(Cerrillos Rd to I-25)
It wasn’t supposed to be a long goodbye, but it sure turned into one. Life doesn’t always work out how we intend it to.
My first attempt at college failed, at least in purely quantifiable results. I was supposed to become a great filmmaker, or, at the very least, a productive member of society. I had all these dreams of being the next Jim Jarmusch or Jean-Luc Godard, or at least Quentin Tarantino. Heck, I would have settled for becoming a commercial behemoth like George Lucas, especially in light of my teenage obsession with everything Star Wars.
Nonetheless, my visions of cinematic glory faced one major obstacle: I was afraid to put myself out there. Afraid of failing and even more so of succeeding.
To be a filmmaker, I was required to learn about the business from a nuts-and-bolts angle and a storytelling perspective. Challenging my notions of visual entertainment and being able to tell a compelling, bankable tale seemed like two different worlds to my frustratingly green self. I was stubborn and impatient.
Sure, I’d barely scraped through high school, but I usually excelled in creative areas, landing some encouraging praise from my teachers. But now I was out of my comfort zone. My blemishes festered into gaping wounds. And hearing my flaws pointed out was like grinding salt into them. Going from a high school loser, albeit a loser with aspirations, to an easily wounded, insecure film student, took the wind out of my sails.
Fear of my own abilities, or lack thereof, also nagged at me. Instead of pushing myself, I trod water in a doldrum of self-doubt.
Being light-years from home also fed into my self-destructive urges. Away from the kindly authority figures of my parents, and, in service to my subversive streak, I dove deeper into the chaotic wonderland of punk rock. First stabbed and smitten by its delightfully poisoned blade in high school, I went all out in college. Anything remotely rebellious—including piercings, tattoos, bright red mohawks, raccoon-eyed face paint, hard liquor, playing hooky, listening to actual records, etc.—became my tonic.
Ironically, the worldlier perspectives presented by academia only reinforced my growing dissatisfaction with government, education, and religion. Why let myself be fettered by the chains of institutional learning and the empty vestiments of the cloth when I could flip the bird in the general direction of THE MAN by listening to raucous music and swilling shitty beer. Seemed like a good take at the time, anyway.
In all fairness, my would-be alma mater—which coincidentally went out of business about a decade later—did a fine job of instructing me. Something inside me simply demanded a sacrificial patsy. The film department was nothing more than Hollywood shills, right? The industry was too pretentious, too full of sellouts, right? I was too pure of an artiste, right? Right.
My thoughts had merit, at least as pocket lint nuggets into the mindset of a goody-two-shoes gone bad. They certainly were an extension of my know-nothing know-it-all status. It didn’t matter in the long run, though. My time as a student of the moving image arts quickly came to an end, stranding me in academic limbo.
Since my other passion was writing, I thought what the hell. So I clambered back into the saddle, catching a foot in the stirrup, upsetting the academic horse, and being half-dragged myself into a new major. The burning pen may have been my true calling, but that realization came too late to save my first attempt at a collegiate career. When my give-a-damn left town on my second major, everything began went south. The only way out was to leap from the burning building of my education before it collapsed under the weight of my student debt.
The marriage betwixt my middle-finger ethos and my Gen X slacker aspects culminated in a perfect storm of failure. I dropped out of school as the semester dragged to a gruesome conclusion, leaving with nothing more than a spiky leather jacket and a soul brimming over with cultural antipathy rather than wisdom or at least a skillset.
Now was the summer of my discontent, my time for reflection, my chance to rearrange those misfiring neurons and sift through the wreckage of my first misstep down the enigmatic path to adulthood.
Maybe some clever part of my mind also recognized the resonant emotional moments—the little heart-shaped hummingbirds never to flutter at the same frequency again—because I drew out my impending departure for as long as humanly possible. Youthful naiveté and inexperience also contributed to my delays. But, looking back, there was something else too.
My overall plan certainly felt as simple as it got: I would drive home for the summer, relax at my parent’s house for a bit, get a job, earn some travel and housing money, find an apartment from afar (this was before every two-bit slumlord was listed on an apartment-finder website or app), and drive back in time to catch the tail-end of Santa Fe’s brief but charming monsoon season. Let’s just say things didn’t quite work out that way.
It was my last day in town. I was almost completely packed up, but there were a few issues I needed to address before I rode off into the sunset.
First, my friend needed his room back. I’d bummed around in his apartment while he went home for a couple of months, paying his rent through June. It was now late June and time to sling my meager possessions into my car and skedaddle. Any spillover from the trunk and back seat were dropped off, along with my battered drum kit and some winter gear I’d never lay eyes on again, at a shared storage shed.
I also desperately needed to address my music situation. My previous, half-ass stereo installation left a few poorly-insulated wires dangling behind my dashboard. Eventually, they shorted out, sending my tape deck to Valhalla. Driving from New Mexico to Wisconsin—through largely barren wastes with often little more than religious talk radio, or worst case, nothing but static—sounded like one of the circles of hell. So I bought a new stereo...and waited until the last possible moment to install it.
Perhaps expecting the two-man DIY installation to flow as smoothly as a freshly brewed cup of French roast from the urn at my favorite coffee shop was a bit naive. My colleague Mark and I’d agreed on a start-time around 9:30 in the morning. The only trouble was, we’d both attended my impromptu going-away party, which, admittedly, would have been pretty weird without me. And, rather than being sensible in light of our task ahead, we closed down the bar. 9:30 came and went, and I hadn’t even cracked an eye yet, much less crawled out of bed.
At least Mark’s automotive skills weren’t to blame. He was constantly tweaking his ’66 Mustang, which often broke down at the most inconvenient times like many vintage cars. When it ran, though, damn did it purr. We’d often carpool to concerts. I could tell roughly how much time I had to finish spiking up my hair with glue by the rumble of his rebuilt 306.
Skillset or not, the most impressive amateur mechanic is only as functional as his hangover remedy. And, as science and life concur, there is no rapid-fire cure for a hangover. By go-time, neither one of us was exactly firing on all cylinders.
I finally slunk out of bed just before noon, and our installation didn’t pick up until almost one o’clock. Before I got down to wiring, I had to ferry my remnant belongings up and down two flights of stairs, which also took longer than expected. Best of all, I’d misplaced the key to my locker during my questionable but fun night out. Now, I had to snag a duplicate key from one of my co-renters--after she wrapped up work at 3 this afternoon.
Life slapped the filling into this shit sandwich when I discovered I’d packed my handful of tools into the storage locker. Yep. The same one I didn’t have access to. So much for those well-organized ducks. Fortunately, Mark had some spare tools in his trunk, including a rusty pair of pliers that doubled as a wire cutter.
The sun baked through the windshield as we took turns contorting our bodies to fit beneath the dashboard. Flipped over like disoriented turtles, we stripped and threaded wires, sweating out booze and cursing like truckers, working at a frenzied clip that would make legit electricians cringe. Fuses and bolts and rubber tubing littered the ground (don’t worry, I picked them up afterward). Confusion over ground-versus-live wire resulted in one nasty, 12-volt jolt. But, finally, my new tape deck was ready to rock. And just in time. We wrapped up around 2 o’clock, which gave me an hour to stuff the rest of my junk into the car and meet my locker-mate.
The mild morning turned into a rare, muggy Santa Fe afternoon. Drained and frazzled already, I was in no shape to tackle the first leg of my journey, at least not without coffee. That was my excuse for taking a side trip to our favorite local coffee shop, The Mayan, anyway. It also gave me a chance to repay Mark’s kindness and further draw out my leisurely departure.
Drowning our troubles in dark roast, on me, we toasted a job fairly well-done. Not long after, Mark’s cellphone rang (this was before babies were born with Bluetooth connectivity). It was our friend, Trent. Upon learning that I was still in town, he decided he absolutely had to swing by for one final hang out.
Good conversation and strong brew swept the gray afternoon into the dusky dustpile of evening. Trent suggested, across his stadium-sized mug that we enjoy one last meal at Tomatillos, one of our favorite local eateries. Seeing as it could be some time before I dined on New Mexican fare again—a cuisine celebrated for it’s defining question: "red or green (chile)?"—I could hardly refuse. It didn’t hurt that he was picking up the tab.
Thusly, my sloth-like exodus crawled on. If I’d known the significance of my last supper of sorts, I’d have stretched it out a little longer, enjoyed one last sopaipilla, drowned one last fresh-fried tortilla chip in green chile salsa, enjoyed one last stimulating conversation with two of the best friends I’ve ever had.
My little road trip, slated tentatively to begin at noon, actually commenced just before midnight. I was now certifiably geeked-out on caffeine and probably should’ve crashed at someone’s place, or at least crawled back to my old apartment to curl up on a borrowed a blanket and a patch of carpet. But something drove me onwards, be it destiny or stupidity.
Deep down, I knew if I didn’t leave, I’d float around town for the summer, couch-surfing until I wore out my welcome. I’d lose all perspective behind a veil of moping and trips to the liquor store. My rudderlessness could easily turn into self-destruction. I needed a calm harbor to weather my storm of doubt and rebuild the tattered rowboat of my confidence. The only truly safe port I knew was at my parent’s home some 1300 miles away.
Sure, I had more baggage under my eyes than a luggage carousel, but I could always find a rest stop or motel along the road, right? [insert maniacal cackle] So, I made the rounds at yet another coffee shop, hugging and handshaking friends and cohorts on the way out. I clambered down the stairs and into my powder blue sofa-on-wheels, bidding an ultimate adieu to the luminous city that cradled my existential angst for 3 years.
Clad in the laid-back, hair-blowing-in-the-breeze iconography of the great American road trip, I hit the trail. It was the last time I would see Santa Fe, New Mexico for nearly a decade. It was also a turning point in my young life, a test of my then loose-fitting big boy pants.
Even under the cloak of night and the eerie glow of the light reflected off of the clouds, the city lingered in my mental rearview mirror the way I’d always remember it: ruddy adobe cuboids draped in a cloud of beige dust, a tenuous marriage of old and new worlds, boundless expanses of warm pink desert and cool blue mountains. The “holy faith” of my youth clung to me like a mother struggling to give up her child on the first day of kindergarten. These were my first steps into a very different reality.