I’d love to grab lunch at Xalepeño Charlie’s the next time I pass through Nevada (if “restaurant” could be considered an appropriate designation for a dive with a tin roof, no air conditioning and a urinal made from a rusted water tank). But I guess you haven’t been to Winnemucca for a while because (bad news, dude) Charlie’s closed in 2016. I know because my ex-wife Evangeline and I visited her parents in Utah, and I drove four hundred miles out of our way to introduce her to Charlie’s culinary delights.

We found boards over broken windows and a fading “closed for business” sign taped to the door. Evangeline reminded me of our side trip whenever we argued about my decisions during the four months that remained of our marriage.

Remember how Charlie’s tacos could blow off the back of your skull? We washed the burn away with cold Pearl beer and stuffed another taco down our throats. No flour tortillas for tourists who thought corn was for Taco Bell buffoons, their masa tortillas were thicker than pancakes and fresh every hour. How many different tacos did they offer? I think it was 27 and a half (the half being for “add beans”), but people dropped by for the fried chicken taco with poblano and corn salsa. Even for breakfast. Did you ever book a room at the tin-roof trailer motel across the highway? Six cracker box sized trailers, black and white television and all the bedbugs you could kill with industrial pesticides. More cigarette burns in the carpets than fleas on a stray dog but cheap enough for a van full of hippies with three dollars and a quarter ounce between them.

My favorite memory is a redhead mother earth goddess that I hooked up with. Did we know each other then? I wish I could recall her name. I spotted her in the booth by Charlie’s jukebox, sitting alone and grooving to Shocking Blue’s Venus. As I passed her she said, “If you share your tacos, I’ll share my pot.”

How could I resist?

And how to describe her? (Or did I tell you this story, one time or a hundred thousand when we were tripping to the Dead?) You know the woman in the Bible who never ran out of oil and flour? That was this chick, although her miracle stash wasn’t oil and flour but a strain of purple kush that unlocked the door to the next dimension. I got so high I sat next to myself on the mattress, speculating about metaphysics and the wonders of the cosmos. Her nipples were as big as plums and just as delicious, tastier than Charlie’s poblano corn chicken tacos (the food I most craved when I was stoned).

Inanna. That was her name. Big girl. Her breasts parted to each side of her colossal belly when she sat naked on the bed with her head against the wall and she radiated the energy of a mother in bloom. She filled the room with the scent of soil and spring.

She asked if I wanted to meet the goddess and how could I deny her? We split a tab of sunshine and sat naked on the curb facing the highway while the moon rose. She pushed me down, mounted me in front of Charlie’s patrons, the motel’s and passing traffic. I exploded into the Milky Way with the white heat of a new born sun. 

I woke the following afternoon, hours after checkout, with only the company of bedbugs feasting on star dust. No sign of Inanna, no sign of her clothes, no sign of my wallet or my car. In retrospect, it may have been best Charlie’s closed because I might have been tempted to share this story with my wife and ended our marriage four months sooner. Instead I offer it as a reminder of the youth to which we’ll never return.

Phillip T. Stephens attended the writers' workshop at Michigan State and went on to teach writing and design at Austin Community College for 20 years. His prose, poems, and art appear in anthologies, online, print and peer-reviewed academic journals, most recently Maintenant and Art Ascent. He lives with Carol in Oak Hill, Texas where they built a habitat in the shade of their oaks to house abandoned cats. More than three hundred of their rescues found new homes.