Mother Road
Spring/Summer 2021 - EM MAGAZINE
I cannot seem to figure out how to floor it in pumps. I keep a sensible boot on the passenger side for here to there.
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In the critically acclaimed 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, transgender woman Bernadette Bassenger and drag queens Mitzi Del Bra and Felicia Jollygoodfellow traverse the Australian terrain in their tour bus dubbed “Pricilla,” slowly making their way to a summer gig. Though Bernadette is hesitant when Mitzi first suggests the all-queens road trip, Felicia convinces her, explaining the magic awaiting them in the desert.
“Ever since I was a lad, I’ve had this dream...to travel to the center of Australia, climb Kings Canyon (as a queen) in a full-length Gaultier sequin, heels, and a tiara,” Felicia confidently enumerates. “Great. That’s just what this country needs. A cock in a frock on a rock,” Bernadette slickly replies.
Though Bernadette cannot yet comprehend this unusual desire, she and the men load the bus and head into unknown territory. Once Mitzi takes Pricilla off-road, the queens slowly explore their new environment.
Purposefully wandering, Bernadette hikes through unmarked canyons and up disparate paths, eventually reaching a cliffside. She stands in white linens, the entire world below her. Meanwhile, Mitzi rehearses the group’s signature number “I Will Survive,” bumping and weaving her way through the desert. The red-hot sun beating down, she stands — in the middle of nowhere — center stage. And floating angelically above Pricilla as she races down the unpaved road, Felicia, enveloped in silver lamé, soars across the setting sun. Mitzi drives fast. She does not speed.
Through these surreal, disillusioning moments, Bernadette and the queens reconnect with themselves, entranced by the heat or the landscape or maybe just the feeling of the breeze in their Gaultier.
The first time I drove in drag, I sported a pink headscarf, square sunglasses, and Kiss press-on nails. Overdressed, I sped down San Fernando freeways, shuffling through my “Ladies of the ’80s” playlist, headed straight towards “The Point of No Return.”
Though there is power in pedal to the metal, stoplights are always the most exciting.
With a gentle sway, the car slows to stop, my foot resting but ready. I look to my left to see a trucker staring down at me from his elevated seat. I grip the wheel— not in fear, but in fantasy.
My fingers dance on the window’s sharp edge as I roll my neck in thought of Thelma and her words for Louise. Something's crossed over in me and I can't go back. I mean I just couldn't live. My head thumps and my palms sweat. At A and B, I am “Sam” But for the time in-between, for the journey, I am whoever I damn well please.
I turn my gaze to my rearview mirror, then back to the road. To the trucker, then the road again. Green. I floor it.
My drag character, then in its infancy, is inspired by the freedom inherent in those moments of transition. And though I knew I unlocked a well of power, I did not yet understand the depth of that well. But I was certain I had to take advantage of the moment as Felicia, Mitzi, and Bernadette do so fervently as they traipse across the Outback.
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Joni Mitchell sings of a sudden “Urge for Going,” a yearning for “California” where everything is warmer. Sorrowful, she recounts her travels east and west and east again — “All I Want.” I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, looking for something, what can it be? 20 years before Joni sang, my grandparents made their cross-country trips from New York and Nebraska. They settled in Los Angeles. In the city, then the suburbs.
Sitting together in their modest San Fernando home, they reminisce about gas prices and ice cream flavors as their children and grandchildren grow and go. Orange light glows from the family room and memory floods in. She recalls the feeling of the wheel in her hands, Hollywood Boulevard stretched before her. He remembers the friends, long since passed, who helped him make the journey there.
I have never driven cross-country. I have never known a map, a destination, the open road, “yes, Mom, I’ll call when I get there!” Yet Joni’s lyrics tug me toward my keys and my ignition.
Empty Halls and beveled mirrors. Sailing seas and climbing banyans. Come out for a visit here, to be a lady of the canyon.
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Route 66, one of America’s oldest cross-country highways, was established in 1926. Stretching 2,400 miles from Chicago to L.A, the road served as an essential means of escape for those living in the Great Depression Dust Bowl. Since then, the “Mother Road” has come to represent more than a journey west.
“66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land,” John Steinbeck writes in his 1939 opus The Grapes of Wrath. “From the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these, the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads...66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”
In its height, Route 66 afforded the daring traveler the chance to reach higher ground. A symbol of hope, it was the highway of social mobility, connecting rural communities to prosperous urban hubs in a veiny web. Though now largely obsolete, a way to simply— as Nat King Cole sings— “get your kicks,” 66 has secured its legacy as a historic channel of opportunity.
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In her essay, “Born to Take the Highway: Women, the Automobile, and Rock ’n’ Roll,” Chris Lezotte explores the car and the road as feminist symbols of liberation and independence. Referencing Joni specifically, Lezotte argues the automobile is essential for women’s self-discovery, mobility, and free will.
“Mitchell reconfigures the road, typically male territory, for the female traveler. She imagines it as a site for the possibilities of women’s newfound liberation, as well as a location for the loneliness that accompanies that freedom,” Lezotte writes. “The car on the road offers Mitchell sanctuary; it is a temporary respite from everyday responsibilities and a quiet place for reflection...a mobile ‘room of her own.’”
Tension mounts when a lone woman faces the road, miles standing between her and her destination — something waiting on the other side — self-deliverance. Pray for her.
Of a different dimension, I think of “The Hitch-Hiker.” Ahead of me stretch 1000 miles of empty...Somewhere among them, he's waiting for me. Somewhere I'll find out who he is...what he wants. But just now, for the first time...I think I know.
If she gets lost along the way, may she find her way back to Mother Road who will carry her to safety again.
If Mother cannot save her, may she find peace as she drifts along this Route.
As hopeful travelers pass through this land, may they feel her presence beside them as they, too, face plentiful nothingness.
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My heart beats along to the rhythm of the road, my car’s belly gliding above fresh pavement. Hot wind sweeps across my browbone. There is a gentle roar beneath my feet. It shoots through me, sitting heavy in my stomach then warming my chest. I feel it fill my lungs.
The in-between is mystical, hypnotic, alive. Shutting the car door on one life, you decide how fast you go to reach the other. How fast is too fast?
I named my FIRST DRAG PERSONA Joni 66 after Mother Road and her favorite traveler. Haunting and desolate, She provides for the lonely wanderer and sustains the tired soul, those lost and weary, drifting from here to there, dreaming of abundance.
You wake me up, you say it's time to ride. In the dead of night. Strange canyon road, strange look in your eyes...You say, “go fast,” I say “Hold on tight.”
—Orville Peck, “Dead of Night”
I am infatuated with finding those precious moments when the world feels completely open and I can breathe along to its natural refrain. Who can I be as I prepare to leave — just before I arrive?
In my periphery, hills woosh by. But just ahead, they wait for me.
Notes
This essay references lyrics from the following songs:
Exposé. “Point of No Return.” Exposure, Arista Records, 1985.
Joni Mitchell. “California.” Blue, A&M Records, 1971.
Joni Mitchell. “Urge for Going.” Blue, A&M Records, 1971.
Joni Mitchell. “All I Want.” Blue, A&M Records, 1971.
Joni Mitchell. “Ladies of the Canyon.” Ladies of the Canyon, A&M Records, 1970.
Nat King Cole. “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.” Capitol Records, 1946.
Peck, Orville. “Dead of Night.” Pony, Sub Pop, 2019.