The Birmingham Interlude
From the Nomad Chronicle
Every good adventure has its side quests—the unplanned detours that become the story you tell most often. They’re the chapters you never intended to write, forged in chaos and navigated by instinct. For me, the Birmingham Interlude was “that” side quest, a story that begins, as so many of my best ones do, in the hazy, magical grip of New Orleans.
The first time I lived there, the city’s electric current ran through my veins. I lived in a ground-floor apartment with my polycule of frequent visitors, a tight-knit constellation of souls navigating love and life in the Crescent City. One humid evening, with the air thick with the scent of jasmine and impending rain, we hatched a plan. It involved what was probably the cleanest, strongest LSD I had ever experienced, and a mutual desire to dissolve into the city's ancient rhythm.
About two hours into our adventure, the sky opened up, not with a gentle shower, but with a biblical deluge that turned the streets into canals. The universe was putting on a show, and we were determined to have front-row seats. We all piled into my candy red Ford Escort—a car far too small for our collective energy but perfect for the moment. Somehow, I was chosen to lead the quest, gripping the wheel as the world outside melted into a watercolor painting. When we started floating down Toulouse Street, the streetlights blurring into impressionistic stars on the water's surface, I knew we had reached our destination. With the logic only available to those on a higher celestial plane, we pushed the car into a parking lot we assumed was a safe, dry haven. The rest of the night was a beautiful, disjointed blur: four people wandering the gas-lit alleys, tripping balls, and having profound, rambling conversations with the ghosts of pirates and poets who still call the Quarter home.
The next morning, the cosmic bliss evaporated into a cold, grim reality. The city was submerged. Our safe haven was a lake, and my Ford Escort was its newest reef. The car was dead. Utterly and completely ruined. We had to literally wade through waist-deep, murky brown water to get back to my ground-floor apartment in the Riverbend. The scene there was even worse. The flood had claimed everything, leaving a muddy, heartbreaking testament to the storm's fury. I saved what I could—a backpack of clothes, a few water-logged books—and said goodbye to that chapter of my life.
With my home and transportation washed away, I moved in with my polycule for a couple of weeks, a refugee in my own city. But stability, even in that loving chaos, was temporary. My next stop was the Hummingbird Hotel, a classic New Orleans institution humming with the energy of transients, dreamers, and drifters. I got a job slinging eggs and coffee in the 24-hour diner on the ground floor, trading my labor for a small room upstairs. Life at the Hummingbird was a whirlwind. It was there I met Sara, a spark of a woman who would inadvertently prompt another side quest later in my Chronicle. And it was there I met the cats from Milwaukee. They were two of the most cheerful nihilists I had ever had the pleasure of knowing, passing through on their way back home, full of stories of the road and promises of cold Northern air. Their plan was to drive to Wisconsin, and I saw my out. My new plan was simple: ride with them to Milwaukee, then make my way east to Mackinac Island for another summer working vacation. It felt like the path was clearing again.
We got as far as Birmingham. One of the Milwaukee kids knew folks there, a place to crash for a night or two before continuing the long haul north. The Southern landscape blurred past the windows, a green tapestry I had no intention of exploring. It was just a place on the way to somewhere else. Then, in a screech of metal and a sickening lurch, the plan was incinerated on a stretch of Alabama asphalt.
The details of the car accident are a haze of flashing lights and the sharp smell of burnt rubber. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, bruised and bewildered, but blessedly in one piece. The car, however, was not. And with it, my ticket north was gone. Just like that, I was stranded. Stuck in fucking Alabama.
My new home was a couch in a punk rock crash pad, a world away from the gothic romance of New Orleans but familiar in its beautiful decay. It was different from the pad I’d known in Boston; the anger here was slower, baked in the Southern heat, smelling of stale beer and cheap cigarettes. I was a nomad without a path, sleeping on a stranger's couch in a city I never wanted to be in.
But a funny thing happened in Birmingham. I actually had a wonderful time. The city had a gritty, understated charm. I fell in with the local punk scene and, most notably, met a lady with devil's locks—two sharp, curled points of hair framing a captivating face. We started hanging out as much as possible, exploring the city's hidden corners and finding a strange comfort in our shared outsider status. She showed me that even in a place you're marooned, you can find a temporary port.
For just over a month, my life was that couch and her company. I eventually secured a line-cook job, stacking cash with a singular goal: buying my freedom. Every dollar was a step closer to the bus station. Finally, the day came. With a bus ticket in my pocket and enough walkin-around-cash to survive, I said my goodbyes. The departure was bittersweet. I was leaving behind an unexpected chapter, a comfortable couch, and a woman I’d remember forever. I boarded the bus and watched Birmingham shrink through the window in the back, heading back to the city that had spit me out a couple of months before.
I was returning to NOLA not with a victory, but with a story to tell. Incidentally, the cats from Milwaukee also limped back to New Orleans some time later. And, in the end, I did make it to Wisconsin after all, where I got my first tattoo—a permanent mark for a journey defined by its impermanence. The Birmingham interlude was over, but it had become an essential, unforgettable part of my Chronicle. It taught me that sometimes, getting stuck is the only way to really move forward.