So, yeah, I have a swimming problem. I have to swim every day or—I don’t know what—conflagrations, I imagine, chaos. Big, bad. I’ve never tried to make it through a whole day without swimming. Water temporarily washes off song tattoos, so I made it my drug.
I like the idea of drugs; humans seem to need them. They’re personal, private, sort of precious. We value so few private experiences on this planet and we celebrate so many conspicuous, attention-seeking ones—like it only counts if someone’s watching. I love that the junkies seek an internal pursuit, but I didn’t adopt their drug ’cause they looked sad to me. I couldn’t relate to their high.
Really, from the outside, what they call a “high” looks a lot like a low. Heroin doesn’t seem to add the color to their lives that water adds to mine. Swimming sweetly reflects the human condition: we’re never on solid ground. And there’s a whole story down there, like a love life. Underwater, it’s quiet and otherworldly; even a stormy ocean is quiet underneath. And there is color—there’s no bluer blue than swimming-pool blue and the ocean is slate green and alive. I’ve never found anything better than water for putting out fires.
♋ cold water coming
cold water coming
for the warm water junkies
I shut the car door slowly, as quietly as I can, just pressing it into place, and walk down the dark street. It’s silent at this time of night. Everything is.
I know that the pool gate is covered in vines and about three feet from the end of the stockade fencing, so I feel my way down, pushing my hands through ivy, and find it with the tips of my fingers. When I lift the latch, it creaks loudly and I freeze. The sound brings a dog over, but it always does that. He doesn’t bark; he’s happy to see me.
All dogs on this island are named “Bailey,” so I call him that, ask him how he’s doing and slip into the yard, rubbing his ears until he calms down. Then I take off my dress. I always wear a bathing suit under my clothes.
I try not to swim in other people’s pools too often ’cause it’s tacky and illegal, but at 3 A.M., the Y and hotel pools’re all closed, and, well, I have to swim.
Sitting at the edge of the pool while the dog ambles back to his bed, I watch the blossoms of a dogwood tree flutter. I love those trees. Elegant in the spring, dogwood flowers are even more beautiful in autumn when they become sepia-toned; then they look like old photographs of trees. The yard is dimly lit and the swaying branches create an interesting lighting effect: movement, I guess.
Sudden loud jingling from the dog’s collar as he scratches his ear sounds like cymbals crashing. I whisper “No!” at him. He stops, then walks over sweetly and sits next to me. I put my finger to my lips and he lies down. While I pet him, I try to imagine that the people inside the house who feed and care for this dog are kind, lovely people who might have invited me over to swim in their pool, had we ever met. Probably not in the middle of the night, though.
I slip into the water as quietly as I can. This pool’s heated, but just barely; the water feels icy. Good. Unless I’m chilled to the bone and exhausted, I can’t sleep. I have to be almost dead before I can rest. Shivering, I roll onto my back so I can see the stars glow again. I like the moving light; it looks like the yard is breathing. But I have laps to swim before someone wakes up and calls the police, so I kick off and kill an hour underwater with only the sound of bubbles as a distraction.
Drying off on the sidewalk with a towel I swiped from the Y, I whisper goodbye to the dog. “See you later, Bailey.” He barks at me through the fence. “Now you bark?” I ask him.
Then the Bullet and I drive to the beach. Maybe I’ll get a couple hours of sleep, but the sun’ll be up soon and then I’ll be off the hook as far as sleep goes. At the beach, I can blend in with the dog owners who get up early on Saturdays to watch the sun rise. I just don’t have running shoes or a thermos full of coffee. Or a dog. Wish I could borrow Bailey.
Can’t wait for summer and real beach days. I love swimming in the ocean. There’s nothing like being knocked around by waves, turned upside down, getting the shit beaten out of you by something so big it couldn’t care less, all in vivid silence. I can’t think underwater—I’m too busy making bruises. Add numbing cold and I’m giddy.
A nice storm’ll beat the living daylights out of you, too. Hurricanes’re good, blizzards. A natural disaster’d be perfect: untamed energy and destruction—vandalism on a biblical scale—and none of it my fault. Short of that, I run outside whenever I hear thunder, hoping to get my head bashed in by pounding rain.
The band thinks this is very funny, so I have to sneak away when I hear a storm brewing if I don’t wanna be ridiculed. They don’t know what they’re missing. Neither Tea nor Leslie nor Dave can relate to my desire to have my skull caved in and my body pummeled. They claim that a healthy organism moves toward pleasure and away from pain.
I say endorphins mean I’m having it all.
I watch my little brother eat a caterpillar as a storm approaches. The sky is a deep cornflower blue with patches of lavender. He kneels on the ground, delicately lifting the writhing caterpillar to his lips. Bright green goo oozes out of his mouth as he chews.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
He looks at me, then at the piece of caterpillar between his chubby fingers, then back at me, still chewing. Light rain begins to fall, a faraway crash of thunder.
I spend Saturday afternoon studying at the beach, books spread out on the hood of the Bullet, watching the water in between paragraphs. I read only science books, so that’s what I see in the water, in the air, flying around, eating out of garbage cans—science doesn’t lie. I make sure my eyes and ears are filled to the brim with its clean information, that nothing else can creep in and wreck up the place with false impressions. Science is clarity goggles.
I know this means I’m lacking, somehow; that’s what I’ve been told, anyway. That more evolved people have an emotional attachment to what’s around them, so they enjoy putting fictions in their head to help their feelings along. That’s probably true—that imagination works like dreams and comes with a message. It just doesn’t sound very reliable. And when I see a diagram of a cell, or DNA, it looks so perfect—the essence of something: essential—that I’m moved. Isn’t that emotion?
I guess when I’ve got the science down, I’ll make room for the rest.
As the light begins to fade, my friend Mark pulls up on his moped, smiling. He’s always smiling. Mark is a monochromatic boy. Everything about him is beige: his skin, hair, clothes, eyes and backpack, which probably doesn’t sound as attractive as it is. Mark matches.
Leaning his moped against the car, he takes off his backpack and joins me on the hood without saying anything, just smiling. I smile back and then laugh at him. He turns to look at the water. “Why do the buoys have antennas?” he asks, like it matters.
“Antennae.”
He looks at me. “Why do the buoys have antennae?”
I watch them, poking out over the water, bouncing around. “I don’t know. It looks like the ocean’s full of narwhals.”
“Mmmm. Unicorns of the sea,” says Mark dreamily.
I shake my head. “Don’t say ‘unicorns of the sea.’”
“Too late.” Mark lies back against the windshield, folds his arms behind his head and switches from water to sky. I join him.
The first time I met Mark, he asked me if my parents were divorced. When I said they were, he nodded. “I can tell. You wear ‘broken home’ on your face.”
“I do?”
“Yes,” he answered, looking sad. “Was it ugly?”
“I guess. I had a beautiful family that broke into ugly pieces.”
“Stepparents?” he asked.
I nodded. “They don’t like me.” Mark looked even sadder. I chuckled. Who is this kid? “Do you know anybody whose parents aren’t divorced?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Not really. But not everyone wears it on their face.”
&n
bsp; Mark is very, very kind.
Our shoes match: four motorcycle boots in a row on the hood of the Bullet. Beyond our black leather toes is an orange sky, reflecting orange into the ocean. “How was the show?” he asks after a few minutes.
“Frenetic.”
Mark laughs. “No shit!”
“Yeah, but this time it wasn’t all our fault. There was a smoke machine and strobes and a drunk.”
He smiles at the sky. “Was it poetry?”
“Was it poetry?” I laugh. “What?”
Mark thinks. “Was it beautiful and necessary?”
“Hmmm. Mostly, I guess.”
“I’m sorry I missed it, then.” He sits up. “There’s a party at the Bells tonight. People are staying over and camping afterwards. You wanna go?” The Bells is on the other side of the island. It’s a spooky shell of a building in a field by the water. It looks like a movie set or a place where burnouts would go to party; it’s not much of a campsite.
“Camping?”
“That’s what they’re calling it. Don’t you like camping?”
“I don’t know. The Bells smells like cat pee.”
“It does,” he agrees. “You could leave the Bullet here. I’ll take you over.”
“You mean on that moped?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “But I won’t blow the horn.”
“Why, what’s the horn sound like?”
Mark stretches an arm out to his moped and pushes down. It sounds like someone squeezing a very loud hamster. I jump up. “Holy shit. Never do that again.”
Mark frowns. “I already told you I wouldn’t.” We stare at the water for a few minutes. I don’t feel like going anywhere. A good show last night, swam laps early this morning and the beach is both calming and invigorating. For once, staying still is okay.
“I don’t know if I want to sleep at the Bells, Mark. It isn’t even nice in the daytime.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s pretty creepy. If you don’t like it, we can leave.” He’s smiling again. Mark’s smile uses his whole head—all gums and goofiness. I can’t say no to it.
“Okay.” I jump off the hood and open the driver’s side door. “But this doesn’t make me your girlfriend.” He smiles even bigger. Mark is, as he puts it, queer as a gay dollar bill. “Get in.”
“Uh . . . no.” He looks suddenly serious. “I know you love the Bullet, Kris, but she just isn’t safe.”
“Shhh . . .” I whisper. “Not in front of her.”
Mark looks stern. “It’s not funny; you should get a bike or something.”
“Carrying an amp on a bike doesn’t seem very safe, either.” I shut the car door and look at the moped. “You really want me to ride on that?”
“I ride on it.”
“Well, not on the bitch seat.”
“The moped works,” he says, annoyed.
“The Bullet works, she just works badly. I can’t believe you’re scared of her.” I climb onto the back of the moped and wait. “What a chicken butt.”
Mark sits in front, then turns around to look at me. “You’re so stupid.”
“You’re so gay.”
“Noted.” He grabs his helmet off of the handlebar, presses it onto his head and fastens the chinstrap.
I watch. “Can I have a hat?”
“I only have one helmet.”
“Well, how safe is that?”
Then he turns the key and the little moped springs to life. Mark turns to me. “I think this’ll be fun!” he shouts over the noise.
We’re already going much faster than I had anticipated and the moped’s sorta . . . bouncy, making it difficult to stay on my fakey bitch seat. I cling to him as we pull away from the beach. “Geez, Mark!” I yell into his ear.
“Geez what?” he yells back, as we zoom up the hill.
When we get to the Bells, the sun is down and the deteriorating stone walls look very beautiful, like ancient ruins. Inside, orange light from fires and an enormous grill lights skateboarders who glide past its graffiti-covered walls, music is playing and it doesn’t smell like cat pee for once, it smells like hot dogs and smoke.
Mark takes a package of hot dogs out of his backpack and balances it on top of a huge pile of similar packages next to the grill, the pile with an index card that says “PIG.” The other enormous hot dog pile’s index card says “SOY.” The kid who’s cooking them nods a solemn thanks and graciously salutes Mark with his spatula.
We wander over to a window we can’t see out of; the darkness outside is enhanced by the glow inside the building to the point of . . . thickness? “Yep,” said Mark. “I guess that’s what they mean when they say darkness is thick.”
“Is that what night looked like before light pollution? I don’t know if I like it.”
“Well,” he cranes his neck out the window, looking up at the sky. “There used to be a moon. Didn’t there?”
“Oh yeah! I remember the moon . . .” I stick my head into the darkness, too, trying to find the moon. “Nope. It’s not there.”
“No,” answers Mark.
Pulling our heads back in, we slide to the floor, watching skaters whiz by. After a few minutes, I get the distinct impression that couples around us are making out. Mark and I sit in silence. Every few minutes, someone skates by. The griller kid piles hot dogs onto a tray, opens packages of more hot dogs, grills them, sticks them in buns, then adds the cooked ones to the others on the tray. No one seems to be eating them. I worry that the pile of hot dogs will tumble if this kid keeps cooking. It’s starting to smell like cat pee again.
“Are we bored?” Mark asks quietly.
We both stare at our boots. Like many people from this island, we wear motorcycle boots in slightly different sizes. My left boot is a half size smaller than my right; Mark’s are actually two sizes apart. It makes him walk funny.
A few years ago, a ship dropped its cargo near the shore and a bunch of crates washed up on the beach. There was no official cleanup because it wasn’t an oil tanker or anything, so beachcombers opened the crates and found motorcycle boots inside. Salty, wet, mismatched motorcycle boots. But free shoes are free shoes. People wandered up and down the beach for days, pulling seaweed off of boots and trying them on, trading with each other, looking for matching ones. I was there on the first day and did pretty well, but Mark didn’t get there until most of the boots were gone, so his feet usually hurt.
“Yeah, we’re bored,” I answer. “That was fast.”
“Camping’s boring,” he whispers. “Wanna go?”
“Sure,” I whisper back.
The silent griller stops us on our way out. “Soy or pig?” he asks.
“Soy,” I answer.
“Pig,” says Mark. We carry our hot dogs outside and eat them standing in the grass, looking up into the orange windows. Yellow jackets buzz around our faces. “Look at that,” I say. “Night bees.”
“Bees aren’t nocturnal,” says Mark, swatting one away.
“These are.”
“What’s wrong with them?” he asks.
We listen to their buzzing. “Maybe they can’t sleep.”
“Do killer bees sleep?” he asks suspiciously.
“Now there’s a thought.”
“You were right,” says Mark, finishing his hot dog. “This was a bad idea.”
“Just too much fun, I think.”
“Can’t handle it?” Brushing light brown crumbs off his light brown shorts with a light brown hand, he straddles the moped and turns to me. “Where to?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t care, either.” I throw the rest of my hot dog into the bushes and then sit behind him, my arms around his waist. The moped lurches into the darkness.
There are no streetlights on this part of the island. We ride by the sea-wall, where the only light is far, far out in the ocean. It feels nicely scary.
I notice that Mark’s a good moped driver; not only does he wear a helmet, he follows traffic rules, even in the dark when no one’s arou
nd, sticking his arm out to signal turns, stopping at lights and waiting patiently for them to turn green. He lives his life that way, too. He has to be good because he is good. I squeeze his middle tighter because I love him so much.
We drive across the island to a very nice neighborhood, winding through quiet streets, then pulling into the driveway of a big Victorian house. There are no lights on in the house and no car in the driveway. If Mark’s into breaking and entering, I don’t want to know. There I was, thinking he was so good. “What are we doing here?” I ask him quietly.
“I used to babysit for these people,” he whispers, taking off his helmet and walking the moped up the driveway.
“That’s a good story. What are we doing here?”
“Don’t worry, nobody’s home.”
I follow him up the driveway, hissing, “I can see that. What are we doing here?”
“Be quiet,” he hisses back. “It’s the middle of the night.” Leaning his moped up against the garage, he walks up the hill behind it in the pitch dark. I follow.
“Mark. What. Are. We. Doing—”
“We’re camping,” he says, annoyed.
“We’re still camping?”
He reaches the top of the hill and begins feeling around in the dark. “What the hell happened to the moon?” he mutters in the blackness.
I notice a bulky, pyramid-shaped piece of darkness slightly to our left. “Is that a tent?” I whisper.
“Where?” he asks excitedly.
“Uh . . .” I feel around too, then bump into something. “Here.”
“Good work!” he whispers happily.
“Thanks. This is so not legal.”
Mark is shuffling around at the base of the tent; I can’t see what he’s doing. As my eyes adjust, though, I begin to make out the shape of the thing. It’s dish-mouthed, like a bulldog. In fact, it has little eyes and doggie ears sticking up on the roof—it is a bulldog. The kids he babysat for probably use it as a playhouse. Mark’s struggling, trying to get the bulldog’s mouth open. “It’s a dog,” I say, forgetting to whisper.
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