On August 27, after months of anticipation, Olga and I left Houston for southeast Asia, by way of California and the American southwest. We had agreed to pack as little as possible, carry everything ourselves, and spend, on average, no more than $50 per day, for the two of us, including transport, meals, lodging, and activities. We would record every purchase, every day, no matter how trivial.
Our entire luggage fit into two modest backpacks. We had eliminated item after item until we each had four shirts, three pants, one ultra-thin waterproof jacket, five pairs of underwear, a bathing suit and one pair of Rainbow sandals. No shoes, no socks; two months, two people. I pleaded with Olga to leave her hairbrush, but she drew the line. One of the bags held all our clothing and toiletries. The other was half-full with six books and a new DSLR. We had carefully packed everything into Ziplock bags, a habit we kept for the entire journey.
Our flight would depart from LAX shortly after midnight on Tuesday. We left early Friday morning with the sunrise in our rear view mirror. California was three days away.
We arrived in Marfa in the late afternoon and checked in at El Cosmico, the 18 acre slab of barren West Texas land dotted with yurts, tents, campgrounds, and restored vintage trailers, where we had reservations for a 1951 Royal Mansion. We walked along the winding dirt paths that formed cosmic patterns through the tall summer grass, pulling a yellow luggage cart with heavy duty off-road wheels behind us until we reached our trailer. It was painted half white and half sherbet green, with three big windows facing out over as much wide open desert, mountain, and sky as the eye could take in. We lay on the couch, stared out the windows, drank beers, and started reading our novels. The door was open and fresh washed white linens flapped from a clothes line in front of the neighboring trailer, a few dozen yards away. We rinsed off in the outdoor shower and laughed, buzzed from the beers, at the pleasure of being naked and wet in the middle of the endless desert. Back in the trailer, still wrapped in towels, we napped and let time drift till we woke hungry for dinner.
The next morning, Olga and I set out to explore Marfa’s phenomenal food scene. The sun was already mercilessly high by the time we were seated for breakfast in the garden at Cochineal, where we took coffee and refuge beside the cool grey adobe wall, next to a tall, lean man in a high-sleeved white undershirt and skinny jeans, pushing the side bangs away from his tortoise shell sunglasses so he could read Truman Capote. We walked through the town’s two main intersections, paced the fabled halls of the Paisano, experimented with new photographic angles for the clichéd water tower, and flipped through art books in the bookstore until we could eat again. Back on the sidewalk, we hugged the storefronts in search of shade until we arrived at the Pizza Foundation, where we ate the best pizza either of us has had – New York, Chicago, L.A., Portland, France, Italy – anywhere, to this day, made in a converted old gas station by a Brooklyn transplant.
Afterwards, we packed up the car and drove west two blocks to the outskirts of town, past Dairy Queen and El Cheapo Liquor Store, to visit Tacos del Norte. We pulled aside the bright orange metal screen door and stepped into the cool, empty dining room furnished with bingo chairs, two murals of Speedy Gonzales, and candles adorning an icon of the Lady of Guadalupe. At the benches outside, beside the quiet highway, we ate in awe and silence the greatest tacos either of us has ever had, anywhere, to this day.
We left Marfa without filling the tank. As we passed by what obviously looked to be the last gas station in many miles, Olga begged me to stop. But I knew Valentine was only 35 miles away and knew we could make it. I did not know that Valentine was a town of two hundred people, in good times. These were not good times. The only gas station was boarded up, the pumps removed. We had rolled in on fumes and had no shot of making it out to the interstate on what we had left. I pulled over by the gas station hoping to eventually hail someone down and ask for help.
Across the street I heard sounds coming from a huge open-ended garage, where a thin man in overalls was washing down a beautifully painted electric green semi truck that was more of a hot rod than a tool of interstate commerce. I called to him twice, trying to get his attention over the noise of the high pressure water pump without frightening him. He shut the water off, and as he turned around and walked over to me I realized he had cerebral palsy. “We’re out of gas,” I said, “I didn’t know the station would be out of service.” He looked down, took his gloves off, shoved them in his back pocket, and grinned. “You’re not the first,” he said, as he turned and started to walk away. “There’s a woman with a tank a quarter of a mile away. I’ll take you to her place.”
For the next two days, the American southwest rolled by as we sat still, gazing across flatlands and hillsides and ranchlands, until California came to us and we came back to the Pacific. I exited the 405 on Culver and in a single drive passed everything that had happened to me and that I had done from the age of nine to seventeen, until we arrived at what I now call my parents’ house.
They knew our plan: drop off the car, stay a couple of days, then fly out on Tuesday shortly after midnight. But they were still in disbelief over the finer details. “$50 a day? For two people? Where is the rest of your luggage? You aren’t taking any shoes?” It is petty to take pleasure in worrying your parents, to seek validation of their love by causing them concern, but their outrage was nonetheless deeply gratifying. Olga rolled her eyes and laughed as I told them that we planned to eat entirely on the streets, from vendors with no regard for basic sanitation, and that, to be honest, we were concerned for our health, “because there are a lot of unpleasant diseases over there.”
“You’re such a little shit!” Olga whispered in my ear, “Stop worrying your parents.” As a child, I was constantly afraid that my parents would find out I was doing something wrong. Now I could tell them in great detail all the wrong things I planned to do.
At ten minutes after midnight on Tuesday, August 31, 2010, Olga and I left for Vietnam.
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