Dancing in the water
December 26th 2008
4am
Philadelphia International Airport
They hit me like waves. One minute I am here, right here. present and accounted for. I am up and moving, everything is happening. Then I find myself standing in some strange corner of the citadel, some dead end, because the airport is under construction. They are very sorry and keep asking me to pardon their dust, only I don’t see any dust anywhere. No one is really asking anyway, they just put up colorful signs every 200 feet to remind people that this isn’t what an airport is supposed to be like, and they know it, and they’re sorry. I need a few of these signs. I don’t know if 200 feet is enough for me, personally, but if I had a sign or two asking people to pardon my dust, then maybe the security guard who came to see what I was doing in the closed area of Section D might have known and looked down instead of waking me up and asking me to please leave. If I’d had a sign, maybe he would have left me alone.
I suddenly find myself kissing you, your lips soft, and your mouth open. We are standing in the middle of the street, or laying on a huge mattress somewhere dark, somewhere light. We are just kissing and breathing. I breathe my dust out of my nose while we kiss softly, and you open as if it is everything you had hoped for. But then you grow annoyed with my tongue, and exhale your dust with some degree of frustration. I chop it up and snort it, or filter it through a little ball of cotton from my cigarette butt and shoot it into my heart. We huddle together behind the abandoned muni bus and smoke the rest through a beer can.
The Samoan man is really struggling to get up the escalator. He has to stop and just let the contraption do the work for a minute so he can wipe his face with a napkin and say Wheew. No one really says, Wheew. It’s just the way we describe the sound of relief in cartoons. A loud sigh when we finally get indoors from the rain or the freezing cold. Wheew.
Now I am responding to you, as if you have come back and tried, again, to explain. But I’ve got Molly in my head now, Oh God, you’re much too complicated. and I’ve got Jill in my head now, You might be just a little bit in love with the idea of being in love. And when I say, Hmmm. Something else no one really says. It’s the sound of thinking in comic books. I have learned so much from comics. Hmmm. I’ll have to think about that. I say because it doesn’t just click. It doesn’t immediately fit. And she says, You’re a thinker aren’t you?
I was in love with Marvel Girl when I was a boy. you could say that Marvel Girl was my first love. She was fairly plain, had red hair, and arguably the weakest power — telekinesis, which means you have the ability to move physical objects with your mind — but I thought it was the best power. She was the weakest of the X-men because she was just a slender girl who got tired easily. Sometimes when she was just exhausted and collapsed one of the other X-men would have to carry her in one arm, and keep fighting the bad guys with the other arm. Later, after she died and came back to life, she was much more powerful. After she died she could fly, and stop huge robots with her mind. Everyone else had always thought of her as weak and delicate, but very pretty. I always believed in her.
And then I said, I gave you my whole heart. I trusted you. You betrayed me. You betrayed me so deeply. I don’t want you anymore. I don’t think I can ever trust you again. And then you said, But you love me, right? And when you say it you look so pretty and exhausted. It’s the way I like you best, raw. But I say out loud, to the wall and the security guard, I do. Yes. It’s true.
Sometimes I am exhilarated by an overwhelming sense of feeling single. A woman walks out of the bathroom and does a double take. I smile. She smiles. And then I am doing her hard from behind in the back of her van in Parking Area D. she is practically shouting, Yes. and I am breathing seriously through my nose. and then she is sitting across a table from me. Then she has a crush on someone else. And then I don’t know her anymore. When you doubt me, I die.
Now I am sitting on the only bench in the airport I could find which doesn’t have dividers between the seats. I imagine how people have such terrible boundary issues that we actually need plastic arm rests between us so we know where we stand with each other. These devices stop elbow fights in all sorts of places, and they stop indigents from having cozy, warm places to lay down too.
I am exhausted. I miss you. I love you more than the sky. I hate you. I love you. I am so mad at you. You make me smile with my heart. You have hurt me so deeply. Now I know what you’re really made of… when things get tough, or confusing, you shut down, turn on me, develop a crush on someone else, and then bail. Awesome. Just the kind of partner I wanted. I love you. I hate you. I love you so much it hurts. I’ve completely lost it. And the man in the hoodie says “Say it my brotha.” and then he smiles at me.
Now I don’t care, but I remember bursting into tears on the airplane yesterday and texting my sister, I am in hell. I knew she was going to quickly point out something positive, or just say, Oh, or maybe not say anything at all. I wanted the slim man with skin like dusty chocolate beside me to wrap his arms around me and whisper sweetly into my ear. I needed him to assure me. I have such warm, loving arms. Everyone likes my hugs. Well, not everyone. Sometimes people get freaked out by just how big and warm they can be. Sometimes. I understand. Sometimes I understand. I might actually love those hugs the best. No one ever really hugs me. Not when I really need a hug. I am, perhaps, much too big and strong and prickly to hug.
Now my feet are dangling over the edge of my bench. They are soaking in the warm water — weightless. It is as if my feet are not even there any more. I have to look to be sure they haven’t dissolved. They are there. There they are, dancing in the water, waiting for the waves.