In The Creek

Originally written February 2000

It is the first day of summer, and I am in the creek. The water is cold and I can feel the stones on the bottom all slimy and slick and I hear the water rushing past, clatter-clatter-clatter in my ears, and when I look through the water, everything is whirled together like ice cream and chocolate syrup that is stirred and smushed and stirred until it is all goopy and swirly looking. That is what it looks like through the water. Not wrong, but not right either.

Summer. My favorite. The colors like the white of my sailboats and the yellow of my balloon. I have already made ten paper sailboats. I can see them floating. The bottom of one is getting eaten away by the water but the boats are my own little Armada. They are mine to keep and sail.

The yellow balloon Mr. Yano gave me is caught in the tree by the riverbank, bobbing up and down in the branches, higher than I can climb. Believe me, I tried. It is stuck on the highest edge of the tree, much taller than I can stretch. I am still sad that I lost it. Mr. Yano is nice to me, nicer than my own grandpa and I think, maybe he should have been my grandpa.

The sun, high up and bright, shimmering down on the water. I know Mom and Jerry are at home with my lunch.

I close my eyes, and I can see a bright rainbow in my head. It is black, but there are big spots of color. Red comes from pink comes from yellow comes from orange comes from red. And little green circles going into blue sparks. And white dots everywhere. I know these colors aren't really there, that I just pretend them there. I asked Mom about it, and she says that the colors, and the shapes, are all the ideas my mind has, all jumping and trying to escape. So now I can see my ideas.

When I open my eyes again, I can't see for a second. White bursts are everywhere. I have forgotten how bright the sun is. I think of rubbing my eyes, but it is not worth moving my hand. So I just stay still.

Robert was here earlier. He called me Davey, even though he knows I hate it. I have told him, one hundred-thousand-bazillion-gillion times, not to call me Davey. I have told him, all those times, that I hate it. But he doesn't listen, not ever.

He said, just today, that I am slower than his baby sister. I am not slower than his baby sister. I won the race in gym last week, before school got all the way out. I even beat Robert. But Robert said that I cheated, and wanted to race me again.

Mom says for me to ignore Robert when he says mean things, but it is easier for her to say ignore him when he is not talking to her. He makes me so mad. He gets right up next to me, staring at me, and yelling. His breath smells like someone stepped in a dog mess before going inside.

Robert yelled at me earlier with that stinky breath, and I wanted so bad to hurt him. But Mom says that I can't. So I just walked away and ignored him, only I didn't ignore him really.

Because when you ignore someone, you don't hear them anymore. And I heard when he said that I am a sissy and a wimp. But I didn't say anything, because I was supposed to be ignoring him. So I kept walking.

As I walked, he yelled a lot of mean things. But he has yelled it at me lots of times before, so I knew it was not important. So it was easier to pretend I was ignoring him. But then he did something very wrong.

I was listening to him, even though I was ignoring him, and he said Dad left Mom and me because I am a wimp. I was so mad at him for saying that I turned around and ran at him. Robert is bigger than me; he is the biggest boy in all of third grade. But I didn't care. I just wanted to hurt him. I ran at him, and I tried to hit him, but he pushed me down and I started crying. I hated me for it but that just made the tears come faster.

And Robert laughed, and kept hitting me, and called me a wimp. But I was not crying for being a wimp. I was crying because all of my mad was pushing inside of me, trying to get out. And I could not laugh it out, because you don't laugh when you are mad. So my mad found the easy way to get out of me, in tears. So I cried.

As Robert hit me harder and harder, telling me not to be a wimp, I cried worse. I could feel my nose running, and taste the blood on my tongue, and still Robert hit me.

After a while, he got mad at me and stopped hitting and went away. But I still laid on the ground and cried. I had a lot of mad inside me, and it all had to get out. And I couldn't let it get out at home. Mom would be mad. Then there would be more mad pushing to get out, and more tears. And I don't like the tears.

So I walked over to this creek. The water was cold, but I cleaned up my face and let all the mad get out of me. It all left and I had nothing, not even one drop of mad, inside of me.

I looked into the water, and there I was staring right back. There were tiny ripples that made my face squishy, but I was in the water. As I let the mad get out, I watched me, and watched the drops of tears become the creek. I don't know why, but after all the mad got out, I felt sick. Maybe the mad was holding me together and when it was all gone, there was nothing left to hold me. I can't be sure but I got sick. I stood up, and tried to run home.

My feet slid on the wet grass, and the slimy mud squelched into and over my shoes and I started to fall back then forward and my arms were flying and then I slipped and took a huge breath, the biggest I could take, before I fell into the creek and then the sun was on top and I was down below and my head hit a hard rock and I wanted to cry again. My eyes flashed colors, not the good idea colors, but hurt colors.

So now I am laying here in the creek. I fell in forever ago, and I cannot breathe. My heart feels like it is pushing through my throat, and I want to get up, but I cannot. I try to move my hands now, but I cannot. I can see the trees through the water with my yellow balloon smearing into the sky and the sky swirling together all the colors and looking like the milk in my Fruit Loops.

My heartbeat pounds in my ears with the water, louder and louder, going clatter-clatter-clatter. All of a sudden, I am tiny and on my paper sailboat. I float away on it, looking for my Dad. Behind me, I can hear Jerry running and yelling "DAVEY!" and my mom yelling too.

I turn around, and I see Mom pulling something heavy out of the water. She is crying very loud. She must have lots of mad pushing inside her too. I want to tell her that I am okay, and am just going for a trip, but I cannot talk. So I turn back around, and swallow hard. My throat feels like I got a chip stuck in it, and it hurts. The creek carries me down, and I steer my paper boat.

Dirty Confessions Time

Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" is one of my favorite songs. I know a lot of people despise it, and honestly, I can't really blame them. I had heard the song before, and thought it was rather repetitive and annoying.

But I fell in love with the song, almost a year ago.

It happened on the cruise that John and I took to the Eastern Caribbean, as we were leaving the port of Miami. We'd taken a redeye flight out of Phoenix the night before, and basically been stuck on planes all night long, where we couldn't sleep. We were so excited to be going on vacation that we were restless with energy, while at the same time being drained. When we finally boarded the ship the next day, we fell asleep in our room until dinner time, at which point we dragged ourselves to the dining room, ate, and promptly went back to bed.

I woke up some time at night, itching for a cigarette. John woke up too, and we threw on our clothes and walked to the top deck, noticing how dark the world around us was. We'd left Miami behind us, and because most passengers had already fallen asleep, the lights on the deck were low. We walked around the swimming pools and the hot tubs, not even talking, as some music pulsed out around us, a techno/dance beat that no one was using. We were just looking at the sea and finally breathing it all in. I think we still couldn't believe where we were, what we were doing. Finally, we stopped so I could smoke, and we leaned against the rail, John upwind of myself so the smoke wouldn't blow at him.

I lit my cigarette and stood there, staring out at this black void. And it should have been lonely, except for this - my arm was on the rail, and so was John's, and the outside of our arms were touching. Just the slightest pressure, that bit of contact. And everything felt right. I was happy and content and quiet and for once, the constant stream of worry and panic that I felt had stilled within me.

Poker Face came on the speakers, a remix meant for dancing, and John and I swayed against each other. Our feet tapped, and it became a little game, the both of us gently tapping each other's foot with our own in time with the music. We stood for forever and never and a heartbreaking beautiful instant that lasted a lifetime, listening to the music and simply ... being.

Whenever I hear the song now, my mind flashes back to that night, the first night of the cruise. We'd both been through a lot in the past few years, and even months. Had our hearts broken and mended, our lives turned upside down. We had fallen into each other one lonely night and then realized that we were the compliment. Yin to yang, I was the bright energy that pulled him forward, and he was the stabilizing force that kept me from being carried off too far. Neither of us had had a real vacation in a long time, too caught up with life and worries and relationships that would pull us apart and rebuild us into something we likely didn't know we could be.

I think that that moment, when we stood swaying and tapping our feet to Poker Face, was the moment when I realized I loved this man who was beside me. Whether I would love him for a month or a year or a lifetime or all of eternity, I couldn't say. But my heart was so full, my soul so pressed and open and pained and ecstatic, that I felt as if I didn't hang to that railing, I would fly away forever. And just when that feeling was almost too much to bear, he moved his arm - and took my hand.

And he stood with me, and he rooted me, and he held me just enough to make me safe and comforted, and I pulled him just enough to make him adventurous and eager, and we were made whole there, listening to some pop song that in a few years will no doubt pass into oblivion.

We've never said I love you to one another, not in words. But everything we do, we think of each other. I learned to make the foods he likes, to tell him the jokes he never thinks of, to be the nonsensical moment he needs in his day. He gives me what I never thought I'd have for myself - something stable and concrete - a beautiful home with a kitchen where I can cook to my heart's delight, and plenty of room to have friends over. He loves me, and I love him, and we know whether we love for this moment, this week, this month, this year, we have loved.

Maybe some day I should tell him this, but I think he already knows. He sees me, he rescues me from me, and he has never denied me. And every time Poker Face plays, I remember that moment when we first stood and were as one, on a sea as black as ink, a dot of light in a dark dark world. And we are each other's salvation and rest and comfort and adventure, and we are whole.