When did you begin that awful yet human longing to belong?
When did I?
Hard to say.
Last year we challenged ourselves to live six months in an Airstream.
Can you imagine?
Tin. Can. Fever. Is. Real.
We made it 181 days.
Day one, I had to sell my beloved old Range Rover, because when I pulled the Airstream (Rosie!!), the Rover wobbled a bit too much for my nervous system. Rosie was still swayin in the rear view as I said fuck it and started googling.
Rick, on “floor duty” at just the right time, was the only guy I could find for ten thousand miles not trying to upsell me. Slowly, quickly, he convinced me to buy a Ford F-150.
What. the. Actual. fuck.
This is not me. A gun rack. A decal of a flag taking up the whole back window. Rolled coal at a stoplight. I have not seen a confederate flag in more than a decade.
We bought the truck.
I immediately put a bumper sticker on it that said FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE and drove around delighted with myself, loving my glorious contradictions.
With Rosie packed and ready, we hit the road.
Rural America for us requires — what’s the best way to say it — hesitation.
When the population sign reads 3,649, we know statistically that isn’t all heterosexuals. But I’d bet 3,646 think so.
Internalized homophobia comes with us wherever we go.
,
Somewhere early into the 181, I realized: to be gay at the KOA feels like a radical act.
We pull in, the envy of the whole shebang, Rosie shining and proud, the truck we named The Ghost pulling her effortlessly.
I want to feel as proud as she is.
My eyes are scanning.
American flag. MAGA flag. “Traditional” family after traditional family. Big trucks with loud mufflers.
My shoulders come up an inch and stay there the rest of the night. Our spot is wedged between Leave It to Beaver and the Dukes of Hazzard.
I wonder how we’ll hold hands at the campfire.
I pull our chairs out of the back. REI, $199. I wish they were Amazon, $34.99. My desire to fit in overwhelms.
My husband builds the fire log by log. The fire starter doesn’t work. Gas always does. It’s kind of dramatic. Fuck it.
I sit next to him. Topo Chicos open — the fizz hits right. Our neighbors seem to have nine kids and six little loud dogs. How do they fit them all into their plastic camper?
I watch the sparks. He leans over and kisses me.
I scan over his shoulder. Half kissing, half scanning.
I’m grateful when he’s done and then full of shame as he resumes his fire prodding. Shame wins and loses all night. Again.
I’m so sick of it.
,
Fast forward. Day 182. No more Rosie. Good chapter, complete. (Truth: we wrecked her when we drove into a cactus the size of a tree and when I say “we” I mean my husband.)
Now we have this embarrassing fucking Truck in a new house with a driveway that can’t hold it? Hmmmm.
I’ve been wanting to get a bronze historic plaque for our new place, like all the fancy gays here in town seem to do, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Ours is from a famous architect (trust me, that really matters) and the mid-century vibe warrants it (you should be on Modernism Week, bro).
But I am from cheese curd Wisconsin, for god’s sake, and I can’t even fathom what my dad would think of me if I plaqued what he’d call an “old rambler.”
Rodney, next door, is eighty-something. He loves God, his cat Blackie, and us.
I’m sure he loves other things as well, but these are the three he continuously reminds us of. When we redid our landscaping — me turning my obsessive addiction toward cacti for half a second — Rodney decided to clean up his yard to fit in a bit better.
Where are you still trying to fit?
Morning or night, heat dependent, Pancake — 89% bulldog, 11% what-the-fuck — likes to go about a half mile. The butterfly roofs are like an orgasm for the eyes. Mid-century house after house, outrageous in any other land, commonplace here, with pink doors and the guy who hung a hundred bras in his trees and filled the double-D cups with cacti among the norm.
The lesbians — regrettably, I still categorize them that way — live halfway down the road toward the San Jacintos I can’t stop loving. They painted their house a unique color I created when I bribed the guy at Sherwin-Williams to mix a paint that felt just right. We all decided we were just far enough away, and our houses dissimilar enough, that we could have the same color.
Months later I’m still proud about the whole thing.
They have an electric BMW. I love it.
Maybe we should get one of those?
The guys across from them do as well, zooming back and forth from LA, best I can tell, since they only seem to show up on weekends and besides us, everyone seems to be from LA.
But even with all this LA fuck-you money, there are no Teslas to be found, and the weekly protest can be heard from all our front patios (to call it a porch would reveal my midwestern DNA and, although unconfirmed, I believe it to be a sin-level statement around these parts).
The boys on the corner, both with the same first name — how fucking awkward is that — came to say hi only when they needed a petition signed for some project. They caught us on the road, clipboard already out, Pancake pulling toward them.
“You boys are the ones with the MAGA truck. We’ve been wondering about you.”
Then the other guy, same name: “You’re the talk of the neighborhood.”
Damn. Gotta sell that fucking truck.
,
Aaron — fully Jewish — arrives in his shiny new Tesla from a cross-country ride-about and demands we go to Sherman’s Deli.
“Those pickles!”
I look up and down the road, hoping nobody sees the Tesla logo.
“Bro, you gotta drive my car.”
I jump in the driver’s seat, more interested in getting it out of my yard than in driving the “thing.”
“Now just wait,” he instructs, so animated you’d think he was showing me his son Henry the day he was born.
I look around, scanning for objects in the rear-view like it’s 1995. No Blackie. No Rodney. The Erics aren’t around, our signatures being the last thing they needed from us.
What am I waiting for, I ask.
Just wait.
On the screen emerges a blue square button. Self-Drive.
I push it and nothing happens.
Take your foot off the brake and your hands off the wheel, Lewke.
I oblige, un-gripping just an inch, ready to stop this madness.
The car moves. Slowly, backing up cautiously, scanning for Rodney, Blackie, the Erics, Pancake, the lesbians, and even Barbara from across the way who had her piano stolen in broad daylight, go figure. (She drives a Rivian, but I’m suspect.)
You gotta get one, he says, at least ten thousand times before the first stop sign.
Man, I will never buy from Elon. He is brilliant past anything I can comprehend and he carries a darkness most of us never touch and I just can’t do it.
Aaron heard me out for less than four seconds.
You know, Henry Ford was a Nazi.
George Washington owned people.
Fuck.
True.
,
We weren’t halfway to the deli when the car blasted off from a stop sign all on its own, and I burst into tears as Aaron turned on the radio.
A while back, my sweet mom was asked to leave the health club because she couldn’t stop singing John Denver out loud on the treadmill, listening to her old Sony Walkman with the CDs.
She traded the club in for the open road, driving the outskirts of McHenry County on roads lined with wheat, corn and cows, blasting Country Roads and letting her long hair dance in the wind of the open windows.
She’s blind now, and happy as fuck about the whole thing honestly, but she aches for those drives and that big sky and singing about mountain mommas.
I called my mom that night.
Ma, I found a way to get you back out on the open road one more time.
I called Rick, bought a Tesla.
I know, I get it. But before you judge: listen.