SARAHFROMTHEINTERNET GOES ACROSS COUNTRY WITH CHASE SUPERCULT

by Sarah Morisson
(originally published on http://www.supercult.com)

Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books? The story starts, as it always does, but you get to pick what happens next. There is no middle or end, just a beginning. As some of you may have heard, Chase and I drove across the country last month. There are people who like maps, lists, dates, and times. And there are others, like us, who like to just choose their own adventures.

Chase smokes a pipe and I kind of like the smell. He has a glove that he sometimes wears, while driving. He is a horrible singer and likes to listen to certain songs on repeat. He likes Morrissey. He is unable to find things in his backpack or screw on Gatorade tops. Sometimes, he accidentally takes a Xanax and forgets to tell you. I think he is too short.

I am Sarah. Most are accustomed to seeing my panties on a daily basis. I make a weird sad noise when things go wrong. I own one bra that I usually am unable to find. I may have two open diet cokes at any given time. I am better at making conversation with strangers, than with my friends. I get up before 9 am no matter what time I go to sleep. Sometimes, I accidentally order a Margarita. Chase thinks I am too tall.

We both impulse buy, get uncomfortable in social situations, have no idea what day or time it is, are easily distracted, call people and accuse them of having things we have lost, forget to listen when the other one is talking, find eating an inconvenience, and fear the mundane.

Kiki is my cat. She stops being cute maybe 20 minutes outside of Boston.

I take notes. Chase takes pictures. Kiki pees on us.

This is our story.

Mid-Summer, I drive back from LA to get my stuff out of storage on the East Coast, to drive back to LA once again. Yes, I see the lack of logic in this. Chase agrees to go with me. He books models along the way. I bring my laptop to do work. We get to LA without shooting a single model. The only time I open my computer is to check Myspace. Sometimes you get distracted by sitting by the river in New Orleans, or truck stops, or Indian City, or talking to Elvis’ biggest fan, or sitting in Will’s front yard, or the sunset, or sometimes you just realize everything can wait.

I leave Boston on Friday morning at 9 am and get to Baltimore close to 11pm, a combination of traffic and probably some sort of cosmic sign that I should probably just turn around. There is nothing to go back to, so I said fuck it. I do the math, and yes, I actually spend more time in traffic than actually driving. I finally get off the highway in Baltimore and missed the turn to go to Chase’s. I am turning around, when I hear a cop on a megaphone going, “Do not perform illegal U-turns in front of police officers.”

So we leave Baltimore for Charlottesville, Virginia, Friday evening. We arrive in Charlottesville even later that night to meet up with a girl Chase has an internet crush on. The next morning, we are up and off to Memphis, Tennessee to stay with none other than Supercult.com’s “Memphis.”

We stop to go to a sidewalk fair in some little town in Virginia. We say bye to Kiki, get out of the car, and start walking. I realize I forgot my cigarettes, and go back to the truck. There are two trashy ass bitches standing next to the truck screaming, “There is a cat in there.” They are at the window of my truck flipping the fuck out. I walk over, and they explain to me that my cat is going to die. I go, “Oh ok,” and try to ignore them. I attempt to get the cigarettes and walk away. The fatter of the two tells me she is calling the Humane Society on me. So we go move the car…We check out antiques and Civil War memorabilia, for a bit, and head back to the relocated vehicle. There is a cop walking in front of us. The cop stops at my truck. He informs us that they were called to come check on my cat.

Sue is more than glad to take us in and show us her fine city. We go to a party the night we get there, and to bed around 5 am.

The next day, we do some antique and thrift store shopping. Not unlike the Xanax, Chase somehow manages to accidentally buy some sort of KKK emblem that he would now keep in his wallet to piss me off. We eat at a soul food place with the after church crowd. Chase is paying and I am sitting outside smoking a cigarette. A man still in church attire comes up to me and goes, “You know beautiful that (cigarette) is going to be your gravestone.” I smile and go, “That’s what I am hoping.”

We end up sitting in a park for hours on end, lying in the grass and telling stories. Sue climbs a tree and pees out of it. She is so high up, the pee evaporates. That evening, we go to a weird bar. Some dude in a patchwork shirt, with exposed chest hair, grabs my ass as I walk in the door. Within the half hour, he comes back up to me and goes, “Well look it’s fucking Paris Hilton.” I think this is the point where I go, “Chase can we go.”

We relocate. The next stop is a little lower key. We meet more of Memphis’ finest. One of the girls we are with starts talking about “Graceland Too” which I had overheard a little about, at the festivities the evening before. So the facts are in. It is the home of the dude that considers himself Elvis’ biggest fan. It is a half hour, or so, out of our way. It is better than Graceland. We are sold.

The next day, after getting lost, or me not paying attention, we finally get to Holly Springs, Mississippi and the famous or infamous Graceland Too. The place is full of transcripts from every time Elvis has been mentioned in any television program ever, every TV Guide that has run his name, and a bunch of other crap that has little to no relevance to Elvis at all. The guy talks like an auctioneer. He spits out facts about Elvis, about his son whom he named Elvis Aaron Presley, and then tends to yell out “Paris Hilton” or “Jennifer Lopez” for no apparent reason. He is building an actual replica of the jail from Jail House Rock in his backyard. He insists that women have fainted and peed themselves at the site of his son, who is Elvis reincarnated. This is way better than Graceland.

So the guy at Graceland Too thinks we were married, apparently. On the way out, he goes, “Do you have a sister as pretty as you?” I assume I am setting my sister up with this guy, which I think may end up being next Christmas and Birthday present rolled into one. He says, “Send her this way. We will have her marry Elvis Aaron Presley. He has had some trouble with the ladies. She can divorce him after six months. (He points at me and Chase) You two can take the money and live off it for the rest of your lives.” I promise to send her his way.

Chase thinks we were there for 45 minutes and I think we were there for a couple of hours. Regardless, it’s later than it is supposed to be. We are off to New Orleans.

We are stopped at a gas station in either Mississippi or Louisiana on the road to New Orleans. I come out of the bathroom and from what I hear Chase saying, I realize he is talking to a cashier girl and another woman working there about his penis tattoo. I walk over and the cashier girl goes, “Well can I see it?” She is all flustered and can not decide if this is a good idea or not. The other woman becomes skeptical about this happening in the store. The girl, finally, confidently says, “Let me see it.” Chase pulls out his dick. Both women are laughing, screaming, and throwing their arms up in the air. The cashier girl tries to get it together and asks me if I want the receipt for the gas. I go, “You keep it to remember this moment.”

Chase is been having trouble with reception on his sidekick. He turns to me and goes, “How the hell does Paris Hilton get around the country?”

We arrive in New Orleans. With my amazing sense of time, I am going to guess it is really late. We are staying with a girl named Amanda, who is sweet to take us in. She seems a little frightened at the sign of us, but she is kind of drunk. I think we scare her a little more in the morning.

We shop a little. I look for jeans for Chase to try on. We go to an antique mall. I am sitting outside the antique store talking to a man that works there. He is telling me that he came down here from NYC with his girlfriend at the time. They broke up and she went back to New York. He stayed because he could not think of anywhere else to go. He has been there for 25 years.

Chase lived in New Orleans after high school. So I drive around for hours, while he stares at street signs looking for ones that might jog his memory. It has been twelve years since he has lived there. To his credit, we find both apartments he lived in. Time is a strange thing.

We decide to go down to the French Quarter. So, we are walking down Bourbon Street. There are horse drawn carriages everywhere. Chase asks me to get a picture of him with one. I am standing there holding the camera, looking down the street, waiting for said horses to roll into sight. He gets all pissy. Apparently, I am supposed to be framing said picture for like five minutes, while we wait for these fucking horses to roll into view. I roll my eyes and go, “What do you want me to do? I can’t move horses.”

We decide to sit and get Benets and coffees. They do not have tea. Chase does not bitch too much about the coffee, because he is distracted by some underage waitress’ ass. I think we discuss her ass for the twenty minutes we sit there. Chase not really laughing announces, “I need to let you know, sometimes some of the things I think are wrong.” We get up and walk down to the water.

Chase convinces me that the Mississippi River has salt water in it. I convince myself this makes sense due to ocean flooding. Then he tries to tell me there are sharks in it. We return to Amanda’s, after what I would guess is maybe four hours of sitting by the river.

Getting out of the car, back at the house, we see a wallet lying in the middle of the road. Only a few feet away is a purse. We find a phone number, and call the girl about it. Obviously, she is thrilled it had been found. On the phone, Chase goes, “Well, what happened? Did you get robbed?” She starts laughing and responds, “No I am just retarded.”

We watch the movie Ray. Chase convinces the girl we are staying with that Ray Charles had only one ball due to a “dishwashing accident.”

The Circle Game is a wonderful game, where Chase makes a circle with his hand and positions it somewhere below the waist. If you look at it, he hits you. I announce every time he does this, “I am not playing.” He hits me anyways. SO, Ray Charles, according to Chase Lisbon, actually, invented the circle game. According to Chase, Ray and Stevie Wonder used to sit around playing for hours. They had their assistants help with the whole seeing part.

And, we are off to Austin in the morning.

On our way out of New Orleans, we stop at a restaurant where Chase had worked, when he lived down there. Many of the same employees are still there. Its funny the places that people never leave. New Orleans seems to be one of those places.

We are staying in Austin with Will, a friend of Melissa’s. We decide we should bring him something as a “thank you for having us” gift. We are thinking liquor or something of that sort. So, I call Melissa hoping she can suggest something he likes. She comes up with sugar free candy and Brian Wilson.

We get to Will’s later than we were supposed to, as usual. We head over to a gathering of sorts, to meet some of the locals. We make it through introductions, and return home to go to sleep.

We spend the next day exploring Austin. We end our day of exploration in Will’s front yard in lawn chairs. Myself and Will smoke cigarettes. Chase smokes his pipe. Somehow it becomes dark and no one seems to notice. People come to us. More lawn chairs appear and our circle grows. Will and one of his friends are playing guitars. I smoke another cigarette. Chase has, two barely of age, girls coming down from some town in Texas. The boys and I, from the front yard, go out to dinner. Chase, and the girls, join us later.

We arrive at some sort of chain Mexican restaurant, where we are seated, per request, in the “smoking section.” We are lead through the entire restaurant, past the bar, and through a door. We are seated at a booth in the far corner, next to a big screen TV. The seats are maybe a foot off the ground, and we are all having trouble reaching the food and drinks on the table. We each light a cigarette and it no longer matters.

We spend day two entertaining Yvette and Brittany, our two new underage friends. We shop and do lunch. We search high and low for a photo booth so the three of them can remember their magical day in Austin together. Will and I are left in the car, while photo booth pictures ensue. I ask Will if he wants to go outside and smoke a cigarette. He insists on smoking in this girl’s car and goes, “Whatever, she can tell her friends her car smells like smoke, because she was hanging out with older kids.”

The girls return to where they came from. We go to a bar. Our driver is a little intense. He is a little unaware of pedestrians. The passengers are a little intense. They are eyeing people on the street and yelling “posers” at them. We make it home alive. I want to go to bed in my dress and boots. Will and Chase encourage me to at least take the boots off. I am asleep within 60 seconds, probably in my dress.

We eat approximately 15 meals in the three days we are in Austin. We attend the last supper, being day two of Sushi, around 3pm. A girl working at the Sushi restaurant looks at Chase’s Morrissey shirt and goes, “Is that Vanilla Ice?” He tells her it is Morrissey. She goes, “I knew it was either Vanilla Ice or Morrissey.”

We return to our lawn chairs for a bit. And, we are off to Albuquerque, with little to no idea how far it is.

I tell Sue that Chase gave Kiki away, in Texas, and got me a pet Armadillo instead. I then called the Armadillo cute. She kind of believes me.

Chase is driving and I am reading celebrity gossip magazines.

I am driving and Chase is sidekicking.

He looks up enough to remark, “Texas looks like Africa.”

I do not think anyone will be surprised to hear we get pulled over in Texas. I am removed from the car and Chase and I are questioned separately about where we are from, where we are going, and why, if we are not married, are we traveling together. My cop had no problem with me giving Will’s address differently three times, but does not believe I could possibly be from Boston because I should have a “Boston accent.” We arrive at a thirty-dollar motel in Truth or Consequences, Mew Mexico at four in the morning.

I am returning the motel key, the morning after. I am a little tired. The lady at the desk thanks me. I manage to respond, “Goodnight.” Chase says she probably thought I was a hooker. He is probably right.

We wander around Truth or Consequences, and in order to get Chase tea, we end up eating an entire meal at 11am. I blame Austin, Texas. Soon, we are back in the truck and off to Albuquerque.

We stop at a Mexican graveyard, maybe an hour from Albuquerque, to take pictures and notes respectively. From the catacombs of New Orleans, to shallow graves marked with stuffed animals and hood ornaments, cemeteries are my kind of beautiful. One just has “I heart you” written out in rocks. Chase decides he wants an internet gravestone. I agree to be in charge of the site’s upkeep. I just want “I heart you” in rocks.

We arrive in Albuquerque. We stay with a girl, Kat that works at Hot Topics and her six roommates. Upon our arrival, we discover Kat needs to go to work. I put a bathing suit and a razor in my bag, because Kat’s boyfriend said he would call us to go swimming. We bring her to the local mall and decide to walk around a little. This does not last long, due to the crowds of people pointing and staring at us. As most can imagine, we have been stared at in truck stops, gas stations, restaurants, and bathrooms since we left. The Albuquerque mall beats all of these scenarios, hands down. I offer to change my underwear. I am wearing a yellow skirt and a black thong, but that really is the least of our problems. We leave the mall. Chase accidentally takes a Xanax. I have a razor in my purse.

We continue on to some street where there is a Buffalo Exchange. After I pay for whatever items I purchase, and will probably never wear, Chase spots this red vintage lingerie top in the window. It has potential to be used in a shoot. He asks a girl working there to see it. So, she is getting it off the mannequin and I go, “You have to get it. It has panties,” making Chase seem a little gay and me a little crazy.

I miss Will’s front yard.

We find a coffee shop with outside seating. Chase gets an entire pot of tea and we now have somewhere to sit for the next 4-8 hours, as needed.

We go out to a bar that evening with Kat and her boyfriend. Apparently, Chase accidentally takes another Xanax. He begins telling them I have had sex with 17 guys on this trip. He details how amazing this feat is, due to the fact, we had been gone for a little over a week. The kid Chase is directing this all to, gives me this “I get it now” look. He begins to detail blowjobs at truck stops, and dudes on the side of the highway. Chase is still talking when this kid leans over and high fives me.

On the way home from the bar, we go to Wal-Mart. I think Wal-Mart is Albuquerque’s “after party.” Chase is trying to convince the carpool to go to a Casino. Wal-Mart distracts him and he forgets about it.

Once home, I want to go to sleep. We are sleeping on a pull out couch in the living room. There is Eminem blasting out of the stereo. At least, four people are loudly engaged in playing some sort of video game where you are a giant ball rolling the city streets collecting things to make your ball bigger. I think small children were worth a lot. The last thing I remember hearing before falling asleep, in the middle of all of this, is someone yelling, “Small child, small child,” over and over again.

It is morning and we are off to Los Angeles.

Chase wants to stop at one of the many enticing “Indian” themed, Tepee shaped, rest area/gift shops, off the highway. We settle on “Indian City” in Arizona somewhere. He is wandering around with some postcards. The lady working asks him to leave the postcards with her at the counter, until he is done looking. He is all upset in the car about the injustice of some Native American woman thinking “Just because he stole her land, did not mean he was going steal her postcards.”

We stop in the California desert, at night, to take pictures. I try to give Kiki Children’s Benadryl to chill her out, but just spill it all over her. She starts foaming at the mouth. I tell Chase I think we are going to jail.

We make it to Los Angeles. We both kind of want to keep driving, but the road ends. I blame the ocean. We blow up the air mattress and fall asleep at Melissa’s. Maybe tomorrow, we will do it again. We will wake up, leave LA quickly and quietly, and no will even know we were here.

I wake up and go to Starbucks.

Chase gets up and showers.

We get in the truck. It smells like cat pee and tobacco.

We decide to go to the Glendale Galleria to look for jeans instead.

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