A Bench at the Park

There is a picnic table that sits by the shore of a lake.  It’s a short drive from here, just a few minutes to the south and east.  Whitewater consists of two parts, really; the town proper, where operates the university bustling amongst the bulk of the citizens, and that small slice of Illinois wealth that haloes Whitewater Lake.  A quaint country rode connects one to the other as if umbilical, and who nourishes who is anyone’s guess.

The lake is frozen right now, and the homes largely vacant.  I’ve seen every season bloom and whither on its blissfully oblivious vine from that pine vantage point.  It’s shocking to note the passing months, really; while each turning of a calendar’s month alone is but a vacant recitation, these recitations begin to bump into each other with alarming ease.  The vernal equinox frosted the glass as my steady breaths, a fog rising through the struggling sprigs of budding spring, dissipated and died.  Little did I know.  Little do any of us really, actually, truly know, but despite our troubling ignorance and uncertainty, we have to do something.

I remember being fourteen.  Fuck.  That’s all I’ve been since I turned fourteen.  And I wanted a girl to fuck and a book to read.  Nothing with a really diverse vocabulary, of course.  That would require a dictionary and something more than a negligible motivation.  But I didn’t know how the next eight years would pass.  I didn’t know how violently volatile emotions would wax and wane, and I hadn’t had any idea how contemptible the average person tends to be.  I watched the Mallards weave in and out on the placid solstice waters and wondered: How average am I?  There’s time left, right?  So how is it ever possible to point prow forward—remembering that without a target destination, the vessel will flounder in indecision—and to overcome the inclination to undo as opposed to the necessity of doing.

She perched on her stool like a preening songbird.  She flipped on the high-beams and invited me over with a slow, sultry smile.  I considered my drink in front of me.  A whiskey sour.  I had a friend who invited me out for cocktails when I was twenty; not being familiar with mixed drinks, and fearful of appearing uncouth and making some ridiculous tavern faux pas, I recollected an old John Wayne movie from the cobwebs and ordered a whiskey sour.  I didn’t enjoy it.  I don’t really even like them now, but I still order them.

Anyway, the girl.  The digital face on the cheap Green Bay Packer clock displayed 1:15 in a hellish shade of red.  I checked my reflection in the mirror that stretched behind the cornucopia of liquor…in case you didn’t know, bars adorn walls in mirrors to create an illusion of additional space…and I figured she’s either desperate before the specter of encroaching last call or blinder than the eyeless.

The shredded cushion on the bar stool sighed and I sat beside her.  Eyeless she was not, and she looked me full in the face and put her hand on my elbow.  “Didn’t we have a class together,” she asked, her voice a dangerous, smoky contralto.  I knew we never had—I wouldn’t have forgotten a face like that—but I pictured her legs around me.  I visualized how her full breasts would bounce as I moved in and out of her.  And I pictured her naked and sleeping in the seven a.m. light, and I knew how terribly empty I would feel as I gazed on her, how nude we both would be once the night’s darkness had fled.  I left the bar alone, her surprised resentful glare burning holes through my back.

The last few months have burned me harshly.  This tired soul and broken heart are littered with crumpled love letters and unfilled applications.  And now, sitting at this tired, oft-vandalized picnic table on the indifferent shore of a winter’s version of Whitewater Lake, I don’t know what to do.  I don’t.  I am twenty-two now, aren’t I?

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Perhaps my most damaging vice is my propensity for wallowing.  But, if just for now, if just because I have written it down, I am better.  I am done with undoing, I think, and must concentrate on the things that must be done.

I am, and not just because the calendar says so.