I'd agreed to meet my brother Wyman's best friend Marc and a group of Marc's friends on Wednesday night. By appearances, Marc is a prim and proper Parisian businessman (which he says, though I'm fairly certain that he's "French KGB"), but in reality is the biggest social butterfly I've seen. Though having only been in Charleston off and on for four years (his spy work takes him to Iceland and other strange locales) he knows virtually everyone in town and is a member of nearly every club imaginable (particularly the ones where he's the youngest member by at least 40 years). The last time I'd gone out with Marc the night finished off at an impromptu house party where the spectrum of his acquaintances included strippers (off duty), a bouncer, a jeweler, a magazine co-editrix, a failed US Senate candidate and a raging egomaniac (me), among others. Thus when he said that he said we were all meeting up just to go to a bar to watch a bluegrass band, I should have known that there was a high likelihood of something memorable happening.
The bluegrass band was interesting enough, though the bar was relatively dead and the band finished far sooner than we'd anticipated. Because we didn't want to waste a downtown parking spot by leaving so soon, we went to see what else might be happening nearby in the Market. Our first stop was the Marked Street Saloon, a touristy bar where the bartendresses get up and knock out a choreographed dance on the bar from time to time.
Marc and I were dressed in traditional Charleston casual wear (khaki slacks and button down shirts) and his friend the jeweler was wearing argyle pants [when asked by the co-editrix, who was Marc's date, why, the jeweler responded, "I don't like to look like everyone else." Under my breath I said, "Hmm…defining yourself externally…I prefer to dress like everyone else and let my personality differentiate me." (which admittedly is a bit of a BS statement because the week before I'd gone in a swank bar in one of my Peruvian ponchos)]. Point being, we stuck out like sore thumbs, in a bar where most of the guys were wearing cowboy hats and jeans.
Feeling a bit self conscious and bored, and not paying much attention, I ended up drinking a bit more than I'd realized and soon was doing my spastic boogie. As the saloon was rather sparsely peopled that night, one of the bartendresses took notice of my shameless showboating and, when I started belting out a Guns N' Roses song that had just come on the speakers to Marc and the others, she jammed a microphone in my face and I gave the entire bar an impromptu lesson on why it's probably best that someone else keep track of my imbibition. Though apparently the bartendress had rather enjoyed my impression of a rhesus monkey being brained and wanted us to stay, I suddenly felt embarrassed and we quickly skidaddled off to another bar.
Eventually, Marc, the jeweler, and I headed over to cousin Elizabeth's, where we settled down to sober up and watched the greatest terrible movie in the history of blaxploitation, Dolemite (or as the cover to the DVD declared, "RUDY RAY MOORE is…Dolemite!"). At the finish, I was still not quite right, but it didn't matter since Mark decided he and I were going on a road trip (the jeweler, having not been able to withstand Rudy Ray Moore's genius, had left some time before). So, at one in the morning, we jumped in his car (I grabbed the sleeping bag, tent, two Peruvian ponchos, and Desert Eagle pistol from my car and put them in his trunk) and headed off.
Marc really wanted to go to Oxford, Mississippi, but since I'd just driven from Louisiana two weeks earlier, I was in no mood to do another overnight nine hour drive. We bargained back and forth on ever closer destinations until I convinced him that Asheville was the way to go, especially since I know people there and it's loaded with hippies.
We'd left Charleston, where it had been in the seventies, and by the time we stopped for the night, at 4:30, just short of Asheville it was nearly freezing. The clerk at the Red Roof Inn looked at us rather suspiciously as we came in wearing the ponchos, which was all I had for warmth, and thought it necessary to ask if we wanted a king size or two doubles. I almost sprained my tongue trying to say "Doubles!" so quickly.
We rolled into Asheville yesterday at noon on what was a cold blustery day (we had stopped at a Walmart so that I could buy toiletries). I convinced Marc that to fit in with the hippies it was necessary for us to wear the ponchos. We then set out on foot to get a sense of the place.
Now, when I say Asheville is loaded with hippies, I mean it. For some reason, that particular hamlet is where the freaky people from the Southeast congregate. In no time whatsoever we were immersed in white people sporting dreadlocks and tie-dyed bandannas, wearing army surplus store jackets, and smelling like whatever it is that dogs always roll around in after you've let them go outside after a bath. It was perfect. We queried all of them as to what we needed to see and we got different answers from all of them. Apparently, other than the ultra-liberal bookstore/ coffeehouse and Himalayan boutique (where we were unfortunate enough to stumble on a plump woman breastfeeding her talking child) we went to, the hippies didn't concentrate in any particular establishment.
As we were at a bit of a loss, plus it's always fun to talk to him, we called my cousin William, who lives just out of town with his wife, Sarah, and his baby daughter Bridgette (whom he sorta jokingly refers to as "Regan", the possessed girl from The Exorcist, since the baby is a rather fierce 2yo). William is one of those few ultra-brilliant people you can spot from a mile away. He's jovial but at the same time has a very intense look about him, that's aided in no small part by his untamed John C Calhoun/ Ludwig von Beethoven hairstyle. If there's one thing I can say for sure about William, it's that he loves to hippie watch/ mock. We asked him to come into town and help us on our safari.
In the course of our wanderings from bar to hippie "bodega" to crepe restaurant to swanky Beaujolais tasting event (which cost $40 a head, though we simply walked right in past the bouncer and no one charged us) to Indian restaurant (where I burned 75% of my tastebuds) to hookah bar (which, surprisingly, was so empty we didn't stay) to basement divebar (where I clobbered William in darts as Marc hit on the bartendress), we saw the sweep of the town and Marc and I came to the conclusion that we'd never seen a place quite like it. Asheville is so strange that we actually had a bum accost us, not for money, but simply to say, "That's the @#!! I'm talkin' about! Those is real mutha!#%!in' ponchos!"
Sufficiently sober, at midnight Marc and I bid William adieu and got back on the road to Charleston. Other than our stop for gas, where I scared woman clerk who was closing up shop for the night, but let us come in and use the bathroom…
Me: "Sorry to hold you up."
Her: (gasp; look of fear)
Me:"…I mean, delay you."
Her: "Oh, I think I know what you mean…I guess…(Eyeing my poncho to see if I had a shotgun hidden in it)."
Me: "I'm not going to rob you in khakis."
…we had no more adventures and safely completed our adventure.
