I love the rushing around before a big trip, every detail, and bit of planning coming together in the final moments before a looming departure. All checks and services done to the vehicle, our bags packed, tickets in hand and the excitement of a long awaited occasion fluttering in our bellies. Our eagerness spills out in waves of unspoken elation, passed to each other by silent momentary glances between our individual preparations.  These are the makings of a good trip. To my sudden and piercing realization, it seems the journey has started before we ever walk out the door. Did it start when we budgeted finances to the penny, planning months prior to buying tickets as to mitigate any unintelligible financial fallout all too common with those in our age group and economic means? Or does it start the moment the ignition turns over; fuel rushing into the cylinders, forcing us ahead as we slip into drive and go bouncing down the road? Only the path in front of us could uncover the intrinsic answers to all those questions now simmering in the back of my mind.

We walk out the door into a late October day, blustery, and cloudy; it’s the typical fall afternoon that makes me love this time of year. The air temperature, resisting with all its might, unforgiving rays of heat from the sun that make patches of shade prime real estate to pass through or linger in. Humidity percentiles that, during the summer months boarder on intolerable, retreat to a more reasonable level; life may once again emerge from enclosed environments, artificially conditioned to be conducive for our existence of comfort. Cool breezes swell up from nothingness and quietly glide across my skin, the gentle caress occasionally bringing goose-bumps over my body, like those from the touch of a wanting lover.

As we pack in and are propelled forward, I take a momentary glance back in the battered mirror hanging from our windshield. A final mental check list is approved and set for filing in the department controlling unnecessary doubt and worry, it will likely be left out for additional review. And in the event of mitigable disasters, will likely be used as evidence to convict to me of crimes most egregious to self; failure to properly prepare, surely topping the list.

Once the physicality of our journey begins, we make our bearing west, and over the horizon. Landscapes changing from winding roads through steep hills and exposed gray rock face to the gentler flowing terrain of the open, seemingly endless prairie. The crests and troughs of the roadway making me feel as though we were speeding across an ocean of grass and sporadic trees. Miles stacked up beneath us, and time passed by outside our windows as we headed towards an increasingly beautiful orange and purple sunset; colors and clouds swirling together, creating this grand master piece from mother-nature being conjured before our very eyes.

Nearing Tulsa, we are welcomed by a view of the Hard Rock casino rising up from the grassland in all its covetous grandeur, like a palace celebrating capitalization on the cliché American dreams to get rich quick and have something from nothing. We continued westward, deeper into the maze of roadways and speeding cars flanked by increasingly larger buildings. Navigating towards the largest, we now exited the freeway and descend into downtown. The geometric shapes of the buildings crashing, and colliding with each other’s angles; their collective mass making me feel tiny and impermanent.

After finding convenient adjacent parking, with our bags in hand, we move through the front sliding doors of a grey building dwarfed by its neighbors. Walking into a brightly lit and quite opulent lobby of the Hyatt, an escalator ascending through a circular opening in the ground floor celling subconsciously invokes religious imagery. A short ride up through the white ceiling, spits us out at the front desk. I have a strong sense of impending judgment. A short, well dressed, clean cut man behind the counter greets us; his bright eyes widen as we approach him to be granted the privilege of loftier heights.

Proper paperwork finalized, he takes a moment before relinquishing our room keys and makes a point to inquire about the occasion bringing us for a stay in Tulsa. I prepare myself for a sermon about the hotel’s drug policy or a stern warning that any damage to the room will be charged immediately to my debit card. But upon learning of our choice of entertainment for the evening, he immediately began listing his favorite Against Me albums as well as sharing his excitement for an upcoming Rancid release.

Only after we had parted from the front desk and started walking towards the elevators did the complete irony of the situation strike me. His disguise causality for my assumptions of assumption, a sickly echo of those so often used against myself. The reciprocity of my own prejudices temporarily spins the room and I fight back the sudden urge to vomit all over the shiny white marble floors.

Once inside our staging area, the all too familiar process of erecting a Mohawk starts without hesitation. It should be noted that contrary to what one would reason, clean hair is best for the largest of Mohawks, those towering over nine or ten inches. Starting from the base I gradually create a, backcombed, tangled rat’s nest foundation; all the while, wielding the creation together with thick tacky hair spray. The point is to make your subject squirm and agonize, tears ought to be avoided, but they should be taken to the point just before the vocalization of protest. This punk rock choreography now performed to perfection and true to the genre’s compositional theory, is over quickly and abruptly. Our leather jackets, and pretentious vanity all in order, we set out in to the night. Crisp cool air rushes across my face as we traverse the lightly inhabited city streets. I silently laugh to myself thinking about how horrible an experience it had been walking up and down the unreasonable hills San Francisco is cursed with.

My feet throbbed and ached as we trekked, fate now laughing to itself in my realization; I was wearing the same shoes that had tortured my feet up and down the busyness of Market and Ellis, and all over the Tenderloin. That had slept on my feet as I made my way through those uneasy avenues, creeping along in the night from cheap room to filthy cheap room. These same beaten pair of black converse that protected against broken glass and used needles on terrible dirty streets becoming the eroding ruins of human addiction; all the while, in my constant breathless effort to stay in tow behind my mother moving from john to john and score to score always chasing an ever fleeting chemical high.

Venturing further, Cain’s ballroom sign could occasionally be seen blinking through in between buildings, like a blasphemous North Star, leading us inexorably towards a Bethlehem of debauchery so that we may pay homage to a new messiah of solidarity, decisiveness, and Rock-and-Roll. Our feet now beating along the final persessional causeway, crescendos of bass drum accented by thrashing of guitar strings and vocal chords hasten our pace. In true anarchist fashion we are right on time to a show that started without us and therefore early.

Once inside the door, our state identification is checked, but more importantly our status as punk is verified. My badge: crooked teeth, ugly tattoos and the Mohawk unwaveringly guarding the right side of my body. Entrance is granted. The Mohawk grasps my hand tightly and with a final smile leads me to dissolve in with the mass of leather jackets and combat boots. We become one with the collective; we militant queer and trans, we atheists and anarchists, we punk rockers old and new. Every breath a blatant middle finger to what we perceive to be the delusional status quo. Pushing our way forward still, we reach our final destination, the focus of months of preparation and planning. Fists thrown up in the air, voices struggling for individuality against the ceaseless unifying force of the music.

No sooner have we arrived, my Mohawk luges forward crashing into the few already jumping and stomping around each other. But the Mohawk’s addition seems to be the point of eruption, as if the proper mixture of chemicals for an explosive reaction had been met. With the effect now in a runaway, people are pulled and pushed into the fray; I am, as Anthrax so poetically penned, “Caught Up in a Mosh”.

Dawn welcomes us to a new day. With frazzled hair and groggy eyes we repack our bags, never getting them to fully return to the organized state they left our house in. Heading back east saying goodbye to the fancy hotel room, and shiny marble floors, we transit towards the sobering normality of our lives, thankful for feelings of closeness and reaffirmed love between the two of us.

Now, laying here between our sheets, submerged in the silence of my own home with the Mohawk I love beside me, I think about my questioning and worries before the trip. My mind still not grasping the answers staring me in the face. Perhaps the journey never really ends or begins. Maybe we all too often forget about the unseen beauty in the trip itself. Maybe it doesn’t matter in the long run of mortality. Like the cowboys in those portraits, our time will pass and the complete insignificance of our stories will go on being quietly unnoticed. Either way, I feel a deeper connection with myself and the tragedy of life, with its sick pragmatic sense of humor twisting our lives and berating us to within an inch of our humility.