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A year before she broke up with me, and eight months before she fell out of love with me, Reni asked if I wanted to visit Yellowstone National Park and I said “Um, sure, why not?” This came as a surprise, even to myself. I am lazy and sedentary by nature despite the fact that I complain I don’t have enough adventure. In college, leaving my bed to pee at three AM was such a chore I tried to sleep through it. When a CNN.com article suggested doing so leads to bladder cancer, I bought a large potted plant, simultaneously eliminating the need to stray further than two feet from my bed and allowing me to donate my unused nutrients to a good cause.

My mother works for Johnson & Johnson. This has turned her into a world traveler; she hands out Cleanpaste dental floss and Q-Tips to the poor or unhygenic and brings back kabuki fans from Tokyo, olivewood crucifixes from Tel Aviv, and most recently, from Mumbai, a marble, talismanic, S-shaped elephant penis, thinking it was a mortarless pestle. I much prefer the confines of America, where there is a significantly lower incidence of decapitation by extremists, gang mugging by gypsies, or the accidental acquisition of a bewitched phallus. When I told my mother as much, she sighed. “You sound exactly like your father.”

My father is an hypochondriacal psychotherapist for the criminally insane. He drives his Volvo C30 hatchback via backroads one half mile to the hospital, where he tries to fashion logic from the fantasies of the unrepentantly disturbed, which is one half mile from Bunicu’s Apothecary, where he purchases his weekly battery of ginseng, omega 3’s, vitamins and purifying bath oils, which is one half mile from the supermarket, where he gets frozen vegetables, orzo and Grape Nuts, which is one half mile from his home, where he can clean, clean, clean and sleep. On GoogleMaps, his daily travel route looks like an adorable flux capacitor. When I told him about my plans for Yellowstone, he sighed. “You are your mother’s son.”

Yellowstone seemed like a domestic adventure that would satisfy everyone, but instead I failed them both. Were they a happily married duo of either adventurers or recluses, they could have coordinated their disapproval of me and molded me into a disciple of whichever life paradigm they agreed on. Divorced, they tossed me back and forth like a lump of Play-Doh, each making shapes from me the other found obscene. When thrown back, they hacked away at the unsightly appendages I acquired that represented the values they despised in each other and I became something new entirely.

At least Reni was happy.

Yellowstone was her idea, as most of our excursions were. She hated that she was the one who made plans for us and that I just went along with whatever. If I had a great time, everything was cool, but if I happened to have a miserable time I would subconsciously blame it on her because she was the one who dragged me out from underneath my covers in the first place. It made me look childish and thoughtless. “Childish” I can accept, but thoughtless is a stretch. I have thoughts all the time. Exhilarating daydreams are the landscape, population, and stormy climate of my waking mind. I just space out when people talk about their family and job and hopes and dreams and stuff. I’m not thoughtless, I’m just irrevocably egomaniacal. Eight months later, Reni would make this perfectly clear to me. But that’s the next story.

In preparation for Yellowstone, I did some Internet research, which is the kind of follow-through I’m capable of since it easily segues into checking the latest celebrity gossip. The U.S. National Park Service webpage said:

Yellowstone! Wyoming, Montana & Idaho!

But when I GoogleMapped Yellowstone, I learned that Montana and Idaho are almost completely fraudulent partners in the Yellowstone National Park enterprise. The park is a green stamp placed on the upper left corner of Wyoming which overflows the state by a few miles north and west. Idaho is the more egregious offender, claiming only a few square miles of the western overlapping. I’m assuming Idaho just wants to be known for something besides potatoes, “I da ho!” shirts, and the fact that the whole state looks like a falling stock market report.

The website contained photography featuring elk, buffalo, and colorful hotsprings. These all seemed like impressive creations that I could brag about seeing first hand. Plus, starting a story with, “When I went to Yellowstone National Park…” would make me seem traveled and sexy despite the fact I used to urinate in my houseplants.

We arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah without incident. I say without incident because insane things that are rarely my fault tend to happen to me and it’s important to note that I did not have a run in with local authorities or angry Mormons. SLC is small and scary-clean. We took pictures of the Latter Day Saints HQ, bought some CDs, rented a car, and got the hell out of there.

Late Registration got us to the Utah/Idaho border (including multiple replays of Gold Digger and Diamonds From Sierra Leone Remix), Guerro got us to Pocatello, I-20 was almost entirely Demon Days, and Erin McKeown’s We Will Become Like Birds took us clear through the park and to the front door of our cabin. We arrived at sunset. The clouds were explosions of color. A huge elk walked by car. I bought a winter hat since I had packed poorly, we had dinner, and went to bed.

*****

Yellowstone is a truly magical place and I took 600 hundred pictures of animals and geysers and other subjects of unspeakable majesty. I show these to people now and they think I am well traveled and sexy. I had never been on a major trip with Reni before and we got along famously. We ate well, drank well, took our first horse ride together, hiked, photographed the feces of various creatures, woke up to the barking of bull elk, made love every day, and I did not murder any wildlife while disregarding park speed limits. Our final morning, I lazed nakedly under the covers and watched the foggy reflection of Reni get dressed through the cracked bathroom door. I was in love and surrounded by the most glorious of God’s creations. What could possibly go wrong?

I’d fallen asleep and when Reni ripped the sheets off of me. She was all packed. It was early, we had a plane to catch in Utah and we had planned to see Old Faithful erupt before we left. I’d slept through shower time and grudgingly put on clean clothes over yesterday’s skin, speed packed, got in the car and drove out the pearly gates.

An hour later, we passed by a huge lodge that looked way too much like the one in The Shining. This was the Old Faithful greeting center, full of Yellowstone memorabilia and park rules. I did not read them and we walked out to the geyser, scheduled to erupt in fifteen minutes.

A small crowd of late-season tourists began to meander into the amphitheater around the geyser; light rain misted around us. I closed my eyes, tilted my head heavenward, and let the heavy air settle onto my face. A quiet murmur drifted in on the wind and I expected it drift away when the gust subsided but it did not. I turned and saw a little Native American girl in a wheelchair. She nodded her head rhythmically to her own quiet language. I couldn’t see her eyes so it was hard to tell if anybody was at home; the impression that she was forming actual words was vague at best.

She was flanked by her white mother and her white father, who must have been her adopted parents, barring some freak Native American milkman accidental impregnation scenario.

She was dressed in the exact same outfit as her white father: jeans with elastic ankles and a matching jean jacket with a fluorescent green shirt underneath. Fluorescent green, I think, so that in case the girl was abducted or got lost in a snowstorm she would be visible by helicopter. The mother wore something else entirely and I wondered if she had mutinied against the family dress code.

I began daydreaming about a world in which I was the only person who could understand her and how I would serve as her personal interpreter. She and I would go on tour together, appear in science and nature magazines, Letterman, the Daily Show, I could help her compose symphonies she’d been banging around in her head, write some fanmail to George Clooney, who would naturally invite us to his place on Lake Cuomo. Next thing you know, she’s on a Jet Ski with Matt Damon and I’m making out with Sandra Bullock.

But as Sandy B feeding me grapes cross-faded back to reality, the girl was not only looking at me, but pointing right at me. And just as I thought she might be pointing to my hat, something blocked her from my view. This something said, “What the fuck are you looking at?”

This something was her father. Apparently, he thought her mumbling signified some sort of discomfort on her part, the source of which, she appeared to point out, was a scruffy 20-something that he caught staring at his wheelchair-ridden adopted Native American daughter. I stared at the father for several seconds as I rewound the previous moments in my mind, searching the frames for any offense that I may have perpetrated. It’s like when someone refers to your actions or comments from the previous night of heavy drinking, except it’s like that for me all the time.

So I’m sitting there getting up to speed and he’s standing there misinterpreting my silent cogitations for guilty quietude.

ANGRY FATHER
Do you have any god damn idea how rude it is to stare like that?

MIKE
Oh…no.

(Pause. I meant to disagree, but I answered his question, and not in the way Angry Father wanted. I attempted to self-correct.)

MIKE (cont’d)
I mean. That’s not –

(Pause. I am usually adept at covering for stupid things said but it is still early and I had had no coffee. I must say something, and quick. Remarkably, the truth is the only thing that comes to mind.)

MIKE (cont’d)
I think she likes my hat.

ANGRY FATHER
Well. I think you should MYOB.

(The truth rarely works.)

MIKE
Listen man. If she wants to point at my hat, I think that OUR business, ok?

At this point Reni stood up and left. That’s her little way of telling me that I’ve probably taken things one step too far again and she will stand by with first aid.

“Your business,” he chuckled, as if the idea of her and I having any sort of legitimate connection were an utter impossibility. He found it so absurd he said it again.

ANGRY FATHER
Your business! Do you see what your “business” has done to my little girl?”

And with that he swung his arm around to show me what I had wrought. For some reason, she was now crying, but it was clear to me that this grandiose gesture was just to get the crowd involved, inviting the late season tourists to enter their judgment into this developing drama. About 15 people started to watch and a Russian guy began filming me. I became acutely aware that anything insane I did in next few minutes would probably end up on YouTube and could seriously jeopardize my fledgling acting career. I’d come back to New York and meet with Ingrid French and she’d be like, “Yeah, you’re great! …But aren’t you the guy who went apeshit at Yellowstone?”

So I just sat there, handcuffed by outrageous misfortune, the Hamlet of Old Faithful. The crowd continued to stare at me, waiting for an apology or an explanation or even better, some violence. I looked around for a little help but none came. Reni had abandoned me. The old people in the crowd thought I was a troublemaker. The 30-somethings remembered themselves as 20-somethings; smoking pot and tormenting the retarded, and I’m sure they figured I was getting my just desserts. A concerned park ranger passed nearby and he could tell I was the epicenter of some minor sociological earthquake. I could feel his eyes looking me over for Yellowstone contraband; weapons, drugs, maybe a smuggled pine cone or two; anything so he could swoop in and take me to the lodge for a good tongue lashing or maybe even a $25 fine.

Ordinarily I would have apologized to the father and slunk away, but for some reason, this had become larger than myself. It had turned into bizarre test of wills; after all, what had I done? I felt blameless under the circumstances but I also understood and even appreciated this white man’s rage. Confrontations like this one are so rare in my life that when they do come up I need to focus my energies, take my time and make it right so that when God plays back the tape at the end of all things, He will pat me on my back with his giant hand and say, “Nice work, Mike Lavoie.”

So I did not apologize. I did not shout or cry or even tell him to go shove something inside himself, his wife or another man. I simply said nothing, and sat there absorbing his venomous glare while trying to radiate a sense of benign martyrdom. The blood slowly drained from the giant hard-on this moment had become and the audience seemed disappointed by the anticlimax. We had given them a great deal of foreplay and then fell asleep. Old Faithful began to come to life, the crowd turned its attention away from us, and the father returned to his family without a glance back. I heard Reni’s camera firing away behind me before she sat down on my lap. I knew I would have to give her the blow by blow later and I wondered if I could purchase the video from the Russian and save myself the trouble.

I dared a final glance at the girl; she had stopped crying and was watching Old Faithful with a wide-eyed fascination. I sat there for a moment and tried to enjoy this majestic landscape that my forefathers had appropriated from hers. But I wasn’t sure if her father would come back to administer some better rehearsed lectures, so I slid Reener onto the bench and ambled off.

Inside the car I consoled myself with some glove compartment dark chocolate and tried to figure out how I could blame this on Reni. In the distance I saw a buffalo eat some grass and then take a shit and I wished my life could be as simple as that. Where did all my well-meaning human intentions get me? Sequestered in a Honda. As reclined my seat all the way down, so I could hide from anyone who might try to find me, I closed my eyes and hoped that spirits of the girl’s ancestors had been watching. I figured if anyone could empathize with a kind but tragically misunderstood soul like mine, it’s probably them.