Road Notes: Indiana Again

Why did I stop in this Dunkin' Donuts again, this time after having been awake for 30 hours already with a thousand miles chewed beneath my cramping fingers, this Dunkin' Donuts where, the last time I was here, I could feel my IQ draining away through the concrete as the feeb behind the counter wrestled with the concept I'd presented, i.e., the idea of sugar and what it meant to something as complex as a sealed, pre-mixed bottle of Snapple iced tea? (You want sweetied or unsweetied, she'd asked after pausing long enough to consult the bible.) Why would I risk stopping here again? Because this Dunkin' Donuts is the Dunkin' Donuts on the Edge of Forever, that's why, the last garish orange-and-fuschia coffehouse before the great midwest swallows all normal coffee in a great scoured throat of brackish French roast.

I thought I could handle whatever this Dunkies could throw at me, this Vortex of Dumb sucking me in with the promise of East coast coffee. Even after I had a seven-minute challenge explaining the elaborate concept of the 'ice' in an 'iced coffee' (she had to consult with the manager of the Arby's, Mr. Dim, no kidding, before she was confident with filling the cup with ice from the soda machine) I figured I had come out unscathed; I still had not yet forgotten, say, how to work my anus. But Indiana was not done with me.

I had to urinate, a complication of increasing frequency as I remained awake, stressed, and speeding (MPH and drug-wise) for dozens of hours on end. The men's room was thankfully unoccupied. I positioned myself at a center urinal and let the hot yellow flow, enjoying the quiet expanse of no one around me.

I wil call him Bubba. I was, after all, in Indiana, and the monikers Cletus or Joe Bob seemed to high-brow. Bubba picked to use the urinal next to mine. This has to be purposeful, I thought, what with forty other choices stretching along every wall of the lavatory. I seethed through several hard bladder-pushes, but my stream was maxed out and could not be rushed. After a minute I had to glare at this space invader.

Cutting my eyes to lazers I twisted my head to my left, hoping the sound of the tendons screeching in my neck would at least make his ears bleed. By the look of the droolingly wide grin on Bubba's face he'd heard my tendons not at all. He was preoccupied. It was not with urinating. Not only were the motions his hands were making at his crotch all wrong for keeping a pee-stream straight, but his filthy gym pants -- which were bundled at his ankles -- suggested he was thinking about more than bladder relief.

Was he pulling (so to speak) a George Michael for my benefit, was this what I had heard of, the subtle public restroom homosexual come-on perfected by Captain Wham? Or was jerking off bare-bottomed in highway restrooms neighborly behavior in Indiana? I suspected both and zipped up, literally backing out of the bathroom, giving him a fantasy target of nothing more than a rictus of clenched teeth.

I finished peeing in Chicago. The next time I take the Madison-Boston trip, I'll swim the lake.

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