Cancerous Hallucinatory Death

Holy hell! The veins in my hands have become road maps and they lead clear out of the known universe. There are tires involved. There are rubber fires burning all over the mid-west. Black smoke rises. Classic blues song splay on the radio. Drunks sing along. They wouldn’t like these songs if they were sober. They can all shove mufflers up their asses and fuck off and die.To meet the family under the circumstance of cancerous hallucinatory death would be absolutely off kilter to a degree that even I cannot handle. Black shrouds and tears. “These times of woe afford no time to woo.” So said the great under his drafty roof in the winter with ink frozen in the creased skin of his knuckles. He also said,  “Where is the bathroom? My drink has gone to my bladder.” How guttural and suggestive.  Next comes  the  sex-ed video  that tells us  teenagers only spoke to their  lovers  on the family telephone where conversations must remain pure due to prying  related ears.  Then come  the un-documented back-seat blow-jobs.  What the hell is the world coming to? Damn the youth!  But so it goes.  They cannot help themselves when faced with the right kind of eyelashes  and  fingers.  When the music is loud enough it can make you do just about anything in public.  Then Jimmy comes in thru the door in his bright nonsensical outfit and slays you with a voice he never trusted and a guitar that spewed stars all over your soul and set it aflame. How will I survive? It’s un-endurable.  It’s obscene.

Leaving Molars Scattered on the Asphalt

I can see the fan spinning in the lens of your sunglasses. It blends your brain matter into a slippery smoothie. I can see the fan spinning in the window depicting Rampart Street. It gouges holes in passing driver’s windows, stabs eyeballs, severs jaws, leaves molars scattered on the asphalt to puncture hot rubber tires. Soon the free-flowing traffic will be a ball of blood-colored tin foil. I see the fan spinning in the walls of a bar across the street. It will saw the balcony’s support beams to slivers. The sparkly people will come crashing down in a jumble of sprained ankles and broken spike heels. They will untangle themselves, stand up straight, and complain about being sticky from spilled champagne. I can see the fan spinning in a scene of a funeral on television. It shreds a coffin, decapitates the pal-bearers. Splintered bones fly in all directions, pierce calf muscles and the tires of the hearst. I see the fan’s shadow spinning on the yellow ceiling. It stirs up the smell of detergent and fabric softeners. It purees the greasy hair of a fat woman playing pinball. It shorts out the star atop the Christmas tree which still adorns the corner after the holiday has come and gone and caused its proper amount of destruction. The shadow of the fan hovers over the jolly lawn chairs and summer paint of the entire laundromat. It spins. It spins all over the Clothes Spin.

The Gurgling Threat Which Moves Most to Build Bridges

From certain angles, ice cubes make sense. But when cars are passing through thick drunken crowds, bumping ankles and skimming skirt hems in the background of blinking eyelids, there is one other thing which must be considered: Beer in relation to the five o’clock shadow. This concept is a summation of many hats, including the hat worn by the man who guards the south-west end of any rainbow. His is special, for it is not to be found in any other place. It only fits a head which can sing it the proper song involving tarnished bugle horns and harmonicas. Touch the page. It is fibrous. Obscenely so. This is the gurgling threat which moves most to build bridges in lieu of maneuvering boats. Stay Dry! For the love of God, Stay Dry! But how will you ever feel goosebumps if you stay dry? It’ll be in the upper seventies again Saturday and Sunday. That’s nice. That’s good for us. Why doesn’t my mind know its way without the fizzy shaman, the wild turkey navigator. I’m done for. No sense dealing with boundaries or censorship. We will move waves onto shores and they will engulf many shacks and palms and leave high-water lines like those on bruised and over-worked livers. If you could ask the person sitting directly in front of you now any question at all, what would you ask? These foreign potions do not change you, they simply turn you inside out. And despite the initial reaction of repulsion, one eventually warms up to the site and even becomes fascinated with the squelching and bleeding innards of themselves and others. They are not something one sees every day- tragically.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument: Gravestones, Picket Fences and Manifest Destiny

Earth slides aside and sun’s amber glow spills over undulating hills covered with nursery-green grass. Bullet-holes smolder in the petals of tiny white flowers. Thousands of white gravestones line up like molars, gnaw the newborn day and scream dead soldiers’ names. I look down the row. From here, they look like posts in the white picket fences of American Dreams.

“Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument memorializes one of the last armed efforts of the northern plains Indians to preserve their ancestral way of life…in 1876, more than 260 soldiers met defeat and death at the hands of several thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors…among the dead were Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and every member of his immediate command…”

I follow the winding path through the battlefield, going up steep hills and down deep valleys. I crouch in the grass. Billions of grasshoppers jump on tense thighs, backs, necks, shoulders. Billions of grasshoppers crawl into gold-buttoned collars and once-shiny black boots. Skin itches, blisters, bakes in the afternoon sun.

“…approximately 7,000 Arapaho, Lakota and Cheyenne were encamped below the Little Bighorn River…Custer orders Maj. Marcus Reno’s battalion to attack…warriors rush forward to defend the village…Reno’s battalion is soon joined by Capt. Frederick Benteen’s battalion and the surrounded troops make a determined stand…

I look out across the river. An army storms straight at me. There are only a few blades of grass between me and death. Will I run out and meet it? Will I freeze, paralyzed, close my eyes and vomit thru clenched teeth? What would my last thought be? Would it even be coherent?

“…a devastating charge lead by Oglala Lakota Crazy Horse and White Bull… cut down retreating soldiers…Custer found in vicinity of 7th Calvary Memorial…other soldiers found below the knoll…”

Only a few blades of grass between me and God…beautiful green grass between me and…good god…what good god spills blood on beautiful grass…to manifest destiny…to clear the way…for a graveyard and some statues? For glory? God is glorious…like Custer…is handsome like God…is handsome like man…is the measure of all things…even God…Trust us. We know what he wants. We know that he’s a he…like Man…the measure of all things… so tall six feet under…looking up at wide Montana sky… big sky country… big country… no share…no compromise white picket fences… standing in rows like gravestones…screaming the names of dead soldiers…

“I want peace on Earth and that’s what I have strived for…I need your help…to get your minds and your hearts together. Ask the creator for peace throughout the country and throughout the world.” -Austin Two Moons, Northern Cheyenne Elder, November 11, 1993

They fought for a big open space to erect gravestones and statues…and a highway…for buses full of tourists… Close in together now! Cheese! See the cameras flashing…like gunpowder in the sun…glinting off the bullets…flashing toward your eyes…ready to take your… life flashing before your…eyes blinking like shutters… capturing memories for your photo album…Custer, can you see them taking pictures of your death…cameras flashing off your gravestone…

“…the Indians won the battle, but they lost the war against the white man’s efforts to end their independent way of life…”

“Forty years ago I fought Custer…until all were dead…I was then the enemy of the Whiteman. Now I am the friend and the brother, living under the flag of our country.” -Chief Two Moons, Northern Cheyenne, June 25th, 1916

Las Vegas: Eventually the Lights Go Out

Twenty-two hours ago I woke up in the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was 4 a.m. and a weird feeling was gnawing on me like a meat grinder. It was saying, “Eventually, the lights go out.” And they do. Even in the gleaming gold tooth of America that is Las Vegas.

When the sun rises and brings grim reality crashing in with it your only option is to get in the car and drive quickly into oblivion. Las Vegas doesn’t even want you to look back. The scene is played out and the curtain has begun to fall. You must get out before it drops completely. You must move on to the next act.

In the beginning, the radio is blaring. It is the kind of obscure desert radio station you only listen to because no other channel comes in. It is Santana, Black Magic Woman. It is keeping us awake. Neither Kevin nor I have slept in two days. Vegas creeps onto the horizon, a rising tide sparkling like a billion lit fuses. The first glimpse of Vegas always swarms in like a contagious infection. You feel like something is about to happen. This is the electricity of the curtain beginning to rise. The show is about to begin.

It starts in the Excalibur Hotel, a white castle with red and blue cone-topped towers. It is a cartoon. Disney couldn’t concoct a more wildly and deliberately fantastical structure. In the lobby the undersea-bubble-circus carpet knocks me off my feet. Uniformed people on vacuums like riding lawnmowers hover across it, weaving through throngs of people.

Our room is on the 18^th floor. The key cards will not unlock the door. A nearby housekeeper shuffles over. She obviously knows the score. She slides a card into the slot and jiggles it from side to side. She slams the lock around with a fist and jerks the door back and forth in its frame. She mutters some kind of incantation in a Mexican accent. The door swings open.

Shortly afterward we find ourselves on an island in Hawaii. The towers of Vegas have dissolved and sand shifts beneath our feet. A turquoise ocean rushes the shore all around us. Palm trees bend in a breeze. There is Karaoke. People are howling ecstatically into the night. They are passionately devoting themselves to songs they’d never admit to listening to if it were daylight, if they hadn’t sucked down thirty-six twelve-inch high Mai Thais just like the ones Kevin and I are vaporizing.

This is the kind of bar where the music is loud and you feel compelled to lean in close and yell at the person you’re talking to. You must look them right in the eye and say loads of profound things you won’t remember once the sun rises. It’s the kind of atmosphere that makes you realize, with a certain beautiful sadness, that the most honest conversations always happen in places where there’s no time and lots of noise and you have no means of preserving any of the wisdom that spews forth when inhibitions vacate the premises.

The vibe of the place is understandable when you meet the man who runs the show. His name is Clearance Friend. Clearance came from Hawaii, bringing with him an incomparably laid-back attitude and a genuine smile. He has long white hair. His sleeves are rolled up. He leans casually on the bar and talks about islands. He orchestrates the karaoke and he does a mean cover of Drift Away. The song embodies the mood of the place impeccably. “Gimme the beat boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away…”

Kevin and I listen to him all night. Soon everything behind the bar is put away and all the stainless steel surfaces are spotless. All the bartenders are going home and new ones are replacing them. The morning sun reflects off a glassy tower into a pale blue sky.

It’s the point at which you actually notice the shift of the skies that the mythical American night comes to an end. The day scorches. It calls for a change of scenery and something rejuvenating. So you put on sunglasses again and stagger away from the island and out onto the cement strip. Then, catching a sudden glimpse of the seriousness of the daytime tourists, a wave of nostalgia for something you left right around the corner causes you to say something dumb and ruin the entire vibe with melancholy and stupid personal demons. You wish the night would come back. But it shattered as soon as you got out off your barstool. You must distract yourself until a new one comes along.

At the Excalibur Kevin and I request new key cards and a locksmith. The new keys don’t work. We yell, swear, slam, kick and eventually bust in. On the television is an instruction manual called Welcome to Las Vegas. It’s a word for word guide intended to lead nervous amateurs in the right direction. A man in a suit and a woman with big hair teach us how to play roulette. Next, a B-list TV host tells us which restaurants and clubs to go to. Her recommendations include celebrity owners and food so expensive that prices are not listed on menus.

“There are 3,000 people in this hotel,” Kevin says. “How many have the means to take those suggestions?”

“Not very many,” I say.

Most of the guests in the Excalibur show up with mismatched suitcases and a budget. They’re traveling on discount package deals. They won’t see Robert DeNiro at the table next to them while they’re eating dinner. But, this show loops twenty-four hours a day in all their rooms. It tells them that Vegas is glamorous and that if they are not doing glamorous things, they are not really in Vegas. They are doing something wrong if they don’t see celebrities or party with Playboy Bunnies. They may as well have stayed home.

There’s no sense watching this swill and it appears the locksmith is not coming. Kevin and I head down to the restaurant for some breakfast.

The hostess waves us wordlessly to a table and tosses some menus at us. She ambles off, glad to be rid of us. The hash browns are mush and the enchiladas are made of micro-waved rubber. The servers bring raspberry juice when we’ve asked for cranberry, even though there is no raspberry juice on the menu. The restaurant is on par with the 24 hour diner you go to in your hometown when the bars have closed and there is no other option.

After breakfast, Kevin and I get lost in a labyrinth of slot machines on our way to the pool. A security guard slouches against a podium, glowering into oblivion.

“Can you tell us where the pool is?” Kevin asks.

The man doesn’t flinch.

Advancing until we’re a foot from his face, we both say, “Can you tell us where the pool is?”

He jerks his head slightly, continues to glower, and mumbles, “Out those doors.”

Bodies lounge on lawn chairs all around the pool. They’re getting tans. They are trying to look like they’re not looking at all the others to see whose tan is better. They’re renting exclusive tents with televisions and couches. They’re sitting in the shade, trying to look like they’re not looking around at the others to make sure everyone notices that they have exclusive tents with couches and televisions. There’s no one in the pool. Kevin and I jump in and flail around and wonder loudly about the strange American ritual of frying in the sun while there’s a perfectly good pool three feet away.

We decide it’s time for a drink. Flagging down the poolside waitress is complicated. She is about as attentive as the security guard at the podium.

Figuring it’s not worth trying to flag her down again, we wander into the afternoon and snap pictures of New York and Egypt. We stumble upon the Tropicana. Inside is an exhibition of artifacts salvaged from the Titanic. The cashier at the ticket counter is conscious of the high price. She makes sure to ask if we’re students or if we want to be Nevada residents for the day.

Finding the exhibit isn’t easy. It involves fast elevators, inconspicuous signs hidden in dazzling murals of parrots, and beige basement corridors that seem to be leading to the janitor’s closet.

The maze leads to a display of personal possessions that once belonged to the passengers of the infamous wreck. The story of the sinking is poignant like a personal tragedy when it’s told by leftover pieces of human lives, pieces which are near enough and real enough to touch. I contemplate the strange and obsessive western need to be the biggest, the fastest and the most beautiful and decadent. When all frills and excuses are boiled away, that need is the reason for this particular human sacrifice. It makes a person feel cold; especially when you run your hand along the iceberg. It’s there to give an indication of how cold the Atlantic Ocean was the night all those people were plunged into it. At the beginning of the tour, you get a card that looks like a boarding pass. At the end there is a giant list of names. You get to search for the name on your card to see whether the person lived or died. The longest list of survivors is under the First Class heading. The longest list of dead is under the Crew heading.

The exhibit tweaks my nerves. It makes me hungry. The 24 hour buffet at the Excalibur looks like a winning option. It has everything. But aside from the bad Chinese food, the good cake, and a gigantic tourist who can guzzle down an entire glass of soda with her right hand while filling another with her left, it is average at best. The scowling hostess prefers to hoot at the waiting customers from across the dining room rather than walk ten feet to greet them like human beings.

“All of these people hate their jobs,” Kevin says. “Why would you work in a service town if you hate dealing with people?”

“I have no idea.”

“The strange thing is that none of the tourists seem to care that they’re being treated like cattle.”

“They’ve accepted it as normal. People don’t come to Vegas expecting to be treated like high rollers anymore.”

The conversation plunges my mind into a deluge of nightmare flashbacks about huge steaming dishwashers with drains full of unidentifiable globs of wet food. I remember how my nerves twitched every time a customer came to my register with some expired coupon and a blouse with no tag…I could never bring myself to smile. I hated serving consumers. I hated perpetuating the notion that people only exist to buy things. I hated allowing people to treat me like a doormat simply because they were spending money at my place of employment. I wanted to be treated like a human being.

The faces of the workers here in Vegas confirm that I am not the only one who feels this way. People don’t want to pretend to care about their jobs. They are exhausted and stressed out. They know you’re not a high-roller and they aren’t going to waste energy treating you like one. They know you are a regular person like them, on vacation from trying to get by, and worrying in the back of your mind about how you’ll pay off the enormous credit card bill you’re running up. Consumerism, decadence and self-indulgence are no longer new and innocent. They are no longer fashionable. They are beginning to seem depraved, criminal, destructive. We are beginning to see that they never did anyone any good. Most of us could never afford them, and those who could were never satisfied.

In Vegas there lingers an atavistic belief that self-indulgence is still cool. The initial impact of the sparkle sticks with you for at least 48 hours. It convinces you. But when the lights go out you see that look in the eyes of the waiters and the bellhops and you have to try hard not to dwell on it.

“They are only trying to survive,” You tell yourself. “They are just doing what they have to do. No sense picking it apart.”

“But do you really have to do something that makes you unhappy in order to survive?”

Walk away. Hope the lights will melt your thoughts. Listen to the music and look at the people. Groups of girls walk stiffly in very expensive dresses they picked out especially for this night. They carry their brand new spike heels in their hands and complain about blisters. They are putting on shows. They are paying high prices for attention. But it’s what they’re here to do, so it seems reasonable somehow. At some point you accept it. Then you decide whether you want to join them or find some place you know they won’t go and hide there for the night.

Kevin and I opt for Sherwood Forest, the bar in the lobby of the Excalibur. The bar top is covered with gambling screens. People come here when they don’t want attention. They want to ignore and be ignored. On one side a woman is falling off her stool and spraining her ankle and her boyfriend is not helping her up. On another, some kid is maxing out his second credit card and moving onto a third in order to pay for three mixed drinks. Another is trying to make moves on a girl while texting someone else on his cell phone. A college student is carted across the lobby in a wheel chair. He is too hopelessly drunk to walk or even use a friend as a crutch. Kevin and I drink whiskey and jabber our way through the night. Sherwood Forest is a good bar. It is open all night and it is not recommended by Welcome to Las Vegas. No one cares what you look like, what you’re drinking, what you’re saying, who you’re with. They don’t even know you’re there. Your seat at the bar is your own corner of the universe and no one tries to come in and tell you how things should be run there.

Many hours pass by like a few seconds. The sun rises. The lobby surges with people again. They look fresh and rested. I don’t want to see the sun. I don’t want to see the people. They have slept the night away and now they are trying to join in on a conversation they know nothing about. Where do they get off?

What I do feel like is a shower. On the 18^th floor, Kevin and I have another boxing match with our door handle. Our new keys don’t work any better than the old ones. Kevin calls the desk. A locksmith arrives and tinkers with the thing. He decides he’ll have to involve a computer and reprogram it entirely. Kevin and I don’t wait around. We want breakfast.

At the New York, New York Hotel we wander into a place called Nine Fine Irishmen. It is dark inside. Every table is hidden in an intimate nook. Ours has a couch next to it. A one-man band takes requests like a juke box, playing old songs people forgot they loved. The waitresses burst out of their white blouses and green plaid skirts. They refill our Tullamore Dew and Guinness without having to be asked. The food is good. It is authentic. This is a good place to lean back and eat slow.

To escape the afternoon, we take refuge inside the Luxor, a gigantic black pyramid with elaborate lions and sphinxes and Egyptian carpet. There is an IMAX theater. A 3D film about deep sea creatures is playing. Kevin and I perform complex acrobatics all over the knees of those who refuse to relinquish their places in the center of the row, and find seats on the far side of the theater. We are attacked by slow-moving sea stars, homicidal flashing squids, and whales who stare curiously into camera lenses which are being filmed by other camera lenses. The whole show looks like it swam straight out of that limbo between a nightmare, a mushroom vision and Alice in Wonderland as it would be if it were directed by Tim Burton. It is narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet and everything I see is being projected straight into my brain as though I am the only person there.

I don’t remember going to sleep after the show, but I wake up at 4 a.m. convinced that if I look out the window, Las Vegas will crumble to dust at my feet. Its mystique has faded so utterly that I cannot remember why I came there. The only answer I can conjure up is some variation on, “I guess I just needed something to happen.”

I can’t be sure if I actually got what I was looking for. I can only try to appreciate the beauty inherent in a place where a person can be anyone and do anything without being questioned. Women can wear shirts with necklines that plunge down to their navels and men can wear neon pink tuxedoes with top hats and canes and they can both drink endlessly together without being alcoholics. They can stand on the table in any public place and scream loudly and no one will tell them to sit down. Everyone will believe them when they preach about how good everything is. Everything they do will happen under lights bright enough to convince them that everyone wants to look at them, admire them, be them. And when they get home they don’t have to say a word about it. They don’t even have to admit that anything ever happened. That is the mystique of Las Vegas. That is The Dream.

But it is not unusual to hear people, when they wake up in the check-out lines of Vegas hotels, saying, “Well, time to get back to the real world.” That is when you know the lights have gone out for them. Vegas, after all, is only a game. It is a fantasy. It isn’t real. And people come here to be some unreal version of themselves that they only wish they could be in real life. Everyone, including them, knows it’s only a show, but they don’t have to admit that until they are beyond city limits.

The only drawback is that you must be careful about going to sleep. Because when you wake up, it’s with a headache like an earthquake and you find you’re wearing leg irons instead of Versace. At this point you feel compelled to pack quickly and drive as fast as possible into the desolation of the Nevada desert and not even glance at the reflection in your rearview mirror.

People have been coming to America from all over the globe for over two-hundred and fifty years simply for the opportunity to be whatever they want to be as flamboyantly as they possibly can. Soon America will implode. It will collapse inward on itself and rise up in billowing clouds of filth and blow away in the wind. But until that happens, people will continue to migrate to Las Vegas from all corners of the universe. It is one of the last places, even in the Land of the Free, where a person is allowed to be what they want to be without being questioned. Here at the end of America’s reign of decadence, Las Vegas is as close as most people will get to touching their raging dream of freedom. But even here, you can’t hold onto it. You leave feeling as though you’ve only brushed past it in a crowd.

-June 1, 2008

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park: Fugitive Vision from the Subconscious of Salvador Dali

We drive non-stop from Boise, Idaho to Cedar City, Utah. At dawn, at a gas station in Cedar City, we question a cashier. She is local. She will know the way.

“Can you tell us how to get to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State park?” Kevin asks her.

Her eyes bulge. She shakes her head. Slowly, she mutters, “I don’t know what that is.”

“Can you tell us how to get to highway 14?”

She traces elaborate twists and turns into the air all around her and says, “You just go out here and turn right and go down to a light and turn right and kind of curve around toward the onramp and go straight until you have to veer left, but don’t veer left, and you’ll end up right on it.”

We begin to drive. We are quickly ensnared by a university campus. Highway 14 is nowhere to be found. There are no signs, no arrows.

“Cedar City is on Highway 14,” I say, squinting over a map of Utah.

Disoriented by bad directions and a lack of informational road signs, we get on Interstate 15 going north. North is the wrong way. We turn around and go south again.

Taking Exit 59 onto Highway 56 East, we pass through Cedar City, taking a chance turn onto Main Street. By accident, we discover the sign we’ve been searching for. It points to the left, to Highway 14 East.

The road twists and winds. Canyons split the horizon. Cliffs pile up in pink and white layers. They form intricate pillars and towers. They form huge imposing slabs.

“They look like castles,” I say. “Or the birthday cakes of dinosaurs.”

Pine trees shoot up from folds of rock. Gradually, the cliffs smooth into rolling hills. Silvery Aspens materialize between the thickening pines. Meadows expand amid the trees as the hills flatten. Creeks curve through the grass. A quaint log village flies by. It was made especially for tourists. Million dollar cabins loom up sporadically. They are empty. It is not summer. Dilapidated shacks and houses with many old cars in their yards begin to cluster against the highway. They are a town called Orderville, Utah. Orderville has an excessive number of rock shops.

“I think you’d do well in Orderville,” Kevin says to me.

“Yes. I think you’re right.”

“I’ll just drop you off. You can work at one of these rock shops.”

“No. I don’t want to sell rocks. I want to hunt rocks. I’ll go out in the wild and lasso them and bring them in. Someone’s got to do it.”

Many gargantuan tour buses lumber by. They are coming from the Grand Canyon.

“What are all these buses doing in Orderville?” Kevin asks.

“They’re going to the rock shops. The passengers need something to take home with them.”

A sign jumps out of some bushes. It points to right. We swerve off 89 south and onto a one-lane ribbon of asphalt with crumbling edges. It leads to a big sign that says Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.

Inside the visitor’s center a girl gets out a map and spins it hither and thither on the countertop, trying to figure out which way it goes and where we are on it. She hands it to us and points into the distance and says, “There’s a trail off that parking lot over there.”

A snake-like sidewalk leads onto a platform with silver bleachers. It’s a lookout. Kevin and I stare out at the sand. Shadows spring across the pink-orange slopes. Their razor-sharp crests glint in blazing noonday sun. Prehistoric silence suffuses the landscape. A cool wind augments the emptiness. The scene strikes an eerie and beautiful note like a fugitive vision from the subconscious of Salvador Dali.

Kevin and I traipse up the side of the tallest dune, punching a line of footprints into its sharp crest. From the top, we watch the swells rise and fall. The sand is impeccably soft. It is the color of human skin. The many dunes coalesce into a single body, forming a voluptuous naked woman. I stand on her hip as she lounges in the sun.

“I wonder,” Kevin says from a few steps back, “If we don’t come back, will it occur to that park ranger to send out a search party?”

“No,” I say. “She couldn’t even read the map she gave us. She can’t locate the visitor station on it, much less lost hikers. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know what it was a map of.”

Back on the wavy sidewalk Kevin and I stop and pour eleven pounds of sand out of each of our shoes. We drive back to highway 89 and go south toward Kanab, Utah. The drive is short and easy. Halfway through, we pass a sign that says Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. It’s a back entrance of some kind.

“Hey!” I yell. “That’s the same park from another angle! It’s a whole other perspective!”

“I can’t believe no one told us,” Kevin says.

In Kanab, we stop for a breakfast sandwich and look at the town. It has the air of a boomtown that’s lost its luster and must now survive by tourism. In winter, it is empty. In summer, it is flooded with trinket-buyers. The locals are wary of the tourists. The tourists can sense this. It makes them nervous, but they still want to buy something that proves they were here. They move in packs around the souvenir shops and restaurants. The locals smile. The tourists smile. They accept each other reluctantly. It’s a fascinating dynamic.

“Forget highway 14,” Kevin says. “You can’t navigate Cedar City. It would be best to go from St. George to Kanab and then take 89 to the dunes.”

“Absolutely. Cedar City is nonsense. It has no signs and the locals don’t know where they are.”

-May 28, 2008

Birth of the Zephyr: Custer State Park, South Dakota:

Sweeping. Rolling. Wide vast magnificent- insufficient words. 50,000 gargantuan buffalo thundering. Run alongside, barely clothed. Pick one off with an arrow- Be brave. God dips hand in green mist, swoops across blue canvass slow- gentle up, gentle down. Throws purple, splattering thistle like Pollock. Air moves in a gushing wake behind his swooping hand, bending golden grass. Stand here and know what it feels like to be wind and have nothing to do but rush swift and smooth- gentle up, gentle down- subtle undulations like slow sex. Wind runs light fingers across the curve of earth’s naked back, and she shifts. Feel their breathing mingling, her heart molten and his heart flying. Know what rustle is… the shifting of sheets off sweating skin and heaving ribcages in summer wind. Know what quiet is. Hear nothing. Then, swelling up over the horizon, thunder advances… Swoop-swish like a bird flies… dive and float, hover, dive and float. Fly. Yell. Blow away. Run loose. Wail gallop blaze… reverberate against the breathing day. Pulse. Drive. Feel like wind because you have space to move like it. Chase. Race. Learn its dance and scream like it. Drop. Drop swing float fall… gold luster grass tips touch sun, drip with afternoon. Wind blows into you, vaporizes you, scatters you to nothing, leaving no time for you to miss being a solid slave to gravity. This is zephyr country. Howls silently in gust and whisper…

Glittering Space Captains and Mutant Rock-hungry Babies: Kiss Plays Sturgis, South Dakota:

A bulging line of people snakes out into the desert. They shift and twitch, trying to shuffle forward in line. Eyeballs pop out of heads. They begin to claw each other to death. The gate opens and they go running like horses on a track. They vacuum-seal themselves to the front of the stage with suction-cupped fingers. They clamp onto it with drooling vampire fangs, chew the footprints of their heroes out of the floor and eat them. Kiss comes on, a troop of glittering space-captains with platform shoes like skyscrapers. All air stops moving. Then…the first blazing note like a chainsaw to the sternum. The VIPs, with their $400 tickets, scream loud to show off professionally whitened teeth. They jump high to bounce expensive silicon in designer shirts. Behind them the violent ones rage with souls of steel, soaking up guitar sounds like gasoline. Behind them, in the chair zone, people sit back and melt in the sparkling explosions. The space captains float up high on platforms, ride zip-lines into the crowd. Everyone is screaming so loud they can’t hear themselves. In the morning their throats will feel like they’ve been thru paper shredders. We’re blasted into the air, zapped to pieces. We float down, fluttering like flaky confetti, catching fire in the smoking fountains of sparks. In the hills people maul each other, rip each other’s clothes off. Searing metallic screams weld them together at the genitals. They are creating monsters; mutant rock-hungry babies who will be born craving blood and the epic noise of the soar-and-scream guitar note. Their first words will be lyrics from the rock-and-roll party sermons that were woven into their minds at the moment of conception. They will taste life with undulating sex tongues, always on the look-out for mouths to suck. The Sunami crowd crushes the stage trying to get closer to the diabolical electric priests who stand wailing in happy Halloween costumes. They should be old. But they are not. Their costumes keep them from aging and changing and deteriorating. Face paint keeps them invincible. They are always in their prime, like photos in a picture album. They will never fall apart like humans. They will never disappoint, never fail, always blast the crowd to smithereens.

Uncle Don’s Campground- Sturgis, South Dakota:

Monster crickets ring high-to-low, fast-to-slow lullaby like electricity buzzing thru a power line, loud as buzz saws in the night, with the timbre of engines revved against the black sky. The ever-present South Dakota wind ruffles warm thru the skin like morphine, blowing stars around like salt dust. It’s quiet here. It’s calm atop this hill. This is Uncle Don’s place. It is an island refuge amid the ruckus of the motorcycle rally swarming below. It drifts gently, lulls you into contentment.

Uncle Don: I didn’t open this campground here until ’90. Yeah, I bought the land in ’85. My friend, one of his daughters started callin’ me Uncle Don, okay. Everything is word of mouth. I’ve only had to 86 three people outta here since 1990. You don’t see no arm bands on nobody here do ya? It’s the honor system, okay.

It’s easy to feel at home here, easy to picture yourself coming back year after year- like Robyn and Bryan. They got married here in 2006.

Bryan: We met on her birthday at a bar called the Full Throttle. Robyn caught my eye and it was just kinda, you know, ‘Well, can I buy ya a drink?’ She’s probably the first person I ever took for a ride, you know. Honestly I couldn’t tell ya a name if there was ever anybody on the back of my bike before her. Ever.

Uncle Don’s burnt down a couple of years ago. But he rebuilt it. He’s a tall, sinewy man- bright eyes, white hair, veins like road maps and a tan like he vacations on the sun. He’s always laughing and talking. He drives a golf cart all around sharing beers with the campers and learning their names. He’s happy.

Bryan: I come here and I’m walkin’ up this trail in the Petrified Forest with a flashlight, and ‘Oh, what’s that?’ and I picked it up and it was a piece of petrified rock- a little piece- kinda like a half-moon shape…I chucked it into this ravine. And the first year I brought Robyn here we were on our way up the hill and here’s that piece of rock. It was in my footsteps again on the same trail. That’s when I knew. This is my spiritual ground and that’s my symbol. My spirit’s here.

Uncle Don will recommend you have breakfast at the Piedmont American Legion, where the real people eat, where there are no tourists. It’s a beige cafeteria with plastic silverware and a bingo ambience. Eight years worth of Budweiser banners from rallies past cover the walls, and they are covered with the autographs of past attendees.

Bryan: Don’s like my dad and Polly’s like my mom. We come to love em, and they love us. They’re great people. Can’t find any better. That’s why I said, ‘I’m getting’ married in Sturgis.’ Robyn rode with me for two years out here on the back of my bike, and then the year after we got married we wanted to get her a bike. I said ‘You need your own bike, ‘cause you gotta experience this for yourself.’ A friend of mine had a bike for sale; it was like a brand new bike. She got on it and she took off- I mean that bike was made for her.

When the storms come, the rain falls thick and lashing and the lightening switches the track on your CD player. The tents begin to boogie in the wind, collapsing into the swamps pooling inside of them. This is a good time to take your huge bottle of Jack Daniels over to the pavilion and listen to Uncle Don play a tune or two on the guitar.

Bryan: I’ve done a lot of wrong things in my life, relationship wise, and that’s where ya learn from. I spent almost three years alone in a cabin in Wisconsin trying to find some solidarity. I needed to in order ta move on. I put all the little details together and come up with a picture. Years later, I come to the point where I know what I’m looking for. Ya really have ta be selective and take your time in choosing. We’re soul mates. I mean, there is no doubt.

Uncle Don’s sound is a steel-string blues somewhere between a rocking chair on a humid porch in New Orleans, and Jimmy Buffet at a beach front bar in the Caribbean lamenting his salt shaker. The song is called Wildfire Blues. It’s about resilience. It’s about working hard to rebuild when your entire operation burns down.

By popular request, Uncle Don:

Hey, hey, workin’ man,

A workin’ man like me,

Ain’t never been on welfare

and that you’ll never see,

I’ll be workin’

Cryin’ away my wildfire blues

One time I thought ’bout leavin’

and Polly tol’ me no

Our nieces and our nephews

wouldn’t have no place to go

I’ll be workin’

Cryin’ away my wildfire blues

Uncle Don: You can go home now and say, ‘Yeah, I got a uncle Don. I got cousins from everywhere! Ha ha ha!’ It’s just a wonderful deal! It’s my bowl of soup! I live for it! Hahaha ha! It’s just gonna get better, okay, I’ll keep shinin’ it up and I’ll wait for y’all to get here and I’ll have big tears in my eyes when ya leave. Haha Haha!

This is the reason why people come here year after year. And it’s easy to want to keep the place a secret. This is why, in order to find the place, you must have a close personal friend who can tell you the way.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 2008: Shattering the Hooligan Stigma of the Biker Culture

Miles outside Sturgis, South Dakota, the ground begins to hum. A pack of motorcycles roars by. Another pack roars by. The drivers lean back in their seats, hanging off high handle bars. Behind them a woman’s loose arm skin ripples in the wind and her back fat puffs through the laces of her leather corset. They wear club emblems on their backs. Some are old, worn and dirty. Some are new and clean. It’s easy to tell which riders are hobbyists and which ones were born into this. The latter has a gaze that hits you like a steel bat to the skull. There’s a hard, fast story written all over him in faded green tattoos.

SLH: Tell me about the first time you rode a bike.

Animal: I was probably seven…I run straight inna ditch, hooked all out inna road, picked it back up, got it started, rode it some more. I got a mowtercycle I’ve ridden for almost twenty years. She’s my girl. Since I have owned dat mowtercycle, I have put twenty-five rear tires on it. A rear tire will go between seven and ten-thousand moiles.

By the time you reach city limits, the traffic has turned almost exclusively to bikes. The ground is shaking. Your nerves have seized up. The traffic lights are blinking and 4-way stop signs have been placed in every intersection to slow the movement of the roaring flow. On Lazelle Street, it’s bikes only. The thunder is near deafening.

Vendor booths insulate the street for blocks: Brass Knuckles! Dirty Panties! Hot Leathers! Broken Spoke; Biggest Biker bar in the world! I brought my mama all the way from the east coast to cook for this rally! Good Italian Food! You’ll love it! The air is thick with exhaust and the mingling odors of every artery clogging edible substance imaginable, including eight-inch square blocks of potato chips. Twenty-foot high inflatable bottles of Jack Daniels and Budweiser occupy the roofs of buildings. The whole scene is made of denim, leather, American whiskey, American beer and American flags. It’s a strictly American swirl despite visitors from all over the world.

City Representative: We’re closing in on around 700 vendor licenses. Our sales tax is up 80%. People are having a good time and spending money, so that’s a good thing for the City of Sturgis.

Lazelle St. is where the vacation bikers hang out. They’re here to buy things. You don’t see many old school bikers here. They’re here to ride.

Animal: Mowtercycles are not an accessory. They’re a love, a desire, a need. Dose people downtown… we call ‘em RUBs- Rich Urban Bozos. $30,000 and thirty moiles does not make you a boiker. A friend a mine bought me dese Harley Davidson boots five years ago. I don’t own nothin’ else dat says Harley Davidson on it. Da last thing in the world dat I have any care about is keepin’ up with da Jones’. The Jones’ can lick my left testicle. Not the right one, the left one. I’m old school real like my boike is old school real. Dere may be a few people younger dan me dat understand dat, But not most. I’m the end a dat generation.

The whole street is covered with row upon row of parked bikes, glinting in the sun like a shoulder-high chrome garden. Rolling through the aisles are burley men with beards and lots of back hair, wispy bleach-blonde California boys, huge walrus-shaped beach ball types and those who are utterly indescribable. People clog the sidewalks. Old people, little kids, girls with thick thighs thundering out from under chaps, girls in nothing but tattoos and red fishnet body suits, girls posing in scanty dress to earn donations for their college fund… Most of the women have a certain look like deflated and sagging caricatures of what was hot in 1989; high-wasted whitewashed jeans, tall hair, big boobs, beer guts. After you’ve looked long enough, they become beautiful like an acquired taste.

Law enforcement: Things are going good for us at the sheriff’s office; Numbers are about the same as last year, we’ve done 88 traffic stops; we’ve issued 83 warnings, 29 citations. As far as the jail goes, we’ve had 74 individuals go through the jail.

Animal: In order ta join a club you got a period of what we call prospect. You have a sponsor. Playin’ prospect would be …I call you at 11:30 at night and you live 40 miles away…or 80 miles, or 100…I want 2 cheeseburgers from your corner McDonalds, and ‘ey better be hot when they git here. It’s February. There’s no car involved- ever- if you’re a prospect. Your sponsor calls you, it’s mowtercycle ownly. How do you take 2 cheeseburgers 40 miles, hot, on a mowtercycle? Ya stick ‘em between the cylinders. Ya gotta be sharp enough ta know dat.

The nerves begin to relax within moments of mingling into the crowd. These are not hoodlum delinquents. They’re just people. Doctors, lawyers, carpenters, mechanics, fast food workers, students… Here they are all the same. There are the Boozefighters- a club established in 1946 that inspired a film called The wild Ones. Then there are the Soldiers for Jesus- clean and bright in yellow and black. They were probably established last Sunday while their children were in Bible study class.

Animal: There are gentlemen dat belong to a mowtercycle club dat I respect highly. I have worked on a lotta deir boikes. If one a dose people fall, gets struck and killed, you go to deir service. Did you love and care for dat man? It’s 26 *#%& degrees out and it’s 800 moiles away… you pile the *&#% up and you roll.

Sturgis is usually a small, dusty town of around 60,000 people. But this week it will swell to many times that size. It will be stifling hot. It will take forty-five minutes to drive one mile. Traffic will be chaos both on foot and on wheels. It’s a volatile scene, always on the brink of disaster.

Animal: I’m the kind of individual dat will roide my mowtercycle to work in the $*%#&# snow. I’m not afraid a none a dat. My worst wrecks have been with cagers, which is an old-school boiker term for people roidin’ in a car, not payin’ attention. Probably my fastest crash was 167 miles an hour.

Law enforcement: For last night’s shift we have four injury accidents, one vehicle seized, there was a total of 32 DWI arrests, 27 misdemeanor drug arrests, nine felony drug arrests, and 350 warnings were issued, and 520 citations issued.

None of this will faze the old school bikers. Nothing does. The people you meet here defy the hooligan stigma that follows them around. They are rebels and wild ones only because a person must break rules and twist conventions in order to live free and fully here in the era of fear and rampant restriction. Many rules are being made in this country. Many deceptions are being woven. But an old school biker is honest- he has no agenda and hides nothing. And he lives by no guidelines other than highway stripes. He is moved only by a driving desire to live hard.

Animal: I’m an everlasting warrior, dere ain’t no doubt. Adapt and overcome. You gotta make changes. Everything’s forward. Dere ain’t no backin’ up. If you foind somethin’ dat interests you, and you don’t go for it…you will always second guess yourself. An old black man told me several different things when I was twenty-something years old livin’ in San Diego: One a da things he told me was dat loife is a beautiful thing if you know how to live it. I’m almost to where I’ve learned how to live it. My eyes are open. My attitude is good. And apparently the big man has got a purpose for me, ‘cause dere have been numerous opportunities in my loife for my ticket to get punched. Dyin’ ain’t hard, dyin’s da easy way out. The biggest regret will be not taking advantage of an opportunity should it arise.

When the last vacationer takes off his leather costume and packs up his bike in a trailer and drives home to Monday, the last old school biker will be following behind. But he will be riding his bike and he will never take off his patch. He will roar out of town leaving all judgments, stereotypes, and rules shattered in his ear-blasting wake. The pieces will rattle off into gutters alongside the road and Sturgis will crumble to dust again and go to sleep until next year.