Suffer Little Children

Suffer Little Children – The Smiths

A woman skidmarks into the restaurant where I work. At first I think the leash in her hands is pulling at a very eager dog trying to scramble its way to our kitchen on its hind legs, but then I realize the bundle of excitement on the end of the taut strap is not a yipping family pet but a little boy of about 3 years old. The boy is tugging and pulling at a harness tied all around his chest and back where it is masquerading as a fun little backpack. Why is this woman walking her child on a leash?
I think, maybe the boy is one of those wolf children you hear about every couple years; feral kids who’ve been raised by a pack of wolves or other wild animals. Maybe the woman is a concerned child care worker and the leash is part of this miracle kid’s slow rehabilitation into civilization. You know, to keep it from gnawing at people’s shoes, or worse, marking his territory in public. Meanwhile, the boy has realized it is the backpack that is causing his grief. With tremendous effort he tries to reach the clasp tying him to the woman. There he is, whirling like a dervish around his own axis in hot but futile pursuit, a dog chasing its tail. I try to catch a glimpse of the boy’s face. It does look somewhat savage.

On second glance, it looks a bit mean. It might be his struggle to break free – what with him lunging forward and backward, gasping for air, a little vein on his red forehead about to pop – but the kid looks like he would set the place on fire given half a match. The more I look at the boy, the more I think that this is probably the kind of kid that would twist the legs off puppies, just because.
Isn’t our boy just so inquisitive, you can see his parents try, all apologies and smiles at the neighbors as they bury another mangled pet in the back yard. When do you realize, as parents, that you might have a future homicidal maniac on your hands? I can see how you’d better contain and restrain this kid from an early age on. When left in the woods (I imagine him, in full harness, tied to a tree and watching the rest of the family drive off into their summer vacation) he would probably pull the wolves’ ears and poke them in the eyes and end up being eaten alive before the pack would even remotely consider raising him as one of their own.

Maybe the woman is one of those moms who get confused, so busy keeping her family and her wits together that sometimes she forgets who’s who in the family pecking order. I am half expecting the family dog to come wagging in after them, leash-free, maybe wearing a little sweater and a beanie. Slobbering up an ice cream cone. It happens, you know. Confusion within families about who’s what. I guess you need to be really level-headed to make a family. Then again, what do I know? I don’t have any kids and I don’t think I ever will. Apart from my physical fear of giving birth, I’m just not much for small children. It’s not that I don’t like them, necessarily; I just don’t really know how to act around them. I'm always afraid to break or traumatise some fragile framework; common case scenario is I go out of my way to try and be nice or funny, and in return they give me that blank face kids and cats seem to reserve just for me. It's just awkward all around. Besides, what if I turn out to be a confused mom?



The closest I ever got to resembling anything motherly, was when my oldest sister had her first child, and I went to live with her for a couple weeks to help take care of her and the baby. At that time, all I knew about babies was that they feed a lot and they sleep a lot and in between they crap a lot, and all I knew about parenting was that there are some parents who insist that all visitors wash their hands before touching the baby. I can sort of see how you wouldn’t want the crack addict on the corner sticking his gnarly jagged finger in your offspring’s mouth to suck on, but I find it rather insulting when people ask me to wash my hands before laying one on their gene pool. I mean, your average baby is the dirtiest thing! They have no sense of personal hygiene whatsoever, sticking their grubby fingers into everything while soiling themselves. If anyone should wash their hands more, it’s them.

Anyway. I don't know much about kids, but I do know there was a time when dogs and children still ran free. I was a little girl, and always alert for any occasion to pet a dog – any dog, anywhere. I loved anything furry back then, and dogs in particular. Back in those days my mom told me time and again to always ask first before touching someone else’s pet. She’d watch in petrified horror every time I ran up to random strangers’ snarling pit bulls and frenzied chihuahuas on the street or in the park. My mom is not an overly dramatic woman – not like me, anyway – but I can only imagine the slideshow in her head of ripped off fingers, blood gushing out of mangled legs and loose flaps of meat hanging off the face of her youngest coming home from school. What do you tell your husband, or worse, your own mom, when that happens? I can see the I-told-you-sos lining up around the corner. So she’d make sure to tell me, every single time I went anywhere, to keep my hands to myself until given explicit permission to touch anything animal. To this day I find myself apologizing when I touch someone unsolicited – much to the awkward surprise of some of the guys I dated.

As a kid I totally understood where my mom was coming from. I wouldn’t want anyone to just come up and touch my dog, either. Hey, that’s my dog! I get to pet it. You go pet your own, sucker. So I would go up to people as politely as my borderline tizzy would allow, and ask them if it was okay to put a hand on their dog. Most people are really pleased when strangers like their dogs and come up to touch them. It’s strange how different the sentiment is when it comes to their kids. Especially when you think about how much rarer it is for people to like other people’s kids and want to pet them. You’d think it would be a good deal more appreciated.



One day when I was walking to the store with my mom, I spotted a poodle across the street. Not just any old poodle; this was a real big one, in full coif and everything. It was a luxurious poodle, with an expensive woman attached to it. I was already halfway to dog-touching heaven when I heard my mom call after me: “No touching without asking!” So I asked permission, my eager seven year old fingers knotted behind my back. The woman sized me up for a second or so, and nodded, yes, you can touch my poodle. As I was burying my face in its fur the woman and my mom struck up a conversation – the awkward kind, spawned not by the wish of two strangers to share any possible mutual interest and get to know each other, but the kind that solely exists to bridge the time-gap until your child is done fondling someone else’s poodle. My mom could be really patient that way. So she stepped up to the lady and said, “My daughter really likes dogs”, and added, in the way small town moms bring up their good upbringing rules when confronted with possible small town tattle-tales, “Of course I always tell my children to ask the owner’s permission before touching their pets.”

The lady sized my mom up for a second or so, and nodded. “Ah yes, indeed. With kids these days, you simply never know where they’ve put their little fingers.” After that, my mom never told me to ask permission again. Not for petting big rabid-looking dogs with rabid-looking owners; not for running with scissors, or juggling rotating knives. Insults directed at parents can probably be held responsible for mangled and traumatized kids all over the world.

So I arrived at my sister’s house with no knowledge about babies whatsoever except for what I’d seen about newborns on TV. Consequently I knew that, from the very second babies are born, they are fat and happy looking, all soft clean pink and dimply knees and big smiles and a perfect belly button; the new mom gets back to her former routine and weight within two weeks.
In the real world, newborn babies lack some serious credibility. For one, they are greasy beyond control. Not clean at all! And they don’t seem to fit in their skins. They’re wrinkly, like some lackluster shopkeeper gift wrapped them in the womb before sending them off; their excess skin is covered in all kinds of crazy rash, their heads stay warped for days from squeezing through the forever too narrow corridor (why doesn’t evolution do something about this pointless cruelty? Come on!) to the outside world. There are no smiles for the new aunt; newborn babies mainly look angry and disturbed, their faces knotted in what I can only hope to be a fading memory of the pain of being born.

The strangest thing is, about an hour after he was born, my sweet nephew didn't look like he was in pain at all. He didn’t look knotted, or angry. I always figured babies aren’t really persons. I mean, they can’t have a decent conversation, they crap themselves, and they don’t know who they are. If anything, I figured they’d resemble a mental patient stepping outside after spending 9 months in solitary confinement in a padded cell in the dark. The outside world too hard and bright and loud to handle. His eyes squinting against the bright light, his ears sensitive to the smallest sound; his helpless body caked with dead skin flakes and covered in rash from lack of sun, squeezed into the harsh light all stumbles. Weak in body and mind, without a sense of self, groping for anything he might recognize; a basic survivor.

But when I saw my nephew in the hospital nursery, he was nothing like that at all. He was the Zen Master in a movie. The processing computer system in The Matrix. A universal satellite. The Encyclopaedia Brittannica. Motionless on the outside, with an almost superhuman awareness behind the eyes. The entire world was waltzing in, and he had started processing it all. There was no confusion, no squinting. My newborn nephew was taking in everything around him without even blinking. And I do mean everything. His ears pricked up to every hospital sound – registering, cataloging, building reference. Nostrils trembling with the smells of the room, the cafeteria on the first floor, and I’m pretty sure he picked up the outside trees and cars, too. I stood there watching him. I have never seen such focused intensity, ever, on anyone. All antennas up. At some point he shifted his gaze to look me straight in the eyes. Whatever, newborns can’t see anything but shapes and shadows, no real colors? My ass. My new nephew looked straight at me. And he saw me. Every single molecule. He was palpitating with new information, processing the incoming world at full speed, and not going mad. The effect wore off after a few hours. The next day, he was just a baby, with the crying and the poop. But I’d seen him, lying there. Completely open to the world and letting her in – all at once. How do you welcome someone like that into the family? Coochie-coo just doesn’t seem to cut it.




When I first held my wrinkly nephew up to the light I realized that babies are not born with belly buttons; nor is the belly button the result of cut umbilical cord tied into a careful little knot. Doctors cut the umbilical cord about 3 inches away from the baby’s belly and put a clamp on the end to keep the baby from deflating. The leftover bit of umbilical cord slowly dies and eventually falls off the baby’s body, leaving the scar mark that we refer to as the belly button. The first time I changed my nephew’s diapers I nearly dropped him when I saw the strip of bluish flesh hanging off his little body. Nobody ever tells you about this on TV. I figured this was it; aliens do exist and now they had finally got to my family. Even after my sister explained, for the first four or five nights I was afraid to even look at the clamped down strip of dying tissue; whenever I washed my nephew I would avoid going anywhere near the area.

Then, after a week or so, I had gotten somewhat used to the sight of the shriveling afterthought. My nephew didn’t even seem to notice it, so I decided it was time for me to stop being a big baby and deal with it. Besides, the poor boy’s belly was slowly turning a distinct greenish grey from lack of soap. So the next time I washed my nephew, I carefully held the cord – dried out and strangely resembling a strip of beef jerky – up between my thumb and index finger and started washing his belly. Suddenly, with a soft sticky sound and the slightest change in pressure, the cord let go. There I was, holding my nephew’s umbilical cord in my hands, clamped and all, but no longer attached to him.
I gaped at his naked little stomach in terror – for a horrific split second I held my breath, waiting for the sound of deflating balloons, and for my sweet nephew to be reduced to an empty bag of wrinkly skin before my eyes. All gift wrap, no present. I broke my nephew! What was I to tell my sister? It was an accident. She should have told me not to touch without asking permission first! She knows how clumsy I am. Why did she even leave me alone with him? This was all her fault!

My nephew smacked his lips, gurgled something about the meaning of life and started peeing on the changing mat. He couldn’t care less. This boy was ready to be released into the world.

Meanwhile at the restaurant, the woman braces herself to give the leash one final, magnificent pull filled with determination, irritation and something else. I may be mistaken but I think I detect a hint of fear in that pull. She will not lose her child today. And she doesn’t. The little boy is jerked back with such force that he falls on his diapered ass, and, after his initial surprise, he starts to cry. Mommy! The expression on the woman’s face makes way for concern, love and something else. I may be mistaken but I think it is relief. My little boy still needs me. He is not growing up just yet. He’s still part of me. We are still connected. I see this woman trying to hold on to that feeling of being necessary, like when she was pregnant; not just a caretaker (anyone could do that; people do it for money or for the hell of it, all the time), but essential to his survival, the womb vital for the boy’s very being.

That’s when it strikes me. The leash is not a tool for desperate parents, their last resort to keep an untamed child from destroying the civilized world. It is not the lazy way out of bad parenting – yanking a rope instead of teaching your child when and where to run and what not to touch and why. The leash is not used by parents who do not care. It is for parents who care too much. These parents have not realized that their child’s umbilical cord has been cut and the remainder has fallen off for a reason. They think they need to stay attached, to keep the clamp in place. The leash is their artificial umbilical cord, physically connecting them with their child until they are prepared to let go.
Or maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I'm not a mom. I'm not a feral child expert.
Then again, I totally get this particular woman's fear to cut the residual umbilical cord of this particular little boy. You can tell that this kid will totally be one to deflate. He'll be leaking all over the dining area and god knows where else in no time. It's an accident waiting to happen on too many levels. I haven't learned a whole lot since I moved to New York, but I do know it's considered a bad thing to be liable for someone else getting hurt. Never mind it was an accident, and you didn't mean to - you can save the heartfelt apologies for your loved ones as you pay damages for the rest of your life. Forget about that nest egg, or your kids going to college. All it takes is one unsuspecting Upper East Side lady who lunches and breaks an expensive hip as she slips on her way out; panic ensues, until someone pokes an accusing finger at the deflated toddler - who would ever allow their child to run wild like that? Lady and restaurant sharing their indignation and lawsuit. I'm pretty sure this woman is not insured for that.

I Am a Rock

I Am a Rock - Simon & Garfunkel

There’s a dog lying by the side of the road. It’s been dead for a bit. Its belly is already swollen with the gases that inevitably announce rot and decay; its dead ears, filled with hatching maggots, are no longer twitching at the buzzing of the flies. Our driver looks at it without much interest as we curve past it on our way to the hotel. She looks over her shoulder and says, “You probably want to keep to the side of the road when you walk around here at night.” We are on St. Croix, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands off the coast of Puerto Rico.

St. Croix is America. Only it isn’t. No open plains or wide skies or skylines here: the tiny island is crammed to the brim with nature wrestling over top of itself to be noticed by the sun. It being an island and all, the bright blues and greens of the Caribbean, the palm trees and hibiscus strewn about, the rain forest and sandy beaches, banana daiquiris and sunsets indicate this could be paradise. And it is. The beach area off St. Croix and, at a stone’s throw, Buck Island, was voted Top Ten Most Beautiful Beaches (In The World?) by National Geographic, we are told. Largest living coral reef in the Caribbean, we are told. The Friendliest People you’ll ever meet, we are told. And indeed, people everywhere on the island greet us so often and heartfelt that we start to think, at some point, that they must get a monthly allowance for every “Good morning” they pitch at a tourist. Or maybe they get beat on with a stick for every visitor they forget to greet. It’s hard to tell from the expressions on the faces.

We get a giggly “A’ight” in unison from three flawless teenage girls. Sitting the way only girls in hot climates can sit together, on the steps to the porch of a tiny house, they can’t be more than fourteen, maybe sixteen years old. Beautiful: what the smell of hibiscus would look like, if the smell of hibiscus were three girls. One of them breaks the surface of her stunning face into a smile as we walk by, revealing the near-toothless, cavernous mouth of a seasoned meth addict – or maybe she has simply been foolish, refusing to follow the island rules of tourist engagement one time too many. Again, it’s hard to tell.



Best snorkeling ever, we are told. Sea turtles nest here by the bucket load; shark nurseries cradle curious lemon sharks, and docile nurse sharks. Cute, like kittens, and perfectly safe to swim next to, we are told. Like kittens. The stingrays ‘round here never poke their stinger right in your heart or anything. They just ray, their puppy dog faces beaming up at you in wagging tail delight. In the bluest waters you’ve ever seen, parrot fish crunch their buck teeth down chunks of hard coral; endless shoals of yellow wrasses envelop the diver by the millions – swirling, sparkling, shooting up and down and sideways around him with that choreographed mixture of simultaneous push and pull, this half-conscious centrifugal force, they place the diver – awkward, sluggish, his pink meat still giddy with the new sense of weightlessness: out of his element – at the center of their shark feeding frenzy waiting to happen.



It’s a pretty good sound. The sound parrot fish make when they break off a piece of coral, I mean. I was half expecting it to be a wet sound, it being under water and all. I was expecting it to be a sound as wet and warm as the sound rabbits make when they munch on a carrot. That’s one of the best sounds in the world, the sound of a bunny rabbit munching on a piece of carrot. It’s the sound of safe, of succulent and soft and pink and carefree.
Curiously enough, the sound parrot fish make underwater is as dry as the crunch of potato chips. It’s a familiar sound, the sound of an evening curled up on the couch to watch a movie you’ve seen three times before, so it doesn’t matter when you talk all the way through it – only underwater the crunch is taken completely out of context. It’s a sound that belongs on land; when you hear it underwater, two conflicting elements collide with such immediacy that it makes you jerk your head, instantaneously aware of the fact that you, much like the sound, are very much out of your element.

You tell yourself, I’m 80% water, how can I feel out of my element? Your scientist sweetheart says, Really, salt water is very much your element. Listen, he says, Salt water is so much like our own body juice that when you start bleeding underwater, your body won’t even send out a signal to stop the bleeding because it thinks the water surrounding you is part of you; the salt water tricks your body into thinking no wound is actually there – no skin has been punctured, so no blood is lost. And he’s off again, exploring ever deeper waters, fearless, comfortable.



Leaving you with the tiniest seed of this horrific idea, taking up root in the darkest room of a secret vault inside your head, that the water around you is somehow alive – that it’s not just a platform accommodating life, but its own conscious being, the world’s largest living organism with tides for a heartbeat, and currents for a bloodstream – the world’s largest predator, actually smart enough to lull the human body into unwittingly hemorrhaging out into its gaping mouth. The whispering break, its soothing sway of wombs forgotten, inviting you to crawl right in, fetus up, close your ears, let go, forget: all a trick!

You know how some people say they love their dog (or worse, their cat) over people, because animals never lie to you? Those people suffer the gross misconception that nature is somehow true (and that people somehow are not part of nature). They say things like, Nature might be cruel, but that’s in its nature. Or, worse, True coral needs no painter’s brush. I don’t trust those people at all. They are the kind of people who can stand by and watch, with greedy interest, their fat, empty faces screwed up so as to not miss a thing, whenever something particularly cruel happens in nature.
They are the kind of people who set up foundations to rescue stray dogs in Rwanda. People who care about other people only in the most abstract sense. Love Thy Neighbor. We Are The World. They are the same people who say that people are different from the rest of nature in the respect that man knows how to deceive, to lie, to manipulate – conveniently eclipsing the notion that that it’s not just in man’s nature, but in nature’s very own nature not to stay true to its nature – that nature is an instinctive deceiver. They think when their dog raises its hackles, or when the chameleon at the zoo changes color, it’s just the cutest thing. Silly nature!



In the meantime, you wouldn’t believe the massive swindle that’s going on in nature. I mean really, it’s that bad. Nature will lie to your face any change it gets. Take, in this particular case, nature below sea level. Forget about fish that puff up to pretend they’re twice their actual size, or marine predators that pretend to be seaweed to lure in their prey. Those disguises at least have some human scale to them: the organism plays tricks on itself, and once exposed the deception is obvious. I’m talking about the water, that most treacherous of all that is nature. Water doesn’t merely pose as something it isn’t; it tries to trick you into thinking you are something you’re not. It tells you straight-faced that you are water, and it will claim you the second you let your guard down.

Of course the water is not just trying to claim you, the hapless tourist; it is incessantly trying to reclaim all things earth – on St. Croix it is trying to swallow the entire island. Tides nibble endlessly at the shores, turning rocks and glass bottles into sand at an imperceptible pace; hurricanes tear off entire stretches of land in a violent split second and haul them back into the sea. Water fuels the rain forest as it rambles overnight across the already unkempt roads, egging it on to usurp. Nature is like that, always trying to take back, expand, conquer, colonize.



People tell you nature is fragile. Man needs to protect it. On St. Croix people tell you not to touch the coral. It will die and never recover and you will be responsible for killing an entire ecosystem. The real reason not to touch coral is that coral, when it punctures your skin, will continue to grow inside you, latching on to your bones and infecting the hell out of your body. It being half plant, half animal, it knows how to do that. Posing as pretty plants and pretty rock, coral will overtake you when given half the chance. Fragile, my ass. Did you know the coral in the Red Sea found a way to survive and thrive in the ever warming waters caused by global warming? I saw it on TV. Oceanographer Philippe Cousteau and his team of implausibly beautiful people took a sample and rejoiced.
They continued to talk about figuring out the Red Sea coral’s survival technique and using it to rescue all the corals of the world. Man protecting nature so nature gets better at eating him alive. Have we learned nothing from all the genetic horror movies we’ve seen? Jurassic Park, Deep Blue Sea, Mimic, Splice. They tell you one thing: man should never, ever, ever try to give evolution a hand. It will end badly. Right this moment, the Red Sea coral is gearing up to survive in body temperature, and the second it can, no swimmer or diver will ever be safe again. Of course, man’s response to coral infused manplantimals roaming the earth will probably be to genetically enhance parrot fish to get rid of the problem. We never learn.



An old man comes up to us at the gas station, asking for change. Right under his milky left eye, three bright green somethings are nestled, comfortably burrowing into is cheek and sponging off him like the barnacles on the back of the loggerhead turtle we spotted earlier. I can avert my eyes just long enough to see the proliferating tumor protruding from the front of the man’s stomach, a foot long arm of living coral softly punching his overstretched skin against the inside of his t-shirt. The man says he has lived on the island for over 30 years now. I don’t know if he ever goes into the water, but it is trickling into him; the water has been slowly overtaking him since day one.



Water, that most treacherous of all that is nature. After only a week on the island, you’ll feel the water’s soft tidal sway tugging at you whenever you are on land; you have to make an effort to walk straight. After only a week on the island, when you are not in the water, you have to consciously tell yourself to get up and go to the bathroom whenever you have to pee, instead of just letting it go. After only a week on the island! That is how colonial the grip of water is. You must never forget that it will masquerade as just about anything in its attempts to possess you, feed off you: a womb, a safe haven, a warm lull, a place to get away from it all. It will trick you into feeling like you belong there; doesn’t the flow of the water, the effortless ease of underwater movement, feel so much more natural than walking? Nobody ever gets seasick in the water. Didn’t we originate from the oceans, in long forgotten times? Why not go back and stay?

Come back to me, leaf corals beckon you closer. You remember this, don’t you? Come back home where you belong, they coax, We missed you. The pop in your ears when you start to dive under is more businesslike. Want the pain to stop? Just cut that umbilical cord already, and be born again. 80% of your body’s already down here; your reverse birth will be only 20% discomfort. Want the pain to stop? Then stop deceiving yourself and come back to me. You clear your ears and let yourself sink towards the ocean floor. It does feel like coming home. Should you give it a try? Remove your mouth piece and take a deep breath, your lungs filling with water instead of air. The struggle, yes, but only for a minute or so, and then – 80% of your body starts singing, Yesss, yess, yesss, we’re going home, almost there… Right before your survival instinct kicks into overdrive to force the rest of you to come up for air – arms flailing, floundering, clumsy once more – the biggest lie the water tells us is truth.

You have to keep telling yourself, with every breath you take through the umbilical cord of your snorkel, I am not water, I am land; I am not water, I am land. With every inhale and exhale, you need to betray 80% of yourself to remember your truer nature. That fundamental deceit is all around us. It is in us. We breathe it. It is who we are. I am not water; I am rock. I am the island.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Racing Cars

Watch the German report right here.

‘Now I do believe that’s an insult, see.’ Had we been anywhere else in the world, I would have figured the man across from me at the local bar was joking – but we’re in Arvada, Wyoming and this guy is dead serious.

Wyoming, of course, is the manliest of manly states. Notorious for its abrupt changes in weather – hot and sunny one moment, heavy rain and hail storms the next – I had expected many a rainbow. But Wyoming doesn’t do rainbows. Rainbows are gay. Soccer is gay, too, as are Democrats; and vegetables are extremely gay, unless you call them crop. Wyoming is for Marlboro Men only. People here ride horse, rope cattle and then they go back to the ranch to throw slabs of home slaughtered Angus beef on their George Foremans. They say things like ‘I wursh my clurthes in the turlet’.
To give you an idea of where I am: the plane that flies you from Denver, CO to the airport of Sheridan, WY (an hour and a half outside Arvada), is so tiny that it barely fits the entire Arvada population of 25. It is, in fact, so small that the steward/copilot states, as we all try not to bump our heads working our way down the aisle, ‘Don’t settle down just yet, folks, we might need to do some shiftin’, see.’ By which he means he must evenly distribute our combined weight over both sides of the plane so as not to topple it over in mid flight. I am in Arvada, middle of nowhere, USA.



At the local Arvada bar, just now, I good-naturedly compared cowboys to ballerinas, and find myself being stared down by a 250-pounder by the name of Bubba, who is unmistakably not amused. The hat, the chaps, the spurs, the moustache, the smoke and the cheap beer; they’re all there. Unless Bubba used to be one of the Village People, I am looking at a cowboy – the real deal. I’m sure the moustache in particular would fare well in certain New York City scenes. But as I said, we’re not in New York anymore – and I do believe I might be in trouble.

How did I end up in this tight spot? My memory flashes back to the past three days. My German friend Silke, camera man André and I have been introduced to the cowboy way of life at Arvada’s Powder River Ranch Cowboy School, to shoot one of Silke’s American culture reports for RTL Television. Silke and André are actually working; I am happy to tag along as the story’s sidekick, riding horseback and roping longhorns. How hard can it be, really?

So far, Cowboy Bob and his wife Betty have shown tremendous patience and restraint trying to show us how to work with the horses and navigate them. It’s definitely harder than watching Cowboy Bob do it. ‘It ain’t about shouting, see, or whipping a horse into doing what you want; you want to make him want to work with you. You have to establish a relationship with the horse, see – draw him in.’ Bob is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of horsemanship. ‘You have to read the horse to understand the horse, and when you understand the horse you can communicate with him. Use your body language. If you do it right, riding a horse is like a dance, see, it’s about being in sync – if you know how to lead, the two of you can dance across the land together in the same rhythm.’
Bob speaks horse fluently; his body language and minute gestures make the animals respond immediately to whatever he wants them to do. ‘You have to be clear in your intentions, see. If you give off mixed signals, the horse will not know what to do, and that makes him nervous. Give the horse the singular energy of what you wish for him to do, and he’ll do it alright.’ May the Horse be with you.



Silke quickly picks up the general idea. Of course, she’s a pretty commanding presence to begin with; not only does she know what she wants, she usually gets it, too. In no time at all, she’s steering Ring, her horse, all over the round-pen. ‘Und Links! Rechts! Gerade aus! Good boy!’ she goes – camera in one hand, German black-yellow-red vuvuzela in the other – and off he trots, only to immediately stop and walk over to her obediently when she steps back and beckons him like Bob showed us.

I am slightly less imposing, I guess. I tend to not know what I want a lot. I mean, I like a lot of different things. Not much of a one-track mind. Ever ambiguous. I’m a philosopher, you know! Unfortunately, in horse language my paper hat qualifications translate to complete and utter confusion. On the first day of Cowboy School, I am mixed signaling my horse Uno all over the place, and as a result, it decides to do call it quits and follow its instinct rather than my half-baked orders.
‘See, the horse likes you, but he doesn’t respect you,’ Betty sympathizes. The horse likes me, alright. For the past half hour I’ve been trying to navigate it, from the ground on the other end of a leash; I want it to turn right and run a lap inside the round pen, but so far all I got it to do is trot straight for me, and come to a halt only to affectionately smother its nose in my bra. Uno seems pretty happy with the way things are going, gently leaning its 1,300 pounds of horse meat attached to the soft muzzle into my boobs.
(Admittedly, things are improving. This morning, the horse did not care for me at all. Cowboy Bob’s final comment on my laborious ground work was a heartfelt: ‘At this moment, see, the horse has more interest in the flies on his back than he does in you.’)

I really do not mind this state of affairs either, you should know. I’d rather be liked and ignored by an insolent horse than thrown off by an obedient one in a respectful gallop.
I’m actually pretty impressed with myself. I think it’s pretty considerable to pose such little personal threat to such a notoriously jittery herd animal that it doesn’t even realize I’m there. So what if I’m not cut out to be the next Buffalo Bill; I bet I’d make for a pretty nifty prairie wolf. Smiling Coyote Decimates Unsuspecting Herd, I imagine the Arvada Daily headlines. See how you like me then!

On the second day of Cowboy School we ride out to find the 800 head herd of long-horn cows that roam the ranch’s endless acres of land. We find a fragment of the herd, and the plan is to drive them to a nearby pond. By the time we find the small group of cattle Uno is in a jolly good mood; he has burst into a spontaneous run about a million times. I have gained fear blisters on my white-strained knuckles from clutching the leather strap attached to the saddle; my thighs are raw and throbbing. ‘It’s kind of ironic, see,’ Cowboy Betty observes. ‘Humans intuitively tense up when they sense danger. It’s the adrenaline kicking in, see. But the only way to bring your horse to a halt is to completely relax. Every time you press your thighs and toes into his side and grab the strap, see, Uno thinks you are actually asking him to go faster.’ Nice. The one time I manage to send out an unambiguous signal it results in the exact opposite of what I mean. I force myself to relax my muscles next time Uno gets the jitters. Uttering a rather uninspired ‘Whooooaaa’ as I let go of the leather strap and gently pull the reins works like a charm – the horse doesn’t seem to mind, but even though it feels awkward and fake to make the cowboy sound out loud, it has quite a soothing effect on me.

As soon as we get upwind of the long-horns, they prick up their ears and start shifting wearily from one leg to another in the long grass. They don’t look at us directly, but make sure to keep one eye on us at all times as we slowly approach. The bulls position themselves between us and the cows and calves. They don’t trust us one bit. ‘We don’t want to scare the herd, see,’ says Cowboy Bob (although when he says it, it sounds a bit like scurr the hurrd). ‘We just want to get them to water.’ So we need to be very slow and careful in our movements and not make too much noise. I can totally do that – I’m pretty sure slow and careful and quiet is exactly how I feel. I don’t need for these cows to respect me; I just need them like me enough to not want to stampede all over my pointy little head.



I am pondering all of this later that night as we walk into the Arvada bar – André holding the camera, Silke clutching her vuvuzela and me donning what I hope is a reassuring smile. As we open the door, the seven locals inside immediately prick up their ears. ‘Hi! We’re from German television! This town is sooooo nice!’ Silke tries to break the ice to smithereens as we barge in – strangely enough to no avail. The men start shuffling ever more wearily on their chairs, not looking at us directly, but keeping one eye at us at all times. The woman to the right repositions herself so as to almost disappear behind one of the local men’s broad backs. The bar lady decides to mediate. Why does anyone go to a bar? To drink, she figures. Even foreigners. And so we drink.

Over the next hour or so I find myself trying to wean six wary cowboys and one cautious woman off their conviction that we are here to bring their country lives to ruin with our big city frivolities. ‘What are you doing here? And you’d better tell me the truth,’ the cowboy to the right says by way of introduction. I explain how I jumped at the occasion to catch a glimpse of a part of America I’ve only ever seen in the movies. I’ve never been in a town this small, or countryside this big. Where I come from, pretty much everything is small, the big cities as well as the outdoors. My mom grew up on a farm, I say, suddenly inspired. When I was little my uncle would let me stir the fresh blood pouring into a barrel as he slaughtered pigs in the barn. To keep it from clotting. ‘What kind of hog?’ he grumbles, and, ‘Sounds like the tiniest damn farm I’ve ever hurrd of.’ But I think the pig blood story mollifies him a bit – as it should! Either way, it’s the only anecdote I’ve got that any cowboy might relate to.
It doesn’t hurt that the woman, who turns out to be his wife, attempts a crooked little smile at my ill aimed stabs at conversation. She slowly emerges from behind her husband’s back to show me pictures of her first grandchild.

We smoke cigarettes inside, and spit on the government (although when he says it, it sounds more like garment) for decreeing that people can’t decide for themselves if and where they want to smoke or not. At some point, the man admits that he’s not a real local. ‘I’m a transplant, see. Grew up in O-hi-o.’ He’s been in Arvada for 35 years now. A foreigner, like me. ‘We ain’t got nuthin’ to hide here, see, but that don’t mean y’all can just come runnin’ in here and film us with them purdy cameras,’ he grumbles.
- ‘Don’t be an asshole, asshole – he’s just being a dick,’ the cowboy across the bar confirms the happy shift in mood matter-of-factly. ‘And you’d just lurve to get yur urgly mug on TV, wouldn’t cher, asshole?’ He tips his hat, and introduces himself as Big Bubba (not to be confused with Tiny Bubba, a droopy and very drunk looking ranch hand sitting quietly off his left). ‘I’m a roper ‘round herr,’ says Bubba. ‘So y’all been hangin’ out with them folks at the cowboy school, eh? Now might I ask, what did you little ladies lurn about cowboys so far?’

My first mistake is that I choose to ignore the positively sarcastic undertone clinging to the moustache. I can handle this, I think. All I need to do is answer truthfully. In my head, all the things I experienced in the past few days are coming together: Cowboy Bob’s revelations about how riding is like dancing; Betty’s remarks on muscle control to direct the horse’s speed; the muscles in my own thighs, sore in places I’ve never even heard of. You know how sometimes bits and pieces of a bigger picture suddenly click into place, like a seat belt? I have that moment right now. That feeling of high speed security. I point at my bent, sore-legged posture, and stretch my arms in front of my chest, fingers touching, in what I am sure is a universally witty fusion of a bow legged stance and a plié, and say: ‘I’ve learned that being a cowboy is a lot like being a ballerina. See, even the way you stand is exactly the same!’



You know how sometimes the way things that make solid sense in your head have a way of falling to bits and pieces the second you voice them? I have that moment right now. That feeling of total loss in progress. Everybody in the bar falls silent. I can practically see the men’s stubborn hair jump straight up in their knotty red necks. The woman shudders and ducks behind a back. After an eternity, Bubba slowly locks his gaze onto mine, and says: ‘Now I do believe that’s an insult, see.’ All eyes are on me now.

So here I am, at the Arvada bar in Wyoming, with an imminent stampede on my hands. I start noticing the innumerable animal heads hanging off the wall of this bar, much in the way city bars are proud to exhibit pictures of visiting celebrities, shot with steady cameras, and mounted on the wall. The Arvada bar displays specimens of all wildlife and cattle that ever visited the area – shot with a sawed off, and mounted on the wall. Prairie dog, coyote, big horn, mountain lion, long horn, deer, elk, buffalo, bear – each looking down at me with the infinitely sad wisdom of those who have experienced the Cowboy Wrath firsthand. Time for me to be scurred – be very scurred. Only one thing I can do.

‘Whooaa,’ I say. ‘Let me explain.’ Bubba’s pupils get narrower and narrower as I stumble through a fuzzy rendition of Cowboy Bob’s beautiful horseman philosophy. Bubba’s moustache trembles a little as he finally clears his throat. ‘Well, I happen to rodeo ride wild Colts and I can tell you for a fact that it ain’t nuthin’ like no goddamn sissy dance. You can’t talk to no horse. Them horses don’t listen to no goddamn communication. You have to shut them motherfuckers down before they buck you right off. You have to control ‘em, let ‘em know who’s boss. You...’
- ‘Hmm, I guess you’re right. That doesn’t’ sound like a dance at all. It sounds more like a marriage.’ I can’t help myself; I am on full blast collision course. Everybody’s dead quiet as Bubba half-raises from his bar stool, his open mouth still pondering over the little round ‘o’ of his interrupted speech. Does he have one hand on his holster? Smartass Foreigner Decimated By Angry Mob, I imagine the Arvada Daily headlines.

Then the bar lady’s face splits into a wide grin; she gives a little chortle at first but soon she explodes with laughter. ‘Did you hurr that? That’s the furniest thing I’ve ever hurd! Did you hurr that, Bubba?’ She raises her hand to give me a high five; with the other she wipes a tear from her eye. ‘Like a murriage! You crack me up!’ I look around, flustered, fear blisters throbbing. Everybody’s grinning – for now, anyway. We order another drink. I don’t care if you respect me, see; I just want you to like me.

Push Up

Push Up– Freestylers

'Miss! Miss, wait up!' It takes a few seconds before I realize the Asian lady that comes galloping from across the street is actually shouting at me. Did I drop something? Worse: did I drop something on top of her, or – worse still – on the unborn baby inside of her? Will she sue me? Suck me dry for every penny I’ve got in years of tedious law suits to come? Start a random rant on how the lord will smite me unless I repent, now? Or is she about to ask me for directions to MoMa? I hope it is the latter. I happen to know the directions to MoMa, and to many other cultural spots in the city. I like when people ask me for directions, especially in midtown. It makes me feel all born and raised like, quite the local, and that always makes me smile.

I hate, on the other hand, when overweight unfunny guys wave tickets in my face and ask me if I like to laugh, especially in midtown. The dumpy, sad looking comedians hang around on the corners of the Theater District attempting to sell overpriced tickets to their ever underwhelming stand-up comedy shows. They think if you like to laugh, you’ll probably laugh during their routine. Not because their routine’s funny; they hope you’ll be laughing anyway because, well, you agreed that laughing is what you like to do. You said it yourself! An easy crowd guarantee.

'What cup size bra are you?' the lady asks apropos of nothing, jabbing a well manicured finger in the direction of my left boob. I involuntarily take a step back; the lady takes a step forward. We do an awkward little shimmy while she continues her request for information concerning the extent of my chest. 'You’re a C, right?' The lady frowns in a business-like manner as she peers beyond my collar bones.

– 'Uhh...' Strangely, rather than thinking, What the hell lady, that’s none of your fucking business and would you stop staring at my tits already (which would undoubtedly be any local’s response), I wonder why today of all days is the day that I am wearing a Victoria’s Secret Wonder Bra, roughly translating to: What You See Ain’t What You Get. I’m not a C cup. I’m not even a very convincing B, really. You can’t will these things to happen, you know. Boobs, unlike noses or ears, or wild goldfish, just stop growing at some point. So, in order to look like the real boobilicious deal, every now and then I fake it all the way. My push up bra is heavily padded, leaving no trace of nipple or natural boob other than the cleavage that was never there before.




When I bought my push up bra at Victoria’s Secret on the Upper West Side, I walked past the racks and into the strangest bra I’d ever seen: a fully padded super-push up with fabricated nipples. The bra was a set of boobs in itself: anatomically correct, only softer, and machine washable – and instantly turning any flat-chested waif into a succulent work of nylon nipply goodness. I imagine the Nipple Bra is for boobs what a Ferrari Testarossa is for small penises. As with the car, the trick with the bra is to make it look casual, like you were born with it.
The idea behind the manufactured nipples is to give off the impression of not wearing a bra at all. Your own nipples – never cold or animated again, being buried in layers and layers of polyester – are cleverly replaced by a set of durable synthetics. A fine, clean-cut (nobody need be offended, since they're fake!) way to show off nipples. And, since they’re not real, there is no longer any need to be a prude. Off to the wet white t-shirt contest it is. Don’t forget to pretend to be embarrassed when your polyester pinheads come poking through.

A few blocks from Victoria’s Secret is another lingerie shop, a mom and pop two-rack type of setup donning a rather moldy selection of bras, except for a small section of sexy undies in the back: four or five different body stockings with the top half of the boobs cut out. So yes, if you wear them, your bosoms are lifted much in the effect of the fake nippled Wonderbra, only in the brandless bra your actual nipples are exposed. The weird thing is: the nipples on the girl that covers the wrappings of the brandless underwear are photo shopped out. In the land of the brave, girls are encouraged to show off fake nipples whilst hiding their breasts as they pretend to be bra-less super women, but you cannot show the real nipple in a picture of a girl wearing a non padded bra.

Strangely enough, this means that today, hordes of women end up covering up their nipples in order to show them off, only this time around in a collectively accepted way. Our first generation feminists must cry themselves to sleep at night. I bet the new and improved pads don’t even burn when you set fire to them; they probably just fizzle out. Or melt into an unyielding block of constrained boob.

Meanwhile, back in the Theater District, I am fully aware of how sensitive my situation is. I am caught in a conundrum. What am I going to tell the Asian lady poking at my padded chest? Bluff and say, 'Yes, I’m a C thank you very much, and by the way, stop staring at my god given sin pillows?' Or fess up that my (granted) luscious cleavage is merely the result of a thoroughly cushioned front, and feel like an idiot? Lie and spit in the faces of all the women who dared break out of their corsets, annihilating the right to physical self-determination my mum and her entire generation fought so hard for; or be genuinely exposed in front of a total stranger? The lady is obviously looking for the truth. But can she handle the truth? Of course, there is always the chance she’ll notice my unnatural lack of nipple and reveal me for the raisin smuggler (as my friends so delicately put it) I really am. It’s a tough call.

The lady notices my discomfiture, but mistakenly attributes it to her inappropriate question rather than my inner post feminist struggle. 'Donna Karan is coming to New York and I am supposed to dress her for an event. I roughly know her dress size,' she starts explaining. 'But her pr people never told me her cup size. All I have are red carpet pictures, but those are all taken years ago.'
– 'Oh,' I sympathize, 'And she put on some bacon over the years?' I sort of know who Donna Karan is – well, I know that she designs clothes and that she’s pretty old. I’m guessing she let herself go. And good on her, too. She’s probably sick of wearing her own size zero line year in, year out. Time to relax and start wrapping up the rolls in something XL-ish bought at a shop sporting the words Plus Size and Fashion over the door. Or Tall Couture. Modern European Designs.
'No, no, no!' The lady looks at me in disbelief. 'She lost a lot of weight over the past few years!' How could I not know this?
'Anyway,' she decides to let this one slide, in all probability because I thought most of my response inside my head and didn’t say it out loud. 'I’ve been looking all over the city for someone to match her body type, and I think you’re about her dress size so if I know your cup size I can finally get her some bras.' I feel strangely flattered. Donna Karan and I share a dress size – after she lost all that weight. Not bad! Then I remember that I haven’t a clue what Donna Karan looks like. She might have been a true rhinoceros in her day, slimmed down just enough to be considered for a stomach bypass surgery.

And just like that, the idea of being taken for a big boobed girl is just not as attractive as it was before. 'I’m not a C. I’m just wearing a huge bra. Push up. Makes me look way bigger than I really am. I’m a modest B, or maybe not even, trust me!' I blurt out. Feminists be damned; I won’t be mistaken for some fat chick.

Mr Pleasant

Mr. Pleasant – The Kinks

‘It is not blood sir! I am telling you, madam, it is not blood!’ the short Indian guy is gesticulating appropriately as he tries to convince us that the stains we just discovered in the bed sheets of his Pleasantville motel room are not of human or animal origin, but rather an unfortunate yet most sanitary side effect of the extensive cleaning process he subjects these same sheets to every single day. Although we haven’t made any mention of blood up to this point, it was admittedly the first thing that crossed our minds when we pulled back the sheets. Of course, I was still recovering from the dozens and dozens of tiny hairs (‘Hey, look, someone shaved a small animal in this bed’, my sweetheart Scot suggested) that first grabbed our attention when we opened the covers.

The outer rims of Pleasantville, New Jersey make for the perfect place to spend a night when you’ve been chewed up and spat out whole by nearby Atlantic City. Atlantic City is the gamble capitol of the East Coast; think Leaving Las Vegas, only without the glamour. Our motel is the kind of place that will embrace you when you have lost everything you hold dear in one fateful game of craps. It’s the ultimate rock to crawl under when you cannot and will not go home, if only because you gambled away the car keys in an attempt to win back your kids’ college funds. Our motel is the place where you wash up after you have gone down the drain. What’s worse: it’s probably the place you think you deserve to be in for being such a royal flush. The hair and blood on the sheets serve merely as reminders of your miserable human condition. I guess the Indian guy who owns the place doesn’t get many complaints.

We, on the other hand, are rich and happy, and healthy, and – however adventurous we think we are on our weekend road trip to Maryland in search of crabs (not craps) – we still appreciate a basic level of sanitation, even at a 40 bucks a night motel. I mean, it boasts having free HBO; we just sort of assumed grown-up TV comes after clean sheets. Of course, when we pull up the car we don’t know that this motel is the type of place that laughs in the face of hygiene. We don’t find out when we walk into the room either, largely because the main light switch doesn’t work. Sure, there is a certain musky whiff of fish wrapped wet newspaper in the air, but we naively attribute it to New Jersey in general – it always smells funny in Jersey.
We only realize something really isn’t quite right when Scot feels along the walls for any bedside light switch and notes that they feel strangely sandy to the touch, leaving a curiously sticky residue on his fingers. The bathroom light works. Its smudged glow finally allows us to size up the room. We are standing in what appears to be the remnants of a heavily flooded and then abandoned pet project by the love child of a suicidal electrician and a home decorator from hell. Everywhere we look, blackened sockets appear to have been ripped out of the walls in a fit of rage, umbilical cords of unprotected wires connecting them to a moist system hidden behind layers and layers of peeling, flaking wall paper bulging from water damage.



The walls actually give way to the touch – there must be at least three inches worth of wall paper slapped up against the boundaries of this room. Neither the refrigerator nor the microwave balancing on top of it, are plugged in; the plugs sway aimlessly over the grubby carpet in a sluggish hunt for the crab lice undoubtedly living it up in the fiber. Someone left food in the fridge, in a dewy plastic bag. Scot, ever the scientist, actually begins to pick up and poke at the bag for closer examination before the muted smell leaking out of it sincerely advises him to leave it be. The air conditioning looks like it blew up the last time anyone tried to hook it up. It probably blew up the person who dared to touch it, too. Whatever is left of that person is probably scattered beyond identification across the room, we reason – it would explain for the indefinable pattern on the ceiling. The TV works. Sort of. Lots of static. No HBO.

In the grand scheme of health hazard things the not-blood stains and the hair should probably be the least of our worries, but we decide it’s a good starting point to request another room. I am sent out to get us relocated.

‘Hello!’ the Indian guy at the check-in office cheers as he sees me. He doesn’t bother to wipe the soggy crumbs of whatever he was eating off his sweater. He smiles a wide grin, exposing his soggy-crumbed teeth. ‘The sir and madam decided you wanted a remote control for ten dollars after all?’ No, I explain, we would like a different room. The guy looks positively baffled. ‘What do you mean?’ he cries, his hands already halfway to heaven.
I tell him about the stains and the hairs in the sheets. ‘No no no, our rooms are very, very clean,’ the guy assures me. I point out that we have actually been in the room, and it is most definitely not clean. ‘You are most definitely mistaken. Our rooms are always clean,’ the guy insists. I tell him about the water damage and the pulled out sockets and the general stickiness. His smile fades into a look of disappointment and affront.
- ‘I cannot believe you. You are a most strange person. I wish to see this,’ he snubs my summary, and storms out to inspect the room, where Scot is trying to stay away as far as possible from all four walls and the ceiling, rendering him fairly vulnerable and faintly reminiscent of a magnet in a magnetic field, simultaneously pushing towards and pulling away from an unstable center.

‘Look!’ we tell him. We point out the hairs.
- ‘What are you talking about? I do not see anything.’
- ‘Right there! On the sheets!’
- ‘I do not see anything wrong,’ the guy insists.
- ‘Seriously, just look!’ we point out the holes in the walls, and the bulging mess of sticky wallpaper. At this point the little man is starting to get a bit agitated. ‘What are you trying to tell me? That my rooms are not clean? My rooms are very clean!’ That’s when we show him the stains. The guy responds as if stung by a bee. As he hits us with his this-laundry-only-looks-dirty-because-it-is-so-clean defense he is bouncing with indignation. By now he is gesticulating so laboriously that we fear he might propel himself into the dark night – or off to the ceiling for a closer inspection of the stains we haven’t pointed out yet. But no. When he sees we are not impressed with his story he redirects his flailing arms towards Scot and steers him to one side of the bed. ‘Alright, I will give you another room. But only this once. Now help me remake this bed.’

Scot stares at me, then back at him. Is he serious? ‘Please, take the sheet in your left hand and pull it straight into that corner, please,’ the guy says as he neatly tucks in the stained, hair ridden sheet on his side of the bed. We are both too confounded to do anything but comply. ‘No no no, not sloppy like that!’ the guy instructs Scot. ‘Be more careful. Pull the sheet up to precisely… That is better… Now do the same with the covers… Now fold it back exactly two inches. Are you watching this?’ he suddenly turns to me. He can rest assured I am glued to the scene. ‘Ha ha, you watch very carefully young madam, so you can make the bed for your husband when you get home,’ the guy chuckles as he attacks the dusty bedspread with vigor. ‘It is very important to make a good bed. Now,’ he turns back to Scot, ‘What are you doing? Help me get this straight! Pull there! Tuck in that corner! And pick up that pillow!’

Five minutes and one flawlessly remade – and still as outright dirty as we found it – bed later we trot to our second room of the night. Quick inspection learns that it is in slightly less decomposed state than the first. The sheets are clean. It’ll do. What about the promised HBO? we ask the guy as he is about to leave the room. ‘Yes, of course we have HBO! It is on channel 3!’ Our host is obviously fed up with our ridiculous requirements. I turn on the TV; it jumps to channel 47. ‘Push down to 3! Slower! Slower!’ the guy says impatiently. When I get there, two minutes after infinity, the TV channel jumps from 4 to 2. ‘See?’ I can’t help myself. ‘No HBO.’ Grudgingly, the guy pulls out a remote control. ‘You, hold the ON button on the TV. And switch the button behind you, on the wall. Now!’ As I hold and switch, he pushes 0-3 on the remote and holds it down, and, as if out of nowhere, a new station appears that could be anything – it could even be HBO. The second we switch channels, some ten minutes later, we never find it again.

For now, the guy is certain we must be content. ‘Now, have a good night.’
- ‘Wait!’ we call after him. ‘There was food in the fridge of the other room, you might want to…’
- ‘Of course. You are most allowed to bring it to your new room,’ he says and turns on his heels, undefeated. The house always wins.

Even Better Than The Real Thing

Even Better Than The Real Thing – U2

‘Forrest Gump Stopped Running Here’ says a sign by the side of Highway US 163, the road through Utah to Monument Valley. A bus filled with Asians has stopped right beside the sign; boys and girls stream out and line up to take a picture next to the sign. Never mind that the Monument Valley sandstone formations you see rising hundreds of feet into the air from up in the distance are the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region. Or that those layers contain deposited material eroded from the Rocky Mountains; or even that archaeologists have found numerous ancient Puebloan sites and ruins in the valley, or that it is Navajo territory today. No. Forrest Gump stopped running here.

Of course, Forrest Gump wasn’t a real person. He was the fictional title character of a movie that won 6 out of its 13 Academy Award nominations – and earned actor Tom Hanks his cute retard Oscar. Award winning rule for boys: play a handicapped guy, but don’t overdo it – remember poor Sean Penn’s all-too-real retard approach that cost him his win for I Am Sam! Sure, he got the obligatory nomination for taking on the part of a mentally handicapped grown-up in a drama, but actually portraying an uncomfortably convincing retard earned him slight moues of distaste in the final cut.
Admittedly, it was a bit of a downer. We want a fun Rain Man we can identify with; who likes Wapner just like the rest of us – even Daniel-Day Lewis’ left foot was more relatable, given what little he had to work with.
Dead funny Tropic Thunder pretty much sums it up: ‘Everybody knows you never go full retard!’

Golden rule for girls: go ‘ugly’. Watch Charlize Theron pack on 30 pounds and give up her concealer in Monster, Hilary Swank go butch in Boys Don’t Cry AND Million Dollar Baby (and snatch up an academy award both times!) or Halle Berry simply go barefaced in Monster’s Ball – so brave! (Note: girls should not play retards: Jodie Foster’s Nell was a heroic attempt, but there is a reason why nobody’s queuing up for the remake.)

Anyway. My point is, Americans have an interesting way of telling you that you are somewhere very special. Don’t get me wrong; I love pop cultural references as much as the next guy. They give me something I can relate to. Plus, there’s something absolutely giddifying about strolling around in places you have never been before and feel like home – like you know this place, grew up here; like you are finally introduced to someone you always assumed was an imaginary friend, or heard about in the words to your favorite songs; like the backdrops in your thoroughly thumbed Lucky Luke comic books just came to life.



What I find strange and slightly disturbing is that these infinitely gorgeous landscapes, with a billion years of history of their own, are ultimately reduced to the place where Marty McFly drove his DeLorean in Back To The Future III (Monument Valley); where Thelma & Louise drove off a cliff and into their closing credits (Dead Horse Point); where you get your kicks (Route 66).

Sure, in state and national parks you’ll find the obligatory historic background of a site, but more often than not these are dwarfed by numerous pop cultural references to movies and songs, linking the scenery to people that never existed and events that never took place – nowhere do you find so many allusions to things that never actually happened than on these majestic sites that pulsate with history, both man- and earth made. The ongoing emphasis on pop culture just doesn’t do these places justice. If anything, they make it hard to just be in any of them and soak up those billion years worth of natural history. Where exactly did Louise step on the gas again?

It works the other way around as well: places where really nothing happened turn into sites of interest, rendered immortal by a movie or a song. On our road trip through the South West, my friend Silke and I drive through Winslow, Arizona on our way to New Mexico. There is absolutely zero going on in Winslow, Arizona. There never was, the visitors that stayed away in large numbers agreed. But then The Eagles’ man Glenn Frey and singer/songwriter Jackson Browne came up with the song Take It Easy – including the famous lines ‘I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona / Such a fine sight to see / It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford / Slowing down to take a look at me.’

So today, when you drive through Winslow, Arizona, a gazillion signs carefully direct you to a random downtown Winslow street corner where you find a statue of a guitar singer in front of a carefully put up façade and a sign that say ‘Winslow Arizona’ and ‘Standing On The Corner’. They painted a bald eagle and a girl in a flatbed Ford on the wall, just to authenticate it up a bit. The shop on the other side of the street plays Eagles songs all day. You can buy the T-shirt there. The town has dedicated a website to the phenomenon.
Thing is, nobody ever actually stood on that corner to see a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford – let alone a bald eagle. It never happened. It’s a song. Glenn Frey and Jackson Browne sat down and made it all up.
(Of course, if it turns out that Frey and Browne met whilst hanging out on that very corner checking out flat bedded girls and crying out to their Maker, my face will be very red.)



Silke and I have lunch at the La Posada Hotel in the same Winslow. Built in 1929 for the Santa Fe Railway it is considered the ‘last great railroad hotel’ and pretty much a historic landmark, crammed with stories of real life adventures, romance and hardship. We are the only ones there. Wikipedia gives you a 76 word entry on the entire place.

For older tourists – or those happy few who missed out on Forrest Gump altogether – the information about Monument Valley makes sure to tell them that this is the place where Marion Robert Morrison put on a cowboy hat and became immortal as John Wayne. Silke and I spend a night in lovely, hot spring ridden Ouray, Colorado – recommended, by the way, by Lonely Planet as the little piece of paradise on earth John Denver must have alluded to in his song Rocky Mountain High – and we are looking for a place to eat. The girl at the desk of our hotel recommends the Outlaw restaurant. ‘Sure, they serve decent spare ribs, but did you know John Wayne left his hat there?’ she’s happy to inform us. And so we go. And take a picture of the hat of a legendary manly man movie character played by an actor who was known in real life for his hardcore right-wing, über patriotic, racist, xeno- and homophobic (and, as ironic rumor has it, closet-gay) views before lung cancer ate him up from the inside. Say cheese!



If the Southwestern landscape from Arches National Park to Grand Canyon tells you anything, it’s that mankind and all his shenanigans are fleeting, insignificant, not even an itch to scratch. Grand Canyon was there before man first wriggled out of the water, and will be there long after he’s gone. Why would national and state parks take away from that immediate sense of infinity and awe by tying it to the most fleeting man-made industry of all? Why try to make these places feel more real by invoking memories of things unreal?

Is Hollywood fiction really the only way Americans can relate to each other and their environments? Or are the endless undomesticated regions of the country just too uncomfortably raw – or, to fall back on the Oscars, too real of a retard – to appreciate in their bare authenticity? It would explain for the carefully added layers of relatability, the urge to be able to identify with every place you go to. In the words of Tom Robbins in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, it’s all just ‘too damn vivid.’

When you arrive at Dead Horse Point State Park, you notice that it is physically impossible to drive your car all the way to the edge of the site – that would make for poor photo ops, not to mention very bad liability. You must park your car on the parking lot, a hundred or so feet from the edge, walk the rest of the way and stop at the waist-high brick wall put up to prevent you from stumbling over the edge.

So don’t be fooled. Thelma and Louise never drove off a cliff in Dead Horse Point State Park. The girls paid their 10 dollar per person entrance fee like everybody else; they parked their convertible in the parking lot leading up to the site; they walked up to the cliff and then they soaked it all in – the strange sensation of deafening silence that, in places like Dead Horse Point, or Grand Canyon, or The Valley Of The Gods, physically pushes its way into your brain and literally squeezes out any pop-cultural reference you might entertain. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Maybe it’s like breathing underwater on the moon in a dream – maybe free-divers know what I am talking about. It doesn’t need to get more surreal than that.



Watch the road trip video!

Breakfast in Bed

Breakfast in Bed – UB40 & Chrissie Hynde
Or (for slow Dusty goodness): Breakfast in Bed – Dusty Springfield

Roland’s Navajoland Tours / Bed & Breakfast. The sign, and the well worn four wheel drive in the front yard, set the owner’s priorities. We stand warned. Still, we figure, everybody has to sleep sometime – even Roland. My friend Silke and I have been driving through Utah today, starting in Moab and meandering down to Arches National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, The Valley of the Gods, Goosenecks State Park, and Monument Valley. Instead of heading all the way down to Grand Canyon, as our ever changing itinerary suggested this morning, we came to a screeching halt in Kayenta, AZ – I for one am definitely queasy from the sensory overdose that smacked me in the head somewhere between Delicate Arch and the Three Sisters. We are in Navajo country, and we are done.

Somehow, the droopy faded sign in this droopy faded front yard in this droopy faded town caught our nature-weary eyes. I imagine how it might have been, once, the colorful and attractive call to travelers from all across the globe; today, the sign is just tired. It looks like it wants to go home, curl up and die. On closer inspection I realize that it probably never was a very attractive call to anyone from anywhere, but somehow, between the burnt-out van and the blue-eyed husky panting on the porch it really ties this particular yard together. I find the sign oddly comforting. Silke is not so sure.

Sure enough, I am voted most likely to go inside and inquire after any vacant rooms. The dog drums her tail on the porch two times as I pass her, announcing my arrival. I open the porch fly door, expecting to step into a lobby – or at least some kind of entrance – but instead I find myself blundering straight into the middle of a living room where two men and a woman are glued to a Spanish soap opera on the biggest flat screen TV I have ever seen. Had the Mormon settlers put their minds to developing home entertainment systems instead of, well, settling, this TV still would have been a serious contender today.
‘Uh… Hello, good afternoon,’ I stammer, slightly taken aback by all this invaded privacy. The woman looks up and shoots a slightly puzzled yet friendly smile. The men glance at me and almost immediately turn back to the screen. Nobody gets up. ‘Hi, I was wondering if you had a room for two for tonight?’ The taller man looks up again, his eyes boring straight into the more ill lit corners of my soul. ‘Huh?’

‘Yeah, uhh… the sign said… You are a bed & breakfast, right?’ I try.
- ‘Yeah?’ the man asks. He must be Roland.
- ‘Uhh, yeah, great, I mean, I hope you have a room available?’ I am caught in quicksand, fidgeting my way to an accelerated death. It seems like the man has no problem whatsoever with leaving me dangling. The woman retches extensively, belches much to her own relief, and smiles at me again. The second man reaches into a big paper bag, spreading sickly waves of lukewarm buttery popcorn smell across the room. He stoically stares at the screen, where a highly attractive couple appears to have received some tragic news; their quiet desperation lasts until they fade to black and into a commercial break.

‘You want a room?’ the tall man leaps up and towards me with surprisingly feline grace. Up close he is really tall. I find myself craning my neck a little to look him in the eyes. His grey ponytail stretches about as far down his back as I imagine his treelike arms can reach when they squeeze the life out of a black bear, or, say, pick up a solid marble washbasin and hurl it through the window of a mental hospital. I blink. He doesn’t. ‘Yes, please, for two. Preferably with two separate beds!’ I tend to get over-cheery when ill at ease.
- ‘60 dollars,’ says Roland.
- ‘Uhhh… okay,’ I say. ‘Do you have Wi-Fi?’
- ‘Huh?’ Roland neither looks nor sounds puzzled, but something in the way his shadow shape-shifts across my face tells me he doesn’t know what the hell I am talking about, but he suspects it’s something menacing and threatening, like spreading wildfire maybe.
- ‘Internet, do you have internet?’ I explain. Roland just stares at me.
- ‘She means for the computer,’ the woman unexpectedly comes to the rescue. ‘We don’t have internet but you can tap into our neighbors’ Wi-Fi from here,’ she says as she turns to me and back to him. ‘Roland, show the lady the room.’
- ‘We don’t do breakfast,’ says Roland – he must have mulled it over and decided, way back when, that ‘Bed & Breakfast’ has a nicer ring to it than and ‘Bed & Get Out’ – and that settles that. I hobble after him down the hallway to our designated room. On the wall, in the size and shape of one of those old-fashioned tiles homely people sometimes put up that say Home Sweet Home or When God Closes A Door, Somewhere He Opens A Window a sign is put up. It says, Do I Look Like A People Person To You?!

We haul in our bags to the threesome’s bored amusement, and ask for a key to the room when we go out – this to the hilarity and mild contempt of all three, although the woman, to her credit, tries really hard not to show us her mild contempt. ‘What do you need a key for?’ she says. ‘You don’t need a key. It’s just us here.’ And on that note we head out for dinner and entertainment. We soon realize that Roland’s front yard is probably the most entertaining feature of Kayenta and its vicinity. But then, just like that, we find a tiny cinema at the end of the mall strip boasting Date Night and Green Zone, both starting in about half an hour, and decide on Date Night – after we grab a quick bite to eat at a place called the Amigo Café.



I wolf down my enchilada; Silke manages a little more dignity as she efficiently attacks her fajitas. We arrive at the cinema five minutes after the indicated starting time of our show. The girl behind the counter looks up and says, ‘You are late.’
- ‘Yes,’ Silke says, ‘we know, but could you let us in? We don’t mind that we are missing the commercials.’
- ‘Sorry, we aren’t showing Date Night at all tonight. We already turned down 2 other people, who were two minutes late. You are now the only ones here to see it – and there has to be a minimum of 4 people for us to show it,’ says the girl. To Silke’s suggestion that we just buy 4 tickets so the minimum requirement is met, the girl rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not sure if we can do that,’ she says. What she means is: goddamn city folk, think they can buy their way out of a mountain lion’s attack. Not on my watch. Silke, ever the reporter, is unfazed. ‘Let us find out together if it’s possible. Can we talk to your manager?’ The girl rolls her eyes again, sighs ostentatiously, then picks up a walkie-talkie. ‘Shelley? I have two… ladies here, they want to buy 4 tickets to Date Night so we show the movie. I already explained that they are late.’

Two minutes later, another girl, she can’t be much older than 15, scrambles into the lobby, looking extremely uncomfortable at the sight of the two of us beaming back at her in high expectation. ‘So, can you show the movie if we buy 4 tickets?’ Silke booms. The girl shrinks back, but stands her ground. ‘No, I’m very sorry but we can’t do that. You are late.’
- ‘Well, that shouldn’t matter since we are the only ones coming in to watch it – right?’ Silke pauses for confirmation. But no. The girl struggles to explain that they really cannot make any exceptions for anybody, because if she would make an exception now, tomorrow the place would be overrun by customers wanting to have their own private viewings of shows and surely we could see how that would be a bad thing. We look around. There are exactly 10 people in the entire theater – including the two of us, and a ticketing/counter staff of 4. The town of Kayenta and all its livestock combined couldn’t overrun this theater’s restroom in a stampede. We end up watching Green Zone viewed on a screen decidedly smaller than Roland’s TV.

It’s not bad, but half an hour into it I find myself wondering why Jason Bourne has joined the army, pondering how hand-held camera work always makes me feel a bit iffy and then knowing full blast that I will not make it to the end of the night without throwing up extensively.

I make it back to Roland’s B&B, where I puke my kneecaps out with all the decorum I can muster, next to the left rear tire of Roland’s 4x4. I must be suffering from Stendhall effect – nature’s majestic beauty has simply overwhelmed my underdeveloped sense of splendor. Silke thinks it might have been the enchilada. Or maybe the two packs of Twizzlers I’ve been munching all day instead of lunch. ‘Did you know that men can go infertile when they eat too much of that shit!’ she throws in there when I come up for air. I didn’t.

Roland’s place looked dark and deserted from the road, but as we work our way through the yard we hear the sound of muffled laughter. I half expect to find Roland and the woman dancing around the living room wearing our underwear as little party hats, while the other man does something arts-and-craftly with our passports. But no. Roland and his friend are still watching TV, sitting in pretty much the same spot as when we left them, only this time around they are watching a basketball game. They curse, and clear their throats, and belch and retch and are generally having a grand old time. They vaguely nod in our direction as we wish them a wonderful night.

I figure a hot shower is all I need to get me back on track. Upon turning on the tap, the water runs abundantly for a minute or so – and then fizzles out to a mere cold drizzle. I put my clothes back on, head to the living room and stand there for a bit, waiting for a break in the game before disturbing Roland and his companion. Johnny Cash’s mum might have told him to always be a good boy and never play with guns, but at the other end of the world my mother told me to first ask nicely before touching anything that isn’t yours, and always be polite. And at all times wear fresh underwear in case you get hit by a bus on the way to school – where I come from nurses and doctors apparently won’t touch traffic casualties with a 60 foot pole when there is the merest suspicion of skid marks.

So I say ‘Excuse me sir, I believe the shower isn’t working. Would you be so kind as to take a look?’ The men look at me as if they smell something vaguely nasty, like lukewarm popcorn butter. ‘I might be doing something wrong…’ I add.
- ‘I’m sure you are,’ says Roland, but then he shrugs and gets up to horse-whisper the shower into a hot stream of submission. When we drive off at the break of dawn the next morning, I find no trace of my projectile vomiting of the previous night. Nature must have opened up and swallowed it whole, her sense of splendor completely underwhelmed by my contribution. We are, after all, in Navajo country.