“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
-Jack Kerouac, On The Road“I’ve been walking [San Francisco] for three decades… and now the place is layered with ghosts — of my own life, of the events of my lifetime, and of the histories that unfolded there before. Everything used to be something else.”
-Rebecca Solnit, “San Francisco: The Metamorphosis”
I am a person who cannot give up the ghosts. Everywhere I go reminds me of the last time I was there, and the time before that. Everything I do reminds me of the last time I did it, and the time before that.
I like to know the history of every new place I see, too. I want all the ghosts, not just mine, but yours too.
For two weeks leading up to leaving, I packed. I organized and packed and packed and packed and organized and packed. This would be my 25th move in 33 years on this planet. Packing means unleashing hoards of ghosts, every time. You open a folder and ghosts tumble out, flimsy and worn, poorly packed, oddly labeled. For example, I have a folder called The Way We Were. I have another called The Case Against [Ex]. A legal-sized envelope with an ex-boyfriend’s name scrawled in all caps, red pencil.
In September of 1997, at 15, I’d left Ann Arbor to finish my last two years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy in Northern Michigan. My father had died two years earlier and my Mom and I fought constantly and it was nice to be somewhere else. When I came home for Thanksgiving, I started crying the minute my Mom pulled off the highway onto Route 14, which’d lead us back into Ann Arbor. I held my best friend’s Billabong sweater to my face, inhaling his CK One, trying to transport myself back to where I’d just been, up north with my new friends. When my Mom asked me what was wrong, I said too many ghosts.Â
Wednesday, July 22nd, San Francisco to Anaheim
That moment when you pull out of your place and pull on to the freeway, your whole life in the trunk, is a strange one. I was just there! I was just inside that apartment six minutes ago and now I’ll never be inside it again, ever. You can’t imagine that your life will ever involve not sleeping in that place you just slept. Then a week later you can’t remember what it was like to be there, either.
This first leg of our trip — from the Bay Area to the Los Angeles Area — is one I know by heart, now. I know the rest stops, the factory farms, how quickly it gets too hot to breathe and then starts cooling back down when you curl on past Tejon Ranch. I know it like I knew the route from our house in Ann Arbor to my grandparents in Ohio, like I knew the route from Ann Arbor to Interlochen, like I knew the route from New York to Detroit when I lived in New York. But I’ve never driven south on this route without a plan to drive back north, soon. I feel relieved, if also twisted-up about how easy it’d been to leave, how few ties I have, like maybe I failed as a person out here, and maybe I’ll fail in Michigan, too. As I drive I think of every person I knew or loved or tried to know out here, making a mental list of things that were my own fault.
I’m in the scraped-and-dented maroon 2005 Prius I bought last summer and immediately drove to Oregon to sleep on the Orchard Abby was working at last year. She is in the grey Ford Ranger she bought last spring while planning the road trip from Indiana to California that was supposed to end with her returning home (Indiana), or going to school out East (Maine), but instead ended with her moving in with me in Berkeley. All in all, I spent five years in California and she did one. Now we are going home.
Anaheim isn’t on the way, of course, but Disney. We arrive in the evening, meet up with our friend Courtney, and head into Downtown Disney for dinner. Abby’s so excited she can hardly stand without jumping or touch me without squeezing my arm like a stress ball. Abby adapts popular songs to express her enthusiasm for tomorrow’s itenerary: Everything is DISNEY, Everything is COOL when you’re going to DISNEY!Â
After dinner we catch the fireworks and I remember tumbling out of Splash Mountain near midnight in Orlando, wet from plunging into the briar patch, with my then-girlfriend, Alex, and two of my best friends, one of whom turned out to be lying about everything including being able to afford that trip. We were so happy and the explosions in the sky were for us. What can I tell you: ghosts.
Regarding the construction of the Haunted Mansion, Walt Disney is quoted as saying we’re going to have ghosts from all over the world… but we haven’t got the ghosts in yet. We’re out collecting the ghosts.
I wrap my arms around Abby. I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE GOING TO DISNEY TOMORROW! She smiles, lighting up the sky. Our trip has begun.
Thursday, July 23. Anaheim, CA.
In addition to being older than Disney’s target demographic, I’m a good ten years older than my fiancé and the friends we’re Disney’ing with. This should matter but consistently does not. We meet up with Chelsey and Erin at 8AM for breakfast, and I make them describe the plot of Frozen to me as I’ve yet to see it and know it’ll figure prominently in the park. Then we meet up with Charlie and their friend who’s gonna sign us in.
They get Courtney’s Mickey hat wrong, wrote Countney instead of Courtney but it’s fine, it works, like when Abby yells “Countney, Count ‘Em Down!” and we each yell our numbers. I’m number five. We’re not really at risk of losing each other, but it’s nice to keep track.
I’m a total sucker for only a few things and one of those things is Disney. Abby is a sucker for a great many things but her thrill at meeting Mickey will only be rivaled by that of the children we take to this stupid wonderful place one day. It’s like doing ecstasy with your best friends, putting your love on blast. I am aware that Disney is a stylized sanitized saccharine monument to consumerism and I don’t care.
Disney holds up, again and again, meaning the ghosts aren’t at all intrusive but part of the fun: I’ve been to Disney parks with my family, with exes, with friends, and magically (so to speak), have exactly zero bad memories, and nothing wistful about the good ones. I guess it helps that I’ve had good fortune or strategy regarding cost. Like the $300 all-inclusive week in Florida I got in exchange for attending a series of workshops on owning time-shares in Kissimee St. Cloud. Or that friend who pretended to be rich, and paid for the whole trip. This time, the bargain comes courtesy of Disney employees (Courtney used to work at Disney, so she knows people) who can sign in a few friends a year.
While waiting in various labyrinth lines we discuss which Disney characters are the gayest and are very proud of ourselves for realizing that The Beast (as in; Beauty and The) is a butch lesbian. Beauty is the high femme who sees beneath the tough exterior and low-level dysphoria to awaken the prince within. Think about it.
If one intends to pack their day with maximum Disney fun, I suggest attending with a former Disney employee. Courtney is a deft tour guide and Chelsey — not a former employee, but a clear descendent of Ariel the Mermaid and a former Floridian — is a handy first mate. Courtney ensures we pack as much Disney as possible into our Disney day. She knows the short-cuts, what gets crowded when, what to skip or not.
All in all, we spend 17 straight hours in the park. Near midnight, our whipsmart strategic fun-maximizing is foiled when our path back to Thunder Mountain is blocked by the nighttime light parade. Abby and I edge towards the roped-off path and are quickly tugged aside by two girls whose tiara-ed heads barely reach my waist, dressed in full Frozen regalia, waving with desperate enthusiasm towards the SoCal teenagers hired to play their heroines in this particular section of park, who themselves are waving as generously as possible to nobody in particular. But then — but then! — Disney Light Parade Elsa and Anna spot the Mini Elsa and Anna next to me and both give them a specific, enthusiastic wave. The mini-thems completely lose their shit, like I imagine they will do one day for a YouTube star or whatever the equivalent will be, then. Our thrills come directly afterwards, careening down Thunder Mountain into a pitched, artificial darkness.
Friday, July 24th. Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, NV.
“The only problem now was a gigantic neon sign outside the window, blocking our view of the mountains…”
– Â Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Las Vegas exists ’cause it was a convenient stop on the railroad and then because of all the men who came out here to build The Hoover Dam in 1931. They needed a place to blow off steam. Back then, the casinos were called The Apache and the El Rancho. Now: The Luxor, The Bellagio, The Mirage, The Venetian, Ceasar’s Palace.
My first time in Vegas was 1995, a month and a half after my father died. We didn’t want respite or relaxation or anything that’d give us time to think, because thinking was sad. Vegas is actually very sad, but children don’t know that, and we were children. We grazed from one frigid maze of a casino to another, taking the yellow brick road through the MGM Grand, sleeping in a hotel designed like a Playmobil castle, gazing at Egyptian artifacts inside a 2,526 room pyramid-shaped hotel built two years earlier for $375 million dollars.
Later, I’d have a boyfriend whose legal guardians had retired in Henderson, and we’d visit. His great-aunt spent most of her days and nights drinking White Zinfandel and smoking cigarettes at the Arizona Charlie’s slot machines. Apparently there are no property taxes in Vegas, which’s why he wanted to move back after college, a desire I disregarded along with a laundry list of other reasons we weren’t right for each other.
Anaheim didn’t feel anything like “here,” it was still “there,” and so is Vegas. Vegas, where Alex, her friend Ryan and I spent a sweaty post-pool morning in 2009 hiking the strip on my demented mission to show them the Fall of Atlantis in Ceaser’s Palace, which was way less cool than I remembered it being. Vegas where then-girlfriend Marni and I went for “Shedonism” and I felt unpolished and uncool around our LA friends and we fled the Real L World-hosted party we were obliged to attend within five minutes of our arrival. Vegas, where on New Year’s Eve 2001 a boy said to me you know we’re gonna get married, right? and I pretended like I couldn’t hear him over the crowd and the fireworks.
Finding parking at The Rio is stressful, I feel tired and cranky and dead. Abby’s never been to Vegas but is already better at finding parking than me. I barely register the clerk telling me we’ve ben upgraded to a penthouse due to them overbooking the cheap seats. Okay, whatever. Maybe that’s how they describe rooms with king beds here. No but really: we’ve been upgraded to a penthouse.
When we reach the 20th floor and open the doors to our palace all we can do is go WHAT THE FUCK over and over, collapsing in laughter on the carpet, laughing more as we climb from the first floor of our suite to the second floor on a marble staircase and kiss against the pool table and visit the silver-set dining room and observe all three toilets and a bathroom bigger than our apartment with a double-steam shower and reader, I love a nice hotel.
When you really love someone like I love Abby, though, ordinary magic becomes downright witchcraft because on top of my own happiness and wonder is hers! I could ice a cake with it and I plan to. Do you know what I mean? And this girl, here’s the thing about her: she has been through some shit. Her life has not been easy. Yet she possesses a capacity for joy as enormous as my own for cynicism. Yes the word love has shifted in our hands but so has my understanding of what it means to be happy: I have known happiness but not like the happiness of being happy with Abby. You know what I mean, like how the best sex of your life makes you side-eye everything that came before. She one-ups my heart.
At the Bacchanalia Buffet at Ceaser’s Palace, I’ve eaten my first plate before Abby’s back from getting hers, so I go hunting and eventually find her wandering between sushi world and barbecue planet like Grandpa Simpson, her plate piled like a toddler you’ve just told can have whatever toys she can fit into a given small space. Abby’s diabetic (Type One) and her blood sugar is off, which means she got disoriented. Luckily there are lots of deserts nearby. We eat until we can’t eat anymore and set out to see The Strip.
We wander the humid, sweltering, packed strip streets, ducking into themed hotels, walking by at least two thousand youngish women in tube dresses and clunky heels, clutching each other in packs.
The walk back home is long and involves a significant stretch of broiling, sidewalk-free highway, but we sleep like queens.
Saturday, July 25th – Las Vegas to Moab, Utah
 “Miners came to grab and get out, and they laid waste to their surroundings with gleeful abandon.”
– Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise
Good fortune strikes early this morning, following a breakfast buffet easily described as “bad fortune”: the $100 we sink into slot machines, mostly Ellen DeGeneres’, nets $240.
Nevada is mostly empty. Almost all its residents are corralled in Vegas or Reno. Nevada is a place where you run out of gas not believing it’s possible that there could be so little civilization between here and there. Nevada is a site of extensive nuclear testing, of alien sightings, of mysterious military experiments. As we pass into Utah, signs of life increase, mostly.
We’ve given up on caravaning ’cause I drive like a normal person and Abby drives like she doesn’t want hamsters to feel insecure about their own capacity for speed. Instead we pick rendez-vous points. Our first is a ghost town named Frisco.
Named for the San Francisco mountains in which its mine resided, Frisco sprang up in 1875 when silver ore was found. By 1880 the town was on the railroad and boasted over 6,000 residents and a rowdy reputation, along with 23 saloons, a school, a local newspaper, hotels and churches. In 1885, the mine caved in. Some stayed behind, hoping for a twist of fortune, but by 1920, the town was empty.
“The wildest town in the great Basin” maintained many of its structures out on this dry earth — charcoal kilns, mining equipment, a cemetery, what may have been houses. When we arrive a large sign warns us that the area has been “reclaimed” and we should beware.
So we find a way to walk back to the mountains without passing that sign.
Detroit is often described as a “modern ghost town,” or a ghost city, I guess, despite containing about 700,000 residents. You know: the blown-out abandoned houses, caved-in roofs, residential blocks with only one or two occupied units, miles of shuttered factories gutted for scrap metal, huge lots of urban prairies springing up where houses burned down. Growing up in Southeastern Michigan means growing up hyperactively aware of how industry builds and abandons communities and cities and the human heart, and I think my fascination with ghost towns probably began in Detroit. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawn to them. But it’s tacky and grotesque, as a white person, to photograph the ruins of Detroit with the approach we take to photographing these abandoned mining towns. Those who mourn some kind of “golden age” for Detroit — the Paris of the Midwest! — ruined by the offshoring of factory work and the uprisings of the late ’60s ignore the fact that Detroit was only ever truly “golden” for white people, who’d started out terrorizing Natives (calling them savages, killing them, pushing them west in the ‘name of human progress’) and, once they were gone, moved on to terrorizing, segregating and incarcerating African-Americans. In Mark Binelli’s Detroit City is the Place to Be, a book I start reading out loud to Abby before bed, he writes of how Black residents endured years of “workplace discrimination, redlining, slum housing, and abuse at the hands of goon-squad cops,” and when white residents fled the city for the suburbs, they did so “not without sacking the joint on the way out the door” and “doing everything possible once they’d gone to ensure the failure of, and effectively place sanctions upon,” those left behind.
Driving through America means driving through ghost town after ghost town, so many that by the time we’d arrive at our destination, its poor turn of fortune would no longer seem exceptional. I knew this already from the State Routes we’d take to Ohio in the eighties which were already dotted with tiny, collapsed towns. We’re a country of fortune-seekers, inspired by an illogical belief in various prosperity gospels to chase booms like there’s never been a bust. Settlements converge around blind optimism, even in places like Frisco entirely devoid of water (they had to bring it in by rail.) The bust comes, and the people flee. Out west, everybody talks about the drought. In Detroit it rains a lot, but 40,000 residents just got  their water shut off.
The Utah we go through is dry heat, a lot of orange, the memory of green. Very few towns but lots of enormous houses. An abandoned store, a church, another church, a Family Dollar, a trailer park, hay bales, horses. Whether a trailer or a mansion, though, one thing these residences all have in common is lots of space between them.
This is when the trip begins something like a total re-orientation of the map, when you marvel, mile by mile, how many things you’ve yet to see. In California and New York, you start to feel like you’re at the center of the world ’cause you’re in the place that makes the movies or the magazines but no, you’re at the edges of the world, look at a map! They are spectacular edges, but there’s also a huge crater lake of life right here in the actual middle of it all. And I want to see all of it, every little thing, and with Abby.
For me this matters ’cause I’m a person who always wanted to be on those edges, to be “edgy” if you will. But the ratio of “fun things to do” / “ways to live” / “methods of being” to people who wanted to do / live / be them was like 1:2, so everything was very crowded. Everywhere else it’s more like 1:100. So like, I want to be somewhere less crowded.
