DESERT SONG

Summer 1973

Maxwell is dancing in his underwear and socks, the vodka in one hand the other hand waving as if directing the orchestra. “Rocky Raccoon, checked into his room, only to find Gideon’s bible.” The bandage of his third hernia operation bulges under his shorts as he weaves with the music. Fat Dad snores in his bed in the next room, his huge chest rising and falling with each breath, his red swollen feet oozing from the sores. A small dust whirlwind spins by the open front door, staggering off into the distance. This is the desert where the heat is merciless and the sky is always empty.

The telephone rings. Maxwell looks at me and I at him. He lifts the receiver and listens. Smiles. We have been invited to the home of Charles and Jasmine White for an afternoon of barbeque frolicking tomorrow at noon, and to watch the Watergate hearings on TV. It has been rumored that John Dean is now prepared to sing and Sam Ervin is always good for a chuckle. The children will be visiting their cousins until Sunday and Jasmine is in heat. Charles, the recently liberated male in the pack, has a client in the morning and will be retiring early with a nod and a wink. Maxwell delivers this news with a slow and knowing smile. Of course we shall be delighted to attend.

It is the appointed hour of noon and the wind has come up. The wind is the voice of the desert before which even the heat must bend in reverence. Living things have learned to hide, burrow and wait. We dash to the car covering our eyes, switch on the motor and creep through the fierce cloud of sand. The houses stand silent and dim, windows and doors closed and swaddled. On the main run the signal lights sway on cables above the deserted pavement. Only the El Capitan shows even the slightest sign of life, its flickering neons aglow in the dust. CASINO ROOMS EATS One can only imagine the sleepy gamblers with their cups of quarters watching the wheels spin incomprehensibly, and then the arm is pulled once again and the sequence repeats. We pass the commercial zone and turn down toward the lake which lies silent and hidden behind the gusting cloud. Here we enter Lakeside Estates, home to the privileged of this part of the desolation. There are three models of homes to choose from, lined and fenced side by side, anonymous. Models open daily. For one who has lived near the suburbs of Sacramento there is a sense of familiarity and a sneaky hint of comfort. Yet there is also a sense of panic and instinctive revulsion which accompanies a small fear that these districts will soon cover the entire country – perhaps even the whole wide world! Safe, familiar, predictable.

We enter the house and are immediately confronted by the Tiki bar complete with thatched roof and bamboo stools. There is a fish net hanging down one side of the bar with starfish, ceramic crabs and colored balls attached. Charles is mixing the Mai Tais behind his “Tiki Fun” apron and humming along with the Barry Manilow music while the wind rattles the windows in gusts. A large jeweled ring highlights his right hand as he stirs the concoction and greets us with a thin mustache smile. He cocks his head a little to the right and shakes my hand softly. The empty cocktail glasses have been lined up across the bar anticipating our arrival. “We won’t be barbecuing in this wind”, he announces wryly. “Jasmine is frying the chicken.”

On cue Jasmine dances out of the kitchen, a Mai Tai in hand, the little finger gracefully pointed out. She is wearing a sheer vee cut blouse, back-zipped petal-pushers with an aqua floral design and bare feet. Her thirty-something breasts are still sufficiently perky, the dark nipples barely hidden under the lace. She holds her face in a non-committal pose with just the slightest of a smile, but all this practiced mystery is lost and given away by the thick dark-rimmed glasses without which she cannot see. She greets Maxwell with a kiss on the lips and then turns to me. Instinctively I kiss her on the mouth and she dances back into the kitchen having completed the performance.

I sit on the edge of the afghan covered couch before the color television console. The Watergate hearings are in motion but the sound has been tastefully muted in favor of the Manilow music playing through inconspicuous speakers mounted in the corners of the glitter sprayed ceiling. The lighting is recessed and on dimmers. These are the trappings of success out here in the scorched desert.

Suddenly a couple of hours have passed and I am standing before the large picture window looking out into the wind and sand. My shoes are off, my shirt unbuttoned. There is a Mai Tai in one hand and a Budweiser in the other. I sip from one and then from the other. I am just rising to the pleasant peak of a slow and poisonous drunk. I am smiling into the wind storm because I am insensibly happy for no good reason other than the booze. I love the wind, especially here behind the glass. I love the wind, I love the sand, I even love the Barry Manilow music which keeps repeating and repeating. I am approached by Charles from behind who throws an arm over my shoulder and stares out into the wind with me. “Maxwell tells us that you are a banker,” he says to get the conversation going. I examine his moustache for a moment and then turn away, fearful that he just might want to kiss me. “Actually, no,” I say and chug-a-lug the beer. This I follow with a long and satisfying belch and then a small smile. There is a moment of silence between us as I hold the smile. “Do you have any Clifford Brown?” I ask. He is puzzled. “Trumpet”, I explain, “jazz trumpet”. His face lights up, “Yes, we have some Harry James. And also”, he says, suddenly alive with purpose, searching through his albums, “Yes, here, ‘Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White’. Perez Prado. That’s trumpet isn’t it?” He drops the needle on the 45 RPM, cranks the volume and shouts over the music, “My nephew plays the trumpet.” “So does mine”, I shout back. Pleased with this he wanders over to the bar to mix up another batch.

Jasmine is indeed in heat. She dances with herself in languid steps, charmed as a cobra, smoldering between her legs. “It’s cherry pink and apple blossom white, when your true lover comes your way…” Maxwell follows her helplessly, his hernia stitches pulling at the seams.

In another small drift of time Charles has evaporated and Maxwell is now on the couch with Jasmine. Her top is off and they are both struggling with her zipper. Too many cooks spoil the broth. “Cherry Pink” has repeated about a thousand times. I keep turning it up hoping to disappear into the sound, but no, I’m still here and the more I drink the clearer everything becomes. This is a bad sign. I just might be in for another bout with my nemesis, Unbearable Clarity, the malady I occasionally suffer from wherein the profound senselessness of everything going on around me becomes acid clear and unbearably intolerable. The Tiki bar with fake thatched roof, the Mai Tai concoctions, the Watergate hearings tastefully muted, the Perez Prado trumpet bending that long note over and over, the glittering ceiling, Maxwell and Jasmine writhing on the couch like mating snakes, this two-story four bedroom structure standing idiotically out here in the blistering desert, the stoplights swaying in the wind, Fat Dad and his festering feet. And me standing here in this room amid all of this stuff! I could as easily be in Sacramento, or Bakersfield, Milwaukee, Montgomery, Alabama. Everything has become vivid, the edges sharp, the colors primary – red, yellow, blue, green. The furniture is logically laid out, every room precise and defined. I am as completely out of place here in this living room as a lump of mud, and I have no idea what I am doing, yet I suspect I’ve been here a thousand times before. If I stand here one moment longer I will go stark raving mad. I look out the window and am stunned to see the great outdoors completely transformed. The wind has stopped. The sky is clear. The moon is full and shining through the dark night, laying soft lit edges on the tract houses and the sand swept street that weaves down to a long, thin, glimmering lake that must have been painted into this desolate landscape by a mad man, a Vincent Van Gogh, or wizard like Hieronymus Bosch.

Without a word I exit the house leaving the front door open so that whatever mystery is out there might just make its way into this house and bless its inhabitants with its moon glow touch. I leave behind the sleeping Charles as he dreams of naked children or perhaps wild horses, preparing for his morning appointment, and the dream-spun Jasmine reaching deep within her being to grasp and expose her most generous sex, to turn herself inside out. The night is as silent as a painting and I have the sensation of walking onto a huge set, an empty stage, lit to perfection, waiting in patient silence for the audience to file in and take their seats. No one is about, nothing moves. I follow the road down to the lake and stand there like Moses before the Red Sea. A loon calls and a small coyote trots right past me on the road as if I didn’t exist, and I wonder if perhaps I do not. Is this a huge and marvelous dream? The coyote pauses at the lake to drink. If this is madness, oh, thank God! Finally! If this is the fruit of my insanity I have earned it. If this is reality, the new reality, the new world that has just revealed itself to me I will dance a jig and walk on my hands. I will sing an opera, prostrate myself before this glowing lake, coo with the loon, offer myself up as sacrifice to that bushy-tailed coyote and all her pack.

I walk up to the main run and turn back toward the commercial zone. There is not a tire mark or a foot print on the sandy highway and I wonder if I am the last man on earth. But no, the El Capitan is populated with gamblers who are unaware of their surroundings, and Joe’s Tavern tinkles with music from the jukebox. The hanging traffic lights change from green, to amber, to red for no reason at all.

Back in the neighborhood the houses stand silent and dim, as if expecting an explosion. In the shack I rifle through my pack for the pipe and stash. Fat Dad is sleeping heavily. Leaving the shack I walk up the narrow road away from the town and up the rising hill that glows in the darkness. Quickly I am surrounded by the brush, on the very edge of the immeasurable wilderness. Half way up the hill I turn to look back down upon the town and the long finger lake pointing to the north. Everything has been reduced to miniature, a shimmering illustration, glitter paint on black satin. Sitting on the sand I light the pipe, close my eyes and taste the sweet smoke. Everything is transformed by the moon. There is a three dimensional silence to the night, a cooing in the distance like a child’s dreaming voice, a dog's bark, round and hollow, the moon glowing on the sand. The silence is a soft blanket. I lay back on the sand and look up at the sky that covers me with stars and moon. Magically I rise from the sand and float up toward the stars, releasing all I have ever known of “self”. I spread across the sky in a conscious mist, seeing all, hearing all, being everywhere at once, knowing nothing except that there is nothing to know. I am dreaming. I am being dreamt.

The coyote howls once.