Memoir: Death Valley 1985

Heartbreak and lightning

Dave and I made the decision to drive the 300 miles to Vegas as a sudden college nerd dare - I’d bought a toy bunny at the San Diego Sports Arena parking lot swap meet, then Dave stuck a small bagel on the bunny’s ear. We’d met at our college newspaper, where I was the features editor and Dave took pictures. He accompanied me to the swap meet for the potential photo op, and urged my toy bunny acquisition. As we drove out of the parking lot, Dave mused that it would be fun to take pictures of the bunny poolside at Caesar's Palace. I said sure, and as the sun edged into the Pacific, I veered the car toward the interstate onramp.

Three hours and 200 miles later we were in fifth gear doing about 90 in the nighttime sea-level desert flatness, the surrounding landscape lit phosphorescent-bright with moonlight. A summer storm ran parallel to us. I swapped out tapes on the cassette deck, swishing down the smoke of unfiltered Lucky Strikes with sips from a big gulp of Coke. We had no plan other than for Dave to photograph the toy bunny with me at a few casinos (Dave had me practice tossing the bunny up and holding my hands out as if I were levitating it), then haul ass back to San Diego in time for the next day’s classes. If the cigarettes and soda couldn’t keep me awake for the four-hour drive back, we could sneak on to the UNLV campus and nap in the back row of a lecture hall before heading home.

There was another reason for the trip: Dave’s girlfriend had suddenly left him for his roommate, which meant that instead of spending nights with Dave in his bedroom, as she had for the past year, she was now walking past Dave’s door to his roommate’s room at the end of the hall of their off-campus condo. Her way of handling it was to act as if she’d never been with Dave, and he’d come home from a full day of processing film and making prints and contact sheets to be greeted by them curled up on the living room couch, watching MTV. So I figured Dave needed the distraction. We were young and clever, but stupid about life, and being sealed in the mechanical cocoon of the Datsun would give us an opportunity to figure things out.

Dave was heartbroken to the point of inarticulation, and it was hours on the road before I could even broach the subject with him. I asked him why he thought it happened, and he shook his head and fiddled with this camera. He did not know, he said. Caring and brutal, I pressed Dave, saying there must have been some reason. He was silent for a while, then looked at me and asked, "Why can't we just be happy?" His tone and expression were wretched and heartbreakingly earnest, but even in our raw youth I knew he was asking the impossible question.

Nobody simply wants to be happy: what they want is the thing that leads to happiness, which is to be understood. To be understood allows acceptance, and love, and trust. What his girlfriend wanted, and what he wanted, and I too, driving that car on I-15 past Furnace Creek and Zzyzx Road, past the truck brake fail runoff ramps, the closed fruit inspection station, the Sandy Valley Correctional Facility, to the beckoning perpetual artificial light of the Strip, all of us under a powerful, rampant, uncaring moon; what we all wanted was for someone else to say, "I know how you feel."

There was no way I could even begin to tell him this, but before I could try, he held his camera towards me, slid his face behind it, then took a long exposure, commanding me not to move during that moment when photographers become quarter-second gods. Before he closed the shutter, a bolt of lightning struck beside the road: once in a lifetime. He told me it was going to be a good picture, patting the camera as if it contained trapped magic.

We never returned to his question - it dissipated as fast as the lightning, and we knew even then that some moments aren't meant to be recaptured.