#ihopejohnroberts

As he becomes increasingly drunk on vodka and Sprite served in the flimsy plastic-wrapped plastic cups that came with his cheap motel room, #IHopeJohnRoberts doesn't find himself led into moral error by the ladies his new hobo friend has brought over – but let's be honest, he probably will, especially since one of the ladies has just produced a spliff, which John hasn't tried since he was an undergrad at Harvard, and honestly that was mostly the shake and seeds the Harvard Square dealers sold to rich kids who didn't know any better.

It's not that hot in Kansas City today but it is very humid, so when he sees that the prostitute who is passing him the lit joint has taken her top off #IHopeJohnRoberts isn't even that surprised but just accepts the joint, takes a hit (not even coughing that much), and finishes his vodka and Sprite, feeling the crossfade spread pleasantly across his whole body and barely noticing as the topless woman curls up next to him on the motel room bed and presses her bare breasts against him.

#IHopeJohnRoberts now is completely crossfaded on vodka and weed and so is the topless woman next to him who incidentally is the same one that aroused him so much when he saw her earlier in another guy's room with clothespins on her nipples and his new hobo friend is doing something complicated to the other woman on the hotel room's tipped-forward cuck chair and did I mention that the Chief Justice is completely crossfaded and also please remember it's been a very long time since his wife left so I believe we should politely draw a curtain across the sordid scene for now. For now.

#IHopeJohnRoberts had a lovely very drunk and very high time with the woman who is not his wife and that she did that thing to him that his wife only would do on his birthday, and when he gathered his inebriated courage and asked if he could also do the thing to her that *no* lover had ever let him do before, she replied laughingly, "that's the only way I *can* do it, honey!", and then afterwards when they both had to go pee they played that kids' game where they crossed swords, and then went back to bed.

When he wakes up this morning after his stoned, passionate night with a woman who wasn't his wife, #IHopeJohnRoberts isn't too hung over and feels contented, not guilty, because she was so sweet and pretty and generous and creative in bed that he will remember it forever as the peak erotic experience of his life, and his only ambivalence is that he isn't sure whether that's in spite of her having a penis or because of it.

#IHopeJohnRoberts then falls back asleep, having not even opened his eyes, and then really truly awakens a couple hours later, and oh okay *there's* that hangover, ow, and he stumbles to the bathroom and pukes and rinses his mouth, and looks at himself numbly in the mirror and remembers more about last night, and oh yeah *there's* that religious guilt and conservative transphobia, and now he wants to throw up again, even before he realizes that everyone's gone and he's alone in the room and his new hobo friend has taken some of his clothes and most of his money (from his wallet and under his mattress, leaving only the stash hidden under the dirty towel in the closet), and oh my god his head hurts so badly and also his heart and also he suddenly has the trots.

#IHopeJohnRoberts still is hung over and struggling with moral ambivalence and also keeps remembering the thing with the clothespins that he thought he'd use on her but that she actually used on him.

#IHopeJohnRoberts decides that instead of continuing to lie in his motel room bed having a hungover moral crisis, he should go out and find some oatmeal or something soothing like that for breakfast, but when he opens the door he startles at the dead rat lying on the doorstep and stumbles and falls to one knee, skinning it badly and tearing his last remaining pair of pants, so he goes back inside and curls up on the bed again, blood from his knee staining the dirty sheets in a slowly widening circle.

As he lies on the cheap motel room bed, hung-over and nearly broke and bleeding from his knee and experiencing a dark night of the soul, #IHopeJohnRoberts falls back asleep and in a dream is visited by three rats, who remind him that he hasn't studied for an important test and also point out that he's naked in public and then chant that he's a failure and laugh at him scornfully, having somehow transformed into the shades of Antonin Scalia, his father, and his 1L Constitutional Law professor.

In his terrible dream, #IHopeJohnRoberts 's wife appears to him as he's standing in his old schoolyard worrying about the test he's unprepared for, and points at his nakedness and laughs and laughs and laughs and then walks away intimately arm in arm with Clarence and Ginny Thomas, heading towards a cheap motel exactly like the one he's currently asleep in.

#IHopeJohnRoberts 's terrible dream continues, with St. Peter appearing to him in a blaze of lithium-fire white light, asking whether he has completed all the Hail Marys the priest assigned him as penance for his anti-democracy rulings, and Gabriel standing behind Peter eagerly fingering his flaming sword as John nervously tries to think of an answer besides the truthful. "no, I blew it off."

This morning when he woke up #IHopeJohnRoberts realized Kagan and Barrett had squealed on him because his phone had 79 messages from people expressing concern, and when he looked out his bedroom window to see what kind of day it was he noticed several black Explorers parked down the block with men in dark glasses inside them, and so he just threw some clothes, a picture of his family, and the emergency cash they kept in a fake soup can into a duffle bag, pulled the brim of his favorite Bohemian Grove ballcap low over his face, and slipped out his back door and across his neighbor's yard, beginning his summer vacation earlier than planned but with a jolt of adrenaline and uncertainty that actually made him feel happy for the first time in quite a while.

This morning when he awoke on a sprung mattress in the 7th and K Street rent-by-the-hour motel room he paid cash for last night, #IHopeJohnRoberts retained yesterday's sense of giggly excitement at his unexpected escape from expectations, and that after disingenuously texting his assistant that he was taking the vacation his wife had scheduled to Martha's Vineyard, he then stepped without concern over the crushed dead rat someone or something had left on the threshold of his motel room, smashed his phone under his heel, dropped it in an outdoor waste can on top of the empty malt liquor bottles and used condoms and syringes, and, toting his duffel and wearing his Bohemian Grove ballcap, walked cheerfully, whistling, in the direction of the bus station, stopping at a used bookstore along the way for a slightly dog-eared paperback copy of Kerouac's "On the Road."

When he got to Union Station, #IHopeJohnRoberts understood that the best way for him not to be recognized or tracked was to travel by bus, so he found his way to the Greyhound/FlixBus area and bought a ticket for cash on the first bus to someplace reasonably far away, which is how he finds himself en route to Portland, Maine in a surprisingly comfortable seat next to a talkative, sprightly, older woman who immediately launches into a hilarious, hourslong explanation of the drama in her church and large family circle, all in some Eastern European language he does not understand.

#IHopeJohnRoberts falls into a pleasant sleep in his surprisingly comfy Greyhound bus seat, finally just letting all his anxieties fall away for a blissful while, and so doesn't notice that his bus to Portland isn't passing through Baltimore and Wilmington and then New York, but rather Frederick and Cumberland and Morgantown. #PWM #PDX

When his Greyhound bus finally stops somewhere long enough for a meal, #IHopeJohnRoberts is mildly puzzled because he doesn't remember there being a town called Columbus between D.C. and Portland, Maine, but ofc there are lots of Columbuses and he's so engrossed in his book (Kerouac's "On the Road") that he thinks no more about it and keeps his nose buried in his paperback while scarfing his hamburger and then gets back on the bus and continues reading as it speeds him on towards Indianapolis.

#IHopeJohnRoberts 's really pretty good-tasting lunch hamburger was topped with unwashed #cyclospora-tainted lettuce so that he spends several hours in the Greyhound bus's tiny lavatory instead of gazing out the big window, and therefore he continues not to realize that his secret independent trip to "Portland, Maine" has just taken him through Indianapolis and that he's now en route to Peoria.

Now #IHopeJohnRoberts 's intestinal upset continues, and that the TP in the tiny (and now smelly) bathroom on the Greyhound bus is super scratchy.

Yeah, the toilet tissue keeps ripping through, and the tiny Greyhound bus lavatory is out of soap. #IHopeJohnRoberts

#IHopeJohnRoberts 's Greyhound bus makes a long stop in Kansas City and he finally realizes he's going to Portland, Oregon and not Portland, Maine, and he feels really stupid both for his initial mistake and for not realizing it earlier, but also he's finally recovering from his intestinal problem and is super hungry, so he buys some spare ribs at a nearby barbecue joint filled with Black people near the bus station and oh my god it's so good he no longer even minds his accidental adventure and he stays there well after finishing his meal, just enjoying the music and watching people very unlike those he usually associates with but actually not so different, until the proprietor, a bald man with massive guns and wearing a pristine clean apron, very courteously explains that people are waiting for his table, and he apologizes and goes outside and stands on the sidewalk for a long while, savoring the sense of simply not giving any fucks at all about any of his usual concerns, and then he walks back to the bus station, confirms that his ticket will allow him to get on a later bus if he wants, fetches his small duffel bag and his paperback copy of "On The Road," and walks back out into the town, with no idea what he'll do next.