Go West
by Jonathan Penton

It is noon, on Friday, February the seventh, 2003, and things are not going according to plan.

The plan was to be driving through East Texas at this point, in a hatchback filled to the hatch with clothes, books, software, and other essentials, listening to my copy of Learn Spanish in Your Car! while I made my merry way to El Paso, my new home.

Unfortunately, the hatchback, on which I had spent all my money, is currently sitting in a junkyard, irrevocably trashed and insufficiently insured.

I've lived in Atlanta for almost 22 years, and I have absolutely no reason to stay. My son moved to Seattle in 1999, and while I have no desire to ever live in Seattle, all other locations seem equidistant from him. There's no one here that I'm horribly interested in dating. I have no job, thank g-d. I do have friends here, close friendships that won't be replaced by new acquaintances, but fuck it – Atlanta is boring. The poetry community is completely dominated by spoken word, and that's simply not my thing. Culture is nonexistent. Traffic is terrible. I could go on about why I don't like Atlanta, but simply, it's time for a change.

So when I came into a little bit of money at the same time I was watching The Naked Lunch, I decided to make as drastic a change as convenient. (What can I say, I'm a rebel.) El Paso is hot, cheap, filled with Mexican women, and English is not the predominant language. It is as close as an American can get to moving to a foreign country without all the hassle of actually moving to a foreign country. Since I know no Spanish, it seemed like the perfect adventure.

Romantic fantasies abounded. I have a bad habit of getting involved in creative projects that aren't really near my heart. The most outstanding, recent example is my involvement in horror movies. Why would I make horror movies? I don't like horror movies at all. Yet the opportunity opened for me to make one, so there I was, spending my weekends with a camera and a ledger trying to juggle bills and interest investors. For some people, this is an excellent way to spend time; for me, it was a distraction from the things I want to write before I expire.

I planned to leave this habit behind when I moved. I was going to live in a tiny room in El Paso, and write every day, putting down many hundreds of free-associative pages in the hopes of producing a book's worth of coherent ramblings, if not a coherent story. I was going to exercise. I was going to learn photography. I was going to edit the documentary footage I shot last year.

Monday night, February third, my car was destroyed. Some silly woman who had the right of way plowed into it, bending the frame and snapping an axle. Since I technically ran a stop sign (it was a very hard-to-see stop sign, which I coincidentally knew was there) it was my fault, and my liability insurance will pay for damages to her car, but not to mine. Having spent all my money buying the car and getting it in good repair, I was now completely unable to make my way to El Paso.

When your life's plans go horribly awry, I recommend three steps.

1. Get depressed.
2. Get sick.
3. Get stoned.

Sniffling and disoriented, I began my long, introspective journey into what felt like madness. Alone in my bed, with nothing but a highly unhelpful copy of Lolita and a stack of microwaved burritos to guide me, I took a trip into my mind which I, at this point, hardly remember. I remember, several times, mentally screaming Oh g-d I don't want to think about that. I remember thinking I was going crazy, and despairing that I would wind up back in the hospital, while a still voice in the back of my head assured me, "Stupid, you're not going crazy, you're just stoned. You'll be fine in the morning."

And I was fine in the morning, or at least as fine as I ever am, and began to consider the possibilities.

The first and heaviest possibility is that I wrecked my car to avoid going to El Paso. My fears pressed on the gas, failed to turn the wheel in time, and propelled me into an intersection and financial disarray. My subconscious had, in a moment, destroyed everything I'd been working for the past few months.

"Seems likely," offered Lewis when I suggested this to her.

"Nonsense," said Mordecai. "You just bought a new car, you were excited about that, you were excited about your trip, and you were naturally reckless. I worried that this might happen, but it's not a self-fulfillment type of thing. You just got too excited and wrecked your car. There's nothing dark about it. It happens all the time.

Mordecai's explanation is of course the most appealing, but we never got nowhere by trusting in the most comforting solution. That's not to say he's wrong, but we mush explore the darker possibilities.

And, to the possibility that I deliberately wrecked my car to keep myself in Atlanta, I say, Fuck my subconscious. It and I aren't friends. It's never done shit for me. If it wants me to stay in Atlanta, then I'm leaving Atlanta as quickly as possible.

"I think you should make peace with your subconscious," said Pablo, and remarkably, no shining Path to Mental Health appeared behind him. The Path to El Paso, however, seems clear, if delayed.

My friend in El Paso tells me you can't live there without a car. I'm sure it's not especially fun living there without a car. But thousands of people live in El Paso not only without a car, but without bank account, legal identification, or the right to be in the U.S. I'll be OK without a car, at least for a few months.

So in the beginning of March, with a little money saved, I'm trying again. No car. No furniture. No bullshit. My coffee maker, my computer, my clothes. I'm leaving my library behind, for now. And I'm going to lock myself in a goddamned room and not come out until I finish a book.

Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.