Great Escapes

Great Escapes or: I am Not Going to Die in Kansas
8/9/08

Driving back from Kansas City, I just want to pass Lawrence and keep going. I’m not quite sure where K-10 goes, somewhere further west, but I know it eventually hooks up with I-70, and then I-25 in Denver. Then it’s I-80 to I-84 in Salt Lake City, which should eventually drop me off in the Northwest, which has been sounding more and more appealing every day. I’ve never been there, and that’s half the appeal. It’s an ideal. A place I’ve read about and heard about from many people and everything I’ve read or heard said sounds right.
I spent a good part of the day with Casey; it’s what I needed to do. I was sitting in a Chinese buffet restaurant with my friend when she called, asking if I wanted to go see a movie in Olathe with her and Judy. Casey and Judy are the only people from high school that I still keep contact with, and I think it’s because they both moved away and went to schools more than thirty miles from our hometown. I was supposed to help a friend move, but I explained that I needed to see these people before they left and that I needed to get out of town. So I made a CD for the drive and drove.
We saw Pineapple Express and I could tell the film was flawed when I started thinking about everything that had happened in the past week. After the movie Judy had to go to Topeka so Casey and I decided we should probably hang out, since she was leaving that weekend. And, being in Olathe, we had no idea what to do so we just went back to her parents’ house. I should probably say that Casey is sort of my ideal. I met her the last semester of high school and she is probably the only person I know that makes sense to me all of the time. There’s nothing really romantic, but there is something incredibly hopeful about knowing her.
That, and her parents are sort of ideal too, and I think that is because they remind me so much of my own. Really off the cuff, totally cool, no problem cursing in the household, and most importantly, they know how to make me feel completely welcome and comfortable. Especially her mom, who insists I stay for dinner. After food, Casey takes me down to the soundproof room her dad built in their basement. It’s full of instruments. We pick up a couple of guitars and start noodling. I tell her about what happened the weekend before, which is something that I don’t even want to get into in gruesome detail. The way I’ve been describing it is a line from a Jawbreaker song. “What’s the meanest you can be to the one you claim to love and still smile to all your newfound friends?” In short, it’s impossible to be friends with someone who has broken up with you, no matter how long you’ve known them or how close you are. Eventually they will do something, or you will do something, to make sure you can never be in the same room with each other. Anyway, it’s a long story that I’m tired of telling.
Hanging out with Casey was a perfect escape from a town that has felt like a prison all summer, and maybe even before that. I’ve made jokes about it, how all I do is drink (even though I’m pretty sure you can’t drink in prison) and how I’ve started smoking because of the prison-like atmosphere. I need more jailbreaks in my life, even if they only involve sitting around and watching YouTube videos with someone I haven’t seen in more than a year. It’s nice being in tune.

I really mean it, when I say Lawrence has been like a prison, and I think it is a legitimate metaphor. This town is divided up into different crowds, which feel like cellblocks. You hang out with the people in your cellblock, and your cellmates are your roommates. You can wander around and you can leave, but mostly you’re just stuck here. I was talking to my friends Luke and Drew the other day, and I told them how I wish I was going on tour with their band in October and how that was exactly what I wanted to do this fall. Of course they encouraged me.
“There’s room in the van!” Luke said.
I told him that I couldn’t, that I had to finish school so that, next May, I could leave Kansas for good. Although, I really want to do the Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous neo-Kerouac thing with Boo and Boo Too. Just go around, from town to town, record what happens, sleep on floors, and eat out of dumpsters. It sounds ideal right now. It is the perfect escape from everything here.
I feel like I’m plotting a prison break right now, I have it all worked out and I feel more clearheaded than I have in forever. Last weekend was supposed to be incredibly uncomfortable, nights where I would have to be around my ex (as we share the same social circle) and never get comfortable but I was wrong. She was there but I felt fine, I realized something, or something sparked off in my brain. Something made sense, that this wasn’t a prison, that this was my town and that I just had to do my best to ignore the things that bugged the shit out of me. This past weekend felt like a metamorphosis. In a town where it feels like everyone is trying to be something, the only thing I can be is myself, and as long as I’m honest I can make it to May.
I’ve always had an affinity for escape films. To me, nothing is more thrilling than watching a bunch of POWs pull one over on an oppressive force keeping them imprisoned (usually Nazis). I feel like Steve McQueen or Charles Bronson, digging tunnels, ready for that one night when the guards are…most off guard and then making a run for it. Getting in the car and driving somewhere out west where the plans have been set like some modern pioneer. Something about wanting a better life and at least trying to make it, despite not having that many marketable skills. It’s about faith, though. The Northwest feels right, there’s something like a call that is beckoning and the more I think about it, the more I know that it is somewhere I need to go. Maybe it’s the belief that being surrounded by natural beauty will make me a more positive person and a healthier individual. The comforting thing is that almost everyone I know here is hatching a similar plot, and I think we’re all driven by the same rallying cry: “I don’t ever want to be a townie!”