COACHELLA

Little Ms. Beautiful Person

There is a place of unspeakable beauty and magic that rises from the hallowed grounds of the Empire Polo Club in California’s Indio Valley. It is a place where the Kardashians’ kulture klub exists alongside yours and mine, if only for a few fleeting days each year. Hot, arid days soften into crisp, dark nights, punctuated by a smattering of desert stars, the glow of one hundred thousand iphone 11s, and the incessant throb of Childish Gambino. At least in 2019.

Back in 2007 things were different. There was no $9,500 Shikar-style yurt for 2, complete with air-conditioning and late-night snacks. But there was a fully refurbished VW pop-top camper van, with some bags of chips acquired from a nearby quickie mart, and a semi-private loft where you could grind your jaw one final time before drifting off above your brother-in-law and his new girlfriend. It was going to be mint.

That was the year Rage Against the Machine had the main stage and some guy named Tiesto played so loudly in a little tent that I’m sure your hearing aid days were accelerated ten-fold. You may recall we were blessed with a pharmacological bounty earned by your 10 months of hard labor growing baby Kaj, and ensuing months of general anxiety, depression and dissociation with your identity. You know, the joys of new motherhood. But you were generous and happy to give us all the tools we’d need to just. relax.

So relax we did. We rolled into the parking lot on a dry, sunny Friday afternoon. The air had that desert clarity where everything is so sharp and so defined that in my mind’s eye I can still see the oohing and aahing admiration at our impeccable ‘70s ride. We enjoyed the sleep of kings on 2 inch wool-covered foam platforms and woke to take our Little Ms. Sunshine for a spin into town, for what reason I can’t remember.

I believe it was on the highway when the van dropped its transmission, or whatever it’s called, and it simply became impossible to shift. We coasted into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn and sat on the curb, waiting for Hertz to deliver us a vehicle. We abandoned the pop-top in the back row to await her renovator and owner.

Our return to Coachella, still in desert-clear air, was shrouded in the mocking, judgmental gaze of all who had arrived by any means necessary except our own. We were the only mini-van in sight. I’m pretty sure that’s when we agreed 5 Xanax made an excellent dinner and out we skipped for a night of revelry. David and I returned many hours later to find you had turned down the van for us--back seats flattened so we could stretch out in the trunk while you made due on a reclined front seat. We were homeward bound the following afternoon.

Of that weekend I recall so few specifics and one predominant generalization: we had a great time. Even the bad parts were hilarious and ironic and we knew it would all, someday, make a great story. I remember liking you and thinking I would have wanted to be there with you regardless of David and Michael. In between the extended moments of idiocy we had real conversations as the sun was setting and the night preparing to begin.

These days (and years) our great, stupid adventures have gotten fewer and farther apart but I still like you, and I’d still want to be with you regardless of David and Michael. How lucky I got when I picked up a new family that you were already there, and I got to have you, too. May the next decades (because that’s how you measure time now that you’re 50) be filled with a few bad ideas well executed and many more good discussions in a camper or other suitable stand-in.

All my love on your fiftieth birthday, and every day.

- LIZ THORPE, NEW ORLEANS