Phoenix

Phoenix

I didn’t know there was anything green in Arizona, they say it’s a desert –and those people that say it are leathery, brown, so I believe them. But flying from Indianapolis to Phoenix I found out those leather bound voices are liars. Small mountains dusted with green, low-lying trees rolled out from the desert, the hills down to the desert floor like old veins. Then as soon as it came it went, the green faded to a warm brown, you know the color, the color they use for all the new houses in every new neighborhood in America. My dad lived in one of those houses at one time.

As we flew into Phoenix we passed right over the miniature downtown, I thought I could see people wave at me from the Wells Fargo building, I waved back. The bright orange dome of the capitol, at least I think it was the capitol, reflected the hot sun from above. I could see the mayor who built that capitol standing outside with a cigar hanging from his leathery lips, slapping his pals on their backs, as the final bit of shiny metal was glued to the top. I wonder if he knew his city would grow sideways, not up, I wonder if he knew they would have homes sprawling endlessly towards the green hills in the distance like roots from a tree searching for water. There are homes on the unfinished developments that back up against nothing but desert floor. Shrubs and coyotes their only neighbors behind them. Not even a road. One day that land will be bought, one day the coyotes killed, and then they will have neighbors, and they will barbeque and fight about property lines and dog poop, and the mayor will smile, and the coyotes will sing at night honoring their fallen comrades.

I could see inside the baseball park as we descended towards the landing strip. I felt like I was sleeping with someone else’s wife, looking at her beauty that only her lover should see; but I looked at it, I ran my eyes down the third base line and up the foul pole before it went under the plane and out of sight. Such a small downtown from up above. Only cars, no people. The city looked like an ant farm turned on it’s side. Little streets running in and out and around to all the new little brown houses with their blue water behind them. I wish I could have seen the people, what do people from Phoenix look like? I imagine them all either having skin cancer all over their bodies, one big brown hairy spot with a smile, or as pale as the sheets the cancer patients lay in at the hospital.

We landed, I stayed on, I couldn’t risk exposure to the leather-making sun, and I was going to Sacramento. I never knew Phoenix was such a fertile town. More babies and families with small children boarded the plane than I have ever witnessed before. I contemplated moving back to the rear of the plane from where I had come, my father’s hate for small children on airplanes bubbling up inside me. Forget Snakes on an Airplane, Crying Babies on an Airplane.

Maybe I was wrong about Phoenicians. Maybe they don’t all have cancer, maybe they all just lay in the pool all day and make babies at night. What a life. If people ever run out of love in their relationships they should move to Phoenix, love pours down from the sun above, heating the soul to uncontrollable temperatures, to where even the whitest of white sheets and the sweatiest of sweaties looks appealing and fit for baby making.

My sister told me that she thought people in Santa Barbara had a lot of sex because they are alway wearing bathing suits. They must wear swimsuits more in Phoenix – the city bordered by ridges that look like the ridges on Warf’s forehead.

~ by kevinthomas on August 22, 2006.