Rainbow, 1997

We had been driving for days through the summer heat, the little truck rattling along the broken interstate across the heart of the country.

It felt more like the asshole when we stopped in the small towns, all filled with Pentecostals and other life forms afflicted with a virulent strain of fundamentalist thinkers.

Sometimes I was glad people thought we were sisters. I suspect some of them would have had a whole different way of talking to us had they known we were lovers.

We were long haired women in their 40's, scruffy looking hippie dykes who had Seattle Grunge written all over us, driving back to the urban hipster neighborhood we lived in on Capitol Hill, along with all the rest of the junkies, punks, handsome gay boys and general queer crowd.

The storm was huge on the horizon, a towering pile of clouds and sideways lighting that roared along nearly parallel with us as we approached the long flat stretches of land between Bismark and Boise. It felt like we were pushing it along with us for an hour or so, then we drove through the edge of it.

The blacktop was steaming from the rain, the ground around us gulping down the newly fallen rain. We pulled over to the side of the road as the sun was setting and stared at the double rainbow, staring at the wide open plains and the big dark sky making those rainbows.

It's been a long time since I drove across the country. Now, with gas about to shoot up to four or five bucks a gallon, it's going to be too expensive to run off and have long distance adventures.

Maybe things will change and we'll finally be able to convince our stupid government that the money pissed away on airports and wars of choice and the big town killing clot of highways should go to high speed rail.

I hope they do, but I get the feeling that what I ask them for doesn't mean shit to them.