I was thinking today of how summer evenings are quick shimmer. I’d paid for a small coffee and was holding a sweating San Pellegrino bottle and I walked down the boardwalk to the smokers’ patio. The sunset lasts a good hour and a half, and it’s slow—so I guess my quick-shimmer notion was maybe more about how sunsets here feel. They feel shiny. I don’t know, glittery, especially by the lake, which is where I was. Like ravers, and body art and slow-motion all across the shining surface.
The funny thing about the lake: it’s not all that nice. I mean, sure, it’s central to our town. You can see a downtown steeple peeking up from the crepe myrtles. The houses along the lake even hosted a few barbecues, which meant little kids spinning themselves sick on those tree swings suspended from a high enough branch. But it’s downtrodden with small dogs and their excrement, or their owners. The sidewalk is narrow so people often bump into one another, like personal space has just been discovered.
What I hate most about the lake, especially on gorgeous sunset days like today, are the couples on the benches staring out at the water and the ducks. Or worse—the couples who don’t need a lake, and are content to stare in their partner’s eyes. I initially get grossed out by their myopia, and am reminded of the several close friends who have recently blipped off of my radar after taking up with a pretty member of their preferred sex. They moon around each other like fruit flies, and it looks stupid. Or, maybe I’m bitter, and it’s that very attention I want, but have no idea how to handle.
At least here, on the smokers’ porch, the very air we breathe is cynical, at least carcinogenic. It’s like smoking somehow underlines the need for personal space—the gray wisps uncoiling in the late sun are an elegant way of saying, “Get out of my face, or I’ll give you lung tumors very slowly.” I appreciate that honesty. I’m not a smoker myself. Sometimes I wish I were, if only for holding the lit ember between my fingers, controlled fire a hair’s breadth from my skin. I forget how light cigarettes are. How heavy they sit on an extended hand. How easy it is to watch them burn, how the smoke, for a moment, is a shroud, close and kind. How it loves only you.
The funny thing about the lake: it’s not all that nice. I mean, sure, it’s central to our town. You can see a downtown steeple peeking up from the crepe myrtles. The houses along the lake even hosted a few barbecues, which meant little kids spinning themselves sick on those tree swings suspended from a high enough branch. But it’s downtrodden with small dogs and their excrement, or their owners. The sidewalk is narrow so people often bump into one another, like personal space has just been discovered.
What I hate most about the lake, especially on gorgeous sunset days like today, are the couples on the benches staring out at the water and the ducks. Or worse—the couples who don’t need a lake, and are content to stare in their partner’s eyes. I initially get grossed out by their myopia, and am reminded of the several close friends who have recently blipped off of my radar after taking up with a pretty member of their preferred sex. They moon around each other like fruit flies, and it looks stupid. Or, maybe I’m bitter, and it’s that very attention I want, but have no idea how to handle.
At least here, on the smokers’ porch, the very air we breathe is cynical, at least carcinogenic. It’s like smoking somehow underlines the need for personal space—the gray wisps uncoiling in the late sun are an elegant way of saying, “Get out of my face, or I’ll give you lung tumors very slowly.” I appreciate that honesty. I’m not a smoker myself. Sometimes I wish I were, if only for holding the lit ember between my fingers, controlled fire a hair’s breadth from my skin. I forget how light cigarettes are. How heavy they sit on an extended hand. How easy it is to watch them burn, how the smoke, for a moment, is a shroud, close and kind. How it loves only you.
