This is an excerpt from my first book Love Songs and Suicide: A Travel Memoir, Romance, and Tragic Musical Comedy. The book is also available on Amazon.

 

Chapter 1. Father and Son

 

My 69-year-old father and I were sitting outside on the Steamboat Natchez, a New Orleans cruise ship.

“That jazz band is way too white,” I complained.

The group performed in the boat’s main cabin. Speakers carried their music outside. With the Natchez’s big wheel turning, we traveled upstream on the Mississippi River as sunbeams danced beside us on the water.

At the ship’s all-you-can-eat buffet, tourists of all sizes and nationalities stuffed their gullets with gumbo and alligator sausage. There was a bar upstairs, plus a gift shop (of course). The emotionless six-piece jazz band, mentioned above, blew their horns respectfully in the background, allowing the insatiable diners to converse freely.

I couldn’t help but wonder: What would Mark Twain think of all this?

In response to the day’s vapid consumerism and gluttony, the curmudgeon version of Twain would have perhaps invoked this popular line of his: “There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

On second thought, no. In this hypothetical and preposterous scenario, I believe Twain would have commended our efforts as sightseers and said this instead: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” It’s one of his most famous quotes and a favorite saying of nomads throughout the world.

I boarded the Natchez because I wanted to not merely see the Mississippi from a nondescript shoreline, but rather, I wanted to feel its magnetic and timeless energy pulsating under my feet and into my body. And I suppose, voracious appetites aside, most of my co-passengers boarded the Natchez for reasons similar to mine. The Mississippi’s a river that has captured the imaginations of countless souls through generations. We were all there, alive, and together to experience the river’s majesty firsthand.

My father and I began our pre-plague journey from Washington State to Florida in December of 2019, shortly after my thirty-fifth birthday. By the time we reached New Orleans, our sixteenth stop along the way, we’d been on the road for almost two months. We traveled in a cozy nineteen-foot trailer with my two dogs in tow.

When my father reveals his age, he often shocks people. They want to know his health and beauty secrets (he drinks a lot of beer, doesn’t wear sunscreen, and moisturizes). He’d sold his home in Washington State just prior to our departure. His plan was to retire, most likely in Florida, a plan which ironically and unfortunately involved, as he once put it, “working until I keel over.”

I’d just quit my job and was desperately in search of something, anything—just a pittance from the universe. Over the preceding two years, I’d worked as a security guard at a rural hospital. The job was fine, but it paid nothing. And every now and then, I had to perform absurd and dangerous tasks relative to my wage. For instance, one shift I tackled an ornery heroin addict with open cuts. Another patient I babysat was a violent ex-con who described himself as a “professional meth smoker” with a “Swiss cheese brain.”

On the plus side, I made some new friends for the first time in ages and doubled the size of my comfort zone, which was approximately two inches wide when I started the job. My love affair with songwriting resumed at the hospital, and I completed my first batch of new material in over a decade. I also met Amelia, the beautiful and nomadic nurse who inspired this cross-country expedition and exacerbated my alcoholism.

Aboard the Natchez and throughout the region, it was an unusually cold and bright January morning, with heavy winds swirling in all directions; some of those gusts pierced my ailing body to its core. That afternoon I had a severe headache and several throbbing muscle strains in my shoulder from tackling my chihuahua-pug in Yuma, AZ, a story I’ll address later. I was disenchanted and nauseous, suffering through the second-worst hangover of my thirties.

My worst hangover of the decade—and one of my top five worst hangovers of all time—had occurred on the previous day, courtesy of a tall and buxom bartender. Her voice was almost as deep as mine. And she didn’t skimp on the booze while serving me up one vodka-pineapple cocktail after another. No, that’s not my usual drink.

 

 

Next → Chapter 2: French Quarter