left a Hispanic woman sniffs constantly, every fourth
or fifth breath. It’s really incredible. If the seats reclined, she could lie back and the fluid would drain down her throat, but they don’t. You get a two-inch tilt that’s barely noticeable and she doesn’t have a tissue.
A sign on a mountainside says ‘Endless Caves’ but nothing can compete with the endless sniffing. Many hours have passed and many more are yet to come. Since the book I was reading on Darwin brought on a crisis of memory and self-loathing, I decide to go back to my book on the South.
Tobacco, it tells me, introduced to the whites by the Indians (some small revenge, I suppose, for the theft of their land), soon became the major crop in the South. Tobacco was labour intensive. The first people to work in the fields were indentured servants from England who worked off their passage and were then set free, at which point they became expensive to hire.
Enter the slave. You could lease an Englishman for a year or two, but a black man you could buy for a lifetime. The outlay was higher but once purchased you could literally work him to death. I remember when a movie of mine was being shot in Atlanta, arriving late to my hotel and being ushered to my room by a young, gay African-American man. When I asked him where I could buy cigarettes, he told me it was too late and offered me one of his. I thanked him effusively. ‘No, no,’ he said, waving my gratitude aside with a complicit smile, ‘I too am a slave to nicotine.’ How ironic, I now think, seeing a larger meaning, that African-Americans who continue to smoke in America are in fact continuing a 400-year tradition of slavery to the deceptively beautiful plant.
The bus stops and about half the occupants leap out to smoke. It’s quite comic this. Sometimes the bus stops for only thirty seconds. The true addict gets out none the less, lights up, sucks feverishly on his cigarette, then re-enters the bus, coughing. This, however, is a longer stop. I haven’t smoked in a long while, but suddenly, I have the urge to have just one. I go to the mixed-race couple and burn a cigarette. We sit in the sun, our backs to
a dilapidated convenience store. She is a Certified Nursing Assistant and he’s in the building trade, bricklaying, concrete. I ask him how he feels about moving to the South.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘as a man of colour …’
He takes a drag on his cigarette, looks off into the distance, exhales, and lets the smoke drift off with the rest of his sentence.
CHAPTER TWO
An Alligator Up My Arse in Roanoke, Virginia
About twelve hours after I get on the bus in New York, I arrive in Roanoke, Virginia, and my buttocks are numb. I have decided to travel only during the day and to stay in the best possible hotels at night. Roanoke, known as the Capital of the Blue Ridge, is a town on the Norfolk and Western Railway. It advertises itself as a centre for ‘transportation, distribution, trade, manufacturing, health care, entertainment, recreation, attractions and conventions.’ As I take a three-minute cab ride across town, I don’t see much evidence of any of these. The place seems a little beaten.
The best hotel in Roanoke, the Patrick Henry, is a grand, faded downtown hotel not far from the railway station, which, having spawned the place, now seems curiously irrelevant. A large lobby with antique tables and Fifties sofas is only slightly marred by modern signage. Behind the desk is a woman in her early twenties with five earrings in each ear. She is short and slight and has reddish brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wears a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and has a rueful, mischievous look, as if she’s acting a role and is slightly embarrassed by it. Her name is Tasha.
I ask her which room in the hotel is the most luxurious. It’s the Governor’s Suite at $250 a night. The next best is the Honeymoon Suite, which she’ll let me have at a special rate of $99. She
or fifth breath. It’s really incredible. If the seats reclined, she could lie back and the fluid would drain down her throat, but they don’t. You get a two-inch tilt that’s barely noticeable and she doesn’t have a tissue.
A sign on a mountainside says ‘Endless Caves’ but nothing can compete with the endless sniffing. Many hours have passed and many more are yet to come. Since the book I was reading on Darwin brought on a crisis of memory and self-loathing, I decide to go back to my book on the South.
Tobacco, it tells me, introduced to the whites by the Indians (some small revenge, I suppose, for the theft of their land), soon became the major crop in the South. Tobacco was labour intensive. The first people to work in the fields were indentured servants from England who worked off their passage and were then set free, at which point they became expensive to hire.
Enter the slave. You could lease an Englishman for a year or two, but a black man you could buy for a lifetime. The outlay was higher but once purchased you could literally work him to death. I remember when a movie of mine was being shot in Atlanta, arriving late to my hotel and being ushered to my room by a young, gay African-American man. When I asked him where I could buy cigarettes, he told me it was too late and offered me one of his. I thanked him effusively. ‘No, no,’ he said, waving my gratitude aside with a complicit smile, ‘I too am a slave to nicotine.’ How ironic, I now think, seeing a larger meaning, that African-Americans who continue to smoke in America are in fact continuing a 400-year tradition of slavery to the deceptively beautiful plant.
The bus stops and about half the occupants leap out to smoke. It’s quite comic this. Sometimes the bus stops for only thirty seconds. The true addict gets out none the less, lights up, sucks feverishly on his cigarette, then re-enters the bus, coughing. This, however, is a longer stop. I haven’t smoked in a long while, but suddenly, I have the urge to have just one. I go to the mixed-race couple and burn a cigarette. We sit in the sun, our backs to
a dilapidated convenience store. She is a Certified Nursing Assistant and he’s in the building trade, bricklaying, concrete. I ask him how he feels about moving to the South.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘as a man of colour …’
He takes a drag on his cigarette, looks off into the distance, exhales, and lets the smoke drift off with the rest of his sentence.
CHAPTER TWO
An Alligator Up My Arse in Roanoke, Virginia
About twelve hours after I get on the bus in New York, I arrive in Roanoke, Virginia, and my buttocks are numb. I have decided to travel only during the day and to stay in the best possible hotels at night. Roanoke, known as the Capital of the Blue Ridge, is a town on the Norfolk and Western Railway. It advertises itself as a centre for ‘transportation, distribution, trade, manufacturing, health care, entertainment, recreation, attractions and conventions.’ As I take a three-minute cab ride across town, I don’t see much evidence of any of these. The place seems a little beaten.
The best hotel in Roanoke, the Patrick Henry, is a grand, faded downtown hotel not far from the railway station, which, having spawned the place, now seems curiously irrelevant. A large lobby with antique tables and Fifties sofas is only slightly marred by modern signage. Behind the desk is a woman in her early twenties with five earrings in each ear. She is short and slight and has reddish brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wears a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and has a rueful, mischievous look, as if she’s acting a role and is slightly embarrassed by it. Her name is Tasha.
I ask her which room in the hotel is the most luxurious. It’s the Governor’s Suite at $250 a night. The next best is the Honeymoon Suite, which she’ll let me have at a special rate of $99. She
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