The Traveling Salesmen Project

Savannah, Georgia

[Intermittent Drizzle]

The streets are wet, which makes them reflect light from street lights, windows and neon signs.  This is an old Southern town of the genteel South, narrow streets and a human scale of architecture.  Every thing is infused with light and has the feeling of somewhere between wet and new.

This is the city of the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  The famous statue “The Bird Girl” from the book cover and movie poster moved to protect it from a destructive brand of bibliophile. 

Matt and I share a bottle down a narrow alley with painted and fading advertising signs from stores long bankrupt and only remembered in dusty local history books.  The alley is dark but the rain soaked entrance grabs light from the main street and pulls it in as far as it can.  It gives the alley a Raymond Chandler feeling, where PI’s, snitches and women of the night hide themselves in shadows that hide more than their faces.

Matt is young twenty-three,  I take to him like an older brother.  We talk about everything and I respect his experiences, which draws his real self out.  He is a good kid with a big heart, dealing with the devils of addiction, drinking being the least of his evils.

We wander the streets of

Savannah

and save our words.  From the street we look into warm lighted windows, wondering of the lives lived inside. 

Walking we hear the beat of a good R&B band down by the river walk.  We walk down a wide cobblestone road which was once used to bring up merchandise from the river’s edge more than 200 years ago.  We both think we hear the clip clop of horses.

The bar is friendly and in no time people are buying us drinks, “ I’ve never drank with Mormon’s before,” says the guy buying.  I don’t have the heart to tell him that I am not Mormon. It is closing time and the bartenders turn up the house lights and start closing up.  I tell Matt that I want to walk alone down the river walk and I will catch up with him later. 

I walk out of the bar and notice that on top of the bar is a building that is being renovated.  The façade has the appearance of and

Baghdad

remodeling project.  I climb over the broken concrete and navigate the rusted rebar into the main section.  The rest of the building is in tact, with only the structures main walls defining the space.  In a corner is a chair that I grab and sit by the big window that overlooks the river.  I pull out my half pint, light a cigarette and put my feet up on the sill.  I watch a ship coming in from the sea.  Its red bow light slowly sways to the horn being played in the bar below, for the bartenders cleaning up.  I watch the last few people leave the bar, making plans with each other; talking in an economy of words that shared experience creates.

Sitting in a bar sharing drinks, you share a shallow connectedness, and the masks rarely come off.  But with me, my blessing and my curse, more times than not things are barred to me and a person I don’t even know sits naked before me.  Maybe it has something to do with my name.  My mother named be Christopher, the Christ bearer, laid upon my shoulders the weight of the world and Anthony, after Saint Anthony the patron saint of the lost and somehow the lost always find me out, A woman once told me that I had the kindest eyes she had ever seen.  Maybe it is in the eyes, nothing beautiful, rather small and non-descript but a kindness held within them.  How we all long for a pair of kind eyes.  How I long for a pair of kind eyes that see.   When they do bare their souls, their crimes, their pains and fears; most of the time I lift them and console them and by doing so, make the world a little more Just.  But at other times I have to turn away to save something for myself:  my blessing and my curse.   

I sit at the window and watch the lights on the other side of the river, sit in the moment drunk on the half pint and the view.  I light a cigarette and write a poem in my head for me and no one else.

Walking down the river walk I breathe in the river air.  Coming for the arid West, larger rivers are rare and I want to drink this one in and take it back with me.  I see two tug boats tied to the dock and I sneak aboard.  I sit on the stern and imagine the nostalgia of someone else’s life.

On the river walk is a statue of the “Waving Woman”  and her dog.  I hang out with them  wondering who she is.  Her dog seems to like me.

I call my friend Kevilina, the woman who threw a monkey wrench into the machinery of my life a few years ago.  She actually answers…..we talk about me visiting, about the river and the rain.  I duck under an overhang.  When she answers, which is rarely, there is an excitement in our voices like friends who haven’t seen each other in years.  She says she will call right back after she gets another drink…..I know it is a lie, but I accept it.  This is our maddening dance.  After I hang up I write a draft of a poem,

After talking

It started to rain harder.

Leaning over the rail

To see the river closer

I fall in and turn into

A cartoon fish.

I meet a Mermaid

With cigarette burns

All over her body.

I take her into my

Arms and kiss them better.

Reluctantly I make it back to the hotel at 3am.  I need to wake up in 4 hours.  I lie in bed and think of a world without sleep.

Macon, Georgia: Begining of the End!!

How much is your integrity worth?  Mine so far, 2,000 dollars.

(This will be developed into a much longer freelance piece)

The Internet marketing seminar world is composed of about 5 main companies.  Each one is the bastard, inbred child of the others.  This is a world of half-truths, lies, manipulation and pressure all in the name of "opportunity" and  "financial freedom"  It is a modern snake oil sales tent with promises of restorative cures, and financial health!

The company I work for is only a little less sleazy than the others, which is the only reason I have stayed as long as I have.  For the most part the products work, but a stone wheel rolls and what good is a stone wheel?

Macon, Georgia is suburban and sprawling across the Georgia landscape like cancer, eating up land and forests with an insatiable appetite.  "There is money to be made here," is what our owner tells us before our first seminar.

The hotel with its dingy stucco arches and furniture stacked outside of the rooms, is a welcome sight after 3 hours driving.  Driving with these men; stunted in their emotional and intellectual development shortly after their missions, is an unmentioned circle in Dante's Inferno.  Constant fart jokes, sexual jokes, and the endless exchange of TV and movie quotes.  With each new movie, a bombardment of one liners.  Borat was an unbearable movie, not because of the movie but the constant, "Do you like me? I like you?"  "Where is the pussy magnet?"

There is something unappealing about each one of them.  One of the men has gained 80 pounds in the past year and is always asking, "Are we going to eat?"  " Can we eat now? " "I need food!"  There is one hungry and angry baby sitting inside his huge belly banging on the walls.   I always sit in the very back of the minivan, surrounded by all the luggage and boxes.  This is my sanctuary, where I have learned how to doze in every imaginable position.

The seminar beings with its usual assortment of participants.  Late middle aged, old desperate people looking for a way to make a few extra dollars to pay for doctor bills or help their children out, a few want to be millionaires.  There are retired train workers, a warehouse man, a teacher, a slaughterhouse worker and nurse. 

The beginning of the seminar starts before the presentation.  We are to mingle with the guests and schmooze them up, find out about why they have come.  In the Missionary Training Center, this was part of the sales process for selling Mormonism Inc., called the Commitment Process  and these fine return missionaries who own the company are well aware of its success.  There are 4x more Mormons since I went out and that's when they started using the Commitment Process.  So we small talk and warm them up.

The seminar starts with the fat guy.  He's warming them up, and asks if anyone has anything to eat?  He goes through the schedule for the day.  He introduces himself and his qualifications, but doesn't tell them that he has been doing seminar sales for 10 years.  Introduces the team, and his introductions are false.   He then introduces the owner and main speaker of the company.  I love this part, because the fat guy hates the owner guy but introduces him as his mentor and brilliant marketer.  What one will do for money. At least my stripper in Augusta was more honest and had more integrity then these upstanding family men.

The main speaker, we will call him Ned, has a degree....in acting.  He is good in front of a crowd.  He starts off saying how great it is to come to work and have everyone clap, how many of them would like that kind of job.  Then the lies begin.  "Companies pay me $10,000 dollars to come a work with them on their Internet marketing"  or " I kept on getting laid off after I set up a companies Internet strategies and then they sold the company."  He never tells them that the last company this happened with......was an Internet market sales seminar company.  He tells them about going to a prestigeous school and Ross Perot speaking, giving him this air or business authority.  I wonder how many would buy from him if they knew his degree was in acting?   I won't go through all of this lies and half truths at this time, that's for a longer freelanced article I am writing, but to say the least, I sat there thinking to myself....I can't do this any more, but damn I need the money.

Martin and TC were very young for our crowd, twenty something.  I like them, they are bright and engaging.  TC is a rapper and very talented and Martin wants to do something that will give him freedom.  We go through the 8 hours of seminar and we talk through most of it.  At the end of the day, they want to buy one of our products.  I at least know this product works.  They don't have the 5,000 dollars but can come up with maybe 500 and make payments.  They want to get the seminar price.  That's part of the spiel, " This price is only good for today!"  The boss man wants me to get them to sign a promissory note.  So I take them to the lobby of the hotel/motel and I break it down for them.

" I like you guys, here it is.  The product is good and there is a potential to make some money with it, but these guys who have been talking to you, are full of fucking shit and 75% of the stuff they told you about themselves and the amount of money you can make is a lie.  I have no respect for them and the last thing I will let you do is sign a promissory note binding you to them.  If you want the product he will sell it to you in a week or a month or a year for the so called "seminar price" 

It felt good.

Martin still calls me and is working to get the capital to pay for the product.  I will make sure that if he buys it he will be protected. 

How much of this can I get away with?

Down Time: Writing Poems

I wait

Like my grandmother

On the steamship

Between

Romania

And

Ellis Island

.

The in-between

Before arriving.

Boredom —

The not knowing for

What one is waiting.

I am waiting.

Smoking and

Drinking away

My days.

Read poems

Write a few.

Like my grandmother

Writing letters to her

Father,

“ There is nothing

But the flat sea, like the

Flat line that leads back

To you.”

At night we walk

The decks together,

Traveling in-between

Departure and destination.

We say very little.  She points

To the night sky, “ Cassiopeia”

We lean on the railing watch

The silver blue wake of the ship.

She’s been dead so long now.

She cups my face in her hands

They are warm and soft,

Like the dream of home.

.

.

.

.

Going down

On you

Speaking in

Syllables

Looking up

At you see you

Smile.  It

Makes me

Concentrate.

My tongue

Soft as feathers,

A paintbrush.

I paint like

Rembrandt.

With so many

Dark hues —

Everything else

Is you.

.

.

.

.

Silence

This poem was first written more than two years ago, here is the first rewrite.  A prophetic poem.

Oh longing for absolution!

I call to her but she doesn’t

Respond. Oh mocking moon turn

Your face from me, keep hidden

The worshiped wound.

Oh suffering of kisses.  I

Call to her but she doesn’t

Respond. Oh evening primrose, still

Your scented lips and do not repeat

my helpless verses.

Oh desperation of clocks.  I

Call to her but she doesn’t

Respond. Oh light hearted Lark banish

Yourself from the sky so that she

Will not know of my sorrows.

Oh extinction of Night.  I call

To her but she doesn’t respond.

Oh unforgiving bed, be still

That I may sleep — and my heart die

To this ever so sad, sad night.

Wilmington, NC Part 1

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." Fredrick Nietzsche

This project has opened up my mind to many things.  Traveling is a gift that renews one's own awareness of home and one's interconnectedness to others.  We are all traveling our own roads to get home, whatever that home is.  I like this quote:    " Life is like getting dropped of in the middle of the woods, and then year by year, gradually walking home."      April Fools.   In a way we are all like Odysseus, from the Odyssey by Homer, tired and weary and just trying to get home.

Walking has become my meditation, sober or drunk, I walk.  At times I feel like the shark that must move to keep the water flowing over its gills or it will drown.  I keep moving.  Flying so much with this job has made me think constantly about moving, propulsion, the moving away from something towards something else.  My commute to work some days was 2000 miles, and a metaphor of what I needed, needed to be as far away as possible.  I wish I could have sold Internet marketing in Uzbekistan.

Walking to Wilmington

Walking to Wilmington would be my last long walk on the road.  I knew eventually this would happen.   The ethical issues were starting to become louder in my head and would steal my sleep.  It became easier to lie and it made me nauseous. 

The seminar was over and the rest of the team had decided to go see Reno 911.  I wasn't looking forward to the trip to Greenville, 3 hours of one liners from the movie.  Matt said he wanted to go downtown, so I waited for a few hours and then the hotel room started to get smaller and smaller.  By the time the TV was next to my chest and the Air Conditioner shoved up against my ear, I decided to get out. I was going to walk downtown.

I asked the front desk lady, how far it was to downtown. " Oh no Honey, you ain't walking downtown, it's 7 miles."  I tried to explain to her that this is what I do. " Is it dangerous," I ask her. "No Honey, it's just FAR!"  I thanked her for the directions and as I leave she tells me I am crazy.  She doesn't understand, that if I stay still too long, Madness may be knocking at my door, so I move and when it comes I will be two miles ahead of it.  Madness can knock on the door, pick the lock, climb in through the window, and the only thing Madness will find is a still warm bed.

I start walking about 11pm and it is warm.  I sneak a drink from my pint of Vodka, it too is warm as it goes down.  This part of Wilmington is the usual pattern of suburban expansion - strip-mall after strip mall.  I walk and drink checking out chain stores that don't exist on the West coast. Girls drive by hooting at me, "Hey baby!" says an attractive black girl in her twenties, and they drive off giggling.  I don't think they see very many pedestrians, unless they are homeless or down and out.  In modern America, walking if for the lower classes.   The farther I walk, the more sparing the strip malls, and everything starts to give way to offices and then homes.  I come across a railroad track and write this in my head for Tara my ex-wife, and still my best friend.  For years we lived close to railroad tracks.

Rails across a road / 2000 miles from...../ I touch the steel / my mind travels in an instant / to the rails / that would sing to us / every night as we/ made love/ fought / cooked dinner/ slept to the low / moan of a sad train / trying just to get home.

These rails traveled all across America, this very rail was connected to home, like arteries to a heart.

The houses in Wilmington are old and they have preserved them.  Big porches are everywhere.  Porches the first thing the Television destroyed.  I close my eyes and imagine families sitting on them, drinking tea and  children playing in the yard.  Spring is on the way and soon all these porches will come alive with stories, and laughter, and people spending time next to each other silently, the quality of the silence telling everyone of the quality of their love.

Walking, I look at everything, notice everything.  Walking you see things and smell things that go unnoticed when driving.  Their is a note left on the door of a store, I write it down in my notebook          " I am sorry baby, I don't deserve you, I cried last night, can you believe it....can we talk."      signed by some guy named Lance.  I was watching  Jarhead  the other night; here are all these killing machines ready to fight and their Achilles heel, the woman they love.  Think of the Blues, listen to the words, big men, broken down and blue because of a woman they loved.  Here was Lance, all the big bad talk, maybe he even calls women "bitches" but this one got to him.   

I look for objects, found object, the trash of daily life.  I notice things in the streets and pick some of them up.  A super ball, one earing, a ticket to a concert, a shopping list, a playing card.   Each one of these could be the starting point of a story.  In Salt Lake, the streets are so clean, they seem silent, absent of stories.

to be continued

Wilmington NC Part 2

A Fountain in the Middle of the Road.

I can see in front of me a fountain, the large scalloped bowl is held up on the backs of 8 Swans.  The mouth of the fountain is a bouquet of Lillies.  I grab a few pennies from my pocket and make two wishes.  When they come true, I will need to make a pilgrimage back here. 

I head for the river and every building has a historical marker.  I read about the first synagogue built in 1875, imagine the Jews praying wearing their Kippah's, and their prayers rising like the smoke from smoke offerings.  Next door is the first Catholic church and a garden.  I unlock the gate and walk in and see a statue of Saint Francis with carefully placed flower petals in his hands.  I sit down on a bench donated in the memory of Gail Bronson.  I sit and imagine up a life for Gail Bronson and thank her memory for a place to sit.  Under some flowering bushes I can make out the faint mewing of a cat.  She comes out and rubs against my leg, hops on to my lap and purrs.  The Cat, Saint Francis, The memory of Gail Bronson and I hang out for awhile staring the waxing moon.

Walk, I need to walk.  I say my goodbyes and walk towards the river.  I pass the Slice of Life Pizzeria where we hung out last night for a couple of hours talking to Paige, a tallish, attractive and nerdy college student who was tending bar.  I look in to see if she is there but no.  Instead a homeless guy is being thrown out.  He asks for a handout, telling me how a guy in their had stolen five dollars from him.  I tell him I have nothing but a little vodka.  "That will do."  We walk to the river and share a drink.

David is late 40's looks 60.  Blond hair going grey and missing four front teeth.  We talk to a couple other homeless guys, Clark  has hair like a 50's movie star.  They tell me their troubles, the blues of addiction, women, and bad luck, not to mention mental illness.  Clark pulls out a bottle of Colt 45 and insists I take the first drink.  We talk a little while longer and Clark and the other guy (he wouldn't tell me his name), decide to go look for some food.  David finishes off the Colt 45 as I finish off my vodka.  We stand looking out at Cape Fear and the battleship U.S.S. North Carolina shrouded in shadows. 

David tells me about the woman who kicked him out.  "We met drinking on a warm day, she was beautiful and we really hit it off, we got married that day."  He shuffles his feet and leans more intently on the railing.  "I had to leave right after to go to court and they ended up putting me in jail, when I got out two days later, there she was waiting for me."  He looked me straight in the face and said, " That's when I found out she was a man."  David starts to laugh a loud hoarse throaty laugh.   "Didn't that upset you," I ask him.   "A little at first, but I like men too, so it worked out for a few months."  He went on telling me how he loved her but she was crazy and tried to kill him a few times.  I had to sit there for a moment, this was real life, not some story line from an HBO show.  The old cliche reality is stranger than fiction.  David says, "Fighting's OK, but trying to kill me? that's where I draw the line."  He gets quiet.  Looks off at the dark side of the river, stays there for awhile, so I decide to leave him alone there on the other side.

I say good byes to David and look for Paige again, but she isn't there.  I walk back the 7 miles talking to Mykul.  By the time I get back to the hotel, the time has flown by and I am sober.  Tomorrow another day of bullshitting people but no more lies.  I am not looking forward to the morning.

Rough Draft Poem

Slice of life pizza

parlor.  I find a "Go Navy"

in the gutter to write with.

Where is Paige?

I need to write something down.

Angry homeless man

asks for money but

will take a plug instead.

Bisexual homeless man

wants to cuddle.

NO, sorry.

Two more homeless men

one with movie star hair -

We talk the Blues -

Watch the river like

"The Featured Presentation"

Film river - Opera water.

The river, the river

rolling. The river rolling.

rolling.  Rolling the river.

10 miles of walking to here -

Drunk 10 miles.

In the garden of Saint Francis,

flower petals in one hand.

A black cat with one white paw.

I pet her and she purrs

to the waxing moon.

NEW!!! THE LAST SEMINAR

The Bar Scene

After the drive I need a drink.  We find a bar in  downtown Greenville, it is the busiest bar we have seen yet.  Matt and his brother start their fishing.  They catch two sisters with lines from Borat.  What the hell am I doing here?  I drink and drink, but it doesn't work like it used to, no escape, no lightness, just a heaviness of trying to constantly be some place else. 

I act, put on a mask of interest.  Small talk and bullshit.  Every 30min or so, I walk out into the fresh air and walk the small downtown.  How did I end up here?  Strange thing, I hate it and love it.  My life is moving with an intensity and propulsion I haven't  known in  a long time.  I am on a path of becoming, becoming something more, breaking the shackles of stagnation, being forced to live, to really live. 

Maggie is sitting on a barstool, leaning against a wall.  We talk, she is more interesting than the rest of the drunk, self-hating, sad drunks.  She has amazing eyes, clear, sharp and open.  She finds out that I am a poet and asks me to recite something to her.  I finish and she stares at me.  says, " I really felt something, and I don't ever feel anything"    She makes me uncomfortable, the way she stares at me like she wants to devour me....not in a sexual way, I could appreciate that, but more in I will possess you sort of way.   This is the last thing I want.   Matt and his brother have closed the deal on two sisters, like an episode from the REAL WORLD.  I am glad we are leaving.

We stop at their house, they are flirting with eachother, while I talk to the cat.  The cat is articulate, we talk.  She is the best conversationalist I've met.  We talk of all manner of things.  Finally we leave to the hotel with the sisters in tow.  They are attractive, but too drunk to be interesting.  I have little respect for someone who can't hold their liquor.  I have never done anything intoxicated that I wouldn't do sober.  Don't get me wrong, I have said things I shouldn't have, made a fight last longer than it should, but I have never done anything I wouldn't have done sober.  I wonder what these girls will think in the morning?  Maybe nothing being a part of the Narcissistic Generation, where the world revolves around them and everyone else are just players on their stage. 

Finally we are back at the hotel, I say goodnight and can't wait to go to sleep and dream I am a man dreaming, I am a butterfly, dreaming that I am a man.

BASTA!

This was the call of the Cuban revolutionaries, Basta; Enough.  I am sitting in the Seminar and I have to leave, I can't sit there and listen to the lies.  The speaker is desperate to make a sale and he is pulling shit out of his ass.  I am talking to this guy, and telling him some bullshit story about myself.  I am sick to my stomach.  " Thou shalt not bear false witness!"   I am screaming at myself in my head, "You fucking liar"  but I haven't said anything because I need this job. I don't think I can do it one more day. 

I make myself scarce, walk around the hotel, avoid the conference room.  Don, asks me what I am doing, leaving the new guy alone.  I tell him that he's smart he can handle it.  We get into a fight about the whole thing.  I want to punch him, but just lean against the wall and take a drag of my cigarette.  I am sure he feels my disdain.

What does a man have if he doesn't have his integrity?  Pascal has said that life is not about getting the things we want, but about moments when we choose what is important to us, and that people matter, that the choices we make matter.  At the end of our lives we are the choices we have made.   

I am not what they are, I am different.  It's time for me to stop this.  Mykul once said that you can tell the character of a man but whom he associates with.  I believe that, and cannot associate with these small men; I am smaller because of it. 

This ethical dilema has made me think of who I am. Camus has said that in a world of injustice, the only response is to be just.  I chose to be just.    I am a good man.  This is the one thing that keeps me going in a world of compromise and self absorption.  I am a good man.   I can say this with confidence and grace.  Don't get me wrong, I am no saint, I can be a weak man, a fragile man, an asshole and self absorbed man and it has taken me a long time to admit this and embrace it.  In the end, my motivations have been just and true.  Of course, I could have done things differently in my life at times, but I have no regrets.  It is a great gift to be able to say that, and it comes from knowing myself and a willingness to go all out, risk everything for what you believe in.

I am no longer embarrassed by my weakness or my wounds, they are part of who I am.  I am the light and the shadow.  I will stand up for what I value, becuase  I would rather be homeless like David in Wilmington, than wealthy and false.  Authenticity and the search for authenticity is the only way I can live.

We leave the hotel at 5am, get back into SLC at 830pm.  This trip we have circled the US.  We flew South - down to Phoenix then across to get to NC.  On the way back we fly over the Great Lakes.  An appropriate flight path for my last seminar.  Leaning against the bulkhead.....half asleep - I look out the window at America unfolding before me..... So many lives, so many dreams, and I swear I can hear children singing.    I fly above them catching all their prayers as I pass over and hold them for a brief moment and then let them go.   

Beautiful!

This has been quite an adventure.

NEW!!! EPILOGUE: The End

The End.....

I walk out of the Salt Lake City Library, after finishing the last post.  I decide to not go back on the road, to take a stand.  I am walking away from the library and get a call.  It's the owner of the company and he tells me the sales are too low and we wont be going out for awhile.  It's what I want...but I am frustrated... because I want to take a stand....I hang up and laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

I cross the street and walk next to a woman in an electric wheel chair.  She has a black lab trotting next to her. I say to her, " That is a sweet dog."  I notice the electric power display in the arm of her chair, the red light moving back and forth.  "This is Blanche, she's a good dog, they gave her to me after I was brutally raped and tortured."  The woman starts crying.  I touch her shoulder and squeeze.  We walk a block, say nothing.  We get to the corner and I say, " You know there are angels among us and they sometimes look like black labs....she cry/laughs... tells me in a whisper, "Blanche has wings."  She thanks me for being kind.  I walk away grateful that I could give a little comfort.  I realized that one does not have to go farther than the corner to experience living...to be alive.

In the end I have learned an important lesson from this project    -  that we are all travelers, whether we fly 3000 miles for a job or a block from the library.  We are all traveling somewhere. 

God speed that you make it where you are going.

Christopher Leibow

New!!!! POSTSCRIPT: WENDOVER NV

"In  Wendover, everyone gets lucky!"

I thought it was all over, and it pretty much is as a traveling salesman, but I have one last entry because I had one last gig and that was to sell Wendover.  I have been signed on to be a part of the Wendover Ad Campaign. 

Wendover, a post apocalyptic town, a town where Mad Max would probably retire.  Appropriate. (This is where the Enola Gay and the first A-Bomb was loaded to turn Hiroshima into a radioactive wasteland.) This is a town that exists only for the gentiles of Utah, or the Jack Mormon's who need a little extra risk in their lives, since everything else has been figured out.

We drive up to the Montego Bay Casino, the "g" and "b" of the sign are out.  "The Monteo ay Casino"   Someone say's, "When it gets busier, the letters light up, because they can't afford the electricity until people start losing."   We kinda believe him when we get in because it's pretty empty, but then its only 7pm on a Monday.

We check in.  The rooms are nice and big, bigger than my apartment.  There is a beautiful paper mache palm tree sort of thing in the corner and a view of the Wendover water tank.  I already feel lucky.

Down on the casino floor, I wander looking for everyone else, we are supposed to meet at the bar.  I get a drink and meander.  At a row of video poker tables, there are two old women, thin as a bony finger and wearing similar outfits, they look like they could be sisters,  but I am not sure because the sit as far aways from each other as possible and never look at each other, even when one of them wins.  One of the sisters is not having such great luck, her brownish red wig keeps sliding and she adjusts like a hat, mumbling something.  The other sister has just hit a big win.  She tries to celebrate, but the arthritis makes it hard to dance.  The one sister seeing that her sister has won again, gets frustrated and starts banging on the video screen.

In the modern casino, there are no more messy coins, just the recorded sound of coins falling into the metal catch.  I have always found this disturbing.  But the most disturbing thing is the gambling card.  On the card; a sort of gift card,  win or lose the computer tells the card if you are lucky or not.  The casino gives you a yellow stretch cord that you can pin to your shirt so you don't lose it.  Old people use them mostly.  The sight of an old man sitting at a slot machine, the yellow stretch cord going from him to the machine, brings to mind a umbilical cord.  I imagined that in each machine is a little henchman of old Beelzebub, and with each pull of the lever ( or push of the button that says "spin") a small little part of their soul goes through that cord into the coffers of hell.  Many times when you ask someone, how they did gambling, they say in geest, "lighter".  Little do they realize that they are and it is not their bank account!

The cast a crew finally gather and have a few drinks.  An interesting cast of mostly amateur actors.  Most of the crew go to bed early, but a few of us decide to go to the Nugget next door.  The drinks are cheap in Wendover, so that has made us a little more drunk than usual.  The Nugget is dead, there is almost no one in it and the very low ceilings make it feel basement like.  We go back to the Monte Ay and everyone goes to bed except Liza and Adam, they go back to the bar.  I can't go back in yet and need to walk.  It's now in my blood.

I walk to two other casinos.  The Peppermill and the Rainbow.  Nothing to say about the Peppermill, except the crowd was even older than the Monteo Ay.  I walk the rest of the way to the Rainbow.  I go up to the bar and order a double whiskey and coke and wander the floor.  This is a younger crowd, a few tattooed and pierced but the number of them is too low and they are diluted by the number of pissed off old men sitting in a group complaining about everything.

Walking back to the hotel, I walk on the south side of the street.  There is nothing, no development, just a clear view of the desert.  A warm wind has picked up, moon washes an abandoned train car.  I stand and stare out at the desert, take it in... let the wind sway me till I fall asleep standing up.  I dream of airports, of driving, of hotel and motel rooms, of strip clubs and bars, of the beach, of meeting new people, of mexico.

In the end, the project of the Traveling Salesmen might have come to a conclusion.  But there is something about it that has changed me.  I will never be able to travel like I did before.

Christopher