A murky haze settled into the hollow as cicadas thrummed from their perches among the layered canopy. Sunlight dappled the moist, fern-covered ground; I stepped carefully, eyeing my prize: a cluster of chanterelles peeking through the dense leaf litter.
Dirt-speckled, the mushrooms’ uneven, wavy caps cradled
morning dew—soaking a few snail hangers-on as I gently nudged them onto the
ground and tucked the orange blobs into my weathered garden hod. A few steps
later, I startled a deer and watched it bound, crashing through high brush and
melding into a thicket. Far afield, a turkey gobbled back at cawing crows.
I exhaled, and surveyed the mounded mushrooms. Cooked down, they’d last a meal or two—reminding me of the constant work it took to reap what I, or nature, sowed. Still, I felt a needed lift rise within me—what with the pandemic’s existential weight; racial liberation uprisings erupting nationwide; my bank account zeroing out; unemployment stuck in processing limbo for months; my business venture scrapped; bills piling up; job opportunities closing left and right, in sync with the plummeting economy; temporary, high-cost, useless health insurance ending; and my damaged RV becoming more a haven for rain and mice than me and JoJo.
Reversing course, light filtered across my tanned arms, my
blonding curls; I breathed deeply.
Keep moving.
Setting my bounty inside my clay-caked car, I reminded myself not to explore the wealth of accessible mental rabbit holes, down which I’d plummeted for weeks—where self-questioning and deprecation exacted a depressingly high emotional toll.
I turned the key in the ignition and inched uphill.
The Check Engine light illuminated, its accompanying sensors flashing; I lay my head on the worn steering wheel.
Each day, something reopened an unmendable wound festering within me.
***
A month prior, I sat in the rental car’s absurdly low
driver’s seat and held my breath behind my mask, all the while turning toward
the window and away from the unmasked rental technician—who recited a litany of
unnecessary add-ons for my cross-country trek.
I pressed my gloved finger to the iPad screen and scrawled
an illegible signature.
“Have a good trip,” she said, promptly exiting the vehicle
and coughing into the wind.
I doused my hands and the steering wheel in hand sanitizer, shifted the car into drive, and breathed out. Adjusting the rear view mirror, I mentally recited everything I’d packed as I locked New Mexico in my sights. I had no idea how far I’d make it each day or where I’d sleep; all I knew was that the two-door coupe would serve as my makeshift bubble whilst navigating through COVID-19-racked states.
Twelve hours later, just outside of Oklahoma, foreboding
storm clouds shrouded the moon—lightening pulsing through the darkened masses,
as my phone’s weather radar tracked a solidly red line descending on Norman. I
rolled into my friend’s driveway as the wind picked up, and we exchanged
socially distanced greetings before the rain poured down and I ran back to my
car—the seat declined, a pillow on the headrest. Bouts of hail and furiously
loud thunder punctuated the night as I tossed and turned, feeling my neck and
back muscles tighten.
Veiled by dawn, I peed into my ad hoc toilet bottle and
lodged it in the passenger-side door’s storage cubby—ensuring I’d tightened the
lid.
Along the highway shortly thereafter, I watched the officer approach as I pressed my mask’s nose guard and rolled down the passenger-side window. Before he appeared, I flushed with anxiety and anger—recognizing that if I were BIPOC, my frenetic attempts to mask up could’ve been construed as threatening, an act of aggression. Maskless, he leaned in through the window; the added weight on the frame caused the full urine bottle just below his forearm to shudder. Amid a pandemic, it seemed even more unnecessarily bizarre for such a stop—much less without PPE; but part of me was glad he honed in on me, rather than the Black and Brown drivers who’d flanked me. A warning later, I pulled off the shoulder and merged back into traffic. Even though my hands were gloved, my face covered, I slathered myself in sanitizer—feeling wholly unclean.
New Mexico’s intense sun broke through the lone tree’s branches and fell upon the collection of pots and listing plants. I’d stepped into the yard so many times before, each of which had been fueled by excitement—the expectation of seeing him framed through the open door ahead, hearing his laugh. But there, as the heat rose from the baked earth, I knew the vibrantly blue door would never open. I collected what remained of my plants and stowed them in the trunk of my dirt-covered Subaru—a bittersweet reunion.
That night, as I walked with my friend along water-filled arroyos, I felt New Mexico’s familiar pull—and mourned the finality of its loss and all of the frayed, loose ends therein, which only intensified as I crossed the state line the next morning, reflected on my abruptly ended life chapter there, and sent a final text.
Thank you for making
New Mexico worth it.
***
Never did I imagine I’d be standing in a line at a driver’s license office during a pandemic. The attending clerk scanned my temperature and nodded toward the largely vacant waiting area—the few seats separated by a number of blue X’s.
“Have you ever had an Alabama driver’s license before?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I last lived here, fourteen years ago.”
“Wow. Why’d you come back?”
Her probing question surprised me, much like the sentiment expressed by my childhood hair stylist when I’d stopped by months before to say hello, to tell her I was back.
“And is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she’d asked, a knowing smile curving at the corner of her lips.
Given the extent to which my plans had unraveled, I recognized my honest answers to both questions remained debated by the jury in my head.
“Please remove your mask,” the intake clerk said from behind her plexiglass shield.
I repeated her request slowly, feeling my anxiety rise.
“I totally get ya, man,” my neighbor said from behind his mask, nodding as I fumbled to remove mine and muster a smile in front of the green square on the wall.
Outside, I faced a completely empty carnival setup—the
carousels and Ferris wheel at the corner of the cracked pavement creaking in
the wind. I folded my temporary license into my wallet.
A rain shower broke as I eased off of the county road, back onto the gravel driveway and dodged Zebra Swallowtails fluttering through the air; around the curve, nestled atop the hill, my RV came into view.
Heat rippled across Bertie’s roof while I ruffled new okra
leaves. Bush beans dangled from flowering stems, and tomatoes blushed red. And
from an unlikely nest-filled perch above a carrot bed, a tiny, feathered
bluebird chick raised its head to meet mine.
Amid the chaos, life continued to unfold.
From my back pocket, I removed my license—my pixelated smile visibly fake. Comparing my hole-punched New Mexico license with it, I bore little resemblance—my hair longer, facial hair fuller, the lines around my eyes noticeably longer.
That evening, as I tarped over garden beds, I craned my head toward the nest—now empty, save a dud egg and a flight feather. The fledgling had flown. I smiled, and watched pink hues fill the sky.
I thought back to my licenses—the photos taken so close in time, and still, they felt years apart. Between then and now, I’d become a stranger unto myself.
But deep within my strained eyes, I recognized the faintest glimmer: the desire to fly.
Red chile soaked into seared tortilla: a shifting bed for stewed beans, melted cheese, and scrambled eggs. Across the table, my friend sprinkled fresh jalapeños over her nachos and nodded—confirming my suspicion.
“This is such a small town.”
I’d recently submitted my resignation from my toxic job, the impetus for which was so rich with drama that, in resultant stress-induced insomnia, I crafted a comic strip from it. And barely two days later, I’d been given a week’s notice to vacate my RV park. Suspiciously coincidental, the timing made me recall my friend’s statement—her implication intoning bell-like.
And people talk.
Crumpled notice in-hand, I re-read the short paragraph and stared into the setting sun—fractured light dancing across Bertie: immovable, broken-down.
And just how am I going to fix this?
***
The next day, before I could sit completely, the property manager shoved the freshly printed page across the cluttered desk—the paper’s warmed edges catching on the splintered tabletop.
“I wouldn’t want to put you in an awkward situation.”
I nearly laughed out loud at their hypocrisy.
Thanks to a friend, I’d been able to leverage renter law, and indicated that the original notice they’d furnished was illegal; the revised notice resting in front of me gifted me a full month to determine my next steps. It was the closest I’d get to an apology. And there would be no further negotiation.
Even still, I’d never been given a reason for the forced removal. As curious as I was livid, I pressed for an answer.
Their hands shook, not from a nervous palsy, but rather broiling anger—the depths of which ran bizarrely shallow. As they launched into an empty rationale, they clutched their coffee mug with such force that I expected it to shatter with each emphatic enunciation—their lips curling carefully around patent mistruths as each burned into my brain.
Minutes later, they nodded once more: my cue to leave. I rose, flustered and upset. Hours afterward, I’d recognize the motives for what they were: a collection of anti-environmental views peppered with violations of freedom of speech and probable anti-queer discrimination. But in that moment, exhausted and fatigued, I slipped the revised notice into my pocket, and pulled open the warped, turquoise-painted door.
Their hollow “God bless” followed me out.
As I approached Bertie and eyed my homemade directional sign to the ad hoc recycling center alongside Bertie’s backside, I laughed at the delicious irony of being displaced due to upsetting the status quo by having an environmental conscience—my driving motive for transitioning into tiny living.
The departure from my job hadn’t been wholly different—a crucible in which I was forced to choose between either honoring my ethics or perpetuating white supremacist praxis. My decision was clear; with my back sore from repeated stabs, I leaned fully into the ensuing uncertainty—wearing with pride the label former complicit coworkers had applied to me: disruptor.
Over the following weeks, through a series of conversations, my boyfriend J and I determined how our respective new chapters—scoped fully outside the state, our eyes fixed on the southeast—would intersect. We both recognized that New Mexico was not our place, and there was comfort in acknowledging it.
We’d move beyond the high desert—gleaning from it the richness of experiential lessons, each of which would help propel us forward.
***
Weeks later, snowplows arrived in the layered parking lot—skimming packed lenses methodically, the trucks’ wheels performing mechanical ballet.
Thick flakes slowly descended from laden grey clouds as I scanned my laptop’s screen—my southerly route paved in fat blue lines to Alabama. Powdery blocks cleaved away from the coffee shop’s eaves and exploded across the icy sidewalk. A car’s spinning wheels reminded me that I’d left Bertie’s snow chains in my car, stored with J in Albuquerque. But I quickly reminded myself that I wouldn’t know how to fasten them anyhow; they were more of a security blanket—one I hoped I wouldn’t miss.
Sighing, I took a deep pull from my coffee, imagining the journey over the next four days—my mind juggling multiple variables as my bank account emptied.
More snow fell from the roof, mounding into frigid piles.
The Land of Enchantment had morphed into the Land of Entrapment. I narrowed my eyes, answering an unasked question.
But you can’t have me.
***
Just as snow began to fall again, I pushed aside the blanket draped inside Bertie’s door, and dusted off my hair. JoJo wriggled around in one of her nests, rolling over for reassuring rubs. I nuzzled her nose with my chilled cheek.
“Bear with me, little bean. We’ve got a tiring journey ahead.”
A ladder rested precariously atop my infrequently used bicycle, which balanced haphazardly across three lidded garbage cans packed with wrapped inventory for my future vintage shop. The air, heavy with the smell of rubber muck boots, warmed slowly from the faithful tower heater.
Out from my laden grocery bag, I wrangled a large wedge of cornbread—JoJo angling for any errant crumb as I inhaled the buttered bread, leaving no trace on the wrinkled plastic wrap. I stared out the window.
Within 24 hours, I’d unmoor my home and leave New Mexico. Whereas some RVers enjoyed driving days, I never did—my mind consumed by the chassis’ incessant clattering from offending potholes, as the hours expanded with the asphalt snaking toward the horizon.
JoJo licked my hand, and I smiled down at her before looking back outside. Eyes darting from snow-covered junipers to the muddy arroyo beyond, I murmured again.
Sliding through predawn darkness, my car fishtailed toward a snowbank along the canyon’s edge as a semi listed sideways, bearing down in my askew rearview mirror—the oncoming lanes choked by a pileup.
Amid my brain’s cacophonous, contradictory flight-and-fight mental directives, I attempted to maintain some semblance of composure—feeling a momentary sense of relief that I’d remembered to tell my parents where JoJo was being boarded. She might not appreciate Alabama’s humidity, but she’d enjoy my parents’ cozy fireplace—quickly forgetting that curly-haired man who’d so selfishly taken time for himself, and subsequently hurtled down a mountainous gorge.
But before my car’s back bumper skated into the snowbank and over the side, I regained control and slid further along the obscured canyon pass turned bobsled chute. Decelerating, I put “Heroes” on a loop, straightened my mirror, and refused to exceed 10 mph until the road revealed itself beneath the thickening layer of ice and snow. Behind me, the semi pulled off, leaving me and a rust-speckled Tercel shuddering down the corridor alone.
Eyes trained on a strip of blue sky bursting through the snowy veil, and knuckles clenched over the steering wheel, I cautiously reached for my nearly cooled coffee as my salt- and snow-caked rental sedan’s wheels finally reunited with hole-pocked asphalt.
Sun glanced across the snow-smeared windshield. And as I watched the behemoth monuments rising from the landscape—their jagged, brownish-red formations stark against the snow—I took a long, deep pull on the lukewarm dark roast and melted into the music.
“We can be heroes just for one day.”
Image description: taken from far away, the shot features an expansive blue sky with a few white clouds. A few brownish-red peaks are visible above the snowfall on the ground; the bases of the peaks are covered in snow and sage brush.
***
Naivety bookends travel, and travel infantalizes us: everything is new, awe-inspiring; we’re jellyfish floating in an expansive sensorial sea, drifting into and longing to experience its deepest depths.
Two days before my foray into the canyon, I locked my apartment and felt a mantle of anxiety lift from my shoulders. I had a very schematic outline of what I intended to see and do over the ensuing 3,200 mile road trip, but left most of it open to chance. As my windshield defrosted, I familiarized myself with the rental car’s most vital functions, and slipped my crowbar beneath the driver’s seat.
Hours later, I passed quietly through southeastern Washington’s green, amoeba-shaped agriculture fields and wine vineyards with aged, woody plants wrapped tightly around cracked pergolas. Manicured stretches along the horizon gave way to broken, upturned trunks and tilled fields. Treed oases shrouded weathered clapboard houses and trailers with glowing porch lights: tiny beacons welcoming a new day. The rising sun bathed the fields in a lavender glow, and outlined the snow-flecked, rolling hills against the steeply rising mountains far into the distance.
With an impatient produce hauler tailgating me, I eased into an abandoned convenience store parking lot to snap a few photos of an array of midcentury chairs encircling a fire pit. Across the road, coyotes perched atop the hills, keenly attuned to the hoards of bloated finches gliding down over felled, shattered trees. Down a produce farm’s cottage-lined gravel road, a school bus rumbled out with its charges: tiny bodies clamoring over the seats, lowering the fogged windows—shrieks of laughter and curious, wide eyes as they passed me: the stranger regarding the entire spectacle.
I lingered out in the chill, taking in a panoramic view, listening as the sounds of the morning crept into the air. Hairs pricked on the back of my neck, cajoling me back into the car’s encapsulating warmth. Sections of the sky remained forebodingly dark. And as my sedan glided through northeast Oregon and across Idaho’s wide, empty fields, I felt an encroaching storm stalking me.
Having finally arrived in Salt Lake City, I scanned my phone screen with heavy, drooping eyelids, and then screamed. The clerk inside the gas station raised their head, momentarily scanning the dark parking lot for the source before returning to their newspaper. Through a combination of exhaustion and ineptitude on my part, and clever subterfuge by a third-party hotel room reservation platform, I’d unwittingly blown most of my lodging budget in my first night. Once I abandoned my futile attempts to find loopholes in the cancellation policy, I pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, wandered into the brilliantly gleaming, gilded and colonnaded lobby, and asked for my room keys. An apartment-sized suite appointed with an uncomfortable bed and mint green accents in its superfluous living room area all but greeted me with, “Welcome, sucker.”
I lay prone on the king-sized bed, willing my anxiety to dispel and enthusiasm to surge.
It’s ok. Everyone fucks up. It’s a learning moment. EVERYTHING’S FINE.
It was nearing 8pm, and my residual anger combined with overwhelming hunger fueled a speedy restaurant reconnaissance walk. I inched up to the stoop of a highly rated sushi bar on my list, opened the door, and faced a wall of hard, accusatory stares from hipsterish poseurs and wannabe influencers taking selfies and rapping out captions—most of which undoubtedly included #YOLO.
As I turned to exit, I cut a sideways glance at two bouffant-capped tweens in acid-washed mom jeans and Carhartt jackets—clothing reminiscent of my earliest field clothes as an archaeologist.
Silly Salt Lake City children. You won’t out-hipster me. I’m from fucking Seattle.
Twenty minutes later, I took a deep breath, straightened my brilliantly vibrant sweater, flecked my conditioned curls, and charged back inside—bulldozing my way through the hipster gauntlet to the host’s stand.
“Name for the waitlist, Matt. Seat for one.”
I flicked off my generic gloves with an air of decided disinterest in the entirety of the belabored, attention-seeking social positioning unfolding around me, shoved a crumpled jacket toward its owner, and seated myself at the end of a crowded waiting bench. I smiled into my phone’s dark screen, and turned it over. Looking up at the ostentatious light fixtures, I closed my eyes and rested my head against a bank of planters.
It’s all a performance. Just keep dancing.
***
With the canyon and Salt Lake City behind me, I parked at a rest stop to soak in the sun and massage my tense shoulders. Albeit brief, my visit to Utah’s capital had been remarkably uneventful, bland. Everywhere I went, I sensed an air of subtle surveillance, which only amplified my desire to leave quickly.
Overhead, open, blue skies streaked with pillowy clouds entreated me to keep moving forward; I felt more at home there, at a rest stop, than I had in the entire city.
Back on the highway, as the air whipped my hair, I hollered into the vastness—whooping at the arching rocks, the stoic cliff faces, until my lungs felt like tattered rags.
Image description: taken uphill, the shot focuses on an arched geological formation dusted with snow. Sage brush grows in the foreground.
Hours later, as I stooped in thigh-high snow to capture a few shots of a mural stretching along an abandoned storefront, a man pulled up in his Bronco. Immediately, my shields went up, and I angled toward my car; he called after me.
“Hey, you trying to get Horsehead?”
Unsure if this was a local proposition, I stared, vacuously cow-eyed.
“Up there, just near that triangle of trees,” he continued, angling over his seat and pointing far uphill, toward a mountainous stretch.
I aligned myself with his outstretched arm.
“Oh! Yep, I see it.”
He leaned back and smiled.
“So, you’re from Washington, huh?” he said, adjusting his cap and nodding toward my license plate. “What part?”
“Seattle.”
“OH, Seattle,” he crooned nostalgically. “My wife and I go up there once a year. We moved here to be closer to her family. I’m from there. But it’s so expensive now.”
“Yep, it is. I’m sort of on a mission to get out of there myself,” I replied. “On my way to Santa Fe.”
“Welp, yeah, you got a ways to go, but it’s nice.”
He finished by reciting a complex roadmap for reaching Horsehead Canyon. I knew it wasn’t on my way, but waited until he was done, thanked him, and waved him on.
Placing my camera on the passenger seat, I chuckled to myself.
Of course I encountered one of the most open, friendly people from Seattle in New Mexico.
That night, as I drove along streets sprinkled with adobe buildings bedecked with bright tiles, porch arches glutted with hanging chiles, mammoth Cottonwood trees towering overhead, and low, Gaudi-esque walls outlining succulent-peppered greenways, I exhaled.
This feels better.
Image description: an adobe facade with an entry gate, which is made of wood and metal. There are colorful tile mosaics flanking the gate; urns sit atop pedestals on either side of the gate.
***
Fueled with multiple helpings of scrambled eggs slathered in green and red chiles, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began traipsing around Santa Fe.
Within the first hour, I found myself near tears in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. While her art has always been inspiring to me, what continued to swirl in the back of my mind was how she described her affinity to New Mexico—the landscape, the beauty of natural forms—and how much of a foil it was to her life in New York City. Blocks away, in the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, I became even more overwhelmed by the place-based narratives on Native life and traditions, and the destruction wrought through colonialism, and its modern day avatars—all reflected through generations of artists.
Exiting the museum, I ran into droves of people leaving the main square—pink hat-wearing Womxn’s March participants, most of whom were coupled and white and clearly satisfied with their annual contribution to democracy. I scanned the area, landing on the pavilion where Native speakers continued addressing the rapidly dwindling crowd, calling for Indigenous rights to be recognized, honored, and protected. Scattered applause from the crowd faded, melding into the rising conversations from nearby cafe diners and shoppers. Methodic drumming began onstage, rising as the bells from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi intoned.
Everywhere, this country’s violent history collides.
***
Over the ensuing days, I explored the city center, and ventured out to the periphery—always observing, contemplating, absorbing everything: spiced drinking chocolate; green and red chile; cheese-slathered enchiladas; honey-sopped sopapilla; lime-infused caramels; baskets of bloated bags of homemade red pepper flakes; soft lavender soap; and dark piñon coffee.
The strong, arid air that sucks the moisture right from your skin while refreshing your lungs with its deep, cool gusts. Passersby who acknowledge you and smile.
And, of course, I forced myself to face the downsides: I’d have to buy a car, and I’d probably have to wave goodbye to any hope of a romantic life—but I could probably rustle up a few LGBTQ+ retirees to commiserate with.
On my last night, after a whirlwind jaunt to Albuquerque and dinner in Española, I watched the blood moon rise. A formidable, massive orb, it hadn’t yet flushed red; from my vantage point, it hovered between two shadowed peaks. Its massiveness in the desert’s vast emptiness made it one of the most beautiful moonrises I’d ever witnessed.
Everywhere here, there is natural beauty.
***
With my sights set on Taos, I made a short detour to Abiquiú, again marveling at the richness of the landscape. Soon thereafter, I crisscrossed winding roads, and felt my excitement build as I began noting the amorphous, small hills dotting the Greater World Community: earthships. Walking through the model earthship was like stepping into the future—or, more appropriately, how the present should be. Experiencing an off-grid, sustainable building constructed with recycled materials—tires, plastic bottles, cans—was indescribably inspiring.
About a mile down the road, I crossed the Rio Grande gorge, and spotted my last lodging in New Mexico, spread along the Taos Mesa: a hotel of vintage travel trailers arranged next to a brewery.
Image description: two vintage green and turquoise trailers with a connecting deck, taken an an oblique angle. Snow is on the ground.
Once I stuffed myself with sweet potato fries and tofu tacos, I settled into my small trailer, and peered out at the sprawling, snow-covered mesa. Approximately 15 feet, the trailer had everything I needed: a functional heater, bathroom, bed, and kitchen—as well as ample storage. Given my desire for a more mobile, longer-term living situation, I’d wanted to experience this, in all its imperfect glory. And while the space was expectedly small, it felt effortlessly comfortable.
I gazed out the windows as snow fluttered down, and the heater kicked on.
I think I could do this.
Image description: me wearing a bright sweater, laying across the trailer’s bed, and looking out the window.
My eyes drifted to the empty storage shelves and cubbies, and I mentally populated them with my belongings from home.
Wind from a snowstorm began buffeting the sides, and the heater continued humming; I stretched over the bed, dipped beneath the covers, and slowly fell asleep.
***
Steam writhed inside the rim of my tin coffee mug and a snowy haze glowed outside; it felt like the entire world was asleep.
As I rubbed the night’s sleep from my eyes, I marveled at the trailer’s beautiful simplicity—having the necessities within reach, allowing you to melt into being present in the moment.
I looked around and couldn’t help but think: I could give up the rest of what I have to make my own version of this. After all, at the heart of it, the beautiful remaining pieces I possessed weren’t really any different than the built-in table, small shelf by the door, or ample bed with ruffled sheets: all bits of wood and metal and fabric pulled together into a workable shelter. And, as such, their faults could be sanded, repainted, darned, and mended: a patchwork tapestry encouraging growth and change, propelling me into life rather than suffocating my desires or intrigue with a burdensome mortgage, inescapable debt, or a string of unnecessary belongings.
Over my third cup of coffee, I fleshed out a scheme to steward a small parcel of land just north of the earthships. There, I could move a small trailer while methodically building an earthship hut: which, to most, would resemble nothing more than a hole in the desert. But in my mind, it’d be the manifestation of so many personal goals: a base from which I could live a more sustainable, debt-free life.
A few hours later, I made one final pass through the trailer, and then headed to my car. Soon thereafter, I punched in latitude-longitude coordinates for various parcels I’d been stalking online. Snow began cascading down, icy veins of it blowing across the road. Cautiously, I pulled off at the mouth of one of the dirt roads leading to a slew of my target acreage. With little reception and no cars in sight, I decided not to chance it.
Instead, I stood against the wind and snapped a few blurry photos. And questioned my mental state.
What a wildly absurd idea, right? I mean, this is sort of mad.
I took in one last gulp of frigid air and exhaled.
But living is all about exploring the madness.
***
Whether or not I can translate my musings to reality—be they maddened dreams or viable alternatives—remains to be seen.
But if I don’t try, I’m not living.
So, I plan to continue dreaming of a day when, somewhere out in the desert, I’ll dig a hole, and shape it into a home. Where I’ll feel the warmth of the earth around me, and admire the small place I’ve made for myself—embracing the cracks and fissures that’ve formed in my life along the way, whilst acknowledging that I haven’t let the most vital parts of who I am cleave away.
Like the ancient land around me, I’ll weather on—bathing in the starlight, reflecting all of the character and subtle gifts from the myriad turns of the sun and moon.
A curious feeling swept over me when I realized the Trader Joe’s cashier scanning my tempeh once sat on my toilet and fucked in my bedroom.
Like most new tenants, I’d spent the first week in my apartment receiving former residents’ mail—briefly scanning their names, shuffling the junk into overflowing recycling bins, and nosily assessing the heft of more serious parcels before shoving them back into the outgoing mail slot. Her name was one of four I’d come to know in my very brief tenure as an addressee reviewer. And then, quite suddenly, here she was: the person matching the standardized black-and-white typeface printed across coupon packets.
Her nametag was chipped at the edges and hanging askew. She smiled, waiting patiently as I wrestled from my laden basket a burrito and box of chocolate.
“Nothing like stress eating after signing a new lease,” I chuckled, waiting for the card reader to cooperate.
“Oh, where’d you move?” she asked, mechanically disinterested.
“Just across the street.”
“It’s a pretty good complex,” she said, her tone changing slightly as she ferried my groceries across the scanner. “I’m moving a few floors down, into another unit with my boyfriend.”
Where I’m from in Alabama, this would’ve been a revelatory exchange, a gateway encounter to a budding friendship. But in Seattle, I already knew there’d be no neighborly invitation to get to know one another tacked on as a conversational addendum. It was a simple, matter-of-fact observation.
“Small world,” I said, smiling back.
“Yep. Have a nice day.”
Days later, when my bathroom sink and shower drains began backing up, I imagined it was her long blonde hair contorted into amorphous, matted blobs that clogged the pipes.
***
My apartment was dark, save some light from the blue television screen—the conclusion of “Annihilation.” Around me, plants listed lethargically, while others hurtled into an even more obvious state of unstoppable decay—my beloved, mammoth African violets rotted shades of what they’d been back at Gay Gardens. Even my most prized geranium—once over six feet tall—shrunk markedly, its tendrils browning, its sinewy body stiffening and breaking down. As each floral charge withered despite my best efforts, I mentally reframed their demise as altruistic entropy—unburdening me of their care, pushing me onward. Even as they diminished, a sense of resilience continued to grow inside of me. I scanned the apartment, regarding it more for the necessary aspects it afforded—shelter, security—than its ebbing decorative vitality. Naked brass screw-ends pocked the wall, free of their framed charges, and corners sat shadowed, devoid of their previously appointed furniture.
“I’m pretty sure it’ll fit right there along the back,” I said, arcing my arm across the pickup’s deep bed, whilst watching the foreboding sky, willing it not to open up.
Moments later, the sideboard I’d lovingly restored a decade before on the stoop of my first apartment shuddered down the road—its heavy, beveled mirror angled upward, reflecting the graying sky.
The day prior, I’d bid farewell to my beloved Mission-style dish cabinet as it made its way to a farm in Oregon. When I walked back into the apartment, I followed the cabinet’s vestigial trail of white paint flecks to a bag of fresh produce and herbs—the bartered portion of the cabinet’s cost.
A few nights later, my eyes watered as I gently, methodically, set down the basket of remaining Fiestaware into the woman’s cigarette smoke-saturated car. As I nudged one additional bag into the floorboard, I recalled the rush of adrenaline I’d felt over a decade before when I ripped off the tightly wrapped, yellowed newspaper to reveal the brilliant turquoise plates and saucers—the striking colors gleaming in the scarce, dusty light of my parents’ attic.
Memories are much lighter than things, which can easily transform into beautiful traps.
***
We’re all renters—of life, space, objects. And yet, through social conditioning and mental self-subterfuge, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time convincing ourselves it’s entirely normal to expend our lives paying off debts incurred by attempting to own something we never will.
Downsizing my life over the past six months was an exercise in self-care and disciplined boundary-making. I pushed myself further than I ever thought I could—both in terms of acknowledging how little I needed to thrive, and the extent to which I could, with nearly surgical precision, emplace necessary boundaries to maintain my emotional and physical health. And through it all, I strived to acknowledge the privileges I carried in being able to do so.
For me, self-care has involved introspective reflection, study, and understanding of my place in the world: how I got to where I am, by which I mean what oppressive systems have I benefitted from over the course of my life, and what steps I can take each day to dismantle those same institutions and systems and restructure them to be equitable and sustainable. And in so doing, I’ve had to remind myself that I will always be a student—learning, failing, and working harder to get it right the next time.
Never did I expect a year to make such a difference—to be in a place where I’d have enough mental clarity to better understand the intersections of my interests in social justice, ecological sustainability, and health and wellbeing.
***
Adjusting my glasses, I perused the tiny panes of potential matches—assessing perceived flaws, swiping on the ones I thought would be incompatible, and jotting down notes. Each had its merits, but I knew what I wanted; I could wait for the right one. Good bones were a must, and any hint of faulty undercarriage was grounds for an outright dismissal: slipping transmission, pervasive rust, overtaxed motor. Unlike airbrush-happy Tinder users, buses had very little ability to hide their blemishes.
Thoroughly unimpressed, I darkened my phone screen and set it on my bedside table, and then reviewed my latest musings. Across the worn, tattered pages, I reread the plan I began devising in the Olympic Peninsula’s mist-covered woods months ago—to convert a school bus into a tiny home. I’ve dubbed it, “Not the worst plan.”
Feeling the rising anxiety and doubt, I took a breath.
You can do something this monumental. You already have.
Selling nearly everything I had of value helped free me from crushing credit card debt, untether me from the strangling grasp of materialism, and add a modest contribution to a long-empty savings account.
In downsizing even further over the coming year and a half, I intend to push myself into uncomfortably uncharted territory as I prepare to live within a much tinier, more mobile footprint. My goal is to live as efficiently and sustainably as possible, have a home that is mine and not the bank’s, and mobilize it so I can move wherever, like a hermit crab. Ultimately, I want to operate on the periphery of this hyper-consumerist, capitalistic system as much as possible, to live more freely.
The hardest parts are yet to come, but I’m tired of paying exorbitant rent for a place I don’t like and that isn’t reflective of me, that limits my creativity. And as thrilling as it can be to live in a thrumming city, I’ve grown weary of being surrounded by the droves of closed-off shell people scuttling to and fro, heads angled down—their entire worlds seemingly confined to their phone screen. I want to look up, toward the tree-lined horizon, whenever possible.
My plan is a wholly different re-imagining of what I thought my life would look like by my mid-thirties. And while I never expected to become an increasingly tattooed gay with a penchant for wearing loud sweaters living in a skoolie alongside an overly anxious Chihuahua, I’m learning to love the idea.
There are so many steps in between the here-and-now and the there-and-done. But having my atypical goal post set far afield from traditional expectations, I feel more empowered than I have in a while.
Because I want freedom from the surrounding monotony; to drift into wide open spaces, rove through forgotten places, and embrace the changing scenery—the glamor and tarnish: a space apart.
Leaning against the front door and eyeing the cabinet’s dusty outline on the chipped, white-painted floor, I felt an unexpected weight lift; my mind was slightly clearer. Outside, rain drizzled down, and I hoped the man had made it down the hillside and back to the bridge without too much trouble.
I thought about the glass-fronted Art Deco cabinet in the back of his homemade hauling trailer—draped in a burlap shroud, like the recently deceased in a western: being slowly removed from home, taken far, far away. I recalled staring at myself in the glass door’s reflection the night I’d planned to kill myself a decade earlier.
We map so much emotional weight onto things.
I reached inside my jacket pocket and removed the crumpled bills, counting them out before folding them into the growing roll hidden inside a tin in my bedroom. Little by little, as pieces I’d cherished for well over a decade left me, I quieted my exhausted, fretting mind by reminding myself that I was doing this for all the right reasons: to work towards financial solvency, and improved health. And to experience a long-overdue catharsis.
The next day, I watched the sun slowly rise, bleeding through the opaque glass sliding doors separating the bedroom from the rest of my new apartment. The light warming my arms, the rumpled sheets washing wave-like over me.
I slipped into a favorite pair of worn jeans, threw on a holy tee shirt, and took JoJo out to welcome a new morning: the first day of a new beginning.
***
Before I reached the summit, I paused and looked out over the mossy canopy—a primeval, forested canvas. Rain dripped down from the tightly knitted fronds and branches, dappling my camera and sleeves with refreshing moisture. As I shifted my backpack and headed uphill, my bear bell clanged lowly—a metronomic reminder of my vulnerable place in the natural order.
A few feet later, I peered over the falls, absorbed the soothing sounds of fresh water flowing over weathered rocks—churning pools disappearing underground and re-surging downslope. I took a few deep breaths, exhaled, and soaked in the view, expecting to feel a crushing weight lifted off my shoulders.
But I felt nothing, except a needling question creeping into the back of my mind.
What in the fuck am I doing here?
Somewhere along the line, I’d convinced myself that I had to travel far stretches, overcome amazing feats, cross the country or the world to be rewarded with life-changing clarity. But my short foray into the Olympic Peninsula’s woods only reaffirmed what I already knew—what I recognized each evening as I slowly drifted off into a fitful night’s sleep in my tent with a writing pad, bear bell, knife, and canteen within arm’s reach, the solar-powered lantern hanging overhead: we need so very little to thrive.
We surround ourselves with so much superfluous stuff to blunt the simple reality that the more we have, the less we actually live.
***
The apartment was blissfully still—overburdened fans and the sound machine retired for a brief reprieve. Sunlight warmed the worn leather on the love seat, and dripped over the heat-racked, withering tendrils listing out of chipped terra cotta pots. Seattle was experiencing a protracted, more intense summer than usual—and prized plants that weathered Gay Gardens’ drafty chill had succumbed to the inescapable, stagnate heat.
JoJo braced herself against the gracile legs of the Art Deco buffet turned TV stand, and leered into the beating sun—her tongue gradually inching out as she lapsed into deeper sleep. I, too, felt the heat climbing—sweat beading across my brow, dripping down my nose.
I’d just hit the six month mark on my apartment lease, and it felt as though I’d been living here for ages. Albeit a glorified studio with few furnishings, there were chairs I never sat in, things I didn’t use—so much space allocated to stylized tableaus that were wholly unnecessary. Everywhere I looked, charmless sterility stared back—no uneven angles, no roughened edges, just cool, muted cream walls and dark grey carpeting, particle board cabinets, and an overly massive bathroom. I began to regard it as a charmless easy bake oven in which I felt suffocatingly uninspired.
Weeks later, just before midnight, I scanned the room—soft light from the only remaining lamp illuminating a smattering of plants, cascading over a haphazard assortment of empty pots and stickered surfaces. I hugged the brownie-packed Cathrineholm casserole to my chest with one hand, and used the other to wield my fork—shoving it into the cakey middle and boring out a hole. As Ghost’s end credits rolled, “Unchained Melody” reverberated throughout the apartment. I felt like crying out of sheer exhaustion, but I didn’t want to saturate my brownies. JoJo rustled in her crate and let out an exasperated sigh; I was up far too late and making a ruckus. I tucked the DVD back into its case and slid it into the “Keep” pile.
Hours before, from the overstocked Fiction section, I watched the bookshop’s buyer assess my bags of DVDs and books. As he thumbed through the thick, leather-bound art book I’d toted around for years—but rarely opened—he called back to his partner, “Yeah, we’ll make an offer on this lot.”
I circled back through the shop to give them time, and sidestepped into the Social Sciences section for amusement. A few of my previously sold books—including one of the referential cruxes of my anthropology Master’s thesis—sat on the shelf gathering dust. I flipped through it, chuckled at my margin notes and dogears, and slid it back into the uneven line of bindings; the symbolism was laughable. Shortly thereafter, I found myself back at the counter.
All told, my haul garnered $16.25.
I sighed dejectedly. “Sold.”
The clerk who’d reviewed my pile sidled up to me.
“Hey, you know, it’s a bummer. But take a look at that back wall.”
He pointed behind the counter to a far wall partly obscured by mounded boxes of DVDs.
“I think I’m going to have to start pricing their resale at five cents apiece. But hey, this book, it’s so weird.”
He touched the large volume with unexpected gentleness. “I have no idea what it is, but it’s going to look great on someone’s bookshelf.”
I laughed.
“But at least it’ll stay in circulation. We’ll keep its story going.”
I smiled, patted the pile, collected my receipt, and walked away.
***
Days later, JoJo struggled against my snug hold. She was more interested in our coiffed visitor than being sandwiched against my sweat-saturated shirt. I couldn’t blame her.
The woman rapped her bejeweled press-on nails across the weathered dining table as she surveyed a pile of studio art pottery, and lifted up small mid century cache pots pocked with struggling succulents. She extended her index finger, the polished nail tip squaring dead-center on the glazed pot behind me—one that friends from North Carolina had gifted me right before I moved to Raleigh. Out from it grew a large Pilea peperomioides—what I’d come to dub as one of many “hipster plant necessities.”
“How much?”
I’d already told her that I hadn’t yet priced many items in the apartment, that I hadn’t anticipated having any buyers over. Still, I tried to reframe the whole situation as an opportunity.
I quoted a price, and then she motioned toward a small cluster of pots lining a corner table.
“And those four?”
As if sensing my growing irritation, JoJo sighed in my arms and descended into full-on fainting goat, her tiny form sagging as she exercised her greatest anti-holding technique: dead weight.
“All together, forty-five,” I blurted, setting JoJo down.
The minute the “five” rolled off my tongue, I cringed. Albeit a painfully low price, the plants needed to go.
Exceedingly pleased, the woman began doling her cash onto the table. Seconds later, she upended her purse entirely, counting quarters into one-dollar piles as her bangled bracelets clattered together in metallic applause.
JoJo sniffed around the woman’s pristine suit pant cuffs, and I snapped at her to back off. She glared back, wandered over to the spot vacated by the large planter I’d dragged over to the woman’s pile, and proceeded to roll around in the sun.
Touche.
“I have thirty-one dollars,” the woman said confidently, adding, “This is my laundry money.” As if that somehow justified the low-ball counteroffer.
I sighed.
“Fine.”
“So, you do this for a living?” she asked, apparently forgetting she’d already posed the same question thirty minutes prior, as I helped her load six large plants into her oversized, battered Ford pickup.
“Nope. But I’ve thought about it.”
“You really should. You have a lot of nice things.”
That line gets me every single time. It’s a kind sentiment to express, and it’s certainly a prospect I’ve explored. But I remind myself about how stressed I get when I’m surrounded by those same “nice things”—and the associated, incessant drive to collect more and then immediately shed the bulk. It’s bulimic materialism, one of the waste behaviors we’re taught is normal. Because, from an early age, people in America are conditioned to believe that the Norman Rockwell-esque “American Dream” is the pinnacle of success: two kids, a spouse, a generously-sized house with a new car parked in the driveway, and Scraps the dog running through a perfectly manicured green lawn out front. But that same dream has always been rooted in white supremacy and white privilege, racist policies, and a tarted up version of Manifest Destiny—move to the West and take what is rightfully yours; a hallmark of this country’s deep-seated taproot springing from genocide and slavery. This problematic mirage is perpetuated through hyperconsumerism, capitalism’s key driver: the notion that, with “hard won success” and a “can-do attitude,” comes the ability—nay, necessity—to conspicuously consume the right house, car, wardrobe, and on-trend decor. And we all fall for it; I certainly did.
Only after I finally got out of debt, and through ample self-reflection, was I able to acknowledge that I don’t want or need most of the elements of that force-fed image of success. More than ever, I now crave physical and mental space to breathe—to be free of things. I intend to wholeheartedly embrace this mentality while I’m young, rather than burying myself in baubles or committing myself to an unhealthy, toxic relationship in the short term, and then spending my precious golden years fretting about how to escape. So much of this next chapter is unwritten. But those parts I’m beginning to author are all about self care, and putting boundaries in place. Of cherishing what little I need, and letting the rest go—keeping only that which helps catapult me into my next phase. No matter where I end up, I’ll continue to map on my sense of personal beauty through the experiences and company I keep.
I slammed the truck’s heavy tailgate, and nodded to the woman. After I crossed the road back to my complex, she drove by slowly and rolled down her window.
“And let me know when you, uh, leave for good. What you want to do with the rest of your items. I have sort of a buying problem. HAHA!”
I waved her on, and assured her that I would. But I knew I’d never see her again.
***
As a high school senior, I was assigned a 10-page paper—a dreaded semester-long project, the tales of which resonated through my predecessors’ ranks. It’d be a literary rite of passage, a hurdle to clear. Each student chose a word, and that was the singular focus of their paper—its etymology, symbolism, and its evolving usages throughout history and through the works we’d read. It required calculated introspection.
I chose “growth.”
Decades later, I find myself in a far-flung corner of the country, away from everything and everyone I know. Moving here was a decision made as part of a joint life being cultivated; two years ago, it became a solo journey. I stayed and forced myself to root, to grow into my surroundings. I rehabbed Gay Gardens; I lost myself there. It became my Eden, from which I begrudgingly acknowledged I needed to fall. And I did.
I evolved, adapted.
Whenever I think of growth—as I did all of those years ago—the most common reflection is something new, generative: intimating some greater experience—a building of momentum, toward a logical conclusion or form. But the personal growth I’ve experienced here has been antithetical to how I assumed my life would develop: that it’d grow in a defined, understood direction. That’s not the case.
My anticipated “beginning” in Seattle is no longer dependent on when I find someone, or the “right” job, or encounter some fortuitous windfall, or even accomplish long-held dreams. It’s suddenly so painfully obvious, and within my ability to kick-start. I just have to lean into it, allow myself to grow into this new mindset, and stop pretending as though I know what my life is supposed to be like. Because none of us knows. We’re all pretending like we do, but we’re really just here for the ride.
We’re all growing into journeys we never thought we’d take. And that’s the messy beauty of it all.
At nearly thirty-four, I’m inching into a neoprene harness behind a sex shop’s three-quarter changing room wall.
I glance to my left, expecting to see this failed experiment reflected in a cracked, distorted mirror. But instead, I look out onto the shop floor and make disturbingly prolonged eye contact with a man holding up a black shirt that features a “1” outlined in dripping yellow.
With one arm tucked awkwardly beneath two straps, I duck out of view and commence muttering to myself.
How the fuck does this thing work?
Is there a front?
This is so disempowering.
Moments later, the overly attentive clerk sidles up to the wall, and peers over.
“Is that the right size for you?”
Crouched Gollum-like in the corner whilst fumbling with the clasps, I know my stricken expression will belie any hints of knowledgeable enthusiasm I can possibly muster.
“OH, YEP. EVERYTHING’S FINE. HAHAHA. YEP. JUST FINE.”
Unfazed, he pivots left—walking over to the discount shirt section where two twenty-somethings banter back and forth about their options.
“Oooh, we can really slut this up in time for Pride. And look, there’s even an otter on it for you!”
“Wait, you think I’m an otter?”
“Of course you’re a fucking otter. Jesus, Todd.”
With arms twisted in opposite directions and my neck arched like an arabesque origami crane, I feel like Pinocchio’s uncoordinated gay brother, Parker—and consider re-shelving the entire getup. But as I unwind myself, I lean into the fearful discomfort burbling in my mind, and push past it—reaching for the potential I know lies just beyond.
I slide the dressing room’s daisy duke jean short drape to one side, and notice the chatty twink rolling his eyes at Todd, who’s holding up a shirt that reads “Bad Puppy.”
“Goddammit, Todd! It’s like you’re not even trying.”
Opposite them, in a mirror-lined alcove, two forty-something Microsofties debate the flogging merits of elk leather over cowhide.
“I dunno, Jason. You know how welted my skin can get,” she says, running her hand along the flogger’s coarse underside, her French tips glinting brilliantly beneath the track lighting.
Jason nods his agreement, and adjusts his wide-rimmed glasses.
I skirt around them, trip over a cock ring display, and knock into a wall, causing upright dildos on the shelves above to jiggle like dashboard bobble heads. For a moment, I watch them sway, thinking about how lively this place would be during an earthquake.
At the counter, an older man scans my items like they’re produce, and slides them into a generic paper bag.
“Do you need any lube?”
That definitely beats a shopper savings readout.
“Nope, I’m good.”
As the card processes, I think back to my first solo sex shop foray—working up the courage to cross the threshold after passing by the storefront twice. But the moment I walked in, the friendly staffer wholly disarmed me with his kindness and tact, so much so that I gutted up enough confidence to flirt with him, but promptly tripped and fell into a lube display—bottles sliding across the floor and into the door. I didn’t get his number.
After the card reader beeps, the man pushes the bag over to me.
“Thanks for coming in.”
I wait to see if there’s a punchline, but he turns to help the Microsofties, who’ve decided to go with the elk leather. So I gather my bag and inch past Todd, who’s migrated over to mesh tops—the same display I careened into when I scurried in, a pair of assless chaps swatting me across the face as the clerks welcomed me.
Back in the car, I cram the bag into the floorboard as paranoia-fueled story-lines mentally unfold frame by frame: whilst feeling empowered and driving along, I neglect to see a dog crossing the road; I swerve to avoid it, and crash into a sidewalk bollard; in slow motion, I half-consciously watch as the merchandise hurtles out through the shattered windshield; and, as I fully come to, I hear bystanders whispering conspiratorially to one another, “Claudia, is that what I think it is?”
When I get home, I try everything again without the pressure of prying eyes, and feel totally free—sexy, desirable, and completely unencumbered by societal expectations.
There’s power in exploring such desires—in reveling in the delicious ambiguity of budding selfhood and self-reflection, of finding a new, albeit distantly familiar, rhythm to life. Especially when it’s for you, and no one else.
***
Glass crunches underfoot as I teeter off the backhoe’s caked tracks and firmly plant my sneakers onto the cottage’s shattered, listing porch.
Several months before, during an afternoon walk with JoJo, I’d stumbled upon the abandoned cottage. Sited on a manicured stretch of Craftsman bungalows and 1940s cottages, it sat far back on a deep, overgrown corner lot. As I often do with dilapidated structures, I dreamed of what I’d do to it if it were mine—making use of the front yard for raised vegetable beds and beehives, slowly transforming the modest house from an eyesore into a home. But in subsequent weeks, I’d been noticing a surge of activity around it: the boards covering the windows had been removed, the lawn was mowed—subtle hints of impending change. And then the backhoe arrived.
I angle myself through the collapsed doorway and let adrenaline fuel my tour —acknowledging at every turn that this was once someone’s home, treating it with respect. There’s something sacred about mapping one final experience onto a place that’s soon to be wiped from the earth.
Just inside the kitchen, I step over a small mailbox sign reading “Anderson” and peer into open cupboards where purple glass tumblers stand aligned—soldiers soon to face an unwieldy adversary. Beneath the sink, a bright red kettle sits alongside a small computer monitor, its cord neatly wrapped nearby.
Condemned homes replete with personal items have such a haunting quality; it’s as though life inside is still unfolding. I snap a few photos, and then scamper out.
Late the next evening, as JoJo and I crest the hill, the cottage is gone. There’s no pile of splintered wood—only a broken picket fence gate propped along the massive hole, the air perfumed by a shattered evergreen laying across the upended lot. We dogleg into the alley, past a gaggle of neighbors clucking about “what’s coming,” and sidestep a swath of pavement sprinkled with purple glass and computer bits.
Every ruin, every life, can be an homage to decadent waste.
***
My phone pulses from a push notification; more bad news about the state of our country—more chaos sown, more lives thrown into limbo. Everything feels substantially heavier.
The weight of it makes my privileged skin feel unbearable—that if I wait a second longer, I’ll rip it off. I flick the power button on my battered iPod Shuffle as the elevator door opens. Moments later, I’m running.
As I gasp for breath between sprints, I try and think about the last time I ran this hard. I was a block away from Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, racing away from an encroaching truth.
Turning a corner, I bound to the left to avoid colliding with an oblivious, scooter-riding child.
Through my ear buds, Dolores O’Riordan croons the haunting lyrics to “Zombie.”
“But, you see it’s not me It’s not my family In your head, in your head They are fighting
With their tanks and their bombs And their bombs and their guns In your head in your head they are crying
In your head In your head…”
I run faster, sidestep a dead raven rotting on the sidewalk, and wind along a row of character-rich single-story cottages being prepped for demolition—to be replaced by the charmless, squared facades being overbuilt by the block-full. We’re stripping away so much for the sake of the here and now; we’ll regret it.
Every single day it feels as though this nation is dying; here and there we disappear—generations lost to violence, a layer of our collective history ripped away. And when we reach back for who and what went missing, we can only grasp at random photos, a few yellowed pages packed away in library stacks, hum a string of lyrics to remind ourselves that we were once here together.
Bowie’s “Heroes” queues up.
“…I will be King And you, you will be Queen Though nothing will drive them away We can be heroes just for one day We can be us just for one day
…
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever Then we could be heroes just for one day…”
I hurtle downhill—my legs expanding outward, arms catching the breeze: willing me to take flight.
***
A block ahead, Pride thumps through the streets. Amid the glittered, sweaty revelry, signs of solidarity are raised aloft, clutched by rainbow-painted fists.
Screams inch into the back of my throat; I let the music pulse through me—my body easing into the thrumming crowd: a community of fellow “others.” Living loudly is the best revenge to take against a force that’d see everyone white-washed and straightened out.
An hour later, I take a side street and head downhill—but not before I look back and scan the crowd: a kaleidescope of blending color; the world as it should be.
Sun streaks across my shades as the sidewalk grade steepens. I give in to gravity, and lean into the decline; before I know it, I’m running again.
Air rushes by as my slip-ons clack against the pavement: the intervals widening, my body feeling lighter.
Reminding me of the thrill of piloting a life that embraces unknowns, hardship, and intense longing—using it to catalyze changes for a better future, a time when we all can fly.
Crabs skittered beneath rocks flecked with serpentine seaweed strands—nature’s gelatinous boas sopping ashore from parties in the deep. A bloated seagull bobbed their head beneath a small tide pool’s rippling surface; the repetitious machinations, a dance.
Out of the corner of my eye, a Labradoodle’s sand-dusted, curly coat blurred by as he raced full-tilt across the sandbars, his green leash soaked and trailing—his owner walking quickly behind, nodding my direction. JoJo’s ears pricked at the lowly, plaintive gull calls as the wind buffeted her tiny face, her jellybean eyes watering, dampening her cheeks.
There, at the edge of the beach, I felt an internal tug—willing me further, into the great blue horizon pocked with cream sails unfurling in the breeze. The salty air curled in my lungs as I gulped it in—willing it to fill and cleanse my mind, making all the possibilities brim and spill over into my consciousness, borne to fruition.
Certain moments crystallize in our singular perceptions of time. And this was one such instance. There I stood, hours away from Seattle, cradling JoJo: a tired, hairy, heaped mass dripping over my arms. An unlikely duo, we’d forged a necessary bond during a tumultuous time, uncertain if we’d make it. But as my feet sunk into the saturated sand, I could feel us turning a corner. Like the shells around us, we’d been battered and bleached and weathered through various trials—through rough and smooth currents blunting jagged, exposed edges: creating something new, albeit unevenly polished. We’d emerged from the deep; we could breathe.
***
I’ve been divorced for nearly a year and a half. And almost every day, I fret that I’ll become that person who can talk only about their divorce, who can’t just reference it and move on. But, slowly, I’ve recognized that, like so many other forms of loss, divorce isn’t something you can just ignore; every now and again, I have to acknowledge how it’s shaped who I am today.
When I was a kid, I often played Duck Hunt until the Nintendo overheated—the screen still, leaving the duck profiles mid-blast: fluttering feathers and pained expressions frozen in time. Only when the immersive experience was interrupted by real-life variables would I snap out of my trance-like state, pull the piping-hot cartridge out of the machine, blow on it, and shove it back in—all the while knowing the blue screen of death would win, the illusion shattered by the ultimate Game Over. But often it forced me to redirect my energies into something else—another hobby, or self-reflection.
Marital cracks are like those Duck Hunt moments: they bring reality into sharp relief, make you realize the game that you’ve been playing has been convincing, but is still a mirage whose artifice is crumbling. It forces you to decide what to do, who you want to be—and, most pointedly, if you’re satisfied with the person you are when you’re with the other.
I wasn’t. And I’m so much better for having faced that crushing fact.
***
Ricotta-beetroot filling bubbled out of the thin ravioli shell, and oozed down into the spinach encircling it—a wilted, fallen crown. My cider began to hit, lulling my mind into that ethereal haze reserved for tipsy musings that I hoped I wouldn’t let escape my subconscious and rupture through my purple, beet-stained lips.
An hour earlier, I lay sprawled across my bed, nodding in and out of shallow naps as my skin tanned from an afternoon spent outside. For the past week, I’d been forcing myself to do more things after work—pushing myself out of my daily routine and taking advantage of living in a city bursting with life.
Having grown up in a small town, I’d always relished moments in movies where characters would take trains, taxis, or buses to enjoy a night in the city—glamming themselves up in finery and disappearing into the heaping, thrumming mass of people milling through the cityscape. So, I did exactly that: threw on an outfit that made me feel confident and sexy, grabbed my wallet and phone, and jumped on a bus hurtling downtown before descending into the light rail station and watching the passengers cycle between the cars: the crowd growing comfortingly queerer the closer we got to the Capitol Hill stop.
Right as I crested the staircase, the breeze billowed under my shirt, carrying with it music from a nearby shop. I wove through the blocks and streets where I used to live, marveling at how quickly the neighborhood had changed in a little over a year: buildings gone, sidewalks painted, alleys reeking of urine and rotting garbage tidied, sanitized—the grit and personality ground down in a microcosmic illustration of the latest phase of gentrification.
I walked into the restaurant I’d been wanting to eat at for years, and immediately slammed into a line of couples putting their names on a wait-list, their facial expressions morphing from hope to utter dejection.
“How long of a wait is it for one?” I asked.
“Oh, just you? I can seat you at the bar.”
I smiled. Never let anyone tell you there aren’t perks to being single.
She seated me next to another patron, and placed a towering glass of water with an orange wedge on the bar in front of me. A few minutes later, the waiter leaned over, his voice slightly louder than the surrounding conversations.
“You’re not together, I know that,” he said, looking from my neighbor to me.
It wasn’t so much a question as it was a pronouncement, and both the older man and I acknowledged the momentary awkwardness, laughing it away as we both retreated to the nonjudgemental, comforting glow of our respective phones until my ravioli slid onto the bar.
When I left, the air was cooling slightly, and I doglegged a few blocks over to an ice cream shop I’d been to once before. A line snaked out the storefront for half a block, and I inched into it behind a couple of trustafarians bedecked in expensive, trendily-tattered clothes: her crop top exposing a lower back tattoo of a unicorn, his side-sitting hat’s tag poking out from beneath the intentionally weathered rim reading, “Hipster Hats.”
As they groped one another, I rolled my eyes closed, imagining they probably worked for Amazon and couldn’t care less that the neighborhood where they were all but dry humping was where many LGBTQIA people still couldn’t overcome socially-conditioned fears of reprisals for showing a modicum of public affection—even in the gayborhood. A few feet away, a woman in a jumpsuit let her Shiba Inu puppy piss on tufts of ornamental grass before walking into a new, glimmering apartment building across the street. Ahead of me, the couple stepped up into the shop, a passing comment from one of them ending with, “…the Amazon mac and cheese bar.”
With my ice cream in hand, I began demolishing the top scoop as I retraced old walking routes, and waited to lick the dribbling cone until I was in front of a new gay bar, the outside patio blasting with music and conversations. I looked up above it all, and smiled at my old apartment’s window.
A few minutes later, I passed by a softball game in the park, and angled toward a familiar empty bench overlooking a reflecting pool. Late in 2017, when I first waded back into the dating waters, I sat on the same bench with a Tinder date as we finished our ice cream cones. Our conversation and laughter had been unceasing since we’d met up for coffee six hours earlier, and I remember thinking, Finally. It’s happened again. Days passed with back-and-forths, plans set to meet up. Then, nothing; silence ensued—but still I reached, hopeful: casting a line back into that still pond. A week later I learned why, and was reminded that we all have demons that sometimes drag us below the surface.
I stared up at the darkening blue sky cross-stitched with chemtrails, and tipped the last crumbling cone bits into my mouth.
***
The heat from the day hung heavy in the apartment, and I teetered a bit as I opened the windows, the cider still saturating my thoughts. JoJo circled my legs, and pawed at my feet. After a quick jaunt outside, I put her to bed and, in the process, tripped over a photograph I’d framed earlier—letting it lean against the foot of my bed, opposite of where I’d hang it.
I rifled through my toolbox, grabbed a screwdriver, and positioned the frame at eye level, so that I’d see it first thing every morning, and remember the confident person I was when I took it: reliving the rush of adrenaline as I tiptoed through the mouldering, abandoned Alabama farmhouse, snapping the photo right as I bolted for the front door—my foot crashing through sections of the rotting floor—as the landowner’s heavy footsteps grew louder as he ventured into the ruin where I was trespassing.
After splashing water on my face, I stretched across my empty bed and lay watching the evening streetlights dance across the ceiling.
Wondering about the characters I’ll encounter in this next chapter—who they’ll be to me.
Dreaming of an endless series of future adventures yet to be entertained through this life reclaimed.
Shoulders hunched, leafing through battered Goodwill frames like tattered dockets in a card catalog, I felt my phone pulse inside my jacket pocket.
Hours before, I’d checked my bank account and realized my full security deposit from Gay Gardens had been refunded; a very minor financial cushion was beginning to build: my plan had actually gone accordingly.
Ever since, I’d been sinking into a welcomed sense of relief.
And then I looked at my phone, the push notification from news sources reading simply: “US, UK, and France launch missiles at Syrian chemical weapons depots.” My stomach dropped; the color drained from my face.
This is exactly what he wants.
That’s all I could think; and the most tragic part was that there are so many “he’s” to whom I referred.
The Cold War has resumed, but this time there’s so much more at stake—so many terrifying buttons that could be pushed, orders to be issued, infuriatingly childlike tweets inciting chaos.
The same feeling I felt in November 2016 hung over me: overwhelming dread underlain by a suffocating tightness, a sense of imminent disaster.
A desire to flee.
It’s always in these moments when my animal self takes over—the sheer will to survive overpowering every other emotion, the need for further questions blunted. Answers cascade like water through a ruptured dam, swirling fitfully in my mind: a maelstrom of emotion. But eventually, through bouts of clarity, I emerge and move—push onward. Because I must.
Outside, rain poured down, drenching my coat as I folded myself into the car. Moments later, I pulled into a drug store, got batteries and a flashlight, and withdrew cash.
I stared at the assortment of items strewn across the passenger seat—the crumpled bills peeking out from beneath the rumpled receipt. Anger boiled out of me.
We are always fighting. Because life is a fight no one ever wins; some get to dance around the ring more untouched than others—whose bodies bear the brunt of landed blows.
I started the car and eased into the driving rain.
***
Weeks later, sun beamed down, and animated conversations filled the street—the air brisk, tinged with the salty smell of sweat. A friend and I made our way to a meeting, taking a scenic route to soak in more of the welcomed light.
Ahead of us, just beneath an overhang, an older man stood hunched over a walker, his pants hanging down to his knees. A medical discharge bracelet dangled from his shaking arm. He was alone, disoriented—a flood of people skirting around him, choosing not to see.
As we approached, a suit-clad man sidled up to him, shielding his backside, and said lowly, “Sir, your pants have slipped down.” Apologies poured out of the man’s chapped, cracked lips as he groped his weathered jeans up and over his cheeks. I stood uselessly, holding his walker—his only anchor. A few moments later, he moved on, slowly ambling uphill, his pants visibly loosening with every labored step.
As we descended the stairs to the light rail, I attempted to refer back to the conversation we’d been having before, but faltered. Anger clouded everything.
***
Later, from my hilltop perch, I could barely make out the brick spire of a nearby church, the bells clanging for an unknown celebration. A piercingly blue sky loomed above, the wind blasting my face—carrying laughter up from some unseen conversation below, the gaiety of it beckoning me downslope.
JoJo’s collar clinked in the wind, and I looked down as she shoved her nose in the freshly mowed grass. I exhaled, and she looked up—sensing an opportunity to play. She skittered frenetically, zigging around as I twirled her leash, before coming to a gradual stop in another pile of grass clippings. I smiled down at her, and took another breath.
Whenever the faintest light shines through, we must bask in it, cherish it, and will it to fuel us through the coming days. Because it’s our fortitude, our sheer tenacity, that lives on through the inspiration we spark in others.
***
The apartment was quiet, the sun nearly set. Around me, lamplight blanketed bloated, neon tendrils—the air heavy with the scent of peppery geraniums.
Real life—woven together through pain, sorrow, joy, and promise—surrounds us: its tumultuous clatter reverberating in our bones, chilling us cold. But rather than face it, we so often race for shelter: retreating to the far corners of our minds in a dissociative rush—somewhere only we know.
I leveled my tired eyes at the distant snow-capped mountains, a lavender haze curling around them, as I felt time—weightless, motionless, formless—pass quietly in the night.
JoJo batted my leg; I didn’t have to glance at the clock to know it was pushing 8pm, her bedtime, and we still needed to go on one last walk.
But I felt the convulsing swell of tears bubbling up, taking me down, contouring me into a ball on my ottoman as I sobbed into clenched fists. This was it: the final expulsion of guilt, of anger—of the life I thought I was going to have.
Startled by the sudden, breathless tears, JoJo smacked my leg again, and nosed her way into my face. I rubbed her ears and looked around the small apartment illuminated by lamplight—pouring over green blobs, their delicate, arabesque tendrils frozen in a perpetual quest for the sun.
I thought I’d moved on; that’s what surprised me the most. But as I reflected on the past two years, I recognized I’d been spending so much time surviving, making do. Regardless of whatever form the tether took, I constantly found myself laden with the life I began in this state—suffocated by post-divorce debt and scraping by in a place that was supposed to be ours rather than mine, my social life atrophying with every declined invitation.
But this night, I felt free.
***
Hours before, I’d spent my last moments in Gay Gardens—thanking the little cottage for reminding me that I had the strength, confidence, and audacity to take those first terrifying steps toward building my new life.
I walked through every room, thinking back to the conversations, arguments—the dreams borne out of necessity and a deep wanting, all of which still require constant cultivation. And then I paused in the entryway—the door opened wide—and smiled back at how much the view had changed. Intermixed with exhaustion-fueled sadness was a growing sense of pride. We’d both emerged a little better than when we’d started.
In the weeks prior, I’d been informed that Gay Gardens wouldn’t be destroyed after all—at least not imminently. My efforts over the previous two years had not only resuscitated the cottage, but an interest by the landlord in managing the property responsibly. Once I handed over the keys, a month-long series of intense structural repairs would begin.
I hope you become something great.
Outside, I made one final circuit around the yard—lingering in the flower beds replete with irises and hyacinths; collecting branches that’d blown down, bundling them up, and tossing them into the woods; and ripping out a few resurgent briers, knowing I’d likely carry a few barbs back with me. I dusted off my hands and gazed back at the house, watching as petals from the flowering plum skittered across the worn brick patio.
Goodbye, you weird, beautiful place.
Walking up the wobbly staircase, I stretched out my arms and ran my hands along the large tree trunks growing through the railing, remembering how ivy-choked they’d been when I first descended into this overgrown jungle.
Breathe easy.
As my hand reached the end of the railing, I dug my nails in and then exhaled, propelling myself forward. I adjusted my rearview mirror, put the car into reverse, and promptly plowed into the anchored mailbox.
Befuddled by my absentmindedness, I eased forward, listening to the scrapes and pops—watching the mailbox shift back into place.
Fitting.
With the car idling, I dusted off the deep dent in the trunk—flecks of bright turquoise ground in: a subtle reminder of how every little thing shapes another, leaving glorious imprints.
***
Perched parrot-like on my reading chair, JoJo snorted, annoyed.
“Alright,” I huffed back.
Her ears pricked up, tail wagging wildly.
“Let’s see what’s out there.”
Walking through the apartment building’s deserted lobby, we emerged into the chilly night as two actors in this ever-unfolding sideshow.
Wandering down dark avenues, venturing toward shapeless lights. Marveling at the vacant spaces in between, glutted with potential.
My sweaty footprints trailed along the laminate wood floor—a runway to the living room. With the narrow awning windows slightly ajar, the cool evening air filtered in, pricking the hairs on the back of my neck as my feet sunk into the slightly damp, freshly shampooed carpet. I stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows—past a handmade sign scrawled onto the back of an Under Construction placard leaning against the alley wall that read, “Please don’t shit here.”
Along the horizon, a brilliantly blue swath beneath a darkening cloud bank highlighted the city skyline, and as I pressed my face against the window glass, I could just make out the Space Needle. I imagined the view was comparable from the deck I’d constructed almost a year prior as I settled into Gay Gardens—my enthusiasm for what was to come in the little cottage fueling all sorts of home improvement projects, helping distract me from the reminders of how I’d ended up its lone steward.
I soaked in the view and demolished a walnut-Nutella roll and then a homemade fruit bar from the farmers market, the berries fresh and bursting with flavor. I dragged over the only chair in the apartment and unfurled into it, extending my legs out into the potted plant forest at my feet.
Dusting remnant crumbs off my jeans, I started unpacking the fourth carload of belongings I’d brought over, marveling at the bags’ random contents: a cheese grater, a music box, an assortment of shower products. Slowly, methodically, I began piecing together where things would go—envisioning the space gradually filling with furniture and plants.
Aside from the apartment’s patent emptiness, a few other things to which I’d grown accustomed were noticeably absent: the caustically frigid air, the musky smell of mold. Even without the heater on, the temperature hovered around 75 degrees—with the east-facing windows soaking in all the morning sun. My eyes weren’t agitated by allergies, and the semi-constant tinnitus from my cold-accosted Eustachian tubes was nearly gone; here, I wouldn’t have to wear ear muffs inside.
Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I stripped off my coat, tossing it into an empty corner. Light shifted behind me as clouds stampeded across the sky—my shadow dancing along the cream walls, a harbinger of this new chapter of movement and change. A storm began rolling in, its flurries fluttering down and melding with Seattle’s signature mist.
The thought of returning to Gay Gardens for another frigid, sleepless night made me shiver.
Moments later, slushy snow whipped tempest-like outside the immobile panes—the shrieking wind barely audible, the air inside heavy and warm, like a worn sweater.
I turned and faced my new nest.
This is where my life continues.
Gay Gardens was no longer my home; my time there was over.
***
With large expanses of its walls and floors liberated of art and rugs, Gay Gardens had become markedly colder than it’d been weeks before. Even the dankness that’d hit me like a ton of bricks when I’d initially toured the house had returned—like something in the fridge had just begun to rot.
From the last remaining area rug, JoJo eyed me suspiciously as she’d been doing all morning while I swooped in and out, ferrying off furniture and artwork. She splayed across the coarse, colorful fibers: laying claim to her protected island the way a child does with sofa cushions floating in a sea of imaginary lava.
Snow slowly clung to the budding trees out front as I muscled my entire memory foam top—complete with bedding—into my car like a bloated burrito, the sheet corners dragging along the dampened stairway. The sky began morphing into a dense, white mass. I raced back down, skittered into the bathroom, and began knocking everything out of the medicine cabinet and pulling baskets from under the sink. A few minutes later, nothing but the plunger remained.
I threw open the 70s-era fridge and loaded condensation-kissed dishes glutted with leftovers; foreseeing an exhausting final push for the evening, I’d have little effort to pull anything remotely nutritive together for dinner.
Before I knew it, the car was full again, and I was off. I had exactly an hour to unload everything before returning for my most precious cargo, and to convey two albatross-like pieces of furniture into their new owners’ waiting hands.
***
With 20 minutes to spare, I pulled back up to the house. Descending the stairs, I could feel exhaustion and fatigue slowly hugging my bones, cajoling me to stop.
Back inside, I listened to the heater rattle away as I flitted into the empty rooms, ensuring I’d snagged everything I needed for the next few days. The couple I’d be meeting to pick up the mid-century sofa and chair were running behind, which gave me a few moments to catch my breath.
I moved JoJo’s crate into the living room, tossing in a couple of her favorite toys. Knowing something was up, she scampered inside and disappeared beneath the layers of blankets.
I pulled the chair and sofa closer to the door, and wiped them down one last time. In moving the chair days before, I’d exposed a long-dead spider’s larder: drained gnat corpses littering the chipped, white-painted floor beneath; husks of their former selves, they’d provided nourishment and life to their now absent consumer.
Apart from the pair, nearly 30 beautiful furniture pieces, along with hundreds of pieces of Fiestaware and vintage tchotchkes, had waltzed out the door over the preceding month—their vacancies at first startling, then enlivening.
We really don’t need things to cultivate happiness.
Standing atop one of the only functional heating vents, I could feel the circulation in my feet picking up; after multiple trips of kicking my shoes on and off, my socks were hopelessly waterlogged. But there was something incredibly calming about standing there as the heat writhed around my toes, my back leaning into my leather love seat—knowing that in the span of an hour, JoJo and I would be somewhere else. Warm.
Minutes later, the couple arrived and carted away the furniture. And then I hurriedly gathered up JoJo, feeling as if we weren’t so much leaving as we were escaping—as if I were Sally Field, starring in Not Without My Doghter.
With JoJo crated and prepped, I did one last circuit through the house.
As I cut across the darkened living room, I left my hand outstretched, at the height where it’d have undulated along the sofa back—memories of its cold, stitched leather conjuring it back into being; my hand reaching for something that’d never return, like a ghost haunting a past life.
Wind howled outside, buffeting the clapboard. Warped by time and neglect, window sashes rocked in their tracks. In the tiny bathroom, I pressed my hand against the lone window’s painted sash—framing bubbled, frosted glass—remembering how relieved I was to apply the final coat of Pale Starlet. I could feel the air intruding through the splintered cracks, curling around it—reclaiming it. Willing me away.
I took a breath, stepped back, and let it go, watching the sash loll back and forth.
From the bathroom doorway, I could hear JoJo rustle impatiently. I floated back down the hallway, gathered her up, and turned back—the sashes’ thuds a slow, measured applause reverberating into the husk of Gay Gardens as I pulled the front door closed and whispered goodbye.
