The Fellowship of The Van

Jeric was a homegrown, hometown, homeboy, who called Echo Park his home. Tatted on both thick, trunk-like, arms with names of friends he’s lost, and declarations of his city and his heritage. LA pinoy was he, and damned proud of it. Although he was a tough looking guy, he was quite the friendly fellow. Not at all what one would think when one would lay one’s eyes upon the 24 year old Echo Park kid.

He smiled big, from ear to ear, silver shiny braces glued to almost every tooth. He’d worn those things for a good five years. Never could get them removed because he couldn’t afford it. Just another poor kid from Echo Park, one would think.

But that kid, that Jeric kid, there was something about him. A kind of magic. He was magnetic when he talked. A person just had to listen. To his stories about his dead friends, or the way he grew up on the streets of LA, or the fights he’d gotten into, or the hatred he had for any kind of police, or how he was really enjoying this poetry thing.

“I’m really enjoying this poetry thing.” He said, driving the rented minivan. We were on a long stretch of highway somewhere in Kansas. And I mean long. He’d been driving for three hours straight and the highway didn’t veer left, didn’t curve right, it just stayed straight, and in the horizon, the vanishing point, the road never ended. “Thanks for letting me come along.”

“You know this highway right here was the inspiration for the Yellow Brick Road?” I said to him, hungrily grabbing a can of Vienna sausages from the plastic bag at my feet. “And Chicago is supposed to be the Emerald City.”

“No shit?” Jeric said, interested. “That for real?”

“I think so.” I said staring at the top of the can. “Yas told me that.”

Jeric smiled that big smile of braces. “It’s gonna be cool, yo! When we get there, the first thing we’re gonna do is drink to The Writers Workshop!”

“Cheers.” I said, reading the ingredients on the can.

We got quiet. We could hear the hum of the tires skating at 80 miles per hour on the concrete. Somewhat soothing after four days of road traveling. From LA we ended up in Vegas, tried our hand at nickel slots because Jeric said we could win two thousand dollars. We ended losing five hundred bucks. Then from Vegas we shot through Utah, which was part desert snow, part gray colored brush, and part Martian forest. From Utah we ended up in Colorado and followed the Colorado river. We crossed Hoover Dam at night. Then from Colorado, we entered Kansas. Good old straight line Kansas.

Our purpose for this road trip was twofold. One, we wanted to visit Yas Morgen, a guy originally from Chicago who had a short stint in LA, who ended up moving back to Chicago. And two, this was the second year a national conference of Asian-American poets and spoken word artists were getting together a couple hundred of the countries biggest and brightest.

We all had our reasons for going on this trip. Me, Jeric, Josh, Joe, and Oscar. They were asleep in the back of the minivan.

Oscar was an old friend of Jeric’s. 23 years old. They grew up together in Echo Park. Oscar was the one who brought all the alcohol and drugs. The pound of marijuana, the five baggies of mushrooms, the perfume bottle of cocaine, and the bottles whiskey and rum. He always had red eyes even when he wasn’t stoned. Funny guy that everyone seemed to get along with. He came on the road trip to see if he could sell some drugs across America. He thought it’d be a good story for the rest of us to write about. We figured, what the hell.

Josh was a guy I played basketball with back in the Valley. 27 years old, like me. Tall, bald-headed, looks white, but was really Mexican. Kind of quiet, reserved, laughs at everything just to be polite, and didn’t really say much. For some reason he was at the cafe that wasn’t really a cafe that night me and Jeric planned this road trip. His biological dad lived in Iowa and wanted to roll through, figured this would be a good opportunity to see the man he hadn’t seen in over twenty years.

Joe was a guy from Glendale. He had lawyer parents. Pilipino guy, but looked Indian from India. 22 years old. He was so naive to the ways of the world, so incredibly out of touch with the reality. He was stubborn with his youngling dogma, his inexperienced belief that poetry was powerful enough to change the world. He wanted to go on the road trip because he wanted to meet all the poets from across the country, bounce ideas around, talk literature, learn from the great ones, and bring home a knowledge that would help him change the world he lived in. Truly a stupid kid. But hey, he had a house in Vegas and a thousand dollars in his wallet. What the hell.

One of Jeric’s close friends died in a car accident several years before. He marked that as his decision to get into politics and poetry, activism and art. To change lives through the power of words, music, and theatre. That’s how he met me at the cafe that really wasn’t a cafe in Downtown LA. That’s how we ended up going on the first road trip to Seattle for the conference, which lead to our decision to do a second road trip to Chicago for the same thing. But something happened between conferences. He noticed the poets were just jukeboxes filled with rhetoric. All theory, no application. A bunch of incense-burning, tourist philosophers who would ball their fists in the air, but never punch a clown in the face if it ever got down to it. He wanted to go on this road trip just for the fuck of it.

And me, well, I went on the second road trip to drink one more glass of whiskey with my friend Yas, the originator of the writers workshop. When he lived in LA, he lived in Gardena. Had a small one bedroom apartment to himself, decided to bring together some poets and drinking buddies, lock ourselves in for the whole weekend, and just write. In comparison to the Asian-American conference fuckheads, that writers workshop was the real deal. That was the thing Joe was looking for and what Jeric realized. I wasn’t going to Chicago to listen to some stereotypical angry, collegiate, Asian kid, rant on about how no one respects him because he Asian or to listen to some chick drone on about how white guys looked at her like she was a doll, or how the “establishment” and the “man” were keeping them down because they were not white, and how, through their poetry, they were going to change the system with meditation and chanting or some spiritual shit. I wasn’t going to Chicago to listen to some cry-babies cry about identity issues when they didn’t have the guts to, literally, fight back. Me, I was going to Chicago to drink at a bar, wait for some idiot to say something about monkeys, or kung-fu, or bad driving, or math, and then sock him in the jaw until he couldn’t talk shit anymore. That, and I wanted to see if I could have sex with one of them counter-culture, insecure, poetesses.

“Yeah, man. I can’t wait!” Screamed Jeric, smiling, shining, metallic.

“We got about three more days, I think?” I said, opening the can of Vienna sausages, drooling. “We’ll stay with Josh’s dad for a day. Maybe go swimming. Take in a strip club. Play some basketball. Shoot bottle rockets. Hang out in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Or whatever they do in Iowa.”

“Sounds good to me, Xavier.” He said, bobbing his head to the music of the road.

I ate all seven sausages. Shoved them in my mouth and swallowed their processed goodness. I was satiated. All that was left was the jelly in the can.

Long road behind. Long road ahead. Five guys with five lives, tripping on the Yellow Brick Road.

I rolled down the window all the way down. Wind pushed my face. I smiled aerodynamically. I took the can filled with jelly and chucked it out. The can and the jelly should’ve landed behind us. That was my theory, anyway. But what ended up happening, was the can flew back into the van, hit me on my throat, and all the jelly that was inside, splashed my face, my t-shirt, and my pants.

I was instantaneously shocked. I was stunned for a good three seconds. Jelly slowly, dripping down my face. Sticky, stretchy smelling, disgusting. I looked over at Jeric who was equally taken aback. We stared at each other.

Then he belted out the biggest, most raucous, laugh I had ever heard. And he laughed until he cried.

I had to smile. It was pretty funny.