Story time # 2

The camera blinked and then we were in Arizona, but not long enough for the desert to really penetrate, just long enough for a roadside stop near a man made stream. There was a sun bleached beer can nestled against the government issue fence with barbed wire, but not the kind that keeps prisoners away, just the kind that deters soft hearted tourists like my driver. She was behind me in her short shorts and I took one last look at those golden brown legs before stepping over the fence and into a whole new kind of freedom. I felt dangerous, like I was in a part of the country not meant for me and all I could do was take these deep breaths and inhale this world unfamiliar beyond the freeway noise at least six feet above my head.

A truck rolled by and its roaring bull engine reverberates off the cliff side, but it charged back over my head, leaving only the dust of it's rumble. And she was shaking and shouting at me not to go too far and I'm thinking to myself that it must be some kind of motherly instinct, and then I started thinking about Freud, and all that shit I learned in college, and my librarian friend who once suggested I fuck an older woman just to live the fantasy of it, and I felt dirty. The air is a sour kind of free, one with the sickly sweet tinge of guilt like peering in on your parents making it, but finding it interesting.

And I shouted, “Don't worry about me lady, you just sit there with my camera and snap away.” This was my country, every step, every rock, the way the gravel skidded under my Chucks. My fingers were wet with anticipation and when I gripped the rocks to shimmy my way down without falling, my grip was nice and tight. I'd gotten close enough to hear the stream trickle it's way through the Arizona red mud below my tiny dry plateau. And I wondered whether I would erode along with this mountain and there's this picture of me just kind of sitting there, she must have taken it when I wasn't paying attention, and it's sort of above me to so I'm just locked like a statue planted up out of the ground. I see that picture and I imagine myself still floating there somehow, slowly eroding with the dirt and eventually giving way to the top heaviness of the mound and crumbling into that stream. Maybe the rains would come, wash me away.

I wanted to turn to her get her down to my level and hold her hand. Her ring glowed in the dying daylight and I coughed to cover the wretch.

I climbed back up after I'd had my fill and when I passed her I dropped my hand and cupped her breast. She rose immediately and shoved me, suppressing a laugh. I stumbled and face planted, but when she got to me I turned and pulled her down ontop. In the dust, kicking it up in clouds, I feasted on her lips. My hands plucked at her nipples and then she fell ontop of me. I had been hard after touching her the first time and when she felt me she began grinding her hips against me. For awhile there were only hips, and breathing.

Her hair, a deep crimson in the dusk, shadowed my face and I was looking into her eyes. I wanted her then and there, but we had road to cover. “Ramble on.” I said it, but I meant I needed her.

“If I can ever get you to stay put long enough, I think I just might like making it with you.” And she winked, and my stomach didn't quite turn, but registered it's dissatisfaction never the less.

She lit a cigarette, and I watched her suck the filter, imagining it was me, and I got hard. She just had this no tell smile and she crossed her legs, “beautiful,” she said.

"I know,” although I was too focused to care. Spinning roads dizzy rock formations around our steel box and the steady drone of passing semis. This was the road.

“What's playing,” static, and country. Then she landed on one of these old Conway Twitty sounding guys and both of us lit a cigarette and rolled the windows down. Out of the corner of my eye I caught her smiling at me.

A soft smooth-jazz deep voice told us we were listening to Arizona's choice for blue grass, and she started singing Tamborine Man, and I looked at her and said, “That aint bluegrass lady, it's folk.”

“Too many genres man. Why can't music just be fucking music.”

“People don't like, just 'music'. I don't mean to tell you that you can't please everyone you know.” I waited for a response, a chuckle, anything. Another semi roared past and Mary jumped, her cigarette flying out the open window and somewhere on the road.

“Fuck! One of these days I'll start a fire. It's irrational I know-” and she was tugging at her hair and rocking back and forth.

“It's not irrational, you are. Light another one and it is what it is.”

“I'm letting it be. I just fucked up. I'm always fucking up.” She opened the glove box and grabbed her camera. There was this eagle flying above our heads, huge wingspan. I was watching it and the road.

Blue grass, and her camera shutter click clicking away.