It’s only about 4.5 hours from Pittsburgh to Detroit, where I was stopping in to see my good friends Amy Jane and Graham. However, I needed a negative COVID test before I could get there.

I got the COVID test on Friday, and mid-afternoon on Saturday I set off, heading vaguely for Cleveland with no real desire to see Cleveland or anything in it.

I tooled around Cleveland for a bit, decided “screw it” and left for Sandusky, which is home to Cedar Point, a massive theme park that, needless to say, was not open.

I spent Saturday night in Sandusky, and Sunday meandering slowly along the shores of Lake Erie headed vaguely toward Toledo. I could expect my COVID results back either Sunday or Monday, and hoped for Sunday, so I could head straight on toward Detroit. The results didn’t come. I did find a charming lighthouse:

At some point I see a sign for the African Wildlife Safari Park where you can drive through and feed the animals, with a giant picture of a giraffe. That seems reasonably COVID-friendly and I like feeding animals, so why not?

The park featured mostly non-African animals and zero giraffes.

In Toledo, I visited the National Museum of the Great Lakes, which would be a lot better if the actual boats were open to explore. The museum itself isn’t bad if you like exhibits about all the people who have died on the Great Lakes.

On Monday afternoon, my test results came back negative for COVID (holla), so I set off for Detroit, filled with optimism. Along the way, I stopped for gas. As I stepped out of my car, I noticed the car next to me had its bumper attached with duct tape. No less than fourteen pairs of eyes turned to stare at me as if to ask “what the fuck is this white boy doing here”? When I went inside the station, the man made change behind the thick bulletproof glass, then slowly and deliberately lit a joint and blew a puff of marijuana directly into the glass while making hard eye contact.

Respect.

Amy Jane and Graham are two of my favorite people in the world, and their house reflects well on them. It has brick and stained glass and leaded glass, and it’s three stories of unmitigated good decisions.

As I write this, I’m sitting in their second dining room which we don’t use for dining. Joe Biden’s comforting smile is at three o’clock. To my right is a shrine, to my left is a Christmas tree and a record player, above the table is an enormous chandelier with Mardi Gras beads, behind me is the yoga studio. Around the corner is the portion of the wall dedicated to cat portraits of Nadine.

This house is magical, somewhat like Narnia, in that there’s a lot more hidden inside the wardrobe than you’d expect. Conservatively, I think there are about 112 rooms, not counting closets. There are really only two downsides:

Downstairs is their beautifully decorated movie room, resplendent with painted walls and pictures of whales. You can’t help but walk in and feel calmer, happier, more at peace with yourself and place in the universe. However, their television is – well, originally I said it was the size of an iPad, but in retrospect, it’s probably closer to an Nokia flip phone.

That’s how small their television is. Just imagine sitting on a couch with a Nokia flip phone nailed to the wall 12 feet away while you’re trying to watch Queer Eye. AJ and Graham tried to argue the great benefits of how they’re able to pick their TV up and take it upstairs if they want to watch something there. Here’s the truth: they came over to my house to watch Game of Thrones back when they lived in Seattle. They know what’s up. And while they claim to be happy with their TV their eyes tell me the awful truth.

The other downside is this being an old house the stairs are hella creaky and if you were a teenager trying to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, you’d never be able to.

I settle in at once. My bedroom door has a pair of nunchucks hanging on the knob, which is fucking sweet:

They also got me a Detroit care package:

My room is Disney-themed, which is ironic since I’ve never been to any Disney theme park. Not sure how the nunchucks fit in. Also the bedspread is covered in pineapples. I have subsequently learned that apparently, pineapples are a secret code for swingers. So apparently if you want to let the neighborhood know to come over for a key party, you just leave a pineapple outside your door and everyone knows what’s what.

I did think it was a little odd in my situation given that I’m currently single, and you definitely can’t be a swinger if you’re single.

But since then, we’ve just been hanging out and they’ve been tour guiding me around Detroit, which is a beautiful city filled with friendly people and amazing architecture. (Ex: I went outside because I needed to move my car to let the tree removal guy into the driveway, and the neighbor across the street waved at me and immediately said I was welcome to park my car in front of his house. People are just very chill here, very different from Seattle)

Graham and Amy Jane immediately started working their voodoo magic on me. Inside of a day they were feeding me fake-meat Beyond burgers and I was doing yoga and watching Queer Eye on the Nokia flip phone.

Today we went to the Henry Ford museum, which is incredible, and features things like the actual bus where Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, and the actual chair that Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he got capped by John Wilkes Booth, featuring actual Abraham Lincoln’s blood. Also, trains:

Very, very big trains.

Visit Detroit.