The last time I was in Wisconsin, I was losing my mind and my inhibitions at the most glorious place in all the land, Wisconsin Dells. Doc had told me about The Dells when we first met—the waterpark capital of America, they called it. Upon landing, it was the Midwestern version of the Jersey Shore, and I loved every moment of it. I slammed up and down tube rides and lazy rivers, wave pools and splash zones. By the time we got back to Minnesota, my knees hurt so badly that a doctor told me I’d bruised my shin bones.
In the car on this demon hellride two months later, they are howling, having lifted heavy things up and down and up and down and up and down the ascending AND descending stairs that serve as a moat to where we were living. I slather them in peppermint oil and Aspercreme and the throb dulls.
Somewhere around Eau Claire, the threat of a tornado fell off, the night quieting. We are still hours from our hotel. I listen to My Favorite Murder as my eyes get sleepy, and when Doc tells me to pull off, I discover we’ve made it to the Dells.
We pull into a mega-gas station that has everything—nachos, ice cream, and souvenirs. The hotel I’d tried to rebook us is just across the parking lot. It’s 10pm and I’ve never been so tired in my life. On the phone, the hotel rep tells me that my reservation can’t be moved, and she’s sorry, but I’d be out several hundred more dollars if I wanted to cancel and re-book with them. I don’t have this money to spend on what has already been (and, oh, will continue to be) a hemorrhage of a move, but I am toddler tired, and I cry to Doc, can’t we just stay here?
Doc holds me close and soothes the dogs, and like the jock they are, they amp me up: It’s just another 3 hours. We can do that, can’t we? The roads are almost empty, we don’t need to spend the extra money on a different hotel. We can make it, we’ll just drink some coffee.
I nod and eat some of the off-brand gummy worms Doc got me, Sour Snakes (would not recommend). I turn up Karen and Georgia until the whole car vibrates with them, and I open the windows for a cool blast of consciousness.
After 2-and-a-half hours of pretty decent driving (and a final 30 minutes of white-knuckling to stay awake), we arrive in Kenosha, at a hotel that I am not shocked to discover is now permanently closed.
It’s 12:30am, and the parking lot is on… fire? No, just some jackanapes setting off fireworks! The pavement is buckled and cracked everywhere, and Doc parks the U-Haul in the weeds, hoping to deter any interest of a break-in. We head to the front desk, and no one is there. A small landline at reception says CALL FOR SERVICE, and when I press the service button, a phone behind the glass rings for no one, like an old Looney Tunes joke.
Eventually, someone who looks not unfamiliar with crystal meth gets to the desk and hands me two keys.
The room is on the far end of the solar system, up a dim and sketchy set of stairs with no elevator. We open the door, and a few things are immediately apparent:
There are no towels here
This bathroom door simply doesn’t close
The sprinkler is rusted over???
I shower, drying myself with a lone clean washcloth from the sink, and I collapse and know nothing until I’m barreling through Chicago the next morning.
It pours through Illinois and scorches through Indiana, stops-and-starts maddeningly through Ohio, and rollercoasters through the mountains of Pennsylvania in a stampede of tractor trailers.
There’s the brief respite of landing at my mother’s, sweet reunion, and a good night’s sleep in a safe place. In the morning, we go down to Deep South Jersey and see our new home, our new landlord, our new town. The first U-Haul thing that goes right happens: our movers are there, both of them!, and they are so great. They empty the truck and we drive it back up to my mother’s, where it is to be filled the next morning with *my* things.
As per the reality of finding myself suddenly and unexpectedly homeless, all my earthly belongings have been living in limbo for months in a storage unit. In the morning, I will meet the movers there, where they are to fill the now-empty truck with my old life, and then I will drive it down the 2+ hours to South Jersey, where the Other Movers will unpack the truck.
We have a new place, our stuff is safe, we are safe. We enjoy a meal with my mother, and I take an edible after a harrowing too many days. As it starts to kick in, I think I should really confirm those movers for tomorrow. So I text them—we still good for 6am? I get a tentative response from this dude:
Oh hey, yeah, so I’m just waiting to confirm my buddy, but he doesn’t usually turn on his phone til nighttime lol 🤷
I text mostly one-way until I can’t stay awake anymore. While I’m sleeping, a text comes in at 2am: the thing is one of the guys canceled last minute and we don’t have anyone else
(For those of you counting, this is egregious U-Haul fail #3.)
I wake up at some point to pee, see this, make a very sad frowny face, and go back to bed. In the morning, I get back in the U-Haul portal and book another set of movers, who SWEAR they will meet me there in the afternoon. LOL okay!
Doc and I take the truck to the storage unit, where, unsurprisingly, there are no movers waiting, and there never will be. (U-Haul Fail #4).
Doc says Screw it. We can do this, right? I have my reservations, but they’re gung-ho, so I leap. We pack the truck together with surprising efficacy. It’s not everything—not even a little bit—but it is enough for the moment to be reunited with some clothes and books and lamps and my bed.
Each day, a new tiny disaster: I nearly lose an arm when unfurling the mail-order mattress. We have the wrong directions for putting together the bed frame, which sounds innocuous, but it is a fight for our very lives. And… is the wall vibrating? An exterminator comes and wipes out several colonies of un-bees living here, in the wild abandon of a place devoid of people, thriving in a rare drought of a summer. There are hornets in the walls and yellowjackets in the eaves and wasps in the roof.
But soon, things calm down. Boxes are unpacked. The dogs settle. We meet our neighbors. I get a flyer in the mail about a production of Peter and the Starcatcher, a show that I loved dearly, and that I know Doc will, too. I get us tickets to the show, remembering that my friends from college live down here, and I should reach out to them, see them, let them know I think of them all the time.
That thought, like a weight on my chest. The baggage that comes along with it: everything my life now is not. Once upon another life, we had our first dates together, our first dances and kisses together, parallel paramours. I’m not the person they remember, no longer married to the person they remembered, and maybe those are dealbreakers. My digital footprint has been frozen in time, staving off the moment when people who once loved me realize that I’m queer, and I’ve come undone, and step away from me forever.
All this has kept me from texting my friends, people to whom I’ll now be neighbors. We walk into the lobby and give the box office our tickets, fully masked in N95s. I turn around to see my college friend Megan, ushering her three small children through the door like ducklings, and my whole heart does a backflip, because she knows it’s me IMMEDIATELY, through my mask and my pink hair and years and years apart. She shrieks like a steam whistle, and it’s 2 minutes til curtain, and she instructs her ducklings to wait for her quietly while she does the fastest friend catch-up that has ever happened.
She grips my hands and says HOW ARE YOU HERE? I take a deep breath and out tumbles: I came out in 2020 and we separated in 2021 and I got stuck in Minnesota all year because bad stuff went down and left me homeless, but I live here now, and it’s okay if you hate me, I promise–
I hold my breath for her to reject me, but she doesn’t. Her eyes light up with almost maternal pride for me, and her grin is ear-to-ear, and suddenly, none of the things I thought mattered seem to matter at all. There’s just this wonderful person who finally sees me again, living my truth. She introduces her ducklings to me, and I blurt, Where’s Tommy? But the ushers are closing the doors, so we crash land into our seats as the lights come up on Never Never Land.
I have just enough time to wish that my friend were here before he glides on-stage, resplendently mustachioed in epaulets and boots, the playful and devious Black Stache. I wiggle deeper into my seat and unleash my laugh for what feels like the first time in years.
After the show, there is a joyous reunion, and my friends ask me if I will come back to the stage with them again. There’s so much I don’t know right now. Will I like South Jersey? What is this new chapter of my life? And how did all those hornets get in there???
I don’t know much, but apparently, I know this. My body makes the decision before my mind has any business picking it apart. An open-throated, full-hearted YES.
xx Jen
OMG that picture! Which show is that from?
Next please!!!