...a 10- or 11-day clown.

Sunday, 16 May 1999

It's the wee hours of Sunday morning, and we decide on the fly to change into more comfortable clothing, repack our gear, and get on the road at least as far as Rochester, New York so that we don't have to drive all the way from Toronto in one stretch. As we drive out of Toronto, I feel a weird sort of melancholy, sort of what we science fiction convention aficionados call the "post-con letdown." This is what you get after you've gotten very excited about an upcoming event, had an intense experience, and then have to go back to your more mundane life. The city falls farther and farther behind, and I find myself wishing I could prolong the experience even just a little bit. You can't always get what you want. Fall asleep in the back seat.

About 10 miles from the Canada/USA border, Derek looks down at the gas gauge and swears. Wake up confused. Turns out poor Roz is almost out of fuel again. We get off the highway and head toward what we hope will be an open fuel station. It is open, but we run out of gas and stall out about 100 yards from the pumps. Could've been worse, but it still sucks. Derek and Jude walk to the station and get a gallon container to put enough gas in the car to get it to the pump, then fill up a few more dollars' worth. Back on the road.

We reach the border at Niagara Falls around 3:30 a.m. The best time to see Niagara Falls, in my opinion. No crowds, no traffic, only the heavy mist, the scree of seagulls, and the whoosh of water falling hundreds of feet. Stop to gaze at the falls for a little while, then make our way through the neon tourist hell of the adjoining town as we try to find our way onto the bridge to the US side. Don't remember Niagara being quite this soulless and lurid when I was here as a kid in the early 1980s. How sad.

We pull into a motel a few miles from Rochester maybe around 5:00 a.m. We all immediately strip off clothing and fall into bed. Fuck, we're tired. Wake up to a most unwelcome alarm around 11:00 a.m. and recall a dream fragment. All I can remember is that I was kissing Whoopi Goldberg while Tim watched. Am mildly disturbed at the implications for my psyche. Decide to relate this little tidbit anyway because oversharing is a proud tradition in my social crowd. Still would've preferred it the other way around. Tim, though there's no particular reason for him to know or care, has been on my list of Five Celebrity Freebies, à la that episode of Friends, for some time now. It's a compliment. Really it is. If you ever read this, Tim, I hope it doesn't freak you out or anything. It's just a harmless celebrity crush. (The overshare light is now on. Please return your stewardess to her original upright position. Okay, I think I've overshared enough for one story.)

Shower, head into town and eat lunch at the Slice of Life Café, a feminist vegetarian establishment. Then we hit the road for the final stretch, my turn to drive. Approach Albany three hours later, the capital of New York. Also the place where Derek and I met while attending the State University of New York there. We dither about going into town or to Thacher Park to relive old memories, but I'm tired and don't really want to stop. Change my mind to say sure, let's go up to the park for a little while, but not too long; however, the rather confusing map confounds our plans by leading us in the wrong direction, so we don't go. Derek sulks a while, partially because he wanted to go, partially because he feels old as we pass the campus and see the familiar residential high-rises and the cylindrical form of the central water tower (the one we students referred to as "Rockefeller's Last Erection," not least because of the pulsating red light at its tip).

An hour later we cross into Massachusetts. Get Derek to take over driving again, as I'm worried about falling asleep at the wheel. Roll into the Boston metro area around 7:45 p.m. and we're home about 25 minutes later. Wow. It's over. Still feeling a bit sad that something to which I looked forward for a couple of months has passed into memory, but also looking forward to gloating about it to all the other FOWs as soon as possible. Oh yes, there will be gloating. And I will have this by which to remember it all.

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