Awoke: Pinewood, AZ
Speedo: 63590
Miles: 186

I wake up with a piss-filled erection. I get out to pee again and think about masturbating but I’m still too scared and this is still too new, so I shove my penis back in my jeans after I pee and I slept in my jeans and I just want to stretch everything. Stretch my legs and neck and arms and back. There is a huge crack on my windshield. I don’t know how it got there but it’s huge. Shit. I put in my contacts and find food and water and drink a liquid meal and choose a CD for the day and go. I drive. I make it to Flagstaff.

Been here before. Katie was here. I fill up the tank, the same one from this past December, stop at a bookstore to check my email, and get onto I-40. I remember how, when driving to Buffalo, I wanted to stop at the Petrified Forest but couldn’t. I follow the signs and go.

I feel like I’ve been doing this for days already, and like the familiarity. I take state highways to the Petrified Forest. I remember passing Holbrook and thinking how it looked abandoned and unlivable. I’m the only person on the road for miles at a time. It’s hot today and after another hour I get there. The land is accumulating behind me. I don’t want to spend much time here, because I’m ready to get the fuck out of Arizona.

So I park and put some beef jerky in my backpack and pee at a gift shop. I drink water and eat some nuts and fruit snacks. I realize I will be perpetually hungry for this entire trip. I’ve changed my outfit but haven’t showered, and was sweating while driving. I’m going now to hike. I’m going to smell like old sweat and dirt and I don’t know when I’ll be able to shower again and I know I’ll end up sleeping in whatever I have on for the hike.

There are a few other people –tourists- also at the Petrified Forest. I don’t want to be around anybody. So I go as far as I can away from anyone.

I walk to what looks most isolated because I want to isolate myself. I want to remove myself from anything that can be called company. I want to be utterly alone for a few hours in this big, rural place. I was alone in Sedona, but still passed some people on trails. I don’t want anybody else around today.

I start walking and it’s beautiful, hot side of temperate, and vastly expansive, the open pathless desert range. I feel so alive and so alone. I am healthy, twenty fucking years old. There is blood in me and semen in me and I am carrying all my hopes and psychoses and cells and every particle inside me. I feel free. There is nothing expected of me here. There is no one to have to be pleasant to, there is just me in all my moods and anger and capacity for love and evil, my drive and personal affinities. I don’t have to make sense to anyone. I don’t have to please anyone but myself. There won’t be a test on this, I don’t have to remember if I don’t want to, this isn’t costing me anything but time to be here. I give nothing and get nothing. No one welcomed me when I came here and I will be forgotten when I leave. The land doesn’t care that I walk on it. I am in a realm that’s not mine or anyone’s. It could rain on me, or I could trip on a rock or get bitten by a rattlesnake. But I just stand and look. I don’t have any enemies here, I don’t have to beat myself up, I don’t have to share my thoughts or attraction or glances or facial expressions. I can be as emotional or stoic as I want to be.

A lizard crawls over my shoe. He runs to a rock and looks at me and I look at him. He has invaded my moment and I’m sure I’ve ruined his. We break the stare and each go our own ways. I cannot believe how open and wide the landscape is here. I feel so far away from anyone. I am far from my birthplace, far from my Mom, and far from anyone who would love me.

Which is the only thing Brad ever did to me. He simply loved me. And I threw shit at him constantly. It’s what I truly, desperately want- to be loved. But it’s the one thing I’ll fight you to the death over: you loving me. I don’t have a problem loving others—in it, I am teeming. I feel like I don’t deserve it or feel worthless, like someone shouldn’t waste their time loving me. So I fight for them to keep it when it’s the only thing I really want.

After maybe two slow miles of hiking, I’m ready to leave. It will be dark in a few hours. I want to be out of Arizona by tonight. I get back into my car and make my way down to highway 60 East. It will take me to New Mexico, my paramour.

I pass a few gas stations, but I know I have enough to make it out of the state and surely there will be some off the highway in New Mexico. At Springerville, Arizona, I have a little over half a tank left. I know I should top off whenever I pass a gas station, especially out West where there is no forewarning of hundreds of miles of nothingness, but for some reason I don’t. Because I am running out of Arizona. Once I get to the border, I’ll start looking for a place to sleep for the night.

It takes forever. Arizona does not want to relinquish its hold on this highway and turn it over to New Mexico. It’s getting dark really quickly, and I don’t want to park after dusk. I want to be able to see the area and get settled and watch the sunset until the sky gets black and I can sleep. But tonight this doesn’t happen because I am racing Arizona and sunset to New Mexico. I don’t win.

It is fucking dark when I see I’ve arrived. It is dark and it is rural. I am about seven thousand feet up in the air, still on highway 60. There are no towns, and when I think I’m at a town, it’s about 500 feet of shacks and hovels and dilapidated buildings and then there is more highway. I can’t believe there are people here, living in these trailers with no windows, with bare bulbs and TVs with bunny ears. I see them because there are no windows and I know they see me and they are sitting in squalor with trash and graffiti and old furniture. I can’t imagine what they do for a living or do during the day or where they go or even buy their groceries. It is so totally and bleakly isolated. I cannot even begin to conceive how daily life must be out here. And there are no gas stations. I am getting really low on gas and it is around nine at night.

I pass these little towns, each time thinking they’ll have a gas station or some place to park and sleep. Red Hill. Quemado. Omega. Pie Town. I’m getting really discouraged. The next town is Datil and if it keeps going like this, I’m going to run out of gas. But right now I am too tired to deal with it. I woke up today around dawn and now it’s late and I’m listening to Tori’s “Scarlet’s Walk” album and trying to find a place to sleep for the night. I get through the fourth song, “strange”, and it’s time to stop. I am in Pie Town, New Mexico. The next town is Datil. This is my fourth town with no establishments, businesses, or services. Based on this, I can almost infer that Datil will be hopeless too. I have a quarter tank of gas. I thought I’d surely pass a rest stop or gas station by now. If there isn’t a place in Datil, I won’t get any further and I’ll be fucked. Royally and rurally fucked.

There is a clearing on the side of the road for RVs. I pull in and tonight I am bent on sleeping in my tent. There are plenty of open spaces and I was too squished last night. I want to stretch out. I use the headlights to guide setup. Because it’s dark, it takes me fifteen minutes where it usually takes me ten. But I get it. I take out my contacts and look at how to get back to the tent from my car and memorize it and think about where I’ll step because after I turn off the headlights, it’s going to be black. There isn’t even ambient light here.

I get to the tent. It is still cool out it feels so good. There is a circulation system in my tent and I take the covers off to let the air in. It’s around ten o’clock now, maybe a little after. I look at my phone in the dark and don’t have a signal. I turn it off. I am in a really scarcely populated area and it is dark and cool and I feel good and worried about tomorrow and hungry like always and I fall asleep within a few minutes.

Route: 179S to I-17N to 40W to 180E to 60E

Petrified Forest, Arizona 4-26-05