I’m not from here

It all starts on a plane, as it often does. Or in an airport, you never know. It’s noisy, it’s running, it’s shouting. Crowds of people packed together like no other. I’m looking for the flight to Las Vegas, wondering what came over me. I come to join you. Getting to Vegas at night is like watching a 3D movie, you know it’s never what’s real and what’s not. But you don’t believe that.

I’m a lone walker, a wilderness surveyor and a lover of arid silence, and I find myself without even taking a shower in the boiling heart of the casinos. My hands are sweaty and my stomach is empty. It’s glittering everywhere. Nothing seems flashy enough, visible enough, shiny enough. Sequined pumps protruding from crocodile trousers, Gucci suits for lapdogs, fake starry skies and fake Venetian canals. Everywhere, excited tourists are mixed in – phone in hand, running from table to table, feverishly enjoying the free drinks and the attractions for rich adults – the lost souls, wandering the long empty corridors. In the crappiest casinos, maids, drivers and dishwashers come to spend their dollars, hoping to hit the jackpot and finally get out of this rat hole. But right now, there’s a line at the Golden Nugget.

I’m drunk, I haven’t won anything and I don’t know what time it is. Slot machines depress me…

It’s almost noon and the city is empty and dead. It’s drinking bad champagne in windowless rooms. With my foot on the accelerator, stalled at 70, I look at Vegas in the mirror as it fades away. Adios, roulettes, blackjack and voracious neon lights. You make me sad. I remember that old lady, alone, at 6am on her slot machine. The sun heats my skin through the windshield. Vegas, even here the dead dance in the light. In front, around, everywhere, the desert still cold, the sky burnt and the road so black. So big, so soft, like a silk ribbon on the red rock. All that remains of the Indians are the charm shops, the dream catchers made in China in the gas station shelves and a few names, sometimes, that remind us of the sad songs of the tribes.

We go down to Kaweah River and Lone Pine, California. On the side of the road, a couple of newlyweds are being photographed in front of their limousine. Shiny cowboy hat and dusty desert, America is there in front of me, without seeing that it is beautiful.

To the regular rhythm of motels as gloomy as in our dreams, the nights pass. We make love in front of the heater. It smells of burgers and fat right into the car. Shit. Bakersfield, Three Rivers, America gets tired and passes in front of our windows. Already 800 km on the odometer. Always car parks, always gas pumps and always the sun on the burnt rock. The desert invades everything, but America, of course, plays the fool and plants there, in the dead valley, an artificial oasis, with a landing strip and private golf, multicoloured pensioners and Bud at 10 dollars. Badwater, 28°C. Here, we water the lawn with ice cubes.

From time to time, a few tourists get lost on the road and take pictures in the white sand. The car parks are crowded with cars too clean for the desert. We follow the Sierra from sand to snow to sand again. Far from the artificial arteries of Vegas and the feathered chicks. The cactus in bloom go by the window. I think of all those I have read, Hillerman, Harrison, Brautigan, Kerouac. They are far away. So what?

We take a sandwich in a bar. It’s always dripping on the fingers. I dream of a café that is one, but I find a little air and love under the giant redwood forests. We stand side by side listening to the owl. I hum Harvest Moon. We are far from the wilderness. Every intersection is overflowing with billboards for Sequoia Park and plastic souvenir sellers. We drive one of those cars for Europeans, who don’t want huge pick-ups. On the snow- covered roads of Grant Grove, people look at us like we’re crazy. I’ve seen more of them. A blue bird follows us for a while; I would like to know its name.

As the days pass, we abandon the America of tall trees and the snowy roads of Sequoia Park for the giant, flat highways of California. The orange tree fields as far as the eye can see are full of underpaid Mexican workers who hide out to smoke. On the side of the road, barbed wire sometimes marks the edge of fields that are too green. Clothes and a confederate flag take the sun. We tour the godforsaken villages, where there are half- empty pubs, pool tables studded with fag holes, neon churches and workers who finish their day in front of a cheap burger, the Santiag wedged in the bar of the counter in front of a too big TV.

It’s already late when we arrive at the ocean. It stinks of postcards and Instagrammers in procession. We’re going to eat at the water’s edge and watch the seagulls of Santa Barbara. I feel like I’m walking through a Martin Parr album, hanging out with overweight rich white couples in floral shirts and leather sandals. I try to order a beer, but the waitress is completely taken by a remix of Sweet Home Alabama playing on the sound system. The pick-ups have given way to shiny Buicks. It’s a far cry from Ellroy’s thrillers, believe me. I feel like getting some coloured glasses and a fly fisherman’s bob to walk around like Raoul Duke – Las Vegas Parano – with wobbly legs and glassy eyes. We hang out in the sun, under giant palm trees and multicoloured cafes, drinking Malibu beers.

In the night, we finally let ourselves be swallowed up by the endless ribbons of lights of the two times six lane highway that plunges into the abyss of Los Angeles. This city is a demon, a disproportionate ogre that swallows everything that passes within its reach. A disgusting egret hangs out along the canal. It watches a dollar float by. I’m a little sick. You order a latte and an avocado toast on Venice Beach, I mumble a few words of Ginsberg that you don’t hear and you take my picture. We pay a fortune to sit on our asses in a golf cart and explore Paramount Studios. I take pictures of people in period costumes, a dog bone machine and a mannequin in a coffin and then we end the day in traffic on Mulholand Drive under a stormy sky. I want you, but the guy in the back honks the horn in his Chevy and you take me for the best sushi in town.

A young woman walks around with her tits out in front of the Disney studios and we pass a procession of Catholics with “I Love Jesus” signs. Princess Leia makes a guy with a Viet Vet’ t-shirt sign a petition and we look for a shop I can’t remember. The angels in the city are siliconed and stink of Chips, but an old blond surfer sings Blowin’ in the Wind and I leave him a quarter.

I smoke a few cigarettes on Hollywood Boulevard, since you can’t smoke anywhere. The stars are ghosts and the not so heavenly bums pitch their tents on Sunset Boulevard. All- you-can-eat tacos, failed actors, gold cars: it stinks of money as much as it does of misery.

You take my hand and drag me into a café.

You’re a thousand times more beautiful than L.A.