Lubbock by night, Amarillo by mid-day

Something about being on the road just makes me care less. I think I have a carnal desire to potentially lose everything. I guess that's why Phil and I had completely different reactions when an encounter with bonafide lunatics led to a prolonged, highspeed car chase down a Texas highway somewhere between Lubbock and Amarillo. See, I already knew what the stakes were as soon as they pulled up beside us on the curb. I've been through way shittier situations just dating women with mood disorders that were compatible with my own. I didn't even mind the gun; that was just part of the experience for me. Most of my focus was bent towards trying to calm Phil down during those crucial moments where his ability to drive was directly proportional to our survivability, sometimes on a second-by-second basis. The monks call that the "fourth moment" by the way; it's somewhere between the present and the future, where we dictate the flow. That harrowing chase sequence was Phil's rock bottom; for me it was a gratifying experience. I felt the weight of every infinitesimal choice that resulted in just one more moment, just one more chance to care less. I appreciate that things can be intense. If anything, I require as much intensity as possible. I would have absolutely loved it if I still had just a little bit of blow left over from the night before, so that I could have licked a bump of it right as we hit the highway with those two strange cars in hot pursuit.

I'll get back to the car chase in a minute. Have you ever been to Lubbock, Texas? Absolute mecca. Let me set the stage for you:

You are in Texas, let's just say at any particular point. All of the action is on the more eastern side of the state. The big cities - Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio - are all basically clustered near (or near enough) each other, and for most folks travelling to Texas this area of the state will be all they know and identify as "being in Texas". Let me tell you, there is a shitload of land in Texas beyond these sprawling metropolitan areas and it is devoid of any meaning. Most human beings will never find a practical reason for venturing into the heart of Texas, in its most deliriously vacuous and dark shadowland. There exists however a lone beacon of garish light, standing against the vast and desolate wastes and it is beckoning your stay. It is called Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock is a little out of the way; no major thoroughfares will take you directly there. If you are heading east through the state from Albuquerque, you will probably pass through Amarillo, the closest city; similarly, heading west from Dallas towards New Mexico will take you past Amarillo as well. Nothing will take you directly to Lubbock unless you deliberately and consciously execute the decision to head south from Amarillo (at least, I assume that's mostly true; Phil and I actually came to Lubbock from the southeast, through desolate wastes and flat, brown death with the occasional greenery of unidentifiable crops).

Some facts about Lubbock: There has been at least one documented UFO sighting in the 1950's. In 1988, upwards of 10,000 folks congregated there to see an apparition of Mary. Buddy Holly was born there as well. I didn't know any of these facts until after we left, which is crazy because truthfully you can really sense some fucked up energy there. We rolled into town on a Friday night after a 6 or 7 hour drive from Austin, TX. Along the way, Phil and I stopped at Krause Springs, which is a nice little spot perhaps an hour outside of Austin if you're heading roughly northwest. You can swim and smoke pot there; there's a natural spring as well as a man-made pool situated on the hill above the spring. We ate some snacks and took a dip, which was nice coming off an all-night bender in Austin the previous night (maybe I'll write that story too). Continuing northwest from there, you pass through the terrestrial equivalent of outer space - the endlessness part, not the no oxygen part. It looks like God gave absolutely zero fucks when it came to coding this part of the world; He/She/They literally copy-pasted drab shades of brown across an entire expanse, then sparsely populated it with racists; in the distance you observe the silhouettes of what might be factories, imaginably only employed by the denizens of the kind of backcountry shitholes where the Texas Chainsaw Massacre actually takes place. We passed through at least four towns claiming to be the "exact center" or "heart" of Texas, and we saw a lot of cows.

Anyway, enough literary masturbation about the existential dread and incomprehensible banality that is realizing central Texas somehow occupies the same universe as places like Tokyo or Budapest; let's move on. Phil and I arrived in Lubbock around 6:00 PM on a Friday, which inadvertently was a fantastic time to arrive. My friend Monica was hosting us for the night so we could rest before continuing on to New Mexico the next day. I met Monica earlier this year in New Orleans and we really hit it off - she is a lesbian and I am a straight man so we engage in wholesome activities such as going to brunch on Sunday's and raiding kink dungeons for free liquor. Monica is one of the realest people I know and, like Phil, one of the few people I trust 100%. She moved to New Orleans during the pandemic and another one of her friends, Josh, followed her. Josh and I became friends in our own right; from hanging with Monica and Josh I had gotten to hear about their hometown but I never in my life imagined I would actually pass through one day. It was amazing and unbelievable to now be in Lubbock, this town where my friends came from and hated.

Phil and I pulled up and Monica hopped in the car. She couldn't believe it either; "This is crazy, ya'll are really here!" Phil and I were starving - our last meal was at the swim spot 6 hours ago. Monica recommended a Tex-Mex place and we were game (We somehow were not burnt out on that yet. Two nights prior, Phil and I linked up with some friends in Houston and went on a raging path of destruction across the city where we ate at two separate Tex-Mex restaurants mere hours apart. We got obliterated. Maybe I will write that story too). We went to the spot that Monica recommended, and I ordered this margarita that comes with two coronas dumped in it. The waitress sweetly cautioned me ("Be careful, the rule here is if you ordered it you have to finish it!") and I waved her away then proceeded to down it. I ordered another one. While that was happening, Monica filled us in on the plans for the evening. It turned out that Phil and I had arrived in Lubbock just in time for the "Art Trail".

~

Pause. This story is starting to become too idyllic and I feel that its disingenuous to the vibe of the moment, as it truly was. Let me paint a darker picture. There is more that needs to be known about the context of Lubbock and what was going through my head as I approached the bottom of that second margarita con dos cervezas (I do not actually know Spanish, blow me if I got it wrong). Time for some more backstory; let me tell you about a broad named Vanessa:

Vanessa is a friend of Monica's, who is also from Lubbock, who I met while she was visiting Monica in New Orleans several months prior. Vanessa is friends with Josh (who I mentioned earlier) as well. I went to meet Monica for dinner one night with another friend, who we can call Rachel. Josh and Vanessa came out to dinner to meet us as well. Now, Vanessa is the type of girl that you would call "hot". She's got a smoking hot body, is Latina, and has pretty facial features. The other thing about Vanessa is she is deceptively unassuming. I don't think she spoke more than five words to me that entire evening, and I guess for some reason I had two misconceptions: 1. She seemed dumb; she isn't. Turns out she's a graduate student studying English lit or something like that. She is always posting about Marxist theory and other wacked out shit that I find disinteresting and impractical on this side of 25, but she is definitely not dumb; 2. She just wasn't that interested in talking to me; also wrong. Vanessa is a schemer. I guess the main thing to note about her is that you never really know what the fuck is going to happen next. That night in particular ended up being uneventful; we ended up back at Josh's house in the Bywater and played spin the bottle. Everyone made out with each other. I don't know how long she was in town for, but eventually Vanessa went back to Lubbock after that.

And that's when she contacted me. There was not much of a build-up. It escalated from "Hey" to "Do you want some nudes?" rather quickly. I accepted. Vanessa's body was appearing in my inbox. From there it progressed to vague plans to hang out again next time she was in New Orleans. She made me promise to not tell Josh or Monica and I was sworn to secrecy. And then, she vanished just as rapidly as she had appeared. See, Vanessa had (has?) an on and off again boyfriend. When things were bad, she would be messaging me, asking me questions about their relationship, sometimes sending me picture. When things were good between them, I was blocked. I didn't take it personal. I knew that she was completely solipsistic and unaware of what she actually wanted. That's game.

I knew the minute I crossed into Lubbock that the possibility of meeting up with Vanessa was a very real one, despite the fact I was blocked on every platform at the time.

~~

In the present, Monica, Phil and I were now wrapping up our meal at Rosa's Cantina or whatever the place was called. Monica was selling us on the idea of attending this Art Trail thing in town. She said Josh was going to meet up with us out there. "What about Vanessa?" I asked with a shit-eating grin. Monica was just as eager to stir shit up as I was, so she had obviously already told Vanessa that I was in town. "She said she's going to her boyfriend's show tonight."

"Oh fun, let's go." I responded. Monica just laughed. We both knew that I was serious. "Well let's go meet Josh at the Art Trail first" she said. Phil came back to the table with some more beers and said we had to finish them before we were ready to go. I chugged one down like a gluttonous animal, deeply upsetting the family seated across the aisle from us. It was still daylight outside and I was already hammered. "So are you going to cuck Vanessa's boyfriend?" Phil asked. I responded, "No, I'm going to cuck her; I'm actually going for him." We all had a laugh about this and it would remain the running joke for the rest of the evening. We got back in Phil's car and Monica directed us towards downtown Lubbock. Now this is where it gets really good.

Downtown, Lubbock looks like it was illustrated by Todd McFarlane. I mean, its dystopic and bleak but there is this forlorn mysticism to it; if devoid of purpose, the tall buildings must be used for dark vigilantes to perch imposingly and scour down upon the lifeless husk of what was once civilization. I'm both amazed and disappointed that this was the sole location on our trip where we actually did encounter cocaine (and ketamine). As we passed into the imaginary line designating that we were now "downtown" I saw it framed in the last vestiges of that sad Texas sun, a depressing, murky sunset outlining the gray steel of lifeless giants huddled pathetically and meekly in the city center. I am describing the skyline - Monica explained to us that Lubbock was once a bustling and relevant business district that essentially died out decades ago. Here we were on a Friday evening but there was no traffic around whatsoever. It was a metropolitan ghost town. Vast empty parking lots everywhere, yet they still had the blue motorized scooters that you find in places like Austin, or Nashville; it was actually quite surreal. It was a city in theory; it felt like all the tall buildings were on the outskirts and the central area where we were going was flat, giving the impression an atom bomb or something struck Lubbock decades ago and leveled it out. I could also be completely delusional about all of this; I was fucking wasted and Phil had not stopped passing me weed every twenty minutes for the past several days. We parked the car on the side of an abandoned, nondescript store and began walking towards the Art Trail.

The Art Trail was easy to find, too. Lines of people were streaming towards it from all directions. It was very trippy. Phil and I walked behind Monica but we could have easily identified our destination. There was seriously an organized movement of people from every possible direction, all walking towards what appeared to be a plaza. There was mothers pushing strollers, young couples, old folks, families, single people, teenagers, every walk of life you could possibly imagine. It appeared as if the entire population was showing up for a singular purpose - and it actually felt insanely cool to be a part of. I kept saying stupid shit like "This is its own subculture!" (which is a ridiculous and ignorant thing to say, as if every single place where there are people to occupy said place do not intrinsically create a subculture), and Phil and Monica kept shaking their heads and saying stuff like "Uh-huh...sure." I was truly enthralled though. As we approached the nexus where all the people were gathering, it became clear that it was not so much an art "trail" as it was a festival of sorts. There was a number of different buildings that were serving as galleries and you could walk between them and see art and stuff. There was also food trucks and vendors scattered about, and there was a stage set up as well with a band playing - and they were good.

I don't know how I lost Phil and Monica, or if I actually lost them at all, but at some point I found myself alone and watching the band playing. The band members were all of Latino or Hispanic descent, but the music was not particularly Latin-inspired. The singer was singing in Spanish, but musically it sounded like this really driving, melodic rock music. They played very well together. One melody still stands out to me from one of the songs: the singer was singing a verse melody that went C#, E, G#, F#, with the rhythm comping an F# minor chord to an E major chord (I wish I could describe the rhythm, but it was like this driving, heroic sounding riff) and then the second line was E, C#, B, C# (singer) and I can't recall exactly what the chords for that part was. Then the chorus just exploded. It was great. I stayed and watched them for a bit and just took in all the sights and sounds. At some point I caught back up with Monica and Phil and we found Josh by a food truck and he joined. It became night as well; the sun fully went down at some point while we were walking around and collecting Josh. Josh made some shitty comment about how he really wanted to find some blow, and he said Vanessa had texted him saying that she got in a fight with her boyfriend and wanted to come get shit faced and party with us. Very convenient, right? Josh and Monica explained that there's a crazy bar scene in Lubbock because its technically a college town (by technically, I mean it literally is a college town). The plan was coming together; we were intent on getting fucked up. The four of us made our way to the bars somehow - I can't recall if we simply walked or if we ended up driving. That is blurry to me. I know that the first place we went was this club called Kong's. It was described to me as "hip" and I would say that's a fair assessment. The place is legitimately cool and reminded me a lot of some spots I visited a little further west - its actually hard to describe what I'm talking about unless you already know. Also, you can do a Google Image search for "Kong's Bar, Lubbock" and you'll see it. Cool little night club. Anyway, that place was fucking PACKED full of kids. You step out of the quiet, dull Lubbock night into this feverish den of sex and narcotic indulgence. People's eyes were just rolling around in their heads as they took various toxins and gyrated to the hellish electronic music blasting from the speakers. It was crazy. Vanessa met us there with this gay dude, who ended up eventually being the coolest fucking dude ever. Let's call him Jordan, why the fuck not? We met them there and that is when the night began truly escalating.

If you google "bars in Lubbock" on maps you can see that there is a cluster of multiple bars all within walking distance of each other. One of them in particular stood out to me - The Library - but they all kind of blend together in my mind. That night is like a fucking impressionistic painting to me - blurry, vaguely defined, but you know you felt something. We bar hopped all night, and it is absolutely insane to me because we never stayed at one spot more than a couple drinks before moving to the next one. I actually did not try anything with Vanessa because the situation felt a little weird, and she seemed standoffish too. Jordan was cool as shit - he ended up doing all of my blow (yeah we found coke) and I didn't even care. We were having a great time. Josh was just on the prowl and being slutty all night. Monica was like our chaperon. Phil fucking hated it. He hated Lubbock. At one point it looked like he was having a great time - he was standing on a couch in one of the clubs and was pumping his fist and dancing on his own. Other than that, he was really against Lubbock. He and I got in a fight because I was black out drunk and was arguing with him why I needed him to buy the blow and me Venmo him when I could have easily done it myself - when he recounted my logic to me later it made no sense at all; I was just completely being a dick. Other than that, the six of us weaved a trail of destruction. It is very blurry to me, but I recall thinking everything about this city defied my expectations. It was bonkers. Lubbock is the coolest city in Texas to me. The five of them think Lubbock sucks, all for completely justifiable and individual reasons, but I think Lubbock is awesome. But anyway, I spent over $100 on booze somehow.

~~~

At some point we all ended up going back to Vanessa's house to...actually, I couldn't even tell you. We were already miserably fucked up on multiple substances so it clearly wasn't to go drink more or do drugs. Maybe it was to go "chill"...except all we did was drink more and do drugs so that couldn't have been it either. Anyway, being in her house was surreal. The boyfriend was obviously a nonfactor, due to a combination of her own object impermanence (Google search that term & BPD for extra points) and the fact that I was standing in her house. The house had nothing in it. We were sitting on countertops. There was like one table and a plate on it. There was a wall that looked like an explosion went off near it, like someone tossed a frag grenade sort of nearby it. We put the remaining coke on the plate and then Vanessa revealed another baggie that evidently was on her person all along. "Wanna do some k?" she asked plainly to the room, nonplussed by her own insanity. I think Phil just heavily sighed and made a face like "Dude, Lubbock sucks", but I was actually down for all of these shenanigans. I said "No, I'm good on that, but you can do some." She railed both powders and then spontaneously said "LET'S PLAY ROCK BAND?" I was like, "oh shit, you have Rock Band?" and she was like "NO, BUT JORDAN DOES", and that is the story of being in Vanessa's house. In Lubbock. Two places I never thought I would ever be. Absolutely absurd. Very Kafka-esque. Instead of waking up as a bug, I came out of my blackout in a dimly lit kitchen where I'm confident Narcan has been used to revive someone before.

~~~

I'm going to wrap up the Lubbock story in a minute but I'm a little distracted by something. There is another story that hasn't left my head since I heard it. The other day, I had this girl by my house and we were talking about Colorado because if you have been there then you will talk about it (and I may even possibly write about it). She was telling me about her visit there back "when Obama got elected president", so I'm thinking this was a while ago. My first trip to CO didn't happen until about two days after this Lubbock story where I left you in media res; but hers happened over a decade ago. She told me this story just a few days ago, on my front porch in New Orleans.

First, in order for me to get this right I need to describe Shantell to you. It is absolutely an essential element of the story. Picture a curvy, bronze skinned Creole girl. She is in her early 30's but looks good for her age, like she could pass a few years younger. She's wearing an oversized t-shirt, and her hair is natural. As she is telling this story, she is pausing intermittently to hit a blunt of marijuana and sip beer out of a can through a straw. She is struggling to find descriptive language at certain points - her vocabulary is simple, and she forgets what things like 'streams' or 'altitude' are. I'm listening patiently and intently but fighting back laughter the whole time because the way she tells this story was genuinely hilarious and she had absolutely no intention of being funny. The delivery was inadvertently masterful. Her way of speaking is sweet and naïve, yet also incorporates vulgarity; she was describing common, everyday nouns and objects with a word that starts with 'n' that Caucasians can't say (I'll substitute it with 'ninja'). The entire time, she had this look in her eyes like she meant what the fuck she was saying. Shantell begins to tell me this story about a religious experience she had encountering a deer in the mountains while high in Colorado. "Bruh, listen this is a serious story," she pleads. Ok, so this is The Deer Story, as told by Shantell (not her real name):

She was up in Colorado with some friends, maybe it was family, that part of the story was kind of vague. She said she was up in the mountains and went for a hike ("We was like, walking into the woods and whatever. It was pretty and peaceful and shit"). She was with at least one other person and it sounded like they were probably smoking weed on this hike and got really stoned. She said at one point she went off on her own, down into a little valley where she crossed over a little stream or a creek ("what's that shit called where its like not a river but smaller?") and came around a bend and basically came face to face with a doe. They startled each other; she said the deer jumped but did not move away from her. "It was like we both froze and made eye contact, and bruh, I kid you not, this (ninja) was staring into my soul, man." She hit the blunt and exhaled with a look of wisdom as she told this part. "This deer was just staring me in the eyes, and I'm not gonna lie, I started crying bruh." She then went on to say, "I think that deer was God. That shit was beautiful, son. It was so peaceful." Now, as she's telling the story (and it was much longer and more detailed), I'm just laughing my ass off at the way she's telling it; my writing serves it no justice. It felt as if she didn't even give this event a second thought until at this moment, but it also genuinely was something that moved her. She was just so nonchalant about it. Just ashing her blunt on my porch and sipping her beer and shit. She kept saying "Stop laughin', this shit is serious, this is a serious story."

She goes on to tell me, "But wait, that's not the actual crazy part. Listen, this is how I knew this shit was God, bruh." She goes on to tell me that a couple days later, on the same trip, she was riding in a taxi in Denver or something like that. She was telling the driver about her experience and he evidently whipped around in his seat and gave her a strange look and then told her, "Have I got a story for you, miss...". This is The Deer Story part II, as told by The Driver:

He goes on to tell Shantell that his father once told him a story of the day he stopped hunting deer. One day, the father of this driver was in the woods somewhere and he was hunting for deer. He was on the ground rather than on a stand and was just looking through his scope, believing to be aimed in the direction where a deer would pass. Just then, he said he heard a twig snap behind him. He turned around and found himself face to face with a doe - seriously, it was right on him. According to this man, it was staring him dead in the eyes and would not budge. The most gentle of animals. The story goes that he laid down his gun and never went hunting for deer again - he was convinced he had met God in the form of a deer. He left the woods a changed man.

Shantell concluded her story by saying, "Bruh...I think that (ninja) was the same fuckin' deer. I think it was God, for real."

Can you believe that? She nonchalantly hit me with this absolutely devastating story that fired on multiple levels. She told it with this level of suspense where I was on the edge of my seat, and when she said that shit (with zero fucks given), it was like a freight train hit me. Now, if you think that was a cool story, with a pretty decent punch line and pay-off, you are mistaken. That is just the set-up for the actual punch line. This is the Deer Story part 3, as experienced by me and Phil, about the next night after the events in Lubbock:

Possibly 24 hours from the time where I observed Vanessa snorting cocaine and ketamine off a dirty ceramic plate in her empty apartment, Phil and I were speeding through the mountains of Colorado. Our destination was a town called Eagle, which is situated practically dead center in the Rockies about two hours west of Denver. We were warned not to "go through the mountains" so late at night but rather stay on the highway north through Colorado Springs into Denver, and then head west from there. We ignored this advice because we were still tired and spent from the events of the previous night in Lubbock, and indeed the morning thereafter. Recall that we had survived a prolonged, intensely scary highway chase on our way out of Lubbock. This was still the same day as that (except it was night now). So, we decided we were going to take the quickest route to Eagle, which involves cutting northwest through the mountains. The drive is absolutely beautiful and I highly recommend choosing it; you pass through this rolling prairies at first that literally look like that one Windows screensaver. You probably know the one. And then from there you ascend into the mountains and it starts becoming a little dangerous because of the inclines and sharp turns and icy roads. Phil didn't want to do the mountain driving and I volunteered anyway because I had some experience doing it before and was looking forward to it.

It must have been about 11 PM. We were about an hour from Eagle. I was coming around this curve and suddenly in the headlights caught three or four deer literally standing in the road. They didn't even try to get out the way; I literally had to fucking weave between them like some fucked up version of Frogger where the car is the protagonist. I passed right between two big fucking deer going at least 50 mph. We were freaking the fuck out - both of us were inconsiderately stoned - but we were glad that we made it without any damage to the deer or the car (deer will fuck your car up if you hit one. They total cars.) I probably drove another fifteen miles or so and then we saw it: one lone deer standing on the side of the highway up ahead of us. Phil urged me to slow down so he could take a picture of it (and that picture still exists!) and I happily obliged. I brought the car to a complete stop right there on the shoulder of the road, mere yards away from this deer. It was a doe, and she was staring right at us. She did not move. She was just staring us down. Phil goes, "Bro...she's thanking us for not killing her family back there." She never budged. We eventually just continued driving after paying our respects. But you see, the reason Shantell's story hit me the way that it did is that

I think that was the same fucking deer, man.

~~~

Another cool thing that happened when we were bar-hopping in Lubbock that I forgot to mention earlier is when we were standing outside some place and a girl called to me from a car window. She was in the backseat of a parked sedan. Weed smoke came pouring out and within was a gaggle of drunk girls. "I like your hair," she said. I started talking to her and found out her name was Val (the only real name in this story, because Val will never read this let's face it), and she was coming on to me very strong. She was a cute Hispanic girl and we chatted for a bit. I really wanted to make something happen with her, but my friends were calling me away from the car and her friends kept rolling up the window on her. For a moment there, I felt something. Val, if you are out there and happen to be reading this, just know that you're a beautiful bitch and if we cross paths again I will love you unconditionally.

~~~

I'll try and get to the ending chase sequence now so you can move on with your life and cognitively process the intricacies of how this story enriched or destroyed your day. So, after Vanessa's the six of us went to Jordan's house and played Rock Band. It was the witching hour by this point and Phil was completely passed out on the sofa. My dreams of cucking Vanessa and stealing her boyfriend never panned out so I had been maintaining my distance and ignoring her all night for no reason. Here I was, in Lubbock fucking Texas playing Rock Band in a strangers house. It was a fever dream. We stayed there until the sun was almost up and then finally returned with Monica to her dad's house where we crashed on a couple of cots. In the morning I asked Phil if we could stay and party in Lubbock another night. He said fuck no. Phil hates Lubbock, reader, but let me assure you it is a magical place.

We went and got Whataburger for...breakfast, I suppose. Then it occurred to Phil that he was missing his blanket - he left it on Jordan's couch. (While the rest of us played Rock Band bug-eyed and depraved, Phil had been snuggled up on the couch there, just snoozing. He was the only one who didn't touch the coke. That's probably why he didn't enjoy Lubbock). The problem about the blanket situation is that we didn't have an address on Jordan's house. It was never texted to us and we couldn't find it in our recent searches on Maps either; we figured that we must have followed Vanessa and Jordan there and never got a proper address. Despite this glaring problem, we actually did sort of remember the area of town he lived in and how to get there. We decided to just drive to the neighborhood where we remembered going and go up and down the streets until we found the house by sight.

Things looked promising at the outset. Phil remembered exactly how to get to the neighborhood, on the suburban outskirts of Lubbock not far from where Monica lived. The next problem we ran into is that Jordan clearly lived in the hood. That was not apparent to either of us at 3 AM & hammered, but now in the wide, hateful stare of day it was very obvious that we were in a rough part of town.

So Phil is just cruising up and down different streets and we are intently looking for this house where we played Rock Band the night before. We found a few houses that we thought could be the one but we were not completely sure. Phil remembered that the front door was missing the glass and we walked right through it to get inside, so we were looking for a front door with no screen in front of it. After about 15 minutes of riding around we were about to call off the search when we noticed there was a car right up on our ass. Phil swerved over to the side of the road to let them pass. They didn't pass. They pulled up alongside us and angerly glared and honked their horn. It was a black guy in a coupe and he was yelling and motioning for us to get out the car. "What the fuck did I do?" Phil said. "I don't know. Does he want to fight us?" I responded. Just then, a second car pulled up from around the corner and stopped right behind us. This car was bein driven by a woman, and she was also yelling at us and motioning for us to get out of our car. So, we were semi enclosed by these two cars containing very angry people for no clearly distinguishable reason. "Phil, fuck the blanket let's get the fuck out of here dude." Phil agreed and pressed on the gas. The two cars began following us and we both realized that we were in some sort of situation beyond our understanding.

Phil got scared quick. He started blowing past stop signs and trying to accelerate rapidly down streets then quickly turn off before they could see us, in attempts to lose them. They stayed right on us the entire time. They were both honking at us and the car immediately behind us continually rode up so close to Phil's rear that you could see the driver's gold teeth in the mirror. I thought he was going to hit us. We finally got out the suburbs and onto the highway. I remember Phil going, "Dude, what the FUCK. Leave us the fuck alone!" The highway is where shit got dicey. The second car was now riding behind us and the first car was riding almost directly alongside us in the adjacent lane. Phil was hyperventilating and I was trying my best to keep him calm, saying things like "Just focus on driving, ignore them and focus on the road and driving safe," and stuff like that. I packed a bowl of green during this and started smoking and putting it up to Phil's mouth so he could hit it too. At one point I looked to the right and saw the guy's face. His window was rolled down and he was just grinning and glaring maniacally at me. He wasn't even watching the road in front of him. The car behind us seemed inches from rear ending us at all times. I noticed the guy alongside us was holding something at his waist while driving with one hand. It looked a little too familiar to me.

"Phil, try to stay ahead of him, I think he has a gun bro."

"You're fucking kidding. Where are the fucking police when you need them?"

These cars followed us for miles. At some points, Phil got off at exits and tried to rapidly lose them in twists and turns of backroads. They didn't care. They stayed in pursuit. After a length of time, right as I was actually about to call 911 for help, the cars fell back and left the interstate. By this point we were already miles away from Lubbock and on our way towards Amarillo. I called Monica and explained what had happened and apologized for not getting to see her again before we left. Phil was still in fight or flight mode and he pulled over to collect himself. I couldn't believe what had happened. Although I remained calm throughout it, I definitely felt like this was potentially an inescapable situation for us. We were prey. After that we rode on in silence for a long time, the signs showing steadily decreasing mileage to Amarillo. Finally, Phil just sighed and shook his head. "Fuck Lubbock," he said.

~~~

I first heard the song "Amarillo By Morning" only months before this trip. I don't know how I never heard it before in my life; it is a ubiquitously known and cherished country song. I was on a trip to Birmingham in late May of this same year (might write about it later) and my uncle played it in the car. I'm not a country fan by any means but that song hooked me from the start. It made its way into my catalog of songs to casually listen to while driving. When Phil and I were charting our course for this road-trip, I knew from the outset that we would pass through Amarillo to get out of Texas. I romanticized this idea of playing the song as we entered into Amarillo, knowing it would be a cathartic moment; that's exactly what I did. I started playing the song right when we rolled in.

"Amarillo by morning,

up from San Anton'

Everything that I got

is just what I have on"

I smiled to myself. Here I was, entering this town I had imagined in some folkloric sense from a song I only just learned months prior. I truly only had the clothes on my back, just like the song talks about. I was with one of my best friends that life ever provided me. We had the windows down to air out the smell of weed.

"I ain't got a dime, but what I got is mine

I ain't rich, but Lord I'm free

Amarillo by morning

Amarillo is where I'll be"

I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up a little bit, feeling exceptionally aware of the moment and present. I didn't know why, but at the time I vividly recall feeling accepting of the possibility of a God, or some universal mind that is behind all coincidences and happenstance - like hearing a story and having it reflected in your own experience later, or hearing a song and getting to live it. I will now be able to effectively deliver the true punch line of this entire spiel, and then I will be done. This is the Deer Story part 4, and it is either the shortest one yet or the longest if you can believe this has all been the Deer Story part 4:

As we pulled up to our first gas station of the day, somewhere in Amarillo, we stopped to talk about what we went through just a short while ago. I remember during the entire conversation just staring out past the window behind Phil's head. In the bed of a truck, parked a few spots down from us, there laid a deer. Dead, with its eyes wide open and staring through me.

Sometimes messages take a long time to reach us because we don't have the proper tools to translate them yet.

~~~

After Amarillo, we continued west into New Mexico, then northwards through the brown, dead country that slowly becomes the low, rolling green earth that signifies the gradual ascent into Colorado. We reached Eagle, CO later that night and that concluded the day that began with us leaving Lubbock.

Monica is still in Lubbock to this day, unable to find another apartment in New Orleans.

Josh has returned to New Orleans but appears to be currently travelling in California.

Jordan and I started following each other on Instagram. I wonder if Phil's blanket is a permanent fixture on his couch.

Vanessa and her boyfriend have continued to split up and get back together. She still messages me sometimes but I lost interest and don't entertain it anymore.

Phil and I had the time of our lives on the road and eventually returned to New Orleans. He talks about wanting to do a return trip to Denver and explore that city more. I told him I'm in. He still despises Lubbock.

~~~

I found an article published in the LA Times on April 10th, 1989 describing the event where some 13,000 people congregated in Lubbock to view apparitions of Mary and God in the sky. There's numerous identical reports of miraculous happenings, including thousands of people's rosaries turning gold and visions appearing in the Sun. The Catholic Church refused to acknowledge ay of it, despite the emphatic testimony and shared experience of thousands of people. In the article, a Bishop Sheehan is quoted as saying, "Lubbock isn’t Fatima. Lubbock isn’t Lourdes. And Lubbock probably isn’t even Medjugorje."

And you know what?

I wish he would have gone on to explain what the fuck it is then.

10/25/2021