Kansas City is home, but I grew up in Kentucky. My cousin married her high school sweetheart last week. I rented a car and drove back to our hometown to see it. There was a pandemic, and before that there was a job, and so, I hadn’t been to Kentucky since Christmas 2018. And I hadn’t driven there since 2012. Ten years with no car. I’ve kept up my license. Cars have changed. But driving was like it always was for me. I loved it.
My dad taught me to drive on country roads against my mom’s wishes. For that reason, the interstate remains my least favorite way to get anywhere. There are miles of construction that doesn’t look like anything is happening. Nearly every wild animal you see is already dead. I saw more roadkill armadillos than I’ve ever seen living ones. In fact, I’ve never seen an armadillo alive, but I did pass an antique mall the size of a megachurch. It was called The Brass Armadillo.
The country roads stay a zoo. I saw a white horse in a field. I saw a young buck. I saw a lone chicken peck the grass on the shoulder of the road. I saw a box turtle survive its crossing. I saw a crow peel up something pink and flatter than the sticker on a banana. I saw a sign for a town called Oddville.
The trip was a mantra of, “I’m really doing this. I can do this.” I don’t remember having that anxiety the last time I drove. My prayer back then was for my car to stay together. It did for longer than it should have. And then, right after that last trip in 2012, in a grocery store parking lot, it didn’t. I’ve walked nearly everywhere since.
In Kentucky, I hiked up a steep trail with my mom. The trail ended on top of a sandstone arch called Natural Bridge. Before the final rough-hewn staircase, there was a landing area. Mom wanted to take my picture there. She told me about an old picture she has of her mom in the same spot. She’s not alone in the picture. You can see a lizard just to her right, sunning on a rock. “Wouldn’t it be funny,” I said, “if we saw a lizard right now, too.” And then there one was, bobbing with aggression on the face of a rock wall. Sometimes, you wave at the past, and it waves right back at you.
The country came back to my voice a little. Maybe it’s the gay mockingbird thing. Like I don’t have my own vocalizations. I just pattern myself after others around me to survive. The voice in my head doesn’t sound like anything so much as someone narrating an audiobook.
On my last day, I drove an hour north of my hometown and went to a clothing-optional gay campground. I took my shorts off by the pool and laid naked under the sun for the entire afternoon. An older man, a nearby farmer who discovered this campground had opened in his own backyard, came over to me, leaned against the deck railing, and lit a cigarette. He told me he’d been married to a woman, now divorced. He had children, long grown. He said, “Maybe if this place had been here back then…well, it’s here now.” He flattered me with a compliment about my body, then he left.
I told the campground’s caretakers the same thing I told my family, that I’d try to come back next summer.
“We’ll be here,” one of them said, “unless we up and blow away.”