This Red Rock

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

2

This Red Rock

MAGDALENA, according to the guidebook I picked up from

the library last spring, is an incorporated village in Socorro

County, New Mexico: perennially mild, of considerable

historic interest, and set at an elevation of 6,548 feet. It

marks the trail"s end of the old Socorro Magdalena railroad,

neighbors the abandoned mining town of Kelly, and, with a

population of 1,200, is most definitely the kind of place

where everyone knows each other. It"s also—as, again, I

worked out from the guidebook—the closest town to my

Uncle Frank"s ranch, and, therefore, the place I was making

for. That was the plan, anyway.

Not, please note, that it was actually
my
plan.
My
plan,

if I"d had my way, would have been to hang out lazy and free

around San Diego all summer, no doubt eschewing the

library in favor of the attractions of the beach, the parks,

and my friends in cosmopolitan downtown. San Diego is an

awesome
place to go to school, whoever you are, but when

you"re a guy who grew up as the lone homo in a small town

in Arizona, my
God
, but you appreciate it. I remember

driving out here with a few friends as a rising senior in high

school—we took a trip just before school started up,

checking out the colleges we were thinking about applying

to—and falling in love with the place the second we entered

the city limits. Where I come from, everything is red dirt and

dust. The idea of a city whose freeways were lined with

trees—well, they might as well have been paved with gold,

that"s all I"m saying. We scooted around town for a couple

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

3

hours in Jimmy Romero"s little convertible, I remember,

winding up, naturally, in the university district. I was half-

euphoric already, even before I caught sight of the shock-

haired waitress and the rainbow beaded band around her

wrist. After that, I was sold. The guys, of course, thought I

had a crush on the waitress; the waitress, on the other

hand, knew exactly what was going down, and winked at me

as we left. I guess you must see a lot of kids like I was then,

in those kooky little cafés downtown, wide-eyed and weirdly

liberated at their first glimpse of an actual, real-life,
out

person. Guess she recognized the way I was gaping at her,

not like I wanted her, but like I kind of wanted to
be
her.

I wanted to be her all the way back to Arizona. Hell, I

wanted it all the way through senior year. The thought of

being free to be unashamed like that—to pierce one ear and

dye my hair and hang out in coffee bars in red chucks,

discoursing on philosophy—was what got me through my

SATs and my college applications, and the hell that was AP

French. When I drove back to San Diego in my own little car

a year after that first time, I felt like I"d won something

monumental and indescribable. I was gonna make friends I

didn"t have to lie to; I was gonna
be
there in the Pride

parade. I was gonna lie around in the park on sunny days,

talking to sailors and reading Nietzsche and looking

educated and beautiful. San Diego was where I was gonna be

me.

I don"t have to tell you it didn"t exactly
pan out that way.

I mean, the dreams we dream about the big wide world never

do. But the things that were most important to me, the

essence
of what I wanted, I got, and it really was San Diego

that let me do that. I"m myself, when I"m there, dressing the

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

4

way I feel comfortable, hanging out with guys I genuinely

like, whom my mother would, no doubt, despise. In San

Diego, I can stretch in the sun and say honestly, “Yes,
this
is

the real Alex Arzano.” I"ve never really felt that, anywhere

else I"ve been.

You probably understand, then, why the idea of being

shipped off to the wilds of New Mexico didn"t exactly fill me

with joy.

Thing is, the Southwest is in my blood. Much as I hate

to admit it when I"m sitting cross-legged in some beat poetry

joint where the air is sweet with weed, that"s what we"ve been

since Grandfather Arzano stepped off the boat from Calabria:

Southwesterners. I was born under the shadow of that red

rock and, sitting there declaiming my T.S. Eliot, it was there

where my ghost strode behind me, where my fear showed in

a handful of dust. The Southwest is in me—
is
me—but it"s

my
past.
I didn"t want
to be stalked by the shadow of my

rural childhood.

And so, I argued: “Mama, can"t I just stay here?”

But she was adamant. “Alex, honey, Francesco is paying

your fees. The least you can do is help him out a little over

the summer. He doesn"t have any obligation to you, you

know. Any time he liked, he could cut off your money at the

source.”

And boy, if
that
didn"t sober me up real quick. Leaving

San Diego for a summer didn"t exactly appeal, but the idea of

having to leave it forever, disconsolate and without a degree,

was insupportable. If Magdalena for the summer meant San

Diego for the next two years, then dammit, I would just have

to trip out down to Magdalena. I"d seen the ranch a couple

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

5

times before as a kid; I knew it smelled like cows and shit

and was run almost entirely in Spanish. I was under no

illusions about it being an easy ride—my Uncle Frank has

never been the sort for that—but hell, it was still a better

deal than the potential alternative.

End of semester, I waved farewell to my buddies, slung

my crap into the trunk of my little Fiesta, and filled her up,

ready for a long, long drive.

Coulda been worse. At least I didn"t look Anglo.

TO MITIGATE my plight, I packed about half a trunk full of

Dylan CDs, all sonorous nasals and sentences swallowing

their own tails. “„Señor",” I crooned with him, into the wind,

“„señor, can you tell me where we"re heading? Lincoln County

Road or Armageddon?"” and I"d never quite seen the truth in

that beauty, before. I didn"t anticipate much comfort, the

way I was bound. I guess it made the long road just a little

shorter; to feel that there was somebody on it with me,

somebody who had been this way himself. Once, I even

thought I caught him singing just for me—“and I"ll pray for

Magdalena as we ride”—and the misconception warmed me

for a whole turn around the CD, before the track came round

again and I realized that Magdalena was only his girl, and he

was
playing
for her all the way to Durango. Well, I wasn"t

headed anywhere near Durango, and I sure as hell didn"t

have a girl. I liked my mishearing a whole lot better. In my

head, as I drove through the desert, the words were as I first

heard them, hopeful and apposite. Pray for me, señor. Pray

for us.

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

6

In New Mexico, things fall away. The farther I struck

toward the state line, the cleaner the roadside verges were,

the fewer the billboards stark against the sky. I always forget

just how much sky there
is
down there in the southwest,

until I drive back out there again and it"s all I can see. You

can go all day under its azure vastness, bright and fierce as

some strange water-metal, and then in the evening it"s like

it"s all erased and repainted, all massed red clouds gilt-edged

on a purple plain. I"m getting a little lyrical here, I know, but

New Mexico sky is something to be lyrical
about.
If I were

really a poet, I"d paint that sky in words.

It awed me, that great vista, as evening fell and my

peppy little car chugged on across the sun-dried earth to the

Magdalena Mountains. I guess I started to see some possible

benefits, in those last few hours of my sticky three-day drive,

of all this beauty for a hedonist like me. But as the ranch

finally swam into view, its stiff-poled fences and its disparate

cows amassed in sullen little clumps, I forgot whatever it was

that had started to move me. This would be a summer of

sweat and dirt and shit, resentment on my part and

irritation on Frank"s. As I turned onto the dirt track that led

me down to the house, my face was set, my mouth a little

down-turned. I am many things, but I"m sure as hell no

cowboy.

Frank was quite obviously of the same opinion. We"re

Italian, and that means we don"t hold with any of that “no

touching” crap other families pull with their sons and

nephews, so he pulled me toward him and hugged me hard

when he saw me, but I didn"t miss the flicker of doubt under

his smile as he pulled away. He was looking at my chucks,

pristine and alien in the dirt. “How are you,
grissino
?” he

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

7

asked, in his dark copper voice. He gave me that nickname

when I was a kid, when I was all height and no muscle. It

means, for want of a better definition, “bread stick.” I

couldn"t help hearing, in his use of it now, an undertone of

“think you can stick this?”

To be perfectly honest, I was far from sure myself. But

the last thing I wanted was for Frank to think badly of me.

He"s a tough guy, my Uncle Frank, but he"s a fair one, and

he was certainly a hell of a lot more judicious than my father

was when I came out in my freshman year of college. Given

that Dad is a businessman making the occasional commute

to a decent-sized city, and Frank is a rancher who never

leaves his home on the range, you"d have been forgiven for

expecting the opposite outcome. But as it was, my dad is still

coming to terms with things—although I know he will,

eventually—whereas Frank didn"t even seem to need time to

think. He just clapped me on the shoulder, ruffled my hair,

and said, “Cchhh, I knew that,
grissino
.” The fact that he

was so great about it was what made me particularly eager,

suddenly, to impress him, when I saw that doubt in his eyes.

He knew I was queer, and he didn"t give a damn, but he also,

I could tell, thought it meant I wouldn"t be up to much in the

way of ranch work.

“I"m great,” I told him, and suddenly, I meant it, or,

goddamn, I meant to mean it. I put on my best eager-beaver

smile, and tried to un-tilt the natural stance of my hips. I"m