I’ve been busy this last week riding around on speed yachts and sifting through tape-recorded conversations with real estate investors as they go on and on about unexploded bombs in their backyard and how they always thought they could trust the military and the government, but now they can’t, and how ordinance disposal companies that work in Iraq and Afghanistan could help bring retirement communities to Southwest Washington and something about us all being Americans in the end and all the while Jimmy Buffet played in the background and my head and my eyes feel like they’re made out of nerves and my skin feels like it’s a million miles from here and when Amanda brings me Olive Leaf Extract I eat all the capsules at once, which apparently I’m not supposed to do, and anyway this cold won’t go away, but at least the story got filed and the boat trip was an interesting bonus.

    It all really happened, just last week. The following story really happened as well, about six years ago…



     Three Months on Planet Moab

     “Listen, we need enough plaid material to make nine skirts, between size three and four."

     The pear-shaped women in the fabric store looked awkwardly at the two of us.

     “H-how well do you need to sew them?” one of them asked.

     “That’s not important,” said Boo, inspecting the texture of the fabric with his fingers. “We’ll only need them for a couple of hours this afternoon.”

There was a tense silence. Then the other one spoke:

     “Are these size 4 for ‘girls’ or for women?”

     “They’re all women,” I said. “We’re shooting a movie about off-roading.”

     Given our appearance, the two seamstresses might have been dramatically suspicious of our intentions with the women and the skirts-Boo stands six-foot-four with rally stripes on his head, and I was standing silently, next to a shelf full of thread, with a green over coat and baseball jersey with the words, “Trees Lounge” emblazoned on the front. The light pastel antiseptic nature of the fabric store served to exaggerate our exotic appeal, or criminal countenance. But this is Moab. This is Utah.

     “Well, you’ll need to make sure you get the shape right. Let me show you how to cut them,” the other one said.

     The entire event rivaled, for tension, any liaison between Angela Landsbury and Iggy Pop. Or better yet, the Pope and the little rascals.


    After the transaction, we were back at the home of motorcycle stunt rider Jacko Parriot, who was on the phone, rounding up the girls for the shoot.

     “Yeah, bring your sister too. It’ll be a good time,” he explained to the voice on the other end. “We’ve got all the skirts. Bring a white shirt.”

     The Dead Milkmen blared from the CD player as Boo Wiles’s partner, Anton Rash, quietly played pool next to a wall covered with ammo cases and hand grenades.

     “We’ll need blanks for the shotgun,” Jacko announced, lighting his third smoke.

     The trick in a town like Moab is not to end up a tourist. There is no value in showing up in a remote place and then strolling around with an ice-cream cone; you’ll stick out like a rube and learn nothing. So, when Boo Wiles tried to talk me in to coming up to help him wrap the movie, I told him we’d need to find work while we were there.
“It’s all been taken care of,” he declared. “Jacko got us jobs shooting pictures for the tourists.”

     We were working as “action photographers” for an outfit that deploys cameras to the remote trails, and anyone who wants to can buy the shots later that night. Normally the mountain bikers are the subject, rolling around the slickrock trail like delusional neon superheroes. But this is jeep week, and over 1,400 off-road enthusiasts had clogged Moab, a town of only 6,000, with their machines.

      On one afternoon, the snow blew sideways. Ten minutes ago, it was relatively warm and a little sunny. But the red sand planet of Moab, a pinpoint in the Utah nebula, was subject to dramatic shifts. Two days ago, the sky was red with the Aurora Borealis. It was the rare effect of solar flares that sent the glow this far south, something that only happens once every thirty years or so.

     The snow continued, which was especially noticeable because I was working, and my job required me to perch on the side of a 40-foot boulder called “The Dome.” I shot frame after frame of 4x4s, all red or green or yellow, as they made their way, one at a time, up this almost vertical rock. Not all of them make it: some slide back down or roll over. Others bomb around like madmen, their wives cooking lunch on the manifold.

     Moab’s “jeep week” is a 30-year-old affair that, in certain circles, is as important as Bastille Day. Every hack jeeper from across the country shows up to spend the week paying the local 4-wheel drive club for the chance to follow them around on the dozens of trails that ring this boom-bust-boom hamlet. And as a photographer, you’ve got to ride along with them-ten hours a day of rumbling along, listening to stories from guys who all their life have been earning little trophies for driving around in cars and trucks. When you’re not in the jeeps, you’re staking out a steep cliff, or “obstacle,” watching a group of  blank-headed tourists in tree-bark camouflage pile up rocks and tree trunks at the base, just so “Jimbo” can gun his way up and receive a round of applause.

     There are two camps on planet Moab: If you’re not an exhaust-huffing jeeper, you’re a pot-smoking naturalist. The naturalists want the jeepers to go away, and the jeepers want the naturalists to shut the hell up. When you hear the naturalists describe the “chain-reactionary” damage caused by oil and gas fumes and broken parts, and trampling of the landscape, you wonder if the jeepers are all that guilty, until you ride along with a jeeper who tells you about how he used to drive up the natural bridges in Arches National Park, and then you notice a tree that has been driven over and up-rooted.

     So, days were spent dumbing it up with the jeepers and nights were spent in Moab’s pocket of weirdness: the retro-sheik apartment of Bill Musto, with his bowling shirt-Chuck Taylor-close-cut beard-transplant freak from Ohio persona. We’d met him at a bar called the Rio, while a drunk local was staggering about with his pants down, and his cowboy buddies were attempting to corral him. Musto was there with a black-clad socialite named Susie Strong. She belonged in Manhattan, but grew up in Moab. She was the one who announced we were coming back to their place.

     When things start getting curious like this, it is common to examine all of the options. Maybe it’s not too wise to get twisted up in the swank underbelly of Moab. Maybe it was true what people say about becoming stranded here, I thought to myself. This led me to my jacket pocket; before we left for the bar that evening, we had checked the rural mailbox at the end of Jacko’s driveway. There were two pieces of mail waiting there. One was from Melco: it seems we needed to be at the San Diego Yacht Club in three days in order to hop some high-end racing boats and sail for Catalina. This was an option. It was a reason to flee Moab. Besides, our newfound companions had all the earmarks of no-good business.

     The second piece of mail was from good old Delcan Montgomery. It had a picture of two natives squatting in the dirt, one with a pipe up his nose, and the other looking down the pipe. They were both brightly colored. I didn’t get around to reading it, but rather handed it off to Boo, who stuffed it in his pocket. I would later learn that I should have read that postcard.

      Back at Musto’s apartment, up the rickety steps and across from the courthouse, Boo and I found ourselves in a heated debate with Susie Strong on the subject of sexism.

     We all went in circles on the subject, defending our man-ness, and unraveling her rhetoric, until finally she announced that she wasn’t a man-hater at all, and was in fact Bill Musto’s live-in girlfriend. This was of course met with hearty laughter and relief all around, but when Musto put on a pair of white furry pants and a Mister Rogers album, the scene turned stranger. Susie began to dance.

     “I love this place,” she sang, twirling toward the kitchen. She was dressed all in black, with a choker necklace and short hair, like a kid in basic training. But despite the buzz-cut, her high cheekbones and expressive, bright eyes made sure we knew she was a woman, or a girl, anyway. She was back-dropped by a giant painting of the ocean – the type you might find at a garage sale – her full breasted figure framed by the tacky piece of wall art. Musto watched, hunched over on the red couch, peering maniacally at Susie, who continued to dance methodically as Mr. Rogers sang, “…when ever I do something, like putting on my shoes, I like to take my time and do it right.” Susie continued,
“We should all go camping. I love camping! Oh, Bill, go get those orange glasses you have!”

     “Sure thing,” Musto replied, leaping from the couch.

     What had happened? Was this a vacuum? A wicked vortex of pop culture hedonism spiked in the center of redneck land? This was too surreal. It was too far removed from the night before, at The Crazy Horse Saloon, where cowboys beat up the doorman, someone was dragging an upside-down Cadillac around behind their truck, and a rifle was being auctioned off behind the bar. I longed for that straight, predictable scene.

     Maybe it’s true. Maybe no one escapes from Moab. It would certainly explain these two opposing forms of weirdness in such close proximity.  I made a decision that night: it was time to meet Melco at the yacht club. Boo Wiles would understand. He would encourage it. And anyway, it was official magazine business.

     The next day, I bid Jacko, Musto, Susie, Boo Wiles and Anton Rash goodbye, and flew for the coast.





   

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- also by this writer -

From Chugiak To Cuba

Beatnik & The Colonel

The War Effort