12/13/16, Twilight
Cotton candy tufts of pink melting to orange,
Fading to nothing,
Along the lines of building tops, parallel to the land and trees and vehicle hoods.
Midnight blue, velvet asphalt reveals pockmarks—manholes and bumps.
The night arrives.
Indeed, the color overhead has shifted now, evading my hungry gaze.
“Remember the moon,” she told me.
I do remember, I do.
Working out at Pop Physique feels like what I imagine being a sweaty piece of bubble gum in the back pocket of someone’s spandex pants feels like. You squat in front of a mirror a lot with a hot pink ball between your thighs while Oksana shouts, “Tuck! Tuck!”
Oksana is a real cutie pie. She teaches the eleven o’clock Pop Sculpt class on Saturdays that I promise myself I will attend but rarely do.
Tucking is basically the same motion as humping. I can never make it through a class without needing to stifle a giggle. There inevitably comes a point when Oksana yells “Tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck” with such astounding speed that my pelvis cannot possibly keep pace. Unable to face my sorry reflection in the giant mirrors, I look around to see if any of my moderately fit, superbly dressed classmates are still thrusting like a metronome. Nope. Nobody. It’s impossible.
When class is over, we clean our mats and put away the bizarrely sexy props. I thank Oksana for the hour’s torture. She asks my name (again) and we laugh. Then I waddle out the door on Jell-O legs in pursuit of an iced latte. I guess you could say I like my bourgeois weekend activities crammed back-to-back.
I pass the Charm City Circulator stop by the Washington Monument, iced beverage in hand, as I search for my car. By that point, I am so goddamn confident and eager that I will introduce myself to anyone. If you just spent an hour squeezing your buns to pop music, you might feel pretty self-assured, too.
One particular Sunday, I noticed a middle aged lady sitting on the bus bench. She was following me unabashedly with her steady eyes. “Good morning! How’s it goin’?” I bubbled.
“Hey, you got any money? I need something to eat.”
These are the moments I await like a lioness. I’ve got change, food, cigarettes and gum neatly squared away in my purse and a relentless arsenal of friendliness. But this day, regrettably, I had left my purse at home.
“I’m sorry, hon. I don’t have any cash on me. You take care. Have a blessed day.”
“Have a blessed day” is an expression I learned here in Baltimore. I never heard it anywhere else although I don’t imagine it’s a totally uncommon salutation. I adopted this the same way I embraced the local custom of jaywalking through moving traffic.
“Well, what about that? What’s that?”
I froze. “You want this? It’s an iced latte.”
As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted them. I held out the caramel-colored drink for her examination with an apparent readiness that disobeyed my immense hesitation. I recalled the milky, cocoa flavor of the drink in my mouth as I prepared to sacrifice it.
“Is it sweet?” she asked, gripping the cool plastic cup with indifference.
Here was my out. “No, it’s not really that sweet.”
I looked down at her clothes. She wore an old-fashioned dress that reminded me of my friend from elementary school who regularly donned Colonial era clothing to show her enthusiasm for American history. I swallowed hard.
“Do you want to try it and see if you like it?”
She hesitated. “It’s not sweet?”
“No. It’s not that sweet.”
“No thank you.” She handed back the cup.
“Okay. Sorry!” I complained.
She said nothing as I strolled away. When I looked back several minutes later, she was still upright on the bench waiting for the free bus. Her brown eyes had already relinquished their hold of my being and my coffee was gone.
“But who will read it?”
My friend Ilene wants me to be a librarian. She sees herself in me because she was an English major. She was a librarian in Queens for some time, she tells me. The benefits are great and it’s interesting work.
I nod. It’s important to be polite to people. I smile because I love her.
Ilene has a blog. I guess one day a lady on her flight to Ireland suggested the idea, then she went ahead and did it. But by the time I met her last summer, the glamour of airing her written word on the internet had waned. She is more anxious in her seventies than she used to be, I bet. And she is certainly very dizzy sometimes. Her only son has a newborn and she doesn’t want to be a burden.
“I tried the vistaril last night. It worked really well and I’m not even groggy today. Maybe you could try that one?”
“Well they gave me that seroquel and it hasn’t been doing anything.”
“I tried that one too for a while but it wore off. I feel like they just give that to everyone.”
I wanted to give her hope that something might make her feel better. She needed to rest. Ilene was the first person I talked to when I arrived at the inpatient unit. She asked me where I went to college. I felt embarrassed. I described my Wellesley College Spanish/English double major. I sensed her communion in the love of words. She said she had started a blog.
We talk about the blog a lot. The clear morning after my anti-histamine aided rest, I was especially interested in conversation. It tickles me when I get to chatting. I love to laugh easy, to let somebody sigh their troubles. I like to share my cigarettes with strangers. Ilene wouldn’t have smoked even if we were allowed, but we could have gone for a cup of caffeinated coffee for a change. Something to wash down the foamy scrambled eggs at least.
I say I think her blog must be a lot of fun. I say she has a lot of interesting experiences to put in her blog. She agrees through tears that quiver in the corners of her eyes. She sighs. She says, “But who will read it?”
Sometimes when I think about that moment, I get stuck. The vulnerability of that worry is like quicksand. It’s like a drag off an American Spirit yellow. Who will remember what I said and did?
Mostly, though, I think if I say nothing and do nothing, no one will remember it. I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a while. I’m not sure where it will take me but my hope is that it will be a journey where I can reflect and maybe even connect with you through my experiences of the world. Here goes nothin’!
Thanks for joining me…
xo,
Jami
Aqua Aura Blog 