Driving to New Jersey to anxiety-poop on the Fourth of July: How a writer lives when they ain’t writin’

The experiences that happen when the words don't.

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This is Stomp Wonders, the sidestream current of life that accompanies Stomp Roams. Subscribe for lush novelette-style fiction from a world of bartender rats, chain-smoking turtles, and a Poptart-addicted sasquatch who knows loss as well as he knows his way around a beer truck robbery. Welcome.

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Inside my laptop in a mud peasant hut made of wires is a spreadsheet fueled by mead and turnips. This spreadsheet earns a living churning numbers in an old white oak barrel while 11 Microsoft Excel children run between her legs. She churns “food costs” and “hours worked” and “student loan balance remaining.”

From my mighty perch in a 102-degree apartment, I lorded over my spreadsheet fiefdom. The spreadsheet wailed at me in her 1400s street peasant dialect:

“You worked 56 hours last week, sire-ah!”

“Thank you, peasant.” I grumbled at the laptop. “You may have some fermented goat milk for your troubles.”

As a professional writer, 56 hours meant thousands of words ghostwritten for newsletters, website copy, and blog articles. But when I looked at all that work, all the toil, I only saw the number next to the hours spent writing for me: three.

“You aren’t doing enough, Jon.”

Belligerent belligerents test my emotional mettle at the library help desk

Name tag on at midday in summer and the library was packed. All of the children asking for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, all the moms looking for their children, all the husbands looking for their moms—were funneled to me at the help desk.

A tanned fella (everyone is a specific degree of tan in Bucks County because of all the old-money shore houses) in a fitted shirt approached the desk. He was fiddling his card from his wallet.

“Hey dude.”

“Hey.”

“The computers won’t let me on.”

“Oh, no? I can check your card for you.”

I scanned it, saw the $277 in fines on his account.

“Okay, so it’s blocking your card because you’re up over $20 in fines.”

I counted up dozens of 25-cent fines over the past two years—death by a thousand one-day-late cuts.

“I’m not paying that. I have never returned my books late. I went to Harvard. I’m not a a vagrant.”

“Okay.”

I printed him out a receipt to show the extent of the fines.

“Yeah, I’m not paying this. I went to Harvard. I would never be late.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “You just won’t be able to use your card.”

“Ridiculous. I went to Harvard.”

He walked off. The next guy came up.

“I have 25 cents in fines that I’d like to pay.”

“Sure.”

“Upon my father’s father’s grave, I will pay this 25-cent blasphemy upon my account.”

“Uh—sure. It’s no problem. May I have your account number?”

“Upon the flames of Zeus! I will pay this fine.”

Please don’t pull out a ninetails and lash yourself, man. It’s just a quarter.

I took his card and scanned it. I could see the mists fogging up the giant bay windows from the humidity that tumbled in great drops from his eyes.

“Okay, that will be 25 cents.”

Trembling, he pulled a quarter from a small purse, closed his eyes, and kissed it. He handed it forth to me.

“Thank you,” I said. I handed him a receipt.

“I am not a bad man.” He bowed and retreated. Still looking me in the eye: “I am not a bad man.”

Ten rampant children with feral glazed looks in their eyes rushed me from the kid’s area.

“Give me a sticker, fool!”

They crowded around, yelling curses in strange Lord-of-the-flies tongues. One child pulled a plastic fork from his pocket and stabbed at me with it. “Die, traitor, die!”

“Okay, let’s be polite about it and everyone can have one sticker.”

“I want five!” Shrieked one little monster with chocolate smeared up to his ears.

“You may each have one.”

They pawed at the stickers then one child, frothing at the mouth, looked up at me like a startled meerkat.

“Can you tell me where I can find Diary of a Wimpy Kid?”

Saturday night in a bar with rhinos in heat

The herd was agitated at Chambers 19 Bistro. This wasn’t a bistro. Bistros served coffee and pastries and dainty teas. In this mud pit a herd of 22-year-old boy-men wallowed in the river of Bud Light, splashing about playfully in Fireball, as 22-year-old women mingled past the oasis in single file and one boy-man shouted above the booming Kendrick Lamar:

“Women! What do we do?!”

The desperation was thick with this one. You could smell the musk.  

My friend turned to me: “Do you want to leave?”

The trumpeting hoots, the alarmed growls of animals all around. It was only a matter of minutes before they’d start peeing on the bar to mark territory.

“Yeah, let’s try a different vibe.”

Outside it poured hot, welcome summer rain. We flushed like birds from the street and down into a neon basement. It was the “Big Gay Party” at Hops/Scotch Bar. Everybody danced, the bass thumped, and when the sun woke me at 6:15 the next morning, it was time to open the laptop, settle in with a cup of coffee, and writ—nope.

It was time to run off seven beers.

In hopes of a quick paralysis by heat stroke

It was a six-mile loop with an 8% grade. I came at midday—that seemed like the most logical way to run in a heat wave. A man in his fifties in running shoes and tanned was pumping up an inflatable kayak. 

“You just starting or finishing?”

“Oh, I’m just starting. Gonna try three miles.”

“I ran this morning before the heat came on. Are you doing a triathlon?”

“No, just gonna try three miles.”

“Are you training?”

“I just like to run.”

The man seemed puzzled. This guy running up a hot macadam trail hill in the heat with no apparent reward.

“Okay, well drink lots of water. Have a blast out there. I’ll be on the lake.”

In typical introvert shut-down-the-conversation-immediately, I responded as one should:

“Alright.”

Would I have calculated my thoughts better and with dramatic flair, I might have said:

“I feel sorely alienated spending 102-degree days alone writing in my apartment, so I come out here to sniff around the park and run up to humans for treats like a curious labradoodle.”

If only the societal norm was to hand each other written pages.

Creeping Death on a Monday evening

I put in my time – I wrote all day. None of this writing was in my universe where a sasquatch was backing a dump truck up to a war elephant for removal from the square in Manhattan near 47^th and 8^th.

I showered, put on my finest Mark-Twain-on-a-town-stroll outfit (tan pants and a forest green shirt), and walked to MOM’s on Main Street. I was the only one at the bar. I ordered the cheapest beer on draft, a $5 Labatt.

“Can I have the Nashville hot chicken with your hottest sauce?”

“Sure, man.”

The food came out. The bar filled up. A kid next to me in a backwards hat sat down.

“Can I have a Lawson’s IPA?”

The bartender brought over a couple of bottles. “The other bartender keeps these hidden behind the bar.”

I twirled them around. Ghost peppers. Scorpion peppers. Alright, that’s a start. I dumped puddles on my French fries. The fella next to me looked over.

“That hot?”

“Uh huh.”

“I don’t wanna be like, weird, but can I try a fry?”

“Uh huh.”

I pushed the tray over. He dipped a fry in a mouse-nip drop of Creeping Death scorpion pepper sauce.

AHG-HAWK!

He shook his head and tears galloped from his eyes. “Dude, you’re fucked!”

I felt seen in this moment. This compassionate-hearted bro, recognizing my hot sauce game.

“They don’t have milk so drink a dark beer.”

When I left, I knew that I couldn’t write. I had two beers. Two beers was under the influence. Two beers with hot hot Nashville chicken was under the influence and tummy full. My brilliance was only allowable to see sunlight when completely sober and starved like Franz Kafka in a cage.

I put on the fan, listened to street sounds, and read in my bed on my phone in the dark.

Driving to New Jersey just to Fourth of July anxiety-poop  

My family doesn’t live close to me. I had to work at 9 the next morning. There were projects due. The Fourth of July could be an exhaled sigh of stark solitude or I could do something for myself.

I would go for a run. Yeah, a good run down by the Delaware River. A Fourth of July run. Me enjoying me. I could drive the backroads through Bucks County down to the river.

I drove up River Road and came to the parking area on the Pennsylvania side of the river. Mariachi music tinkered through the leaves. Grill smoke wafted gray and blue-tinged through the foliage. 9 a.m. and every spot was full with a picnic.

I pulled into the one-way lot and proceeded to pull a nine-point turn in between the parked cars. I mean, I could drive up further and find another lot. My stomach didn’t feel right. There’s the restroom right there, Jon. Just put your four-ways on. No but, I can’t just let my car sit in this full lot—I’d be blocking the picnic. There’s another car right there with their four-ways on, Jon, just go use the bathroom.

No! There will be another bathroom at the next lot up.

I punched the next parking area in my phone and saw the results: 1.8 miles. See, that’s not bad.

I drove out back to River Road and started driving, and the Google shifted and now said:

4.3 miles – 13 minutes.

Curse you, Google!

Shoot, I couldn’t go home—home was 25 minutes away. Wars were lost in 25 minutes. No, stay the course. That’s what George Washington would have said. That’s probably why he forged the Delaware. Bathroom was full in PA—he had to get to the port-a-potty in Trenton.

I floored it and came to the iron-grate 15 MPH bridge from PA to Jersey. I rumbled across, each movement jolting the previous evening’s pizza and beer. I zoomed through New Jersey, past the next recreational Delaware National Park lot. This one was full, too, and I was too blacked out from poop panic to slow for the entrance. No, just keep driving—there’s a car behind you. No, turn in there—no, keep driving—turn in—keep driving.

I anxiety-floored it up to 55 and kept my eyes peeled. “Bull’s Island Recreational Area.” There were three or four spots left and a whole crew of DCNR folks in lime green shirts directing traffic.

Again, mariachi music filtered through the leaves and the picnics were full blast at mid-morning. I ripped in to the lot and parked. I didn’t even pick up my phone. I plunged out the door and strode straight to the park employees.

“Do you guys have a restroom?”

“Yep,” one pointed, “just over there.”

I imagined them talking behind my back, gloating, knowing:

Yeah, look at him. He’s hot-waddling. Who does he think he is?! Driving across our bridge to shit in our nice park on the day of our country’s independence.

I found the potties. I used one. As I walked out, I thought this, and repressed it:

Jon, this is the best story you’ve had all week. You should write about this. You are not writing about driving to New Jersey just to poop. Your subscribers will melt away.

I strapped on a hydration pack. Put on my playlist. Then I walked across the bridge back to PA, stretched, and ran along the river under shade trees who were the great-great-grandchildren of the trees who watched colonials fish out the shad and trade beads to Indians.

On a Saturday night, we wrote.

You gotta buckle down, Jon. No distractions. Just write.

So I did. Twelve hundred words passed. I made chicken and rice for dinner.

On Sunday…

I wrote. Ate leftover chicken and rice. Went for a run. The street peasant inside my computer who kept my spreadsheets, if I told her that I ran, that I wrote, that I made a healthy dinner, she would write that down.

I didn’t need to tell her to write down the moments of quiet restraint, the unfocused melancholy countered by art, the art battling but bowing under the hope of comfort through distraction, still doing it, then quietly flopping onto bed, listening to the street sounds, no distractions tonight, no distractions tonight, just you, writing, writing, not sedating myself, and I can feel the violin strings of emotion stretched over my ribcage on these nights, and the heart is a bow, and the humidity from the street is a heaviness I don’t know how to combat but I’ll sit up another night and read in the dark.

And then there was story.

I woke up and finished Part I on a Wednesday. Thirty-one days of writing for 7,500 words. Stomp wrangles war elephants in Times Square. It’s a good story, I say—appreciate that.

I had the midday shift at the library. I went in, unwound my name tag lanyard in front of my cubby. Chicky bustled in—my good friend.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

I looked up. “I’m alright.”

“Anything new with you?”

I thought of the struggle to create, the melancholy of being too spent for consistency, to drive ambitiously toward the dream to be a full-time creator. But I’d just written 7,500 words. 7,500 good words.

“So?”

I refocused.

“Naw,” I said. “Just work.” 

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How deep into this world do you want to go? Read Stomp’s last adventure, Stomp Bigfoot saves Dan Boone and robs trains with James, a historical fiction tale from the Cumberland Gap in 1770 to Dodge City in 1871, about a young juggling sasquatch who wants to find what so many already have: his family.

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