Harvelle’s gig was lit. I sang like I’d never before. Wild forces gathering gathering and I’m co creating them and walking on an inch of air between me and the ground. Singing for my brand-new beau, and for two other fellows with whom I’d been on dates but had not ever felt that Force, that Knowing, that Oh, there you are, that je ne sais quoi. You know it when you see it. When you feel it. It’s instantly in you. I didn’t, so I moved on. Jon was the one. He was the catalyst for electric light pulsing through me, making me strong, making me want to try. We lit fires within each other. It was undeniable and palpable and visceral and delicious and thrilling. Knowing you’re about to fall in love is a powerful toxin. Drug? Something. Was. Is.
I was great that night. Angi and I really killed that show.
I left the club to give Jon a ride back to his hotel, and say goodbye, and give him my purple book, inscribed too quickly but inscribed nonetheless.
And he asked me for red-flag promises that I sort of dodged and sort of met head-on and said that no I won’t do it like that but I would love to see you again if you really do move to California. We kissed a thousand times and I did nothing else, though the wanting was Wow
I danced back to my car on a cloud. Drove from Venice back to the club in SaMo and picked up a now hilariously inebriated Angi. I’d made her wait too long.
Parked outside my apartment and gathered umpteen wardrobe options for the show the next night
Then we hit the road for Arizona.
3am.
Angi standing outside the passenger door of my Honda CR-V, on a tiny sliver of a breakdown lane, on the freeway in Beaumont, California.
We had been driving through winding hills in a dense fog. It began to seem as though the fog was coming from the hood of my car. Was that smoke?
No, Angi said. Just the fog.
Thank God!
I drove on.
A few minutes later, it was terrifyingly clear that what we were seeing was not purely atmospheric.
I pulled over. We could see almost nothing.
Nothing, except for the eighteen-wheelers smashing by my car, a foot from my face.
Should we open the hood?
I don’t know.
Angi got out and opened it. It was smoking, alright.
I’ll call AAA.
I dial and get nothing. I look at my phone and realize that I have zero cell service.
Do you?
No.
Fuck.
Angi decided to try 911, maybe that would somehow go through. Eventually it did. I still don’t know how.
When the California Highway Patrol officer arrived, he was urgent to get us off the road.
I mean, so were we, but his tone was insistent, almost panicked.
He waited til the tow truck arrived, then barked orders at us:
Get in the truck and stay inside!
We did.
As the AAA fella drove us to the mechanic that would not open for another four hours, the fog lifted a bit. Enough to see that if Angi had taken one more step beyond my passenger door, she would have fallen so far for so long that it would not have been a rescue mission. They would have been recovering her body.
Fog.
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