Edward Adrift

love the word “inscrutable”) sometimes.

    Thirteen-point-seven miles into my trip, Michael Stipe is singing about how everybody hurts—a song that has resonance with me—when I realize that I hurt, or at least my tallywhacker does.
    I have to pee really bad.
    Luckily, I am close to the exit for Laurel, the town directly west of Billings, when the urge to urinate strikes. I pull off the interstate and into the parking lot of a gas station, and I hustle inside, holding my tallywhacker through my pants as I look for the men’s room.
    As I’m standing there, draining my ever-filling bladder, I think of a word I like: “retromingent.” This means “to pee backward.” I am not retromingent; I pee forward. Cows are retromingent, though. I find this curious.
    In the gas station’s store, I buy a pack of sugar-free gum. I don’t like gum very much, but I don’t think it’s right to use the store’s facilities without contributing to its economic well-being. This seems like the right choice.
    Soon I’m back on the interstate and headed west again. Michael Stipe is singing about his harborcoat. I have to say, putting my extensive collection of R.E.M. music on shuffle was a smart move by me. While I know that each song will be R.E.M., I have no idea which exact song is coming up until the first notes are struck. I am enjoying this spontaneity.
    And yet this enjoyment is balanced by a sadness I haven’t been able to shake since September 21, when R.E.M. announced that they were disbanding. I still wish I knew why Michael Stipe and the rest of R.E.M. had to leave me.

    I want to talk about why I’m going only 223 miles on the first day of my trip. Certainly, driving the entire 686.5 miles from my house to Donna and Victor’s would not be impossible to achieve in a single day. If my father were still alive and making this trip with me, I have little doubt that he would say something like, “Teddy, buckle up. We’re going the whole route.” I don’t like to be called Teddy; my name is Edward. But if it meant that I could see my father again and hear his voice, I would be willing to endure it.
    The reason I am going only 223 miles today is it’s hard for me to concentrate on a singular task like driving for much longer thanthat. This is one of the byproducts of my condition, Asperger’s syndrome with a strong streak of obsessive-compulsive disorder. My mind wanders, and that can become a dangerous situation when one is driving a car, especially alone without anyone to talk to. I’m going to try to drive the remaining 463.5 miles tomorrow. If I make plenty of stops to allow my brain some rest time, I should be able to do that, and once I am at Donna and Victor’s, I will be able to get as much rest as I need to recover from the arduousness (I love the word “arduousness”) of the trip. If I cannot go 463.5 miles tomorrow, I am prepared to spend a second night in a motel. My condition sometimes allows me to do some dumb things, but failing to make contingency plans for a trip like this is not one of them. I have already scouted out the lodging options between Butte, Montana, and Boise, Idaho. I am developmentally disabled. I’m not stupid.

    It’s 140.7 miles from my driveway to Bozeman, Montana, and it took me two hours and thirty-two minutes to cover that distance. That segment of my trip took longer than I anticipated because I had to stop to pee twice.
    The first time was just outside Columbus, Montana, at mile marker 418. The rest area sits atop a high hill that overlooks the Yellowstone River valley. After taking care of my business, which is a euphemism, I walked along the sidewalk and took in the view. On an unseasonably warm December day like this one, with the sky clear and no haze, it was as if I could see forever, which is of course an optical illusion.
    As much as I was tempted to sit down in the grass and look at the scenery for a while, I pushed on. I had many miles to go, andI would not want to disappoint Donna, Victor, and Kyle by being later than necessary.
    Thirty-eight miles on, near the small town of Greycliff, I stopped again. This peeing business is getting a bit ridiculous, although I suspect that I make it worse by drinking so much water. By the time I got to Greycliff, I was on my second bottle, and I hadn’t yet covered a hundred miles. As unlikely as it seems, I may have to invest in a second case of water.
    It’s also possible that I did not maintain a constant 65 miles