I’ll meet an Elvis impersonator. But not a shallow one, who just dresses the part like a Halloween costume. A real Elvis impersonator, who does the drugs, prays the prayers, sweats the sweat, and lives in a house full of shag carpeting and creepy ceramics. I won’t even know he’s an Elvis impersonator until I see the TCB lighting bolt tattoo on the back of his neck. I won’t ask him to shake his hips.

I’ll be served fried chicken so fresh that the skin will still be bubbling. It will gross me out a little, but it will be delicious.

“So what do you think of the south?” a woman will ask me. “It’s beautiful,” I’ll respond. “The kudzu is amazing.” She’ll narrow her eyes at me and hiss, “Kudzu drove my daddy to ruin.” Then she’ll walk away. An old man sitting on a bench will look up, scowl at me, and spit tobacco on my sneakers.

I’ll meet the Devil at a crossroads, and he’ll offer to buy my soul in exchange for the ability to play guitar like Robert Johnson. I’ll respond, “No thanks, but if you can get The Tangential as many hits as the Huffington Post, you’ve got yourself a deal!” He’ll say, “Sorry, bro, I don’t fuck with Arianna Huffington,” and disappear.

Someone will try, and fail, to teach me a dance invented by a Southern rapper whose name is the same as the song that the dance is set to.

At a bar, a guy in a trucker hat will come up and bet me a drink that I can’t choose a decent song on the jukebox. I accept his bet and dig a dollar out of my wallet. I choose “Lucky Old Sun” by Jerry Lee Lewis. The man will cock his head, listen for a few seconds, and offer his hand. “That was a safe bet,” he’ll say. “A little too safe. Let’s call this one even.” He’ll walk away, and I’ll never see him again.

I’ll trip over a dead armadillo.

I’ll go into a Starbucks and order a venti iced coffee. The barista, a middle-aged woman as tall as I am and twice as wide, will smile and say, “Here you go, sugar.” I’ll tip her two dollars.

Someone will say, “Well, well, well! Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Yankee!” That someone will be a woman running a karaoke mic, after I request Neil Diamond’s “Heartlight.”

I’ll make a reference to Faulkner. Someone will then ask me about it, and I’ll awkwardly be forced to admit that I’ve only read maybe a grand total of 100 pages of Faulkner in my life.

I’ll flap my t-shirt in a futile attempt to evaporate the sweat, and say, “It sure is toasty.” Then I’ll ask, rhetorically, when I turned into a person who says things like, “It sure is toasty.”

A man wearing suspenders will ask me what I do. I’ll tell him that I’m a journalist. He’ll ask if I’m going to write about my trip. I’ll say that I probably won’t write any journalism about it, but I’ve already made up some stories about it that I published on a creative writing blog before I even left Minnesota. He’ll nod slowly, and there will be an awkward silence. Then he’ll ask, “You get paid for that?”

– Jay Gabler just bought a plane ticket from Minneapolis to Memphis

Photo by Hoving (Creative Commons)