How to Take a Road Trip, Step 2: Be Sure to Pack Snacks

When I was in college, my choice in snacks for any long drive centered around a variety of stimulants to keep me  from getting bored and to keep me awake. While my choices were all technically legal, none of them were good for me. My typical daytime line up was Hot Tamales candies, Coke, and the occasional menthol cigarette (Kools). At night, I would often trade the Coke for Mountain Dew for the higher caffeine content, but otherwise keep alternating between Hot Tamales and cigarettes.

It is not that I found driving itself boring, but I still wanted something “to do” in addition to driving. In the age before podcasts and when books on tape were just something my parents checked out of the library for themselves, I would bring a pile of my favorite cassette tapes or a stack of CDs to sing along to. If it was a trip I had been planning for a while, I would often make mix tapes or (later) mix CDs tailored to the occasion.

I would also listen to radio stations whenever possible, although on most of my frequent routes (Tucson to Phoenix, Tucson to Los Angeles, Tucson to Las Vegas) you would lose all FM radio stations for significant stretches of desert. The one exception to these dead zones were Christian radio stations, which always managed to make it through the atmosphere in what was otherwise a vast sea of empty static. I would also occasionally try to listen to anything I could find on the AM dial, but this frequency seemed reserved for angry old white men shouting. I would opt to turn back to the static.

One night during my freshman year of college, my friend Mo suggested we jump in her truck and drive from Tucson to Los Angeles. When I asked why, she suggested it would be great to go to the beach and put our feet in the ocean. Being unable to argue with this logic, I prepared to pack a duffel bag to throw in the back of the truck. When I asked what I should bring to eat, she asked what food I had in my dorm room.

“Uh, peanut butter. And a bag of mini Milky Way chocolate bars.” I responded, surveying the sparsely populated part of my dorm bookshelf I had been using as a “pantry.”

“Great. That will work.” Mo convinced me.

I remember driving through the night, dipping the small chocolate bars into the jar of JIF whenever I got hungry. We rotated tapes as we went, making it through at least one Cure album and one Indigo Girls album by the time we made it to the beach. Whomever was the passenger would light cigarettes for whomever was driving. I swear I remember our trip through the Sonoran and then the Mojave deserts being filled with fog as we made our way to LA. But now I wonder if the fog is a substitute in my memory for all of the things I could not see ahead of me.

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During the decade I spent in a relationship with Dan, my now ex-husband, it was almost always my job to pack all of the snacks for any road trip. This was despite the fact Dan was rarely gainfully employed for a majority of the time we were together, and definitely had more time on his hands to do ANYTHING, including snack packing.

No matter what I packed, once the road trip was underway, at some point (or at multiple points) during the trip, Dan would refuse eat anything we had brought with us. Instead, he would insist we stop somewhere to buy food. And frequently the first stop was not good enough: wherever it was and whatever they had, it wasn’t what he wanted and we would have to stop again somewhere else.

Dan would often get a taste for something out of the blue, like Starbucks coffee. Despite the ubiquitous nature of the Bux, sometimes there just wasn’t a location anywhere along the route we would happen to be driving. Instead of accepting this fact, as one would expect a 30-something adult to do, Dan would whine about whatever the desired food/drink in question was until this desire was met.

As the years went on, I spent more time before each trip talking with Dan about what food he thought he would like to have on the drive. I would go shopping a week in advance and prepare as much of the food as I could the day before we were scheduled to leave. This planning was all in the hope that when the day of the trip arrived, I could simply put things into the cooler and then put the cooler in the car. I fantasized about making a trip where all of the food I had made in advance would be deemed sufficient upon the day of our departure. I dreamed about making one leg of a drive where he would just eat what we packed, and I didn’t have to lose hours of time making extra stops and spending extra money. But none of those things ever happened.

This confluence of circumstances would often lead to me reaching my breaking point in some roadside rest station or truck stop. Often it was late at night, because no matter how often I tried to leave for our trips early or on time, Dan always spent time doing other things on the day of our voyage which would delay our departure. In a fit of angry frustration, I would often raise my voice, throw my hands up, stamping my feet. When we finally got whatever Dan wanted, I would feel embarrassed as I walked back to the car: I hated losing my temper, especially in public. I would disparage myself, unable to see I was not the person acting like an unreasonable child.

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I would reach the polar opposite of candy and cigarettes as road trip fuel during the summer of 2015, during one of the last road trips I would take with Dan.

We had moved to Columbus, Ohio after I graduated with my MBA and landed a job with the firm. I had also recently passed all four sections of the CPA exam. I felt like I had reached the next phase of my adult life, whatever that was. I had known I had wanted children for many years, but other parts of my life had taken priority, like transitioning genders and finding my career path. Having figured out the career thing and my transition being seven years in the rear view mirror, I thought kids were the next goal to achieve.

There are many trans men who have stopped hormone therapy temporarily in order to conceive and give birth to children. I thought I was ready to join their ranks. Part of me felt guilty for not immediately opting to adopt. But part of me longed to see pieces, traits of family members I loved (especially my father) reflected in my potential new child. Knowing my brother was likely never going to have biological children of his own, I thought of myself as having the one shot to carry on the Drew biological legacy.

As I was not out as trans at work, I wasn’t sure what would happen to my employment if I actually managed to get pregnant. I had heard of other trans guys in the same position applying for time off with their employers under the guise of adoption (or saying their partners were pregnant, if their partners happen to have a female gender identity). They would contribute any weight gain to lifestyle choices. Supposedly, according to these anecdotes, this usually worked: they would come back from their time off, baby born, and then ride off into the sunset as proud fathers.

I was actually very scared about what would happen if this tact didn’t work for me: I was certain I would either lose my job or (maybe worse) have the future of my career turn from a potential path to partner to a dead end of promotionless toil.

But, after nine years in my abusive relationship with Dan, I had gotten so good at ignoring my own fears and desires that I ignored this one too. I started taking the necessary steps to potentially, at some point in the next several months, become pregnant.

Once I decided to try to have a baby, Dan took an immediate obsessive interest in anything that I was going to ingest. After years of our food and diets revolving around whatever he wanted to eat (I actually became vegan initially because he decided he was going to), this sharp change in routine was jarring to me. Overnight, the house began to pile up with supplements and anything vegan that also contained folic acid. I was told to stop drinking altogether, even though I was several weeks away from being at any point where I might actually be fertile.

On the road trip in question, when I asked for something to eat part way into our drive, the choices I was given were sprouted lentils or some Brazil nuts. I don’t mind eating healthfully, but neither of these excited me. Still, loathe to start a fight with Dan, I began popping handfuls of sprouted lentils into my mouth as I drove down the highway.

Along with the food on that road trip, the other thing that started happened was Dan started asking me how I was feeling. He started asking me all of the time, several times a day. While not necessarily a negative in all relationship circumstances, this change in behavior made me realize he had hardly ever asked me that same question during the past nine years. It only mattered now because my physical well-being might result in something he wanted (a kid).

Even if I said I wasn’t feeling well, I was upset at something he had done, or I was stressed out about money or work, his behavior didn’t change. But he did always have reasons at the ready as to what *I* had done wrong to make myself feel that way, and how I had better snap out of it because nothing besides a perfectly positive and serene mindset would be conducive to conceiving. This, of course, never made me feel better. But it did lead to me pretending more often that I was fine when I was often in fact very much not fine.

In the midst of all of this unfolding, I had met Basil. As we had began dating, I was delighted by being with someone who actually cared about how I was feeling all of the time. As Basil is a fundamentally kind and empathetic person, he often knew when I wasn’t okay, and quickly came to understand what things made me happy, what things made me stressed, and what things made me scared. Whenever we spent time together, he gave unto me a thousand kindnesses. Sometimes this was helping me carry in the groceries. Sometimes this was making me organic hair pomade from scratch so I wouldn’t have to spend so much money on commercially produced pomade. Sometimes it was listening to me talk about my dreams and fears.

After months of dealing with conception nonsense while simultaneously falling in love with Basil, I suddenly started to develop compassion for myself. I knew what I had to do: put my dreams of parenthood back on hold so that one day I could be the best version of myself for my future children. It turns out I wasn’t as far along in my self-development as I had thought.

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Basil usually makes all of the road trip food these days. Being the amazing husband and thoughtful human being he is, food in the car isn’t limited to long drives. If he is coming to meet me somewhere after a day of work or an appointment and knows it has been a while since I have eaten, he will bring me a tasty treat to eat: a veggie burger, avocado toast, cold-pressed juice, or some other vegan delight.

We often pack a cooler on our trips: it has a designated spot in the back seat of the Camry, right next to where we set up memory foam cushions for the dogs to sit on. If we stop along the way, it is for a bathroom break for one of us or the dogs. Any other stop is usually for something we have planned in advance, like an organic co-op we love, or because we need gas.

I usually drive the whole way. I would rather do the driving, and Basil would rather not, so it works out perfectly. When Aunt Terry was getting to know Basil, she would point out things like this and remind us “how well-suited” we are for one another. And she was, of course, correct.

As I drive on our road trips now, I have the pleasure of reaching for Basil’s hand, instead of a cigarette or some candy. I look forward to the long road ahead of us and feel so very lucky Basil has agreed to come along for the ride with me.