I Nearly Died in #Yolo County
A djent metal band on tour, driving to their next gig in an Astro van pulls off the sun-seared highway somewhere between the rolling windmill hills of California and the gas station angel sentinels of the Arizona border. I don’t know where we are exactly because the single lane highway to my childhood hellscape has been stopped for several hours in the — I look at the digital thermometer display on my rental car’s dash. An even one-hundred-twenty degrees Fahrenheit shimmers upon the hood. I know they are a djent metal band because I recognized their lead guitarist laughing at a $47 jar of royal bee pollen in a Whole Foods refrigerator last year. That was a lifetime ago. Three deaths ago, a year ago. This is how I measure time now, in the quantity and frequency of deaths. For a moment, I consider pulling off the road to be neighborly in this place where no one dares live and defy the fate reserved for mammals with short ears and not enough fossil fuels stuffed into their gas tanks.
Daydreaming as the A/C styles my hair like Farrah Fawcett, I think about my little sister and gaze into the heat mirage dancing in the distance. Before leaving on this poorly planned manic pixie fiancée road trip, I tried to explain why. I stuttered, searching for a reasonable explanation to give my fiancé. Why exactly I needed to drive across the desert alone in July with our pet poodle. Why I needed to do this a…
