I am standing on the Western most point in the world. Any farther in that direction is no longer West. It feels as though I have been banished by God from my own existence, and all that I am is shifting dust, tripping over Eastern borders into Nevada and Idaho, and Montana. Divorced from my skin, everything passes through me as I pour my eyes out over photos of other people’s families. The drama precedes me; the road ahead of me is laid with gay prostitutes and shit and incestuous bivouacs.
I explained for the fifth time in my life to my psychoanalyst how I think that Camila is the real cuckold in the Don Quixote story, “The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious.” These two friends, Lothario and Anselmo are talking up Anselmo’s wife as this pinnacle of chastity and wonder. Anselmo, a neurotic, schemes with his friend to test his wife’s virtue by suggesting that Lothario seduce her. Lothario is initially like WTF, but then he eventually agrees and begins to fall in love with his friend’s wife, Camila. She rejects him until he glazes her so hard that she falls prey to her own vanity. They have an affair and when Anselmo finds out, the two of them flee with shame. My favorite reading of the story is that Anselmo is gay for his friend and uses his wife as a surrogate to consummate his love for Lothario. If that is the case, Anselmo acts out of desire for Lothario and Lothario acts out of desire for Camila, and both consummate a desire even if its reckless. The two men devised their own misery, as man does at his destined hour. However their plans all pass through Camila, who falls to the temptation of a glazer, delivered to evil. There is nothing of Camila’s desire, she is at their whim; she vanishes in the distance –scathed, divorced, uncurious, and passive.
Along the Cascade mountains, with view of the skyline and of the trees, on the plateau, between a bed of roses and a bed of jasmine, from a table overlooking the window that sees the street, I watched the vlogger on my phone hitchhiking from Southampton to South Africa. He says ‘south’ like souf. He picked up a girl traveler along the way who is now accompanying him, and everyone in the comments wants them to reveal that they are a couple. They say they are just friends. Yesterday, after I came home from the airport, my dad, my cousin and I watched Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. My dad really liked the eccentric German trick, Hans. The first time I watched the movie, I was a teenager, and I was with a bunch of gay people. This time, I happened to go to the bathroom or to the kitchen during most of the gay sex scenes. And this time, I became attached to River Phoenix’s character who has narcolepsy. I have it too, but mine is mild-mannered. The movie weaves home footage into his dreams during his narcoleptic episode, fixating on his childhood ranch home in Idaho and his missing mother. Then there is his love interest, played by Keanu, whose storyline is the plot of Henry IV. Keanu’s character is full of everything, rebellion, duty, virility, sex, Shakespearean prose. River’s character is fragile and interior, and not part of Shakespeare’s world, constantly disappearing into a sleep, into the thin mountains and the plateaus and the vignettes of his childhood. He never gets the boy, Keanu, nor does he find his mother. Banished, scathed, asleep, alone, away from the play taking place in the city, he vanishes into the distance.
My friend, who grew up on the same roads as I did, always monologued about leaving. He would describe the routes he would take, passing through the Olympic rain forest, into the rolling hills and volcanic soil. He would talk about pubs and strip clubs along the way, and the friends he would visit. He would talk about how nice it would be to shit with a view, like in Kings of the Road. And all his planning would lead to Las Vegas. I don’t know why he wanted to stop there, when he could have kept driving all the way to New York. I don’t think he has ever left the Pacific Northwest, though no one has heard from him in years.
When I return to my childhood home, I feel cucked by the soil I grew from. The mazes through the mountains, the distant harbors, the people, the cars. Apparently, it’s still the nation’s saddest large metro area. According to a survey, 45% of Seattle adults are depressed. Although, Seattle adults are also just the type of people to report that they are depressed in a survey.
I’m not really from Seattle; I think the farther east you go, people are slightly happier, looser, aspirational, home-seeking. A reddit thread called them hillbillies with teeth, wannabe cowboys. I’ve never fallen in love here, though I love the rain. I’ve wondered, maybe people who are born here, are born unhappy. But I’m often happy, maybe because I was born a little East.
As a teenager, I used to fall asleep at stop lights driving home. Briefly, I would slip into graphic dreams of Parisian riots, nymphs having sex behind trees, Ancient Athenian courts. Civilization took place elsewhere; there was no action or decision here. Now, even in the throes of love, my sleeping mind instead wanders off to home, into this quiet, passive decision-less place. My dreams take place watching people behind a window in my childhood bedroom. Sometimes they will call out to me, point at me, but I can never figure out how to reach them back.
Pisando del amor la alegre senda
quando más de velar tuve cuidado,
un sueño me acomete mal criado
en medio de la amorosa alta contienda