By (Chen Zhao) Esmerel@hotmail.com Date: 15 June 1998
* * *
Maybe the water vapor was getting to me, but the eerie feeling of sitting in a hot tub in the middle of night outdoors transported me back to our "last night out" -the hill, the surreal lighted up playground, the black sky...
I don't remember the words we said to each other quite as well as I remember the feel of sitting on brittle autumn grass wet with evening dew. It looked like a dark green sea stretched out before and below us, melting into the city without a seam. Perched on the edge of the world, alone with one another, I felt as if we could not be seen. There were people right below us, sure- parents guarding their silly children and preventing them from falling off of slides, monkey bars, ladders, falling onto sand, grass, or God forbid, dirt. But they didn't see us. I don't think they paid much attention to us. Perhaps that is only because we did not pay much attention to them. The stars spoke to us more than the people did, winking silver gray light, and plotting out the vast sky into discernible sections.
I held him in my arms, so that all he could see was the sky, and all I could see was him. We must've mentioned how nice the nighttime was... the stars... life... the conversation slips from my mind as all I really paid attention to was the sound of his voice, quiet and loving, flowing through the air like music to reach my ears. I remember asking him, for whatever reason, how he would feel if I slipped and fell down the hill to my doom. He replied that he would feel like following me. It was touching to me in some twisted way. I hugged him closer to me. At that brief suspended moment in time, life's paths seemed as open as the sky above, and the grass surrounding us. Life's journey is a long, and no doubt treacherous one, but we had each other to keep us afloat in a sea that threatened to overwhelm, drag down and drown. It would be a worthwhile ride no matter the destination, because of him.
We decided to reverse positions. I lay down, using his body as a pillow, gazing upwards. The city, the people, the playground, the grass- everything disappeared from my view except for the inky black night and its sister stars. He smiled an upside-down smile, head peaking out and blocking out half the sky. I smiled in return, because of how right it felt. The city wasn't my life. The strangers that surrounded me every day on the streets, in school, at home, weren't my life. Even Nature couldn't lay a hand on me and claim me to be hers... everything short of the sky- the symbol of possibilities, the future, and all journeys untravelled. Even the sky I willingly ignored for a smile. His smile. Time froze yet again, his grayish blue eyes looking into my black ones up on a hill near a playground on that cold September night...
* * *
My "new friend" shrieked after having attempted to make a snow angel while clad in a skimpy bathing suit. Scampering across the snow as if the devil was at her back, she hurtled herself into the hot tub, as I laughed. It was an amused laugh- surreal laughter that didn't seem to make any sense to me, much like the situation I found myself in. Here I was, with two people I barely knew, one of whom was supposedly my friend- a person I had not seen in a year since she'd moved to a different school... in a hot tub, in the middle of the night, outdoors with snow all around. How did I get from there to here? Within the period of four months, what I had taken for granted as my reality, my correct place and purpose in life, had been shaken up, shattered, and spilt. I remember that night, and yet I cannot recognize myself. If I had been so firmly grounded in my old life, how could I so "easily" or at least quickly, move on to such a radically different one? My mind was only dimly aware of all this of course, as my body blissfully settled into the bubbling hot tub. Birthday girl with the carrot hair and the easy flowing laugh I stopped knowing more than a year ago, not long after I first met her, and became "her friend". The year after, I barely associated with her at all, as she caroused her way through the cliques in the rest of our grade, and dealt with academic troubles as well as a case of severe depression along the way.
She had called me and left a message on the answering machine some time after we had broken up. Of course, I was suffering companionship withdrawal, and searching for new relationships of all kinds on all fronts. I called her back. We talked. Serveral weeks later, we talked again. And then she invited me to her birthday party, an event which only one other person attended, not because we were especially privileged, close friends of hers, but because none of the others she invited "made it". Snow-angel girl was beginning to annoy me.
"Let's go run around the yard! Want to see me climb a telephone pole? Let's do this-and-that right after we do stupid thing #11 on the stereotypical teenager's activity sheet!" I wonderedhow susceptible she would be to some crazy idea of mine. Oh, I wouldn't actually tell her to do anything harmful, of course. But her suggestibility (along with her seeming idiocy) combined to form a definite wrong impression with me, unleashing my mind to conjure up... interesting ideas. Fortunately, she showed no signs of having a clue.
We began to play truth or dare, and I was actually somewhat interested, giggling like a mere schoolgirl, as the cliche goes. After all, I could've boasted that I had more experience than any of them with boys... well, boy. On an emotional level far above what they could possibly guess at. I always wonder, when I encounter girlish discussions like these, how far its participants will journey down life before meeting up with something close to what I inadvertently stumbled across and past. ON another level, it simply felt good, dman good, to let down my defense, and go with the cliche once in a while. For a moment in time, I was accepted by the "others". It didn't matter that I had a suspicion that these others weren't exactly part of the mainstream "others" who ruled culture and made up its cliches and isms. for this moment, they made up the majoriity of my limited hot tub world, and I was a part of them.
Of course, I didn't get to boast much. It was my turn to answer the question about whether I was interested in any boy, and I replied no, because I had just (probably not "just" by their definition, but I was playing by my own rules) gotten out of a year-long relationship which turned me off to guys for the time being. Another little half-fib. The truth was, I would've dived right into another relationship had the right guy waltzed by. But he didn't, and for whatever reasons, I wasn't looking very hard. They nodded understandingly... and moved on. I was a bit deflated. They were supposed to be interested. They were supposed to gasp in shock- a year long relationship for someone of my age? Didn't they see the significance? Couldn't they deduce the depth of feeling, the extreme spectrum of emotion I was exposed to and experienced half-willingly, but with wide open eyes? Apparently not. They weren't even the least bit surprised that someone like me had had a boyfriend for a year. I suppose that my outward appearance/demeanor doesn't glaringly shout out warnings and scare guys away. But short, dark-haired, a waify figure, pale gold glasses perched on my nose, and a quiet/intellectual/shy/reflective aura depending on the time of day and who's doing the observing, I was certainly not the "blond bimbo" stereotype that traditionally nets all the guys. Oh well. I guess I'll take that as a compliment.
The rest of the night is lost upon me. Vaguely, I recall feeling more comfortable around these three strangers. The rented eighties movie "Adventures in Baby-Sitting" runs dimly in the back of my mind. Eventually, it gurgled and died. I think I missed the dramatic conclusion when I blinked. Likewise, the holodeck in my mind that has recorded the steam reaching for but never quite holding the tarnished yellow sky continues at half-volume, readying itself for the conclusion. And after it finishes, it will probably be stashed off somewhere to possibly never see the light of day again... until another night comes along to trigger my sense... but my memories never seem like my own. I can never see through the eyes of the girl I once was.
Oh! I liked the caramels carrot-girl made. I really liked the caramels. They were soft, gooey, and tasted like the caramel Redenbacker uses on his popcorn. I must've eaten half a dozen during the course of the night. As I drove away, half my mind was thinking of my brief little participation in the hot tub society, the three strangers I role-played with, the two skies imprinted onto my mental photographic plate... and the other half remember the caramels.