Eat the Damn Cake

I’m on the edge of insanity, with a list of things to do that’d be as long as the DNA in one of your cells if you could somehow pull it into a straight strand. Make that like three cells-worth.  Doesn’t sound very long? Well, look up DNA! Who would’ve thought we had that much of it? What’s it all doing? It’s making my nose super Jewish, that’s what it’s doing. And some other stuff.

Anyway, because I’m about to lose my mind, I’ve decided to give myself a break in terms of writing, and share a story. I’ve mentioned here how I used to, as a little unschooler, spend a lot of time writing stories. They were fantasy stories. I didn’t understand then that fantasy was for hopeless nerds, who also LARPed, unless it was about vampires, in which case it was for frustratingly squealy preteen and teenaged girls, their mothers, my youngest brother, and the men who “try to understand how women think.” (I’m not kidding, my fiance told me about a prominent Wall Street guy who read Twilight with this explanation. Upon finishing the series, he declared that he finally understood what women want.) Anyway, I failed at fantasy writing, because I didn’t think of Lord Voldemort, or vampires. But it’s storytime….and here’s a little story about….

The Merman:

(source)

He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. And he was trespassing on private property, swimming in her cove, by the two rocks that marked the edge of deeper water. It was high tide. The water swept over the first ledge, with its slick green lip, and licked the ridge where she always sat with her notebook and the green glass pen she had bought on a whim. His hair, thick with salt and wind, dripped along the line of his shoulders, and his skin had a lit look that suggested something warm inside. She watched from behind the tense little tree that had managed to split the rock face, waiting for him to turn slightly and catch her, even as she corrected herself: It was she who should be doing the catching. Hadn’t he seen the signs she had nailed up last week? There was plenty of public beach ten minutes’ walk towards town, where the waves didn’t smash themselves against the unforgiving rock, and the women lay in sweat-glazed, expectant rows as though prepared; garnished with scant, bright dobs of bikini.

He ran his hands over the surface, smiling, and lifted them to watch the droplets take turns rolling headlong from his fingertips and bursting back into oblivion. Is there something wrong with him? She had never seen a full-grown man so simply and joyfully occupied. He squinted, the sun slanting against cheekbones, a simple nose, glinting in eyes as transparent as the glass pen. She was wearing pale jeans again, and her once white tee shirt with the forgetful neckline. Charcoal smudges crept up over one side of her ribcage, where she’d wiped a hand, and even her sandals looked bored. She didn’t care that he had broken her little law, that he had found his way into the cove. She was sure he could explain everything, and she wanted to watch him until he noticed and she had to demand an explanation.

He sank down into the water, remarkably silent. His hair floated gently around his head, the tips drying like tiny fraying brushes, shot with strands of a color she was certain did not exist elsewhere. His shoulders were brief, slippery islands, and then he slid under with surprising ease. She searched for him, for his shimmering, fragmented image reflecting upwards from the dark water. Nothing. How deep had he gone? She was afraid he would surface nearer to her, then anxious for him to surface at all. There had been something alien and disconcerting in his motions, in his eyes, but she couldn’t decide what it was. She held her breath with him, waiting. What seemed an impossibly long stretch of seconds passed, and then she came to the lip of the first ledge, up to her ankles in the cool, biting water, sudden fright collecting in her throat. She bent forward, staring into the water. Where is he? Nothing. She thought that she should call out, because people did that when something went horribly wrong, but her throat closed over the sound. There was nothing to call. She fell to her knees, the remnants of waves pushing over her calves and feet, and leaned over the water.

It was blurry, wavering, the light refracting at odd angles, and for a moment she thought it was the reflection of her own face looking up at her. Then her heart lurched as though it would heave itself upside down in her chest, and she knew the eyes watching her from the water were not hers. Because there was no imaginable answer to any of her questions, she just looked back. The face beneath the water rippled, and the lips tilted into a smile. Then, while she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t think, it lifted softly and the water thinned and spilled away. His hair streamed back and the beginning of his wide chest emerged. She didn’t move. He came up and up until their eyes were level, and put his broad hands over the fluttering green strands where the rock dropped away. In the dark of the water, the tough skin at his waist gave way to intricate scales that were specks of brightness in the sun. Farther down, they layered and thickened and his powerful finned tail curved in a lazy motion from side to side, holding him upright. She tore her gaze from the scales that speckled his hips.

For minutes they watched one another, she crouching on the ledge, he leaning on it. Then she said haltingly, “What are you?” and he stared uncomprehendingly at her. He cocked his head and raised both hands towards her in a universal gesture of welcome or offering.

“You can’t speak, can you?” she whispered.

His hands drifted into the water. His chest, though muscled, had the padded, sleek look of a seal, and there were no nipples. How had she not noticed before now? Her eyes had skimmed that area and, disbelieving, held the concept away from her mind. Then she’d seen the thrust of tail through the water, and the rest became real to her all at once. His animal eyes with the eerie light in them, the strange glistening planes of his skin that was not quite human, the fluidity of his motions that made him blend into the subtle waves as easily as a fish.

“You’re a merman,” she said.

He looked at her. Then he dipped beneath the water, and there was a flash of sun on his scales as he swam for the mouth of the cove. And he was gone. She was still for a long while, and the world paused around her. Then, slowly, she stood. The sun slanted over the grass at the top of the cliff and down to where she was, where the ocean welled into the hole the land cupped. Like a secret it had found and kept to itself. Her mind would not admit to anything, and her jeans were soaked to her upper thighs. She turned, and the green glass pen slipped from her fingers and shattered on the rock. It lay in a thousand shards that glittered like scales. Her fingers skidded on the top button, and she tugged the jeans off and flung them over a knobby branch of the little tree. She pulled off her tee shirt and left it on the second ledge with her notebook.  She took a long breath, and plunged into the salt and cold and fierce quiet of the water.

She surfaced, gasping and laughing, and swam to the mouth of the cove, where the water dragged at her and pushed her back again, reached for her and left her. The ocean opened into the sky so that there was no line between them, only a joining. And then something stirred along her side, and a current stroked her skin. She waited, treading water until he came up before her, the soft fringe of his tail brushing her foot and flicking away. He lifted his hands towards her again, and she took them. Then he drew her in against his body, which was slick and tough like a seal’s must be, and together they swam through the mouth of the secret cove and into the ocean.

(source)

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Yeah. I wrote a lot more romantically back then.

Un-roast: Today I love how romantic my mind really is, despite all my efforts to represent myself as put-together, fully present, and purely rational. I’m clearly not. But it’s cool. I also love that sometimes my own body reminds me of a seal…. 🙂