The Last Free Place
I pulled my motorcycle to the side of the road. I hadn’t passed another car in twelve miles and the Southern California desert stretched out in every direction except for the apparent ghost town ahead. Some town called Niland. The land could have swallowed me up. I could disappear here, just live off of cactus, lizards, whatever the land would provide. I’d never have to return to Camp Pendleton. I wouldn’t have to say “aye Staff Sergeant” to SSgt Moore as he screamed in my face over random uniform violations because I rejected his drunken sexual advance one night. I wouldn’t have to avoid the Velvet Mirage and the wish that Nicole would walk through the door and drag me onto the dance floor. Five miles east of here was Slab City. The last free place in America. A place for people who chose to disappear from society and live off grid. I wondered if I could make it work. I’d never see Palm Bay again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to anyway.
Nicole and I were perfect. That’s what I told the handful of people that wouldn’t tell my chain of command I was in a homosexual relationship. Except we weren’t. We talked, we danced, we told each other our deepest secrets. I told her things I’d only confided to my cousin Tucker. Then she told me about the guy she started talking to, who she swore was just a friend. We met at a party, and she spent two hours on a couch with her feet in his lap while he massaged them. But he’s just a close friend. She’s not into him like that. She swore.
The last rising sun I saw was in Yuma. My head pulsed with dehydration and the remaining scent of bourbon stuck in my nostrils. It was a ninety-six and I spent forty-eight of those hours drinking with bikers until I couldn’t stand up. The Egyptian scarab tattoo on my right shoulder reflected back at me in the bike’s rear-view mirror. I stared up at the blazing sky.
“You still there, Khepri?” I asked. Was this the grand purpose that pushed me out of Palm Bay and landed me in the Southern California desert? Was I meant to stumble from one heartbreak to another? Would every woman that ever mattered to me just leave when it got inconvenient? Or would everyone I meet be bi, just not bi enough to be with me? Bi because they kissed a girl once? I was due back to base in the morning. Standing within miles of Slab City in one direction and the Salton Sea in another, I needed to make a call. I could walk away from all this right now.
I revved up my bike and hit the asphalt. Who was I kidding? The sun sank closer to distant mountains. Three more hours back to Camp Pendleton. I could hit San Diego once more. Find another gay bar, maybe another night of magic might take me, and I could put her out of my mind. It’d be another night drive across the Duat. I would report in, running on shallow sleep and Red Bull, but I preferred it that way. I rushed down the highway, my Harley’s engine riveting through my hands and torso.
Josh Dull is an Air Force veteran and graduate from the University of Central Florida with Honors in the Major in Creative Writing. His stories focus on young people navigating a strange and confusing world where institutions and authorities have failed them, and dreams weren’t as attainable as they were raised to believe. His work has appeared in The Writing Disorder, The 34th Parallel, Ghost Parachute, The Drunken Odyssey, and Burrow Press. When he isn’t writing, he can be found surfing on Florida’s East Coast or in one of the many kava bars around Brevard County.
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