for miles on every side of the car.

My maternal grandfather Earnest McKenzie lived and worked in Iowa for a time as an English professor at the University of Iowa teaching Geoffrey Chaucer. At my home in Methuen, I have a library full of his old books, classics like Dante’s Inferno, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Plato’s Republic, all first editions worn at the seams by years of reading and re-reading.

Upon learning of his life’s work, I quickly realized where my passions originated. I’ve spent hours looking over these books, examining the binding, smelling books over 50 years old trying to gather some understanding of what my grandfather was like. In 1952 soon before the birth of my mother, he committed suicide in the family driveway, a self-inflicted gun wound.

I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about the entire situation. I’ll never know why he did what he did, why he chose, in my mind, to abandon four children and pull the trigger. Part of me wants to see him wandering the streets somewhere in the afterlife, where I can walk to him and punch him right in the jaw and implore him to give me reasons; ask him why he left before he got to see one of his youngest grandsons choose the same field he did, ask him if he regrets that scenario. Another part of me wants to thank him for giving me the critical thinking, writer’s mind that I inherited from him, sit down with a whiskey – his drink of choice – and talk about our favorite authors and stories. Faith leads me to believe I will one day have that very important decision to make. All I know is that it is frustrating to know that I could have had someone with the ability to read, criticize, and write with on perhaps his final legs, giving me advice from an old to a new author.

The smell wasn’t something as unfamiliar as it was unpleasant. And it came in spurts. Iowa had seemed like the longest state to drive through, and it didn’t help that Eric had to use the restroom as frequently as Dick Vitale compliments Duke’s basketball program. We stopped at every rest stop, including the world’s largest truck stop on Rt. 80. Looking at the map as the sun began to set in front of our eyes, we made the conclusion that Nebraska was just as big, maybe even a little bigger than Iowa.

We hit Omaha as the sun was setting before us.

The most unsettling thing about the Cornhusker state was not the size, but the smell. Marisa, who would be awake very scarcely on the trip, would awaken to add commentary to our banter.

“You guys are disgusting,” when we were talking about a difficult decision between family members, “Nice songs, you fag,” when a relatively feminine song came onto one of my mix CD’s, but the most timely of her observations came about midway through the state of Nebraska, a little ways past Lincoln, where the farmland stretched for days, and the streetlights were few and far between.

“What is that God awful smell?” she asked. Eric and I had smelled the scent of shit from the cattle for a little while now, as we were sure Marisa had been, but finally it became so chokingly awful that complaining couldn’t hurt our cause. We stopped for food, so we could take a breath and stretch our legs. It didn’t take us long to realize why the state we were in smelled so bad.

The sign said “Famous Sandwiches,” which was misleading. We did rationalize afterwards that the sign never explained what made the sandwiches famous. We guessed “making people go to the bathroom quite frequently.” Our meals delayed our trip due to frequent visits to the mens’ and ladies’ rooms. When we finally got on the road, we were an hour out of Colorado, where an important decision lay in front of the wanderers.

“What are we thinking?” I asked my passengers. The day had been long, we were growing irritable, and the car stunk of cigarettes, farts, and generally, three people crammed inside a small car.

“I think we should stop somewhere,” declared Eric. I got the distinct feeling that he had seen enough for one day. He felt that there was no way we were going to make it to Las Vegas before morning, or avoid a major crash involving three out-of-staters. Even if we were to finish the voyage to Sin City by noontime at the earliest, we’d still be two hours ahead of our check-in time, and all we’d really want to do is sleep.

We had instituted the “volleyball rotation” during our trip. One person drives, the person riding shotgun stays awake to keep the driver amused and alert, and the person in the backseat is welcome to sleep. Presently, I was still driving, which was no bother because it was my car.

“I really don’t care,” started Marisa, “but I would be okay with driving throughout the night.”

The final decision rested on me. The money situation was tight; could I really afford a night at a hotel? How long would tomorrow’s drive be? Studying the map we truly began to appreciate how big this country really is. Colorado was enormous compared to the two states we just traveled through. Ahead of us, as the altitude kept climbing, we could see the mountains lingering in the distance, illuminated once or twice by flashing lightning.

Chapter Six

2008-10-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

The following is chapter six from the as-of-now unpublished novel by Matthew Osgood, Chasing Sunsets.

VI.

Far from home plate

Skipping across my first time zone, I felt that somehow I was beginning to cheat the Gods. An unsettling feeling, when you have too much time to think up crazy scenarios, comes when you feel that you’ve done something to upset some higher power. We, as people, are allotted a certain amount of time on this earth. Likewise, our daily dosage of sun or rain is also pre-determined. As I changed the clock in my car an hour back, essentially gaining an hour, I was granted an allowance on my day. I had an hour more sunlight, an hour more of my day. I was cheating as I sped west, holding onto sunlit days, trying to avoid the unrest of the night.

A major car crash slowed my trip to Chicago. I eased my way out of Indiana unscathed and crossed the border into the Land of Lincoln. My trip, so far, had been an enjoyable one, zigzagging across the eastern part of the country. There was no rhyme or reason to the route I took, just an excuse to see people and places along the way and maybe get in a little action while I was at it.

I was ready, though, to get some company because I knew when the days’ trip was over that I was to be reunited with a couple of good friends. I had made arrangements in advance to stay a couple days in Joliet, Ill. with my friends Eric and Marisa. They would take me out on the town, and tantalize my taste buds with some of the greasiest and delicious food the Midwest had to offer.

The three of us had met down in Orlando, Florida in 2001 where we were all taking part in an internship program at Walt Disney World. Eric was the first roommate I met, the elder statesman of the group, and right away I thought he’d be someone I got along with.

Back in Massachusetts, I had followed my older brother from elementary school through high school and even through college, so stepping away from that safety net proved to be difficult. I knew that for the first time, I would be stepping into a world where I knew absolutely no one. Having to rely on just myself, I realized that I had the personality tools to make it anywhere. I had to. It was fight or flight.

Eric was a seasoned vet when it came to the college thing. He was already a senior while I was just a freshman, far away from turning 21. When it turned out my seven roommates and I would all get along, we spent most of the time working during the days and spending an absurd amount of money and time on booze. Our drinking habits were increased because there was nothing better to do. We were in Orlando, where the sun shone bright every day. We were young, having fun, and, because there were 10,000 other college students, most of the nights consisted of drinking until complete inebriation and dabbling in some hookups or throw ups. Even if work concluded at midnight, there was a party you could join, particularly for our apartment, where every night was a celebration.

Somewhere along the line, we established a core group of about eight friends, and Marisa was one of them. She and Eric hit it off almost immediately, despite her boyfriend in New Hampshire. Soon after the program ended, she and Eric fell in love and she moved from New Hampshire to Joliet and they moved in together. The two were married in the fall of 2006.

Of all of the friends that I made down in Florida, Eric and Marisa were the ones I remained in closest contact with. Whether the situation calls for a drunken late night phone call, or a clever recap of the weekend through e-mail, we did a great job of keeping in touch, even after the program ended and a relationship between me and the two of them could have been in jeopardy. A terrible fear of mine is that one day, I will stop referring to someone I used to call a friend, as “someone I used to know.” It’s happened already with friends from Florida, and eventually found its way to my friends from California. Either way, Eric, Marisa, and I began to realize, through distance and absence, how much more we had in common despite the difference in time zones.

Their location was incredibly practical; as I thought that it was probably about halfway across the country. I was terribly wrong. Looking at a map of the country, now I realize how big of a difference there is between the Massachusetts to Chicago trip and the Chicago to San Diego trip.

The Camry and I pulled along Rt. 7 in Joliet about midafternoon. I thought of how Jack Kerouac in On the Road must have traveled these same roads during the height of his beat generation journey. Kerouac was a Lowell, Massachusetts native, who gained literary acclaim with his semi-true account of a trip across the country in the 1950’s. Little did I know that Joliet would be the first of many cities along the way that we had both stopped. I counted just him and me among the elite company that had been to similar hamlets.

Just Marisa was home as I pulled in. We sat on the back porch swing, smoking cigarettes and trading stories, updating one another on our lives. Marisa seemed happier than I had ever seen her. She had settled into her life in Chicago, far from the rough upbringing she had in New Hampshire. She wanted to know all about how the Red Sox were doing, and we reminisced on times we spent after Florida frequenting local bars. Red Sox fans are transplanted throughout the country, and at the time, neither of us had any idea that our beloved baseball team would be ending an 86-year World Series drought a little over a month later, and both of us would be watching from different sides of the country, unaware of the chaos ensuing at home. In fact, it was Marisa who made the first phone call to me as the celebratory third out was made in Game Four of that series, both of us reveling in the excitement of a Red Sox championship far from home plate.

When Eric arrived, we started making plans for the night. Ever the planner, he wanted to know exactly what I intended to do, when I wanted to leave Joliet for the trip westward, and so on. I told him I planned on spending a couple of days in his town, checking out the food, the people, and the bars. He took this sentiment as “I want to get drunk for three straight days.”

I realized that one of the only things to do in Joliet was to drink at bars and taverns, of which there are galaxies. There are bars on every corner, bars right next to bars, each of which I felt Eric had spent time. In addition to the bars, the selection of eateries could make even Michael Moore’s head spin. Each place, too, would stay open until about an hour after the bars closed, appealing to the late night crowd, which gladly accepted the convenience.

I welcomed the fact that most of these restaurants were, in fact, locally owned places, and almost none of them displayed the greediness of capitalistic America, shooting up fast-food chains every couple of streets.

Despite the fact that what I needed was a day of rest in between drives, we headed out on the town each night. Besides, we had catching up to do. And since Eric had already been to my side of the country twice, he wanted to show me where he grew up, introduce me to friends, and make up for the time we had lost since Orlando. It was a running joke that I would never make it to visit them out in Illinois. I had promised to come on many occasions, but never quite followed through.

After a couple nights of boozing until the early hours of the morning, we called it an early night before the voyage. We decided that we needed to hit the road early. We made sure to get coffee at the Dunkin Donuts by the highway just before the trip started. Despite the tendency to induce a good sit down in a bathroom along the road, a large coffee was something essential to making this trip happen. Eric suggested that we plan our trip around stopping in Denver, but Marisa and I decided it would be better if we played it by ear. Perhaps we should have listened to Eric when the idea was placed on the table, but we took our chances.

It was right as we left Joliet when I mentioned that we’re about halfway to San Diego.

“Halfway there?” Eric laughed as he went to the glove compartment for our map. “You are so wrong, Matt.”

I ignorantly debated with him as he opened the map.

“We’re not even close to halfway, maybe a third of the way,” he measured the difference in distance eastward and westward with his thumb and his index finger. “You could drive back and it’d take you less time.”

Eric thumbed through my case of CD’s, which ranges from country to rap to jazz and soul. I watched him flip pages back and forth, offering advice and explaining the track listings and compelling stories behind the names of the blank CD’s I had recorded myself. He finally picked a country CD, aptly named “Getting’ Lucky in Kentucky.”

I scanned through the tracks, finally stopping midway through the disk to show Eric a song he may have never heard before but might find funny and enjoyable. After the song was over and we shared a good laugh at Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach,” Eric returned the CD to track number one, explaining, “What else do we have to do?”

Chapter Five

2008-09-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

The following is chapter five from the as-of-now unpublished novel Chasing Sunsets by Matthew Osgood

“Takes away the coffee flavor”

“When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.” – Anthony Storr

I felt a combination of being a stranger and lonely for the first time on the trip. Driving these roads was isolating; I had never climbed these hills, may never climb them ever again, I thought, and I wanted to stop and marvel at the landscape. More so, I wanted to share these views with someone. Pictures taken from that trip do not do justice to the experience mainly because the shots were taken while driving and through a windshield. Looking back now, I wondered why I was in so much of a rush that I didn’t pull along the side of the road to take more pictures. I’d like to say that it’s because I was a lonesome traveler, but when I was joined later on the trip, the camera still went unused for the most part. I wanted to create a scrapbook of the places I would see, but we all have these grandiose ideas that go by the wayside for a variety of reasons.

Atop the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, looking south through the clouds hovering over majestic colored mountains, the sun setting opposite over the horizon is where I came up with the phrase, “The places I’ve met and the people I’ve experienced.” There were cars of strangers gazing out over the vista, cars with plates from Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Massachusetts all taking in the same experience. I decided no longer to go places as a stranger, not pretending to be a local, but trying to experience what the locals do. I would not just rush to touristy sites, gathering in all I can read in brochures, but I would try to become one with the land, ask questions of natives. I wanted to try my best to meet these places, to know what they are about.

The best way to look at a situation sometimes can be from a complete outsiders view. Without an affixed opinion, the questions asked and the first impressions are a little more genuine. To come into a scenario where you believe you understand all that there is to be understood, you tend to miss out on important facets of what is going on around you. I tried to approach my trip like this. The desire for learning about the places I visited and the people I saw was not artificial. If my host wanted to show me the sea, the city, the mountains, or the bars, I felt glad to go.

It was strange being part of a situation beyond my control. Looking at all these people who resided in these parts, knew these streets, knew these people, it’s fascinating how little I knew. There are the roads that people travel every day and know so well, and here I am, a wanderer struggling my way through roads and cities of the country, somehow navigating strange streets to find familiarity. I enjoyed when people came from different areas of the country to visit with me because I could show them the sights and sounds from my hometown. Here I was now at the mercy of others, living as an outsider trying to fit in.

Likewise, with people, I’ve found you need to experience them. Meeting someone consists solely of an introduction, small talk, maybe finding a common interest or two. The best way to experience someone is to ask questions, listen to the tone of their voice when they talk, and listen to how they say it. Look into their eyes and see their sincerity or insecurities. Pay attention to how they laugh and what they eat. Let them take you to a local restaurant, especially when traveling. There are Applebee’s and TGI Fridays on every corner in America. A local pub or restaurant elicits an image of who someone really is, an in-depth look at who the person surrounds themselves with, and where, and how they conduct themselves.

The trip to Kentucky was to see a friend Ashlee I had met in Florida. On Spring Break actually. Amazingly, during the trip to Daytona Beach, Florida during my senior year, we had only just hung out one night. I had approached her at a bar and hit it off immediately. We had some drinks, did some dancing, then exchanged numbers. After that, however, we didn’t talk for the rest of the trip. Upon returning home to school, I deleted her number from my cell phone and went on with my life. Returning from class one day approaching graduation in May, I had a voicemail on my phone from Ashlee, in her southern twang asking if I remembered who she was, that she had had a great time hanging out with me and to give her a call sometime. I actually distinctly remember blowing it off, citing that I would never see her again, why call her. I showed a roommate the voicemail, probably just to let him hear the cute accent she had. He implored me to call her. He knew the girl I was referring to, and because she was cute, seemed genuine, and possessed the sexiest accent we’ve ever heard, I called her back.

It turned out we had a tremendous amount of things in common despite our geography. A southern Baptist, she was a junior in college, and the stereotypical Southern belle: 5’0 tall, no more than 100 pounds, strikingly bright blonde hair, blue eyes and a vulnerable disposition. She was amazingly gorgeous and polite. She was extremely genuine on the phone.

We spoke on and off throughout the remainder of the school year, but lost contact as the summer began. I still hadn’t decided that I was going to embark across the country, so I figured her a passing acquaintance. It was fun while it lasted.

After I made the decision to move to San Diego, I began looking into places that I could stop along the way for visits. I knew that Springfield was definitely going to happen because I still had friends there, or friends that would be willing to travel and send me off. Visiting Elisha in New Jersey was also a given because I knew the drive from western Massachusetts to New Jersey had the distinct possibility of creating some traffic problems for me. The city driving would be terrible if that happened, and would take too much out of me. I had also already decided to stop in Chicago to visit my friends Eric and Marisa. They would then drive with me west. I toyed with St. Louis for a little while, but crossed it off the list. Even the decision for Wilmington came just two or three weeks before the trip even began.

Whose idea it was to go through Kentucky, I don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t mine. I suspect it was one of my friends, who, and I agreed, had intentions that bordered on me being a scumbag. I was, surprisingly, as a single 22-year old, very okay with that. So I called, she agreed, and I was headed to Williamsburg, Kentucky.

As the mountains evened out, my anxiety rose. I hardly knew this girl despite our long telephone conversations and drunk dancing on some Daytona Beach dance floor. However, I was committed to going. Alongside the highway I could see a giant cross signaling my entrance into the Bible Belt, but chuckled when directly below the cross was a XXX Porn Superstore.

The town of Williamsburg was everything I imagined a Kentucky town to be. It had a very intimate feel, a small main street snuggled between the only signs of civilization, a small Baptist college and a McDonald’s. Ashlee and I reunited then I followed her to her one bedroom apartment atop the foothills. She was everything I remembered her to be, except she was a lot prettier than I had envisioned. I just hoped that my appearance had the same effect on her. I called a friend to tell him about the goldmine I had just discovered as I followed her home. There was no absence or awkwardness of conversation during those crucial first moments. In typical southern fashion, it was a necessity that I meet her grandmother and aunts before they consented I stay the night. I trusted that I’d be sleeping somewhere else should I make a bad first impression. We spent the night meeting her family, where I exaggerated the Boston accent and charm. Later that night we laughed over drinks at dinner, making plans to make our way to the Fried Chicken Festival the next day. Only in Kentucky.

The World’s Largest Skillet was a disappointment, but we had fun roaming the streets at the festival. She ran into many friends, and, ignorantly, I felt like the smartest person in town because I was the only one without an accent. Or, more factually, the only person with an accent. On the guys, I thought, the accent makes them sound outrageously dumb. On the women, however, vulnerably attractive. The two of us became surprisingly attracted to one another despite our legitimately short time being acquainted. Somehow, and I believe she feels the same way still, the two of us worked. We were complete strangers, and almost complete opposites. We were from different worlds, held different beliefs, and were headed in different directions yet neither of us wanted this short, three-day visit to end. Back on the Smokey Mountains, we took photos of the two of us, figuratively and literally in the clouds on top of the world. Ashlee and I held hands, the conversation never stopped, and we spent all three nights in the same bed.

We kissed goodbye and the finality lurked ominously. We’d probably never be in the same place again. She had found a notebook in which I was writing, and scribbled in a hidden back page instructions to “never forget those who can’t join” me. I found the note only after I arrived in California. Ironically, leaving Ashlee in Kentucky wasn’t as hard as I would have imagined in the previous days. With every mile west I felt like I was cleansing my soul from a previous life and starting new, like erasing a full chalkboard piece by piece until there is nothing but blank space remaining. I would cherish the memories we made, but not dwell on the misfortune of the prospect of never seeing one another again.

As a matter of fact, we did keep in close contact in the months following the trip to Kentucky. We spoke on the phone a number of times a week and arranged a trip for another visit which actually happened. One drunken night, we had talked, and apparently I decided it would be a good idea to book a flight when drunk. Upon my arrival, we were very happy to see one another. However, the next day, she received word that her grandfather had passed away and she needed to leave for Florida that day. She dropped me off at a hotel near the airport, where I stayed alone. I flew back to California the next morning on my dime. After about a week of unreturned phone calls, I heard back from Ashlee. She had driven down to Florida to her grandfathers’ funeral, whereupon she met up with an old ex-boyfriend. They wed on a nice ceremony by the beach at the end of that week. I never talked to Ashlee again.

The stomach rumblings started about four hours into my drive away from my initial trip to Kentucky. Not a breakfast person by nature, I can survive on coffee, cigarettes, and desire to get to a certain destination. As the scenery driving north changed from the rolling Appalachians to the plain lands of Indiana, I could see for miles. Although I still traveled well above the speed limit, life seemed to slow down just a bit as, through the landscape, I could stare into the lives of farmers from generations passed, envying them for roaming these same farms, not knowing a thing about the fast life we’re all so accustomed to living.

I deciphered a bit in my head where I was, how much longer I had to travel until I reached Chicago. Maybe now would be a good time for a lunch break and regrouping. I was about halfway to Chicago, and just a few hours from finally having some companionship on the trip. Staying a few days with some friends would be good for my psyche. They would then join me for the second half of my trek.

Doubling my need to fill my stomach, I also was looking to fill my gas tank and empty my personal tank. The next exit in Crawfordsville, about 20 miles north of Indianapolis, offered both food and gas, so I pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a small diner.

Upon entering, I could see that the place wasn’t exactly a hub for healthy eating, but I sat down anyway. The place reeked of stale coffee and overnighters. Actually, my initial reaction was to turn out the door and look down the road for any sign of a chain restaurant. My conflict was interrupted by the blonde tending the mock-50’s café style bar.

“Just you, sweetie?” she inquired from her post, stroking just one menu.

I nodded wearily. She smiled, and I forced one myself and offered to take a seat at the bar. After taking care of a bill for a young couple, she came over and handed me a menu saturated in grease, ripped at the edges on the one page selection sheet, one side with the choices, the other with a brief family history behind the place, which I read was erected and established in 1957 by local farmers looking to raise a few extra bucks after a flood wiped out their crops earlier that summer. It was still town owned to this day.

“I’m actually ready to order,” I told her. “Just some white toast, some scrabbled eggs, and some sausage. And a coffee please.”

As she filled my cup, she offered sugar and cream, and cringed while I declined both options. “Takes away the coffee flavor,” I smiled.

“And makes your breath smell wonderful,” she winked. She had a charm about her I couldn’t place. The accent made her appeal raise a couple notches, as she leaned about three feet away, looking over her tip money. She smiled a lot, I thought, for someone stuck in a place where another house couldn’t be seen for a few miles. She turned to me, and positioned her elbows in my direction on the counter, palms to her chin, and we chatted seamlessly in between the few customers coming and going.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” She asked, as the cook placed my order on the window connecting the kitchen from the bar.

I laughed, and told her I wasn’t. I told her that I had just graduated college, and I was driving across the country for no reason whatsoever, just to “see what I can.”

“You’d be amazed (making the word three syllables) that I could probably tell you the names of all the regulars,” she laughed. She was probably about 20, pretty, too, with pigtails accentuated with tiny blue ribbons at the end. I was impressed, and charmed when she lit a match to counter my increasing propensity for a smoke with my coffee.

“Oh, I’m Jenny,” she said rolling her eyes, mocking. “And I’ll be your server today.”

Her nametag said “Alice” but she mentioned that it was her mother’s name. She had forgotten her name tag this morning.

“I was trying to refrain from the Brady Bunch jokes,” I said, quickly realizing the corniness of my joke, and my eagerness to keep the conversation going.

“I’ve been here since 6am and I’ve heard that twice, and of course people have made the ‘wow, Alice, you look a lot younger today’ jokes too,” she countered without a beat, secretly stealing a drag from my cigarette, since the last of the customers had walked out.

I told her where I was coming from, and that for a while there, I thought I was lost. I had stopped seeing signs for Chicago about an hour ago. “I was getting worried,” I said. “and on top of that I was hungry.”

“Sometimes being lost can be a blessing.” It seemed like she was flirting. “It helps you make sense of why you’re going exactly where you are.

“Sorry, I’m taking a philosophy class at the junior college around here,” she added quickly, sensing my raised eyebrows at her sudden disposition of psychologist.

The cook leaned over the open hole in the wall with my eggs and sausage, which my new friend handed to me. I laughed because there is nothing funnier, in an immature way, than making fun of someone for ordering sausages because of their phallic appearance. Today, however, I had no one but myself to make fun of my order.

She disappeared for a few minutes and I ate alone, contemplating how this casual experience with someone would agree with my theory that these solemn encounters are what life is made of: meeting people you will never see again in places you may never return to. There are so many different people with their own interesting stories and backgrounds, who enjoy life just as much as anyone else, regardless of where they live or what they do. I knew Jenny and I would never meet or talk ever again, but in our time as “single-serving” friends, I hoped that she would at least smile at the end of the day, as I would, at good company early that Indiana afternoon.

She came pouncing through the kitchen door.

“It’s on the house,” she confidently whispered as I started to pull my wallet out of my pocket. I tried to argue, but she was pretty adamant about not letting me pay the $4.62 I owed.

“You’re a stranger; you’ll never be back here. Besides, your eggs were watery anyway,” she sincerely smiled. “Please, good luck with everything.”

As I reached into my pocket for tip money, I told her that I was a writer, and that perhaps should she look for her name in the acknowledgement section in my first book. “You know, for that ‘lost’ quote that I might steal one day.”

I casually put a $10 bill on the table out of her sight then started for the door.

“Hey,” she sounded. “Don’t think about the tip before you even look at the menu.”

“Good advice,” I said, turning back to her, understanding the analogy.

“Philosophy,” she shrugged.

Chapter Four

2008-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

The following is the fourth chapter of the as-of-now unpublished novel by Matthew Osgood, Chasing Sunsets

IV.

A perfect day for driving

“…Until it spoke only to me, Impersonally, like someone gradually retreating, Not so much from his life as from its settings, From the country he inhabits; as the darkness depends in the weeks after the solstice.” –John Koethe “Morning in America”

My objective for the next drive, where I would be meeting up with my friend Elisha, was basically to beat the New York City traffic. I was heading to central New Jersey, where she was a medical student. I knew the traffic would be terrible if I hit rush hour driving over the Tappan Zee Bridge, and I understood that should I fail my mission, I would be facing a critical two hour delay.

Cops rarely patrol Rt. 91 through Connecticut, so I kept cruise control around 80. Lost somewhere in the surroundings, I must have missed the exit I needed to take for the bridge. Luckily, having been through New York City a bunch of times, I could navigate my way to get at least through the city and into New Jersey.

Amazingly, missing the Tappan Zee Bridge was nothing outrageously new for me. I had been given directions twice now instructing me over the bridge. Both times I’ve missed going over the bridge, and still to this day I do not believe it really exists.

I passed through New York with recollection of the many times I’ve been there in the past four years. Many of my friends from college lived in or around “the city”, such is the way my friends refer to Manhattan, as if it’s the only metropolitan area in America, so I’ve been fortunate to have an enthusiastic ensemble of hosts around the place.

New York is a beautiful city in many ways. The skyline rockets out of the concrete, so tall that it stands alone like Yao Ming in a Beijing elevator, everything cowering sadly below. The magnificence of viewing the buildings from afar on the Throgs Neck or George Washington Bridge is awe-inspiring, and only amplified at night when thousands of lights illuminate starless evenings. The true effect of the cities regality strikes when standing at the base of a building 80 stories high, staring straight up, and feeling queasy at the realization of the structures’ awesome size and adequate ability to crush anyone or anything within ten blocks should it topple over. Almost as much as the absurd size of the building, what impresses me about the city of Manhattan is the culture. New Yorkers claim the city as their own, yet they share it with millions of visitors a year. There’s an innate sense of ownership to everyone in the country and after the terrorist attacks on September 11^th, 2001, the world saw America’s ability to rally behind a place, uniting New Yorkers with everyone else in the country. There are very few cities in America, or the world, that have the ability to overcome such tragedy with such tremendous aplomb.

My first trip to New York wasn’t very long ago, but they’ve come very often in the past seven years. While visiting friends, I’ve seen the Knicks play in the Madison Square Garden and traveled to all parts of Long Island, including a yearly two or three visits to the eastern end of the island, known laconically as “the Hamptons.” However, nothing can ever top the first time I was there, the first time I stood beneath skyscrapers taller than all the buildings in my town stacked on top of one another.

The summer after my freshman year in college in the summer of 2001, I went to Long Island to visit some of the friends I had made the previous year. We visited some of the popular bars around Nassau County during the first couple of nights. On the Saturday of my visit, my college friend Kristen and I took the train into Manhattan to do the tourist thing.

The city was enormous and inspiring, a man-made wonder. Immediately upon reaching street level, I saw Madison Square Garden, which houses the hated New York Knicks, but is a historical venue I always wanted to see. The city seemed so new, commercialized, and updated, but I marveled – and still do – at the cities’ ability to keep its’ unique charm and history intact.

We spent the afternoon walking along the city blocks, snapping pictures and watching street performers. We shot hoops at the NBA Store and pretended to be Heisman Trophy candidates at the Radio City Music Hall. The two of us cooled from the heat in stores along Fifth Avenue in which we clearly did not fit in. When our feet got tired, we hired a horse-drawn carriage to bring us to a late afternoon lunch. After an amazingly overpriced lunch, Kristen and I walked the short walk from Times Square to the Empire State Building.

The sun was beginning to set on a sweltering afternoon as we stood atop the Empire State Building. It felt as if we were on top of the world, the people and cars below just ants in our kingdom. The two of us looked south towards the World Trade Center buildings and the Statue of Liberty.

“Is it too late to take a cab down to there?” I asked pointing south towards lower Manhattan. Kristen turned around to me in the haze atop one of the worlds largest buildings.

“We should probably be heading back to Long Island,” she responded. “It’s getting late.”

“Okay,” I said regaining my gaze over the now tiny buildings of New York.

I conceded defeat of the day. We had taken in as much as we could during a 12 hour span of walking around the city. During one last meaningful stare through the haze from my towering perch, Kristen approached me from behind.

“Don’t worry,” she said nonchalantly. “Next time you come visit the city we’ll go see the World Trade Center.”

“Deal,” I said. I turned towards her and the way to the elevator.

She continued, “It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

Luck hit me when I reached New Jersey. Far off my course, I was ready to give up on my manly intuition and stop for directions to the highway I had somehow misplaced. In the land of jug handle turns, and wanna-be New Yorkers, I felt oddly out of place. When the sun began to dip below the horizon, I found the road I was looking for. I was on the opposite end of the road from where I should have been, but I was able to alter the plans accordingly.

Around 8 o’clock I arrived at Elisha’s house, where she lived with a roommate, both of whom were studying for an important test. That fact didn’t hinder any plans, as I knew that this one night stay would be more for rest and relaxation. We ate in, stuffing ourselves with sandwiches and cheesecake.

Outside sharing some laughs and a couple of cigarettes, I recognized that Elisha was my last link to my hometown, the last person I would see who reminded me of being on Hampshire Circle.

“I’m happy that I’m seeing you today,” I told her. She had been dating my friend for the better part of ten years now, and living with the family, which was just a few houses down. “I won’t see another person from Methuen for I don’t know how long.

“For years I have always had the concrete knowledge that I could go to that little piece of property on the Spicket River, and find friends at all angles. I had the comfort of knowing I had a place called ‘home,’ where I could go and my brothers would be there, my friends weren’t far away. Now I’m going a place where I don’t know anyone, really.”

She assured me I’d be fine, but I had to at least play devil’s advocate with myself if no one else would. I’ve been in many situations where I’ve needed to make life work on my own and succeeded. I had little doubt I could make things work in California, but without doubt, there would be no such thing as confidence.

I woke up early on the couch in New Jersey, the sun dancing just above the maple trees surrounding Elisha’s house, the sky colored a blue only defined in a color wheel. A perfect day for driving.

The trip, according to my map, followed I-95 about 700 miles down through the nations capital and the eastern seaboard. I remorsefully blew off a friend in southern New Jersey in order to make better timing on my trip, but at the time I was eager to get the trip started “for real.”

I hit traffic around Baltimore, but it got me to reflect on the time I had spent there when I fell in love with the city.

Two years previously, a couple friends and I went to Baltimore for a journalistic conference. While the conference in itself was lame, we made due by drinking bottles of Jack Daniels and wandering the city. Baltimore’s inner harbor and Fells Point are where we spent most of our time, stumbling around drunk, meeting locals, and egging on the serial sniper that was lurking the area at the time.

We had a hotel room overlooking Chesapeake Bay from 20 floors up; we spent the evenings forgetting what we learned at the days’ workshops, and I always vowed to go back to enjoy the city as a visitor and not a conference goer. Driving through the outskirts of the city, now I wondered if I’d ever be back.

The scenery down I-95 is filled with football and baseball stadiums, historic landmarks, and a remarkable transition from the hustle of northeastern cities to the trees outlining the highways leading to the site of the Confederacy. I passed the site of monuments in Washington D.C. and started down towards the Mason-Dixon line. When I passed the border of Virginia, the speed limit increased to 70 MPH, the next time the speed limit would dip below 70 again was in California, I spotted a sign for Manassas, VA. I called my friend.

“I just wanted to let you know that I am now passing the site of the first sniper shooting,” I told my friend Ted. He laughed.

“You’re a complete asshole,” he responded, “but that is the shit I want you to call me about. I don’t care about you seeing the Grand Canyon or anything like that. I want you to find the most asshole things you can, then call me.”

I had a lot of requests to call people when I passed significant milestones on my journey. One friend wanted me to call him upon the arrival of each state and I did a horrible job of it. Eventually I called him up somewhere during my journey and said as fast as I could, “Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska….” Before he cut me off laughing,

“I got it, thanks, asshole.”

I merged onto I-40 towards the coast of Carolina. I’ve always had a romantic fascination with the state of North Carolina and I don’t know if there is any particular reason why. The relationship between North Carolina and I developed somewhat into a crush, where I envisioned something in my mind that was probably better than what it would have been in real life. I battled with going to school in Charlotte before deciding to stick around Massachusetts, but my visit there was an experience I’d never forget and one I wanted to actually live out.

I think the reason I had such an appreciation for the state was the idea that if I had chosen to go to college there, I would have been far away doing something none of my friends were doing, like I’d be taking a risk into self-dependency. I saw the possibility of going to school in North Carolina as a chance of getting away from where I was from, starting anew somewhere. Since the day I decided to stay home, I guess I may have felt like an opportunity slipped away. When my friend Leah said she was living down there for her last physical therapy clinical, I saw it as a great opportunity to spend time with a friend and the place I held in such high regard.

As I turned into Leah’s driveway amongst the mangrove trees and the rigs on Cape Fear in Wilmington, she sprinted out of the little seaside home she was staying in and jumped into my arms like a little kid racing towards a father home from a business trip. Leah and I had spent our college careers on different paths, but our extra-curricular activities were almost all the same. Despite the fact we didn’t hang out nearly as often as we should have during our four years in college, we became great friends. She is someone who I sought out at all of the similar clubs we were a part of. Her apartment senior year was just a 50-yard walk from my own. I was looking forward to spending a couple days with her. She was lonely living alone, and enthusiastic to show me - her first visitor - where she had been living.

Leah has a dancer’s build, and she’s a pretty blonde from a small-town in upstate New York. She went to college solely as a dance major, but a car accident her freshman year derailed those dreams. She was now focused to help people recover from similarly damaging injuries in the field of physical therapy. Isn’t it odd how we make small consolations for ourselves? For instance, once I figured out I wasn’t going to be six-five, 250 pounds, I gave up on the dream of playing linebacker for the Penn State Nittany Lions and focused on telling stories about people who were. She was doing the same thing, which is never compromising or abandoning what you’re passionate about.

I knew nothing of Wilmington, and almost immediately following the three-minute long tour of her tiny house, we decided on dinner, but first the beach. I nostalgically reflected that the sunset falling opposite the ocean would be the last I would see from the east coast for an indefinite period of time. We waded a bit in the ocean, deciding that we should probably spend a good part of the two days I’m there lounging at the beach during the day and drinking at the bars when the sun sunk down over the horizon.

There is no better view in this world than the sight of a southern girl accompanied by her accented voice. In fact, the limb I will proceed to climb upon is to say that Wilmington, North Carolina has the prettiest girls in the entire country. Of all the places I’ve been, I have never fallen in love with so many girls in such a short amount of time. Truly, this part of the country is a diamond in the rough for women, like finding the perfect bar, right out of view from the tourists.

Being in North Carolina was liberating because I was so far from home. I was 700 miles away from home, and now solidly embedded in proceeding with the trip. There was money to be spent, alcohol to be consumed, and stories to be shared and made. When I decided to make the trip to North Carolina, I had looked for things to do in the area. What I found was a ghost tour of the city, which happened to be America’s first major port city, producing hordes of trade ships filled with supplies from the European countries trafficking in and out at all times. With the trafficking of everyday supplies came pirates, and as fantastic as it sounds, the truth of the matter lies in the ghostly past of the city. Pirates ran the city, plundering riches from sailors, parading through the cobblestone streets that still remain to this day. On the ghost tour, our tour guide showed us homes that were rumored to be haunted, and graveyards directly responsible for coining the terms we’re familiar with. Apparently, when the influenza epidemic hit Wilmington, citizens would be sick and unconscious for days at a time. Thinking these people were dead, and lacking proper medical protocols, family members would bury them, only to find out later that they had buried their family or friends alive. The remedy for this faux pas was to tie a string around a persons’ finger when buried, leading to a bell atop the grounds’ surface where someone would stand guard (“graveyard shift”) who would listen for the bell to toll, hence “dead ringer” and possibly “for whom the bell tolls.”

The city was big enough to be considered a major city in the state, but small enough to remind me of my Boston roots, where it was easy to walk around and revel in the authenticity of one of America’s first big cities without feeling trapped in a concrete jungle. There were trees that had been there for years, not phony trees being replaced every summer. From the graveyards sitting in the heart of the city to the cobblestone streets to the modern America downtown streets filled with pubs and McDonald’s, it was a city I felt eerily familiar with.

People had a strange fascination with the relationship of Leah and me as we hopped from pub to pub on Market and N. Front Street. A street-poet performed a love poem for us as we walked up the not-so-lit alleyways and, as Leah ducked into the bathroom, my cue shot was interrupted by a very intoxicated patron at Longstreet’s Irish Pub saying, “your girlfriend is hot. Interested in a threesome?”

We weren’t, so we walked back to the car after paying our tab. We retreated to her little house near Cape Fear.

The two of us frightened ourselves that night, perhaps it was at one of the pubs where we rehashed ghost stories, or when we returned home where we made inappropriate remarks about the rustling of wind being the presence of haunting spirits.

We sat on the screened-in back porch of her house, talking seriously about a subject long forgotten, and having a night-cap of Tanqueray and tonic. With a slight bit of tension in the air, we listened to jazz and three times made “just one more” drink. Perhaps it was that for a 700 mile radius, we only knew each other, maybe it was the gin, maybe it was lingering feelings, or maybe we were just trying to forget the ghost stories, but we did slept a little closer that night.

A few days later I left the salty Carolina shore. We said goodbye early in the morning as she got ready for another day of work. I honestly could have stayed there, in that little blue and white home with her, for the rest of my life. Forget California. With one last wave and a honk as my car shifted from reverse to drive, I was leaving. Sometimes we really never know how to just stay still.

Milking what I could out of what I considered the best way I could have spent my last east coast hours, I stopped along the road in Raleigh for a coffee and a donut at a gas station. I made conversation with the clerk, and also purchased a $6.99 Bob Seger Greatest Hits album on tape. It had been a while since I had bought a tape. A couple hours later, I was driving through the Appalachian Mountains westward through the swiftly changing autumn of western Carolina and Tennessee.

2008-08-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

The college crew, as mentioned in chapter three.

*Chasing Sunsets in the as-of-now unpublished novel by Matthew Osgood. Subsequent chapters will be posted bi-weekly*

III.

A writer by horrible misfortune

“I should not talk so much about myself
if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” –H.D Thoreau
from the chapter "Economy" in Walden

I began to wonder throughout that summer why people chose to move far away from home after college. After all, we had it pretty nice where we were. People my age are the offspring of the Baby Boomer generation; a generation that relied heavily on themselves while parents remained mysteriously absent, mentally and physically, after the second Great War was fought and won. Idealistic suburbs sprang up across the country; kids of that generation became very self-reliant, and became the first real successful and rich entrepreneurs in America. In my opinion, the lack of closeness this generation had with their forefathers produced an overwhelming sense of pride in their desire to hold their children closer than they were held.

Herein lies the problem. My generation has since decided that they are temporarily sick of the family vacations to Disney World, they’re sick of sitting around the table having open relationships with their families, and they’re tired of having to look to their parents when making an important decision like moving or buying a car. I don’t think there is a resentment to the fact that coddling has taken place, I just believe there is an element of wanting to break free for a while and return to the nest when it is necessary. We are expected to take out more loans, live at home longer than our parents did. We are spurned jobs because our bachelor’s degree isn’t a high enough degree of education, our piercings and tattoos disable our abilities to perform efficiently.

With the overwhelming college tuition prices, the extraordinary tax hikes, and lack of affordable housing, America seems like an overpowering force for people of my generation. We feel helpless and cheated that the Baby Boomers are now in charge of the world, making it near impossible to break out on our own. Practicality, be damned, I think my generation has an overwhelming desire to prove that this country is ours for the taking, and we’re determined to prove it by trying to be our own people. Part of that is doing the same exact thing our parents did. That is become more self-reliant.

Was that really the reason I was taking off? Retrospectively speaking, maybe. By now, the ability to articulate theories is beyond the range of emotion I felt. I came to realize that I was a nomad by nature, a journalist by profession, and a writer by horrible misfortune. My brothers and I had spent an enormous amount of time in our lives going on family trips, and with the vast sweep of things to do around us, we got used to seeing different places and exploring them. Suddenly, I realized the ideology that I could now do this alone, finding places unfamiliar. Somewhere along this trip and in the aftermath, I would be able to see where I was going and what I was trying to do.

The trip to Springfield was one that I had taken so many times previously, I didn’t even realize how simple it would be compared to the trips I was about to make. The leaves alongside the roads had started to thin out, the trees glowing with leaves of burnt orange and brown, like an aging wife whose beauty remained intact. Fortunately for me, I had people to stop and see, as the road ahead would lead me to stints of absolute boredom and anxiety. I left mid-afternoon, cursing the sun for being in my eyes.

On the Massachusetts Turnpike I realized the setting sun is what I’d be racing after for the next couple of weeks. I would drive zigzags around the country, stopping for a few days on end, visiting places I’ve never been with people I barely knew. But overall, the theme of the trip, for me, was that I was chasing sunsets. Would I ever catch it? I knew not the answer, but I wouldn’t rest until I went as far as I could to find out. The majestic mountains, the pristine plains, and the setting sun would serve as the metaphor of life inasmuch as we all face the embodiment of an arduous mountain climb, the boredom of a six hour drive through cornfields, or the beauty of watching the sun rise or set. The happenstances encountered on the road are figuratively the same we face in life. Sometimes we climb mountains, sometimes we stumble; it’s how we deal with each lesson that matters.

There were a couple of other close friends who would be making the voyage to send me off on my journey with shots and beers, and a visit with my advisor Marty from college, who steered me into pursuing writing for the rest of my life. His main advice was to remain constantly moving “like a shark” in order to obtain a job in the field of journalism, as it’s easy to get caught up in the waves of the Pacific Ocean, and glancing at some of the finest women in the country. He, like all the others, supported the move, and reminded me that the phone lines are always open for communication.

Marty’s influence, I realized, was not restricted to just the classroom. He was also as a friend. We’d laughed and talked over beers and pizza, and he quickly became someone I went to for advice, all the while keeping him updated on my professional decisions and aspirations. Eventually, when journalism turned out to be a field at which I would temporarily cease pursuing in hopes of enhancing my creative writing side and becoming a teacher, his voice reigned with support and encouragement. It was on this final trip to Springfield College before my move that I knew I had made a lifelong friend, someone that the gap of ages were defied by common bonds and understanding between two very similar people.

I glanced over the campus green, which is a stereotypical collegiate atmosphere, but unique. The grass is green and untainted, as it is tradition to not tread over the grass on the way to the dining hall or to class. The wind shook the fading leaves towards the ground, destined to keep the maintenance crew busy raking for the next couple months. Frisbees zoomed around the adjacent green while students languidly sulked toward their last few classes. Just four years ago, I was an 18-year old know-it-all who swaggered onto campus. Now suddenly I became humbled after realizing that after 16 years of schooling that experience was, and still is the best teacher.

Looking over the halls on campus I used to roam, I realized for the first time since graduating the effect that learning in that particular college environment had on me. I did just enough to get by in my required classes, mainly because I knew the people who read what I would eventually pen wouldn’t care that I had no idea how to add fractions or explain photosynthesis. I was smart enough to understand those things marginally, but too lazy to study what everything really meant or how it worked. That fact still does not bother me. I’ve always been able to distinguish the major difference in the workings of the mind of someone who understands math and someone who understands the arts. I don’t need to memorize the first 16 lines of Canterbury Tales to have an opinion on its meaning and succeed in class (though I do have the majority of those 16 lines embedded somewhere in my brain), but I do need to memorize the Pythagorean Theorem in order to get an A in Math. I found, though, that I can still converse with people about Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece, though I don’t know it line for line, while I remembered the mathematical theories just long enough to pass the test.

I have always enjoyed learning. I liked being in a class where I could raise my hand and ask questions in addition to answering them. English classes, for me, were like that in college. Unlike most of my high school teachers, my college professors wanted us to attack each question with fervor and gusto rather than just listen to themselves talk. For many, going to class was a chore in between the 10am SportsCenter and the first of two Simpsons episodes. It was even an excuse for not being able to pick up the kegs at the local liquor store. “Sure, you can use my car, but I have class,” was a popular excuse in lieu of risking bodily harm, administration consequence, or leaving the couch.

There is something strangely satisfying about learning something new. And college was a completely different place to study and learn than what I had previously known.

“And don’t come late to my class. I don’t need that shit,” my professor concluded in his first monologue to my class.

Did he just swear? The intro to journalism class perked up behind sleepy eyes and hot coffees, nervous laughter hummed audibly just below the sound of the computers. My teacher laughed at the class’s reaction. Is this what college is like?

“Here’s your first exam,” he continued, waving a stack of papers like he was a newsboy holding the daily news with a juicy piece of gossip on page one.

Oh, now this is what I expected from college! The whole class sunk in their seats, but didn’t moan in faux-agony because, after all, we were mature college students now. This was to be expected. Were we supposed to like tests now?

“And if you get 100%, which no one ever has,” he said, “you’ll win the Tilly’s Fellowship Award.”

At this we laughed again. Despite our relatively newness to campus, we knew Tilly’s was the place that everyone went to drink at night. Now our teacher was telling us if we aced his exam, we could accompany him to the bar. This place is great, I thought.

Naturally, of course, no one aced the exam. No one ever has.

Once college ended, I knew that I wouldn’t stop reading or writing since school had ended, just as I knew that I wouldn’t stop searching for the hidden meaning in poetry and literature. Even if there are no concrete answers, I revel in the fact that, unlike mathematics, my interpretation is as good as the next man’s. I would miss reading and discussing in groups what a passage meant to each individual, just as I would miss re-reading old stories, and concluding my previous translation was a pile of horseshit. Ironically, after 16 years of wanting to graduate into the working world, I found myself eager to learn more.

Michelangelo, at the end of a long, successful life as an artist and philosopher, stated the famous, “I am still learning,” as if even though he’s had an enriched life as a scholar, he is impervious to the notion that he knows all there is to know. This philosophy always intrigued me. No one has all the solutions, not books, not people, not ancient scrolls tucked away in a casing at the bottom of the ocean. I have been taught that good questions elicit good answers, so the best attitude would be to continuously asked questions. In a way, though, it is a bit unsettling that all life offers cannot be figured out until our lives are withering away. I could have read books about traveling across the country, or watch documentaries about it on cable television, but the answers to what my trip would be like had to be found through the doing.

And if books and television weren’t going to teach me what I wanted to learn, the places I’ll meet and the people I will experience across the country will be an exquisite substitute.

Traveling to Springfield would allow me to see Marty one last time and also my friends, but I was also happy about the ability to spend one last night drinking and hanging out with my younger brother Tim, with whom I had grown closer to since he enrolled at Springfield my senior year. His formative days as a high school student were spent largely bonding with my older brother Jeff because he had graduated college and was living at home while Tim was still in high school. They spent a good amount getting to be friends on top of brothers. I was happy to have my turn in college (a time I spent largely with Jeff around) to get to know the sibling three years my junior.

Like most siblings who get along well, my brothers and I have paradoxically been each others best friends and biggest antagonists for our entire lives. The three of us are closer than any other set of brothers I’ve ever known. We laugh together; we fish and drink together, and have an incredible amount of fun every chance we get some time to spend in each other’s company. This rings true especially on Christmas morning at our parents house opening gifts and generally acting much younger than our ages would suggest we acted. We get along very well and that’s mostly attributed to our parents.

Jeff is two years my elder. Throughout my life, through little choice of my own, I’d be following his steps. My academic career has been trying to emerge from a rather large shadow that he cast as I followed him along the way from kindergarten through college at the same institutions. I’d like to think I succeeded in going my own way despite similar locales. Jeff is the serious one. He’s formal with strangers and generally concerned with other people feeling comfortable when they’re near him. Despite the “I don’t give a shit” façade is a truly caring person who would be upset if he hurt someone. He is the brother who tends to get the drunkest at family events, sporting events and concerts, and proudly names himself the M.V.P. the following day. He is the one with whom the brothers can have a serious talk.

As I am a middle child (and possess all the symptoms that come with middle child syndrome), I have a younger brother. Tim is a couple years younger than I am. He’s the gregarious one. He’s outgoing, funny, and has a knack for having a girlfriend at all times. He may be the most independent of the three Osgood boys. Since he was younger, he’s always march to his own tune in a way that doesn’t make him ostensibly weird; he’s just a little wackier than normal. Tim is the brother with whom serious talks about Jeff are made.

A good friend of mine likes to place the Osgood’s into an over-simplified description: Jeff is the smart one, Tim is the handsome one, and the novelist is the funny one. I’d like to believe we all possess a variety of the three, but the formula is complete.

While my brothers are I get along very well, there is antagonistic side to our relationship. We tend to warm-heartedly rag on one another to an extent where it makes up most of our conversation. When it comes to my being a writer, I get the brunt of most of the insult. They make up fictional titles for fictional things that I “wrote” and if I’m upset, grumpy, or angry, they won’t hesitate to tell me to “write a poem” about it. Now, I’m all for a good jab here and there, but it is frustrating to have something I’m passionate about be the focal point of insult. I can’t have a conversation about books or authors without looking over my shoulders to see if I’m going to be called some slang of the word “homosexual” for the thought of having that kind of conversation. The other brothers “flaws,” namely marriage for Jeff (he gets made fun of for being old, married, and never having fun anymore) and an endless yearning for Christmas mornings, puppies, and all that comes with being cinematically in love for Tim (“girlfriend man”) seem full of jest and mundane in comparison.

“Shots on me!” cried Justin the second his foot hit the tile floor of our favorite bar, JT’s. The trip tomorrow would be another easy one, three or four hours down I-95 to New Jersey. So tonight I wanted to live it up one last time with my friends.

Besides Justin, joining us that night was my brother Tim, a host of his friends, my college roommates Gary, and Brian, whom I would be living with in California, my friend Tara from Albany, and my friends Greg and Gina. We stayed at one bar the entire night, doing shots, playing pool, and generally rebel-rousing throughout the night. The evening ended with Greg, an EMT, speeding around Springfield with his siren and lights on as we got high off our surroundings.

The night was not any different from others we had experienced in college. While not the most ideal location in America, Springfield, high in crime rates, a major city in the middle of surrounding rolling hills and farms, was our own playground. We spent four years getting to know the city, where were the best places to eat, regardless of what type of neighborhood it is in, which bars to go to, which strip clubs were the best. We learned that the cops were less concerned about drivers with a little too much drink in them than they were where the latest stabbing had taken place, which was, and it’s up for interpretation, good for us. Our school was also very closed-minded about where we drank. While trying to stiffen up on on-campus alcohol consumption, they closed their ears to the fact that, if not allowed do those things on school grounds, students would be jumping into cars to go downtown. Unfortunately, even with an alcohol-related driving death, the school remained too public-image weary, risking students lives for the own public relation success. We broke a few rules at college, but our standing as students and student leaders was a more valuable asset to the college community. We got away with a lot more than we should have, including a real-life Donkey Kong game, in which kegs shells were thrown down a flight of stairs while someone tried their hardest to run up the same set of stairs. Good for laughs, bad for ankles.

With the sun outlining the western Massachusetts horizon the next morning, I said my goodbyes to my friends, and Tim. Life wasn’t going to get much easier since graduating college, but being around the Bay State my entire life, save for vacations and an internship in Orlando, Florida, wasn’t good for my karma. I needed something new, but first I needed to look back around campus and see what, and who, I was leaving behind.

“We’re going to miss you, Oz,” Gary reminded me, looking upon a campus scene much different, at least structurally than we left it.

“I will see you on the other side of the country,” Brian told me. In a way, we both envied each others journey. While I knew my trip across three time zones would be exciting and adventurous, I also understood that the trip would be much easier to make in a plane alongside Brian. From the other vantage point, for someone who is built tall and lanky like Brian, a six-hour plane ride can be a very difficult thing during which to stay comfortable and sane. I embraced my roommates and best friends of four years, and started on down that highway.

Besides the keg stands and the raucous parties, which included, but didn’t limit themselves to fist fights and random hook-ups, what I knew I’d miss most about college life was the camaraderie of friends. Having the ability to remain in bed or on the couch in sweatpants and still maintain an enviable social life is not a very difficult task to master. Since most of my homework as an English major - and soon to be struggling and starving writer - was reading and writing, two things I enjoyed anyway since I was a little kid, I considered myself to be prepared for the real world. Scraping together money for food and beer while spending a considerable amount of time on the couch, laughing it up with friends while reading and writing remained socially acceptable for those who aimed to pursue life as a scribe.

The time spent living on my own was influenced, good and bad, by the constant presence of friends and casual acquaintances, most of whom were continuously open for causing trouble, skipping class, or going downtown to the bars for happy hour. One of those options, if not all, was selected more often than not. The college friends are the first ones to actually live night and day with one another. In all of the years leading up to our higher education, everyone has their school friends, but when the bell rings or the final practice whistle blows, everyone goes home to be their own person. Many times we find out people are entirely different on their own than when they’re surrounded by their peers. It may be annoying the way the kid sitting behind you in 12^th grade history brushes his teeth, but you’d never know, not being privy to his sanity habits. In college, you get to know the kid who doesn’t necessarily shower every day, the kid who talks to his mother three times a day, or the guy down the hall who smokes entirely too much pot. That is why I’ve always felt like college is the first time we really test ourselves in a social arena. You find out what kind of person you really are through the process of figuring out the type of people you choose to be friends with in college.

Chapter 2

2008-08-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Car that took me the whole way, Marcus Camry

Here is chapter two of the novel Chasing Sunsets, by Matthew Osgood

*Subsequent chapters will be posted every two weeks*

II.

Like breaking up, peacefully, with a girlfriend

“It should not be denied … that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.” –Wallace Stegner, American West as Living Space

The first issue I had to contend with when leaving was my automobile situation. Sadly, we no longer live in the times of being able to hitchhike anywhere without fear of danger from both the passenger and the driver. As unassuming as I look, at this point in my life I was a chain-smoker and incessant curser who was still showing the after-effects of four year bloating in college. Jack Kerouac could pull that off to kick off the Beat Generation, but today’s generation strikes a little bit of weariness thanks to the assholes that make the local and national news nightly. Sprinkle that with the exaggerated fear of second-hand smoke, and we’re looking at a losing situation for our generation struggling to make a good name for ourselves.

I scraped together the money I had saved painting houses that summer, utilized the lucky $1000 I won on a lottery ticket and bought a used gray four-door sedan. The winning ticket came with a stroke of luck, or maybe it was ingenuity. Some may even call it “seizing the moment.” I was working 20-25 hours a week at a local liquor store to make a little spending cash for myself while I put my check from painting houses away for my trip. Since we sold lottery tickets at the store, it became increasingly hard not to try my luck every once in a while on the scratch tickets. One particular day I had a bunch of money on me – we got paid in cash – and I was working the late shift. There was a customer, who was a regular in the store, consistently losing on the $10 tickets. The $10 tickets are a waste of money, in my opinion, because there are way more losers than there are winners. Some people just like the risk for the possibility of scratching the million dollar winner. The gentleman had lost over $150 playing one particular ticket, sure that the next one would be the big winner. Eventually, he conceded defeat and left angry. Seizing the opportunity, I bought the next ticket. The result? Ten $100 signs. I never told that guy I won. “No, sir, that ticket didn’t win while I was here.”

I cashed my ticket and took the winnings to a used car lot. My truck was rendered useless through wear and tear of the New England winters and the reasonable commute to college and work. It wasn’t the reliable hunk of metal it used to be, and it was time to trade it in.

Parting with a car is a difficult thing. I had that truck, black and gray, through high school and college. The upholstery had been witness to unbearable heat and unfathomable cold because neither the heat nor the air conditioning worked. “Bo Jackson”, the name of my car, and though the name is a man’s name, I gently referred to the automobile as a she, had seen me top 100 MPH and run over rocks in four-wheel drive off the beaten trail in New Hampshire. She had caught me making out with girls who weren’t my girlfriend, and maybe even saw a couple girls without their tops on. She had coughed up smoke, and provided ample trunk space for kegs in college. I’ve always said, “If this car could talk, I would try to keep it mum around my family and future employers.” Bottom line, this truck would not have made it across the country. Before I left the truck, we took one last ride. I made sure to let the car salesman know that the gas petal sticks, so go easy, and that the oil needs to be changed every 1,000 miles rather than 3,000. Just keep some extra oil handy in the trunk. It was like breaking up, peacefully, with a girlfriend.

I was pretty aware, too, that this new car of mine was going to be witness to some antics as well. I was, after all, driving across the country. A small, mid-sized car, it was perfect for the trip I was making, big enough to fit all my stuff, small enough so that I wouldn’t have to spend too much on gas across the United States. I’m a pretty easy customer, too, when it comes to cars. Since I know very little about the inner workings of automobiles, I was mostly concerned with whether or not the car had a CD player, air conditioning, and power locks and windows. Check, check, check. I was good. This car would be my home for the week and a half voyage that I was about to embark upon. It would double as a suitcase, and a shoulder to lean on when the trip got lonely.

My car was packed and ready to go. It was a clear Monday morning and my trip for the night wasn’t far. I was headed just a couple hours west to Springfield, Massachusetts, where I had gone to college. Some friends were still living in the area, including my younger brother. I laugh when I refer to him as my “little brother” because since 7^th grade, he’s been a lot taller than me, rendering myself no longer as a bigger brother. At least I’m still the older one and without question, I would still win in a fight.

My parents and I shed some tears upon my leaving. They knew I was following my heart to see the country, and they supported my trip. My father had made a similar excursion in his twenties to Arizona, and confided in me that he would love to have stayed out there. I promised to call at every stop, as I was traveling alone until Chicago, where I would meet up with a couple friends to travel with me the rest of the way.

My parents have consistently been a rock in my family. We’ve had some struggles, emotionally and financially, but every step of the way, they’ve been able to make things work by emphasizing that the most important thing we have in this world is one another. For the disagreements and fights, the first person to back you up in any circumstance in life would be family. I had chosen a rather difficult path in life by becoming a writer. It would be a struggle just to get a job, to not remain stagnant, as pursuing this craft as a profession can be a tough thing to do. It’s fairly easy to go a few days without writing anything down, but however grueling it may be, inspiration comes from the unknown, and it’s not uncommon to do a week’s worth of writing in a single night. For some reason, and I believe it’s faith in their son, my parents understood that for the days spent on the couch, there were cogs moving around constantly in my head on what to write, and how to get a job. Few realize that even when staring at a blank spot on the wall, or out the window, a writer is working. Words can’t even begin to understand or describe how thankful I was to my parents for supporting the pursuit of my creative dreams, never mind doing it on the other side of the country.

My mother had grown up on the edge of town in Methuen near the New Hampshire border as the fourth child in a large family of seven. Personable, smart, and attractive, yet unreasonably self-conscious, she’s a voracious reader and critical-thinker who majored in psychology at the University of Massachusetts – Lowell. I get those last two traits from her. Also a middle child like I am, she’s sensitive, loyal, and caring.

Eventually, she spurned the career as a psychologist in order to become a full-time mother to her children, in addition to the other children she cared for during her many years as a day care provider out of our home. Along with my father, they’ve welcomed numerous people into their home, whether it was a down-on-her-luck younger sister, or a college friend needing a home for a stint of time. For all the troubles of having three boys, I’ve decided long ago that she will forego the line for admittance into the Pearly Gates of Heaven. It had to be hard for her to let go of a son with whom she has so much in common. Alongside that, about six months prior to my departure, a baby in her care at the daycare run from our home died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Upon retrieving the eleven month old boy from his nap, she realized that he was not breathing. Her valiant attempts at resuscitation failed, leaving her permanently scarred. Subsequently, the Department of Social Services threatened her with jail time should she ever try to run a day care operation again. Unable to live off just my father’s income, my mother returned to work at an entry level position she wound up hating for menial wages. For her handling of that extremely complicated time in her life, she became a model of strength for the entire family.

Likewise, my father was born and raised in Methuen. He is the younger of two boys – there are no females in the Osgood genealogy. The son of an extremely hard-working mother and an alcoholic, but devoted father and ten years his brothers’ junior, he fended a lot for himself growing up. Compassionate yet stubborn, he cares for very little other than the people around him. He forgives, but doesn’t forget very easily and those attributes have, throughout his life, weeded out the unnecessary things and people in his life. He had an exceedingly loyal core of friends, a small but enduring set of relationships.

A master story and joke teller, my father can make a whole room look his way and pay attention to the words exiting his mouth. His enduring legacy will forever be the extent to which he’s instilled family values into my brothers and I. When he lost his job, his sons were 12, 10, and 7. To us, he was the epitome of strength with how he dealt with the situation. We were too young to see him unquestionably wonder or confide in us how the family would manage, so what we saw was a man who told us that the chips were low, but this was the time that our family needed to stick together. Family vacations may have had to be sacrificed, as with some of the other little things, but we never went without things we needed. We never saw him down. For the rest of my life, I will always see the way my father led the family out of trying times with his attitude alone. He kept us afloat by being positive and keeping in our heads the idea that if we all stick together as a family we can overcome any obstacle.

A honk on the way out signaled my goodbye to the neighborhood that I grew up in. I had a mini-goodbye party during the Patriots game the night before with close friends, which ended up being a late-night affair. My car was packed with a couple packs of smokes, some with a couple pre-rolled blunts, and dreams of figuring out how the west was won.

Chapter One

2008-06-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Here is chapter one of the novel Chasing Sunsets, by Matthew Osgood

*Subsequent chapters will be posted every two weeks*

“You know, for a writer, you have terrible conversational skills.”

“It’s a semi-true story, believe it or not,

I made up a few things and there’s some I forgot,

But the life and the telling are both real to me

And they all run together and turn out to be

A semi-true story” –Jimmy Buffett

I remember exactly where I was when I decided to make the most important decision in my life. I was sitting at Kono’s Surf Shop, a beach-front Mexican joint that served only breakfast and lunch. The line was excruciatingly long this particular Saturday morning, but the omelets were always well worth the wait.

We sat on the porch overlooking Pacific Beach, the canyon-cliffs of the coastline outlined the northern horizon, Crystal Pier stood just south of us, while fishermen drank their morning beers, clinging to their faith that the bonita or white fish would be biting today. Bobbing over waves were surfers patiently awaiting their ten second adrenaline rush. On our well-hidden perch, we laughed about the night before, nursed hangovers with the strong coffee, and shielded the sunlight from our faces with dark sunglasses.

The super-sized omelets came prepared with fresh avocado slices and Tecate sauce. A pleasure of the Mexicans inhabiting southern California, I think, is to challenge the gringos to consume the massive quantity of food they prepare. Or, at least, to rush them to the nearest bano. But, at least, the food was delicious and inexpensive, and contained an innate remedy for the morning after.

“When are you leaving?” I ask Jonathan, pouring salt onto a slice of avocado, something the Mexicans would cry blasphemy about if they saw someone do it. “You said you were going to leave the beginning of the summer, right?”

“June 1^st,” he replied through a mouthful of the best home fries west of the Mississippi River. I always admired his candid responses, whether it was beautifully disrespectful, or harshly truthful. I liked that he had a date set, something I am known to procrastinate on. My response would have bordered on, “In June, whenever I get the urge.”

The porch was full by now with tourists snapping photographs of the spectacular view of the white sand beaches and rising tides. At midday on the west coast, the sun hangs discreetly to the east of the beach creating a clear view of the waves and ripples that smother the Pacific Ocean. This aspect is convenient and practical when walking the boardwalk looking at the females sunbathing on the pristine beaches. They are unable to see you peering at them without getting a face full of sun.

Our meals were finished, but being the stereotypical San Diego day, Jonathan suggested we get a bloody Mary and keep our spot in the sun. He went to get refills on two coffees instead and I stole a Union-Tribune from the vacant chair next to me. No sports section, God damnit. I was mad because illiteracy and lack of current event knowledge plagues people my age. I was also discouraged because I wanted to, like the person before me, read the sports page. The sports section is the first thing I like to read. The Padres were losing to the Giants last I saw in the 7^th inning, but the night took a drastic turn just as the hometown heroes were rallying. Shots of tequila and a couple of southern California girls had taken over the evening. I couldn’t remember whether the bar erupted with the joy of a win, or moaned at the Giants taking the second game in a row. I lit a cigarette and worked sans writing material on the crossword puzzle instead.

Jonathan came back with two cups of coffee and suggested we head down to Mission Valley, where the mall was. He needed a new pair of khaki’s for work, and I agreed to go with him once I could get a shit and a shower in. That, I thought, would start my day for real. A few cigarettes later, we left our seats for the elderly couple that came walking onto the porch, only to have our plan foiled when someone else stole one of the vacant seats to join friends.

On the way to the car, I picked up a want-ad magazine to continue looking for jobs in the area to help pay rent and some extraneous bills I had accumulated.

Jonathan saw this, and added, “you’re not gonna get nothing from that magazine. Don’t settle for a bullshit job, you know what you need to do.”

The insinuation he made was to remind me that a regular job was only hurting me in the long run of pursuing a career as a writer. When it concerns Jonathan, those types of slight motivational comments were about as blunt as they got. I took the hint.

A kid ran past us from the pier, yelling for his friend, who was leaning against a gift shop with his bike, a fish still dangling from the runners’ line, squirming vigorously for freedom. As I waited for the roof to open on Jonathan’s Mustang, I stretched my arms above my head, arching my body to crack my sore back. A deep inhale and the salty air stung my nostrils in an attempt to cleanse my system from the late night.

I skimmed through the want-ad magazine with the speed of a judge looking over a clean rap sheet. I walked over to the trash and flung the magazine inside. Sacrificing opening the door, I hopped over it into the passenger side seat, eliciting an annoyed look from my counterpart.

“Fuckin’ James Dean over there,” he said.

“You know for a writer, you’ve got terrible conversational skills.”

I had come to California a year ago, like most procrastinators, or adventure seekers, depending on how you look at it, to delay life for a little while and explore the cliché of “finding myself.” For me that wasn’t really the case. I felt like I had a pretty good advantage over people my age, and sometimes people twice my age, in knowing who and what I was. I have traveled almost the entire country, seeking clarity and inspiration at the same time. California seemed like a good option. I had just earned my degree in journalism and English, had no inclination to join the “slackers” in graduate school, and I had no family or romantic ties holding me back on the east coast. In ten years, I thought, that might not be the case. I refused to be the person who said later in life, “what if?” In this instance, my “what if” would have been venturing out to the west coast.

My mother wholeheartedly supported my decision to make a move. My older brother had just gotten engaged and my younger brother was going to be entering his sophomore year at the same (expensive) school I had attended. Practically, I figured this would take some of the financial strain off my parents’ shoulders while I took a chance somewhere else. Leaving college to live back at home never appealed to me, as I had grown continually used to coming and going as I pleased without question, and I was fond of having no limitations to how many cigarettes or joints I smoked, or who was coming over to “study” after hours.

Surrendering back to my stuffy room in the basement at my parents’ house would be a step backwards, as I saw it, regardless of practicality. I had grown accustomed to living on my own and saw the opportunity to live across the country as a sign of freedom and independence; a sure sign that I was on my way to beginning a life that was my own independent of the safe havens and familiarity of my hometown.

Before I get to my story, which has already begun, I guess, I probably should pull a Holden Caulfield and introduce myself. My name is Matthew; not Matt like co-workers call me, or Matty like my ex-girlfriend calls me; not Oz or Ozzie like my friends call me. Matthew, like the name I use for a byline in every newspaper article or poem I’ve ever published. Matthew, not because I’m trying to sound sophisticated, mature, or even literary, but because that’s my name, and I like it. It’s rarely misspelled and flows easily off the tongue.

I like to say it’s a Biblical name, not because it actually is, but because people laugh when I say it, especially in groups of strangers because uncomfortable and uncertain laughter is the easiest to provoke. The real reason for my name is not religious, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word, but in some ways it is. My parents had seasons tickets to the New England Patriots around the time I was born and the backup quarterback at the time was a man by the name of Matt Cavanaugh. My mom thought he was cute, liked the name anyway, and without a struggle from my father, my name was decided right there in the old Foxboro Stadium, or as it was called then, Sullivan Stadium right there on route 1 in Foxboro, Massachusetts. I like that I’m named after a backup. This way I didn’t have the pressure of living up to being named after Larry Bird or Raymond Bourque.

I never really knew much about my last name Osgood mainly because my paternal grandfather died when I was young and we very rarely are in touch with his side of the family. What I do know is that there are all men in the Osgood genealogy, so when it comes to my offspring, I hope my eventual wife is okay with having all boys. It’s no my choice, it’s science.

Osgood is an English name. It’s the name of a character in Great Expectations and the surname of a professional hockey goalie – a white man, and a San Diego Chargers wide receiver – a black man. When I met the latter at a bar, he didn’t believe me when I told him that we were cousins, but I’m sticking to my story.

Matthew Osgood has a nice sound; it sounds soft and I’ve never heard it pronounced sexier than when it came out of Sarah’s mouth (you’ll meet her later). I’ve never wanted to change my first name, but I guess if I had the choice, I’d pick something manly and classic, not like the names of babies nowadays like Mason or Ethan. I’d choose something like Jack. Yea, Jack. It sounds like someone who could build a house with his bare hands or run for the White House. Either way, I wouldn’t want to do either of those things, so I’m glad I have the name I do. Back to the story.

To break the fall of my desire to continue my life’s adventure in California, I sat my mother Jeannette and father Steve down at the kitchen table, and proceeded to tell them that I had something to talk to them about. Unfortunately, my family and I had too many of these sit-down talks, as at the time, we had a string of a few years where innumerable tragedies had struck our family and friends.

The kitchen table had become the place in my household to share news that would affect the entire family regardless if the information was good or bad. When my dad was laid off from a job at which he worked 19 years, we learned about it at the kitchen table. When three of my high school friends were killed one night in a car accident, I was told with my two hands gripping the tops of the chairs surrounding the table. Playing the answering machine upon returning from my older brothers’ graduation, I learned of another friend passing away while at the table. When I decided to leave the nest, the kitchen table was the only place I could have broken the news.

“Mom and dad, I wanted to let you know I’m coming out of the closet,” I started. Fortunately, my face remained stoic, awaiting a response.

After a moment’s silence, my mom looked up at me.

“That’s ok, Matt,” she started as I burst out in laughter. She slapped her hands on edge of the table, gripping it as if to make sure it doesn’t run away.

“Oh, mom,” I sympathized, “you’re so fucking tolerant!” I have begun at this point to consider myself “adult” enough to use profanity in front of my mother. My father was shaking his head either at the sudden rollercoaster of emotions, or the fact I casually dropped the f-bomb in front of a woman. He’d taught me better than that.

I changed my tone. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to move to California.”

When I look back at the situation, I applaud my own willpower to tell them rather than to ask them. After all, I was 22 years old, considered myself an adult capable of making my own decisions, and had complete faith in myself, a recent college graduate, to follow through with the adventure I had planned.

Happily, they told me through tears that if that’s what I wanted to do, they would support me. Being the organizer my mom is, she barraged me with questions. With whom? When? How? Where is the money coming from? Of course, I didn’t know the answers to these questions because I’m the type of person to just pick up and go, living life nomadically and ten feet at a time.

Despite my claims I was unorganized at the time, I did have some facts already set in stone concerning my move. My roommate from college would be my roommate post-college, since he was born and raised in San Diego. In addition to that, there were friends of mine from home who were also planning to make the move. Having friends out west made me comfortable knowing I would rarely be alone. All that was needed now was money and a map.

Life that summer filled with nostalgia. I thought there was a chance I may never live in these parts ever again. On top of that, I was moving out of home for good. My friends teased me that I was going to find a girlfriend way hotter than I deserve, which I claimed impossibility, though they turned about to be one hundred percent accurate. I spent most of the time that summer reserved, and trying not to grow too emotionally attached to the people around me.

My friends and I hadn’t exactly lost touch throughout college, but since I was the only one to go away from home for school, I lost touch with the minor things like who’s working where, who’s dating who, and who had withdrawn from the group. Those things piled up and it was tough coming home at the end of semesters because I felt out of touch with the many inside jokes. I got ragged on mostly for not coming home unless I was forcibly kicked off campus when classes ended for break. Looking back, I don’t regret these things as much as I do cherish the notion that college, for me, was lived to the fullest, reasonably realizing the time – and money - spent there was a draining well with each second that passed.

Driving through the city in which I was raised throughout the course of that summer season, I found myself realizing exactly what I was leaving. My home town offers it all: from two-family apartments on the east side of town to the half million dollar homes on the developing west. The neighborhood I grew up in was nestled somewhere in between the two, a small cul-de-sac with the neighborhood basketball hoop still standing strong despite years of rain, winds, snow, and the occasional dunk contest off of trampolines on the curb a few houses down. I remember racing through town on my bike with friends as a kid, and later in high school doing the same in my first car, a 1986 Ford Bronco.

I was never one of those people who complained about where I lived. The ones in high school who couldn’t wait to graduate and go away for good, but always seem to come back. Sometimes I wonder if these overzealous wanderers do and say the things they do for show, and why they don’t cower coming home. The petty drama that came with being a teenager never really bothered me. I loved my town; I had a tremendous amount of gratitude for being what it is, which is an average, middle-class community with small town values and large city dreams. My parents were both born and raised here by their parents, and, after they fell in love and were married, continued their life here. The people are humble and the schools are good. There is a wonderful amount of pride in the people who have left here and succeeded – the 2003 Ms. America - on both ends of the spectrum, from the admiration of that person from their neighbors to the appreciation of where they came from. It was not for that aspect that I wanted to leave. I knew I would make it back eventually because every road that leads away is sure to also lead you back to where you started. I just knew that somewhere out there was something special that could elicit whatever was yearning to get out from inside of me. Along the road somewhere I could find the answers from the sounds of the world.

There are two stories from my childhood and teen years that have significantly shaped the way I look at what I do and how I live my life. The first story took place when I was twelve.

The first day of summer vacation started with the freedom adjacent to such a monumental annual event. These were the days before high school when we as children would wake up as early as we could in order to spend an entire day in the sun. I remember the heat and the sun being incredibly present this June day, only because later I can recall carelessly plunging into the pool in my backyard that afternoon despite the presence of police officers and trauma intervention workers hovering over the crime scene that was my driveway.

My friend Cara lived up the street from me. She was a girl with whom I shared many experiences. We grew up together, shared our first real kiss, and she is someone whom I will always remain fond of despite the waning correspondence of our adult lives. Cara, her brother, and I were in the woods behind my house searching for worms to attach to the hooks on our fishing rods. My first dog, a beagle named Wags, was assisting the three of us.

Around lunchtime, I retreated to my house for lunch. My parents were both working. I don’t recall where either of my two brothers were, so I had the run of the house. My knowledge of cooking was limited to grilled cheese, so that’s what I made for myself. Midway through the process of finding culinary delight, Cara came bolting into my kitchen.

“I found something,” she said out of breath.

Prepping for my meal, I didn’t take much of what she said into much thought. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she responded. “I’m scared.”

I followed her immediately outside into the woods. She was like a sister to me. And despite the fact we had some experiences beyond such a relationship, Cara was the closest person to me. There was no way I wasn’t going to follow her into the woods behind my house.

“There.” She pointed to a pair of faded blue jeans floating about five feet from the shore of the Spicket River, which flows directly through my backyard. Looking back, I think we both knew exactly what was bobbing up and down in front of us. The problem was that neither of us really knew how to tell the other. Instead of following our urge to go to the police station, we needed to investigate. We each took a handful of rock and began firing from ten feet away at a relatively small, unusual target. I don’t remember which one of us finally hit the target, but I remember the sound that it made. It sounded like a hard stomp of a rotting wood bridge: sturdy, but hollow. This sound sent Cara into tears.

Not enough to be convinced, I waded into the water and looked over the mysterious object. It was the body of a 47 year old man. Out of our visual range from where we were was the skin of his ankles visible above two running shoes, and orange shirt, and long brown hair floating on the surface. The image will forever be etched in my brain. Seeing this loss of life was numbing. We ran to the nearest neighbor, who wasn’t home. We then hopped on our bikes to the police station, which isn’t far from my house.

We ditched our bikes at the entrance and sprinted inside the building. No one looked willing to entertain the two twelve year olds until one of us declared, “There is a dead body in the river.”

The cops escorted us home. The man had allegedly too much to drink the previous night and fallen off the bridge about 100 yards upstream from where we found him. To this day, I’ve thought about that experience many times, but I’ve never once had a dream – or rather nightmare – about the man we found that day. I’ve retold this story to friends, family, and even strangers countless times. It remains my Stand By Me moment.

The most sobering experience of my entire life happened my junior year in high school. Few moments in a lifetime define the character someone will become. These are transcendent moments to be relived for the entirety of a life.

The Methuen High School football team, of which I was a part, had come off a major victory in the final moments of a close game. Spirits were high as the Rangers were yet to lose a contest in the season. The weekend just a usual weekend, parties and dates and girlfriends. There was no sign that my life and outlook on it would be changed in an instant.

My bedroom was upstairs in my parent’s house and the stairs were old and they’d creak when someone would climb or descend them. This made it especially hard to sneak in passed curfew. My father, hearing these sounds, must have known I was coming.

I turned the corner toward the kitchen where my dad suddenly blocked my way. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but by the look on his face I knew something was not right. His countenance had devastation written all over it. He told me the news. Three of my friends were killed the previous night in a car crash. They were driving to visit a friend at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst when the lost control of the car, swerved into the opposing lane on route 2, and had their car split in half an 18-wheeler. All three girls, and another girl whom I didn’t know, were killed almost instantly.

A vigil was held within walking distance from my house that night. There were hundreds of mourners and candles, dozens of signs, and a million wails; the toughest of people were reduced to tears. A car radio played – over and over – the song “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy.

Then there I saw Cara.

I hadn’t cried yet until then. I held her as tight as I could as she told me she was supposed to be driving with the girls, but she elected to drive herself earlier in the day. I can’t imagine how the pain would have been magnified had my father listed her name in the morning.

One of the girl’s cousins is a very close friend of mine still. We’ve taken trips on the anniversary almost every year to place flowers on the site of the crash. When I saw her that night she looked as if she was off in space. Not a very emotional girl in terms of hugging people, she’d probably been embraced hundreds of times that day. She didn’t say a word as I embraced her to express my condolences until she let out a giant sob and sniffle combination. She pulled away from me with an apologetic grin on her face.

“I got snot all over your shirt,” she said. I’m convinced this moment produced one of the only smiles she could muster that day.

I can remember the hugs, I remember the community that the town felt that day, but more than remembering, I will never forget the sounds of sobbing people, mourning the loss of friends, girlfriends, and family. During a moment of silent prayer, I watched one of my best friends in the world keeled over wailing and being held up by friends. These things stick on the back of your eyelids at night. They permeate your eardrums at mundane moments.

The town was in disarray. The school hallways on Monday were packed with students still shocked, teachers and friends consoling those affected. Hundred of people attended the wakes of the girls, the last vision of whom being the family-chosen portrait sitting atop closed caskets.

Every year in the spring, I receive an invitation to the scholarship benefit banquet for the girls. What kills me is not the memory of the tragic event, but the pictures of these young ladies, pictures I’ve seen hundreds of time; They will be 17 forever.

My life has changed drastically since these moments. My first real funeral was one where the caskets contained the bodies of three kids. Three of my friends. Three people just like me. Three people seemingly impervious to death, their whole lives in front of them. That week in my life determined my loss of innocence. I grew up a lot that week.

These two stories have taught me two very important things that have followed me thus far:

1. Tomorrow may never come.

2. Never underestimate the power of a good story.