It's only fitting I start posting Night Tripping from a rest stop in New England. I don't really know what I'm doing, as always; I'd call it an anthology, a riff off of Southbound, a few dark stories from sleepless drives, loosely based on a few experiences from my stint... On The Road. I did read Kerouac when I was 15. I did pack a backpack and leave my hometown, did go cross-country in an '02 Civic. (Though by then I was 18.) I have slept in my front seat, passenger seat, backseat at many, many, many off-highway rest stops, at truck stops, in 24-hour McDonald's parking lots, in Taco Bell parking lots, in parking lots of odd burnt-out suburban strip malls, in places I'd never been to. I did, somehow, arrive in New York.
When I left, I left a lot of people I loved in the dark; I left without telling anybody, without a phone or a real plan; I chose to go MIA. It wasn't fair, I know. Nobody knew where I was, where I was going. So, I was mildly triggered when I heard a story—about a Gabby Petito going missing during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend in August. Her family not hearing anything from her, worrying about her. (Her body was found in Wyoming.)
America is a dark venture.
People disappear every day.
Some are never found.
