#4 New Mexico

by Deb Smith

We were exhausted from traveling, but still managed to fill the room with the smell of pinon smoke and sex before we let go and slept. There was magic in the high desert air that made our skin tingle and our ears pop. We woke ravenous, pulled on half clean clothes and made our way to the dining room. Laughing like naughty children we settled into a booth. The waitress wrote down eggs over easy, potatoes, bacon, wheat toast, juice and coffee. The pleasure of the meal was already on our tongues when she brought our plates. On each were two perfectly round, full mounds of golden egg porn ready to corrupt our crusty toast points.

Then it was off to see what we could see, top down, driving fast. We were flatlanders from a land of verdant corn fields and loamy black soil lost in a place of sagebrush and resonant tones of red ochre, gold and purple. The mountains framed the landscape and the rocks carried the power of ancient people, masters of pottery and animal spirits. We were untethered and drunk with disinhibition.

If we had stayed drunk like that we might have made it over those last hurdles of insecurity and caution. Instead, too much tequila and too much sex led us back to the same impasse. We could not keep faith with the pleasure of just being together. In the end love was not enough.