Part I ~ Part II ~ Part III ~ Part IV ~ Part V ~ Part VI ~ Part VII

The Kris Story, Part VIII
or...The Great American Road Trip
4.21.8

On. Off. High. Low. Psycho. Whore.

We had the Energizer Bunny of unhealthy relationships. It just kept going and going and...well, you know the rest. Whenever I tried to be around her, she used it as an excuse to label me as an obsessive psycho. Each time she slept with someone new, I pointed out to anyone that would listen, that she was indeed a whore. It was a bit of a love/hate relationship, I suppose you could say.

As time went by, I found myself running a cigarette store and living either with friends or in my car (depending on the week). It was never that I couldn't have afforded an apartment...I simply chose to blow my money on trivial things like CDs and alcohol. Her downward spiral led her to a rather long jail stay.

Perhaps a little back-story is in order.

Long before this, she had tripped acid with a few friends. One of them had then come up with the brilliant idea of burglarizing a bingo hall for cigarettes. They broke into the building and found the safe that supposedly housed these tobacco products. Since there was no safecracker among them, they took the entire safe so they could try and figure out how to open it. They were later found by the police, repeatedly throwing the safe from a moving vehicle. The actual contents of the safe? Bingo flyers. By missing one of her court dates later on, Kris had broken probation, which is what led to the eventual incarceration.

I didn't find out about her predicament until she called me at work one day from inside. Seeing the name "COUNTY JAIL" on the caller ID, I picked up the phone apprehensively. An automated system greeted me with, "You are receiving a collect call from [Brian, it's me. Please accept the], who is a prisoner at a detention facility. To accept the charges, please press 1 now." I followed the instructions and was connected.

Now, at this point in Kris' life, people were growing pretty tired of watching her fuck up all the time. Because of this, she was having trouble getting anyone to accept her calls. Her best friend, her mother...they simply didn't want to talk to her. I happily accepted each collect call, though, and became her one connection to the outside world.

Soon, I couldn't wait to get to work each morning because of the possibility that she would call. We talked for hours at a time about anything and everything. She sent messages to her friends and family through me in the hopes that they would forgive her. I contributed money to her commissary fund, and sent letters and various things of interest (once I even shipped a collection of stories by Mark Thomas that I had printed out).

We were bound by a type of necessity suddenly, and without the world to distract her things went well between us. Soon, I found myself telling her about the grand adventure I had been planning for years: The Great American Road Trip. She was very interested and happily accepted when I invited her along.

From that point on, all of our conversations revolved around the trip. I sent her lists of national parks I wanted to visit, while she sent me pictures, clipped from magazines and (tooth)pasted to her letters. I wanted to see the Great Smoky Mountains, White Sands and the St. Louis Arch. She wanted to see the Area 51 mailbox, the Deming duck races and of course the ocean, which she had still never seen. She also wasn't shy about her desire to visit Josh Henson, whom she had come to believe was her soul mate.

I added each of her stops to my map. It was of no concern to me that she claimed to love Josh...I was to have nearly 2 months alone with her to try and change her mind. By the time she got out, the trip was pretty well outlined. All that was left was for me to save up the rest of the money.

The morning she was released, I waited at the bottom of a long pathway leading to the jail's entrance. When she finally appeared in those doors, she ran towards me at full speed, throwing her bag to the ground as she neared. She jumped at me, nearly knocking me over, and we stood there hugging in silence for nearly a minute. The whole time I could feel her body shaking in my arms. Eventually, I pulled away and we headed off.

She graced me with her presence for only a few days before disappearing. I had no idea where she was and neither did her best friend (who had previously warned me about this exact possibility). I wouldn't see her again until shortly after 9/11. By then I had already decided that it was time to finally take the trip. She randomly showed up one morning with a shaved head (aside from her bangs), a dirty outfit, and a miniature Doberman which she had somehow managed to take ownership of while living on the streets. I told her about the imminence of my road trip and she once again claimed that she would accompany me. The joy created by what seemed like serendipitous timing was short-lived, of course. She disappeared again a week before the trip.

It no longer mattered, though. I had already made up my mind and put in my notice. On September 29th, 2001, I got into my car alone and began driving.

If I live a hundred years, The Great American Road Trip will remain one of the greatest experiences of my life. Over the next 7 weeks I drove through 26 states, into 2 foreign countries, and down more than 10,000 miles of highway. I saw more of this country than most people will ever have the pleasure of seeing. It was a shame for Kris that she had missed out on it.

Once again, though, timing proved its sense of humor. As I reached California I decided to call Josh Henson anyway, as I had also known him when he lived in Aurora. I figured that I might as well still visit. Coincidentally, he informed me that Kris had shown up at his house one day prior. Ecstatic, I took in a few more sights before heading to Lancaster.

When I arrived, I found everyone smoking pot in the trailer in his mother's driveway. This was where he and Kris had been living and it appeared that drugs were about all they did there. Even more depressing was the story about Kris' disappearance. Apparently she had been so intent on quickly getting to Josh's house that she had decided to hitch a ride with some hippies, as opposed to taking the long road with me. Somehow, she had instead found herself living the communal life in the woods with them for the rest of my trip. When she did finally get out of there, she made it to Lancaster just in time to barely beat me there. She had given up the trip of a lifetime to smoke pot and eat 'shrooms for a couple of months, and hadn't even reached her "soul mate" any faster.

I was also appalled when I discovered that she had spent two days so close to the ocean and still hadn't seen it. I resolved to take her on a few short trips while I was there. I had initially feared that Josh and his friends would want to join us as third wheels, but travel was fortunately not an interest of theirs.

The next afternoon, Kris and I took a drive to Santa Monica. We strolled down the 3rd Street Promenade listening to the street musicians before heading to the beach. When we got there, we approached the edge of the ocean that she was finally seeing for the first time. In her excitement she decided to brave the frigid November waters by jumping into the Atlantic with all of her clothes on. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but was happy to be the one to finally give her that experience.

We spent the following day in Tijuana, following around an extremely unofficial tour guide who kept trying to sell us cocaine and donkey shows. We actually were curious about the latter, but kept getting led to strip clubs of the non-equestrian variety instead. Somehow, around our 6th margarita/tequila popper, Kris began to open up.

She admitted to me that things had been different than she had expected since she had arrived in California. Josh didn't seem to care about her like she did him, she claimed. They were to be just friends after all it seemed. The more we talked about things, the more apparent it became that she wanted to return home. As we waited in the horrendously long line back into America that night, I called a friend of mine in Ft. Collins and secured her as their new roommate. The next morning we left for Colorado.

We made a few more stops on the way home, of course: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde...every day we spent together, alone on the road, seemed to bring us infinitely closer together. It was wonderful.

Our last stop before returning to Aurora was at the Great Sand Dunes. It was the night of November 28th, 2001. After losing ourselves in the freezing pitch black dune field for nearly an hour, we returned to the car, where we made love for the first time...