Underground Man DOUBLE Part 5 and 6
The Early Wins and the Seduction of the Road and Meeting Moonbeam
Hello Revivalists! Neither of these pieces seemed adequate without the other so you’re getting double. The Underground Man has three more posts before he finds redemption. In February we will move into “The Outlaw Archetype” another member of what Linda Leonard calls “The Flight” which symbolizes the stage of addiction and also the part of the creative process that involves stepping away from what is known, or escaping. If you’re thinking, “Gee, many of these posts are dark and contain immoral or toxic attitudes,” that’s correct. They should. After “The Flight” we’ll explore the archetypes of “The Fall” stage, and finally, the largest section will be “The Return,” where we explore closely a number of archetypes that depict the recovery process. I took on this project specifically to do something in a long series format, to hopefully have a complete corpus when finished. I also expect to include some straight up fiction as part of it, and I promise. New Comic Art is in development.!
As always, thank you for joining me in my weird world and for allowing me your audience!
P.S. This post is free but expect another paid post before the Underground Man finishes up.
Early Wins and the Seduction of the Road
I was thrilled to be heading west alone on the open highway, the engine humming under me, the stereo washing over me, and a trunk full of Colorado high altitude herb tucked neatly into vacuum-sealed packs—the drive had its own drug-like high. It was freedom and danger with a side of fuck-you confidence. For a man whose main source of adrenaline used to come from pilfering petty cash out of an office safe, this was far more respectable.
I’d leave Kansas City at midnight, the interstate stretched out like a main artery into the red blinking heartbeat of windmill country, and I’d feel a sense of agency I’d long forgotten. The Chevy Traverse grew into my second home, clean, reliable, its tinted windows private enough to make me think, this might just work.
The first run was nerve-wracking but also fucking beautiful. The tangerine sun peeking over the plains, the pale salmon sky turning the tallgrass to a golden poppy color; the landscape looked infinite. The sight of it felt like a divine high five. I’d stop in little no-name towns for burnt coffee and the local side-eye. “Just passing through,” I’d say, and they’d nod knowingly, as if everyone was passing through somewhere. I’d toss and wash back a few grams of White Maeng Da, or Bali Red Kratom and feel the warm hug of botanical confidence blanket me, the aches in my back and knees slipping away. With my sunglasses on and my Kendrick Lamar playlist, I felt invincible.
And let me tell you, when you’re approaching home and you pass the city limits sign with a carload of product there’s a kind of inner celebration that no drug can replicate. First deal goes down smooth. Second one, even smoother. Before long, you’re making stops at friends’ houses, the wads of cash trailing from your overstuffed pockets, people shaking your hand like you’re a local hero, the prodigal son returned with gifts. I could almost hear the underground man in my mind, chuckling with approval, saying, Look at you, partner. You were made for this shit.
It was so easy to tell myself that this was what success felt like. People putting me up on the road, making me home cooked meals, a reminder of the couch surfing I’d done as a teen, the welcome I always outlasted; the contribution I never made. But these nights felt different, I had a purpose. I was the timekeeper, at the center of everybody’s world, with an exciting new story every time he walked through the door. Upon first impressions, my hosts would eye me with thinly-veiled suspicion, but I’d flash some cash and everyone would warm right up. Money had that effect. I’d throw my duffels on the bed, shower off the residue of the road, and exhale the tension, imagining I was untouchable.
But the road wasn’t all victory. Every time I get back out there, I had to maintain high alert. I’d developed an uncanny ability to spot the sillhouette of an unmarked cruiser, sitting in the median, from half a mile away. Telekinesis for speed traps and lurking profilers. The whine of the tires against the asphalt was like a mantra, a mental anchor in case my thoughts lost me. I had little rituals: keep your eyes up, fixed on a point out farther out. If you see a speed trap, no sudden brake lights. If a cop follows you, have a toothpick or something innocent you can fix on. Breathe, pray silently, but for fuck’s sake, don’t react.
Sometimes the weather would turn against me, heavy snow that turned the windshield into an Etch-a-Sketch, leaving me suspended in pure static, an alternate dimension. I’d white-knuckle the wheel, my heart like a rogue timpanist drowning out whatever Sufjan Stevens song was blaring through the speakers. It was in these moments, blinded by ice and fog, that I knew I’d sold my soul to the road. It didn’t love me, but I loved it, the way I loved cocaine and whiskey, with devotion that dissolved reason.
The first few completions hooked me, not for the money but for the story. I was the outlaw, the family man gone rogue, the antihero in his own fucked-up saga. I’d pull back into Kansas City with an empty conscience, ready to start collecting cash thinking, See? This is it. This is how you win. Natasha would give me a look, something between relief and suspicion, the kids would hug me with smiles that hadn’t yet learned to doubt, and for a moment, everything felt golden. The underground man nodded approvingly from his shadowy corner, and I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, I had finally found a way to outmaneuver the disaster I’d always known was coming.
Meeting Moonbeam
If I was going to transport any decent product, the first major gatekeeper to whom I’d need to ingratiate myself was a human riddle they called Moonbeam. The way people talked, he might have been completely made up. But after a laundry list of small favors, I’d garnered the necessary trust and was permitted a meeting.
Imagine a man built like a jockey, sun-stained and constantly shirtless, with a wild bramble of black dreadlocks. His skin was tanned to the texture of an old saddle, and he was festooned in precious gems: labradorite, blood stone jasper, and dog-toothed calcite, each wrapped in copper wire by one of several baggy-eyed concubines. His hairless arms were adorned with bracelets of hemp and glass, and he dragged oversized pants made from a hundred small patches. An empire of feral cats and barefoot, diaper-clad underlings like incubi, flitting underneath him, scrambling between rusted-out trailers.
When I first rolled up to his off-grid property on the edge of Southern Colorado’s high, flat desert, I knew I was stepping into something that was a mix of cult, commune, and poorly organized militia. The place would make Mad Max jumpy. The kind of sprawling mess that’s more organized than it appears, because every piece of broke-down equipment and pile of black trash bags had a purpose, even if none of us knew what it was.
The first time he greeted me, he yelled, “No dogs! No fucking dogs, man!” from his front porch, eyes squinted and raw-chicken-pink from a lifetime of 98% THC dabs and homemade tinctures that could kill a black bear. I didn’t have a dog with me, but I still apologized. You apologize to guys like Moonbeam even when you don’t know why you’re doing so. He parked his face up in my window, slapped a paw on my hood that left a print like a warning, and called me “Bredda”—an appropriation of Jamaican patois that signaled some affiliation with Rastafarianism. I was wearing a polo.
“Come inside, man,” he said, his voice both friendly and threatening, the kind of tone that says, You’re either with me or I’m not letting you leave. The smell that wafted from his open front door was like a needle to the sinuses: cat piss, unwashed, curry-fed, body sweat, and that pungent airborne stink of living weed so aggravating to the histamines that you regret not bringing an Epi-pen. Visualize the set of a show that combines Hoarders with Naked and Afraid.
Weapons erect in every corner, ranging from rust-speckled machetes to assault rifles, most of them in pieces, a broadsword, loomed above the kitchen sink, brass knuckles and a pair of nunchaku. A bong bigger than a toddler stood sentinel on the coffee table, an blueish anaconda of smoke still dissipating from Moonbeam’s last hit. The furniture looked like it had been assembled during a standoff, every piece turned so as to shield the bong from intruders, and yet, for the chaos of it all, the plush teal rug was freshly vacuumed, not a single fiber out of place.
He initiated me with a hit from the nectar collector—a glass-and-metal contraption that gives an ironically meth-y vibe to getting stoned . I had no desire but this obviously wasn’t the moment to decline. The smoke seared my lungs and ballooned. A spiritual cough knocked out my peripheral vision, and I caught myself gripping the edge of a wobbly table carved with cryptic phrases like Jah Protect and Blood is the Seed. When I got ahold of myself, Moonbeam was already pacing, ranting about federal conspiracies against veganism and the global cabal of reptilian pederasts.
“That’s why we came here,” he said, his voice modulating between rage and revelation. “This!…This is what they don’t want us to have.” With an unlit joint, he pointed to a satellite map on the wall with no clear labels, just a scatter of red dots and scribbled arrows. I nodded like he was making sense. I nodded, agreed, and silently prayed that I’d make it back out the gate.
The longer I worked with him, the more I realized Moonbeam’s campaign was a theater of contradictions. He’d send me out on runs loaded with more product than I’d ever thought I’d handle, all while dictating lectures about self-sufficiency punctuated with homophobic survey. His “employees,” a mix of hitchhikers, fugitives, and runaways, cohabited in trailers spaced out like checkpoints across the acres of scrub brush.
There was a hierarchy here, an unspoken pecking order that had the potential to turn deadly. I learned that by watching how they interacted with Moonbeam. One wrong word and the vibe shifted from Half-Baked to Lord of the Flies. The air would thicken, and everyone’s eyes would dart furtively. He leveraged their paranoia, spinning tales of government drones and undercover narcs, keeping everyone just scared enough to follow orders but not so scared they’d run.
Even so, I couldn’t deny the allure of becoming a critical component. The danger was seductive. Every time I pulled out of his gate with a luggage rack that could land me a federal sentence, I felt more alive than ever. All of the exhausting tedium of family life faded into obscurity there on the edge of consequence. The futility of my former drunkenness also evaporated. Moonbeam’s world was unstable, fickle, and erratic, but for a while it felt like I was supposed to be there.
It was the high of survival, of making it back to Kansas City after another run under the radar of cops, thirteen hours of heart thrumming, kratom fueled, gauntlet. Moonbeam’s voice would echo in my head, a twisted mantra: This is freedom, Brethren. This is righteous. And I believed it. I bought the backwards culture, the mad crusade, the blade of ruin, because anything felt better than facing the quiet, sober truth of who I really was.