Where My Thoughts Escape

Home, sweet home! Sleeping in my bed and using my own shower never felt so good. It was a fantastic ten-day break from reality, long enough to surrender myself completely to life on the road, but not so long that I forgot how wonderful it feels to be back in familiar surroundings. Our last show was a doozie. We played with 3 awesome acts to the largest crowd we'd had all week, won over some people and even sold several copies of our new record. Giddy from the successful night, we stayed up with our new friends and hosts till about 4:30 am, when it finally dawned on me that we had to leave by 8am in order to make the 14 hour drive home by a reasonable hour. I quickly corralled us into bed, set my cell phone alarm for 7:45am and slept in the clothes I played in.

Our hosts were three gay men. I heard someone joke that staying with a gay couple is definitely the way to go on tour, because they're house will be clean and they'll have cable. Joking aside, after having spent the majority of last nine days sleeping on the floors of friends and strangers, I have to say these men were by far some of the better hosts. In addition to offering us 2 extra beds to stay in and cooking up a couple pizzas for all of us after the show, they insisted on programming their coffee maker for our early departure, offered us clean towels and washcloths (you have no idea how much this is appreciated) and even put together a care package of fruit, scones and bagels for us to take. We barely know these people, and this is the kindness they offered us. Ironically, this is exactly the sort of kindness a certain prophet, whose name millions of followers use for the denunciation of homosexuality, would have done for strangers himself. Good thing we're excluding the gays from equal rights; I'd really hate for that kind of icky good will to seep its way in and poison our ever-altruistic society. But I digress.

Our 14-hour drive turned into a 16-hour drive with all the stops for food, gas and bathrooms, and we arrived back in the Bluegrass around midnight. After unloading and dropping off the mates, B & I walked through the door of our little house around 1 am. I dropped to the floor and all the pets surrounded us in greeting. Gina went straight for her favorite toy, a once-squeaky barbell, and began pushing it against me repeatedly, while Zoe jumped on me and began half licking, half nibbling my face. Once we got in bed, Lewis, one of our three cats, decided he needed to re-establish his position as "Top Cat" by chasing this brothers away and returning to nestle between us with a smug look on his face. Oh, it's good to be loved. And so good to be home.