in attaining a sense of proper juxtapositions, and what is religion if not a category of art? But I think Ned was putting me on, as usual. In any case I can’t buy his theories of contrast and juxtaposition. This desert, this dry wasteland, is the perfect place for the headquarters of those who will not die.
Crossing from New Mexico into southern Arizona we left the last traces of winter behind. Up by Albuquerque the air had been cool, even cold, but the elevation is greater there. The land dipped as we drove toward the Mexican border and made our Phoenixward turn. The temperature rose sharply, from the fifties into the seventies, or even higher. The mountains were lower and seemed to be made of particles of reddish-brown soil compressed into molds and sprayed with glue; I imagined I could rub a deep hole in such rock with a fingertip. Soft, vulnerable, sloping hills, practically naked. Martian-looking. Different vegetation here, too. Instead of dark sweeps of sagebrush and gnarled little pines, we now traveled through forests of widely spaced giant cacti surging ithyphallically out of the brown, scaly earth. Ned botanized for us. Those are saguaros, he said, those big-armed cacti taller than telephone poles, and these, the shrubby spiky-branched blue-green leafless trees that might have been native to some other planet, these are palo verde, and those, the knobby upthrust clusters of jointed woody branches, they call that ocotillo. Ned knows the Southwest well. Feels quite at home here, having spent some time in New Mexico a couple of summers ago. Feels quite at home everywhere, Ned. Likes to speak of the international fraternity of the gay; wherever he goes, he’s sure of finding lodging and companionship among His Own Kind. I envy him sometimes. It might be worth all the peripheral traumas of being gay in a straight society to know that there are places where you’re always welcome, for no other reason than that you’re a child of the tribe. My own tribe isn’t quite as hospitable.
We crossed the state border and zoomed westward toward Phoenix, the land becoming more mountainous again for a while, the terrain less forbidding. Indian country here—Pimas. We caught a glimpse of Coolidge Dam: memories of third-grade geography lessons. When we were still a hundred miles east of Phoenix, we began to see billboards inviting, no, commanding, us to stay at a downtown motel: HAVE A HAPPY HOLIDAY IN THE VALLEY OF THE SUN. The sun already impinged on us, here in late afternoon, hanging suspended over the windshield and hurling bolts of red-gold fire into our eyes. Oliver, driving like a robot, produced glittering silvered wrap-around sunglasses and kept right on going. We shot through a town called Miami. No beaches, no matrons in mink. The air was purple and pink from the fumes belching out of smokestacks; the odor of the atmosphere was sheer Auschwitz. What were they cremating here? Just before the central part of the town we saw the huge gray battleship-shaped mound of a copper mine’s discards, the great heap of tailings flung up across many years. A gaudy giant motel was right across the highway from it, I suppose for the benefit of those who dig close-up views of environmental rape. What they cremate here is Mother Nature. Sickened, we hurried on, into uninhabited territory. Saguaro, palo verde, ocotillo. We swooped through a long mountain tunnel. Forlorn townless countryside. Lengthening shadows. Heat, heat, heat. And then, abruptly, the tentacles of urban life reaching out from still-distant Phoenix: suburbs, shopping centers, gas stations, trading posts selling Indian souvenirs, motels, neon lights, fast-food stands offering tacos, custard, hot dogs, fried chicken, roast beef sandwiches. Oliver was persuaded to stop and we had tacos under eerie yellow streetlamps. And onward. The gray slabs of immense windowless department stores flanking the road. This was money country, the home of the affluent. I was a stranger in
Crossing from New Mexico into southern Arizona we left the last traces of winter behind. Up by Albuquerque the air had been cool, even cold, but the elevation is greater there. The land dipped as we drove toward the Mexican border and made our Phoenixward turn. The temperature rose sharply, from the fifties into the seventies, or even higher. The mountains were lower and seemed to be made of particles of reddish-brown soil compressed into molds and sprayed with glue; I imagined I could rub a deep hole in such rock with a fingertip. Soft, vulnerable, sloping hills, practically naked. Martian-looking. Different vegetation here, too. Instead of dark sweeps of sagebrush and gnarled little pines, we now traveled through forests of widely spaced giant cacti surging ithyphallically out of the brown, scaly earth. Ned botanized for us. Those are saguaros, he said, those big-armed cacti taller than telephone poles, and these, the shrubby spiky-branched blue-green leafless trees that might have been native to some other planet, these are palo verde, and those, the knobby upthrust clusters of jointed woody branches, they call that ocotillo. Ned knows the Southwest well. Feels quite at home here, having spent some time in New Mexico a couple of summers ago. Feels quite at home everywhere, Ned. Likes to speak of the international fraternity of the gay; wherever he goes, he’s sure of finding lodging and companionship among His Own Kind. I envy him sometimes. It might be worth all the peripheral traumas of being gay in a straight society to know that there are places where you’re always welcome, for no other reason than that you’re a child of the tribe. My own tribe isn’t quite as hospitable.
We crossed the state border and zoomed westward toward Phoenix, the land becoming more mountainous again for a while, the terrain less forbidding. Indian country here—Pimas. We caught a glimpse of Coolidge Dam: memories of third-grade geography lessons. When we were still a hundred miles east of Phoenix, we began to see billboards inviting, no, commanding, us to stay at a downtown motel: HAVE A HAPPY HOLIDAY IN THE VALLEY OF THE SUN. The sun already impinged on us, here in late afternoon, hanging suspended over the windshield and hurling bolts of red-gold fire into our eyes. Oliver, driving like a robot, produced glittering silvered wrap-around sunglasses and kept right on going. We shot through a town called Miami. No beaches, no matrons in mink. The air was purple and pink from the fumes belching out of smokestacks; the odor of the atmosphere was sheer Auschwitz. What were they cremating here? Just before the central part of the town we saw the huge gray battleship-shaped mound of a copper mine’s discards, the great heap of tailings flung up across many years. A gaudy giant motel was right across the highway from it, I suppose for the benefit of those who dig close-up views of environmental rape. What they cremate here is Mother Nature. Sickened, we hurried on, into uninhabited territory. Saguaro, palo verde, ocotillo. We swooped through a long mountain tunnel. Forlorn townless countryside. Lengthening shadows. Heat, heat, heat. And then, abruptly, the tentacles of urban life reaching out from still-distant Phoenix: suburbs, shopping centers, gas stations, trading posts selling Indian souvenirs, motels, neon lights, fast-food stands offering tacos, custard, hot dogs, fried chicken, roast beef sandwiches. Oliver was persuaded to stop and we had tacos under eerie yellow streetlamps. And onward. The gray slabs of immense windowless department stores flanking the road. This was money country, the home of the affluent. I was a stranger in
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