John Haskell - American Purgatorio

“Yuma,” I say, pulling a random name off my memory of the map.

“That’s where I’m going,” the man says.

I throw my bag in the back seat, get in the front, and off we go. There’s some minor chitchat as we drive across the burnt flat desert but the man doesn’t spend much time beating around the bush. After only a couple of miles he asks me if I would like to have my dick sucked. I decline, as politely as possible, and that’s about it until the man casually mentions that he’s not really going to Yuma, that in fact he’s getting off at the next exit.

“You said you were going to Yuma,” I remind him.

“That was a mistake.”

“What do you mean mistake?” I say. “You said you would take me to Yuma.”

“I could,” the man says, and leaves the rest of his thought just dangling.

Then, holding the steering wheel with one hand, he reaches over to the glove compartment and takes out a round piece of plastic. He puts this plastic to his mouth and begins talking, pretending that he’s talking to some other car, as if the piece of plastic is a radio, a wireless radio, and he begins asking if there’s anyone on the road going to Yuma. Then he places this object, a brown piece of Bakelite, against his ear and cocks his head as if listening. After a pause he tells me that there’s a car behind us going to Yuma and that the driver is willing to give me a ride.

“Are you kidding?” I say. “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m arranging a ride for you.”

“With that?” I reach for the small faux microphone, but the old man is quick. He pulls it away and stashes it between his legs. He explains that it’s a special device, that he used to be in the secret service and it’s a high-tech gadget that not too many people know about.

I don’t care about the gadget or about Yuma; I just want to stay in the comfortable car. I’m like a powerless country with one natural resource, and this man has his eyes on that resource. And because there aren’t many cars traveling on the road, and because the radio isn’t playing, I start talking to him a little provocatively, coquettishly even, saying for instance that I have nothing against the idea of oral sex. And I can see that this excites the man, or distracts him, enough so that he passes the exit, and I think I can keep the man going like this for the next whatever odd miles.

And they are odd. Because the man has a goal, he’s persistent, holding his imaginary microphone between his legs, talking occasionally to imaginary agents, listening to me, as the exits go by, as I wonder aloud about blow jobs, trying to walk a line between interested and not that interested. But the man is interested and as he’s saying it, I’m wondering if his teeth are real.

Gradually, my initial disgust starts to wane. I wouldn’t say I’m titillated, but the wall of resistance I had in my mind begins to crumble, partly because it’s a perversion of my normal mode, and partly because my normal mode has done nothing for me lately. I’m ready to tell my normal mode to fuck off.

The landscape we’re driving through is spotted with cacti and sage and the tentacle stalks of ocotillo rising out of the sand. It’s just the four lanes of the highway, two going west, two going east. A few small junkyard shacks pop up now and then but basically it’s flat desert and barren hills. However, at one of the shacks, as we pass, I notice a compact station wagon. Just the one car, and I think that I can see, sitting in the driver’s seat, a lone head with the hair of a woman. Not that it matters. It’s not Anne’s hair, but because the car, which may not even be a station wagon, is more interesting than the horny old man, I tell the driver to let me off.

“Only if we do it,” the old man says. He’s got both hands on the steering wheel. I mention the shack and the man says he’ll take me there, but “only if we do it.”

So, okay. “Fine,” I say. And this “fine,” when I say it, is the “fine” of surrender. It’s not that the man is omnipotent or anything, it’s that I’m willing to abdicate my own potency in deference to his. I’m letting him decide what will happen. We don’t shake hands, but the man agrees. He drives to the next exit, a crossroads without building or tree, and he pulls off the road and parks the car on an incline overlooking the highway. He puts his plastic microphone back in the glove compartment and tells me to take my “thing” out.

You wouldn’t call it coercion because I know I’m not trading my services for anything. I’m pretty certain the man isn’t going to drive me back to the junkyard shack, and it doesn’t matter. I sit there, staring out the windshield, and the man leans over and does what he does. And it’s wetter than I expected, but I try to imagine something, not Anne because Anne is dead, but something like Anne, something to make the event seem a little more normal and comfortable. But as the act continues, I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable, and then more uncomfortable, and my reaction is to concentrate on something else, on something alive and real. But there’s nothing I want to concentrate on.

We’re given a life and we have to do something with that life, and at the moment I’m letting the man decide what my life will be doing. And by resting my eyes on the maroon mountains in the distance, and by not looking down at the man’s white head in my lap, I am able to imagine that life, and pretend to lead that life, and to bring myself, in not much time, to a climax.

There, I think, that’s the bit done.

But not quite. As I zip up my pants I notice that the man is doing something with himself under the steering wheel. And whatever it is it’s not working out.

“That was too fast,” the man says.

I say something about there being, as far as I could remember, no time stipulation. But the man is unfulfilled and with a raging unfulfilledness he tells me to get out of the car. This doesn’t seem completely fair, especially since I’ve already settled into my seat, but when the man tells me again to get out of the car it seems like probably the easiest solution. So I grab my pack, close the door, and notice, as the man drives away, that he’s driving in the direction of Yuma.

As long as I had my need I was able to move forward, but now I’ve lost what I want, forgotten what I’m doing and where I’m going, and in fact, at the moment, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve stopped moving. I look down at a desiccated plant beside a gray granite rock and I don’t know what I’m thinking, probably not thinking anything, because my body has taken over. My body is feeling like a rock, the heaviness of a rock, except a rock that once wanted something.

The junkyard is out of my mind by now. The heat of the sun is scorching my face, and my shoes, which had always been comfortable shoes, are bothering me. My socks are slipping into my shoes but I don’t pull them up. I would stay where I am on the crusted sand but walking is habitual. So I walk down to the overpass, and under the shade of the overpass I wait. Not wait. I’m not waiting for anything. I’m looking at the overpass support columns and behind them to a cool and dirty ledge of cement, and I’m planning a night on that cement.

But the night is a long way away. I wait under that overpass the rest of the day. No food, no drink, not even a mandolin to play. I could take out my notebook and jot down my thoughts, but I don’t want to notice my thoughts.

I hardly notice the cars passing by on the highway, and I don’t try to recognize a recognizable driver.

There’s nothing I can do.

Except walk.

Walking is habitual for me but now I don’t even want to walk.

Why walk, I think. Is any spot on the pavement, or any destination, better than any other? No. I actually say the word out loud. “No.” And partly I’m saying no to the lack of hope, and partly I’m saying no to hope itself.