As I lock the door to my apartment, the key I’m left with now unlocks both my home and my car. Today I begin living in my car. I’m ready. More than anything, I’m ready.

After four months of false starts, it’s time to get into my car, his name is Tyler, and drive out of the parking lot. Everything I’ll need for the next few months is with me; everything else in storage. It’s a typical Arizona day: sunny, bright, warm. It’s April twenty-fifth, a Monday. I’m leaving my life in Tempe, directly outside of Phoenix. Today the main artery north out of Phoenix, I-17, reopened, and I go to it. I have a full tank of gas, cooler full with ice, sun high in the sky, short-shadow style. It’s early morning and I can use this day to get far enough from Phoenix to feel like I’ve left and to officially begin living in my car.

It’s in the seventies today; blue cloudless sky emanates above. I’m driving away north in my Chevy Prizm with the New York plate; I am from Mississippi. A boy from Mississippi starts a road trip in Arizona with a car from New York; and so begins.

Months ago, in December, I started planning in Tempe, Arizona. I was constantly working and paying down credit cards and bills and waiting. Before that, I’d been living in Buffalo, New York waiting for a boy, the one I moved there for, to come to Arizona with me.

A friend from Buffalo was planning to drive back from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She knew I was in Tempe and I knew she was there and her semester at college was over. She asked if I wanted to take a week off and share driving duties back to Buffalo. It would give me a chance to know what I and this boy could be, if anything, and I had another good friend to stay with in Buffalo and it was cold and far and good for my mind. I couldn’t wonder any more if Brad and I could work out and when he would come and I was going to find out. I bought a return ticket home to Phoenix and he said he’d take me to the airport.

Katie came down to pick me up and we stayed a night at my apartment. The next day, we woke up early and drove back north to I-40. The most direct way to get from Phoenix to Flagstaff by highway is I-17. Treacherous, windy, overheater of cars (swift elevation) - I fucking hate this road. We drove up and were there within two hours. We each had our stash of CDs, and she had started the driving. We got gas in Flagstaff, and it’s always a full thirty degrees cooler up there, like today, this December day, and I was already feeling like I hadn’t packed enough layers of clothes. We got our coffees, creamed well, and conversation was easy we were singing songs and enjoying the ride. I started to get flights of whimsy and pulled out my book and started writing. I wrote about the girls Brad had probably met while I was waiting for him (he was straight aside from me) and how I would be flying over his town, both to and away from him, and by then we were getting close to New Mexico.

I don’t know when my obsession with New Mexico started, I think way deep down the answer is always, but I’d just driven across here in August without stopping and now it was cold and December and I was driving through again –I couldn’t believe it- without stopping. I think if I had just gotten it out, walked around in the mountains, snapped a few pictures, and hiked a short trail- I would’ve been satisfied. But Katie needed to get back and wanted to keep pace and we switched seats in Albuquerque. I was now controlling the race out of this state with crystal magnets and ufology. In seconds, I’d already invested some emotion in the state and I wanted to stay and think and wonder for a little while. This is what sparked all the times I wanted to stop for the rest of the trip from Arizona to New York.

I got us through most of New Mexico, then Katie drove maniacally in the night until we stopped somewhere in Texas to sleep. I dragged myself to some bed. The next day, we would have to drive straight through to Buffalo. I tried to sleep extra hard for the sleep I’d miss the next night.

We woke up early again and Katie drove us through Oklahoma and we switched on and off throughout that state and Arkansas, until I took over outside Little Rock because I was from this part of the country and we were driving to Memphis to have dinner with my Grandmother. In Arkansas somewhere, there was a gas station with coffee for a dime, so I got one and they had flavored creamer and natural sugar and it was one of the Top Five coffees I’ve ever had. I called Brad and told him where we were and that we’d be there the next day. I could already here it being over in his voice and in my heart and I hung up and cried in the bathroom before I went back out to the car. By this time, I had been with Brad for two years. I was only twenty, and I’d been in a relationship for two years.

I met Brad when I was in Cleveland doing an internship for school and he drove three hours to see me and our first date was so anxious and clumsy and loaded. We met under the pretense of sex; we met on a sex line. I’d never even seen a picture of him but he sounded cute and had the most heartbreaking chuckle. You never know on those services who you’ll wind up getting, but I really lucked out with him. I was alone in this house that wasn’t mine near Cleveland with a newspaper filled with ads and I called and got the free trial, and eventually got to Brad.

We met at Borders across the street from where I lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He got hot chocolate. He was reading a big picture book when I got there, and I walked by him at first, not expecting this six-foot-four football player guy but we was wearing what he said he’d worn and that was him and I walked up to him in this horrible outfit and new shoes and told him I was Jeremy, hello. This was around Christmas 2002. I finished my year of college in Bennington, Vermont then moved in with him in September 2003, after I got back from working at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We’d both started to love each other in those months.

Now it was Christmas 2004, so two years later, and I was here calling him from Arkansas and crying because we weren’t going to work any more. We had learned as much as we were going to learn and our transference was over and I’d felt every emotion in every combination and we’d dealt with all of each other’s fluids and moods and phases; presently we were ending. I learned so much about how to love someone with him, he was so fucking patient with me, and I got over so many of my issues. He took a lot of my shit and all he ever did was love me. Being the Southerner I am and because of everything –being with a boy, loving someone for the first time, far from my birthplace- I felt tremendous worthlessness. I was jealous and cruel and petty for so much of the time I lived with Brad. I wasted entire days being mad and making up scenarios that were totally unfeasible and plotting how to catch things that never happened. But I never will again; or, I don’t want to. I can’t believe some of the things I did in Buffalo- so unfounded, spiteful, and psychotic, and all he ever did was love me.

So I got back in the car and drove us to Memphis and we stopped and my Gramma had two pizzas waiting for us and we ate and I hugged her but we were on the war path to get back to New York. Katie drove to Louisville until it was dark, and I started to nod off during this whole part, but then she got sleepy too, so I drove us to Cleveland.

We stopped in Cincinnati and I peed on the side of a gas station because their bathroom was out of order and then went in and got something fizzy from carbonation. We wondered if it would snow further north because geography was really letting us know we were headed to wintry places; this was mid-December. When we got to Cleveland, about three hours from Buffalo -the drive Brad had made for me months earlier- it was twilight turning to dawn and Katie woke up and our stomachs were both butterflies everywhere, but for different reasons. She was about to be home after months away at school, and I was close to Brad again. Neither of us slept until we got there, which was about six in the morning, and I went up to Sarah’s door and it was unlocked so I opened it and laid down on the couch and woke up a few hours later when I heard her moving around. We hadn’t seen each other since August, so we had a lot of catching up, and we’d been through a lot together when I lived in Buffalo.

We talked for a long while, and then I started wondering about Brad. I called and he said we’d meet at a restaurant and Sarah’s Mom was headed into town so she dropped me off and I stood outside, looking very much the same as when I’d lived there. Same jacket, same haircut, aged barely.

I saw his car swirling through frozen winter shit and sludge and then he was there in front of me and I was already feeling little pieces of myself break off. He looked the same too, like the day I woke up and drove away and was crying so violently because I instantly missed him that I had to pull over and let myself heave back to Strong Again before I could even drive any more. He sent me text messages saying how he didn’t know how he’d function without me and missed me already and seeing my empty room was too much and we were both crying and missed each other, but I really thought he’d be right behind me, making the same trip to Arizona and would be there in a month.

So here we were, the end of December, me feeling like I’d make the biggest mistake of my life by running away from someone who loved me so much and holding all my youth and energy and tears in when he walked up. We hugged before we even said anything, but I started crying as soon as we sat down at the restaurant and didn’t even know what time it was or how long we’d been there.

The reason he hadn’t come to Arizona with me was because of a car accident he’d had a few years earlier. The other guy never settled and it was Brad’s fault and now the case was being reopened. He had to stay in Buffalo to go to court. He told me how he’d had his car loaded and the living room emptied and then this happened and he didn’t know when it would be over but he still loved me so much, and to come back. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to live in Buffalo again. I’d moved there for him once and couldn’t do again. He’d gone to school in Tucson and knew how Arizona was and had wanted to move back and this was such a good opportunity for us to be Us instead of Brad in Buffalo and Jeremy in Tempe.

By this time, we’d been living on opposite coasts for five months. It had been too long. The relationship had begun to disintegrate around the three-month mark, but now, after five, we were down to a few phone calls a week. I still couldn’t look at other guys. I was loyal to him the entire time we were apart. But he didn’t know how much longer the court stuff and the case would drag on and we agreed to see where we were in our respective lives when it was all over, but I knew he couldn’t go back to living with me again, as monstrous and uncompromising and unpleasant as I had been. He was right, too. I probably would’ve fallen into my old pattern of being unreasonable and unruly and I hated myself like that and so did he.

He dropped me off at Sarah’s door and no one was there so it was alright for us to kiss each other bye. Bye until we figured out we should’ve ended it instead of dragging it on for months, and he leaned forward and I gave him my cheek. His big lips pressed against me one of the sweetest kisses I’ve received. I still have the sense memory in my skin, on my body map, of how it felt. I can’t believe I turned and gave him cheek. I still cry to think about our last kiss, one I didn’t even take. We would call each other for a few more months after this, and eventually stop calling altogether and it would be a hugely anticlimactic end to a long, raw, and impactful relationship full of lessons. We would never go back. He’d be taking me to the airport in a few days.

I spent those days at Sarah’s, riding around Buffalo and calling people I knew and going to parties. Being there was good for me. I think I’d already cried as much as I was going to, and there’s only so much you can feel bad over something. Still, I was a long way from being over it.

Then Brad was there again to take me to the airport. I was pretty much dry and was able to amiably tell him thank you and bye and he dropped me off, I hugged him, and walked out of his life. I walked away from the most loving relationship I’ve had up to now. And then, I was flying away. On the plane, I started thinking about New Mexico again. I thought about all the places I wanted to walk around and how incredible such a drive could’ve been if we’d taken more blue highways and less interstate, talked to locals, sat for a while, looked at things for the first time instead of passing them by. My tongue lolling in my mouth, the idea started to surface. Then the idea came out whole. I was to do a photography project. I was to make the drive again, taking as long as I wanted, seeing everything I’d wanted to see. Even the project title came attached: Left On Red. I landed back in Phoenix. The next day, I started planning how to do it.

Originally, it was going to take three months. I was to drive to New York again, then all over the contiguous U.S., then to Canada, then to the Arctic through Alaska. It got bigger and bigger and more ambitious. No matter where I ended up going, I knew it would take a fucking lot of money. I thought I could really do an entire continent in three months. I started planning out each day, all the logistics, all the things I would need. I knew I’d need tons of pre-packaged, non-perishable food, a couple thousand in gas money to start, and cameras. I’d need a strict route and I would see all the places I’d always thought about seeing in North America. I’d visit all my old friends and sleep in my car and in my tent and then I would come back and it would be done.

I wiled the time opening a savings account, working overtime by taking every extra shift I could, to the point of obsession. I was saving everything, I bought nothing new, and if I did, it was for the trip. I started talking about it. I told my Mom about it, told people what I was working extra for. I thought about corporate sponsorship, and even wrote a few companies, but no one was taking any of it. No one contributed anything to help me. Early on, I knew I was alone in this, and it scared me for a while. It felt like I wasn’t saving anything, making anything, and each time some shit came up, more bills, something I had to expend on, I got down on myself and wondered why I was doing this but I’d already talked about it for so long and felt like I couldn’t go back on all the talk. I still really wanted to do this.

Planning everything amorously distracted me from how lonely I was and how much I was missing little things about Brad for a long time. For nearly a year after we broke up, I still couldn’t bring myself to look at anyone in a checking ‘im out kinda way. I didn’t go out on any dates. I didn’t hook up. I didn’t go to any clubs. I was twenty years old and was too heartbroken to socialize normally. I spent all my time thinking about this gigantic photography project I wanted to do and every minute logistical detail with zealous extremity.

I applied for some project grants, but didn’t get them because no one knew who the fuck I was and I’d never done or written anything and it was too all-encompassing for anyone to really get behind it the way I was. The plan was overly ornate and I should’ve kept it simpler, but I really wanted to go all out on the details. People told me this had been done millions of times, people were doing it every day, and all I was doing was point-and-click photography with unspectacular cameras anyway. I still didn’t care. I projected a date to leave, sometime in mid-March.

Everything was really picking up. I had food stockpiled in my closet. I bought a tent. I bought extra oil and fluids for my car. I prepaid my car note and insurance and sub-leased my apartment. I had a little money in checking and savings accounts, my credit cards were paid down a bit, and I managed to save some cash for incidentals. It wasn’t much though. I had maybe a thousand dollars. I was ready to go regardless of everything.

On March tenth, right before I was planning to leave, my friend Jake and I were heading out to eat at a Thai restaurant in Chandler, Arizona and it fucking happened. The exact thing I did not need. A lady in a big blue Dodge SUV made an unsafe left turn in front of us and we wrecked. I was the passenger and it hit more on my side and the car was crushed and smoking. My face was burning and my neck wouldn’t turn but we were mostly alright and I just remember seeing the smoke all around and fucking running, fast as I could. I ran to a shopping center and before I knew anything, there were cops and firefighters all around me, holding me up and giving me tons of napkins that I bloodied and asking me where I was hurting and looking at the bruises on my stomach from the seatbelt and treating me like the more injured one and I hadn’t seen how I looked yet. I knew my right eye was going to close and I was spitting and bleeding and trying to just move but they kept holding me down and told me to wait, that an ambulance was coming. I managed to be in a state of shock until I called my Mom. When I heard her, I totally lost it and started crying and screaming how we were in a wreck and there was blood from my face all over my shirt and an ambulance was coming to get me in a few minutes. I hung up after that and I can’t even imagine what she was thinking after getting a call like that.

I was discharged after several hours in the ER. They cleaned up my nose and cheek and tested my vision and hearing and my ears were still ringing from the generic metal thud and histrionics. I remember waking up the next day, my right eye totally shut and thinking about how long I’d be out –from everything.

I started physical therapy two days later, a Monday, with a chiropractor who ended up being wonderful and I could talk to her and I came away from the experience feeling more built up than ever. She told me I had torn muscles in my neck and back and it would never be the same, and I would need at least three months of physical therapy. But I could not wait that long. My health and recovery became the foremost thing in my mind. I cut out all the shit I’d been eating, no sugar, tons of fruit and vitamins, and I spent half the day just sleeping and washing the burns and cuts and keeping antibacterial ointment on all the red. My back was coming along swimmingly as well. I revealed my project to Susan the Chiro, and sped up my recovery to one month, mostly because of her faith in me.

By this time I had recouped the lost pay and saved up a little more and after the holdup I was raring to get the hell out of Arizona. I set the date to leave to April twenty-fourth. So it was. I was finally doing what I had spent, by that time, five months planning.

It was finally going to happen. The whole trip. All the plans were becoming real. I was finally leaving to do the project I called Left On Red.

So on the morning of April twenty-fourth, I was ready. Psychically and physically ready. Everything I considered vital was already in my car; everything else went to storage, which I pre-paid for three months. I woke up really early so I could get in a full first day. I’d already said my farewells and gotten my advice and put my money where it needed to be. The film was loaded, all the food I bought was in the trunk.

I set my car up to be a little house. In the front passenger side, I kept my basic soap, toothbrush, razor and shaving cream Product Backpack, food for a few days, vitamins, extra film, computer (Randall), the digital camera, the manual camera (Asher), and some disposable cameras. The entire backseat was totally empty and I laid out a sleeping bag and some blankets and four big pillows for sleeping back there at night. In the trunk, I put extra food and since it was summer, sixteen short-sleeved shirts, several undershirts, about seven pairs of jeans, four pairs of shorts, lots of socks, and lots of underwear. I arranged it all around an overly-large cooler that held liquid meals, water, sports drinks, and fruit juice. I kept my extra extra film back there and some backup toiletries for when I ran out of what was in the Product Backpack. Behind the seats, stowed extra water and my tent and flashlight and a few books. The books aren’t worth mentioning because I ended up reading not one of those fucking books the entire time, although I did read a bit of Alice A. Bailey’s “Ponder on This” which gave my mind somewhere to be when I really needed it. I was thankful for that book a few times. But I didn’t come close to finishing it.

After planning where everything would go and thinking it all and building up to this day I’d set for myself, I was just ready. I woke up with such a feeling of finally. I’d arranged the leave of absence from work and studied the maps over and over and I knew exactly how I was getting out of Phoenix. My friend Jake stayed over the night before I was to leave. We were getting pretty close by this time, and he was my best friend out in Phoenix. And so he wanted to see me off.

We woke up; I showered for what might be the last time for a few days. I took my key off the key ring and set it on the counter and thought I’d check emails again before I left and check the traffic report because morning can be a tough time out of Phoenix, especially the way I wanted to go on Loop 202 to I-10 to I-17, right through the central part of the City. The traffic report loads. You have got to be fucking kidding me. I-17 is closed. What the fuck. A plane had to make an emergency landing on the interstate and the road is busted and will be passable tomorrow morning. But today it is closed.

I start to think of other ways to get out of Arizona. But mostly I just want to be out of Arizona. I’d been there for a year and I just wanted to be away. I also really wanted to go back to Sedona this day. And besides really twisty blue highways on steep mountains, I-17, the main artery north out of Phoenix, was closed. I decide to wait one more day for it to reopen. One more day.

After this, I spend the rest of Sunday looking at maps, reading other people’s travelogues, and re-preparing myself mentally all over again. Jake stays over again and we drive around Tempe one last time and walk around downtown one last time and I feel the air on my face. The warm, dry desert air in Springtime.

Objects look different in the desert. Everything is less primary, more pastel, fuzzier, less defined. The clearest I’ve ever seen with my eyes has been, to now, in Vermont. The cool, humid air makes puddles deeper and earth brighter and green mountains greener. The desert is calm. My mind felt collected and assembled in Phoenix. I painted a lot there and wrote some really amazing song-poems and read and thought about what I would do next. I was able to smoothly execute the details of my project. The calm there made me feel bombastic and able.

I think about the places in Phoenix I really liked, like First Friday, when all the art galleries downtown opened up and people were all walking around and playing concerts and looking at other people. I think I only missed one the whole time I was there. I think about the people I met there, and how Phoenix changed me from how I was before. I became a little surer of myself, more humble, better with time and money management, I learned some new driving and art tricks, and I really learned how to take care of myself and help out my friends without feeling as desperate as before.

I know I’ll never live in Phoenix or Arizona or the desert Southwest ever again. I can’t say I never will about anything, but something tells me it’s true. This is my last night being a resident of Maricopa County, Arizona.

I come to terms with all this and night comes and the temperature drops and I really feel it simmering now. Inside me.

I lay down on my bare mattress that I’m leaving behind for the last time. I pull the comforter over me, the one I’ll lay down in my car’s back seat tomorrow morning, with the others. I set the alarm on my phone- the only one I have now. My room is empty. The paintings are all in storage. There is nothing on the walls, and my movements make Empty Room sounds instead of the cushioned sound I’m used to. There is no food in the fridge. Nothing in the cabinets. I don’t live here any more. I fall asleep.