Almost Home (2734 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.91 on 43 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by danielH <daniel.at.writerspacemail.com> (View user info) at 2005-08-25 08:45:03 EDT
I grew up against my better judgment, alone with my thoughts beside the oak-shaded waters of a little Gulf Coast barrier isle. Cypresswand Isle. Swimming star-circled waters where miles of moonlight wove over the waves to stop and clasp my face, at the age of five I thought that Cypresswand was where angels and butterflies were born, and that the Gulf was the face of God. I learned the darker features of that face as the years shadowed across it, and found that to be born we first must die.
I was exploring salt creeks in a toy catamaran at the age of seven, following the wind down liquid halls beneath archways of oaks. Those subtopic woods opened to water meadows and marshes along the backwaters, forming the sanctuary of a free-running childhood submerged in the sensuous gardens of seclusion.
Asphalt was an unfamiliar word. The sea wrapped my boundaries around horizons of stars and my freedom rolled as infinite. I was not a child who knew the blunt intrusions of other children. I was one of those moon-christened woodlings raised beneath the sky with summer thunder across fields of marsh orchids fragrant in memory.
Then I met the surfers. My childhood ended at 4:20. That's when I learned a new definition for "blunt."
What evokes our deepest memories are often the most trivial incidents: in this case the arrival of the bug-man.
My current house is built on a slab, so bugs seldom get in, but bigass (flying) palmetto bugs do. They're like Jurassic roaches on crack-laced steroids, big as my thumb, and they scare the poodle-kicking Christ outta me. You don't kill them, you dodge them. They don't run, they strike poses, voguing and posturing.
Bug-man woke me where I'd fallen asleep out on the hammock. As he worked we talked about crabbing- the best bait to set, chicken backs. Felt like my grandfather was there, a saintly Jimmy Stewart who sat on the deck talking of old times on the Gulf. I told him my childhood stories, and hadn't felt such a purity of happiness in so long. But as he was leaving in his Critter Gitters truck he said cryptically:
"You left home, but it never left you. So you shouldn't cut half your heart out of your stories, or your memories."
"What?" A desolate chill rushed through me.
He only gazed across Wolf Bay at a peninsula that's often mistaken for an island. "You left something important behind when you left The Wands," he said with a gentleness of certainty.
Cypresswand was nearly 500 miles south and decades away from where we were having an impossible exchange of words in Orange Beach: I hadn't told him that Cypresswand and the smaller isles surrounding it had been nicknamed The Wands.
"When I was spraying I noticed a line you crossed-out of that manuscript on your desk," he said. "You should circle it, because sometimes you talk to yourself when you write. That's all you've been doing the last years, rewriting your past to make it safe. Even telling me your stories you left the soul out of every tale."
"Who are you?" I asked.
I noticed his iron-on nametag for the first time: S.S. Eless. My heart skipped a beat.
"Try crossing me out," he said, then he drove away.
I went and lay facedown on the hammock, trying to make sense of it.
*
My legs and arms were locked tightly beneath the hammock. I was soaked in sweat wearing only shorts. Beyond the screened-in deck I saw a young guy in a Critter Gitters T-shirt.
"I knocked at the front door," he said. "Someone left us a message about a bug problem. Are you Daniel?"
I nodded standing. My arms and legs were tingling weak, as if they'd been locked around the hammock forever. He looked at the diamond-shaped imprints of the hammock covering my body.
"One of your guys was just here," I said. "His last name, was Eless."
"I'm the only one working today. Nobody named Eless works for us. It took some doing to wake you."
I could recall the older man's every word as clearly as the last seconds.
I let the young guy in and thought (besides that I was insane) of the old man mentioning a cross-out line in my manuscript. On my desk was the earliest of its three drafts. I didn't remember taking this old version out, but it was opened. I saw a line I had penciled-out years ago, a saccharine eulogy to my vanquished childhood:
"These pages are only a farewell letter to a lost child whose life lives on as my own."
*
By afternoon I had put all this behind me and went to look at a piece of property at Perdido Key- hoping a tiny down payment would turn the trick. The owner drove me to see it.
In a word, he was gay; in two words he was elderly and gay. Driving back after seeing the lot, he took an unexpected turn down Johnson's Beach. Aptly named, that beach runs miles down a cock-shaped peninsula. Acres of blistered, bloated cellulite on either side, it's now accessible only by foot after recent hurricanes.
This stop wasn't on our itinerary, but apparently I was on his.
"I wanna show you something," he said. The scariest words I've heard in years.
He pulled into a makeshift dead-end at the entrance between hills of recently dumped sand and said, "There's nude sunbathers here since the beach closed. See those guys? Once they get in the water they stuff their trunks in their fanny packs and have a ball."
Ok who says "trunks"? And there were more mixed Freudian slips in his statement than at a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show after-party.
"Are you cold?" he asked. "You've been hugging yourself all afternoon." I shook my head, but he opened the sunroof.
I could see gay heads bobbing in the waves between dunes. Just for the hell of it I stood up through the sunroof and yelled "Shark!" just to see people do back-flips out of the water. I'd never before seen a naked drag queen sprinting through waves with a terrified look and a chubby slapping his thighs.
There's a miasma of gaydom drifting around deserted dead-ends, like the public smell of interstate rest stops. And there we were, at the gayest dead-end pickle-park this side of Richard Simmons' cul-de-sac.
He killed the engine, and I forgot how to swallow. He looked at me with Viagra-blue eyes: "Wanna get naked? We can try it here in the car first."
". . ."
The gay Svengali had brought me here under false pretences, as if pretences can be anything but false. Lust in the eyes of the elderly is like Jack in milk, or Beck on a banjo, it's just wrong. No, more than lust: he looked like he could've fucked me, the running queen, and a lonely teenage broncin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck.
I pulled out my (not that, he was outta luck) cell, and told him I had to take a private call, and left to take a private piss between dunes. (Faraway dunes.) The fake call would be an excuse for having to get home fast.
I walked down the quiet side of the beach farther than necessary. Knee-high waves were breaking through a light chop, yet the Gulf seemed so menacing I couldn't look at it. I'd been out there in double overheads during storms (the only time we really surf here) yet this placid pond was frightening me.
Someone's faraway boombox stopped playing (they were changing cd's or stations). What I remember next was not so much the hauntingly familiar song that began braiding down the beach, more the pearly ache that this years-away song caused. Memories swam over me, threatening to pull me from the moment.
I couldn't block the song and its attendant pain, and tried focusing on something beautiful: the supernal happiness I'd felt this morning reliving memories of The Wands. But something instinctive shut down these thoughts.
All I could do was close my eyes tight, and in the sudden dark I was gone.
Searchlights sliced the island night of years past, panning through limbs of windy oaks. Bloodhounds were yelping, voices drifting on dark winds:
"Their mother said they stay in these trees all day." "It's been two days and this is night, can't see anything for all the Spanish moss."
My thoughts fled to the serenity of salt creeks, memories of sailing silent summer mornings. I had loved making up words that read the same backward as forward, and saw S.S. Eless painted on the little sail of my catamaran.
"Eless was our boat, Danny."
I sought refuge in mental pursuit of the correct term for words that read the same backward as forward: Palandone... palin-
The music was relentless as time. The barking was getting closer. A dark carousel of dogs circled me.
"Shhh, stay warm," I whispered lying over her hugging her as a hound began sniffing between us. "You're warm, Sarah. Warm like me."
Flashlights swept closer over the beach.
"There's a trail from the shore to those dunes." . . . "The tide washed it out at the waterline, that trench wasn't made today."
Lights illuminated us bright as the sun as a hound started barking. I held her tighter.
"It's the little boy, he's alive." "She's under him." Hands pushed between us. "She's dead." ". . . must've pulled her from the water yesterday. Her hair is dry." "Let her go, son." "I can't break his grip, his legs and arms are like concrete around her."
A car stereo thumped through my thoughts at the Johnson's Beach turnaround. I opened my eyes.
My shoes were soaked in pee. I tied my shorts' drawstring and turned to the Gulf, the heavy gold glamour of the approaching sunset.
Breakers slammed the shore and fell like hopeless anger, leaving laceries of foam rushing toward me.
The receding water pulled away sand to expose coquinas, and a little girl stood out in the surf, her hair furling to her waist in champagne swirls braided with shells as she called my name. But it was only the sun in my eyes.
I turned and walked away, told the old fellow to drive me home.
But, not my real home. Even I don't know how to get back there, and no words know the way.
But I have a secret ritual.
Some nights when it seems all the world is asleep and the moon is burning like a goddess over the bay, I swim out into the channel. Floating there gazing heavenward, the warm push of waves rock me until it seems the stars are swaying. Then I'm again riding the limbs of arching live oaks in the wind, no longer alone, where the days run like music through the green shades of youth as waves break like creamy thunder. And there's no Time there, only an imperishable bliss and the moon upwardly dreaming- where all memories are one, yet separated like the stars.
Home. I reach out, and it slips away.
User Reviews
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2008-08-07 11:11:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So good. Miss you.
Submitted by Danger_Ranger (user info) at 2008-03-20 01:13:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where have you been ritchie sambora, down Jonestown way getting paranoid on hydro?
BOOM!!
just kidding.
Submitted by FartSmeller (user info) at 2006-10-17 14:35:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Okay, then I read the post. Plus fucking two. Amazing story.
Submitted by FartSmeller (user info) at 2006-10-17 14:29:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Once upon a time you posted the funniest review I've ever read to a post I did of my dog and I camwhoring. So, here's a +2 because I remembered it after all this time.
http://www.ubersite.com/m/77883#1663340
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-09-17 14:56:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ace
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2005-11-29 15:17:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
.
Submitted by TheSpook (user info) at 2005-11-29 14:08:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2005-10-05 19:01:05 (#)
Ranking: 2
Holy fuck.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2005-11-29 13:50:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2005-11-26 16:16:22 (#)
Ranking: 2
I remember reading this and can't understand why I didn't review it then.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-29 13:39:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
you're last on my list!
http://www.ubersite.com/m/80003
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2005-11-26 16:22:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
hi daniel h
blimey
pop pop pop
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2005-11-26 16:16:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I remember reading this and can't understand why I didn't review it then.
-Dave
Submitted by tammy (user info) at 2005-11-26 15:58:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FartSmeller (user info) at 2005-10-27 15:47:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by DanielH (user info) at 2005-10-27 15:25:34 (#)
Ranking: 2
FartSmeller, you look like you smell a fart. Iggy seems aloof, with that bemused ennui of a parvenu beast baron. ++
----------------------
Best review ever. Although, I think my dog looks more indignant than aloof. That's just me.
Submitted by MandaPanda (user info) at 2005-10-25 15:55:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Did I actually call you when you were drunk?
Submitted by brokenlizard534 (user info) at 2005-10-09 11:41:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2005-10-09 10:35:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
coooool
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2005-10-05 19:01:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Holy fuck.
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2005-09-19 04:26:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-09-05 20:13:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Glad to see you're all right, man.
Submitted by Danger_Ranger (user info) at 2005-09-05 06:52:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Daniel's in one piece, been holed up in a hotel without electricity for the last week, has just got tv and is kinda taken aback by the devastation.
Fucking beautiful post, hippie, why the fuck more people don't rate this kind of thing is beyond me. Too busy with the hate and drama I s'pose..
Submitted by GodLovesALittleLovin (user info) at 2005-09-02 13:17:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm not sure if you'll see this for awhile, but I hope you're okay and safe daniel. give us an update of your condition when/if you get the chance. godspeed.
Submitted by hollygolitely (user info) at 2005-08-30 11:33:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
PLEASE CONFIRM YOUR SAFETY.
Submitted by truthandterror (user info) at 2005-08-28 19:25:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i loved it
Submitted by Maddog (user info) at 2005-08-28 19:10:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-08-28 18:50:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Argh. Thanks for pointing this out to me D. I screwed up. Hope you can forgive me. :)
Should have neen straight +2's from me.
Fuck.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-08-26 00:37:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"I feel I've profaned something beyond sacred. Yet I'm indebted to you for this. Even tho I feel not so comfortably, but numb. Such is the residue of catharsis."
Sometimes we have to let go of things we hold close to us, our little secrets so to speak. If you feel that you have profaned something beyond sacred, I'm guessing that, in retrospect you might feel a little better having let it hang out on the line to dry; exposing that inner fear to the elements for their perusal.
Time is an amazing thing Daniel, and I'm sure you are well aware of what they say about time.
So I say, give it some time.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-08-25 22:46:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fucking hell, man. This was great.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-08-25 22:01:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't think you've profaned something precious...if anything you've done it a great service with this post.
Submitted by DanielH (user info) at 2005-08-25 11:30:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:14:20 (#)
Ranking: 2
So this is what the hammock brought you back to?
Damn Daniel, this is one excellent piece of writing. It's poetry actually. After I read this, I felt like after the first time I ever heard the song "Comfortably numb" while stoned. I just said to myself, "wow."
---
I feel I've profaned something beyond sacred. Yet I'm indebted to you for this. Even tho I feel not so comfortably, but numb. Such is the residue of catharsis.
+++ to you.
Submitted by stardamage (user info) at 2005-08-25 11:23:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Everything everyone else said. Why don't you post more often? You really really should. This was incredible.
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2005-08-25 11:09:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you really should post more
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:28:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I want to ask what happened to your sister, but I feel wrong doing it -- like Berty said, this seems really private and somehow very fragile.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:27:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Holy shit, dude. Daniel...you have to post more often. This was absolutely incredible. INCREDIBLE. Very beautifully worded, engrossing, a little confusing but not too much...
Really fantastic. You're a weird and wonderful dude.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:16:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I feel guilty after reading this. It felt very private.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:14:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So this is what the hammock brought you back to?
Damn Daniel, this is one excellent piece of writing. It's poetry actually. After I read this, I felt like after the first time I ever heard the song "Comfortably numb" while stoned. I just said to myself, "wow."
Submitted by iradney (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:14:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:02:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I really enjoyed this.
Well done.
Submitted by DanielH (user info) at 2005-08-25 10:00:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by TheSunGod (Ranking: 2
................
do you still (or have you ever?) live on the gulf coast? you must have at least spent a lot of time here...
- - - -
I seldom, almost never post, but all of my post are set here, on the Gulf. My uberdirectory pic post shows a bay you should know well, if the Gulf is your mistress, as it is mine. Yes this is my home. (Try naming the bay without reading what's above the pic- not to reply, just to see if you know it.)
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2005-08-25 09:56:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was just so weird it has to have a +2
Submitted by GodLovesALittleLovin (user info) at 2005-08-25 09:24:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Some of the most creative wording i've read around here in awhile. Really kept it interesting. Good work, Danny BOy.
Submitted by TheSunGod (user info) at 2005-08-25 09:15:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OK, you had an auto +2 lined up for anything having to do with my Gulf.
then all that overdone, saccharine syntax in the first few paras almost bumped it down to a +1.
but then the whole "loss of innocence" thing happened, the wording changed, and i saw why you used the overly dramatic wording. this was excellence for sure.
do you still (or have you ever?) live on the gulf coast? you must have at least spent a lot of time here...
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2005-08-25 09:05:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fucking great.
Submitted by Barnymeinhoff (user info) at 2005-08-25 08:59:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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