Remembering the Road...
an excerpt from one of my Brown Neon essays
My battery light had come up red on my dashboard jolting me out of the obsessive sing-a-long I was having with myself. Ten times through the hook of “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” was probably enough. I was staving off the numbness that comes with the mundane parts of a road trip-in-process. I needed to lift a heavy heart, the kind that comes with leaving loved ones in a place that gets smaller and farther away with each peek in the rearview mirror.
My reptilian brain shook off missing my queer family alongside the idea that maybe I could finally hit those high Steve Perry notes the next time I did karaoke. Floating face down the stream of consciousness and traveling alone I felt a chill upon seeing the unfamiliar alert. Uh-oh. My car has never broken down before. Luckily I have enough time to pull off the freeway into the next gas station.
I heading west on the interstate, back to Los Angeles, trudging through 103 degrees of Arizona’s unsparing desert heat. As soon as I touched down in Quartzite, one of the last towns you encounter near the Stateline, I search for my car owner’s manual. Just how screwed could I possibly be with 300 miles still to go?*
*(Image of battery light owner manual blurb: Stop Immediately)
I stop immediately. The electrical system was due to shut down. But I couldn’t stop immediately. I decided that if I was going to break down I wanted to do it in a blue state. I had over twenty miles to go before I hit Blythe, California. I got back in my car, took a deep breath, rolled down the windows and headed West. To Blythe.
Blythe is a place I have newly begun to appreciate as the last bastion of chill brown Califas. I don’t want to be an irredeemable spoiled Californian blue state brat and call bad vibes, but yes the way politics structures how I take in the sweeping views of Arizona’s difficult terrain makes me nervous. Friends think I’m being facetious when I call it Beautiful Blythe, California. It might be the one slice of coconut cream pie at the Courtesy Coffee Shop on Lovekin Boulevard that made me think of Blythe’s beauty but I’m thankful for the first town in California’s borders nonetheless and in the moment of imminent vehicular collapse I prayed that we (Yes, we. In times of solo survivalist panic I animate fetish objects, like my car in this instance) would make it there in one piece.
And just as I crossed the Arizona/California Stateline checkpoint I revved the engine and shifted to try and hit 75mph before the car began to shut down on me. Blythe: next 4 exits. I just needed the first one. The lights on the odometer began to flash, the digital clock flicked all zeros and the stereo was popping through my speakers. It felt a little Back to the Future and my improvised DeLorean was tearing through the desert’s time/space continuum. The first exit finally appeared and I coasted across lanes and made my first California stop since high school in order to peter out in front of a tractor tow lot. I was good. It wasn’t a miracle by any means but I made land art with that descent.
I called for roadside assistance, checked my phone was charged and still had two big bottles of water to get me through the next couple of hours. I left my lover and my adopted queer son in Tucson but I am glad he had not been in my car.
Parting was hard.
I got out of the car, lit a cigarette and took in my surroundings. I had places to be but now time split open for me. I was stuck—in my career, in my relationship, and now Los Angeles. Trucks and tumbleweed and the hum of freeway traffic a few yards away—the sturdy stuff that can occupy the same space as the desert without totally melting. I was melting. I used to be sturdy but now I melt. And between huffs of nicotine smoke and rivulets of sweat forming on the small of my back. I felt myself see-sawing between sturdy and melting in the desert heat. The tow truck and technician came finally and after the last call with the third auto shop I knew there was no way I was going to Los Angeles anytime soon.
The desert wasn’t done with me yet.