I drove 2,412 miles

And only pissed my pants once

Over the last week two weeks I drove from San Diego to Las Vegas, from Las Vegas to McGill and Ely, Nevada, from Northern Nevada to Salt Lake City, from SLC back to Las Vegas, from Vegas to Phoenix, from Arizona to Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, and from the desert to San Diego.

That’s a lot of gas station coffee, lukewarm Red Bulls, and room temperature water. During my time at the Schellraiser Music Festival I picked up a sore throat and added loads of weak, honeyed tea to the mix. I was hydrating like a champ.

As a result, there were more than a few pit stops where I had to double time to the men’s room to relieve myself before I could even think about fueling up the wagon or scraping the dead insects off the windshield.

When I was in Northern Nevada I stopped to take photos of the beautiful scenery. I was bowled over by the unobstructed views of majestic mountains, sweeping valleys, stunning cloudscapes. There really is nothing like driving in the wild, uninhabited West.

The nice thing about traveling in the great outdoors is there are plenty of places to the fertilize the wildflowers, so to speak.

Last Wednesday was a challenging travel day, a day where I was trying to jam too many things into my itinerary.

I was getting ready to leave Las Vegas when I heard back from the Punk Rock Museum. I’d sent them a note about donating copies of My Damage, Do What You Want, and Corporate Rock Sucks to the museum, and they invited me to come down for a visit at noon.

No problem—except I had to be in Tempe, Arizona on the southside of Phoenix, which was approximately five hours away, for an event that evening with Kid Congo Powers.

That was cutting it close. On my way to Schellraiser I’d run into closures due to road work and a semi flipping over. What should have been a four hour trip took me six hours.

I couldn’t afford such delays this time around.

I rolled the dice—I was in Vegas after all—and thoroughly enjoyed a private tour at the Punk Rock Museum, which I absolutely loved. I’ll have more to say about the place in the future because I hope to be going back for an event in the near future.

By 1pm I was on the road. I went through Henderson and Boulder City and before long I was in Arizona. I stopped off at a rest area for my refueling ritual and since it was approaching the middle of the afternoon I bought an overpriced bottle of cold brew coffee.

I was on I-93 south, which runs in a southeasterly slant from Kingman, Arizona in the northwestern corner of the state to the Phoenix , which sits more or less in the center. It’s two-lane highway that cuts through the rugged heart of Arizona’s desert. The only other city on the route was Wickenburg. There were other towns like Congress and Bagdad but they were some distance from the highway.

I figured I’d find a rest area in Wickenburg and roll into Tempe with an hour to spare.

Reader, I didn’t make it to Wickenburg.

I was searching for a gas station or rest stop when my desire to use the restroom took a more urgent tone.

I needed to pee. Looking back, I realize I waited too long—when you gotta go, you gotta go—but I was surprised by how quickly my need to pee went from “a restroom would be nice” to “pull over now.”

Except there was nowhere to pull over. There was no shoulder. Just gravel and dirt and scrubby little plants hugging the highway.

It didn’t matter. If I didn’t find somewhere to relieve myself I was going to have an accident—in my pants.

I slowed down, searching for a place to pull over, a stretch of shoulder, a gap in the scrub, something.

Nothing.

Up ahead I could see a road sign on by the side of the highway. That’s where I needed to go. I reached down between my legs and clamped the hose, so to speak, because my bladder was no longer receiving instructions from my brain.

As I slowed down and rumbled off the road, my hand—the clamp—slipped and my bodily fluids emptied like wine from a chalice.

I got out of the car and circled to the passenger side, resuming the clamping method until my fly was open and clear of obstructions.

As I finished my business I realized that if I hadn’t slowed down when there was nowhere to pull over and just sailed along until I reached the road sign, I would have been okay. Now I had a mess to clean up.

Luckily, I had clean clothes to change into and a towel with which to dry myself off. I stripped down to my underwear on the side of the road and rummaged in the trunk until I found everything I needed. I put the towel down on the passenger seat and changed clothes. Then I used the towel to clean up the driver’s side seat, which now smelled faintly of finely marinated Earl Grey tea with a touch of honey.

I didn’t have another towel so I folded the towel in a way that I hoped would keep me dry and off I went.

I was now behind schedule so I drove on to Phoenix without stopping at Wickenburg, without stopping anywhere actually, and went straight to the bookstore. One of the employees offered to bring me back to where Kid Congo Powers was waiting for me in the back room. “Would you like me to take you to him?”

“Yes,” I said, “but can you take me to the bathroom first? I’d like to wash up.”

The event went off beautifully and I didn’t lose control of my bladder. Luckily, I’d had the forethought to select a hotel that had washing machines available for guests and the next morning I was able to get up early so I could finish off the tour with clean clothes.

*This newsletter is dedicated to Josh Mohr who said, “If you’re really punk rock you’ll write about pissing your pants in your next newsletter.”

Cormac McCarthy RIP

Apologies for sending this newsletter out so late in the day but the LA Times asked me to write an appreciation of Cormac McCarthy. Regular readers of Message from the Underworld will remember some of this. The editors took out a line about the US cover of The Passenger with its “hideously tacky sunrise resembling an advertisement for a Florida mega-church.” I stand by that assessment.

Other People Podcast

In my haste, last week I neglected to post a link to the podcast I did with Brad Listi of Other People. (Scroll to Episode 840.) We had a great conversation about sobriety and it got a little bit of traction in places where people pay attention to such things. Here’s a taste:

Brad Listi: What about sobriety as it relates to creativity? I’m always interested in this when I speak with writers who have gone through a recovery process. We both know that this profession has a lot of strong ties to substance abuse. Some of it gets glorified. You talk about Kerouac or you talk about Hemingway. I think men in particular. There’s like a masculine, kind of macho thing that happened in the 20th century in particular, where I think it can become a problem when you internalize that. You almost feel like you have to be a boozer in order to be a writer, at least in an earlier stage of life.

Jim Ruland: But one of the best things is that I learned early on that for me, and for many alcoholics, is that resentment is a one-way ticket to a relapse. That’s kind of what they teach you in the rooms, is that you’ve got to live a resentment-free life. You got to have gratitude for where you are. I never realized how much resentment is tied in with the arts.

Make It Stop & Other Events

I’m doing an event a week from Saturday at Artifact Books in Encinitas from 3-5pm. This is my last scheduled event for Make It Stop and I’d love to see some familiar faces there. I’ll be in conversation with Nolan Knight (Gallows Dome) and Craig Clevenger (Mother Howl), both of whom are celebrating new novels. Come say hello!

Also, I won’t be able to attend but if you’re going be in San Diego on Thursday June 15 at 7pm head over to The Book Catapult for Matthew Binder’s celebration of his new novel Pure Cosmos Club with Ana Carrete, Julia Dixon Evans, and my new pal Parker Young.

Thanks for reading, stay safe, and see you next week!