Margaritaville for the Damned

Last night I dreamed I was marooned in Prescott, Arizona, summering not in a cabin or hotel but in a public park. The grass was cartoonishly green, a kind of chlorophyll utopia, and families sprawled across it like they’d been carefully arranged for a Chamber of Commerce brochure. My suitcase sat at my side like a misplaced airport refugee, and I couldn’t help but wonder: why Prescott? Why not Denver, or somewhere less suffocatingly wholesome, less postcard-perfect?

Then I looked up. Looming above the park was a billboard—a monstrosity of sun-bleached cheer—featuring a leathery couple in their seventies. They were bronzed like overcooked turkeys, grinning wide, basking in the eternal glow of some Florida condo where “Margaritaville” played on an endless loop. This was not their first rodeo: it was their fifth marriage each, the residue of decades spent riding the carousel of lust, liquor, and litigation. Their message was plastered across the sky: hedonism may lead to divorce court, bankruptcy, and sun-damaged skin, but look—if you just keep grinning, it’s practically a lifestyle brand.

I felt an almost religious revulsion at the billboard. It was hollow cheer dressed up as wisdom, a glossy ad for despair masquerading as joie de vivre. Pulling my luggage closer, I glanced at my watch and felt relief that my wife and daughters would be joining me soon. The counterfeit joy overhead only made me hunger more for the real life that I have.