The drive back to Denver took roughly an hour. The entire time, Mike later confessed, he was praying for the tow truck driver to take one of the corners as he had been doing (full bore) and dump the Jetta into a ravine, thus presenting a better chance for more reliable transportation through the good graces of insurance.
The driver's name was John, which was fitting. I asked if he was from Wisconsin after he told us the dangers of the Kenosha pass in the snow. It was in the way he said Kenosha and he had moved from Wisconsin almost 15 years ago.
The truck was belching full bore echoes through the narrow passes. "She's not much in a race, but once it gets going, get the fuck out of the way!" he said of the truck as we asked how his day was. He had made the trip from Alma to Denver some 600 times as if this was supposed to help us relax. Again with the calming words, "This thing probably has better handling than the Jettta".
With Travis out of town for the weekend, we were stuck in a strange sort of limbo. Homeless kinda, but with means. Upon leaving the VW dealership the first night, we made it to the first bar we found. There, an incredibly talkative and friendly Japanese lady ranted and raved about anything she could think of. We were the only ones there. We ordered food, drank beer and tried to stay positive. She brought us bowls of stir fry which she proclaimed as her specialty. She told us everything she knew about the area and got around to asking why we were there after she realized we were from Ohio. We told her the story and she immediately offered to get us into get us into a strip club up the street for free. We had passed it, Shotgun Willie's, on our way to the dealership; the tow truck driver had pointed it out actually. There were Range Rovers and Porsches out front. Men in suits were hob-knobing around outside. They smoked cigars. We hadn't showered in 5 days. All our clothes were visibly dirty. "If you go to the hotel and change," she said, "I can get you in for free." Change into what? It wasn't worth the hassle of going to a strip club broke and smelling like we were broke. That night, we stayed in a hotel. It was strange, sad even. One night we figured. No big deal.
We waited for the call for two days, wondering around Denver. We went into the art museum which seemed to only be interested in art from the Woody Guthrie vein of American expansion West. Build no more dams. I remember one painting that stuck out of a Pony Express rider riding past men installing telegraph poles. I hurt a bit in that strange moment. Seeing the very comparative instance when the world shrank just a bit, when the void Mike and I had crossed was tethered together by one lonely sting of invention. After that little moment, the rest of the imagery held more weight. The West was no longer a destination or a tangible place, but now a theory, an idea, a mindset, a larger concept I was just stepping into for a while. I wanted more.
The next day began with a big breakfast in Cherry Creek where the host of the restraint ignored us. Backpacks and all. We found a park and waited over here and waited over there. There was nothing to do but wait for the shop to call about the car.
The next adventure landed us at occupy Denver in the heart of the city. It was exactly where we needed to be. It seemed like the day happened in strangely well thought out succession. When we arrived, I immediately started shooting and mike immediately went to the nearest drum circle. We made friends and hung around while everyone shouted about everything.
I picked up on a few basic principles. The 99% was angry. They didn't want to pay for college. They wanted the troops home. They wanted a fair distribution of wealth. They wanted an end to tax loopholes and they wanted a banking system they could trust. I also learned that I am the 99%. The police are too. As with any publicly visible protest, unless you are well versed on the source of the grand issue at hand, you see nothing but a bunch of anarchists chanting "Down with the media", "Down with the government", down with almost everything, really. This was one of those situations where the context of public demonstration was convoluted by anyone who could make a sign so almost every response to inquiry I received was completely different.
Also, as with any publicly visible protest, there is a certain energy which escalates and declines in a proportionate value based on chess like moves by protestors and those assigned to protect the public interests (interests of the public?). This ratio of determination and righteousness began to escalate once the city informed the protestors that having a tent (The Kitchen) was in direct violation of the rules of the park and must be removed. The protestors, for no rational reason other than to be staunch and irrational in their methods of message delivery, adamantly opposed the removal of the kitchen. This, I told mike, was the beginning.
Around this time, mike received the phone call we were anticipating. In short, the cost of the repairs necessary were nearly equal to the amount of money mike had saved for the four months he was to be living jobless in San Francisco. quite unfortunate. I found him smoking a cigar with his back to the action staring off into a deserted part of the park. He looked like he wanted to simply start walking. My first thought when he told me the news was, "you should have just started walking, man. I would have been fine." I kinda had the feeling that was what he had wanted to do.
Mike has a wonderful way of not taking his anger or frustration out on others. Some would call it passive aggressive, but this is not Mike. You can't tell he is mad. He is not snarky; he responds as normal when addressed and holds the same facial expressions as always. His problems are his and he will ask for your help if he wants it, which is hardly ever. His focus turned from San Francisco to the accumulating frustrations of the protestors and police.
The police were patient. Very patient. They initiated with a calm address via speaker. "You are in direct violation Blah Blah Blah. Please disperse." The protestors responded by walking into the street and sitting down. It was at this point which the entire plot of the occupation changed. It actually became an occupation. It was no longer a public forum to air grievances and entertain the local media. It was now a full blown occupation of a public place. The signs were dropped and the main discourse was one in which the demonstrators reminded the police that they were on the same side and the police reminded the protestors that there were laws adopted by an elected democratic representation of the people aimed at providing the greatest good to the greatest amount of people. This is the point at which a demonstrator becomes a protestor. The animosity in the clever signs and catchy chants was now physical and in a sense, personified. Here was some sort of abstract proof, the demonstrators thought, of why we are so angry. The ones who define and control authority are simply not listening thought the demonstrators. We can't help you, someone else told us to kick you out, thought the police. No one was at fault, it was just something that happened.
The rift tightened slowly. A few steps here and there. There came a point, one I would experience again, where I felt a hand on my arm thinking it was a demonstrator only to realize that the police line had advanced up next to me. It was an amorphous blob which swallowed an unruly black-clad kid every so often. The police passed over a line of demonstrators sitting on the ground and pushed everyone out of the street and onto the sidewalk. From there a few lashed out and some shoving and jostling occurred. It looked playful almost, more along the lines of a mosh pit at some concert in a basement. Those left sitting in the street were systematically arrested or led back to the group to be interviewed by a particularly rabid tv reporter. He, I learned, was also the 99%, but a bit less so since he served to perpetuate the agenda of the 1%. Maybe a 33.3% or something like that.
Once the sun set, the pepper spray came out. Things escalated, but never truly hit the point at which laws were broken. The night would never make it past the 11 o'clock news. The protestors shut down traffic for a few minutes and it seemed that after this, all the police went to bed. Mike and I followed the mob out into 16th street where we made passes up and down past the restaurants and night clubs. Some people took pictures others just looked away. After a few laps, the energy dissipated. All the police had to do was leave the mob alone for a while. Everyone simply went home; it wasn't even 10 pm yet.
The next morning I sat on the floor of our hostel room while light slowly gathered outside. The car won't be ready for another day and we have no more money. We are going home, we're going to just turn right back around and head back in to the sandy void of Middle America. The placid rolling expanse of numbing, rambling nothing. It didn't feel like failure, it was just dealing with life. It was no ones fault, just something that happened.
