Nightswimming
September 2008
"You know what this night reminds me of?" Tom is already letting his voice waver. The memory yet unspoken is thick in his throat, the resulting laughter threatening to break, to overpower his tongue, his jaws and force its way out to the cold, crisp air that hangs around us, around the heat of the bonfire. "The summer before senior year when Janie here was convinced that as soon as she turned eighteen she would be a stripper down at Lou's." His laughter begins, paralyzing the story until it is picked up by Dan.
"Oh, yeah, and then that one night we were all at the beach outside of Sara's folks' place and we got drunk on the vodka in the freezer. Sara was telling her that she couldn't do it, so Janie, who is damn near falling down drunk starts to give us all lap-dances, stripping down to her underwear even though it was probably sixty degrees out."
"Remember when she got to Zach, how he wouldn't talk to anyone afterward and he left really early?"
"Yeah."
"The bastard came in his pants when she was dancing. She didn't even know it. He went home because he wanted to change. It was just sitting in there when she was grinding on his legs, and he didn't say a word. He told me never to tell."
The laughter breaks harder than the waves, drowning out the smooth constant lapping. Legs are slapped, hands placed on the bellies that have grown over abs in the past seven years, beer that was being swallowed when the punch-line was released is choked down through shaking throats, vibrating stomachs. Janie's face is red with sunburn, but no embarrassment, her mouth spread from dimple to dimple in a lazy smile. She is facing the fire, her body limp in her lawn chair, arms extended over its metal arms, legs stretched as far as they will go, near enough to the fire to absorb its heat, crossed at the ankle. Her cheeks look warm to the touch, as if when your fingers graze them you will feel the last two days that they have spent on this beach, as if you could absorb the heat, feel the memories made while her skin burnt, make them your own through osmosis. The laughter, dying now, echoed through the beach, rung out further than the circle around the fire, entering uninvited, but still pleasantly, to the living rooms of other lakefront properties, exciting in the women and men seated on sofas a calm nostalgia for the times when they too got drunk on the beach each weekend until the Michigan fall set in. Now that it has ebbed, the effects of the laughter have set into everyone- they feel lightheaded, more drunk, and younger. They feel ten feet tall and unbreakable, full of the excess energy that causes teens to get drunk, naked, and sweating with the kid who sits next to them in algebra class in their basements, to kick holes in walls, to organize touch football games that always result in a sprained ankle, a broken nose. The memory has brought them back in time to a place where a thin girl with jutting shoulder blades and hipbones crawled on top of them, her skin fresh with goose-bumps, covered only with purple cotton panties, a white bra, and made them feel like they were going to be seventeen for the rest of their lives, and they wouldn't mind it much.
I am fuming.
Conversations break off. Dan complains about his girlfriend, Tom and Janie gossip about Zach and his total disappearance from the group's social scene. I am staring into the fire, down at the embers, glowing white, blue, orange; branches breaking and falling when their middles burned too thin; watching for the sticks that pop, the leaves that crackle. I am trying to picture a younger Janie, a naked Janie, a drunk Janie, in some basement that reeks of pot with some guy who grew his hair too long and talked with complete sincerity about how he was going to get the fuck out of this town once he got a football scholarship at a state school. I try not to think about him pressing his hips against hers and the bored yawn that escapes her lips before she unbuttons the fly on his worn jeans. I'm trying really hard, I swear, but the images keep rising above the embers, the phoenix that is ruining my ability to enjoy this night. Janie on a couch, passed out with Dan or Tom or Jake sliding off her pants anyway. Janie being fingered under the bleachers while the cheerleaders kick and tell the team to be defensive be be defensive. Janie wiping a glob of come off her bottom lip.
I do this too much lately. At night, exhausted and hot, our bodies stuck together with the glue of our sweat, her voice will rise from our covers, inane pillow talk about her parents, her older brothers, her friends, high school, the parties I missed, the sights that I didn't see. I listen, quietly, answer when required, and I seethe at the casual mentions of the party days that we didn't share.
"There was this one night where I went to a party at Stephanie Foster's place, right when she got her own apartment after graduation. Her parents were loaded so they paid for it. And I'm in the living room with her and all the guys are chanting for us to make out, so we did, and she pulled up my top. Can you believe it?"
I try not to picture it, not to hear the locker room banter between the guys the next day (Man, did you see Janie's tits last night? Nice. Very nice.) Still, I see the girl who used to saunter down the hallways in school, eyelids heavy and voice loud and bouncing off the lockers. I see the quote under her senior picture, the one that I set up in the yearbook layout, that I pasted under her tan skin and her sun-bleached hair, One of the Guys!
I dig my beer out of the sand by my chair, drink it slowly. It's warm, the can covered in condensation, the bottom thick with sand. Janie occasionally reaches over, grabs my hand, mummers over toward me. For the most part, I try to bore into myself, like an autistic kid in a crowded cafeteria, creating escape routes and tunnels to retreat into. I imagine I'm watching the bonfire from a high tower buried deep within my own skull. But I still feel when Janie's fingernails trace their way along my arms, up towards the nap of my neck where she bends forward and kisses me gently before she and Rebbecca take off to walk along the shore, their bare feet creating temporary crescents in the wet sand. I, in turn, get up and walk towards the dunes, leaving Tom and Dan to continue in conversation about how awful it is of Tom's girlfriend to want to leave the county's borders. I want to flee further than that, to where the party girl never calms down and cohabits a one bedroom apartment with the guy who existed quietly in front rows of classrooms while she shouted rude comments to the teacher from the back row, her bra strap hangs off her shoulder, her lips pink with gloss, her body smelling like smoke and sweat. Instead, I head to the parking lot that is situated between the dunes, pop open the hatch to my Jeep, and sit there, creating only physical space between me and Janie's past. My head is buzzing, and I start to cool down as the remaining beer disappears into my bloodstream. My bare feet on the cement of the parking lot make me feel physically cool, collected.
I feel so much better, in fact, that I almost instantly kiss a high school girl.
The Corolla pulled up, music blaring, giggling mingling with bass, guitars. I pull my beer to my lips and watch from the corner of my eyes as girls pile out, in bathing suits and cutoff jeans, in hoodies and flip flops, in tank tops and sunglasses. I imagine Sara and Janie. I imagine myself at seventeen, slightly overweight, the acne that didn't clear up till two years ago. I'd probably be at home now, sitting in the living room with my grandmother, watching Wheel of Fortune while Janie got smashed and gave a blow job to one of her friends who worked down at the pizza place, kneeling on the interior carpet of her mother's van.
It happens quickly, more quickly than any first kiss that I've had in my history. A girl, her brown hair dried out from chlorine and sun, her eyes dark with eye shadow and eyeliner, her lips slightly chapped, her hipbones jutting out above the jeans she wears with just a bikini top, breaks from the pack, asks for a sip of my beer. I concede and as soon as she swallows a mouthful of the beer she asks my name. Before I finish telling her, she's up on her tiptoes, her lips on mine, her tongue darting in my mouth, her arms around my neck. I, for once, don't think, and kiss back hard until one of the other girls coughs and her face pulls away.
"Well, nice meeting you," she laughs. They run off to the beach, laughing, pushing each other, looking back at the older guy in his Jeep, alone with a beer in a parking lot. After they are out of sight, I wander back to the bonfire, my head as clear as the crisp air. I plant myself in the lawn chair that I vacated. Janie is still gone.
"Damn, man, you missed these hot girls just a second ago," Dan says, his eyes faraway, as if he's just realized now that he's officially to old to be visible to girls that young.
"Too bad," I say, and I stare off at Janie, down at the shore, her jeans rolled to her knees and her calves in the water and for once, I don't imagine her doing or saying a thing. I just watch the way she dips her hands down to the water every now and again, how attentively she listens to Rebbecca talk, how long and graceful her body is. I can still taste the sweet sticky flavor of cheap lip gloss that only teenage girls wear.
Copyright 2008 Jessa Marsh
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