[The following opera was published in Volume 9 of The Essays & Lectures of Bryan Ray. It is also available as an audio album.]
Itinerary:
Embarking (St. Louis Park, MN) → The Traveling Carnival (MN border) → Snorkeling (Miami, FL) → Driving Thru Iowa → Mountain Climbing (WY) → Youth Hostel (Pittsburg, PA) → Skeet Hunting (Northern MN) → Claude Monet’s House (France) → Jam Band Festival (San Diego, CA) → Coming Home
After waking in the morning, I pack my bags, because my friends and I have decided to go on a road trip. I make sure to bring my hairspray, a pair of clean underwear, $300 dollars in cash, a cooler, my “do it herself” tool kit, and a globe. Now my suitcase is so full that it’s hard to shut; therefore, I get Audrey Hepburn to sit on it. [Footnote: This is just a light joke — I did not actually know Audrey Hepburn at the time. My remark refers to a scene from the movie Love in the Afternoon (1957).]
Our friend Stegz is the driver; he pulls up outside my home. Our friend Mickey is also in the car. When climbing in, I bump my head against the door frame and try to laugh it off. My neighbors watch us pull out of the driveway and cruise down the road. I bet they’re jealous, because I’ll be gone for one whole week.
Next, we pick up our other friend Chris, who lives in St. Louis Park; then we get out on the highway and drive fast.
Now we’re at the beginning of our road trip. The group consists of me, my friends Chris and Mickey, and our driver Stegz. We’re all riding in Stegz’ Chevrolet Monte Carlo Eclipse.
“Hey, look up ahead,” I say, “it’s a mobile circus!”
“Wow,” says Mickey, “they got a Ferris wheel and a woman that’s blind. I hope they stop so that we can buy tickets.”
“Look, they also have a Gravitron,” says Chris.
“And there’s a sign that says ‘See the Man without a Rump’,” says Stegz.
“Is that really what it says?” says Chris, squinting.
Now it looks like the traveling carnival is slowing down. Our car happens to be directly behind the animal van. Once the lengthy train of vehicles comes to a stop, the animal van begins to rock, and its side bursts open. Now a tiger leaps out in a wild rage, and an elephant comes thundering and trumpeting forth; also a giant python starts hissing; a pair of dromedaries stumble out and trample all around with malice; lastly, five lions begin to destroy the city: they are biting pedestrians in half. Stegz quickly pulls out his camera from his purse and begins to snap some pictures for our Road Trip Photo Album.
We’re traveling down I-95 fast, taking a road trip. Now we make it to Miami, Florida; let’s go snorkeling.
We put on wetsuits and use our waterproof cameras to photograph sharks. The water is cold, but the subaqueous world is beautiful. Here is a list of things that my friends and I discover: We find a sea anemone, a spiky blowfish, a swimming Frisbee, a bottlenose whale, some crocodiles and stingrays, and a sunken spaceship. Then we all go rollerblading in the breeze with a half human jungle otter.
4. Driving Thru Iowa
Now we’re back in the car and traveling thru Iowa. The landscape is filled with golden corn. I see some blackbirds and greet them: “Hello, pretty birdies!”
The blackbirds attack me. There are feathers everywhere. I use a napkin to check if my eyes are bloody and have been pecked out.
Eventually a cop car flashes its lights and makes us pull over. Chris and Mickey work frantically to hide all their firearms, booze, LSD, and marijuana. The police officer parks behind us and approaches our Monte Carlo Eclipse. Stegz rolls his window down, and the officer says “Do you know how fast you were driving?” “No,” replies Stegz; “why don’t you write it down on a ticket, and we’ll get back on the road.” So the cop issues a traffic citation; then we wave goodbye and speed away.
Now we’re in Wyoming, driving on a mountain path that’s only a single narrow lane, so if another vehicle were to approach us, we could not both fit: one of us would get pushed off the road and explode in flames.
“Look at all the pretty gazelles,” I say, “pouncing all around the mountainside.”
Now a gazelle comes and stands directly in our way, so Stegz tries to slam on the brakes, but an enemy has apparently sabotaged the vehicle, because it can’t stop. “This doesn’t make sense,” yells Stegz; “for we’ve spent most of our road trip driving — when would a saboteur have had time to tamper with our braking system?” “They probably did so when we stopped at the Mountain Diner to eat,” says Mickey. “Yes,” says Chris, “that would have provided the perfect opportunity for anyone who wants us dead to go lie under our vehicle and secretly vandalize our brake lines.”
“Here’s the plan,” Stegz announces while pressing down ineffectively on the braking pedal as our Monte Carlo Eclipse continues to speed toward the gazelle; “we’re gonna leap out of the windows and climb the mountain, all the way to the top, using ropes and hiking shoes.”
So we take out all our gear, hook on our harnesses, and begin our ascent.
“C’mon, Stegz,” I shout. “Why did you vanish?” – But then we realize that Stegz has been eaten by a wild gazelle. Now the gazelle vomits him out at the top of the mountain: therefore Stegz wins the race to the top.
“Zoom, bang: I won!” says Stegz.
“It’s true,” I remark to Mickey and Chris; “Stegz has arrived at the peak first, with plenty of time to laugh at the rest of us as we struggle here below.”
“But, look,” Chris points: “the altitude level has made the air very thin. It would be too dangerous for us all to try to breathe up there.”
Also Mickey notes that lava is starting to run down the sides of the mountain.
Now Chris and Mickey die. So I decide to go back to the car and wait for Stegz there.
When Stegz finishes descending the mountain, he enters the car and says sarcastically: “Oh, what a funny prank that was, leaving me up on the snowy summit like you did.”
So we get back on the road and drive for many hours until we reach Pittsburgh. Now we’re in need of some rest.
“I’m sick of sleeping in this car,” says Stegz; “I wanna sleep in a bed.”
So we find a youth hostel and stop there. This is a place that provides cheap temporary lodgings, sort of like a motel or brothel: For seven dollars, one gets a cot and a candle, plus all the ginger beer and gumbo that one can tolerate. There are twenty-nine people per berthing unit (that’s what they call the bedrooms here). It’s a little too crowded for me and Stegz, so we decide to go out and have a smoke.
“By God’s hooks, all my cigarettes are wet from going snorkeling in Miami,” Stegz complains.
“No problem,” I say; “we can use my ruby glass skeleton-face bong to smoke our tobacco.”
Then, while lighting up, we notice our friends Chris and Mickey are occupying a raft that is floating toward us on the Mississippi River. (So I was wrong to say that they died on the volcano in Wyoming.) We invite them to share our room.
So we get back on the road, and we’re feeling refreshed. We’re now heading to the woods of Minnesota to do some skeet hunting.
We travel into the wilderness, right by the Lake of the Isles, and begin to shoot: Bam ba-dang boom! “Look, I got a good one,” I announce. “Let’s cook ’er on up!”
So we put some barbecue sauce on the freshly killed skeet, along with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, apple butter, and custard.
So now we trek to the house of Claude Monet, just to see what all the hype is about.
When we arrive, the sight is so beautiful that Stegz and I run away in fright. This leaves Mickey and Chris to tell us what they saw while we were gone. They inform us that Monet’s land contains a garden with many flowers, lush greenery, and a wooden footbridge over a pond of waterlilies. Chris also found a spot where some hemp was planted.
Now we travel to San Diego to attend the Jam Band Festival. Chris and Mickey are elated; they plan to make a secret recording of this concert with their mini-cassette recorders. Once we arrive, we encounter our old grade-school friends Eric, Glen, Heath, and Dave, plus there are over seventy thousand neo-hippies in attendance. Everyone is on psychedelics except me and Stegz.
The bands begin jamming and continue jamming and jamming. Every song goes on for at least thirty minutes. The crowd keeps doing repetitive dances, rocking and swaying like a mass hypnosis. Mickey visits the merchandise table and buys an imported album labeled “special order” which comes with nine CDs in a book that folds out and contains countless photos of the band and its fans.
I myself eventually fall asleep, and Stegz decides to leap off the balcony.
10. Going Home (MN)
At long last, our road trip comes to an end. We all climb into the Monte Carlo Eclipse and head home.
Now in a body cast from leaping off the balcony at the Jam Band Fest, our driver Stegz is overjoyed: “Finally, I will be able to sleep in my own bed again,” he says, “and talk on the phone.” (For this was in the days before everyone carried a portable communication device.)
To pass the time while we travel back to Minnesota, I suggest to my friends that we review what we experienced on our adventure. So we all sit thinking in silence for several moments, and Mickey says: “I know we did a few cool things, but I can’t remember.” Then I list some of the highlights: I remind the group about how I lost my vision on the way to Morocco; and about the time when Chris got drunk and tried to milk himself with a breast pump. Finally we all share a laugh recollecting how Mickey’s head got severed and we tried to sew it back on but it kept falling off.
The worst part about our road trip concluding is that I’m now out of spending cash.
[Here ends “The Road Trip.”]
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