Roast Beef, Burning.

Arriving at RISD/Providence, RI, after 3 1/2 days, I quickly learned to better budget my few dollars (blew my dollar-a-day rule on a meal!). Next, I'm hitching home–3000 more miles to go/8 days total.

ROAST BEEF 

When I did finally reach Providence I went up to the first art-student-looking guy I saw near the campus of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and asked if I could crash at his place. The guy reacted pretty well after the first double-take (how crazy did I look after three and a half sleepless days and nights?), and led me to his basement apartment, pointing out a mattress in the corner. I dropped my stuff on the floor, collapsed on the pad and was asleep in minutes. 

When I awoke from my nap (maybe four hours sleep) I looked around the room and found myself surrounded by the familiar trappings of art studies – stretched canvas, funky sculptures, cardboard, clothes piled on furniture. In a RISD yearbook I flipped through the pages of the entering freshmen artworks and was impressed at their proficiency. The images looked better than some graduate school art I’d seen at CCAC! Soon my host returned and I thanked him, gathered up my things and departed. 

By dinnertime I had hooked up with Dickie at the address he had supplied before we left. He didn’t seem all that surprised to see me, so I didn’t bother to fill him in with any further details concerning my personal problems. He and his brother and some of their friends were heading to a restaurant, so I tagged along. Caught in the swirl of socializing I somehow allowed myself to order a roast beef sandwich. When the plate arrived I did my best to chew the tough meat, moistening it with the salty brown gravy. But just about the only edible thing that I had ordered was the roll. The biggest letdown was when the bill arrived and I looked at the amount I owed. It said $4.35, including tax. Four dollars and thirty-five cents. I know I must have read that cost in the menu before I ordered it, but nothing prepared me for seeing the actual number printed on a receipt. That’s when it dawned on me that I had made a grievous error in judgment. 

Since I left California with only $20, I had watched my money very carefully on the hitchhike trip, right up until that point. I thought I had designated each dollar as a ‘day of freedom,’ during which I didn’t have to think about survival, food, or shelter ($20 equaled 20 days). And yet there in the restaurant I had forgotten, using up four and a third precious days in less than an hour, and for an indigestible steak (almost a fourth of my freedom for nothing!). Thinking about it now, I figure that I just wanted to belong, be considered one of the group, do the logical thing under the circumstances (order a dinner like a normal person...). I didn’t, as yet, understand how much my life had changed in just four short days. 

As I sat there silently staring at the bill, my guts were turning partly from the food, partly from my economic blunder. While I tried to conceal my self-loathing from Dickie and the others, I realized that I’d better straighten out my priorities, and quickly. 

BURNING 

In a few days it became obvious that it was time to head back. I felt that I wanted to be with my wife and kids right then, that second, but knew that my growing desperation for love and security was something I would have to put off for at least four additional hard-traveling days (the time I figured it could take to hitchhike back). There was no bus money this time, no way to shorten the trip. And I refused to consider making a long distance phone call to my wife as an acceptable option. That felt like I’d be cheating on myself again, invalidating the whole purpose of the trip like I’d done from Mojave. I certainly couldn’t tell my wife again by phone that ‘I’d found myself.’ This time I would just have to sweat it out. 

I checked the bulletin boards for rides west and found one listing that was looking for a single passenger to join a carload of RISD students heading for Oregon. I went to the address on the notice and rang the bell of an older, two-story, narrow residence. When a buzzer sounded back, unlocking the front door, I opened and climbed the creaky wooden stairs. A beautiful young woman stood at the top landing (another temptress?). and I followed her into her small bedroom, regarding her sweet face from across the blue homemade comforter. I explained how I was trying to get back to Berkeley and she said the ride would leave for the coast in four or five days. I explained that I needed to return sooner than that. 

(Hitching stories excerpted from my 2017 book, "TWELVE DEAD FROGS AND OTHER STORIES––A FILMMAKER’S MEMOIR: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777FHXX2 )

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