A Harsher Reality

By Adam Kaz

I wouldn’t normally tackle the 27-hour drive home in early March, but pandemics don’t allow for air travel. I wouldn’t normally sleep in my Mazda Protege either, but pandemics don’t allow for hotels. So what’s’a girl to do in times like these but find an empty Iowa rest stop to call her own, hunker down, and pray for a murder-free evening. It was 4 a.m. and I hadn’t been kidnapped yet, which I considered the only piece of good luck I’d had all week.

One thing I learned during COVID is if you bundle up real tight and blast your car’s heat for ten minutes (that is until you feel a warm stickiness envelope your body head-to-toe like a suffocating marshmallow funeral shawl) you can then turn the car off and still retain enough warmth for like three hours of semi-coziness, which I’m told is about the length of one sleep cycle. When time’s up you wake to the sound of your chattering teeth. But that’s just God’s way of telling you you’re ready to start over; He’d been saying that a lot lately.

At present I was warming the car for Round Three. Though on that road trip, when I closed my eyes and counted back from one hundred, I can’t say I ever achieved sleep per se so much as I experienced periods of not realizing I was awake. There was a lot on my mind . . .

Breathing my entire self into cupped hands, leaning into the dashboard like it provided spoonfuls of sweet sweet medicine, legs shaking to an ever-quickening rhythm. I looked out over an empty highway framed by filthy snow and lit by lonesome lights, and I wondered if my nearly completed degree in set design was an even greater professional gamble than I was told it would be on Day One—and then was told again and again every day since. I wondered if my supposed “professional edge”—i.e., really wanting success really really badly—held much water when I proved so quick to drown in despondency at the first sign of a mere international meltdown. 

I was really harsh on myself back then, or maybe I was just adapting to a harsher reality.

In the course of a week I had gone from planning my domination of the Salt Lake City theater scene RE a promised stage manager position at the Gumball Industries Family Entertainment Center, to counting my “administrative skills” and retooling my resume to attract whichever health care provider would also offer a living wage. 

The profession for which I accepted mountains of debt had been cancelled indefinitely. So, yeah, I had a few things on my mind that night. One of them (the things) being a deep, passionate yearning to hold, squeeze my pint-sized soft n’ squishy Squirtle plushie, the prized jewel of my Pokémon plushie collection, which I was certain was buried underneath everything I owned somewhere in the backseat. 

In my mind’s eye I pictured an extended meandering expedition through dirty clothes and forgotten half-eaten fast-food meals. I saw a lot of grunting, some teeth clenching, and a few moldy discoveries that were maybe better left for Pennsylvania. It wasn’t really the vibe I was looking for, not at 4 a.m., but total loneliness wasn’t exactly ideal either, soooo . . . I flipped the light on, held my breath, turned around to face the backseat — during this maneuver, by the way, I bumped my waist on the steering wheel and successfully suppressed my Murderer’s Bird Call, i.e. a scream, only by biting my lower lip with the combined pressure of $50,000.00 in student loan debt — pressed my knees against the driver’s chair, recovered from the sharp pain on my left side, and reached for the Golden Retriever sized duffle bag resting atop a pile of whatever couldn’t be stuffed inside it. Leaning back I heaved, tugged, pulled the bag and let it fall into the sea of filth where my passengers “rest” their feet.

With the heavy lifting over, all that was left was to comb through my trash and/or worldly possessions (mostly clothes) until I found my squishy-wishy-washy friend. Easier said than done. I could feel sweat seep through my armpits, now urgently aware that the self-microwaving process was almost complete, as I stabbed my hand at different pockets of the pile. 

“F-f-f-f-udge,” I whispered, turning off the heat. “Where are you, little guy?” And then returned to work.

A day later, while unpacking the remnants of an abandoned life in my childhood room, I would discover that throughout the entire drive Squirtle was actually squished and snuggled deep inside my suitcase, which I kept in the trunk. But at the time of the search I sincerely expected my fingers, combing through clutter, would find purchase with something soft and warm and palm-sized. And so when they finally did I had every reason to feel relieved—that is until the thing bit me.

I screamed. I screamed very loudly. And it screamed, too.

For a brief moment, just before I bolted out the car and fell face/hands first onto Iowa’s frozen Siberian pavement, I could make out the silhouette of a Pokémon plushie-sized critter leaping out of its sweatshirt burrow. The little fudger frantically tore and squeaked through all my material treasures, jumping and careening and spreading who-knows-what all over my what-have-yous. 

I picked myself up and, pacing back and forth, examining the bloodless but still traumatizing cut on my finger, I summoned a scream powerful enough to, I’m sure, attract murderers from each of Iowa’s border states, enticing them to a focal point as if I were some kind of perverse Four Corners Monument. I screamed louder than I knew I could, matching the pitch and harmonizing with a world nearly as desperate as I.

So I did that for a little while: screamed and yelled and paced and swore. Out into the silent Iowa vacuum. And then, hoping that the mouse had scurried out behind, I abandoned “sleep” and instead began the final leg of the trip home.