You Better Let Somebody Love You

Jeff says the smartest decision he’s ever made was asking me to marry him. He likes to tell me this often and I like to smile and roll my eyes when he says it. On this occasion, we are driving down Interstate 5 toward Death Valley National Park. We are headed to an oasis on a date farm in Tecopa, California to celebrate one year of marriage in a tipi. It is Sunday and the sun is just beginning to set on our two-lane desert highway. Jeff holds my hand. I tell him that I love him so that he doesn’t take my eye rolling seriously. I hope he never takes my eye rolling seriously. It’s a bad habit better spent on people who deserve it. He doesn’t. He never does.

We got married in a park in a nature preserve on an October Sunday afternoon in front of a small gathering of our families and friends. A jazz musician with long greying dreadlocks played the Everly Brothers “Let It Be Me” on a trumpet as we made our way down a stone path to stand beneath a dried floral wreath to exchange our vows.

Four months earlier, on a Tuesday morning Jeff cuddled me in bed and asked me if marrying him was something I’d like to do with the rest of my life. I didn’t hesitate to tell him yes, although it took me a day or so to believe that he had really asked, that he really meant it, that he really wanted to, that he had chosen me. There are some of us in the world that no matter how wonderful the news, our pasts have terrible ways of interfering with our presents.

We walked down the aisle together before we wed and after. In pictures I am smiling, but my eyes are looking downward and just ahead, my head tilts forward, a sideways smile curls my lips and my small hand clutches Jeff’s for support. Even though we were surrounded by people who I know love me, I still had trouble overcoming my shy nature.

Sometimes I wish I would’ve been able to look around those smiling faces to catch glimpses of other people’s happiness for me.

Jeff and I share a common love of the desert. Even though we’ve trampled through American rainforests and scaled minor mountain ranges, cruised coastal highways and marveled at ocean views, swum in the Atlantic and surfed in the Pacific, nothing can compare to the desert.

Jeff loves the desert because he believes those who live in the desert must bear the constitution for leaving behind and severing attachments. He likes the thought that those who dwell in these dusty towns have turned their backs in defiance to a society they can no longer abide.

I love the desert because of the improbability of survival and the adaptation one must endure to survive it. To thrive in the desert is to forsake comfort for simplicity.

There are no TVs, no Internet connections, no Wifi hotspots, no phone signals. Whenever we wind up in these sorts of places, just outside society, I warn Jeff that I might never want to leave. Like the Kit Foxes in the National Parks pamphlets we pick up at the ranger station, I will adapt, I will survive without, I will prevail in spite of. Let the pink sun set on the purple mountains. Let me sweat it out. Let me leave the troublesome parts of my life behind.

Let me stay here, but please don’t leave me here.

We find ourselves in the middle of a Two-for-Tuesday. I’ve spent the ride into Las Vegas pumping my fist to Heart and Aerosmith, briefly pausing the conversation Jeff and I have been having for nearly four years, an endless starting and stopping punctuated by sleep and work schedules.

The familiar light piano of The Eagles “Desperado” begins and I let out a long, mournful moan. I don’t particularly like The Eagles and as Don Henley begins the first verse I nod my head in sorrowful agreement and wipe fake tear drops from my cheeks. Jeff laughs at my pantomime.

Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home

And freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Despite my best attempt to quash sentimentality, Henley and Frey’s lyrics tug at my heartstrings.

For a moment, I let myself wonder what my life could be like had I not met Jeff and I shudder. I feel awash with panic. Billboards advertising casino buffets and world-class gambling pass by and I feel heavy and tired. The risk of even thinking such a thing overwhelms me and I try to push the thoughts out of my head. I look at Jeff, I tell him I love him and the panic begins to subside.

Freedom is letting Jeff love me back.