Uncalled for, pt. I
I’m standing on this beach at night many years earlier in fact it’s the end of summer in 1998 and now I’m thinking of all the stories still to be told.
Sometimes- not too often but in fact only rarely- sometimes I’m lying in bed at night, restless well-before sleep sets in, and then I come up with this notion of a perfect world, a world so flawless it shouldn’t really exist for the sake of our own shortcomings, as absurd as it might seem, and on this perfect world I would have no need for this, you know, because I’d be telling you all the stories head-on, in person, looking straight in your eyes as we cuddled up at night before calling it a day.
I think that’s the main reason as to why I’m so eagerly willing to lay myself bare, exposed, before you, in truncated unedited sentences without spellchecking, and the occasional split infinitive and half-truth or three.
But I’m not really sure.
Yet I’m not standing on that beach in ’98; I’m sitting down on the cool, wet sand with my legs folded in a straight position, my arms holding my knees together, a flashlight half-buried lamp-up in the sand with a plastic cup over it so it diffuses the light just enough as to soften and spread it around us. All the boys are chatting endlessly over beer and maybe a bottle of vodka, too but I remain quiet in my introspection as I’m watching G**** wandering ahead by the shoreline, the late-night cold water dancing around and about her ankles, her dress fluttering in the sticky breeze coming from the Ocean.
She was so beautiful that night in that white dress with the reddish-flower-like blotches and the boys were all asking me what was going on between us, all that boy-talk, had I seen her naked already or what, that kind of stuff.
I stood up and walked towards her. I walked very slowly as if counting each step so as to savor the moment and live each split-second to the fullest, trying not to miss anything, trying not to grow up, not to grow old past 18 years old, already sorry High School was done for and not coming back ever again.
I don’t know if she noticed me. I placed my hand on her shoulder, gently, on her skin exposed by the strap of her dress draping halfway down her shoulder. She turned her head back at me and smiled a sad, lonely smile. That was the kind of smile G**** really had back in the day, you know, despite anything anybody would tell me afterwards. It rocked your world. It froze your world.
Then & there:
As far-fetched as it probably sounds now I wanted one thing out of that night: I wanted to tell somebody about her smile and of how good her auburn hair smelled but maybe her hair was really light brown and I’m making it auburn as I go, not really as I want to remember it but more like, how I want it to be remembered.
I want to cut through all those frat-boy questionings of nipples and pubic hair and the did-she-go-down-on-you’s, I want to cut right to that bit under starlight and infinity and unblemished youth as I’m smiling back at her then whispering my own half-truths in her ear, which makes her stop smiling and close her eyes and maybe bite her lower lip just lightly, then staying silent and motionless for a few moments, until she finally shakes her head in disagreement and says, “Sorry” at me in such a demure, polite way it makes for all the lies and broken phone calls that will eventually come from both of us in the ensuing couple of years.
Upon treading back head-down through the soft sand to the boys and their beers around the half-buried flashlight they all smiled their frat-boys smile and whistled in unison the chorus line to the James Bond theme song. It did hold its own special meaning for us during that summer. There was this James Bond vid*o-game we would play after lunch in which, whenever your character was killed, that bit from the theme song would go off.
It’s now close to ten years later, well after I met you and well after we parted ways, and here I am, like Atlas carrying the burden of the world only in stories half-lived and half-plucked out of thin air by imagination alone, stories blurred out between fact and fiction.
After all this time I still don’t know exactly why I have to write you all of this, or why I have to tell you all of this. It’s something you’ll probably never read or maybe care for anyway, yet the feeling is one and the same:
When I remember it, I want to have you there, present at every single bit, even if just as a passive spectator. I don’t want to make you a character, I don’t want you to act- I just want you to be there in all my yesterdays and yesteryears, there at beach with G**** and I in the summer of ’98.
It’s how I plan on cheating on all my tomorrows without you, by the way:
I think it’s either how I look for atonement for being such an assh*le in the first place, or simply put, something else entirely.
Sometimes- not too often but in fact only rarely- sometimes I’m lying in bed at night, restless well-before sleep sets in, and then I come up with this notion of a perfect world, a world so flawless it shouldn’t really exist for the sake of our own shortcomings, as absurd as it might seem, and on this perfect world I would have no need for this, you know, because I’d be telling you all the stories head-on, in person, looking straight in your eyes as we cuddled up at night before calling it a day.
I think that’s the main reason as to why I’m so eagerly willing to lay myself bare, exposed, before you, in truncated unedited sentences without spellchecking, and the occasional split infinitive and half-truth or three.
But I’m not really sure.
Yet I’m not standing on that beach in ’98; I’m sitting down on the cool, wet sand with my legs folded in a straight position, my arms holding my knees together, a flashlight half-buried lamp-up in the sand with a plastic cup over it so it diffuses the light just enough as to soften and spread it around us. All the boys are chatting endlessly over beer and maybe a bottle of vodka, too but I remain quiet in my introspection as I’m watching G**** wandering ahead by the shoreline, the late-night cold water dancing around and about her ankles, her dress fluttering in the sticky breeze coming from the Ocean.
She was so beautiful that night in that white dress with the reddish-flower-like blotches and the boys were all asking me what was going on between us, all that boy-talk, had I seen her naked already or what, that kind of stuff.
I stood up and walked towards her. I walked very slowly as if counting each step so as to savor the moment and live each split-second to the fullest, trying not to miss anything, trying not to grow up, not to grow old past 18 years old, already sorry High School was done for and not coming back ever again.
I don’t know if she noticed me. I placed my hand on her shoulder, gently, on her skin exposed by the strap of her dress draping halfway down her shoulder. She turned her head back at me and smiled a sad, lonely smile. That was the kind of smile G**** really had back in the day, you know, despite anything anybody would tell me afterwards. It rocked your world. It froze your world.
Then & there:
As far-fetched as it probably sounds now I wanted one thing out of that night: I wanted to tell somebody about her smile and of how good her auburn hair smelled but maybe her hair was really light brown and I’m making it auburn as I go, not really as I want to remember it but more like, how I want it to be remembered.
I want to cut through all those frat-boy questionings of nipples and pubic hair and the did-she-go-down-on-you’s, I want to cut right to that bit under starlight and infinity and unblemished youth as I’m smiling back at her then whispering my own half-truths in her ear, which makes her stop smiling and close her eyes and maybe bite her lower lip just lightly, then staying silent and motionless for a few moments, until she finally shakes her head in disagreement and says, “Sorry” at me in such a demure, polite way it makes for all the lies and broken phone calls that will eventually come from both of us in the ensuing couple of years.
Upon treading back head-down through the soft sand to the boys and their beers around the half-buried flashlight they all smiled their frat-boys smile and whistled in unison the chorus line to the James Bond theme song. It did hold its own special meaning for us during that summer. There was this James Bond vid*o-game we would play after lunch in which, whenever your character was killed, that bit from the theme song would go off.
It’s now close to ten years later, well after I met you and well after we parted ways, and here I am, like Atlas carrying the burden of the world only in stories half-lived and half-plucked out of thin air by imagination alone, stories blurred out between fact and fiction.
After all this time I still don’t know exactly why I have to write you all of this, or why I have to tell you all of this. It’s something you’ll probably never read or maybe care for anyway, yet the feeling is one and the same:
When I remember it, I want to have you there, present at every single bit, even if just as a passive spectator. I don’t want to make you a character, I don’t want you to act- I just want you to be there in all my yesterdays and yesteryears, there at beach with G**** and I in the summer of ’98.
It’s how I plan on cheating on all my tomorrows without you, by the way:
I think it’s either how I look for atonement for being such an assh*le in the first place, or simply put, something else entirely.
posted by 186282mps at 11:11 AM
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