I wake up and start burning more mixes. Around 930 a.m., Ed wakes up. This from Ed:
"I wake up feeling better, but not perfect. But who gives a shit? Today is Fenway Park, my old town of Boston, and our first baseball game! Gus, of course, is already up; I feel like this is a pattern that will continue throughout the trip. Speaking of Gus and sleeping and waking: so there is only one bed in our room, but it's a king and you could seriously fit 4 or 5 people in it. I mean, when I went to sleep I couldn't even tell there was someone else in the bed- it's that big. Anyway, I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself all the way on the right edge of the bed and Gus lying very close to me with his arm sticking out and his hand hanging over my face. So I'm like, 'Uh, dude, you need to move over.' He lets out a couple of grunts, and rolls over back to his side."
OK, let me explain something here. I need space. Especially when I sleep. In the first apartment I ever had entirely on my own, in Culver City, CA in 1995, I slept on the floor for the first 10 months until I could afford to buy a California King size bed. It was barely big enough. I like to sleep diagonally, with all my limbs splayed out like George of the Jungle, after he hits the tree. So it was inevitable that something like this would happen.
When two hetero men are tragically forced by circumstances to have to share a bed, section 803 (b) of the Guy Code states that there should immediately be established "an invisible wall of lead-plated concrete with a reinforced steel core, topped with electrified uranium-tipped barbed wire, running down the center of the bed." This is an important safety regulation put in place to help protect the mental health of the two men, which is obviously at risk in a situation so utterly fraught with peril.
Regrettably, in my unconscious quest for adequate sleeping space, I committed a gross violation of section 803(c) of the Guy Code, which states that "under no circumstances, including life-threatening ones, shall the invisible wall be breached." What happened was not unlike a situation in March, when 170 Swiss soldiers on a routine training exercise accidentally crossed over the border into Liechtenstein. As soon as they realized their mistake, they got back over to their side of the border in a hurry. It could have been a big diplomatic incident, but both parties realized it was an accident and left it at that. Fortunately, since I immediately removed the offending arm to my side of the bed, Ed took the Liechtenstein approach and didn't have a major freakout about it.
After brunch in the hotel with the wedding party, which featured Ed and the bride's baby causing a scene when Ed held her in his lap and took his eye off of her for two seconds- long enough for her to grab his placemat, yank it, and deposit a sizable portion of his sizable breakfast into his and her not-so-sizable laps. The bride, the baby, and Ed all seemed a little freaked out, but it was kinda funny for me.
After a hearty breakfast, we say our goodbyes to the wedding folks and hit the road. We're running about an hour late, but that's much better performance than we had leaving NYC, and we should have enough time to make it to Fenway in time for the first pitch. As long as there are no major traffic issues, things will be fine. This from Ed:
"We know we've left a bit late, but we're making great time on the road, so we've got a good shot at making it to Fenway by the first pitch. And then, in a cruel twist of fate, just as we say we can make it, we hit the longest traffic jam ever- it started in very southern Maine, just before the New Hampshire border... and went into Massachusetts. Bumper to bumper the whole way. It was while pissed off in this traffic jam that Gus and I realized that, because we both drive aggressively [skillfully, as far as I'm concerned] and get pissed at traffic and bad drivers, neither one of us is going to be good at calming the other one down when we're behind the wheel."
Maine- worth a visit. Not worth the lifetime you'll spend waiting on I-95 trying to leave it.
New Hampshire- Live Free or Die in traffic on I-95
Massachusetts welcomes you. You and your damned cah. Clahgging up our roads.
During this traffic jam, I put in the day's mix, which turned out to be exquisitely well suited for being stuck in traffic:
BMFRTE: 8-19: Hard Rock for the Road
1) Intro - Bad Brains
2) Miami Vice - Original TV Theme
3) Rockstar - Nickelback
4) Sex on Wheelz - My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult
5) Regulate - Warren G
6) Wiggle Stick - The Reverend Horton Heat
7) Satan is My Motor - Cake
8) Iron Man - Black Sabbath
9) Road Rage - Catatonia
10) Shitlist - L7
11) Die MF Die - Dope
12) Argh F**k Kill - The Dayglo Abortions
13) Raining Blood - Metallica
14) Army of Me - Bjork
15) Fight for Your Right - Beastie Boys
16) New World Order - Ministry
17) God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols
18) Enter the Sandman - Metallica
19) Head Like a Hole - Nine Inch Nails
20) Institutionalized - Suicidal Tendencies
After a few hours of fuming, we finally pull into Boston. It takes an ungodly amount of time to find a parking spot which can accommodate our SUV+trailer combo, and we end up so far away we have to get a cab to Fenway. We arrive at our seats just at the end of the 3rd inning. But although we are late, it is a gorgeous day for a ballgame, and I cheer the Angels on to victory, a victory made a little bit sweeter by the fact that Ed cheers for the Red Sox.
Fenway! I took this picture. You can tell because there's a large object in the way of what I'm trying to take a picture of.
The Green Monster. And Manny Ramirez in left field.
It's a beautiful day for a game at Fenway.
Who are these handsome young devils?
After the game, we walk back to the car, which takes some time since it's a long way off and we don't really know where we're going. At the car, we get out our gloves and play catch in the parking lot for a while. For me, there is nothing so Zen as playing catch. I can do it for hours and not get bored. But we eventually get hungry, so Ed leads us over to the Harvard Square area...
Boston- kinda beautiful place. Pity it's freezing ass cold half the time, and populated by people who are deeply depressed that no one is ever going to think they're as cool as New York.where we eat at a great Thai place called Spice, after deciding to pass on this gem:
Next time you're in Boston, try the Pu Pu Hot Pot. Comes complete with spray-painted Chinese graffiti on the windows.
Ed shows me around the Harvard campus, regaling me with stories of his misspent youth there. Here's a pic of Ed and a famous statue on Harvard's campus:
Apparently the custom is to piss on this statue at exam time for good luck. Yes folks, Harvard certainly draws the best and the brightest of us.
Here's a picture of me in the science building, getting as close as I'll ever get to teaching at Harvard:
Since there was existing graffiti on the board in Russian, I added some of my own, which you can see in the picture. It's from my favorite Russian pin that I picked up when I went to the Soviet Union on exchange. Translated, it says:
"Lenin lived
Lenin is alive
Lenin will always be alive"
Catchy, if you're a hardcore Bolshevik.
Naturally, I take this opportunity to accuse Ed of being a commie sympathizer. Teasing Ed about being a communist is fun on a number of levels, because (a) it impugns his patriotism, (b) his family had to evacuate Cuba when Castro took over, so like most of the Miami Cuban community he's pretty anti-Castro/anti-Communist, and (c) he gets all worked up about it. Mainly, it's (c) that makes me do it.
Although we've only been on the road a couple of days, we're already settling into certain patterns together. One of those patterns is that Ed really only has three basic responses to anything I say to him:
1) Lick my balls
2) Shut the fuck up
3) Don't fucking tell me what to do
You can shorthand his responses using those numbers as code. For instance, here he responded to my McCarthyite insinuations of communist sympathizing with a "21" response. That is, a "2" (Shut the fuck up) followed by a "1" (Lick my balls). Internally, I give myself 21 points for this round of teasing. I'm pretty good at scoring a "23", and I've even scored a "231" trifecta already on the trip. The numbers help my judge/improve the efficacy of my teasing. I've made it my personal goal to try and hit 3 trillion cumulative points before the end of the trip.
After much carousing on the Harvard campus, we walk back to the car, and Ed drives us out of Massachusetts and on to Cooperstown.
We cross into New York late at night, and finally arrive in Cooperstown at 2 a.m. Unfortunately, Cooperstown is not very big, and it takes us an hour of driving around to finally find a place that has vacancy. And so, sometime after 3 a.m., we bed down for the night. The Baseball Hall of Fame is tomorrow!
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