6:37 p.m.
We are screaming at other bikers: the cubicle-clones with button-ups and ties, looking like door-to-door religion peddlers on their boring black cyclo-cross bikes; the young black men slouched laughing and easy on cheap, garish Walmart bikes; the beautiful, twenty-something white couple with gleaming matching haircuts, gleaming matching faces, gleaming matching designer Trek road bikes. We shout, “Come to the rumpus!” and cackle like crazy people and compose inappropriate ditties (something about shaving a sailor’s balls – who would want to do such a thing?) as we fly by, keg-laden, gear-bags buzzing against rear tires, our wildness streaming out behind us like a banner.
In the normal place, there are cars all crowded onto the grass, leaving deep ruts in the soft ground, so we plunge into the woods on the side of the path, looking for something new, getting lost and tossing our songs and laughter back and forth, from mouth to mouth. And then there’s a clearing by the swamp with a rope-swing in a huge, diseased oak, and we’re tossing down our bikes on the flattened grass and pulling the kegs up and lighting a fire in the damp underbrush, and it starts.
7:42 p.m.
I am watching ____ watching ____. He wants her, even though she is _______________________________ years his junior. He worries about what that means, but they’ll sleep in the same bed tonight, and even though they won’t go all the way he’ll regret having done anything with her at all, later, when we are all sharing air __________. When ____ gets up and wanders off to find another beer, I tell him that this will happen, that it will be even hotter and stilted and awkward, not expecting him to listen, and he doesn’t because he is a grown man.
My cup of beer is mostly foam, so thick I’m scooping it out and sucking it off my fingers like the steamed milk on top of a cappuchino. The sky is greenish, the way I’ve seen it look before tornados, and I can’t stop looking at it, watching the clouds scudding across its sick sheen.
I drift.
8:07 p.m.
I am crouched around the fire with _____________, watching the embers glow and snap. I am already a little drunk and I wrap my arms around _________________ a brother. He puts his hand on mine, lingers. I laugh and stand, shaking off my discomfiture, but I am unhappy. When ________ leaves to find another beer, ________ says, What about you and _______, and I am angry because _____ thinks he knows everything and that everything is his business, and also because I know it is my fault.
I drift.
8:13 p.m.
I am squeezing in between ______ and _____ – ______ gone off somewhere – where they sit with _____, just outside the stuttering light of the bonfire. Things have changed with us. It’s darker, smoke-filled, denser. We are all addicted to
each other, just for now
.
We look at each other, and our eyes are liquid and dark. We look like animals. Someone throws a beer bottle on the fire, casting up sparks. The reflection breaks our gaze open, disturbs our tight gravity, and we start to whisper about brothers, lovers, consequences.
Talking about lust reminds me of my own petty problems with wanting, and because I am slightly drunk, I can feel myself slipping, as I usually do, into that darker place that is held open by alcohol, where I feel like I’m not quite enough. It makes me go quiet and still, and I want to shake the feeling off, get away from it, so I stand up. I say silly, inconsequential things to pull my mind back, using little nothings as a life-raft for my floundering mood.
I drift.
9:52 p.m.
I am standing on the rope-swing, trying to see how far back I can lean without falling. There is a kid in the oak, silent like a spirit, wreathed in leaves – how he got up so high I’m not entirely sure. I don’t know who he is.
Who are you? I ask him, and he says nothing, then he says, I am nobody. I feel like I’m in a fairy-tale. I am a Cyclops, talking to Odysseus. I am No One. ग्नोमों. I ask again, and he doesn’t answer. I wonder what made him climb the tree, what made him spit riddles down on the people below. I wonder what frees us, on these nights, what sends us up trees, through swamps, into each other’s arms. I wonder what ties us together.
I drift.
12:45 a.m.
I am riding again. _________ and I are racing through the underbrush, where my ancient mountain bike – older than me by a year and a half, and eternally in perfect tune – is most at home. I win, lurching out onto the pavement of the rest of the park, and then we’re sliding through the night towards home, the alcohol flaming out of my blood, adrenaline and endorphins soaking through my muscles, pushing their hot fingers into my joints, igniting something in my stomach and my brain as I pedal faster and faster and faster. Suddenly, all my fatigue is gone, on a breath, and I am charging ahead, exhilarated, unafraid, laughing up at the smog-shrouded stars, the silver-white hook of the moon. I am crazy and high and everything is painfully, shockingly clear.
For now, the black door of my insecurities, my secret desires, my fear of the fringes, even the inexorable and incomprehensible knot of connectedness that ties me to these people – all that is on the ground behind the blur of my wheels, rapidly disappearing. I throw my head back, close my eyes, and for one breathless moment, I drift.
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