Notes From the Road: Neon Nights and Kudzu Dreams

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There’s something about working at night.

The streets illuminated from above, the glow of lamps from within cozy homes casting pools of warm light through windows and across dew-covered lawns. The bright contrast of neon and neon-analogue against steel and stone and dark, reflective glass. Feelings of latency and liminality that hang heavy on the diminishing energy of a city almost but not quite ready to sleep.

I have the top open on the Jeep, and the air blowing across my skin is cool and clammy. It clings to me, leaving my arm feeling tacky against the fake leather upholstery of the center console. A prelude to the sticky hot of unrelenting summer, atmosphere pregnant with moisture amidst the firefly-sparkle of lush summer trees.

There are days when I miss the aridity of the desert, if not the furnace blast of a hundred straight days of triple-digit heat. The smell of creosote and sage, the incense of the American Southwest, under an impossible canopy of stars.

But everything is so alive here. In Arizona, entropy means sand and dust and desiccated things. Here it means moss and weeds and wildflowers and bugs and of course, kudzu, the slow green blanket of all-consuming vines that Zerg creeps across landscapes, taking the shape of anything in its path. Things don’t dry out in North Carolina. It rains too much for them to ever get the chance. Phoenix has dust devils and scorpions. We’ve got an endless battle with mold.

We are not the same.

It’s Saturday night, and I’m working the UNC Chapel Hill crowd, surfing a hungry wave of orders from students and their parents. Graduation is just around the corner, and the hustle and bustle energy of the end of the semester is vibrating at a constant hum. People dressed in their caps and gowns for photos with visiting parents, people dressed up for formal dances looking to grab a quick slice of pizza before the evening’s events, and countless others just wanting to grab something to eat. Amidst the throngs, a homeless man, his dark skin contrasting against tight coils of steel gray hair, steps forward and asks me if I can get him something to eat.

“I’m sorry,” I lie. “I don’t have anything on me. I’m DoorDashing.”

I mean, it’s not entirely a lie. I have a few cards on me, but nothing really to spare. I almost never buy food for myself when I’m working, even if it’s one of the many nights I don’t have time for dinner before my evening shift. Better to starve it out and go home and grab whatever is in the fridge.

Dinner is for closers.

The homeless man seems to understand that a man my age wouldn’t be slinging takeout if he wasn’t in need. He acquiesces without protest. This surprises me, but I’m not unappreciative.

My orders take me back and forth, in and out of town. As the sun sets, I deliver Chipotle to a house that looks like a castle designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The contrast between the multimillion dollar home and the generic paper bag of fast food aren’t lost on me, but it’s not my place to judge. I do a grocery order directly thereafter, and grab myself a jug of vitamin-fortified black coffee and a pint of half and half.

It’s going to be a long night.

The open top, the open windows, let in the scents of the night. Sometimes it’s the sweet herbaceous aroma of freshly cut grass, or the latent sweetness of lingering spring flowers.

At a gas station, it’s pig shit. For reason I cannot fathom, since I don’t see any farms around. I’m half tempted to ask the guy at the next pump, but I don’t want to offend: “Excuse me, sir, but is this your neighborhood? I can’t help but notice it smells like the excremental buildup at an enormous pig farm.”

At an intersection after dark, it’s a dead animal smell. I happen to notice, since the book I’ve been listening to describes that smell as akin to rotten egg, how far off that description really is. There really isn’t any analogous smell to dead things. Sharp and earthy and wrong and stomach-turning. The dead have their own unique category of unpleasant aroma. Mercifully, the light turns green, and a mile down the road, I’m no longer stuck breathing in the rot.

Later, when another order takes me back to the same corner as earlier, the homeless guy hits me up again. He’s not actually looking at anyone, just running an algorithm older than the internet. He’s on autopilot, asking everyone the same question, and I can see when he repeats the formula to me that he hasn’t registered my face.

“We’ve already talked,” I say, looking him in the eyes. I see the blank look disappear the way a drop of dish detergent scatters oil on water, his recognition kicking in.

“Oh yeah.” He says, realization dawning. “You’re DoorDashing.”

“Yeah,” I say to him, outside of Raising Cane’s. “I’m doing that right now. But I’m not about to wait in this line for 30 minutes so I can go place a customer order and wait again. Not for six bucks.”

“Naw!” he agrees, shaking his head and furrowing his brow. “That’s not worth it!”

You hear that, DoorDash? The pay on some of these orders isn’t even worth it to a homeless guy begging for food on the street. Fix your shit.

There’s a sub shop where the black store manager is reading Christian apologetics from 1930s Germany, apparently unaware of the irony. There’s a hot dog place where the waitresses all wear skintight booty shorts. There’s a a smoothie place that’s so dead I’m surprised it’s even open. There’s a Mexican place with an unpronounceable Nahuatl name like “Xochitl Tacos.” That last shop hands me a big order in a paper bag under an awning that has turned into a downspout, but when I get the order back to the car, the food smells amazing, sitting there on the passenger seat. This is how I judge restaurants, if I’m being honest. If I can’t eat the food but all I can do is think about eating the food because of the smell, that’s a winner-winner-taco-dinner scenario. The delivery is to a private residence, not a multi-story dorm, and I navigate the steepest, narrowest driveway I’ve ever seen before dashing up the steps through the never-ending downpour. The man who answers says something about staying dry, and I don’t even acknowledge it with a response. It was a stupid thing to say, and we both know it, so I let it go so we can both retain some semblance of dignity.

The prequel novel I’ve been listening to has been really good, at least, right up until it wasn’t. A strangely forced protagonist switch in the final 10% has left the stream-of-consciousness narration in the hands of a douchebag character who is taking some kind of amphetamines that make him say “fuck” every other word. It’s a drug-induced compulsive tic, and not even the impressive narration skills of Bronson Pinchot (of Balki Bartokomous fame) can stick the landing. It was narratively amusing for a few paragraphs, but five chapters into the schtick, I can’t take much more. Still, I’m a completionist, and I force myself to continue. Can’t quit now. Too close to the end.

I’ve been all over the Triangle in the past few days. Cary, Morrisville, North Raleigh, Pittsboro, Durham, Fuquay, Downtown. And all the little places in between. But Saturday, during the storm, stands out. People order more food when it’s raining, and if I’m the dumbass who didn’t even check the weather when I left home under a sunny sky, let alone bring an umbrella or a raincoat, I can still pick up and deliver those orders sopping wet if the money-math checks out.

In the storm’s opening salvo — a gentle sprinkle requiring only the intermittent wiper setting — I was, if I’m being honest, downright jolly about it. After bouncing Ruby (the Jeep, for those not keeping score at home) down a pothole-strewn gravel road, splashing merrily (and intentionally) through every puddle, listening to 80s rock, I jauntily exit the vehicle to bring food to a gray-haired gentlemen in a UNC t-shirt and his extremely enthusiastic dog. After exchanging pleasantries (and getting a few good pets in on the eager puppy), the man says, “Sorry about the rain!”

“Oh, no, I love it!” I reply, totally sincere.

But at length, the sprinkle turned into a deluge, and the deluge lasted hours. I struggled to see poorly lit turns, and found myself picking up orders under a firehose barrage. I walked into a pizza place and wiped my feet on the mat, water running off my thinning hair and down my face in fat, heavy drops.

“How are you?” an employee asked.

“Wet.” I replied flatly. I had, by this point, managed to misplace my earnest enthusiasm.

I think I uttered more than a nominal fraction of as many “fucks” over the next hour as the douchey guy in the book.

My shoes were wet and my feet were wet and my shirt was wet and my hair was wet and I was somehow cold from the wet clothes clinging to my skin and hot from the car heater I was trying to use to dry myself off at the same time.

But all in all, it was a good night, a better haul than usual, a new personal record, and if the actual amount was peanuts compared to what I need to stay ahead of the bills, it still felt like a win.

Like always, I’m torn over the work. The pay is low, the gas and vehicle wear cut deeply into any profits, and it’s physically exhausting. But the solitude for a few hours is nice, getting out of a home environment where I’m seen — not unfairly — as the problem more often than as the solution. So too is the chance to listen to books and podcasts. And there’s something about the rhythm of the hustle that gets me into something like a flow state. As a guy who has spent decades sitting at his desk, I love the physicality of the job. It’s not bailing hay, but always moving, getting in and out of the car, going up and down stairs, walking thousands of steps, sure beats thumping a keyboard all day for getting the blood flowing. I always start dropping pounds whenever I pick it back up.

And until the real estate revenue starts coming in, my family needs to eat. Can’t wait for a closing. Even if I only make $60-70 bucks in a night — pretty common these days — that’s another meal or two for a family of 9. Or another tank of gas with a little left over.

Sometimes, I feel embarrassed, coming into places with my gray beard and old man aura, picking up orders. I want to show somehow that I’m not stupid, just down on my luck, especially when I work the university circuit. College kids like to eat, after all, and tend to have all the main restaurants concentrated in one place, making my job quicker and easier. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder sometimes if they look at me and think, “That’s what I don’t ever want to do when I’m that age. I have to succeed at my career.” It’s hard to say what’s worse, imagining myself as a cautionary tale to young adults, or delivering to multimillion dollar houses owned by people my age (or not much older) and seeing the pity in their eyes.

But I can’t really let myself think like that, so I don’t entertain it. Much of my life feels like a humiliation ritual, and you can only look at something like that for so long before you lose yourself in the sadness of it. So it’s best not to look at all. If you can manage it, anyway.

But I genuinely try to get as much out of the work as I possibly can. I soak up the time to learn, listen, or think without any interruption aside from the rote actions of the job. I enjoy the pleasant evenings with the top down and the windows open. I look at houses I have no idea how I could ever afford and try to see myself and my family in them. Something about the perpetual movement, the frenetic scavenger hunt ethos of the thing, compels me, even as it disappoints.

Even though I get so sick of it I can barely stand to go back out.

The upside is, there are stories out there, if you go looking for them.

When you’re driving all over the place, going to shopping centers and restaurants and neighborhoods you’d never otherwise visit, you see things you don’t expect. Things that catch your eye.

On Tuesday night, as I arrive at Monterrey Mexican Restaurant to pick up an order for one Mallory P., I have completely forgotten what day it is.

Cinco de Mayo.

As I approach the place it is giving off vibes that are aggressively festive. A small group has gathered around what looks like a sawed-off bouncy house with a mechanical bull smack dab in the middle. A child — a young boy — is being tossed about on the rawhide-draped carapace of a red-eyed beast in bovine form as an announcer-slash-DJ makes loud proclamations in Spanish over his sound system. His voice, in a cadence and style familiar to anyone who has ever paid a visit to Mexico, reverberates off the stuccoed walls of the strip mall.

“¿Cuántos SEGUNDOS puede permanecer en EL TOROOOOO?”

He doesn’t make it to “ocho.”

With a thump, the rider, who looks to be about 8 years old, slaps into the inflatable mat like a 40-pound pile of warm hamburger, ejected from his perch by the bucking slab of robotic beef. His mother, standing outside the “safe zone” in a faded blue t-shirt and jeans, looks on with a horrified expression she attempts to stifle by clamping her hands over her mouth. I can see on her face that she knows she has to let her boy tough this out, and she’s doing her level best to let it happen. And tough it out he does. After a couple of motionless seconds, face-down on the puffy vinyl, the boy springs to his feet and raises his fists in triumph, a smile spreading across his face. His mother’s hands move away from her mouth and reach out instead, in a “you did it” posture that nearly matches his own victory posture.

Inside, I’m informed over statues of a countertop sugar-skull Mariachi couple that the order I’m waiting on will be at least another 15 minutes. I’m annoyed. The current promo with extra pay only runs until 9:30PM, and it’s 8:13. But the restaurant is packed, and I get it. And the order is for $10.50, with the drop-off spot just a couple miles away. In the delivery business, hustle and momentum are everything. A delayed order like this can totally take the wind out of your sails, trip you up so you go from a profitable night to a mediocre one. Something about breaking stride, letting yourself get comfortable warming the bench, checking your socials, just faceplants the vibe.

But tonight, I decide I don’t care.

I’m tired.

I’ve been working a lot of hours, hustling for peanuts. All while going through a lot personally. Definitely not having my favorite year. Sometimes, being busy distracts. Sometimes, if it’s the kind of busy you can manage on autopilot, it gives you too much time to think. Truth is, you’re going to think either way, whether it’s in the shower or when you come home late and eat cold leftovers standing up over the sink, in the silence of an empty kitchen.

So I decide I’m going to coast tonight, because I didn’t even give myself a day off over the weekend. Take what comes, pace myself, not freak out if I don’t hit my self-imposed quota.

It’s a weird night. No rhythm to it. Not as busy as expected, with pauses between orders long enough to nearly fit a whole audiobook chapter in. Delays. Delay at Papa John’s, delay at S’up Dogs, delay at the Mexican place with the bull. Ten minutes here. Twenty minutes there. At the end of the night, these little waits have cost me at least three quarters of a productive hour. When I quit at 9:30PM to be sure I’m back home in time to grab some food and go pick up my daughter from work, the balance in my Dasher account shows the truth of it: $68.26.

I’m not thrilled, but I’m not going to cry over it, either.

Like I said, I’m tired.

So I merge onto I-40. The night sky is mottled with clouds, stars peeking through the gaps. The moon is a soft blur behind thick, billowing wisps of white. Bronson Pinchot weaves a tapestry of awkward “fucks” as I drive.

I go home early, if 9:40PM is early. I eat cold leftovers, standing up. I text my daughter, still at work.

“Can you give me some idea when you think you’ll be done tonight?” I ask. Her store closes at 10PM, but sometimes she doesn’t get done until nearly 11.

“In like 10,” she replies, so I swap out my shoes for flip flops and head back to the car.

“On my way,” I tell her, and switch from my book to a YouTube music playlist based on Kavinsky’s Nightcall as I zip down dark streets under the intermittent glow of LED streetlights.

There’s something inside you
It’s hard to explain
They’re talking about you, boy
Like you’re still the same

I’m giving you a night call to tell you how I feel
I want to drive you through the night, down the hills
I’m gonna tell you something you don’t want to hear
I’m gonna show you where it’s dark, but have no fear