Dean Moriarty Timeline and Summary

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• Dean comes east, interested in intellectual pursuits.
• He goes out drinking and meets Carlo Marx.
• Dean is in Denver, sleeping with both Camille and Marylou.
• He meets up with Sal and Carlo and they all go out together.
• He and Carlo take drugs and try to connect to each other’s souls while Sal watches. Or sleeps. They’re not really sure.
• Dean is with Carlo in a stolen car in Central City.
• He sort of searches for his father in Denver.
• Dean was apparently in Sal’s home at New York, but leaves right before Sal returns.
• After he gets a letter from Sal, Dean shows up in New York, along with Marylou and Ed Dunkel.
• He, Sal, Ed, and Marylou drive furniture to Sal’s brother’s new house.
• Dean, Sal, Ed, and Marylou wash dishes to pay for their food.
• Dean guns it to Virginia in ten hours.
• Along the way he insists that he and Sal know God and time and everything will be OK.
• He gets a speeding ticket.
• He is unable to explain his decisions to Carlo before they leave for New Orleans.
• Dean convinces Sal to have sex with Marylou while he watches, but Sal bails out.
• Dean has some cuts from a physical fight with Marylou.
• They all take off for New Orleans.
• He convinces Marylou to keep sleeping with him once he goes back to Camille in San Francisco.
• Dean is arrested for speeding…on the wrong side of the road.
• He picks up a Jewish hitchhiker and drives him to Testament.
• Dean tells the story of how he lost his virginity and makes sexual advances toward Marylou while driving.
• Dean arrives in New Orleans along with Sal, Marylou, and Ed.
• Despite all the drama at the Lees’ house, Dean just wants some food.
• Dean gets high at the Lees’ house.
• Dean competes in races with Sal and wins.
• Dean gets a little turned on by Bull’s daughter.
• He and Ed teach Sal how to hop freight trains.
• He leaves for California with Sal and Marylou.
• He pulls the car over in a swamp area, turns the lights off, and tells scary stories.
• He works with Sal to steal food, since they have no money.
• He gets naked while they drive and convinces Marylou and Sal to do the same.
• Dean has sex with Marylou in the car while Sal is sleeping.
• Dean runs off for a night with a homeless man.
• He picks up a man with a crippled hand.
• Dean charms a suspicious policeman and gets them off the hook.
• He stops to pick up a musician on the road.
• After they drive up some high terrain, Dean conserves gas on the way downhill – not using any gas for a solid thirty miles.
• He arrives in San Francisco with Sal and Marylou.
• He immediately takes off to go find Camille, leaving his friends without money, food or a place to stay.
• He finally decides to save Sal from certain starvation by bringing Sal to Camille’s place.
• He goes out with Sal to chill with Sam Gaillard.
• He ends up back with Marylou. Momentarily, anyway.
• He apparently goes back to Camille, again, because that’s the situation when Sal shows up.
• He is fighting with Camille about his madness.
• In his story to Sal, we find out that he smoked some uncured marijuana and went nuts over loving Marylou.
• Dean hit Marylou and it crippled his hand (thumb, really) forever.
• He and Sal decide to go to Italy, and have an awkward friendship moment.
• He and Sal get chauffeured around San Francisco by Roy Johnson.
• Dean gets dubbed the "Holy Goof" while everyone criticizes him for his life choices.
• Dean takes Sal out for one last night in San Francisco; he sees people that look like Bull and Carlo.
• Dean drags Sal to Denver to look for his missing father.
• On the way, he talks to Sal about musicians and how they have IT.
• Dean may be willing to have anal sex for money, but it never quite comes to that.
• Dean proceeds to demonstrate Bull’s bad driving for several hundred miles.
• Dean gets yelled at by Sal for pointing out their age difference. Then he cries.
• He is brought to the house of Sal’s former neighbors and told not to hit on the young girl.
• He tries to get Frankie to buy a car and is super angry when she won’t spend the money for it.
• He finds out that his father may be in New England.
• Dean sees his cousin, Sam, who wants nothing to do with him.
• He briefly expresses a desire for Marylou.
• He lusts after a Mexican girl and makes Sal follow her around with him.
• Dean steals a softball and breaks one of Janet’s records.
• He steals a car in Denver. Then another car. And then a few more for good measure.
• He is forced to flee Denver with Sal, because of the stolen cars and the cops that tend to follow massive bouts of grand theft auto.
• He picks up a Cadillac at the travel bureau.
• He fools around with a waitress, Beverly, whom he decides he should marry just as soon as he can divorce Camille.
• He heads for Chicago with some college boys in the back seat.
• He breaks the speedometer – that’s the first thing to go.
• Dean takes a corner too fast (after a warning from Sal) and ends up in a ditch.
• Dean agrees with Sal that the farmer’s daughter on the side of the road is the most beautiful girl either of them have ever seen.
• He stops to see Ed Wall.
• He tells the story of meeting Marylou when she was only fifteen.
• He races a hipster Buick and wins.
• Sal dubs Dean "The Angel of Terror."
• Dean has a minor car accident. The people in the other car later point them out to the cops as suspicious characters in a probably stolen car.
• Dean is stopped by the cops, but it’s not a problem.
• Dean and Sal make it to Chicago.
• He and Sal have a crazy jazz night. Dean insists that the musician George Shearing is God.
• He and Sal end up in Detroit.
• He ends up back in New York with Sal.
• Sal introduces Dean to Inez. Dean marries her shortly after, and has a child with her.
• Dean settles in New York with Inez, parking cars and conning for spare change.
• He gets quieter and starts making "Tao decisions."
• Before Sal leaves New York, Dean and he make plans to be old together.
• Dean heads for Denver to join the trip to Mexico. Sal compares him to the Shrouded Traveler.
• Once he reaches Denver, he is "finally an Angel" – according to Sal.
• He gets to Mexico along with Sal and Stan.
• He remarks that Mexico is like heaven.
• Dean communicates with Victor despite their language barrier.
• He goes to a brothel with Victor, Sal, and Stan.
• Dean spends time with Victor instead of getting clean at the bathhouse.
• Dean drives them into the jungle and they sleep outside with the insects.
• Dean, like Sal, sees the white horse and dogs while sleeping.
• Dean digs a small Indian girl they pass on high terrain. He gives her a watch in exchange for a rock crystal.
• He arrives in Mexico City with Sal and Stan.
• Dean abandons a dysentery-ridden, feverish Sal to head back to New York and Inez.
• As soon as he gets back to New York, Dean takes off for San Francisco and Camille again.
• When he hears that Sal is back in New York, Dean makes plans to meet him in a few weeks, but shows up within days instead.
• He wants Inez to come to San Francisco, but she won’t do it.