Monster under the skin

A long walk down the lakeshore takes me out of the isolation of my home, further from the voices of crazy selfishness, into an afternoon like a modern take on Seurat's "Sunday after noon on Grande Jatte". Although in my version the people are plumper and far less likely to cover their corpulence with Victorian decorum. Sand in my shoes can be tolerated for just so long and I move to the edge of the surf, flirting with the water while the lake breathes.

White people play volleyball on Foster beach, Black men clog the one basketball court with a game of pickup. All manner of hair flies up and down the tiny concrete court. A tall man with his long dreds tied back, lifts his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. He's well fed.

Rounding the bend to head down the long stretch of Foster beach, I get lost in a new found throng of people. Bikes, scooters, children waddling from the water to the family blanket all criss-cross my path. I marvel at how over weight so many of the people, especially children, are. I pass families with crying babies, men nursing coal fires awaiting meat and marshmallows, women with beaded hair flipping their heads in conversation. Kids laugh. Three scabs talk about the various painkillers they've tried out. Single women read books. Volleyball nets go up, picnics are packed up. Soccer games fill every possible open lot of space. How do they do it? How do people collect families about themselves like this? And, listening to a tottler squaling, I wonder if I'm quite sure this is something that I want?

I check my phone again. Yes I have signal. No, he hasn't called. Stop it. Keep breathing. Just be present to what's around you, the canvas of human activity.

At long last I find myself on a bench 3 miles from home. Give me a sign, God. What should I do? Give up? Go home? Just then, he calls. Come on over here.

And here we are again. What do I do here? Am I being selfish? What could I possibly add to this man's life? My god, we're opening this book up again...but personally I'm on a different page of this volume called 'love'. Here I am again. It's not yet midnight and I'm sprawled on my half of the king sized bed listening to him purr en route to dream land. Tired, can't sleep yet. Roll over and watch his expression go lax, become placid. Watch his real face emerge.

He's so much easier to be around than he used to be. Maybe I've learned to translate his translation better. Maybe without the immigration stress he's able to open up more. Or, he's up to something. Hmmm.

Periodically through the night I wake up from fitful dreams of looking for a doll in London or running from one of those robots from the movie we saw tonight. I swim between the sheets and wrestle the monster. The monster masks itself as a sort of love, or maybe just adoration, during the day. But under this blanket, this blanket I curl myself in because it smells like him, the monster is loose. I know there's a body next to me, I want so badly to cuddle up next to it. But I don't. I don't interrupt his slumber. The monster's imperious urges wake me up with its continual curiosity as to weather the other body in this bed will feed it some attention.

It's 5 am and the octopus next to me wakes up.

It isn't what I want, I realize. I just want someone to enjoy being near me and to want to be close to me. Tell me that I'm worthwhile. Please, just touch me. It's so easy to walk away, to trade a casual bisou and 'good day' when the sunshine returns. But that solves nothing. For now I see that all the monster craves is to come in from the cold.