If we can’t be ourselves out here we can’t be ourselves anywhere.

We lay in the sun for a while. “That was impressive,” she said, giving me a playful nudge on the shoulder. I groaned and flopped onto my belly. “If we can’t be ourselves out here,” she continued, propping herself up on her elbows and turning her face up to the sun, “we can’t be ourselves anywhere.” She nudged me again and I couldn’t help smiling.

WHIPTAIL UTOPIA BY CHASE EDWARDS 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 26

In Joshua Tree, California, I learn that unisexual, all-female whiptail lizards reproduce lady lizard clones of themselves. On an environmental science course I watch a lady whiptail mount another lady whiptail, and a fellow instructor explains to me that the all-female lizards dry-hump each other in order to lay clutches of fertilized eggs. Another instructor overhears this and boasts that the lizards take turns playing the dominant party. He says that the lizard being humped experiences a rush of baby-making hormones and these hormones enable her to fertilize her own eggs, throug…