From Mark Garcia's ebook "Totally Gone West", chronicling his journeys with high school friend Michael James Gray.

"A rambling gambling man" -Bob Seger

The next day we ventured into the city of eternal phony light. We watched the highly stressed machine-blessed gamblers and gawked at the highly undressed unaffordable waitresses and felt and looked completely out of place. Meaning we didn't really have much money. (I should mention here that we had Mike's brother’s gas card with us, which was great but we would pay for it since we were both working for him before we left and would have to work it all off when we got back).

That night or morning beneath the ripe cheesy neon moons we first saw him. I don't remember all the details, but the people he came there with had obviously deserted him (this should have been our first clue?). We witnessed a confrontation of some kind and a girl throwing things out of a car. His things, which consisted of an old blanket and some dilapidated tennis shoes. Other than that he had the green pocket t-shirt and flared bottom blue jeans on his back and ass, respectively. He stood there cursing a while and then came towards us, with that moxy macho strut, you know, part loose, lazy, chin out, disco sucks so why do I walk this way. Part small town white trash, there's something stiff in my pants and I bet you can guess what it is, seesaw of a walk. "Call me Bob Seger," he said. So we did. He said he was from Ohio and had quite an accent. He was about the same height and build though much younger with a few extra pounds of flab which the real Bob Seger would discover somewhere in the early nineties. He had thick dark hair and a beard. His face was similar too, round and very Norwegian but like it had been through tougher times (again discovered later) than the original. He said, "Yep, that's right, Bob Seger, you got any smoke, where ya' headed"? Anyway, Alias Bob (which he will be referred to from now on) latched on, rambled on and on and of course we took him in as our own. He was the perfect candidate for our campaign, of which there was no agenda except to never pass up any experience, hitchhiker, liquor store or higher opportunity. The only thing we passed was… never mind.

Alias Bob seemed to understand all of this without question. He was not a complicated person. He had that misplaced male machismo and loved to hear himself talk. Of course, like most people, if you heard only the things of depth and/or importance and discarded the rest he would be the strong silent type. I was never really sure what was going on inside him. I don't think he did either. But it must have been pretty heavy for someone to lose or give up their 'real' identity.

That night we bought some L.S.D. from this guy who looked like the consummate hipster. He said it was good, which turned out to be an understatement for very soon afterward we were all trying to find our way out of a casino. Way too many lights and people. We got out and proceeded to walk and walk and walk. We walked to what seemed like the outskirts of the city and a smaller neighborhood bar.

Actually, we had seen a sign that said 'Lady Mud Wrestlers'. It had spoken to us and we were drawn to it like flies to a web or more like tripping lonely males to lady mud wrestlers. We entered and I realized then how high I really was. The bar was filled with others who seemed to be of our kind but had their feet planted somewhere closer to earth. It made me feel like I was an alien and that everyone there knew I was. We had a beer, waited and then forgot about the Mud Wrestlers (it was probably an old sign or for a different night). We decided to leave and go back from whence we came and then realized how far we had really walked. On the way there we were just coming on and had super powers but now we were starting to mellow out and it was like walking on an endless treadmill. The only thing that kept us going were the hookers, who actually worked on the streets back then. "Do you wanna party?" Over and over, block by block. We kept walking. We had no funds for such activities and besides our physical bodies were useless, transparent (we were all altered mind). But it was fun giving them crap by asking them to pay us.

We finally got back to where our car was (why didn't we drive, earlier?) and decided we were going to leave this wicked town where we were tossed out of casinos because of how we looked, judged by how much we didn't spend and where people of all ages walked around with this crazed look in their eyes.

We told Alias Bob that we were going to take him to a place with more real partying, more real woman and more real beautiful scenery than any other place on earth, really, and dared ourselves to make it to "The Little Bear" bar in Evergreen Colorado by prime time that evening. It was possible considering we would gain an hour on the way.

It was at this point that we discovered one of Alias Bob’s considerable talents. We went into a grocery store to get our usual lunchmeat and white bread, and as we were driving away, he started taking things out of his pants. Hamburger, buns, ketchup, etcetera. He was a master thief. We thought, "This is great!" and then had another thought we shared with him. "If you're going to steal food, why not take steaks instead of burgers?" We never ate cheap meat again! It was quite amazing what this man could fit in his pants, considering what he alluded to being down there already. He was very good, I never saw him do it. "I've never gotten caught," he said, which of course is the last thing you should say. Anyway, with our stomachs celebrating their new upgrade, we left Vegas in a flashbacking trail of lights. As we hit the desert behind us a bruised orange piss yellow radioactive glow was swallowing Satan's city.

I don't know how but we made it back to Evergreen in time to shower at this place that had public showers. Mike and I had used it before to disguise the fact that we we're living on the road. I mean, we usually told people, especially woman that we were travelers because of the adventurous romantic no-strings nature of it, but the smell of it was quite different and for our new companion it was definitely needed, though having no other clothes it was somewhat fruitless. (Soon afterwards he stuffed some socks and pants down his pants.) Mike and I had taken a lead from Alias Bob and come up with our own counterparts. Mike was Alias Dan Fogelberg and I was Alias Stevie Winwood (hey, remember this was the 1970s). Now these were stars that we had been told and/or thought that we resembled, faintly. Actually, Mike looked more like James Taylor during his 'Mud Slide Slim' period but we had gone to a Fogelberg concert a while back and the girls were all yelling and propositioning him while he was on stage so I think that influenced Mike's decision. For my part someone like Bob Dylan, Neil Young or Leonard Cohen would have been closer to my musical/lyrical leanings but then again Stevie was more of a ladies' man. There was a certain swagger to our walk when we took on these personas and others seemed to look at us differently. Maybe it was our large-as-planets pupils or the fact that we were out-of-towners. Or could it be that we projected our delusions through our desire to be more than ourselves, to be ’somebodys’?

As we approached the bar we began to feel, sense, then see the carnival carnal carpet magic that was 'The Little Bear'. It wasn't that big though it was hard to tell because it was always ready to burst. The capacity sign read: Room for one more! There were two floors. The main bar was on the first, to the left in the center of the room, and was round and huge. There were stairs going up at the far end to the balcony on the second floor. Both bars were constantly busy and we made frequent trips outside to drink our own since it was very expensive inside. The stage was on the first floor centered on the right wall directly across from the main bar. On the stage the always-live band was always playing loud rockin' blues, country and/or boogie. Dancing, sweating, drinking music or the only kind thought to be so in the late '70s foothills of Colorado. The music was the center, the source of the constant motion, commotion, emotion and perpetual yelling drinking laughing drinking fighting drinking flirting drinking grinding. The band and the audience were like part of a massive group orgy building to a simultaneous climax as each hour passed. When they stopped playing the crowd kept going, not quite prepared for such an abrupt finish.

After the bar closed we ended up driving around curvaceous mountain roads with a couple similarly built young ladies. (I could rave about the pleasures I received in the back of their old station wagon but the truth be told I was pretty numb, in fact though I had many such encounters back then I don't think I really felt my first sexual experience until I was sober and the revolution was long over.) We made arrangements to meet them the next day at a concert at the 'Red Rocks' amphitheater. It is an amazing place to see a concert. Built right into the foothills, the concerts were all general admission, which meant getting there early and partying all day in the sun. Then, the next thing you know, your listening to the music of a band you love, under the stars.

That night Bob told us a little more (very little) about himself. The people that left him in Vegas were his (old) girlfriend and his best friend, now man and wife by his account. He also told us his real name was Roger Williams, which was actually the name of another singer though one he had probably not heard of. We stayed at a campsite just down the road from 'The Little Bear' and Alias Bob showed us another of his un-measurable talents. The man could pee, a long, long way. We were standing on this bridge that went parallel to the creek running below. There were steel bars on the sides of the bridge to keep people from tumbling in. He peed over the bars and across the creek in a perfect arc that went on and on, a whole lifelong minute. Some people are born to achieve such heights, such precise stability that the rest of us can only look on in jealous wonder.

We eventually left Colorado and went to Grand Forks, North Dakota and the "River Queen" bar where I knew some people. Bob came along. Then we headed home to our small hometown of Mahtomedi, Minnesota, which I like to lovingly describe as "like a tunnel cramped and dark, where tough guys don't dance and dreams shall never spark," and again Bob came along. Part of his charm immediately wore off when we got back to the family fridges. Once we were back Mike worked for his brother (to pay off that gas card, don't you know). Actually, I was working for him for a different reason, a good laugh. He had his own pool building company and they liked having me around to do things that I didn't comprehend like standing in the middle of this huge pool trying to suck up tiny drops of water with this huge pool-sucking machine.

Mike and I did not have our own place so we were sharing him with people we were already spreading ourselves thin with. One day he just left, and we were relieved. I always felt that he had someone waiting for him back home that he was trying to avoid, or maybe he was just prolonging heartache. To be slightly less honest, we did miss him, though for about a month afterwards we kept expecting him to show up at one of our doors with that sad (macho) puppy dog look on his face looking for warmth, a smoke and somewhere to cook his stolen meat.

Recently I found a napkin, fairly well preserved, with these words on it: "Best Wishes, Mark and Mike. Bob Seger." How amazing! An autograph from an imposter. I remember him giving it to us, early on when we were on the road. He must have thought we could sell it or frame it at some future date when we were really hard up. I refer to it as exhibit D for delusional, oh yes.

To read (download) the total ebook "Totally Gone West" by Mark A. Garcia and also receive the accompanying 3 song MP3, go to www.imarriedanidiot.com and click on the book photo. It's a steal. Totally!