The What Now?

I’m lying on the grass, one arm behind my head, the other beside me. The grass is tickling my skin, and the sun filters through the leaves to shine on my closed eyelids.

Katie’s dad, standing on the back porch, looks down on me. “Don’t get bit by the army worms,” he says with a grin, and he makes claw-like motions with his hands. 

Public Indecency

“You know you’ve matured when you don’t look at everything like a urinal,” Katie’s brother says seriously.

I start laughing and pull out my phone to make a note of that while he continues. “When you’re young, you just think ‘I gotta pee,’ and then you just look around and find a spot and do it.”

“But when you’re mature, you go, ‘Oh, I could get arrested.’”

Body Surfing at 53

The lifeguards spotted a blacktip shark this morning, so it’s a while before we’re allowed in the water. 

It’s low tide, and we’re able to walk far out into the waves when we get in; the surf is gentle, swells and troughs rolling in from a flat horizon.

I watch the waves until I find one that feels right, and then, turning toward the shore, I push off the bottom and swim with the wave until I feel it catch me, the crest foaming and churning around me, and I and the wave roll into shore in a process that feels close to flying.

Later that night, I try to stand up from the couch and have to really concentrate just be upright.

Don’t Swim Out Past The Breakers

The red flag snapping in the wind behind the lifeguard station indicates “high hazard” from a rip current, which usually drags folks out to sea between the breakers. The note on the sandwich board next to the flag says that you shouldn’t go in more than “waist high.”

“If you go any deeper than that, it activates the post-nup,” Katie says forcefully.

When I ask her what the post-nup is (first I’m hearing of it, anyway) she says, “It means if you die I get to say I told you so.”

Doppelgänger

“I found it!” the woman says as we pass her on the way to the car to go to dinner.

When we look at her curiously, she explains, “This car looks exactly like my car.” She points across the parking lot. “But I’m parked way over there!”

New Sunglasses

Katie puts the three identical pairs of sunglasses on the counter of the rest-stop where we’ve stopped to grab some snacks while her brother grabs a bag of Combos.

“Sometimes you need to be in a gang and all wear the same sunglasses,” she confidentially tells the cashier.

The cashier dutifully rings us up and then looks at us with a sly smile.

“Do you want to wear them out of the store?” she asks.

Edamame

“Sure, I can help you find that,” the kid stocking shelves says, pulling out his phone.

“Yeah, you guys seem to have edamame, but only with the shells on,” I tell him while he types.

“I think we’ve only got the the ones with the shells,” he replies, swiping around on his screen. “When my parents buy them, that’s what they get, I mean,” he continues, “I don’t eat them.”

Like The Samsonite Ad With The Gorilla

My flight’s luggage is delayed getting to baggage claim, so we’re all just sort of standing around while the unclaimed bags revolve.

Finally, a suitcase hurtles down the chute, banging into a barrier at the bottom and almost flying off the conveyor belt.

“They threw that one a little hard,” a woman next to me says, wincing.

“Oh yeah, there’s a guy at the top of the belt whose whole job is to just chuck luggage he doesn’t like the look of down onto the thing,” I say, not smiling at all.

Good Looking Out

“I’m pretty sure that’s the right one,” I tell the guy at the UPS store before he starts to wrap it up and pack it for shipping. “I’m doing this for my wife.”

He gives it a quick check before he finishes and confirms it’s correct, and I let him know he’s appreciated.

“I’m not trying to get somebody in trouble with their wife,” he says with a shake of his head.

She Thinks I’m Mean

I’m hoarse when Katie finally calls me to say goodnight from the bachelorette party she’s attending, because I went to a baseball game. I’m also still slightly drunk.

“Yeah, it was good, and the Cyclones actually won!” I rasp.

“Stop saying that!” she snaps, half-joking.

Maps Don’t Know

The driver takes us to the back entrance of the U-haul parking lot, and the reason why Katie is only half-paying attention to my story about V-16 engines becomes clear: the fence at the entrance is locked. It’s always locked, it’s been locked for more than 10 years.

The driver doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s terribly disappointed. “I don’t know why the maps always send you this way, it’s never open,” she says, maybe hoping to cheer him up.

Wild Pigeons

I wait on the corner, sitting on a short wall that encompasses a small concrete yard in front of the old church. The little dot on my screen that represents Katie as she rides her scooter back from her studio creeps across the map, and a cool breeze blows as dusk approaches.

There’s a commotion behind me, and I turn to find a trio of pigeons regarding me warily, as if I’m the one who just showed up from nowhere, and not them. I think of a poem by Mary Oliver, where she’s talking about just looking at something, not trying to say something fancy, just looking, so I’ll say that one of them was missing some toes, but the other one, with a black and white mottled head, his feet were pink, and perfect.

They Are Ravenous

“I have a question,” Katie says, “and it’s not about the show or politics or anything.”

“Okay,” I say, pausing The West Wing, which we’ve been watching.

“Why hasn’t Trump been talking about how he got shot at?” she asks. “Because if I was running his campaign,” she continues as I consider this, “I would have him talking about how, like ‘I got shot for you,’ at every ravenous Republican rally,”

Some Persistence

More than a decade ago, at a party thrown by one of our roommates, a friend of mine, after a few drinks, tried to ride a fixie bike to impress a girl and ended up face planting on the asphalt, leaving a trail of blood up the stairs, and giving himself a nice scar and a good story.

Today, some fifteen years later, we meet up to go for a walk in the park, and he’s got a noticeable limp. “Oh, what girl were you trying to impress this time?” I ask.

As it turns out, there wasn’t a girl, and it wasn’t a fixie, but he WAS on a bike, so at least he’s consistent.

punched in the face

“Then when I was six, I think? This guy was bothering some friends of mine and I challenged him to a fight and he punched me in the forehead, and I cried.”

“Six?” Katie says, her face contorting in pity.

“Yeah, I was fine,” I say, realizing I don’t really want to talk about it anymore, and that maybe telling every story isn’t a way to feel good.

Edit the Vilanelle

“If you change that comma to a semi-colon, and the put dashes between ‘red,’ ‘white,’ and ‘blue,’ it’ll make more sense and hit harder,” Katie says. I flip the fake chicken patties I’m frying and nod in agreement, with a huge grin on my face.

“I really appreciate you helping me edit my stuff,” I tell her later.

“Just ask the person who doesn’t like poetry!” she says.