He Falls.

No Place

Drill down deeper

Hold on tighter

To the rope that you grip and hang from

This is here

Nowhere but here.

He watches out of the corner of his eye as the clock moved forward to 2:43.  He should have gone out.  What was he thinking? The silence is too much for him.  He gets up, goes to the fridge, grabs a beer, and turns on the tv.  Cop shows. He turns off the tv, powers up his computer, and turns on some music, takes a nice drink and leans back in his chair. It has only been a week, and he feels out of control without her.  He longs to escape the pain, but how does one do that? Alcohol, drugs, sex. Nothing seems to be right.  The silence is coming back again, even with the music on. He gets his coat on to go for a walk.  Hearing the cars going by may help. He starts walking the the stairs of his apartment building and notices that someone had left the main door open.  He goes down to investigate.  He looks outside and sees nothing strange, so continues on his way.  The air feels brisk, but it feels nice to feel something.  There are a few cars still driving by and this, along with the fresh air, comforts him. Not one person in sight anywhere though.  He decides then and there to move out of the neighborhood.  He needs people around.  This won’t do.

He turns the corner.  Still nothing.  He walks; his footsteps the only sound and they echo loudly against the walls of the surrounding buildings.  He sees a light on in one of the windows and a shadow appears behind the curtains.  The figure of a female? Maybe.  He continues on.  The rhythm of his feel propelling his body to move forward even though he is apathetic to everything. Why move, why breathe, when this is the way it will be? This is reality, isn’t it? Feeling a lack of control, being without from within. He misses her touch, her presence. It brought him out of himself, at least for a little while.  Now, all he has is his internal landscape, his barren thoughts, and guilt over doing the wrong thing.  It tears up his mind to think that he could have done something differently. But why? Could it have changed things? Could it have mattered? He turns the corner to veer back to his apartment. He opens the bottom door to the sound of music.  Could one of the neighbors have woken up since he left? He mounts the stairs.  The music is coming from upstairs, and it is loud. Sounds like trance or techno. Nobody else stirs in the hallway. Not another noise around.  Just the music.  As he reaches the top of the stairs he realizes suddenly that, yes, it is coming from his apartment.  The door is ajar. He pushes it open and sees a woman in green standing there. No, dancing there, slowly. Her eyes are closed, and she is swaying back and forth.  Her hair is a mass of waves and tendrils like chaotic waterfalls. He stands there stunned watching her.  Her outfit is all green: a silk-like material, like nothing he has ever seen before. Almost iridescent in the light of his apartment.  One light is on:  the floor lamp next to the couch, yet she glows more deeply than she should.  She continues to sway, the music changes to something more mellow and acoustic. He lies down on the couch and just sits, watching intently. His eyes close and sleep takes over him, comforting his weary synapsing neurons.  They settle down after a long battle. He goes deeper, still hearing the music. He feels hands on his face caressing him, and he falls, losing whatever grip he had left on the past, on the future. He simply falls.  

Siren's Song

I put in a call to book the weekend of June 4th at the lake house.  The receptionist relays to me that there is only one cottage remaining--Siren’s Song, the house farthest past the long dock on the left. I book it quickly, excitedly.  I gaze and glance around the room; the orange sponge strangely signalling to me that I need to clean up the kitchen before she arrives. I look at the clock.  She will be here in an hour.  The sponge moves almost on its own from that point on, channeling my energy.

While washing and drying the remaining dishes, I become lost in reverie about our last meeting at the university library.  The electrical shock between us was palpable and shocking, jolting us out of our mundane academic life. I have a “pull” at the library, so once I had felt that first jolt, I pulled her into the archive room.  Temperature and humidity controlled, white gloves waiting at the door, we swiftly peeled our clothes off like “just ripe” bananas and lay down on the floor.  Our lust matured, growing more forceful. I spotted a copy of Keat’s poetry on a shelf a mere 3 feet away from where we stood. “Could it be a first edition?” I pondered then quickly erased that strange intrusive thought from my head.  I try my best not to laugh as I position my angel, to admire her curvy white splendour, as she lay spread across the carpet like a corpse: blonde hair spilled onto avocado, with lips parted in painful, ecstatic stillness.

Her signature quiet contemplation quickly transforms into a rapturous rhythm of sound, and I fear for a moment someone will hear.  I cover her mouth with my hand, impulsively grabbing one of the spare white gloves for her to bite on.  Gasps and cries muffled, we proceed to end our moment of spiritual elevation on a high note:  no biological traces to be found, all neatly collected in a latex container.  I breathe a sigh of relief for the salvage of my beloved open access to the library and for the continuation of my masculine freedom.  I watch as she dresses-replacing her rosy pink undergarments, buttoning her jeans as I zip mine quickly.  I lay the glove carefully back in place and caress the Keats book as I pass: “No damage done”.  I drive her home and observe her as she walks to the door, hair flowing down her back, slightly dishevelled; her boots percusive on the concrete.  A car pulls up. Two people get out: an older woman and what appears to be a priest. They enter the same door as she has, priest following behind, close at her heels.  She must live with her mother, I suppose.

When the time comes and she finally arrives, I tell her about the cottage. We make plans. She is more beautiful than I remember, away from the fluorescent lights of the university.  She had mindfully thought to bring her toothbrush, and I spot it in the holder on the bathroom sink.  “Huh.” I feel a sharp jab sear through my chest. A small red object with significance miles beyond its ordinary utilitarianism.

I proceed to count the days until June 4th, slashing them with a line on my calendar anxiously, like a kid waiting for Christmas.  I am finding that I am falling in love.  I almost forget to breathe now, and my stomach feels like an empty cavern come to life with flowers.

June 4th arrives.  We unpack our things at Siren’s Song. Someone had left a green rake by the back door.  It had fallen and jammed into the screening.  I carefully remove it and place it on its side on the front porch. The bugs will come later, but let them come.  I won’t notice.

She comes up behind me, her hair tied back loosely with a scarf, bright red perfectly painted toes peeking out innocently from the from of her black leather sandals.  She grabs my hand, leads me to the lake, immodestly removes her clothes, and dives through the surface of the glassy lake.  I think to hesitate, looking around at the other cottages the surround its perimeter.  As I spy her figure drifting smoothly through the water, I say “What the hell,” remove my clothes, and enter.  The chill of the water hits me pretty hard, but it is a pleasant shock.  She swims to me, red lips beaded with water, her hair smoothed back to a fawn colored sheen.  Her skin has just begun to tan.  Around her neck rests a small plain gold cross.  I begin to caress and kiss her neck, moving down to take the cross into my mouth.  I taste the harsh metallic coldness as our bodies begin the melding process.  We create an amalgam of our own and the chemical reaction is synchronic and smooth.

The water will hide the evidence this time, but I never once consider this.  It is simply this woman and me.  It could be any day, any hour, any lake, and any two people experiencing wholeness and escape, feet off of the ground, for the first time.  And I live for that.  I know we all do.