Why I Stole Arizona: Proof of Intent

This whole mess started in Nebraska.

No, wait, that’s not quite right. It was more like Indiana. Actually, if we’re going to get technical, it started in Maryland. I realize that most things don’t start in Maryland, except maybe ennui, but this did.

By “this mess” I, of course, mean my life, as I know it. I’m not really from the “great state” of Maryland, but I come from an Army family and a childhood in the military brings moving around. With moving around comes disorientation. With disorientation comes nausea. Are we beginning to get the picture?

I would often wonder, as a boy, what would my life become? What could I hope to aspire to? Could I be an artist perhaps? Not a shred of talent could be found in me. Although I did argue with every art teacher I had in school. One could call that artistic expression. One could, but I wouldn’t. I’d call it denial of authority. What about being a politician then, and re-making the structure of authority? Nice idea, in theory. Unfortunately I could care less about Democrats, Republicans, Whigs, or whatever there was out there. I haven’t voted yet. Hope no one’s holding his or her breath on that one.

Maybe I’d just become a dilettante, wandering about dispensing clichéd philosophical drivel and useless advice. I could be a walking, talking fortune cookie in a leather jacket. Only problem would be the lack of salary involved in such a venture. There’d be no way I could afford to pay for my addiction to video games and DVDs with a negative cash flow.

What then, I’d ask myself. I’m still waiting for an answer. What that amounts to is an on-going search for an identity. We’re all supposed to have one, aren’t we? An identity, I mean, not the search for one. If that were true, then what happened to mine? Where was my separate and unique existence? Did it get lost in the mail? Was there an error in the production, which caused a pre-emptive recall? All I knew for certain was that I was lost among the people in my life. I was drowning in a sea of faces and voices and troubled hearts. I wanted to crest above the waves and find my own voice through the din. That’s where the tattoos started, I think.

The first one I got was a small bird on my left shoulder. It resembled a cross between Tweedy Bird and Woodstock from the old “Peanuts” strips. It was what I felt like and I have always wanted to be. A bird with feathered wings to fly above the clouds and away from my life. This bird was too small and too weak though. It would never fly, just as I would never fly. But it was a part of my being that would be forever displayed upon my flesh, as an eternal advertisement for my soul.

Other tattoos came in the years that followed. I have a skull on my back to symbolize mortality and a respect for life. I have a halo on my wrist to show my faith in the greater forces of the universe. I have a tiger over my heart that represents my independence and my strength of will. But, most important of all, I got another bird on my right shoulder. I have a phoenix that stands for a rebirth of soul and spirit, a new me.
It was all a load of bullshit. It was the best I could come up with at the time. “An eternal advertisement for my soul", what did that even mean? It was just permanent ink sewn into my skin to show my unique view of the world. I don’t regret choosing to mark my body (although my father assures me that one day I will), but it wasn’t the answer.

I was still waiting for one.

-----

It occurred to me when I turned twenty-one years old that I was still living with my parents. More damaging to me personally was that I was single. Neither situation gave me great hope for the future. Days would pass without a single moment of anything resembling happiness. I wasn’t upset or depressed, I was on autopilot. I was floating through the weeks like a derelict garbage sow in the Arctic Ocean, hoping I’d hit an iceberg, or a whale, just so I could stop drifting.

There was nothing overly interesting to me, and nothing that made me think or wonder like I did when I was a boy. I was no longer engaged in anything on a mental level. My brain was on vacation, and I wanted to join it.

A vacation, you say? Now here, I thought, was the answer I had been waiting for. But a vacation to where (and for how long) was an important question. There was very little I could afford then. This is just as true now, but I’m more concerned with the past at the moment. I’d been working the same go nowhere job for almost two years, waiting and hoping for a raise or a bonus or any manner of fiscal recognition. There’s only so much a man can take. After nineteen months, I called it quits.

I gave my notice and started to plan my trip. It started quite long at first. My early drafts for an itinerary had me exploring every state in the union (save for Alaska and Hawaii) over the course of three months. When my cost estimates broke into the five-digit mark I realized that my plans might be overextending my income. I needed to scale it down some, bring it back to basics. What I needed to answer was what I was looking to achieve. At that point in my life I felt tired, alone, and unappreciated. I was seeking solace. I wanted to go somewhere I was welcome. I wanted to go somewhere warm and inviting.

I wanted to visit Marie. At the time (before I could consider it further) the idea made perfect sense. She was far enough away to make it a road trip. She was a very pleasant person who had always been delighted to see me in the past. She was someone I still kept in touch with, making it quite simple to set up travel arrangements. Most important of all, she was a woman, and (as of the last time we’d spoken to one another) she was single.

I realize (both now and then) how ludicrous it must seem to cross half the country for a date, but one thing must be made absolutely clear. This woman was gorgeous. I could drive from one ocean to the next and not find her equal. I swear she was alive during the time of Shakespeare if only to inspire him in his discourses on beauty. I could never capture her in words on paper. Not with a thousand pages, or a million words. It would be impossible. But I’ll try.

Her hair was long and soft. I only touched it once, but I’ll never forget that moment. It was like warm water on a cold day. Every nerve in my hand was awake and alive. And her skin was living silk. I trembled the first time she touched my hand with hers. Her eyes were the best of all, though. They shined brighter then ten stars and were the color of the ocean when it meets the shore. I would dream about her kiss sometimes, imagining how warm and tender her lips would be when they met mine. Ours, much to my grand dismay, was no more then a friendship. It had been thus for half a year, but it did not make me think of her any less. I wanted her in ways that I had never known a man could feel for a woman. She was the only woman I ever felt I could fall in love with. She moved away during the winter preceding my ultimately depressing epiphany.

She had family in Nebraska, a chance to go to school there, and, since I had said nothing to her of how I felt, no greater reason to stay where she was. It would seem simple to say that my great sorrow over the state of my life had arisen from her departure, but that was not the entire truth. I had felt this way for quite sometime, and her initial arrival in my life had allowed me to ignore my self-centered disappointment for a short while. Once she had departed, it came back as though it had never left.

So, I had decided to go to Nebraska and see Marie. I would tell her how I felt, and settle this part of my life. She would welcome me and reciprocate all my feelings and adoration. We would live happily ever after…right?

If that were the way things worked in reality, then there would be no need for fantasy, and no good stories. Maybe I was right the first time. Maybe this whole mess did start in Nebraska.

-----

I’ve never been able to pack for a trip in a timely manner. I’m quite efficient, but when it comes to timing I miss the mark. I’ve yet to figure out how two such divergent aspects can reside in one personality. Whatever the answer, the fact remained that I was two hours behind schedule on the morning of the start of my trip. All that really meant was that I’d be forced to speed that much more. I’ve never believed in speed limits either, they’re more like suggestions to me.

I had intended to leave by ten in the morning, so that I could be in Missouri by midnight. I have an uncle out there, and I’d worked it out to stay with him for a quick stopover. I’d get a few hours of sleep, then set out the following morning by eight or so to get to Nebraska by a little after lunchtime.

I was finished packing around twelve-thirty in the afternoon. That’s pretty standard fare in my world of tardiness. The time differential is relative to the proportion of scheduling necessary to avoid being late. Therefore it becomes reflective of the reverse ratio of distance divided by time, or a measure of acceleration. It’s all quite mathematical. A velocity of stupidity, one might say.

I was on the road less then half an hour later. I had a full tank of gas, a stocked cooler of sodas and sandwiches (with some pudding on the side), and enough clothes for a week on the road, plus my brother’s video recorder. I had meant to ask him for the loan before I left, but things like that sometimes slip my mind. He’d never miss it anyway, so I thought.

I’d worked out several different landmarks for my trip, which included state borders and the occasional municipal districts I’d pass through (such as St. Louis). I had measured the distance with a U.S. atlas and created time estimates based on the average speed I would be traveling. Like I said, mathematical.

The first part of my trip was (as most are) uneventful. I made excellent time (which means I destroyed my estimates by driving faster then sound), and I had no unexpected incidents or accidents. I ate along the way, and filmed a little of the road. I actually made it to my uncle’s house before midnight (which, I’ve since been told, is impossible per the laws of physics). He’d left his porch light on and a key under his mat. It was all so mid-western.

Jerry is my dad’s younger brother by four years, which was the same difference between my brother, Karl, and me. Both Jerry and my father are from Missouri originally, and both had joined the Army when they came of age. My father (unlike my uncle) had stuck with it. He had built a career and a life out of it. Jerry lasted just as long as he was contractually obligated and then dropped out. He and I had a lot in common. We both shared that “do what you have to, when you have to, for as long as you have to, then drop it fast when you don’t have to anymore” view of things. We also both talk too much according to those closest to us. But that’s a whole other matter.

Jerry had done well for himself in the decade or so since his divorce from the Army. He landed a job as a drafting engineer for a network developer and started making more money then a single man in Missouri knew what to do with. He bought a house and a car with his first years pay, and then spent the next three years worth of paychecks in Vegas. Had he invested the amount of money he gambled away, I’m fairly certain he could have bought most of France. But then, who would want that? Better to lose it in the slots.

He was asleep when I got in, and he would be gone early the next morning so I didn’t even get to thank him in person for the loan of his spare room. I let him know how much his generosity meant to me by eating some of his food and leaving the dishes in the sink. That morning I managed to get on my way pretty close to on time. It was the idea of just how close I was to Marie that pushed me forward that day. I had been working on what I would say to her when I got there. It had to be perfect. If I professed my undying love and devotion, she would most likely respond with screaming and running. On the other hand, were I to “play it cool” and act like nothing special was happening, I’d miss out on my only opportunity for future happiness. Like I said, it had to be perfect.

Few things in life are perfect these days. Take my last significant relationship before single hood. That was quite an education in poor judgment. This particular mistake was named Cora. She was your typical wild, young thing. After half of a young lifetime of sheltered living in her parents’ home, she was ready to burst at the seams. Add to that four years of Catholic schooling and it makes a deadly cocktail in the style of Molotov, only more explosive.

It was a hell of a ride for a while, but it wore me down after a fashion. I’m not, by nature, a jealous man, but…okay, I’m lying. I’m as jealous as they come. And being with Cora introduced me to previously unknown levels of jealousy. To the best of my knowledge, she never cheated on me, but she pushed it as far as she could some days. In the end, she beat me to the punch, and ended our engagement two months before our wedding date. I’ve come to the realization that, had I married her, my life would have been a disaster. It’s a shame that it isn’t possible to figure these things out at the time, though, and save all the grief.

In many ways (most of them, in fact) Cora was a prime motivation for my down turned outlook, and my need for a trip. I’d heard she was pregnant some time ago, a few years after we’d split. I hope she’s happy with her life, I truly do. And I spend everyday fighting that little voice in my head that wants to add, “You bitch” to the end of that hope.

We never stop growing up.

-----

I reached the border to Nebraska in the same sort of record-setting time as it took me to get to Missouri. I’m pretty sure that jet pilots aren’t the only ones pulling heavy G’s. I’m also pretty sure that my car would have been much happier without me.

I stopped for lunch at a small gas-up just west of the state line. It was a quaint little truck stop on the edge of nothing. I’d swear it was the only sign of life or civilization for a hundred miles. It was as if the entire town existed around this truck stop. I can’t remember the name of the town, but I’m certain it’s not important. Even if stopping there was.

It was the closest I came to turning around and going home. When I pulled into a vacant space in front of the greasy spoon diner that made up the heart of the truck stop, I did a quick mental check of how far I had to go. It was less then two hundred miles to Marie and I couldn’t have felt worse. Maybe the reality (and idiocy) of the whole thing was finally striking me square. Or maybe I was just worrying about what she’d think about seeing me again all the way out in the middle of the nowhere that she came to. Or maybe I’d eaten one too many peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches (go ahead and vomit now, I’ll wait). Whatever the cause, the fact remained that I was paralyzed in my seat, a stone weighing down my insides. I had no idea what I would say when I got out there to her. What would I tell her when she (inevitably) asked me why I drove fifteen hundred miles across open highway to Nebraska? I began to think that this was not such a good idea after all.

But I couldn’t go back now. I had made it this far. It was the final lap around the track, and I was in sight of the finish line. It was hard enough justifying the drive out here just to see a girl, but it would be even harder to explain why I turned around so close to the end of my trip. There was something else though, something besides Marie’s beautiful form swimming through the folds of my brain (in a two-piece) that made me decide to push on. It was like a small part of me was out on that road with a completely separate agenda, and it would not allow me to deviate. That made me curious more then scared, as curiosity is wont to do.

After a brief, albeit disgusting, lunch at the dive diner (I think it was a Denny’s) I got back on the highway, and rode towards my destiny.

I really hoped she was wearing the two-piece when I got there.

-----

Marie was not wearing the two-piece when I arrived at her door later that afternoon. Fate was not that kind to me. It was downright mean, to be honest.

“Hi, Marie!”

“Wh-what are you doing here?” This was not the reception I had been dreaming of for the last two days. What had happened?

“I, uh, I came to see you.”

“You drove all the way out here?”

“Didn’t I call you about this?” As it turned out, I hadn’t. It seemed there was yet another detail that had slipped my mind. I started writing things down a lot more after that.

After a few more stuttered greetings, I was invited in. Marie, of course, was still looking at me with a disbelieving stare, as if I didn’t belong where I was standing. I think I disappointed her by not disappearing. I explained what had been going on for the past few weeks, what with quitting my job and driving out west, and deciding to stop for a visit. I might have lied a little by adding that I was driving out to Vegas and this was a stop on the way. I can’t remember things too clearly from then. Whatever I said, Marie started to soften some. I apologized for neglecting to call and offered to find a hotel in the area.

“That’s ridiculous. Just stay here with us. There’s lots of room.”

“Us?”

“Me and my roommate Jen.” This was getting better by the minute.

“I couldn’t impose upon you all.” She flashed this amazing smile at me at that. It was the kind of smile that can change your whole day.

“No imposition and no argument. You’re staying here while you’re in town.” She could certainly be insistent when she wanted to be.

“You certainly are insistent.” Let’s forget for a moment that I had no money for a hotel room. Let’s forget that I was being invited to stay in the house of two women. Let’s forget that I was totally exhausted from two days of nearly non-stop travel and I only wanted to sleep for the rest of the day. If you do all that forgetting you have about half an inkling of what I felt standing there in front of Marie while she smiled at me and showed me around the place. I was having difficulty remembering my name and where I was born.

This was quickly becoming the best day of my life. The trip had gone better than I had ever dreamed it would. Marie was more beautiful then I recalled her to be. Even Nebraska itself was starting to grow on me. With each second that passed I wanted to be with her more and more, and to go home less and less. I thought about staying here for the rest of my life. It worked for her, and she would be enough to keep me happy. I had started thinking about finding a job, and a place to live when it happened. I wasn’t sure what it was at first I only knew that I had heard something that sent splinters up my spine. I concentrated and listened, and then, it happened again, much clearer and more terrible this time. I could feel the edges of this world starting to fall down. The third time it happened it was as clear as the chime of a broken bell, and it felt like a kick in the stomach.

She had said three simple words, and those words were my undoing.

“Brian, my boyfriend…”

-----

I began to panic. I wanted to scream, “Your WHAT?!” I wanted to get back in my car and drive into the nearest tree. I wanted to go and do a thousand things all at once. But I didn’t, I stayed right there and I let the words sink in.

“Brian, my boyfriend…”

I even began to analyze each word scientifically, as if breaking down the phrase would help me to better reconcile this waking nightmare. “Brian” was a man’s name. It brought to mind a stocky, athletic type with more varsity letters then clean pairs of underwear. “Brian” wasn’t the intellectual type, he was too wrapped up in the game, and winning on the field or on the court. A woman like Marie would never be satisfied with a “Brian”. Then there was “my”, a possessive of the highest caliber. It was like a shotgun to my heart, until I looked closer. Did it seem as though she emphasized the “my”, drawing greater attention to it? Perhaps she was concerned over her status as his significant other. Could it be that this “my” she had spoken so fondly of was slipping away from her? The fool had lost interest, and she was suffering. How I wanted to comfort her.

Then, of course, came “boyfriend”. It seemed like such a simple title, one lacking the commitment a woman like Marie deserved. A “boyfriend” could never be enough for her. She would need a man, a lover, or an eternal companion, but not a simple, uninteresting “boyfriend”. I nearly laughed out loud. What had I been so afraid of just a few seconds ago? It was a mere three words, and shaky ones at that. I had unraveled the mystery of her speech. Instead of “Brian, my boyfriend” I now heard “this thick necked jock, who’s kind of involved with me, for now”. I had nothing to worry about from “Brian”, I can say now just as I thought it then. It was me I should have worried about.

-----

As it turned out, Brian was neither thick-necked, nor a jock. He was (I felt) uncomfortably passive and restrained. Nothing about him stood out to me. He was not strikingly handsome, which despite my devout appreciation of women is something I can notice in another man. He was uninteresting, and had no strong opinions on any subject. The man spoke so softly it was almost a strain to hear him. He was so far from what I imagined that I was stunned to silence. The first few minutes of our first meeting was accented by an uncomfortable silence followed by cluttered greetings. We were immediately at odds with one another. I, for obvious reasons, and he for my sudden appearance at his girlfriend’s door almost two thousand miles from home. It was not looking to be a lasting friendship.

I ended up spending only three days with Marie in Nebraska. The first day, she spent most of it at her job. She was a waitress at a local theme restaurant. I won’t bother to name it simply because they’re all basically the same. Let’s just call it “T.G.I. Beni-Tuesday’s Outback Lobster Pizzeria” and leave it at that. I, for my part, slept about fifteen hours. I’m not exaggerating. I woke up around four in the afternoon the day after I had arrived in Nebraska. I hadn’t realized until then how much the driving had worn me down. I dragged myself off Marie’s couch and did a few simple exercises to wake up. I had barely finished getting dressed when Marie came home.

I could tell she was still felt a little weird about my being there, but she was pleasant enough to me. Just looking at her, I remembered what had brought me out there in the first place. I felt fortunate to be standing beside Marie, but I couldn’t help wanting to be closer to her. I knew without even knowing Brian that he was less of a man than I was. I know that sounds harsh, but it was the way my brain was working at the time. I now understand that it wasn’t about what Brian or I could give Marie, it was about what she wanted. It’s a damn shame it took me that trip to realize it. The real shame was that my trip wasn’t even half over.

-----

The second day of my visit was more or less uneventful. We (by we, I mean the three of us) walked around the town where they lived, and had lunch at a fast food place. It was a pretty simple day, and I spent most of it wishing Brian didn’t exist. As the evening came, we returned to Marie’s place with a few rented videos. I voted for action movies, but the romantic comedy vote won out. I honestly can’t remember what the movies they rented were, but I do recall what happened after they got started playing. Marie and Brian were curled up together on the couch, and I was sitting in the recliner parked a bit behind them. How could I help but watch the two of them, wrapped in one another’s arms? It was less painful an experience then I could have imagined, but I didn’t, by any means, enjoy it. About ten minutes into the movie, I got up to leave. Marie saw me stand, and said to me,

“Something wrong?”

“No, I just…I think I’d like to take a walk.”

“You’re taking a walk now? It’s almost eleven o’clock. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Of course I wasn’t okay. The entire reason I had come out here was being held in the arms of someone other than me. This was not how it was supposed to happen. I was supposed to come out to Nebraska, tell Marie how I felt, and it would be reciprocated. I supposed to be the one who got the girl. I was supposed to do something right for once. I was supposed to be happy. I wanted so much to tell her all these things, and to hell with my dignity. But I didn’t say a word about how I truly felt, I simply said something about going for some air and left.

Does that ever work, do you think? The whole going for air bit, I mean? Would anyone ever really believe you? And if they did, what would they think about it? Would they think that the air they were generating in the room repulsed you? Or would it be more a matter of asthma, or some other chronic respiratory disorder? Is there a single human being on the planet that could understand that you left the room because if you didn’t you would wind up screaming at the tops of your lungs “STOP TOUCHING HER!”?

Maybe it’s just a “me” thing.

So there I was, walking through a small town in Nebraska at near to midnight by myself. I was amazed at how many other people were out as well, and how many places were still open. I wandered into a few shops here and there, bought a few plastic cups and some knickknacks for the folks back home. But mostly, I spent time in my own head. It was a lonely place to say the least. I thought about the women I’d known in my life, and the choices I’d made that had led me to that exact moment, standing in the candy aisle of an all-night grocery store.

I felt sorry for myself for the first time in my life that night, and I hated the way that it felt. It was worse than pity from someone else, because anyone else is removed from yourself and your situation. But when it comes from within, it goes deeper than any other wound. I was angry with myself, as well. I was angry for having done something so stupid as to believe that I could fight my own destiny. What was it that made me think that again? What was it that gave me this empty hope?

I spent a fair part of that night (and some of the morning) trying to think of something to say to Marie when I got back, some way to explain my actions to her. But I was at a loss, as I often am with her. So I didn’t come back, not exactly. I spent the rest of the night in my car. It was summer, so it was warm enough, and I’ve always been more comfortable in my car than anywhere else. When I woke up, it was late morning, and there was already activity in the house. I came to find out that Marie had a few friends over after I left and they’d all had a good time of bored games and movies. Had there been alcohol, I’d have been sorry to miss out. But these were good Catholics (or some such theology), and had no room (or stomach) for such dirty deeds. It was getting past my time to stay on, I knew then. But I felt like something was missing, as if there was something I’d yet to do before I left.

I went up to the house and knocked good and firm. Marie answered the door, half-awake. God, but she was beautiful, even in the morning. She seemed a bit cross with me for leaving like I did, but I had no excuses for my behavior. So I tried to offer an explanation instead. I told her everything, straight and honest. I left no part of myself hidden from her. Why I had come, what drove me to drive there, what I had hoped and even (more then a little) expected. It had the exact opposite effect from what I had intended. She was angry with me. I was just taken aback. Here I was pouring every part of my soul out for this woman, and she was pissed off about it. She told me it was unfair of me to expect such thing. She told me that she was (clearly) already in a relationship. She told me how she thought our friendship meant more than that to me (always my favorite). She went on and on about how wrong it was for me to have not only felt such things, but to have shared them with her. Then after what felt like eight and a half minutes (but was probably closer to seven minutes and forty-five seconds), she laid out the coup-de-grace.

She told me she had never thought of me that way, and that she’d always considered me more like a brother than a guy. That was it. I finally understood what it was I’d been missing: a good slap in the face from reality. After that I was ready to go. I said my farewells, and packed up my bag. I got in my car and left Nebraska. I never saw Marie again after that, although I’ve talked to her on the phone a few times since then, just to catch up. Originally, I’d wanted to put all the things that I’d told her in a letter and leave it for her on my way out of town. It was some crappy, pseudo-romantic gesture that would have left me forever wondering how she really felt about me. At least this way, now I knew.

This left me wondering where to go next though. I couldn’t go home yet to face the great nothing I left behind, but there was nothing in Nebraska for me (or anyone, really). I pulled out the giant U.S. Atlas that I kept under my seat for the two times a decade that I actually need it, and opened it up. I picked a random page, and a random map, and a random section of that random map. My finger had landed on the southwest of the United States. It had landed on Arizona. That was where I was going next.

I’ll tell you one thing though: destiny is not a pleasant thing sometimes, even if it does get you to where you need to be.

-----

Arizona is not all it’s made out to be on the high fashion television ads. Maybe I’m making that part up, about the TV ads. I don’t really know. I’d swear I could remember seeing those “Arizona…it’s a state next to Nevada” ads. They were probably promoting Utah. That state could use all the good press it can get. But what mattered to me was that I was standing inside the state border of Arizona, and I could see nothing but flat, endless earth in every direction. It was more then a little disappointing.

I think that I was expecting a startling revelation to hit me once I made it to Arizona. Maybe I would experience some kind of system shock, or a wonder of nature that would open my eyes to all that life had to offer. If I’d only learned one thing on that trip by then, it should have been to stop having any expectations.

The strange thing about Arizona, I realized, was the familiarity of the place. I’m certain I’d been there before, but it had to have been when I was just a small boy, traveling with my parents. Yet, it still felt like somewhere I’d known before. It was like something I might have seen in a dream. Or it could have been the travel channel. Television makes up so much of a human being’s life experiences these days. But the more I thought about, the more I knew that this was not a feeling that was born of a pre-recorded program. It wasn’t even reminiscent of a live broadcast. The sheer space of nothing that was before me was too much to contain on a TV screen, no matter what size it might be.

It had taken me nearly an entire day to get to Arizona from Marie’s house. Like the first leg of my trip, I drove as far as I could, and then pulled in to a well-traveled gas station to rest. I took short naps, and I kept an alarm handy to make sure that I wasted little time. The irony was, I was no longer on a schedule. It was some sad habit that kept me going through those paces. I had nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there. There was a part of me that hoped I might get lost out there, and never come back. Like maybe I would just cease to exist. That felt like a sensible way to be. No existence meant no more pain, no more work, and no more failure. At some point I realized with much disgust how much that sounded like suicide and I abandoned the thought as much as someone like me can.

It was drawing into the deep evening when I stopped just inside the Arizona border. I pulled over to the side of the highway, and got out to watch the sunset. There’s not much to say about that sunset, it looked just like the ones we have out here in the east, with a bit less color. I read somewhere that the colors in the sunset are the low-angled light of the sun being refracted by dense particles in the atmosphere. What that means, is that the more dense particles, which translates to pollution most times, the more colorful the sunset. I always think about that when I see a particularly lovely sight like that. I think about how much of the beauty I see is the aftereffect of the dreck of mankind.

The sun went down past the horizon, and climbed back into my car, feeling more alone than I had at any other point in my trip. I had no place to stay for the night, besides crashing in my car at the nearest gas station, and hardly any money left for food or gas. I considered calling it quits there again, rolling down that empty road at the edge of Arizona, as it approached late night. But I had come that far on a whim; why not continue on with it? Besides, I had never seen the meteor crater out past Flagstaff, and I was nothing if not utterly fascinated with everything cosmic. According to the map of Arizona I had bought just before crossing from New Mexico, Flagstaff (and the Meteor Crater) was just another hundred or so miles to the east along the same road I was currently on. I decided I would go to Flagstaff, and try to find a place to stay for the night (and maybe a few more days). I was short on actual cash, but I had few credit cards on me that weren’t yet at their limits.

It happened not more then fifty miles from city. I was driving along at a fair clip, fighting the greatest urge to sleep that I had ever known, when I closed my eyes. It was only for a second, just to let them rest, since my eyelids were so very heavy. I can’t say how much time passed before I opened them again, but it was a significant amount. What did finally rouse me was the unmistakable sound a car’s tires make when they run over the ridges built into the shoulder of the road. They’re put there (I would guess) as an “early-warning” system for anyone who might begin to drift off the road. That’s exactly what they were for me, and they were the only things that prevented me from running my car into a nice, deep ditch in the middle of nowhere.

Don’t misunderstand me, I was drifting in and out of sleep most of the way from Maryland. I always have difficulty staying awake on long trips, but usually I have the luxury of being a passenger on them at some point. The reason I recall this particular failed bout with narcolepsy is not because I almost ran off the right side of the road. It’s because I almost ran off the left side of the road. It’s quite a disorienting (and not to mention terrifying) thing to suddenly snap to from near unconsciousness while driving, but it’s an entirely different breed of beast when it happens in the oncoming lane of a major highway. I was fortunate that no one else was out upon the road that night. It could have been far worse. That’s what everyone says, isn’t it? “I was just lucky no one else got hurt.” Well, I wish someone were there that night.

I jerked the wheel hard to the right to straighten myself out. The car popped up a bit, and my world lurched to the left from the counter forces of gravity and momentum. I was back on the correct side of the road in less then a second, but I hadn’t counted on being so efficient about getting back there. Between my continuing drowsiness, and my panicked pull of the wheel, I managed to bring the car too far over, and slid into the shoulder of the highway. That would have been fine if I wasn’t going close to eighty miles an hour. I’d set the cruise control a ways back so that I wouldn’t have to worry about cops. The speed limit was seventy-five, and I was just past that. The problem with cruise control is that it doesn’t know when it should slow the car down to avoid an accident.

The wheels lost traction in the shoulder once they hit the sea of gravel that was planted there. All the things I’d learned in Driver’s Ed all those years past flashed through my brain, but I couldn’t for the life of me (which was what was at stake) remember what to do next. Human stupidity took over after that, and I jammed the brakes. At that point the car only sped up, and (I think) started laughing at me. It may have been the sleep deprivation talking, but what would have just sounded like tires squealing and the engine turning formed words in my ears.

“What do you think you’re doing, you idiot?”

“I’m trying to stop! Why am I not stopping?!”

“It’s called gravel, asshole. Good luck not dying.”

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Sometimes, after a tramatic experience, it’s possible that one might not remember what happened, not entirely at least. I’ve been in one other accident since then, a minor fender bender not far from my house, and I can contest to that again. I can't remember exactly what happened in that case to cause me to rear end that Mustang. One minute I was going along fine, and the next I was jamming my brakes (old habits die hard) and re-aligning the rear bumper of the car in front of me.

What happened in Arizona was similar, but not quite. First of all, there was no Mustang anywhere in sight that night, and I wasn’t exactly just out for a cruise. Secondly, what I can remember of that incident was blurred with mild hallucinations and half-lidded vision. When it was all said and done, I was on the side of the road finally at a complete stop, with my front, passenger’s side tire nearly shredded to nothing. Partly embedded in my front grill was a fence post that I had somehow picked up along the way. The fence post had some bits of barbed wire attached to it, and a train of it was going to the decimated tire and axle. It was pretty easy to see what had happened to my tire, although I wasn’t sure where the damn fence had come from.

I made a quick review of the rest of the vehicle, to see what other injuries it might have sustained, and was fortunate to find that only the smashed front end and ripped tire had been inflicted. I was still shaking from the accident when I pulled the spare and jack set from out of my trunk. It took me a good hour or so to extricate the axle and the dead tire from the terrible grip of about ten yards of (what seemed to me to be) razor-sharp barbed wire. Once I had removed that hindrance, changing the tire was the easy part. After that came the post in my grill. Prying that log from out of my car was much more difficult that I had imagined it would be. First, it was difficult to grip the thing, as it was a small square shaped post that was about 4 feet long. There was about a foot or so of it jammed into the front of my car, and it was held fast by warped metal, and chipped plastic from the fan. I tried not the think about all the damage it might have wrought entering the front, or what I was doing to my car now as I pulled it out again.

Once I actually did get the bloody stump out of the way, I checked the inside of the engine good and long. To this day I have no idea what I’m looking at under the hood of a car. I know where the oil goes (and how to check its level) and the names of several parts of the engine (including the battery). After that, it might as well be the inner working of a moon rover as far as my assessment skills are concerned. I saw no fluids leaking from the body of the engine and knew that to be a good thing, but I had no idea what internal damage there might be. When I started the car it sounded fine, but as I couldn’t remember what it sounded like before the collision I had no idea what fine really was.

What did seem obvious to me was the difficulty the car had in accelerating. There was also the wobble that it had in the steering. That meant, to me, axle damage among other things. I couldn’t imagine driving another fifty odd miles with my car having taken such a beating. There was still the trip home to think about as well. It would be a bit difficult to make it back to Maryland if I rode my only transportation into oblivion out in the Arizona desert. After a few more miles of very slow going, I came upon a dirt driveway of sorts that took me off the highway. I couldn’t see where it went, and there were no buildings or structures of any sort visible in the distance. I figured it would be just as safe as parking at a gas station. I couldn’t imagine anyone bothering me out here. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually being out here. I rolled down the dirt road, and pulled into soft stretch of grass out of sight of the highway.

I barely turned the car off before I was asleep.

-----

(End of Part One...)