For the first two weeks things were great, the weather was springlike and Bec secured the use of her Father’s bike for me to get around on. Danny sold most of the weed for me so finding work was not a top priority on my list. I found all the cool places in town to sit in the sun and enjoy a smoke, I was loving it as I got to explore Aiken from top to bottom. I was particularly intrigued by the plantation homes that still stood in all their majestic glory, I found myself wondering what life must have been like back in the day. It was in those days in Aiken that I began to see that slavery never ended… they just opened up the plantation. If I am not allowed to choose what I can put into my own body then I have to ask ‘who owns my body’? Obviously the superstition known as ‘the state’ does, or more to the point, the oppressive assholes that claim to represent said superstition. I believe the ruling classes figured out long ago that to unleash the true creative and productive energy, people have to believe they are free, so they devised a system of debts, taxes and puritanical rules to keep people enslaved. Along with an education system that indotrinates people into believing such nonsense, it makes it difficult for most people to even see the chains. “No one is more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe that they are free” Goethe.
I began to see signs that Bec was not all that happy in life, it started out with little things like nit-picking Danny about insignificant things but soon became all out shouting sessions. I would retreat to my room when that happened, hoping not to get caught in her crosshairs, but soon that was not far enough and her attention turned my way. It certainly didn’t help that neither Danny or I had jobs and I had mistakenly not offered her any money for rent, that was a mistake that I realized much too late. There was no turning it around, once she started down the path to anger she could not be stopped. She would scream until she was crying and about the silliest of things, the final straw came when she returned home from work one day to find 3 dishes that had been left in the drying rack and had yet to be put away. She went berserk, screaming until she was hoarse. By the time she finished she had told me to get the hell out of her house and that she would turn me in if I didn’t go. I was shocked, but I had enough sense to get out of there fast, I headed to a bar that was down the street and sat there for the next few hours contemplating my options. I had none, I was in a town where I only knew her and had nowhere else to go. I had used up all the places that I knew people who could help out. Having no where else to go, I headed back to Bec’s house to see if maybe a bit of time had mellowed her. Danny was waiting in the living room for me and told me that Bec had gone to bed, he said he had talked to her and convinced her to let me stay until I could find another solution. I thanked him profusely and remember thinking how crazy it was that my friend of many years was kicking me out and the guy I had met only a few weeks earlier was saving my tail.
Early the next morning I started working on a plan to get out of South Carolina, first I called my cousin John back home. He was sympathetic but had no real connections outside of Wisconsin and I was not going to go there. He made an off-handed remark that Amsterdam is the place I should go, he had been there during the Cannabis Cup and thought it was the perfect fit for me, the only problem was that I didn’t have a passport and had never had one so getting there would be pretty much impossible. Next I called my friend Greg back in Washington, he was back from his fishing trip and I still wanted to thank him for letting me stay during my last few days there. He was also sympathetic but had no suggestions on where I should go next. I mentioned that my cousin had suggested Amsterdam but that I had no way to get past the gatekeepers, then he tells me that he has a passport that he traveled through South America with in his back pocket and now the thing is so beat up that the picture slides out, he says I can have it if I think it would work. I said it was worth a try and gave him the address in S.C., he said he would send it the next day but that he would have to report it lost as he was going back to South America later in the spring. I felt a bit apprehensive but there was no other options so I started formulating a plan to get out of the country. I called my friend Mike in Chicago to tell him my plan and to let him know I would be rolling back through Chi-town on my way to my cousin’s house. He was very enthusiastic about my plan and said that he would even go with me and introduce me to a friend of his in Holland. This was great news as having a travelling companion who has a legitimate passport might just be the difference maker. I was feeling very confident about the new plan that was coming together however I still had to convince Bec to let me stay until the passport came. She thought it was a crazy idea that would never work but thankfully she said I could stay,
It took nearly two weeks for the passport to arrive and each day I waited, the nervous tension would rise to new heights. I walked on eggshells around the house and stayed out of Bec’s way for the most part, aside from a few dirty looks, she was tolerable. The day the passport arrived I was all packed and ready to go but Bec surprised me by saying that I should wait until the next day to leave so we could have one more night together. She was feeling guilty about the way she had treated me and wanted to have one more night to party and clear the air. I told her sure but was not feeling very forgiving after the things she had said to me. She explained how life had been very frustrating as of late and apologized for taking it out on me, I told her I know me being here has not made it any easier and that we should just forget all about it and part on cordial terms. I also told her that our friendship would never be the same but maybe someday it would evolve into something even stronger. We tapped our drinks to that and spent the rest of the night partying just like the old days.
The next day I was back on the Greyhound bus, a situation I was becoming all to familiar with. In the nearly two years that I had been on the run I had been up and down and back and forth across the country on the bus, seeing every little insignificant town along the way. This time felt different as I knew that one way or another, this would be my last bus trip for a long time to come. I spent the entire trip staring out the window, soaking in the scene from the mountains in the south to the cornfields in the midwest. I realized and maybe for the first time what a truly beautiful land this was and how much I would miss it when I was gone. My sadness turned to anger when I thought about why I had to leave…the oppresive tyrants who controlled the land. My dedication to escaping from the oppressors solidified and by the time I rolled into Chicago, my mission was very clear in my head, make it to Amsterdam or die trying.
A Continuing Story About Life On The Run