Driving 4,000 miles through the hottest, windiest, and dustiest parts of Texas, Arizona, and California in a car with the engine power of a really expensive electric bicycle, while managing a gushing perimenopausal period, accompanied only by a reactive dog named Dracula, doesn’t sound like it would be anyone’s best trip, but it was mine.
The road trip in my 40s with my wife, which took us from our shared studio in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to the Bywater area of New Orleans, with the intent to make a new life together as a married couple, was the one I thought would finally end with me settled and happy. Shocker that, no, it was not.
I have been on many road trips in my life, most of which were planned around some age-appropriate, seemingly life-changing and specific-to-me-hilarious dramatic need for a change in home address. There was the time in my 20s when my best friend helped me load up my red Mitsubishi Mirage to move from California to Illinois after the girlfriend whom I was living with cheated on me with a man named Dino, a betrayal I first attempted to heal from by attending a rave at the Orange Country Fairgrounds, where I did every drug handed to me while drinking discarded bottles of water from the ground and unkowingly peeing my pants. As Romeo said, “O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick.”
There was the time, just a few years later, when I re-loaded that same car to move from Illinois back to California, with a whole new girlfriend as my passenger. She later revealed herself to be the manner of extreme Christian who would, every so often, suggest we try being straight and invite men over to the home we shared, as I sat judgingly, and from a pointed distance, on the couch next to them watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
There was the time in my early 30s — after a few more moves by car back and forth from California to Illinois, for various messy reasons — when myself, yet another girlfriend, her best friend who is now a famous actress, and a cat a piece, stacked one on top of the other in hard-shelled carriers, took turns driving a Uhaul from Chicago to New York to make our individual dreams come true, only for everything to explode after six months sharing an apartment in Bushwick so small that we could only fit one chair in the living room.
And then there was the time a friend helped me relocate from New York to Olympia, Washington during a blizzard, via rental car, after I got a job at a well-known indie label in that area, only to return six months later, having become the scourge of the town when I wrote disparaging articles about the local Co-op, and Olympia as a whole, for a variety of national publications.
But the road trip in my 40s with my wife, which took us from our shared studio in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to the Bywater area of New Orleans, with the intent to make a new life together as a married couple, was the one I thought would finally end with me settled and happy.
Shocker that, no, it was not.
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I have yet to fully unravel what caused my marriage to turn bad after being with the person I once referred to, and often, as “my favorite part about life” for nearly 12 years (months away from 10 married, 2 spent dating), and this, I know, has a lot to do with me telling my doctor I wanted to essentially be “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind“ed, happily filling her perscription for Lexapro on the way back home to a newly very, very quiet house.
I have my side of the story: my wife telling me I wasn’t hot enough for Charles Manson to write letters to right before we got romantic matching knuckle tattoos reading “best wife” (her) and “good wife” (me); her only wanting to do things if they benefited her, her band, or her work; her not helping out around the house even though I cleaned it, furnished it, and paid for it; and me having to beg her to walk the dog with me — something I did only because I liked walking with her.
One day, like flipping a page to a new chapter in a book, my understanding of the fact that I am truly and solely responsible for my own life and all the fun that does or doesn’t happen during it not only came into focus, but into action.
And I’m sure she has hers: I tortured her by reminding her to please not leave the doors unlocked; I bugged her about how I wanted to share more life experiences with her; I freaked out at her on her birthday (also our wedding anniversary) over her telling me, “I didn’t even know you left,” when I came back in from smoking a cigarette during her mini-party at a dive bar, which she’d already been treating me horribly at.
There were fantastic moments, and there were hellish moments. A year and a half out, it seems a million years away, and I dread the day we pass each other somewhere in the city we both still live in and pretend to be strangers. What I do know concretely is that it all came to an end one random sunny day when she said, “I can’t do this anymore,” after I griped to her about me always having to maintain the overgrown cactuses around our house, which she’d planted and then refused to care for. There’s something to that last part that paints the perfect picture of our relationship as a whole, which maybe I’ll feel the need to unpack when I decide to stop filling my Lexapro. A day I truly hope will never come, because those sh*ts are great when it comes to helping me feel unbothered by a very bothersome life event.
The immediate days after my wife moved out of our home, I busied myself in a “bounce back” way that’s been my signature move since forever. Any gap left by something she took with her (have to note here . . . items primarily purchased by me) was filled in immediately. I bought new plants and placed them around the house. I fully re-landscaped the backyard; purchased new patio furniture; planted trees that have grown nicely and provide shade that wasn’t there before. I got a bird bath and then bought a solar water fountain to put in it. I formed closer bonds with new friends in my neighborhood. And I threw myself into my work, which, lucky for me, brought about a promotion at the perfect time, both financially and for distraction purposes.
And then . . . nothing.
The used car I bought for myself before my wife moved out, a 2019 Chevrolet Spark, sat mostly unused outside my laundry room window. I’d go to Trader Joe’s. I’d go to the movies. I’d sometimes just drive around town with my dog, only to get out of the house. In the first year of owning my car, I only had to put gas in it three times. My Miss Havisham era was in full effect.
With most of my friends scattered around the globe, and my bad habit of preferring to only hang out with the person I’m romantically attached to leaving me isolated in a city that still felt strange to me (although I’d lived there for a decade) without the companionship of my ex-wife, I was in an emotional prison of my own making, feeling uncertain as to how to get back to the person I am when not part of a set.
I’d once described my marriage as feeling like I was “waiting for the bus;” my post-divorce life wasn’t much different. Peaceful, yes. Comfortable and secure, definitely. But stagnant. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. Until one day, like flipping a page to a new chapter in a book, my understanding of the fact that I am truly and solely responsible for my own life and all the fun that does or doesn’t happen during it not only came into focus, but into action.
(Kelly McClure/Salon) Dracula’s first time in a hotel
I knew that I was in a funk, but mere months after my divorce, when I chanced upon a TikTok made by a young woman with a nose piercing featuring my ex-wife, whom she referred to as her fiancé, I was like, OK, I gotta start making some plans. And yes, if you just read that and thought, “mere months? That math isn’t mathing.” Yeah, I thought that, too.
Learning that my very newly ex was on the verge of a whole ass new marriage didn’t make me want her back, but I knew that I didn’t want whatever this was.
After tweeting and then deleting a snide remark about nose piercings and learning about the above-mentioned news near 9/11, I started the slow process of getting back to the me I was before I was married, sans drinking too much, doing drugs that made me pee my pants, being addicted to co-dependent relationships, and giving my heart to the wrong people.
I’ve always loved being outside, camping, traveling, and going on road trips near and far, but I didn’t get to do much of that in my marriage. When we were first dating, my girlfriend turned wife turned ex-wife and I flew from New York to Memphis to go to Graceland, where I asked her to go steady at the foot of Elvis’ grave. I took that to be a good sign, but quickly learned that beyond that, any trip we took would have to have something to do with her band in order for her to be interested. Tagging along on her mini-tours, or using my credentials to get her band booked on SXSW showcases was OK by her. “Dragging” her along on trips to North Bend, Washington, where I blew a chunk of money after my dad died in an attempt to cheer myself up, booking the best room I could for us at the Salish Lodge, overlooking the infamous “Twin Peaks” waterfall, was not. Neither, really, was the trip to Dollywood I paid for, to celebrate my 40th birthday. Unable to get her to go places that I would enjoy as much as her, I started going by myself. Which seemed OK to me, as I have always been more than fine doing things solo, but I could see the red flags waving. Something didn’t feel right, and it would never manage to right itself.
Spring savings are here!
Still chewing on my “what the hell do I do with myself now” strategy, a healing opportunity presented itself.
When my good friend from high school, who lives in the part of California where I spent a large chunk of my formative years, suffered the loss of his best friend and invited me out to spend some time with him so we could kick around and heal our individual wounds together, I didn’t think twice. This was something I could and would do, with a little bit of dog-related planning to make sure that my first-ever long-distance solo road trip would be safe and fun for us both.
Prior to this road trip, the furthest my dog had traveled from home was Mississippi — about two hours away — for a disastrous night in a cabin I’d rented for my ex’s 40th birthday. Unused to staying in a strange place, Dracula kept jumping off the bed and back on again, unable to get situated. Had it just been my dog and me, this wouldn’t have been a problem, as I knew she’d eventually get settled, but my ex couldn’t deal with it, and we cut the stay short. I had the memory of this in my mind as I booked three dog-friendly hotels for the trip to Riverside, California, and three for the trip back, which were later changed to Airbnbs, as it turns out that while she actually can get comfy in strange beds, it’s safer for everyone if she has a bit more space. Sorry to the housekeeper in El Paso and that young man in Arizona; she didn’t mean to scare you.
(Kelly McClure/Salon) Dracula’s first time seeing mountains
The stretch of time between me planning the details of my semi-solo road trip and actually hitting the road went by in a flash and, before I knew it, I was loading my travel luggage, bag of snacks and 70-pound American Bully into my silver micromachine and pointing it towards California.
You’d think such a long trip, with no one to chat with in the passenger seat, would be a slog, but the driving days went by faster than I would have expected. I listened to podcasts (thank you, Caleb Hearon, Roz Hernandez, and the Handsome podcast crew), audiobooks (looking at you, Ione Skye, Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo), and broke up the drive with well-timed rest stops for Dracula and I, where I’d buy a coffee and she’d get to give the stink eye to a new town’s nearby population.
As much as the trip was about me, and visiting with my old friend, it was about my dog, and I was happy to check off a lot of firsts for her: First stay in a proper hotel, first ride in an elevator, first time seeing mountains. She’s so good in the car, thankfully, and would spend most of our daily drives either napping in the backseat or hanging her head out of one of the rear windows I kept rolled down for her. When we made it back home after being gone for two weeks, I had to put elbow grease into scrubbing the caked-on dog drool off the side of the car.
“Why’d you stay with her?” my friend asked me about my ex, in one of our many long talks at his house during my time there.
And while I can’t remember how I answered, I know the real answer. I loved her. But, as has been said by many others before, sometimes love isn’t enough.
When I come home now, it feels like a happy home. And when my thoughts go idle, they drift to new happy memories that I’ve made all myself: A rainbow over a mountain range after a terrifying hail storm in Texas. Looking in the rear view mirror of my own car and seeing my dog’s jowls flapping in the breeze as we zoom through Arizona. Walking with a good friend through the town we met in, palm trees swaying in the California breeze. And it’s all good, and it was all worth it. And that’s enough.
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