Marie had made a large quantity of mimosa mix and put it in a cooler. I had asked Michael the day before if he wanted to come hang out on the beach with us and as far as I knew he'd be pulling into my driveway at any moment.
I wanted to dig into the mimosas, but as it was I wasn't sure there were nearly enough to last the day.
I was living out my last days before I went to work for the cable company. The whole thing seemed ridiculous. I was so worried about going back to work. I felt such dread. I couldn't understand it. All I wanted to do was lay in the sun, drink, write, and kiss Marie and pretend that this was July eternal. It's not like I had never had a job before. Like I had never worked. I had been working since I was thirteen, building houses in the summer Colorado sun. For whatever reason though, I waited nervously. Peering through my dark sunglasses. Lusting after some impossible freedom glimpsed only through television and daydreams.
"Are you sure he's coming?" Marie asked.
"I don't know. I tried to call him earlier, but he didn't answer. He never does though."
"Oh." Marie was sitting on the living room floor, putting eyeliner on in front of a large mirror she had stolen off of the porch of an abandoned house nearby.
I sat at the computer, typing and deleting.
Michael pulled into the driveway and I closed out my program and stood up to welcome him. I'm not sure if it was ever noticed, but I have always made it a point to show a certain level of respect toward people. Even during my anger, my drunken outbursts, my stupidity, I tried. I hope that is recognized before people forget me.
He had a large black car that he had somehow acquired from his mother, I think. I was never really clear on it and I suppose it doesn't matter either way. He turned it off in my driveway, got out, shut the door and locked it. He looked up at my porch. Despite our lengthy friendship, he had rarely been here. I supposed it was too far for him to drive. I opened the door,walked out and waved.
"Hey man," I said. "How are you?"
"Good, you?"
"Good."
He came up on the porch. I opened the door and said, "Michael's here, we're ready when you're ready."
"Okay," Marie said. "I'll be there in a minute."
I closed the door and sat down on the stone steps of my porch. "I think we're going up to Buttermilk today."
"I don't know where that is."
"It's beautiful. I keep going there lately."
"You can swim there?"
"Sure. Swim. Wade. Lay down. Do whatever you want."
"Cool. Should we get booze?"
"Marie made mimosas," I said. "But we can get more if you want."
"Okay."
Michael sat next to me. We looked out onto the street, not speaking. There was a sadness to Michael that I couldn't understand. It rivaled my own, but I couldn't see the root. I couldn't speak his language. We had talked about it on a few occasions, but we never got down to it. We always just ended up offending each other. So we sat in silence sometimes.
I wanted to dig into the mimosas, but as it was I wasn't sure there were nearly enough to last the day.
I was living out my last days before I went to work for the cable company. The whole thing seemed ridiculous. I was so worried about going back to work. I felt such dread. I couldn't understand it. All I wanted to do was lay in the sun, drink, write, and kiss Marie and pretend that this was July eternal. It's not like I had never had a job before. Like I had never worked. I had been working since I was thirteen, building houses in the summer Colorado sun. For whatever reason though, I waited nervously. Peering through my dark sunglasses. Lusting after some impossible freedom glimpsed only through television and daydreams.
"Are you sure he's coming?" Marie asked.
"I don't know. I tried to call him earlier, but he didn't answer. He never does though."
"Oh." Marie was sitting on the living room floor, putting eyeliner on in front of a large mirror she had stolen off of the porch of an abandoned house nearby.
I sat at the computer, typing and deleting.
Michael pulled into the driveway and I closed out my program and stood up to welcome him. I'm not sure if it was ever noticed, but I have always made it a point to show a certain level of respect toward people. Even during my anger, my drunken outbursts, my stupidity, I tried. I hope that is recognized before people forget me.
He had a large black car that he had somehow acquired from his mother, I think. I was never really clear on it and I suppose it doesn't matter either way. He turned it off in my driveway, got out, shut the door and locked it. He looked up at my porch. Despite our lengthy friendship, he had rarely been here. I supposed it was too far for him to drive. I opened the door,walked out and waved.
"Hey man," I said. "How are you?"
"Good, you?"
"Good."
He came up on the porch. I opened the door and said, "Michael's here, we're ready when you're ready."
"Okay," Marie said. "I'll be there in a minute."
I closed the door and sat down on the stone steps of my porch. "I think we're going up to Buttermilk today."
"I don't know where that is."
"It's beautiful. I keep going there lately."
"You can swim there?"
"Sure. Swim. Wade. Lay down. Do whatever you want."
"Cool. Should we get booze?"
"Marie made mimosas," I said. "But we can get more if you want."
"Okay."
Michael sat next to me. We looked out onto the street, not speaking. There was a sadness to Michael that I couldn't understand. It rivaled my own, but I couldn't see the root. I couldn't speak his language. We had talked about it on a few occasions, but we never got down to it. We always just ended up offending each other. So we sat in silence sometimes.
The door opened. Marie came out, the cooler in her arms. "Ready?"
"Yeah," I said. We stood up. "Are we taking our car?" I asked them.
"Sure," Marie said.
"I don't care," Michael said. "Whichever."
"Okay then, our car it is."
We put our cooler in the trunk. The towels. My messenger bag with my notebook and an increasingly beat up Hemingway. I got in the driver seat, Marie in the passenger, Michael in the back.
"What do you want to listen to?" I asked Michael.
"What's in here?"
I handed him the large CD book. "Just pass it up when you have something."
"Okay."
We backed out, and drove.
We listened to loud keyboards and guitars. Music from our budding teenage years. A nostalgic warmth to match the sunlight. The windows were down and we careened along the hidden roads between tunnels of trees and sparse houses. We sang along to growling vocals with broad smiles and laughs. I was forgetting for a moment. Marie smiled at me. Michael smiled. It was beautiful, there in my car.
After quite some time, we pulled off onto the dirt road leading to Buttermilk, and quite some time after that, we parked. My legs were cramped from the drive and my lower back ached but I didn't care.
I got out of the car and saw a small group of hippies coming up the hill. They had a small dog with them and they were speaking loudly and one of them was cross eyed. I tried to ignore them.
"Ugh. Fucking hippies," Marie said under her breath. "Stay perfectly still and maybe they won't see us."
"Hey dudes!" the cross-eyed one said to us as we pulled our things out of the trunk.
"Shit," Marie said.
Michael laughed. I turned around. "Hey. How's the water down there?"
The cross-eyed hippie had his dog in his arms and was trying to keep his balance. It seemed too early, even by my standards, to be fucked up. I wondered if maybe his depth perception was just off. His friends were talking between them selves and slowly piling into a beaten up Jeep. "Dude," he said. "Fucking a-ma-zing. I am so fucking drunk!"
"Todd," one of the other hippies said from inside the vehicle. "Get in the fucking Jeep man. Leave people alone."
"This is why I fucking hate bringing him anywhere," another one said.
Cross-eyed Todd began to walk over to us. He tripped over a rock and nearly launched his dog. "It's cool, it's cool," he said. "I'm good. He stumbled left and right.
Marie was bent into the trunk, not doing anything, but trying to ignore them. Michael and I watched him stumble toward us.
"Wow," Michael said.
"Yeah," I said.
"You dudes like to drink, right?"
I didn't speak.
"Well, fuck, I do. Fuck you assholes," Cross-eyed Todd said. He turned around. "Fucking pig pieces of shit."
Michael began to laugh quietly.
The hippie in the drivers seat got out. "Todd! Get in the fucking car!"
"Jeep! Fuck you!"
Sober hippie grabbed Cross-eyed Todd by the arm and yanked him. Todd shook and the dog fell out of his arm and yellped a little when it hit the ground.
"You made me drop Rufus you fucking scumbag!" Todd said and shoved Sober hippie. Rufus ran to and jumped into the Jeep.
"Todd! Get in the fucking Jeep!" Sober hippie grabbed Cross-eyed Todd again and dragged him toward an open door in the Jeep and crammed him into it like too many clothes into a suitcase. He slammed the door and looked at us. "I'm sorry guys, he's, he's got a problem."
"It's cool," I said. "We've all been there."
"Yeah," Sober hippie said. "Have a good one." He got in the driver seat, shut the door and before long they were gone.
"That was a little surreal," Marie said.
"Mimosas," I said.
"Right," Michael said. "Mimosas."
We locked up the car, and walked the path to the rock ledge I had fallen in love with. The path was barely a path at first, made up mostly of roots, jutting rocks and small trees to steady yourself with. Sun light fell through the canopy of leaves in circles and mazes of glowing leaves and sticks and rocks scattered around us. I was carrying the cooler and it I could feel the mimosa mix swishing around heavily it what I was sure were waves like a small ocean. I imagined tiny cellular societies, rising and falling, their time proportionate with their size. They all feared the massive waves, laming against their city walls, killing their families, destroying their cities. The gods were angry, but soon, a millennium or two perhaps to them, I would redeem the gods. I would drain the ocean, and no longer would they fear it, but instead miss it. Tell tales of the great body of champagne and orange juice. Pray for rain. Pray to me.
We came to my rock ledge and I set the cooler down. Marie laid out towels, and Michael stood at the edge of the water, staring out at Lake Henry from a view rarely spied.
"Is there a beach?" he asked.
"Not really," I said. "There's that area over there where you can wade a little though." I pointed off to the side where the slope of the rocks was gentler and went further out into the water.
"Fuck."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Marie pulled off her shirt and shirts, revealing a new bathing suit that she was quite proud to be wearing, and deservedly so. She sat on the towel and from her bag pulled out two water bottles and a cleaned out soda bottle. She poured mimosa from a spigot on the side of the cooler into each and handed us each our drinks. I was reunited with my wonderful green sports bottle at last.
I pulled off of it and it was light. Gentle, and understandably girly. I walked to the edge of the water, sat down, set my drink down, threw my shirt off, and slid into the water. It swallowed me up to my chest and I let it. There was something about the first time sliding into the water that was almost orgasmic to me. Reverse birth, perhaps, or an escape. Sliding beneath the surface into another world, where different life existed. Where there were no rules, expectations, deadlines, or anything recognizable to society or standards. Fresh water indeed.
Michael sat on the stone and let his feet in.
"Get in," I said.
"I can't."
"What? Why?"
"I can't swim."
"What?" Marie said from the towel.
"You can't swim?" I asked.
"No dude. There's no lakes or anything near Springer."
"Springer Lake?"
"That doesn't count."
"Oh."
"You can't swim?" Marie asked again.
"No, Marie, I can't."
"Well, fuck," I said. "If I knew that we wouldn't have come to the fucking ledges. We could have gone to the beach."
"I did ask."
I couldn't remember if he did or didn't. I drank some. "Just slide in and hold onto the rocks."
"No dude."
"It's fine."
"No, seriously."
"How about this then?" I swam over to the shallower part and stood up. The water bounced and curled around my waist. "This part is good. At least this way you can still get in the water."
He nodded and got up and walked over.
"Fuck guys. Now I have to move again," Marie said from the ledge, a ways away now.
Marie readjusted herself on the rocks, closer, and I found a chair under the surface, carved out over eons by lapping waves and silt and luck and just for me at that moment. I sat back, slid up to my chin and stared out at the dancing beads of light and the mountains in the distance. Out there, a mile or more away, people drove the state route northward, or southward. They went to work, or home. They began or ended vacations. They drove hurriedly to hospitals and baseball games, and to first dates. They drove in hostile silences at the end of arguments, and screaming at each other at the beginnings of them. Out there, the world went on. This point, though, on the shore, this moment, this ledge, it was outside of time. Outside of the world. The water existed around me, perhaps oblivious. Hiding me. Reassuring me. Nursing me. A small wave covered my face and I dropped my bottle into the water.
"Shit!" With a little more struggle than I was expecting I pulled myself out of my chair and further into and against the waves as they carried my green sports bottle and mimosa out. I swam out and rescued it, rescued myself and back to my chair. Michael looked uneasy. I felt bad.
"We can head out if you want. Big empty day ahead of us. We don't have to spend it all here," I said.
"No, it's fine. This spot is fine." He waded around in the water and eventually sat on a rock so he was halfway in. The waves swayed his probably ninety pound frame.
Marie tanned on the rocks and Michael and I drank and talked about our band and shows and the sad state of our local music scene. Our conversations rose and fell in as if mimicking the waves around us, occasionally leaving us in strange moments of silence, and perhaps loneliness.
"You're probably my best friend," Michael said.
I laughed. I didn't know how to respond.
"And you're like 'you're totally not.' Awesome," Michael said.
"Yeah, no. It's not like that. It's just, what do you say to someone when they drop that on you? 'You too man!' And then we what, hug or something? It's weird, but thanks."
Michael laughed. "It's cool. It did sound a little gay once I said it."
"See, I was doing us a favor." I should have just reciprocated. He was my best friend, at least at the time, and so what if it sounded weird? In my head I could hear every strong male figure I had imagined to life in my adolescence telling me that men don't speak like that. We grunt and we know. We just know. I found it harder and harder to justify.
The sun blazed across the sky and the lake came to life. In the distance vacationers and locals alike took to their boats and their barbecues and their memories of sun, sand, and smiles, all for rainy days and long grey years. It was beautiful. I refused to believe that it ever had to end. Despite that ticking in the back of my skull. The red x's across the calendar. The dwindling bank account, I refused to believe that I had to go back to work. That I had to do anything I found unpleasant. That this day would ever end.
We swam, sort of, for a few more hours, laughed, finished the mimosas, and eventually went back to the car. The afternoon was settling in and we were all smiling, refreshed and worried that it was over.
"We should get more booze," Michael said.
"You're buying," I said.
"Let's go to town then," Marie said.
I was about to watch two people fuck in front of forty, hang out with two mimes, and get pulled around in a rickshaw, but I was smiling because I didn't know any of that. Because I didn't want to know anything and at that moment, on that perfect day in July, I didn't have to.
"Yeah," I said. We stood up. "Are we taking our car?" I asked them.
"Sure," Marie said.
"I don't care," Michael said. "Whichever."
"Okay then, our car it is."
We put our cooler in the trunk. The towels. My messenger bag with my notebook and an increasingly beat up Hemingway. I got in the driver seat, Marie in the passenger, Michael in the back.
"What do you want to listen to?" I asked Michael.
"What's in here?"
I handed him the large CD book. "Just pass it up when you have something."
"Okay."
We backed out, and drove.
We listened to loud keyboards and guitars. Music from our budding teenage years. A nostalgic warmth to match the sunlight. The windows were down and we careened along the hidden roads between tunnels of trees and sparse houses. We sang along to growling vocals with broad smiles and laughs. I was forgetting for a moment. Marie smiled at me. Michael smiled. It was beautiful, there in my car.
After quite some time, we pulled off onto the dirt road leading to Buttermilk, and quite some time after that, we parked. My legs were cramped from the drive and my lower back ached but I didn't care.
I got out of the car and saw a small group of hippies coming up the hill. They had a small dog with them and they were speaking loudly and one of them was cross eyed. I tried to ignore them.
"Ugh. Fucking hippies," Marie said under her breath. "Stay perfectly still and maybe they won't see us."
"Hey dudes!" the cross-eyed one said to us as we pulled our things out of the trunk.
"Shit," Marie said.
Michael laughed. I turned around. "Hey. How's the water down there?"
The cross-eyed hippie had his dog in his arms and was trying to keep his balance. It seemed too early, even by my standards, to be fucked up. I wondered if maybe his depth perception was just off. His friends were talking between them selves and slowly piling into a beaten up Jeep. "Dude," he said. "Fucking a-ma-zing. I am so fucking drunk!"
"Todd," one of the other hippies said from inside the vehicle. "Get in the fucking Jeep man. Leave people alone."
"This is why I fucking hate bringing him anywhere," another one said.
Cross-eyed Todd began to walk over to us. He tripped over a rock and nearly launched his dog. "It's cool, it's cool," he said. "I'm good. He stumbled left and right.
Marie was bent into the trunk, not doing anything, but trying to ignore them. Michael and I watched him stumble toward us.
"Wow," Michael said.
"Yeah," I said.
"You dudes like to drink, right?"
I didn't speak.
"Well, fuck, I do. Fuck you assholes," Cross-eyed Todd said. He turned around. "Fucking pig pieces of shit."
Michael began to laugh quietly.
The hippie in the drivers seat got out. "Todd! Get in the fucking car!"
"Jeep! Fuck you!"
Sober hippie grabbed Cross-eyed Todd by the arm and yanked him. Todd shook and the dog fell out of his arm and yellped a little when it hit the ground.
"You made me drop Rufus you fucking scumbag!" Todd said and shoved Sober hippie. Rufus ran to and jumped into the Jeep.
"Todd! Get in the fucking Jeep!" Sober hippie grabbed Cross-eyed Todd again and dragged him toward an open door in the Jeep and crammed him into it like too many clothes into a suitcase. He slammed the door and looked at us. "I'm sorry guys, he's, he's got a problem."
"It's cool," I said. "We've all been there."
"Yeah," Sober hippie said. "Have a good one." He got in the driver seat, shut the door and before long they were gone.
"That was a little surreal," Marie said.
"Mimosas," I said.
"Right," Michael said. "Mimosas."
We locked up the car, and walked the path to the rock ledge I had fallen in love with. The path was barely a path at first, made up mostly of roots, jutting rocks and small trees to steady yourself with. Sun light fell through the canopy of leaves in circles and mazes of glowing leaves and sticks and rocks scattered around us. I was carrying the cooler and it I could feel the mimosa mix swishing around heavily it what I was sure were waves like a small ocean. I imagined tiny cellular societies, rising and falling, their time proportionate with their size. They all feared the massive waves, laming against their city walls, killing their families, destroying their cities. The gods were angry, but soon, a millennium or two perhaps to them, I would redeem the gods. I would drain the ocean, and no longer would they fear it, but instead miss it. Tell tales of the great body of champagne and orange juice. Pray for rain. Pray to me.
We came to my rock ledge and I set the cooler down. Marie laid out towels, and Michael stood at the edge of the water, staring out at Lake Henry from a view rarely spied.
"Is there a beach?" he asked.
"Not really," I said. "There's that area over there where you can wade a little though." I pointed off to the side where the slope of the rocks was gentler and went further out into the water.
"Fuck."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Marie pulled off her shirt and shirts, revealing a new bathing suit that she was quite proud to be wearing, and deservedly so. She sat on the towel and from her bag pulled out two water bottles and a cleaned out soda bottle. She poured mimosa from a spigot on the side of the cooler into each and handed us each our drinks. I was reunited with my wonderful green sports bottle at last.
I pulled off of it and it was light. Gentle, and understandably girly. I walked to the edge of the water, sat down, set my drink down, threw my shirt off, and slid into the water. It swallowed me up to my chest and I let it. There was something about the first time sliding into the water that was almost orgasmic to me. Reverse birth, perhaps, or an escape. Sliding beneath the surface into another world, where different life existed. Where there were no rules, expectations, deadlines, or anything recognizable to society or standards. Fresh water indeed.
Michael sat on the stone and let his feet in.
"Get in," I said.
"I can't."
"What? Why?"
"I can't swim."
"What?" Marie said from the towel.
"You can't swim?" I asked.
"No dude. There's no lakes or anything near Springer."
"Springer Lake?"
"That doesn't count."
"Oh."
"You can't swim?" Marie asked again.
"No, Marie, I can't."
"Well, fuck," I said. "If I knew that we wouldn't have come to the fucking ledges. We could have gone to the beach."
"I did ask."
I couldn't remember if he did or didn't. I drank some. "Just slide in and hold onto the rocks."
"No dude."
"It's fine."
"No, seriously."
"How about this then?" I swam over to the shallower part and stood up. The water bounced and curled around my waist. "This part is good. At least this way you can still get in the water."
He nodded and got up and walked over.
"Fuck guys. Now I have to move again," Marie said from the ledge, a ways away now.
Marie readjusted herself on the rocks, closer, and I found a chair under the surface, carved out over eons by lapping waves and silt and luck and just for me at that moment. I sat back, slid up to my chin and stared out at the dancing beads of light and the mountains in the distance. Out there, a mile or more away, people drove the state route northward, or southward. They went to work, or home. They began or ended vacations. They drove hurriedly to hospitals and baseball games, and to first dates. They drove in hostile silences at the end of arguments, and screaming at each other at the beginnings of them. Out there, the world went on. This point, though, on the shore, this moment, this ledge, it was outside of time. Outside of the world. The water existed around me, perhaps oblivious. Hiding me. Reassuring me. Nursing me. A small wave covered my face and I dropped my bottle into the water.
"Shit!" With a little more struggle than I was expecting I pulled myself out of my chair and further into and against the waves as they carried my green sports bottle and mimosa out. I swam out and rescued it, rescued myself and back to my chair. Michael looked uneasy. I felt bad.
"We can head out if you want. Big empty day ahead of us. We don't have to spend it all here," I said.
"No, it's fine. This spot is fine." He waded around in the water and eventually sat on a rock so he was halfway in. The waves swayed his probably ninety pound frame.
Marie tanned on the rocks and Michael and I drank and talked about our band and shows and the sad state of our local music scene. Our conversations rose and fell in as if mimicking the waves around us, occasionally leaving us in strange moments of silence, and perhaps loneliness.
"You're probably my best friend," Michael said.
I laughed. I didn't know how to respond.
"And you're like 'you're totally not.' Awesome," Michael said.
"Yeah, no. It's not like that. It's just, what do you say to someone when they drop that on you? 'You too man!' And then we what, hug or something? It's weird, but thanks."
Michael laughed. "It's cool. It did sound a little gay once I said it."
"See, I was doing us a favor." I should have just reciprocated. He was my best friend, at least at the time, and so what if it sounded weird? In my head I could hear every strong male figure I had imagined to life in my adolescence telling me that men don't speak like that. We grunt and we know. We just know. I found it harder and harder to justify.
The sun blazed across the sky and the lake came to life. In the distance vacationers and locals alike took to their boats and their barbecues and their memories of sun, sand, and smiles, all for rainy days and long grey years. It was beautiful. I refused to believe that it ever had to end. Despite that ticking in the back of my skull. The red x's across the calendar. The dwindling bank account, I refused to believe that I had to go back to work. That I had to do anything I found unpleasant. That this day would ever end.
We swam, sort of, for a few more hours, laughed, finished the mimosas, and eventually went back to the car. The afternoon was settling in and we were all smiling, refreshed and worried that it was over.
"We should get more booze," Michael said.
"You're buying," I said.
"Let's go to town then," Marie said.
I was about to watch two people fuck in front of forty, hang out with two mimes, and get pulled around in a rickshaw, but I was smiling because I didn't know any of that. Because I didn't want to know anything and at that moment, on that perfect day in July, I didn't have to.
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