Written by Ava Pauline Emilione
It was the winter of my life, and the men I met on the road were my only summer.
In 2013, I watched Lana del Rey’s “Ride” music video for the first time. I chewed on sunflower seeds in my room, transformed by clips of Lana del Rey flying on tire swings in the Nevada desert and riding motorcycles in an off-the-shoulder tee. Her representation of the deep, fleeting bonds that came with living on the road reached through my iMac screen, holding my acne-ridden face in its hands. I clenched my jaw so hard that the sunflower seeds turned into a salty paste in my mouth.
At the time, I had begun sixth grade in a small New Jersey suburb. This affluent town, where I spent five years confronting the horrors of queer adolescence and meeting my longest-lasting friends, still holds the record for my longest stint in one place. I grew up in a single-parent household in the early 2000s, a lawless recession-ridden land in the belly of the disintegrating American empire. My mother and I, who remain best friends, faced many dangers during these years: Landlords who turned out to be wolves. Rabid dogs dressed as police. Men who claimed to love us, only to sink their teeth into our skin and chase us down when we disappeared. Hunted by beasts of love and power, our times on the road often felt safer and more exciting than staying put. From a young age, I worshipped the “freedom of the open road” to which “Ride” pays homage.
I’ve held a friend’s hand with one foot out the door more times than I can count.
Many elements of the music video, like its cultural appropriation and nationalist undertones, did not age well. (I’m still trying to forget the sight of Lana del Rey wearing a headdress of eagle feathers as she partied around a campfire.) Miraculously, the opening monologue of “Ride” floats above the music video’s problematic elements, expressing the nomad’s bittersweet, nostalgic relationship with friendship. She represented my experience of growing close to someone while knowing that the restless engine inside of me would kick up and send me away again. I’ve held a friend’s hand with one foot out the door more times than I can count.
The story of my leaving begins with Amber, my childhood best friend. She was Puerto Rican, just like me, and loved Wizards of Waverly Place, just like me. Before my mom and I left town, we stayed with her family for a few days. My mom and I discussed our upcoming move in Amber’s guest bedroom when we heard a noise from the closet. When my mother opened the door, she found Amber hiding inside. The sight of her knees pressed to her chest and tears in her eyes punched me square in my tiny stomach. As Amber looked up at me, I knew we would never see each other again. A part of me will always remember her as the little girl I left alone in the closet. I wonder how she remembers me.
Moving forward, however, also means moving away from other people and the version of myself that loved them.
Many years later, I moved back to New York City for college, where I made most of my adult companions. My friends and I fell in love with each other under the subway’s subterranean humming, at queer bars, in the comfort of our unkempt apartments, and through our iMessage exchanges during a series of lockdowns and quarantines. In certain, sacred moments—like that summer when my friends did acid and we colored together afterward—the certainty that I was known and loved enveloped me. After years of living in New York, I hungered for the wide open road again, dizzied by the world’s infinite promise. I left my friends in New York to work on organic farms with my girlfriend.
Eager to begin my next adventure, I moved out of my Bushwick apartment before my friend and roommate of three years came home from work. I can’t believe you left without saying goodbye, she texted me. I did not know how to apologize when I already felt so far away. My return to nature felt guided by a grand, cosmic force. I knew that once I tuned into the land, it would push me forward. Moving forward, however, also means moving away from other people and the version of myself that loved them.
I was always an unusual girl, Lana del Rey says, walking down an empty street in red Converses. I have never stopped relating, in at least a small way, to how she goes on to describe herself: My mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.
I wish I could tell my 12 year old self, cocooned in puberty’s special sort of isolation, that the road was leading me toward my people all along.
Nomadism cannot thrive without a certain dissolution of the self. However, when my body feels like a moving car I can’t jump out of, the effort to see myself as a good friend or a full person eludes me. Being Black and queer further complicates my sense of self. Growing up, mainstream media only portrayed jumbled, fetishized versions of people who looked like me. I couldn’t fully relate to the details of Lana del Rey’s straight, white cross-country odyssey, in which she rides Harley-Davidson motorcycles into the sunset with old white men. Living under the gaze of a eurocentric culture, I had already felt like a stranger to myself for years. I wished I could ask my long-lost friends: Have I been a good friend? Have I done enough, been there enough, to be remembered as a good person? In the silence that followed, I began to fear that no one—not even myself—knew me entirely.
Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people, Lana says at the end of “Ride.” And finally, I did—on the open road.
My friends have let me crash on their couches for days on end, visited me on farms to plant vegetables alongside me, and sent hand-written holiday cards to my ever-changing series of addresses.
My friends have let me crash on their couches for days on end, visited me on farms to plant vegetables alongside me, and sent hand-written holiday cards to my ever-changing series of addresses. They taught me that gender is only a costume I choose to wear. That Blackness and queerness is a universe surrounding me instead of an identity festering within. That friendship is a brave embrace of life itself—a thing that is always moving, remaining as elusive as my wide, wavering personality. While I mourn the dissipation of bygone relationships and the person I was within them, I’m learning to accept that loss and confusion is a condition of being loved. To be a friend is to open our hands to grief. Friendship is a call to action that never feels fully complete.
On days when I do not recognize myself in the mirror, my community affirms that I’m someone worth drawing close to. I am a road that deserves to be traveled regardless of where I go. I’m grateful to move along my friends’ loving palms to wherever they lead—open hand in open hand, with both feet poised to return.
About the Author:
Ava Pauline Emilione (they/them) is a writer and editor from Brooklyn, NY. A semi-reformed Tumblr blogger, their writing weaves modern folklore about culture, politics, and identity. They are the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ebony Tomatoes Collective, a Black literary and arts magazine for personal and political liberation. They can be reached at [email protected], and you can donate to them on Venmo at @/ava-e-1.