Message In A Bottle

After so much time away, I was hoping to come back with something truly special: the kind of story that makes you feel good inside. But while the events of this story did make me feel better in the short term, I have to say that my dignity has been compromised. So, at the risk of demeaning myself irreparably to people whom I hold in high regard, I give you the following.

ACT I: Let's Get Out of This Country



I left for the ICA convention in Chicago on Thursday afternoon. The car was clean, and I had several CDs of good new music. The sky was blue and my head was clear. I was feeling confident, more ready for a conference presentation than I had ever been. The paper I was presenting is a chapter in a forthcoming book edited by my good friend, Amanda, and being published by Routledge. The other members of my panel were all well-established scholars, and I had a meeting scheduled with an editor at Routledge to talk about possible book projects. I was starting to feel better about my career (which, while going very well, often leaves me with a little bit of existential angst and competitive jealousy born mostly of guilt that I haven't been as productive as I could be). What's more, lots of good friends were scheduled to be in Chicago, where good food and good beer abound.

Heading up I-65, I felt as good as I've felt in months.

I stopped in Lafayette to get a cup of coffee and a cookie. Lafayette turned out to be a little more crowded, and traffic a little more tangled, than I had anticipated. But, still, I got my coffee and my cookie, used the Starbucks restroom, and was off.

ACT II: A Little More Time



Perhaps it was the caffeine and sugar combination, but my relative calm turned into a unnamable and jittery unease somewhere about 20 miles outside of Lafayette. My sense of confidence started to slide away and I found myself nervous about...something. I tried to think back to the interview with John Doe that Terri Gross had done for Fresh Air this week. Doe had been talking about a song that he had written called "A Little More Time" about missing loved ones. He talked about how thinking too much about the future or the past stops us from being here now and experiencing the present for everything it's worth. He wasn't advocating for a kind of "live for today" selfishness. Instead, he was talking about just making the most out of the time we have. I tried to dial up the feeling that had accompanied me to Lafayette, but it wasn't any use. I could feel myself blocking contentment.

I continued that way all the way to Merrillville, where I stopped at another Starbucks to use their restroom and get a bottle of water. I asked a young hipster behind the counter if he thought I would be better off taking the toll road (Interstate 90) through Gary or getting on 80/94 and risking the south Chicago suburban traffic. "You should be fine on 80/94. I was on it this morning and it was no problem." I thanked him, took my water and got back on the road.

About a mile away from the exit for 80/94, traffic was crawling, coming to a halt. The exit was backed up -- stupid hipster --- and I decided to risk the toll road. Plus, I actually like driving through Gary. I feel like too many people avoid it. And the traffic was fantastic. Clear sailing the entire way. I sipped water and listened to the Mountain Goats and was starting to feel better. 90 turned to the north and I headed along Lake Michigan toward the merger with 94 just south of downtown Chicago.

Then I saw brake lights.

ACT III: People Got A Lotta Nerve




To say that traffic was heavy on the Dan Ryan would be a gross understatement. It was obese. My speedometer never climbed above 5 mph. We sat. We lurched. We stopped. We sat some more. The exit signs promised relief, but the exits never came. They hovered in the distance like cement mirages.

And I started to feel like I had to pee. Nothing major, certainly nothing that couldn't wait until I got to the hotel, which would surely be in the next half hour, once the traffic let up and we got moving again. But still we sat, and lurched, and stopped, and sat some more. All the lurching made my situation a little worse than I had anticipated. Perhaps I could get off at the next exit and find a gas station. But where is the exit? The signs keep telling me about an exit, but it never seems to materialize.

I started thinking more about how much I needed to pee. I had to hold out. But the more I thought about it, the more dire the situation became. I longed for a "Stadium Pal." I had to do something. Could I pull off on the shoulder, open the front and back passenger doors for cover and pretend I was doing something else? That seemed unlikely. Could I pee in my water bottle while I was driving/sitting here? I held it down to my crotch to see what the angle would be. No way; not with the steering wheel in the way. First, I can only imagine what other drivers might see. Also, most likely, I'd get into an accident and wind up exposed and covered in urine trying to explain myself to the police.

"What were you doing, Mr. Nichols-Pe...Pet..."
"Pethick"
"Mr. Pethick. What were you doing?"

I tried to put it out of my mind. No good. I shifted in my seat, I tapped my foot, I screamed at traffic. Nothing worked.

Finally, I saw my one and only chance: the exit for Canalport Ave. I took my shot.

An angel must have been riding shotgun with me because, while there were no gas stations on the horizon, I found a small, unpopulated side street just two blocks off the freeway with a vacant lot on one side and a giant windowless wall of a warehouse on the other side. There was a tour bus in the vacant lot (though no people in sight) so I parked next to the warehouse and got out of the car with my water bottle. I walked over to the passenger side, opened the door, pushed the seat as far back as it would go, and poured out the water in my bottle onto the street. I squeezed myself into a low kneeling position on the passenger side floor and peed in that bottle.

I have never been more in the moment.

EPILOGUE:

To be honest, I feel a bit diminished by the whole affair, and I hope none of you think less of me. Of course, I disposed of the bottle and its contents before arriving at the hotel, where I knew I would be using valet parking, and it WAS a desperate time. But, still, for someone feeling so good about the way things were going, it seemed an ironic (or maybe fitting) way to end up: crouched uncomfortably in the passenger seat of a Toyota Camry, in a horrible big city neighborhood, peeing secretly into a bottle with one word emblazoned on the side: Ethos.