Vivienne by A. Ray

Author:A. Ray [Ray, A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holy Mountain Publishing
Published: 2024-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

11. Vivienne

Our first trip was to the Northern Coast of California near the border of Oregon. The first real trip we took together, openly, as a non-secretive, actual couple. We went in her 2001 black Honda Accord and packed everything we thought we would possibly need, from camping equipment and firewood to binoculars, even a disposable camera to capture this new and exhilarating love we had finally managed to grasp and hold on to. We were so elated to finally be free of our constricting empty relationships. Free to love each other out in the world, to not be sneaking around, hiding our messages, our pain, our lust.

We meandered north through the state for over two weeks, stopping at rural campsites and sleeping openly under pine trees, looking for constellations, eating dirt-filled sloppy campfire meals and stinking of firewood smoke. We bathed in the icy rivers, splashing each other's cold, naked bodies and played horribly timed jokes on each other, pretending to be a bear or the elusive sasquatch. Eventually collapsing together in pain from the laughter or anger that ensued as a result.

When we wanted to treat ourselves and take a hot shower, we would stop in motels like the one I was in currently. Cheap motels off the side of some lesser traveled highway, thematically tuned to its surroundings, whether it be the woods or the mountains or the coast. The Breeze Inn, the Lumberjack Motel, The Summit. We would check in quickly, hardly able to resist touching each other for the few minutes it took to sign the paperwork and swipe our credit cards, immediately rushing out of the lobby to our rooms and fucking against the thin walls of the space.

Eventually we’d peel ourselves off of one another, hours later, to seek out much needed nutritional sustenance, a shower, or to watch strange local television shows or stern religious sermons. The strict, heaven or hell kind Vivienne grew up listening to with her grandparents. We would invent weird, sometimes gross cocktails out of what was left in our grocery shopping larder, adding orange slices to cheap light beer or drinking vodka mixed with instant coffee and sweetener. Dancing to the local fuzzy radio station, before falling back into our hazy, infatuated sickness and biting, squeezing, coming all over each other's worn skin and smearing those cheap sheets with various bodily liquids. We stained the coast, literally, with our love and our fueled desire for one other. It was the happiest I had ever been or felt I could ever be in my life.

Now I was here, in this little room, all by myself. No weird cocktail recipes, no radio dancing, no stained sheets or crooked teeth marks on my skin. Just me, looking at local desert flora and fauna in this freezing cold, stinking old room. A dead orange cigarette butt lay in a thick glass ashtray like a squashed caterpillar.

It was nearing 6 pm. The sun was beginning to sink down sluggishly, as if heat stricken, leaving a blazing red hue burning across the sky and the mountains.

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