John Haskell - American Purgatorio

The man, whose name was Fletcher, did most of the talking. The girl, whose name, appropriately, was Feather, sat in the middle of the back seat. She had lips like the lips of Brigitte Bardot, and I could see, in the rearview mirror, that her light brown hair was cut very short in front, so that it stood up, as in photos I’d seen of Chief Joseph, the last great chieftain of the Nez Perce Indians. Although Feather didn’t talk much, her wide eyes were full of enthusiasm. Life for her was all about learning and growing, and since I’d been overlooking those aspects of life, I found her innocence and honesty attractive. Fletcher was also attractive and honest, and I was glad to have them in the car.

During the getting-to-know-you stage I asked them questions about themselves and it didn’t take much to get them talking about their theory of love, which was really a theory of desire, according to which, love was just an echo of desire. “There’s only desire,” Fletcher said, and that’s what they were after, a state of continual desire in which love would flourish. It wasn’t pleasure exactly, but like pleasure, it existed for itself. To have desire — and specifically desire untethered to an object—“You have to get through all the other stuff, society’s stuff.” You had to get past the craving for outcome.

Although I challenged them occasionally, mostly I was interested in how they actually practiced what they were preaching. Because I was thinking about Anne, the idea of desire unconnected to an object made no sense to me, at least at the moment. But I was willing to listen. And they were willing to explain to me, and even show me, what they meant. At one point Feather actually pulled down her drawstring pants, enough to show me the tattoo of two arrows intertwining on her abdomen.

The back seat was small, especially with their luggage, but at some point Fletcher climbed in the back with Feather and I could see in the rearview mirror that they seemed to be in love. They would have called it something else, but whatever it was, they stayed there in the back seat, nestled in their canvas packs. I would occasionally look back at them and occasionally my eyes met Feather’s, and although she didn’t look like Anne, her eyes reminded me of Anne. They seemed to be saying, “Remember this? Remember desire, existing without cause or reason?” They seemed to be trying to show me how thin the veil was between the desire side and the other side, not talking, but in a way urging me to break through to that side, giving me a pretty clear invitation to cross the boundary to what I wanted to imagine, and the only problem was, I was driving the car. Instead of watching them I turned my attention to the fence posts that were racing past the highway.

We drove across the flat expanse of prairie, watching the snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains coming into view. As we drove through Denver and up to the town of Boulder, I told them a version of my story, and they seemed optimistic about the probability of finding my wife. If desire, physical desire, was in me, and if I could access it, they practically guaranteed I would do what needed to be done. Both of them, they said, could see a little bit into the future. Fletcher said, “You can tap into the other world,” and they both nodded as if they were acquainted with that other world.

When we pulled into Boulder I found a pay phone and called the number Linda had written on the piece of paper. The British fellow answered, and he gave me directions to a house in the foothills outside of Boulder. My two companions didn’t seem to have a place to stay so I invited them to come with me. They accepted the invitation and we drove up several roads to a mailbox in front of a driveway. A man with dreadlocks pointed out where we could pitch a tent — they had a tent — and when we found a nice flat spot on the pine needles, that’s what we did.

Other people were camping on the property around this house but they were barely visible through the trees. We laid our sleeping bags in the tent, which was probably a two-person tent, but they didn’t mind and I didn’t either. Not only did I have my sleeping bag, now I had — it wasn’t a teepee but I thought of it as a teepee — the sense of being an Indian. Light came in from the top of the tent, and also from the walls, which were made of thin green nylon. Since there was going to be a gathering that evening Feather and Fletcher decided to walk up to the center of where that gathering would be. I lay back on my unfurled sleeping bag, watching the sky pass by over my head and listening to the generalized hum of voices preparing for the party.

* * *

It wasn’t the first time we met, but close to the first time. I had gone to Morgan’s house. She lived in the back of her store, and the store was closed but as usual there were some people there, men and women, and one of the women was you. A bottle of bourbon was being passed around and there were bottles of beer. Everyone was guzzling and I remembered sitting around a fire. There couldn’t have been a fire, not in the middle of a downtown store, but there was some focal point and, at least gesturally, people were warming their hands around whatever it was. And then the people began to leave. After a while it was just two couples, Morgan and her friend, plus you and your new friend — which was me — and we moved to the bedroom, which was just a bed against the wall in the back of the store. One thing led to something else and kissing was involved. We were showing each other, first our legs and then our buttocks, and you were eager to show your butt. You wanted to have a butt contest where we’d all show our butts. In a contest of butts you were sure you could win. Morgan’s friend was getting excited and I was getting moderately excited, and then the something else led to hands on bodies and pressure on bodies and although mostly our clothes stayed on, desire was established. And enough of it so that the pull of desire brought us together, brought me across that gulf or membrane, and together the chain of events led us to live with each other, to fall in love and live whatever that love, and the pleasure of that love, would be.

I found Linda and her two friends, Geoff and Lisa, sitting on a picnic bench in front of a large canvas yurt. Linda stood up when she saw me approaching and met me on the dirt road leading to the yurt. I could tell that something was going on, that a familial powwow was in progress, and that this probably wasn’t a very good time to talk.

But I wanted to talk. “I was looking for you,” I said.

“I’m glad you made it,” she said.

“This is nice,” I said, turning and looking generally around the area.

We stood there, and I have to say it was slightly awkward. She looked at me and she seemed glad to see me, but the conversation didn’t seem to go anywhere.

“How was the drive?” I said.

“It was fine,” she said.

She smiled at me in an apologetic way, and I could tell she felt impelled to get back to her friends, so I told her I’d see her later, at the party.

“Definitely,” she said, and we both turned and walked away.

By the time I got back to the house the celebration had already started. People on the porch were playing guitars and singing, and there was a punch bowl and people were drinking and dancing, swaying and twirling to the music. I drank from the bowl and I was introduced — or introduced myself — to a number of people, all from the same social tribe, all wearing loose-fitting garments and carefully uncared-for hair. Smiling, and not just outwardly, these friends — the community of people that lived in and around the tents and the house — were living a kind of cliché, but as I stood with them, in the middle of it, they didn’t seem at all false or pretentious.