1986

The Spring of ‘86

Waves crashed on the coast’s dark banks. “White sand is overrated,” I’d heard more than a few times already in my days. Ultimately, there were more wrongs than rights—on the trip, and in life.

The wind playfully carassed my burnt face as I lay peacefully on the beach one day, her fingers draping down my cheek to my neck before being drawn away. How good her touch feels, I thought, even if it was phantom and fleeting. No one stepped in to take her place as she drew calm and left the beach. “Ca va mal,” I responded to her abscence in the spirit of the vacation. But she was already gone, and my words fell to the soft, hot sand below.

It was a lonely beach, and I played the part. Couples would steal away to the farthest recesses of the three mile beach. To the eastern limits, they would head to the woods outside Marea; to the western limits, to the abandoned resort with its tattered cement pier leading to nowhere imparticular without remorse or concern. I stayed by the central entrance to the beach from the resort, fearing I might see my own reflection in the waters of the wild. The world is more full of weeping than they would understand, I thought, borrowing amply from Yeates to amuse myself.

The Summer of ‘86

Ironic, then, it was that I found myself doing what I always tend to do: I admired her by pen but not by word or action. Pathetic fallacy, as so often happens in my world, punctuated the thought: “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?” could be heard sneaking round the bend from the main plaza to the secluded alcove near the beach where I’d hid to pen my pitiful notes on the folds of my fiction novel.

As I watched her flirt with the fit beach boys, the metaphor began to form itself like matter following a super nova. My stomach grumbled. It was an animated moment of remorse, of wishing wistfully and rueing woefully—a moment when self-loathing beget self-loathing. I could not even seek solace in my day-dreams, which ultimately moonlighted as nightmares of the most dreadful kind: the plausible. How wretched is he who, in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, comes to think about what he doesn’t and simply cannot have?

Then again, if it were only a matter of “does not” rather than “could not” and “will never,” it would be a different matter entirely. It is not that I do not have the utensils, after all: it is that I cannot and will not have them—not now, and not ever.

The Fall of ‘86

When the time finally came for the first quiet exchange between us, I found myself as ill-prepared as always. At every occassion, I’d locked eyes with her: not for any explicit purpose, mind you, but because I couldn’t help myself. Her bewitching hazel eyes beckoned for attention with each lash-batting glance, piercing all those who dare fall under their gaze like the javelins of some long-lost Amazon warrior goddess. A clumsy fool, I quickly squandered my moment with an awkward complement.

She, dressed to impress with a slim black, form-fitting one-piece with sparkles and a hint of leoporad print across the bust, had me at a loss before I even spoke. I wrote in my head as the moment passed, searching for the right word that I would use when I inevitably retold the moment on the pages herein. “Radiant,” “stunning,” and a host of other contrived and overused adjectives were all that came to mind.

Bumbling, I put forth what little offensive I could. “I really like your dress; you look great.” She smiled, politely, before not only returning the volley but handily bringing the game to completion. “Thanks. I should really show this dress to my boyfriend sometime.” I abruptly changed the subject moments before we went our seperate ways.

The Winter of ‘86

As I sat there alone by the shore in the dark of the night, I couldn’t help but pick up my book to write again. In the midst of the noisy concert, the silence was deafening. Not even the sound of my own thoughts was enough of a comfort to help me forget the reality of the situation. The calm equator wind blew without paying mind to he who humored her. And then it was still.