The vouyer

Fren looked up and down and then up and down again. Anj could not understand his erratic movements nor the predicament they found themselves in either.

A large 18-wheeler zoomed past, heavily, as if the universe deemed it worthy of a gravitational pull. Anjs slivers of hair pulled into it.

Fren kept walking, toward their destination, as if the car hadn’t run out of gas, as if he was still following the automated voice of his iPhone to stay on the path for the next one hundred and eighty miles. Stay on interstate 80 for the next 180 miles. The voice rung in his head. The one of the peppy British woman he chose and integrated when he got his first iPhone when he was 14 years old. A gift from his dad.

Anj stood still, about a 30 or 40 feet away from where the car had parked on the shoulder of the interstate. The black of tires skidding the gray area of interstate asphalt and brown, dry dirt. The western regions stereotypical desert brown dirt contrasting with the long mirage of western highways.

“Isn’t that funny?” Anj asked.

Fren turned toward his girlfriend, gave her an exhausted gaze.

Anj continued, “You know how on our first dates, you know the first real dates. The dates after you get over that initial hump of the awkwardness of THE first date, then the date we have sex, then the date we spend our first night together, then we meet each others friends. You remember our dates after those dates?” She had caught up to Fren without making it seem as if she was trying. Her short brunette bobbed happily.

“Hmmm, well I remember we used to stay inside a lot because I was sick.”

“Yes, you were very sick and you thought your sickness was caused by electromagnetic waves and central heating.”

“Yes I remember. And it’s true, once you started leaving your phone outside the apartment my immune system started working again. Also, I haven’t turned the heating back on and my breathing has gotten so much clearer. I just wear layers in the apartment. I know you don’t like it but its worth it, in the long run. I think.”

“Oh yes, I was not implying your remedies as invalid or anything like that. However idiosyncratic you try to make them to be.” She tried to look Fren in the face, but he kept his sight steeled down the road.

The sun was setting, as they do in movies about the west. And real life. The west, the west, the west, Anj thought. “What I was trying to say was that during that time we would watch all those old western, American movies, the ones with cowboys and shit. Do you remember that? Or did your involuntary government vaccination disrupt your hippocampal memory processes?” Anj laughed and kicked a hill of dry dirt into the air, aerosolizing it, the wind pushing it, then dispersing it into the air, with its western tint of sunset.

“Yes, I remember.” Fren has his head down as if he was fully accepting his fate that he, they, would be walking on the side of this desert stretch of interstate until help arrived, warmly and neatly on his, their lap.

***

The sunset happened. Another young couple, having spotted their predicament, dropped them off at the nearest gas station. The couple said that they would be willing to drop them back off at their car once they got gas but Frens over politeness won. The driving couple stared at Fren blankly and eventually drove off.

Fren and Anj found themselves in a large gas station. It was 24-hours, per the sign hanging near the front door, hanging from the inside near the flittering cocked-down head of the attendant.

To Ang, the sign seemed new. She told Fren that there wasn’t any creases or stains of time on it, “How impressive, right? I bet a working class immigrant family bought this thinking they could exponentiate their income.”

Anj sat down in one of the 3 small tables in the gas station, adjacent to a built-in restaurant. They advertised selling breakfast burritos or hotdogs with coffee. The lights in the restaurant were off but the attendant, noticing that the couple might want order food, walked and asked if they wanted a burrito, a hotdog or a coffee. Fren shook his head and sat across Anj.

“As I was saying earlier, do you remember those western, cowboy movies we used to watch?” Fren nodded his head, tiredly. He had bought a colorful energy drink with sexualized animated characters. “Well, this reminded me of the scenes. Like our walk, down the road. How the dirt was so dessert brown and dry and crumbly as if the world wanted to explicitly show you how hopeless your prospects are or were. How there wasn’t anyone else on the road for like hours. Okay, it probably wasn’t hours but still, it felt like we were the only ones in an eye sight radius. And how the sun settled. I know you watched it.”

Fren finished his energy drink, “I see your analogy.” Fren met Anj on a dating app designated for niche and alternative hookups. From her profile, it was clear to him that she was politically oriented (she put is as politically gifted, which Frens friends thought was corny and served as a red flag). After dating for a month and a half, Anj got laid off as a teacher for misconduct (you never asked the details). She then offered a couples trip, as she put it, making Frens teeth grind from the cringe of it. They booked a budget airline from LaGuardia, landed in Vegas, booked a car rental from an app (making them uber 40 minutes away from the airport, effectively costing them more if they had just rented from the usual companies stationed at the airport), and found themselves, “roadtripping” aimlessly in the west.

The past couple of days they had visited the spots that had popped up on their social media feeds or were recommended by non-friends in small talk conversations, the ones Fren especially hated. Oh, you should visit Zion national park, its so stunning!!! The pictures don’t do it justice, you just have to be there and like, in the moment, disconnected from technology. After four days, he was exhausted and missed his vegetative time in his small Brooklyn apartment. Time away from his girlfriend. He missed the internet and every cell in his body yearned for vegetation. He couldn’t articulate. He didn’t even think he missed it but it was just something of an evolutionary, primitive urge his cells wanted.

***

Anj tipped the gallon jug of gasoline into the small Toyota sedan, minding however awkward the gallon felt in her hands. In her existence, she thought. Fren looked on uselessly. After the first couple of attempts of trying to slip the skinny nozzle into the cars gasoline tank he took out his phone to see if he had data. He still didn’t, nothing much has changed in the past couple of hours. Anj looked at him annoyed. Fren seeing this, fake-took-a-picture to make it seem as if Fren thought her struggle was cute. “I might have it as a wallpaper on my phone.”

The gasoline worked, got them to the gas station, again, filled a full tank, entered the road. Fren placed his phone back on the navigation panel, where the automated voice instructed to keep on the road for the next 179 miles.

“People are just nicer in the west, huh?” Anj asked. An older man, with a large neck and scruffy goatee had given them a ride back to their car. Anj and Fren said thank you, but the guy had asked for their social media accounts before he left. This annoyed Fren. Fren lied and said he didn’t have social media as he thought it was bad for his mental health, a sentiment he didn’t agree with while Anj happily told him her accounts name.

“I think I have heard some studies showing that the warmer temperatures, proximity to nature and sunlight has something to do with people appearing friendlier than on the east coast. But I don’t know, I’m just very tired right now and want to get to our hotel.”

The desert was now pitch black. The only light was that of the high beams from the rented Toyota. “If there was a community of people on the side of the road, staring at us, you know, vouyering us, we wouldn’t know it at all. Wouldn’t that be weird.”

Fren grumbled a yes.

“I remember after our third or fourth date, we got a drink late into a Saturday night just for fun and people-watching endeavors. At the end, just as the bar was about to close, you told me that you were going to walk home since, one, you lived a couple of blocks down and, two, you had to wake up early so you didn’t want me to spend the night. Well, when you left, I let you walk down a little, just enough time so you wouldn’t look back by chance, and I followed you. You entered your apartment, turned on the lights and head into your bathroom. You never leave your blinds closed so it was pretty easy to watch you do all this stuff from a bench on the other side of the street. I enjoyed it. The vouyerism, of course. I don’t mean I got off to it just then and there, but I enjoyed it, in a warm way if that makes sense.”

Fren kept his eyes steadfast on the segmented yellow line and paved asphalt.

“I wish I someone would care to vouyer me. I wish people were staring at us right now. Weird people from the dessert. Like the weird people we see in Youtube videos or documentaries. The type of people that appear emaciated not because of lack of nutrients but because of ruminating on theories all day. I want them to watch us.”

Anj grabbed Frens hand and shoulder gently, and guided him into pulling over and shutting down the car. She stepped out, gave a look into the black of the dessert. She even shined the light from her smartphone. This was followed by a yell of coyote origin. She dropped back into the passenger seat and off they were again.

“There is no one there.” Anj said in a disappointed tone.

“I am surprised. Everyone should know you are the center of the world. How could they not want to vouyer you 24/7. I mean, are they incompetent?” Fren announced sarcastically. They both laughed at this and a simulacrum of intimacy flittered above the Toyotas gear shifter.

“Oh, the west,” Anj sang. She said it again, this time louder and unabashedly. “I’m so happy we don’t live in the west. So much atomization, ostracization. It’s because people have to drive everywhere just to do things. They never sweat or walk. The air conditioning in their cars makes them sterile. They don’t smell the socializing pheromones of people walking on the street or your subway seat neighbor. Just sterile car air conditioning, big parking lot, and big department store. That’s it. Oh, the west.”

***

The clock on the wall read 2:45 am. There was no attendant in the lobby of the motel and Fren was becoming increasingly impatient or agitated. He was doing his breathing exercises: breathing deeply though his nose, pulling with his diaphragm (making sure to strengthen the mind muscle connection), holding his breath for four seconds (a box hold his yoga teacher once said. Is it because a box had four corners so it aligns with four seconds?), and exhaling slowly, making sure to use his abdominal muscles. No residual air in his alveoli’s.

A woman walked into the lobby, looked Fren and Anj. The couple could tell that she was nervous.

“We have a reservation for tonight,” Fren announced softly. “Well, technically it was for yesterday but we arrived late. Long story short, our car ran out of gas.” Fran could tell that his words, his hiccups and lapses of preparation, were not getting through to her. “We are also not from here. Were from the east coast. And this is the west coast. Well not the coast, but the west.” Anj smiled at the motels sodden carpet.

“Can I have your name?” The worker asked.

“Of course, I’m Fren De La Hoya and this is Anj Rodríguez.”

“I don’t see you guys on the reservation list,” the worker words monotoned.

“Thats strange,” Fren said. “Let me pull up our reservation email.”

“Here it is.”

The motel worker took the phone. It was much too large for her small hands. She struggled to hold it, it seemed, causing some annoyance in Fren. Deep breaths his brain ruminated.

“Ahh, I see the problem.” The worker clicked for a little on the keyboard and then bent down to reach for something in a lower drawer of her desk. She pulled out a pair of keys and handed them over to Fren. After directing the couple where the room should be, Fren thanked the worker. As they were about to exit to the motel lobby, the worked called out, “also, the name of your room is Putative.”

Fren tapped the fob onto its designated space above the doors handle. A red light blinked. After a couple of more attempts and Anj’s tries, they found themselves back into the motel lobby.

“This one should work,” the worker handed over a new fob, this time, a small piece of tape was around it. The word putative in quotation marks was written on. The clock read 4:12 am.

The door opened and small room appeared before them. The bed wasn’t crisp nor was the carpet cleaned, but at least Fren could lay down and vegetate. He placed his face down into the pillow, and thought about how ridiculous this trip had been. How he could not stand Anj anymore. Sure, did he love her, but that wasn’t the point. He wanted his own time. After laying down for some time, he stumbled into the small bathroom with his phone, placed the toilet seat down, and began scrolling through reddit.

When he entered the room again, hoping to see his girlfriend laying on the bed, he was met with surprise. She wasn’t in the room. He texted her. No response. He called her. No response. He sat down on the bed and tried to track her location but it said that she was still on the road, the app hadn’t updated in a couple of hours. Fren he fell asleep, right then and there due to his exhaustion. It was 4:59 am.

When he awoke, Anj was sleeping right beside him. This brought warmth over him and he forgot about last night, extending an arm over her.

***

As they tossed their slim suitcases back into the trunk of the Toyota, Fren asked Anj what was today’s itinerary.

“Well, today I have us going to Canyonlands national park. It will be a 6 hour drive to our motel.”

Fren started the car and faced the road again, this time the pink tint of sunrise splayed on the western scene. His iPhones automated navigational voice directed the couple to be on the interstate for the next 80 miles before, then, staying on the same interstate.

At a gas station, as Anj was filling the car with gas, Fren waked into the stalls of the mens bathroom. There was a stench that reminded him of his home town in Pennsylvania but he couldn’t quite pin it. He set down the toilet seat and covered it with thin, essentially transparent toilet paper and opened his phone back to Reddit.

He had subscribed to voyeuristic thread years ago and as he was scrolling it popped up. It reminded him of Anj. The first couple of posts were sexual in nature, nothing to graphic but what he expected from his previous experience on the thread. He scrolled a little more down and found another picture of a man and woman in a lobby.

The lobby he immediately recognized the clock on the wall and the aimless expression of the woman in the photo. There were more attached pictures.

The next one was of the road he and anj had been driving on the past couple of days, from the point of view of a driver. A Toyota appeared in a little further down the road in the picture. Their Toyota.

The next picture was of the menu of the gas station restaurant, advertising breakfast burritos, hots dogs and coffee. The next picture was of Anj and him filling their car with gas. The next picture was of them entering the motel lobby. The next picture was of Anj looking into a window. She was smiling. The next picture was of Fren scrolling on his phone in the motel bathroom, last night (earlier this morning, he thought).

He stepped out and met Anj by the pump. She payed and gave him a smile and told him that he needs to open himself up, not be so closed off. “We’re in the west, Fren.”