Then I got to Athens, GA.
2am Ransom whispers, as the Oldsmobile creeps down some very back suburban, unpaved, Georgian street, "That's Michael Stipe's house." We park a block away.
For a lot of my life I've had the opportunity to sleep in many a generous stranger's house, who's let me in, and this night was no different. Kicking through back yard leaves, my sister and I followed Ransom past an old Georgian dog who beat the deck with his tail as we passed. The tiny one bedroom apartment was more like a studio, close quarters for Rich and his sister Kim, so my tired mind began to wonder.
Does Rich live this close with his Georgian sister, who just had a dinner party, who just shared the last slices of her Pumpkin pie with my sister and I whipped cream and all?
It continued while eating the homemade Pumpkin Pie, my mind is relentless, Were was the dinner party on the bed?
No really there was no room, so later the dinner party was tumbling around in my mind with the sleeping arrangements and the can of cold Pabst Blue Ribbon which I tried to drink. The air mattress was pulled out, Maggie and I were assigned. This seemed reasonable but for some reason I was convincing myself that if two sisters can sleep together than it is no big deal that a brother and sister do. What I was really doing was preparing my face, like it mattered, but this is the time that I should mention how exhausted I was and Rich and Kim could have slept hanging by their toes from the eves and I would have prepared myself for the same face. The "oh...okay" face.
Describe Rich.
Ransom says things like, "only real men swallow ." He's talking about chew my darlings, Dip, Tobbacy, wad, plug. Are your minds so tender as to think I was meaning otherwise? You do remember I've been working for the Sheet rock shleeping monkey of the Universe for the last two months.
{Oh dear, at my new house, there is a Tap dance class next door, no, I am not fucking kidding, I hear polka music and tapping!!! Unfortunately for you I am so far behind on the last week you'll have to wait for this latest breaking story. Full investigative report to follow.}
Anyways, Ransom. There's always a lil dip in the ole man's lip, he has the greatest chew grin I've ever seen. Light brown soul patch, black rimmed glasses, 37, favorite drink Pabst, can be seen often with a Colt, as in the gun, t-shirt on, softest spoken tenderest fella I've ever met.
{the tap dancing is echoing off the walls in here.}
In fact, I was amusing myself at breakfast the following day, dubbing him silently, as the southern most gentleman of a poet, I've ever known. This made the comment his friend made to him on the street later all the more charming. He said, "oh Rich I had a dream about you last night. Yeah, you were singing "Sweat Child Of Mine" at the Georgia Theatre on Karaoke night."
That's Rich.
The four of us lounged comfortably watching the highlights of the Yankees' game, drifting in and out of the 78 mph Sunday drive, then without cue Kim was gone. I have no idea where, though it seemed suddenly natural enough at the time that there was a couch next door waiting for her or something.

It is two and a half hours from Athens, GA to Auburn, AL.
I let Maggie reminisce and take the wheel, she'd made the drive countless times while playing soccer for Auburn, she knew the way back to her old school.Then she brought up stories I'd not yet heard. I watched out the window. The amount of American flags had escalated on this drive, between Atlanta and Auburn, I took mental note, up to 1 out of 5 cars had some patriotic adhesive denoting Bush-like eloquent, banter. But I wasn't quite ready for the truck with the stenciled, metal, stick letters, the big ones you see on suburban mail boxes, that say, "Townsends" or "Barkers", which are always unevenly spaced and most certainly slanting one way or the another. The back window of the Georgia, F150 read,
KILL THE BASTARDS
No flag,
no Go Army sticker.
The south has such a way with words, just as Ransom does. So gentle south also has an unspoken knowing too. These three words and the whole state knows, but travelers can only hope, with the utmost dread, that this has nothing to do with the opposition of the newly redesigned Georgia State Flag, or the rewriting of the Alabama Constitution, which was taking place in Montgomery that day. I can assume what he means and that disturbs me because I've had the unnerving ability to flash myself into the imaginations of passersby lately and suddenly I am riding bitch with my shoulder in F150's armpit with a bad Perm and a tattoo on my sunburned fleshy thigh with reads "Daddy's girl". My head is bobbing on the geniuses shoulder and all I can smell is Stetson, and a hand job. It's not pretty.