The Rock by the Lake

I wrote this piece as a final project for a creative non-fiction class I took right before I got my Bachelor's. I felt like going back to it and sharing it. Enjoy:

I believe in reincarnation; that our souls move on to bigger, better things. While they are waiting they stay with those who need them, until the time is ripe for them to go. Sometimes in life you meet people, they change you forever, and their beauty forever enthralls you. Your connection is an intrinsic one, no boundaries and no limits.

“I never loved nobody fully, always one foot on the ground” blared on the radio as I drove home from school. It was still really hot, and the daze I was in began to bring back memories I thought I had pushed out long ago.

One of my friends thought he was lying when he said he had a boyfriend. I felt the pain, the heartache. The hurt had found my essential blood-pumping organ, had grasped it, and like a vigorous salmon jumping upstream only to be mauled by the awaiting bear, it met its doom. I had met him but hours ago, the person who would walk into my life and forever alter it. And he had a boyfriend.

We were a close knit group of friends, an impenetrable fabric binded us. There was something so common in our not so modest identities that we all held dear. We worked as a team, and we were leaders in charge of other smaller teams. Our job was beautiful: inspire a whole lot of youth to be themselves. They came from a world where kissing each other was shunned upon, holding hands had severe social sanctions, but at least for one week they would not be part of that world. Their gender would and could be fluid as the river of identity was not one that could be tamed.

Our staff retreat was weeks before the actual camp. It was an attempt to get to know each other better. Gazes from him are all I remember during that time. He was coy, and he openly flirted with me though he later denied it. I remember smelling his hair before departing on the train and commuting towards opposite sides of the city. I ran my fingers through his hair and told him it smelled good. You know when you bathe your dog and run shampoo aggressively through their coat; surprised that such a dirty animal can be so clean; yeah, it was like that.

“And by protecting my heart truly, I got lost in the sounds.” It’s as if Regina Spektor knew what to sing for me at that moment to induce the memory of him. It’s as if listening to her made my soul move again. The wind whisked through my hair as I drove, and I smiled as I listened to her words.

In the middle of nowhere, we arrived for our staff retreat. After kissing one of my friends on a dare and playing the “Who Would You Fuck in this Room if You Could” game, he started rubbing my hair. Gently at first, then with more yearning, with more want of a warm body next to his. He asked if he could crawl next to me. This was no private moment. A honeycomb is full of bees, our room was full of people, and we lay on the floor next to a tightly packed group of peers. That’s how it all began.

“I hear in my mind all of these voices.” In my thoughts on the way home, I saw beautiful sunsets that reminded me of why it is I love my life so much. The purple, blue, and red could never be replicated by anyone. I’ll never forget that day all the houses were painted with impossible hues, colors so vivid, only the Sun-god could have created them.

During camp, I stood on my usual stump. When asked why I stood on a tree stump every morning barefoot, I always told campers that the air was clearer up there. He came up the rocky path and his tender toes grasped every pebble that they could, pushing through his soft skin hard and determined to make him feel.

I was proud because I had taught him to redefine pain. Vipassana earlier that year had demanded that I partake in ten days of sitting on the floor for fourteen hours each day. The participants also adhered to a strict fast which included only fruit and tea for dinner, and any form of communication was not encouraged. My emotions poured out of me and I felt clean as my brain began to maul over new sensations and I felt more beautiful. I still hear the chant in my head… bhavatu sabha mangalam…

There was a huge rock by the lake at camp that I used to sleep on; a limber person can sleep on anything. He came to tell me hi once. He didn’t stay, but I smiled anyway and went back to sleep. Then I lay on the ground with the grass on my cheek. Arching up I saw the Sun-god, the one I knew well. This god had followed me my whole life. The mountains began to sing as the rays of Sun singed my eyes and I tried to fall back into my slumber.

“I hear in my mind all of these words” still played on the radio as I drove. I remembered taking a trip to Mexico and one of my now deceased aunts calling the mountains “Los Azules.” There was a well we tapped into and drank from. The water was so crisp, so pure and refreshing. This was the liquid our bodies really desired, this was the substance that could quench our most magnificent mortal thirst.

At camp we took a hike to the mountain ridge; reminding me of Guadalupe Peak and seeing the spirits glide so freely up high, so passionately as they enjoyed their time before passing on. He started crying. It would be his last year at camp, a sad thing indeed, and I let him be.

Coming back from the hike, I held his hand. It was then I knew he loved me. A coworker then took a picture of us. Our quiet smiles peeked out shyly from our faces. We never talked much, emotions are much more powerful when speech is forgotten. Holding his hand was like holding myself, and all of my power rested in those palms. His soft fingers laced with mine were a moment no camera could ever properly capture, a beauty never to exist in time again.

That summer, I also went to Long Island to visit my friend. This was a sanctuary when I could not cope knowing that he was back in the city with his boyfriend. Wild turkey, fresh deer, chili, stews, cornbread, tortillas, salsas. The scents filled the kitchen daily. The smells seeped into me and reminded me of back home and my family. I was with another people in another shared space and time. We think we differ from others, but that is the illusion we allow ourselves to believe.

My friend drove me to the beach one night, and the full moon was like a huge lantern that lit up the sky. I told her I wanted to go for a swim as she turned and nodded her approval. I stripped off my clothes and jumped into the lukewarm sea for some time. Then I felt it: the presence of something magical wading in the water, something divine. A spirit was guiding me and was leading me to the greater path I needed to take.

Back in the city, I told him about my swim. He was stunned, and he told me that on that same night, he had also decided to go into the ocean, though his friends had told him otherwise. He felt he needed to, something had driven him there. Was it that same mystical being that was there with me that night? Maybe it was the comfort of each other. Maybe in that one instant, the earth had decided to connect us. Or maybe it was all just coincidence that the water felt safer than land in that brief moment. I don’t think we’re ever meant to know.

“I hear in my mind all of this music.” The radio was still on and the heat was still killing me. I was getting frustrated that I wasn’t home yet and that the air was so sticky. I tried hard to think back to my memories of him, but the weather was condensing my thoughts and making their rise to the surface complicated.

Back at camp, we sat on that same rock by the lake. We cuddled, and he held my hand. I had seen more beautiful sunsets in my time, but this one was nice because he was there. Bats flew up ahead as we whispered to each other and giggled. We both knew the moment would end, we both knew that passion is fleeting, involuntary and surprising, but we decided to relish in it anyway.

“And it breaks my heart” sang in my head as I lay on top of my bed after that grueling drive. I prayed that the heat would break in this Snow-god forsaken locale. The intense temperatures reminded me of the sweat that would collect on my back in the city that summer, the way it would just pour out of me and never stop, and then I thought of him again.

They scheduled us for the same mid-week break during camp. He slept in my bed, or rather attempted to sleep. We got aggressive, I didn’t want him to leave, and under all that nervous laughter was the pent up sexual frustration we had for each other. It was obvious to the rest of the world, you don’t cuddle with “just friends,” but we disregarded their comments.

He was stocky and bigger than me, and I was able to pin him. The enormous panda bear can be subdued by the slender otter when strength surfaces from the realm of the imagined and becomes the beginning of the possible. We were those animals in our own world where stories never made sense and whimsical was quite the norm.

When he gave up I lay on top of him, and our foreheads touched. In a glimpse of the many moments in time that have existed all at once, I saw him. In another life he had a long beard, and gray hair as he stared back at me with increasing concern. We had been caught by Fate and I was about to be thrown into my next life. It’s funny how past lovers always seek to reunite despite the many times they’ve been thrown off the karma wheel and the many times the divine have cursed them. It’s funny that they still even try.

“And suppose I never ever met you, suppose we never fell in love.” He used to gross people out and make them feel squeamish and uncomfortable. He was no stranger to discussions about bowel movements. He knew the scents, the foods to eat to make a blast from his ass more potent, more room-clearing. Bodily functions did nothing to churn his stomach, and fecal matter was just a part of the natural excreting forces necessary for good health. Beauty for him was not masked over with fabricated decorum, and it was present in all things. I was so in love with him.

We knew the clear skies were a rare sight for all the city folk who were at our camp as the stars spread above us and we lay next to each other. Being on a grassy plain in the woods was liberating, no high rises intimidated us, no concrete caged us in, and no disapproving society was there to make our dreams crumble under their own weight.

We later put our toes in the water of the lake, the water that washed our worries away, and we placed our feet next to each other. To have feet touch is to envelop each other’s souls. Not only is there an innocent eroticism present in the feet of the person you love, there is an acknowledgment of who they are as crucial pieces in the puzzle of creation. I regret not touching his feet enough.

He had sexy thighs. I remember brushing up against him vigorously, the smells of his neck still penetrate my scent glands. The thick flanks of the complex mixture of muscle and fat made my previously unexplored sexuality pounce out of me. He never kissed me on the lips that night, and sex was not in our near future, if ever. We made do, and our mental connection was the closest to orgasm we would ever get. I still wonder what coming with him might have been like.

His hands ran through my body, every bit explored, at least every bit we could with boxers on. Then there it was, the sensation I would crave time and time again. This moment would set the standard. His mouth was suddenly on my chest and his tongue lapped at my nipples. He was quite gentle, making me crave more. I ran my hand through his hair and tried to bring him closer to me. Love does strange things to our senses, making us think we can physically be a part of other people, and meshing flesh becomes a new found reality.

“Suppose I never ever met you.” Tears began forming in my eyes. What if we had been more open about our desires and attraction for each other? What if when he touched me I would have said no?

I remember crying and holding his hand when I told him he had to break up with his boyfriend. He seemed appalled that I would suggest such a thing as he responded he wouldn’t do that just because I said so. We had gotten so lost in our thoughts that his boyfriend had taken a secondary role and only my insistence on the matter reminded us of that cold fact. I knew it was all over on our last day of camp. It disintegrated, the complicated love that was there. It just quickly crashed and burned. My heart was like a dry brush; his new found feelings for me were the fires that set the entire forest ablaze. The clouds poured and the sky grayed as nature was sad that we were leaving and returning to the world of the non-mystical.

Streams of rainwater ran down the hill, and I saw him standing on my stump. He asked me to join him. We were two young people on one tree stump. It required perfect balance and a sense of trust to mold into each other’s form, our form. I squeezed him closer and could smell the sweet skin of his neck. I know he felt the sadness too, the inevitable consuming us. The water attempted to wash away our fears, attempted to inform us that all would be well, but I just didn’t believe it. I felt nature had betrayed me and was trying to shatter the dream I had called my reality for the past few months.

I stumbled onto the bus still wet and sat next to him. The drive back was quiet. Nobody spoke, perhaps to pay our respects to a sacred memory that was not to be contaminated by human speech. I hugged him, ran my hand up his shirt to just above his heart and took hold. I used the healing powers that my great grandmother gave me to try to comfort my wounds. I began to cry and there I was, helpless and confused, trapped, waiting to escape with no path out.

For all the heaven that was my reality that summer, I think it’s better he stays as a memory. In my memory he is safe from my scrutiny, safe from my contempt for him. Like the scar on my forehead, he will always be a part of me. And just like the waves used to brush up against the rock by the lake, memories of him are calm and soothing.

I believe in reincarnation; that our souls move on to bigger, better things. While they are waiting they stay with those who need them, until the time is ripe for them to go.