Lactose Tolerance

My cave in the desert.
The weeks leading up to Distant Heat, I had wondered how I would manage to stay up the entire night without the help of much alcohol (being that I had to stay coherent enough to take photos and remember the event well enough to write about it), but after 3 days in the desert with M. I had all the incentive I needed. In fact, I was pretty damn sure I could have stayed up for 3 days straight if necessary.

In the past few days, I had learned way too much about the properties of camel milk (a Bedouin aphrodisiac, in case you find yourself in a situation where someone offers it to you) and M. had also disclosed to me intimate details about various down and dirty adventures in the desert that he had had with other women who had found themselves alone with him in the desert. It was if he was interviewing and providing me with examples that could showcase his virility and lovemaking skills.

Fortunately, my demure-asian-thing was working.

“I think you have more of your mom in you, than your dad,” M. says to me as we’re bumping along through the desert.

You have no idea.

Images of my mom flash through my head: her with a hoe raised above her head killing a snake during a childhood camping trip; her chasing the neighborhood bullies down the street with a frying pan after they threw a rock at my sister; picking up spiders with her bare hands that would make most people faint; the murderous look she would give right before all hell broke loose…

“Really, what do you mean?” I ask lightly.

“Well, you’re not the kind of woman that is always after a man, and I’m not the kind of man that’s greedy for a woman.”

“Well,” I said in reply, “I am shy,” still playing Asian, “and besides I don’t get it, YOU’RE MARRIED!” I say with extreme emphasis.

“Oh..well,” he says with a slight shrug as if brushing off some sand from his clothing, “I’m celibate from my wife. She does her thing and I do mine. We have children together, but that’s it.”

Translation: I haven’t been laid in a year and I’ve been drinking camel milk on a daily basis. Holy fuck, thank god the festival is tonight.

“Ah, it’s a good thing you didn’t have any of the camel milk,” he says.

I turn my head and stare out the window at the passing desert scenery. I want to mouth “HELP ME” to the rocks and sagebrush—I can’t even imagine what the look on my face must have been.

Yup, he milked it on the spot.