From the article about Laurie Simmons, best known now as Lena Dunham’s mother, in The New Yorker:
“When [art school] was over, [Simmons] went to visit two Great Neck friends who were living on a communal farm near Roscoe, New York. ‘One of them had just figured out that she was gay. She was leaving the commune, and she told me to take care of Eric, her former boyfriend. So I did. He became my boyfriend.’ They went to Europe together. In Amsterdam, they picked up a used Citroen 2CV and set out for Afghanistan, a hippie mecca. Simmons began keeping a diary on this trip, and she also documented it with her 35 mm Yashica. They were driving through Turkey, sleeping and cooking in the back of the car, when the heat became so overwhelming that they turned back, sold the car, and returned to the upstate commune, where they broke up.”
Seriously, someone should write a short story based on this in which the two characters become subtly militant toward one another as the heat rises, and right before they fall off a cliff of a really malevolent folie a deux, they have a moment of clarity and realize they must head back for civilization. Julia Loktev can direct the film version. Who’s on board? I’ll pay you one sandwich.
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