easy-chairsurfing
There’s a tattoo artist offering up his easy chair in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It’s a magenta rocker of the plushest foam. He also has a couch, but that Lazyboy was like God clouds after my 4 hours of sleep and zombie 10 hours of Bama and Ole Miss. road. I should mention that the guy sold me on the, “Yea, I’d just sleep on the easy chair it’s more comfortable.” So instead of wasting my precious energy, I picked where he obviously thought there was less giant, stoked to be going to the bar, madly texting on his ‘huckleberry’ roommate juice. Didn’t catch his name, but he was mighty talkative… to himself and 5.4.7.G phone, whatever… I can't be the only this happens to when couchsurfing.
As for your boy, well I guess he was right up there with the rest of my couchsurfing experiences. Now, before I slander the site, I’d like add that on the occasions that it worked the experiences were quite memorable.
(To get us straight about my couchsurfing feelings, I am appalled by it. In theory I love the idea, new vagabond hitchhiking, but in function it’s as practical as peeing on a forest fire if you travel as I do. That is, I don’t teeter around one place too long, I hate planning ahead and time is short and the road is long. This makes for soliciting couches a nightmare, I guess along with real lives, jobs, cars, houses, couches, wives, kids, and picket fences, schedules are also an issue of standard in the ‘real world.’ I, however, decide where I’m going the night before, ask 20 people in 4 different locations, apologize for the frenetic last-minute request and hope that at least one replies by morning. I don’t judge pages, or ‘mission statements,’ or even care if the person is 80 years old. In fact, the older the better because the ‘totally open-minded world travelling hippie/yuppie like personas’ making their ‘mission’ as philanthropic as possible usually reply late by weeks, months or not at all. I get the impression that the site is really a cover for lame way to meet female travelers for most of its male users and paranoia fueled selection process for women… “You have to explain to me in a 100 words or less why I should let you surf my couch.” In short, it’s really been ballocks for me to find couches and I feel like there should be a ‘douchebag o’meter’ so I don’t get another, ‘Sorry I missed you, I was out of town. Hope you had fun.’)
But then I wouldn’t meet people like Aspir'n n M’sippi; keen on Ron Paul politics, bumming on the lack of intelligence in Mississippi, and introduced me to the 2006 VICE Magazine documentary “VICE Guide to Travel” (definitely worth checking out). Besides thinking I was “L-7” for not smoking or drinking shots with him (He used “L7”), he was an interesting cat, who owned an interesting cat (photo). His ulterior motive for letting me stay: he needed someone to talk at… unfortunately and completely out of character, I did “L7” indeed, and hindsight has let me regret it, but not the straight vodka shot hangover, however, I did, of course, listen to what he had to say, and he seemed to need to vent his ideas, or was that the substances rattling him off?
Another ‘santa clause hour’ promise around midnight to show me a better local eatery than Waffle House the next day, we had only the simple proper goodbye of a handshake and ‘thank you’ and I left solo. I ate at Waffle House (you can’t take photos inside Waffle House, see photos), but I’m glad I did. It gave me another chance to listen to the nicest people I’ve met on the trip, Mississippians; always eager to find out where I’m from, then jaw dropping, in an incomparable Southern hospitality/curiosity accented by its genuineness, ‘Ohh wow! Whad’a ya doin rou’n he’a?’
Still waiting on the other 18 CS replies, but I’ll let ‘em know that, ‘It’s understandable, and I had fun.’
To Florida # 32.
.s.
