Bullhead City

Mojave Valley Highway. It’s the last leg of the journey between Needles and Bullhead City, Arizona. The place is desolate: there’re more adult bookstores than houses, not a person in sight. If it weren’t for the Harleys parked outside a saloon, passerby’d probably think the place was a ghost town. We find a Wal-Mart.

I jump in a cart and my boyfriend pushes me around the place. He wants to buy me sneakers.

“Does this mean I have to wear socks?”

I hate socks. He finds me some socks. I will have nothing to do with this plan to attain “comfortable attire.” Nevertheless, I’m amazed they have shoes and socks and just about everything in one store — it’s so American. Everything you could need or want, standardized and shoved into this box-like establishment.

It’s incredible to imagine — fifty years ago, this place didn’t exist. Hell, fifty years ago Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, was still working at JC Penney.

I’ve decided that I’m a Wal-Mart: a dilettante specializing in cheapening genius and beauty to the point of democracy.

Andy Warhol was right when he talked about the wonder of consumer egalitarianism in this country. You can still watch TV and see a Coke and know that you can have a Coke just like the one Dubya is having, and the one Paris Hilton is having, and the one Bill Gates is having. All Cokes are the same and all Cokes are good, isn’t that what he said?

Yes — if we have any sort of a legacy, this is it.

Having procured the sneakers and socks — which I flatly refuse to wear — we hit the hills and find a look-out as we near Laughlin. The population there is less than 10,000, but it’s always buzzing with people: it’s the third most visited casino-destination in Nevada, after Vegas and Reno. From the look-out, we see Casino Drive’s lights reflected on the Colorado River like a little Las Vegas right at our fingertips.

I jump out into the heat to take a picture and have a smoke. My boyfriend comes out and before I can light up, he’s opened the side door of the car and bent me over the back seat.

Low-rise jeans give easy entry: you don’t really have to unbutton or unzip them to get them down. You just tug, whale tail and all, and you’re in.

It’s like we don’t even touch, we just fuck. I need his cock and he needs my cunt. We don’t even have time to moan before it’s over. I feel him tighten inside me after a few savage thrusts and I come. When I come, I send him over the edge. He pulls out–pop shot on my back.

He leans against the side of the car, I get out and, jeans still mid-thigh, light that cigarette.

Image by Gregory Melle. Originally published in Black Heart Magazine on December 6, 2007.