Thursday, April 20, 2006
Shelter Shock
Whenever I mention that I live on Mount Charleston in Las Vegas, I get a long, low whistle of appreciation. The kind that stunningly beautiful women elicit from otherwise dumbstruck guys. The kind that says Man! Wish it were me.
I know people immediately assume I’m ensconced in one of those squillion-dollar chalets, perched atop some alpine bluff with floor to ceiling windows and a jaw-dropping view of the valley. What Heidi’s dream pad would be if the little minx had gone corporate, then cashed out before the market burst.
But I’m not.
Our house is really more medieval fortress than alpine chalet. A solid brick affair with small arched windows, it’s the perfect place to wait out the Apocalypse. My friend Jessica charitably calls it The Bunker.
And though we are on Mount Charleston, we’re nowhere near the top. Thirty-two hundred feet up, we’re still in the desert, surrounded by dirt, rocks, yucca, small horse farms and mobile homes. There are amazing views of the Spring and Sunrise Mountains out of all of our windows. But I’ve got to confess, that’s pretty much wasted on me. I’ve spent the last 15 years in New York City’s concrete jungle. I’m content with tree-lined streets and manicured parks bounded by high-rises. Rampant nature makes me nervous. As a kid at sleep-away camp, I always had a note from home that excused me from doing any actual camping. I still have nightmares about an ill-fated family excursion through Bryce, Zion, Yosemite and other parks west of the Hudson during which I suffered an acute bout of urban withdrawl and had to be rushed to San Francisco for smog and city life -- my own brand of methadone.
I’d warned my boyfriend Stewart early on -- back when he could still bolt if he chose -- that I was an indoor gal, an unlikely candidate for living in the middle of the desert, off a dirt road in a house with a well and tempermental utilities. So what am I doing here? In a long-distance relationship eventually someone has to move. And given that I can write anywhere there’s an outlet and a phone jack -- and Nevada’s lower cost of living -- we decided it would be me. Eventually. Those conversations always involved some hazy, not-too-immediate future. I’d move . . . some day.
Truth was, although I love Stewart and couldn’t imagine life without him, I loved New York City too, and couldn’t imagine life beyond the Hudson. I wasn’t too eager to trade my fab Brooklyn apartment where everything I needed from mascara to movies to martinis was literally steps away, for an isolated mountain existence.
Then came 9/11. Four days after the twin towers fell, with gray ash still dusting the front steps of my apartment building, I decided that Eventually had become Immediately. Suddenly, nothing mattered except that Stewart and I were together. My city had become a target. And getting away from everything seemed like a grand idea. With a terse “I’m coming out,” I loaded my cats, laptop and a suitcase into a rental car and floored it out of town. Ninety-six hours later, I began my new life on Mount Charleston.
I know what they say about not looking a gift horse in the mouth. But I still do. Every day. Once the paralyzing terror dissipated and the nightmares faded . . . once a sense of normalcy returned, I wondered What have I gotten myself into?
I wasn’t the only one.
“You? Are living . . . where?” was the typically shocked response from my friends and family on the East Coast.
“Must be quite an adjustment for you, huh?” is the response from my new friends in the West.
Yes, quite.
An editor friend who knows my culinary prowess doesn’t extend beyond speed-dialing for Chinese takeout and hitting Reheat on the microwave predicted that living so far beyond delivery range, I’d probably starve. That hasn’t happened yet, but I have had to get used to some other quirks of mountain living.
For starters, there’s no here, here. The scattering of squatters trailers and horse paddocks in our immediate vicinity hardly constitutes a neighborhood. They say in New York you never know your neighbors. Forget that. In my media-saturated Brooklyn nabe, I couldn’t grab a cup of coffee at the Italian roasterie around the corner without bumping into half a dozen people I had at least a nodding aquaintance with: the onetime manager for the band Sugar Ray, a novelist friend from college, a former New Yorker editor now teaching at Sarah Lawrence, a theatre pal doing The Lion King on Broadway. Here . . . nothing. No neighbors. There’s not even a corner. And if I want coffee, it’s 15 minutes to the nearest Starbucks at Centennial Center. By car.
I always crack up when specialty grocery stores call to ask if I want their delivery service for fresh meats and vegetables. Someone’s going to deliver persishables? Yeah, right. I can’t even get my New York Times delivered!
Oh, Toto, we’re not in Brooklyn anymore. This is Jeep country. (Though I actually drive a Suzuki). At the Best Buy not too long ago, while getting a new CD player installed in my car, the pimply kid doing the installation asked me, “Doing some off-roading lately?”
“No . . . why?” I replied, puzzled. Do I look like the type that goes off-roading?
He looked at me. Then we both looked at my mud-splattered SUV. And I realized, in fact, that, Yes, I do go off-roading. Every day.
In New York, I could find any place so long as I had the cross-streets. So the whole “turn left at the third Joshua tree, go through the big wash and follow the groove carved in the dirt by numerous pickup trucks till you see the silver water tower” mode of pinpointing our house has required some getting used to. Not to mention a GPS tracker. The first time anyone drives out to visit, after reciting the litany of landmarks to watch for, I always add, “Call when you get lost. We’ll pilot you in.” Is it any wonder I can’t get home delivery of my New York Times?
No longer a simple question, What’s your address? is an enormous can of proverbial worms, involving more explanation than most people care about or have time for. So I try to qualify things. Are you coming to visit? Then hang a left at this succulent. Did I win $1 million from Publishers Clearinghouse? In that case, send the check to my PO Box. Technically, I suppose we do have a street address. I just never bothered to note the house number because I hardly needed it to pick out our lonely abode from the acres of yucca and Joshua trees that surround us. And because . . . because . . . Geez! Because there is no street.
Apart from the long-winded explanations, I got by fine not knowing our address. That is, until I got stopped for speeding one night not long after I’d moved in. The cop who nabbed me was surfer-dude blonde with massive shoulders and a Pepsodent smile. He looked like he spent his off hours bumping and grinding in the Chippendale corps. Typically, he wanted my license and registration. When my New York license didn’t match my Nevada plates, his next question, predictably, was, “What’s your address?”
Blink. Blink. I stared at him blankly. Utterly flustered. And not just because Officer Chippendale was disconcertingly buff.
“It’s complicated . . . ” I started babbling uncontrollably. “September 11 . . . recently moved . . . still have an apartment in New York . . . desert. . . no neighbors . . .”
Nervousness at being pulled over -- I haven’t gotten anything more than a parking ticket since my teens! -- was escalating into full-blown panic.
“I don’t know the house number . . . I could give you directions . . . I have a PO Box for mail . . . I know that address!”
I’m mortified that I don’t know my address. What 30something woman doesn’t know her own address? He’s going to think I’m nuts. Or a criminal. Criminals don’t have addresses, right? Or a terrorist. Ohmigod! That’s it, any second now he’s going to cuff me and haul me off to jail.
I’m talking, talking, talking. Trying to forestall my impending arrest. Trying to explain about the Joshua tree and the huge wash and the groove carved into the dirt and how you just follow the path till it disappears into the sagebrush, then look for the water tower in front of our house . . .
In my head, I’m screaming Shut up! Shut up! Shut! Up!
“I’ll call Stewart!” A last lifeline. I rummaged frantically through my bag for my cell phone. “He can tell you where we live.”
I clap a hand over my mouth. I’m an idiot. I realize this. I need to stop talking.
“No need,” says Officer Chippendale, calm as a Zen master.
Incredibly, he lets me go with an admonishing “Slow down!” And a big fat ticket, for doing 55 mph in a 35 mph zone. Guess even in my addled state, I managed to convince him I’m too wacky to be a danger to anyone but myself.
I start the car and make my way -- consciously slower this time -- back toward the mountain. Past the Joshua tree. Through the big wash. Following the groove in the road till I spot our silver water tower, gleaming in the moonlight. Finally, I’m home.
Just don’t ask me what the address is.
