by Micol Ostow
under.
tidal waves rushed at me, daily, nightly, filling my throat with salt water, gagging me until i couldn’t say yes, anymore. but couldn’t say no, still. couldn’t speak. couldn’t breathe. could only swallow, slip further.
so that the only way was to leave. to say: never, now, always.
so. i packed a bag—a backpack, really, more portable—with a few necessities. my two favorite tops, slender, spaghetti-strapped cotton pieces that hung from me loosely now that i was no longer so solid. i wore my lucky jeans, the ones that flared out over the beaded tips of my sandal straps, the ones so worn in the seat that i worried they’d split with one great lunge, one sudden move.
i tried never to make any. sudden moves, that is. i am not one for great lunges. sudden moves had never been my style. not until the now, never, always that was finally happening, i mean.
i braided my hair in one long tail down my back. i washed my face. i glanced in the mirror, droplets of water clinging to my eyebrows, the tip of my nose, my chin, like someone else’s tears.
mel in the mirror didn’t like being left behind, didn’t like the idea of spending forever with mother and uncle jack. but mel in the mirror understood that i had to go. and that there were some things—so many things—that i couldn’t take with me.
mel in the mirror knew that something important awaited me.
but she couldn’t have guessed, really.
she couldn’t have known about Henry.
gentle
the haight is like a broken promise, a premise that has gone unfulfilled.
i can’t say for sure what it was that i had expected. maybe “gentle people,” like the song suggests.
but even if the people in san francisco are gentle, i learn, even still—there are too many of them. too many bodies.
bodies. there are bodies everywhere.
tanned flesh, exposed skin, sinewy limbs. slitlike pupils and low-lidded eyes. bare, smooth, filed-down fingernails. soft, trailing tangles of hair.
torrents of skin and bone.
i didn’t have a plan, really. just some worn dollar bills in my wallet, a backpack, and a grim determination to leave uncle jack, mother, and mirror-mel behind.
i had: a bus ticket.
i had: a vague, thin notion of the haight, and free love, and bodies, enveloping each other, welcoming, caring.
it wasn’t much. i learned that quickly, with the first puff of fumes as the lumbering, barreling bus shuddered to a halt.
i didn’t have: a place to stay. enough money to last me. food.
i didn’t have: any of the things a body needs to sustain itself, the things we all need to sustain ourselves.
the things that keep a body afloat.
the things that keep a body grounded.
right away, right after stepping down from the bus into a cloud of exhaust, i found my bench. sticky, stained, slats buckling slightly from age and moisture in the air, it beckoned to me.
i was tired, the sort of tired that creeps into your spine. i wanted to sit.
no, i wanted more than that:
i wanted some sort of infinity.
and suddenly, now that i had arrived, had made my way to my elsewhere?
now i wasn’t sure that infinity was an option.
not here. not in the haight.
not the sort of infinity i’d had in mind, anyhow.
for two days, the bench became an island to me.
i did my best to plant roots there.
for two days, i was fixed, transfixed, swallowing, silently devouring, taking in the psychedelic endlessness that surrounded me: cloudless blue skies, muffled laughter, the languid movements of careless, gentle bodies in colorful costume.
and music. always music. the strum of a guitar, the echo of a bongo drum, the high-pitched lilt of a lullaby hummed half-silently.
at night i tucked my backpack underneath my head, curled my legs together, and did my best to drift. to stay afloat.
even when i closed my eyes, though, i was still grounded. planted. rooted.
even when i closed my eyes, infinity still swam past me, just beyond my grasp, brushing the tips of my wriggling fingers.
carried by the undertow.
eluding me.
“here.”
i started, startled, broken from my reverie.
i’d been doing nothing so much as staring into the nowhere, barely absorbing, barely soaking in the images that danced across my field of vision. there was music, of course, and the heady smell of smoke that i now knew opened all of the gentle people up, unfurled them, carried them away.
“um. huh?” i rubbed at my eyes, pushed my lank, dull hair behind my ears, and looked up.
<… >
focus.
interference flared behind the helmet of my skull. white noise, the sort that pools at the back of your throat the moment before fear sets in.
fear, or something sublime.
something fierce. somewhere deep. someplace inescapable.
razor sharp, gleaming like a knife’s edge.
a vortex, a black hole that began, ended, everything, with this.
now.
now:
a man.
older than i was, but still young. He wore faded jeans that looked soft to the touch—and i wanted to touch Him, right away, i wanted so much to touch Him—sandals, a gauzy white shirt, a leather vest. His hair was a deep chestnut, and it shone like the surface of the bay in the sunlight.
He had brown eyes like reflecting pools.
He looked kind, “gentle,” as the song suggested. but it was more than that.
so much more.
He looked—how to put this?—He looked as though He was looking.
at me. through me. into me.
He was the undertow. He was the current.
He was the tide.
i sat up straighter, shuffled aside, and He smiled.
gently.
seated Himself. gently.
“here.”
i saw that He was holding something out: a cardboard cup, white, with watery blue writing on it, like you’d buy from an outdoor vendor, from one of the carts that is pushed in endless loops, meaningless circles, hour after hour, just beyond the radius of my weather-warped park bench.
“coffee.”
i was thirsty, i realized. viciously, viscerally thirsty.
it was the kind of thirst that calls for clean, crisp water. the kind of thirst that closes in on you, that gums something thick and round like coffee in a lump at the back of your throat. the kind of thirst that chokes you.
coffee was not what i wanted. coffee would not slake the thirst, dissolve the fists of sand collecting at the base of my tongue.
but i couldn’t decline.
i couldn’t not-accept His offer.
i didn’t want coffee.
but.
i wanted everything, anything, all of this man. wanted to rub the threadbare gauze of His shirt against my cheek, wanted to bury my dry, dusty fingertips in the thicket of hair that gathered at the nape of His neck. wanted to see myself, see the mirror-mel, to luxuriate in how she might appear from within the reflecting pools of His eyes, free of fault lines and fear. i wanted to contemplate infinity from somewhere deep.
someplace inescapable.
i wanted everything, anything, all of this man.
i wanted.
i coughed, clearing out my insides, wondering what sorts of sounds would come out. it had been two full days since i’d uttered a word to another human being.
i said:
“th-thanks.”
my voice sounded shaky to my own ears, a tire passing over gravel.
He didn’t seem to mind.
i won’t say that He didn’t notice, because, of course, He did. even then, right from the start, it was clear that He noticed. He noticed. everything. but He didn’t seem to mind about the stiff, broken sounds coming from within me. He smiled, passed me the water-blue cup.
>
i took what He offered me, sipped at the coffee gingerly. it was black, heavy, tart. it made my eyes water, filled my mouth with heat.
it burned.
i drank it all, downed the whole cup. first tentative, then growing greedier. and all the while, the man simply watched.
when i finished, i placed the empty cup on the ground. i suddenly felt self-conscious, suddenly had too many elbows, knees, strands of hair sticking to my cheeks like gossamer threads of a spider’s web. i wanted to look to the ground, to look away, but i couldn’t. i craned the open plane of my face toward the man like a crocus toward sunrise.
He laughed. “wakes you up, doesn’t it?”
i nodded. He was right. i felt awake. awake like my half-life was a hurricane, a funnel off never, spiraling of into the distance.
awake like a crocus craning toward sunrise.
“i’ve noticed you,” He said. He placed a palm on my shoulder, filled me with heat.
“i’ve seen. you’ve been here two days now, not a bite to eat, not another living person to talk to.”
there was no reply. of course, i had no reply. of course, He was right.
He was right about it all, about everything, ever. and He had noticed me.
i had that sense about Him, overwhelming, enveloping, cloaking:
He. was. right.
He was inescapable.
“the haight. it’s hollowed out,” He said. “free love, all that? it’s over, man. long over. it’s well behind us. there are too many people here now, too many bodies.”
He was right. He was exactly right. He knew about the bodies.
“did you hear about the ‘death of the hippie’?”
i shook my head. of course i hadn’t. i’d never heard about anything.
His eyes sparkled, then took on a faraway glint. He clasped my hand in His own, twined His fingers around mine, recited from a hymnal that only He possessed, a catechism that maybe He’d created Himself, words i hadn’t heard before.
“it’s a song,” He said.
He said: “i like music. i like the way that it can bring forth a message. gently. y’know?”
His words were a poem. a prayer. a premise.
a promise.
well.
i didn’t have a revolution of my own.
getting away had been the one thing, the only thing. and now what?
i didn’t have a revolution to bring. and i didn’t live anywhere.
so.
i didn’t have an anything, an anywhere, an anybody.
i didn’t know what was next.
infinity? maybe. for better or for worse.
“i have my own revolution,” the man was saying.
i blinked, snapped back to attention.
“i have a place, my own place, with my own family. you’d like it.” He was sure of this. “do you want to hear about it? maybe come see it for yourself?”
family. the word stiffened my spine, set like cement in my joints. mirror-mel called to me from behind her looking-glass prison, reminded me of how family ties could bind. could knot.
could fray.
family. hadn’t i left that behind? hadn’t i inhaled, held my breath, plunged headfirst into the undertow?
hadn’t i drifted, open and expansive, toward the now?
something of mirror-mel’s despair, her desperation, it must have seeped through. my flitting, fleeting panic exposed, i gave myself away.
the man surveyed me, taking stock. He read me like a topographical map, scanned the surfaces of my bare skin, studied my jagged fault lines.
seemed to come to a decision.
“it’s not a family like what you’ve known,” He said. His voice rushed with the quiet, assured force of a waterfall. “i can promise you that.”
a promise. a premise. a pact.
about a new understanding of home. a haven. an afterlife.
His face split into a smile, poured like honey down the base of my throat, settled into the hollow where the blood pulses, where it presses up against the surface. blood, and fever, rushing with the force of a waterfall.
“how about this? you don’t have to decide now.”
relief, like a rainstorm. like an ice bath. it pooled between the soft webbing where my fingers met my palms, a force that i could almost touch. almost grab. grasp.
“we’ll just take it slow, get to know each other.” the corners of His mouth stretched toward infinity. “my van is parked just off the road over there.” He jerked a calloused thumb to demonstrate. “it would at least give you some shelter through the nights. while we get to know each other.”
i shivered.
“would you like that?”
of course, i would.
of course, He knew that.
He was right.
always, completely, overwhelmingly right.
He was inescapable.
i nodded.
He grinned again, and a flash of flint flickered within me, glimmering from somewhere deep, from the black hole, from the vortex, filling me with the fever, warming me, spreading it from the outside in.
i wanted to drink Him in, to consume Him, to fold Him into my own body until we shared the same skin. i wanted to inhale Him until i overflowed. i wanted to be carried off, cradled, caressed. i wanted His infinity, His everything.
His undertow.
no matter, then, what family once was, back in the bottomless before. i wanted. still. yet. always.
i wanted to be His family.
i did.
He stood, dusted off His jeans, held His sturdy hand out for a proper introduction.
“i’m Henry.”
He.
was: Henry.
and i.
was: over, under,
locked in free fall.
spiraling into orbit.
smoke
i learn.
with Henry, i learn.
there are ways to silence mirror-mel, ways to smoke her out. Henry knows; of course, He knows just how to quiet her echoing sobs, to distill her razor-fine muscle memory into a haze of vague interference. into nothing more than the reverberation of a half-life.
Henry says there is no before. and He knows how to bring me to the now.
He is magic, alchemy. chemistry.
soothing serum, an elixir.
He offers potions, medicines to break down inside my body, invade my cells. my mind sparks and my limbs loosen.
in His van, amidst the choked-off, heady atmosphere, i swallow, i breathe, i take it all in, welcoming. rushing toward the now. Henry’s medicine takes hold and the want slides over me, warm and wiggling.
we take it slow.
first time
you couldn’t call me a virgin.
not after all of those times with uncle jack, and whiskey breath, roaming hands, squeaking bedsprings. not after all of that endless struggling against the undertow.
but the first time with Henry felt different, still, somehow. it felt like the real first time, like the beginning.
of everything. of always.
it was like all that had come before had been merely practice. had happened to another someone. a cipher. a shadow. a mirror-image girl, covered in someone else’s tears.
i didn’t know that someone, not anymore. i wouldn’t let her back. i swallowed her down and fought back the bitter aftertaste, ignored the chattering that rattled against the inside of my skull. i steeled myself against the constant ache of the fog, the vapor that i used to be.
if i didn’t peer into the reflecting pool, i could pretend to will mirror-mel and her poisoned memories back, deep into the distance. i could build a dam, plug the channels leading to my former life.
with Henry, i didn’t need a looking glass.
with Henry, i could define my own boundaries, my outlines, by the spotlights in his own unyielding eyes.
Henry saw me. saw through me, i mean. He heard the chatter as i ground my teeth together in tight denial of my bottoml
ess past-life. my before.
He had his own ways to silence the white noise, the half-life, the mirror-girl.
the first night in the van, He told me. He showed me. He coaxed my tongue forward until it was outstretched: pink, soft, receptive.
He pressed the tab against it.
He stroked the underside of my chin as i closed my mouth, allowed the wisp of consciousness to melt away.
His eyes shone like marbles, like pavement after a rainstorm. He promised this would “bring me to now.”
i wanted now, wanted Henry’s now more than any other want. couldn’t keep the want from running down the back of my throat, from seeping through the pores of my skin.
the van was big, bigger than two people really needed to be comfortable at night. we had sleeping bags, warm and downy despite the stuffing oozing from fraying corners and stains dotting the nylon surfaces. we rolled up our packs to use as pillows at night.
once the sun had set and the park had cleared of the respectable people, regular people, people like mother and uncle jack, Henry and i would stretch out in the back of the van.
Henry would play his guitar, or, sometimes, the van’s radio, the FM tuner set to rock or folk music, and He’d talk to me about His philosophies: that there was no such thing as ownership, that we’d all been ruined by our parents (clearly, i agreed), that the world was building to a fever pitch.
well. i didn’t know about the world, had hardly even spent any time in it. but.
there was a fever raging. there was.
that much, i knew.
“let me be your father,” Henry said, that first night, skimming the surface of my bare back with His fingertips. “think of me as your father.
“i can be your father.”
Henry had dreams of becoming a musician, of hearing His own music wafting out from the FM tuner as He drifted off at night. He stroked my forearm as though strumming a guitar, humming to a melody that only He could hear.
i listened for sounds as he stroked. but there were things, even then, that Henry kept on the inside. tucked away. things quiet and imperceptible. things he hoarded, guarded close to the bone, in the hopes of making himself whole.
i didn’t mind. i strained to listen.
i told Him i didn’t have a father. and i couldn’t think of Him, of Henry, as uncle jack, even if He was sort of behaving that way.