Detroit & Haiti Part II

This past weekend I was in Detroit performing at Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle.  It was a fantastic trip.  Or as fantastic a trip as is possible when spending 15 hours on Amtrak to get there and almost 18 hours on Greyhound to get back to NYC.  Unfortunately the trip ended with some terrible news for my family from Haiti.

The highlight of the trip going to Detroit was certainly the Amtrak bus.  To get from Toldeo, Ohio to Detroit via Amtrak requires usage of Amtrak’s bus service.  The bus was comfortable, on par with a Greyhound bus, but due to my bladder unable to hold itself for one more hour before arriving in Detroit I had to use the bus bathroom.

Someone of my size in transportation bathrooms (airplanes, Amtrak, buses) has to find a position where I can both lean against a wall to create stability against bumps and/or turbulence, but also in a position that facilitates urination.  It is a delicate balance that I have become expert at.  However, the Amtrak bus bathroom presented a previously unseen problem: anonymous urine.

As anyone who has ever used a bathroom on transportation before – the toilets are not free standing the way they are in regular bathrooms.  The are sort of portals in the middle of a steel shelf.  Well, as the bus driver drove stopped and started a mysterious liquid began pouring down from the steel shelf: anonymous urine.  Apparently the previous user of the bathroom had not perfect the lean and piss and had managed to get what felt, given the fear of getting it on my shoes and jeans, like a quart of their urine on the shelf.  All of a sudden my evacuation began to feel like an Indiana Jones movie where I had to finish my work and duck out of the bathroom before the urine poisoned me.  In this metaphor my sneaker would be playing the role of Indiana Jones’ hat.

I escaped the bathroom sans Golden Shower and made it to the Hampton Inn for a lovely 8:30-1145 AM sleep.  By the way Hampton Inn in Madison Heights, MI – can’t get a much better deal for $50/night.  Close to several restaurants, a movie theater and free Belgian waffles each morning.

I spent each late morning in Detroit at the movies, where matinees where $4.75 a piece – which is like crack to me (with Manhattan movies at their much more expensive prices being cocaine).  I went to see It’s Complicated and Youth In Revolt, the latter of which was apparently a private showing for just me – this is the sort of VIP treatment you get when you are a feature act at a Detroit comedy club I guess.

The shows were the best though.  Out of five shows I had 4.99 good ones.  The only blemish being the very last show, which featured two hecklers – one blond skank in front, whose boyfriend had neither the authority, nor the balls to tell her to shut up, and some frat dude in the back who made a gay joke, which I likened to something you would hear a high school JV football player say.  The crowd backed me against both.

And just so you know that math of a glorious feature act:

• pay – $300
• Hotel – $200
• transportation – $200 (including taxis – plane would have made this $400)
• assorted necessary food items (approx $150)

So as you can see my comedy career is in need of a Black Friday.  It should be noted that the reason for this was to be seen for headlining in 2011.  In that case your room is paid for, you get transportation to and from airport/train station/greyhound prison and you are more likely to sell merchandise as the top dog.  Not to mention a higher pay from the club.  So I hoped to make up the difference by selling my CDs, but then the Earthquake hit in Haiti and I decided the least I could do was give the money I make off of CDs to the Red Cross.

And thanks to the generosity of the people of Detroit, a city that is not exactly on easy street itself, I sold all my CDs before the last show of the week (previous high as a feature had been 15 in 6 shows, this time I sold 20 in 4 shows).  Probably half of those were because they wanted my CD and half were being charitable.  Either way I hope they enjoy them and am very thankful for their help.

The ride home on Greyhound (Detroit-Cleveland-Pittsburgh-Philadelphia-NYC) was interesting for several reasons:

• It was 17 hours and 20 minutes on Greyhound buses.  And I was sitting next to a crazy woman for half of it.
• Seriously 1030 am departure, 4 am arrival.  Really gross.
• Greyhound Stations have somehow managed to be near absolutely nothing edible in every city besides New York.  In Cleveland and Pittsburgh, not exactly tiny villages, the only eating options within sight were vending machines and snack bars that specialized in stale food and sold items like cereal, but not milk.  My Dad, a conspiracy theorist bordering on Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, thinks that the aviation industry has enough power to make bus and train travel inconvenient to encourage air travel.  Given my experiences with Amtrak and Greyhound it seems quite plausible.
• Greyhound Stations are how Cormac McCarthy should have envisioned a post apocalyptic future.  They are near nothing of significance, the most recent music playing was Hootie and The Blowfish, indicating that the blast occurred sometime in 1995 and the roving group of creatures known as Greyhound travellers have the diversity and desperation of people you’d expect to have survived an apocalyptic event – Asians and Mexicans who have come from afar, black people, white people, and one giant mix of them who shall lead them.
• Arriving at Port Authority at 4 am on Sunday I was so delirious that I could have almost been convinced to become a runaway teenage prostitute.  I can only imagine the actual runaways that arrive at Port Authority on these buses.

Unfortunately, the trip ended on a sad note.  When I turned on my phone late into the trip I had a message from my brother that my Uncle Henri had died in Haiti, as a result of the Earthquake.  Right now my Aunt Denise and My Uncle Maurice are safe.  My Aunt Adeline is still unaccounted for.

A few days ago we received word that Uncle Maurice, who is in his early 90s – my Dad’s oldest brother had been in his house when it collapsed.  Uncle Maurice is a relatively feeble man, obvious given his age, but we had not received word whether Uncle Henri, my Dad’s younger brother and closest in age of all his syblings was in the house as well.  As it turns out Uncle Maurice survived the Earthquake, but Uncle Henri did not.  A picture was taken of him to confirm this before he was brought to a “morgue,” which may or may not amount to a mass grave.  We don’t actually know.

My Dad is rather stoic when it comes to death, but there is no doubt that this has been tough for him, both in personal loss and in seeing his native country basically blown up by a natural disaster.  My Uncle Henri and Aunt Adeline were/are my Godparents and were by far the most frequent visitors to my house form my Dad’s side of the family.  When they were children my father shared a bed with Uncle Henri, and if this did not speak to their closeness enough, my older brother is named Henri.

From my perspective my Uncle Henri was also the “coolest” of my Haitian relatives.  It seems that the younger my Haitian relatives got the easier they were/are to relate to.  For example my late Uncle Jean had the countenance of a dictator with an unpleasant thought.  This may have been just reserved for me because he had been the tallest member of the family at 6’4″ before I arrived.  Further down the line was my father who had a sense of humor, but one that seemed to stop at Red Skelton and The Smothers Brothers.  Then my Uncle Henri, the youngest of the Cauvin men of my father’s generation was the one who would come over and talk NBA hoops and was definitely the easiest laugh.  My family’s loss is just one of thousands of sad stories, and at 76 my Uncle Henri certainly was not someone “taken too soon,” at least statistically.  However, it is tragic nonetheless.

My brother is going to Haiti with my cousin Gregory today.  They will try to persuade/assist my surviving relatives to go to the U.S. and hopefully find my other Aunt.  Good luck and safety to both of them.