This is your main man Erik the revolutionary guru, coolin' in Chapel Hill at the Pink House. What's up! I got your eminently digable letter that youse sent me from Jerusalem. It sounded like you were up to positive tricks as usual, causing trouble, skeezing on bodacious cuties, fighting the IMO powers that be in occupied Palestine.
It's now Friday. You know what I'm going to do tonight? I think Derek Shadid just got back in town from his internship in New York. Maybe I'll give him a call. You wouldn't believe what a treehouse the Pink House has been this summer. Numerous random passengers are along for the ride at all times. People breeze in, slide out. This shit happens constantly.
I myself only got back to town about a week ago. In fact, I read your letter my first night back, up real late with Lem. It was a trip. We were listening to some very psychedelic Hendrix at the time, a song called "1983...A Merman I Should Hope To Be," from Electric Ladyland. At one point the song talks about giving a shout to all the friends who aren't around, and I had dragged out a picture of you, just to enhance the letter reading experience, so it was cool. Remind me to show and give you copies of the pictures I took at the Inauguration when you get back in the fall. They turned out very satisfactory.
Before returning to Chapel Hill, I had spent nearly the entire month of June traveling instinctively, all up and down the East Coast. My journey began when out of the blue, I heard from a friend of mine named John Hamilton Palmer. This is a cat I met in Paris last summer. He was working for Vogue magazine at the time on an editorial assistant's internship, hanging out with supermodels and DJ's at cool clubs all over the city. He traveled with my brother Jared on to Amsterdam and then to Milan, Italy, where his Dad lives and works in the fashion industry.
Anyway, this friend of mine John returned to the States at the end of last summer, and has been living with the rest of his family in Savannah, Georgia, ever since. So then he calls me up, and tells me that he's headed to New York, where he's going to be working for Conde Nast again, the publishing company that owns Vogue. He says he's leaving in a few weeks, so on the spur of the moment, I decide to take a little road trip down to visit him.
I convince Chris Pedigo to come with me. At this point, Chris was getting ready to leave for Middlebury, Vermont in a little while, where he's taking summer Russian classes.
We roll out of Chapel Hill on a Wednesday afternoon, and make it to our first destination, Myrtle Beach, S.C., before 10 pm that night. See, the Digable Planets were playing there.
(We met) this woman (who) knew Myrtle Beach really well and after chilling with me and Chris for awhile decided she'd take us out and show us around town, meaning all the remaining after hours bars and clubs. Cool! Her name was Jean, and we went with her all over town. Everywhere we went, the scene was the same. Young, horny kids, lots of women wearing sexy summer beach clothes, everybody essentially looking to get laid.
The next day, we get on the road by late afternoon and drive southward, towards Savannah, Georgia.
That night, we hang out with my friend John. Chris also knew him from last summer in Paris, so it was like a mini-reunion. Anyway, he took us out clubbing. We got into two clubs for a couple of dollars, free drinks because he knew the bartenders, and split our time between both all night since they were totally within walking distance. A fun night.
The next day was Friday. We got up, chilled, and got on the road, bound for Atlanta. Blew into town late afternoon, and headed directly for Little Five Points, which is sort of the Greenwich Village of Atlanta. Very funky. Here we collected club flyers, local magazines, and other information about the nightlife that evening.
Then, we sped all around the city, scouting out all the nightclubs where we had free passes to get in for the night. Some people in Little Five Points stopped us on the street and thought my friend John was so beautiful (he used to be a male model) that they put us all onto the guest list at one joint. We hit four clubs that night and had many adventures.
...
Damn, man, I'm not even half done telling you about my instinctive travels of the last month. Maybe in a future letter I'll pick up the narrative. Just to give you a taste of stories to come, from Atlanta, we took John back home to Chapel Hill with us, chilled for a week, then I drove him back down to Savannah. During that week at home we threw a mad party at the Pink House, attendance levels approaching six hundred or so. Then I headed north, stopping in D.C. to hang with my friend Dana for half a week before continuing on to Rhode Island. There, I saw friends and family, and spent a particularly adventure-filled long weekend in Boston before coming back to Chapel Hill. Swung through D.C. again on the way down to chill further with Dana. I had planned to head further south to Miami for that weekend (this was this past weekend), and hang with this woman Rashmi Airan, but at the last minute decided that the journey had to end.
So here I am, back in Chapel Hill.
I think that in early August, Jenny and I are going to travel up north to Rhode Island for one or two weeks. Lydia and Jay may come with us, and we'll chill with Kyle at some point, who's working at a community newspaper in a small town on the Connecticut-Rhode Island border. When I was going through D.C., I found out that Erica Salmon (the one we stayed with) is living on campus at GWU this summer, trying to do some painting. I'm glad you had time to write, and please write back. I'd love to know what's up with my boy Firas and his many adventures in Jerusalem and the surrounding environs, dealing with Israeli security forces, hooking up with chicks from Duke. N'Gai just received your letter, too. He says hello. You know what? We were just watching Yo! MTV Raps and a video came on by Pete Nice and Daddy Rich. Pete Nice used to be with 3rd Bass, and everybody in the room was like, yo, check this motherfucker out! He looks totally like Firas!
- Letter to Firas, 7/3/93
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