Pierre Sendero: Llegó la hora

"Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going."
---Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

Mike Faulk quit his reporting job at The Anniston (Ala.) Star July 2 after nearly one year of writing, carousing and mostly sulking in the isolation of the verdant Appalachian foothills of his home state. He said it was as much an experience to grow as a person as it was a time in which he came dangerously close to forgetting everything about himself. There was order, and there was chaos. Joy and depression. ACCOMPLISHMENT:DEFEAT. He emptied his apartment of all his possessions following a July 4 holiday with our friend Clover on the Atlantic coast, giving most things away to charity and taking with him only that which he could fit in his small SUV. He took off in the middle of the night. He imagined there was a cloud of dust behind him that spun around and settled in the quiet brush of the Talladega National Forest off Alabama 9. It would have been symbolic, and he would have been able to write about it in that way.

I am not Mike Faulk. The literary device known as I came into the picture a few weeks later. It was at sunset this past Monday. I was in downtown Mobile mingling with partygoers on the deck of the Carnivore Fop cruise ship parked in the bay just off Water Street. I was soaking in the hideous purple- and pink-tiled cafeteria, the laughing red-faced lobsters that were once middle-aged couples two hours before they hit the plastic tiki bar, and keeping my eyes turned politely away from the 14-year-olds as they discovered things in the hot tub in the absence of their parents at the casino. I was miserable, and the boat just hummed, and soon the city skyline would turn to open Gulf and no matter how much further the alcohol and cash-addled debauchery went I would have to be there every second. I thought about Faulk, who had warned me about these things, but my love for free drinks and bizarre company led me there. I had a spouse ticket to the Knights of Old Royal Street's summer cruise retreat thanks to my friend Junior Clayborne, recently divorced, in need of a wingman and one of the Mardi Gras society's top directors, but in that moment I began to question whether my talent as a social chameleon had taken me too far over the edge by accepting Junior's almost weeping invitation to join his rich friends on their lush retreat. I wanted adventure, but not with these people. Their interests were clear, the greatest cultural experience of their lives would be a booze cruise off the coast of Cozumel, a floating Sodom and Gomorrah where they could share their disgust for the way the media treat Sarah Palin, and that would only require one flaming Perseid falling from heaven to send it to the bottom with the old pirate ships. They'd think it's just like Universal Studios. I texted Faulk about my personal hell in only so many words. I began sweating and unbuttoned my American flag polo shirt, which I specifically bought to fit in with the gentiles, and put out my cigarette. Moments later, Faulk responded, "JVMP! VAMOS!"

I handed off my Fiesta Fun cocktail and souvenir glass to my obese associate and cruise director, Big Steak, kicked off my alligator shoes and ran for the back of the boat diving off head first into the bacterial stew of Mobile Bay, knocking the wind out of myself and staining my new shirt and Wrangler's boot-cut jeans a sewage shade of brown. God knows what kind of mutant crustacean is living in my cowboy hat at the bottom of that natural drainage ditch, nibbling on whatever it is that grows on the outer shell of the Bankhead Tunnel while pondering quantum mechanics. Like I said, it's a mutant. I swam to the dock and grabbed a rope dangling over the water and used it to pull myself up to the pier. Higher above on deck I could hear Big Steak jostling through the crowd, probably sweating like a thawing raw chicken, shouting "No no no! Not another one! Buh-bye Pierre! Buh-bye!"

Junior, my apologies.

I have not heard from Faulk since then, but I know where he is going and have a rough idea of his schedule. We are very close, close enough to where we trust each other completely despite fundamental disagreements, and close enough to where he allows me to write whatever I want in his blog. His place and time are never far off from my own even if we don't see each other for however long. It's complicated, but I think you the reader will come to understand me and my relationship to Mike with a little patience. Who am I? My name is Pierre Sendero; who I am is something that my creator (more so a title than a job) has left up to me to decide as I go.

Señor Faulk quit his job at The Star for a newspaper internship in Nicaragua that begins the first week of October. He quit three months in advance so he could move home to see his family and friends, and because he estimates that it will take roughly a month and a half for him to get there when he begins his journey on a Houston-bound Greyhound late Friday around midnight. This Friday. Tonight. It's why he has this blog and why he recruited me to help tell the story as it unfolds, albeit sparingly. He will meet a good friend of ours in Houston, the actress Roby Packer, and they'll take another bus from Houston to Monterrey, Mexico, where they have arrangements to see a puppet show Sunday. Roby and Faulk will bus through the likes of Zacatecas, Durango and Mazatlan to the Pacific resort town of Puerto Vallarta, where Roby will board a flight back to the States Aug. 31 and Faulk will continue south. The other details will just be a matter of time and experience, and I'm fairly certain he'll be on here any day now to tell you more. The next time I write something, I'll make it clear from the beginning which one of us is doing it.