by Christine Hamm
(3/14/01)
Afterwards, I blew Shadowboy and he shot on my sunburned lips. He tasted of
rum and saltines. His head above me was black, haloed by the sun, but I
closed my eyes and remembered his coming face. His eyelashes spackled
together with pressure, tears and ecstasy: his mouth a goldfish "O". His
sweat dripped on my eyelids.
That summer, we girls, we'd hitchhike. Black had feet, we knew, but we'd
turn away and smile. That summer, we'd play mad, and hitchhike to the beach.
Everything was safe. There was no crime in California. We read no newspapers
and didn't talk much, so that's what we believed and wanted to believe.
Sometimes, we took off our bikini tops.
We called him Shadowboy. He'd tag along with Smooth, who used his music truck
as a gift, get women drunk with notes, make them cry. Smooth had his
blackened, smokey voice and bongo drums, and Shadowboy had his always "nearly
empty" bong.
Untouchable Smooth was a gorgeous, sincere knife with broken fingers.
Shadowboy, on the edge of the red rock, was tiny and pedestrian, puffed up in
the chest as if he needed only size, then he'd trip up the sun and clouds.
Smooth would look at us as if we were a forest of red dresses, pink moons,
and shaded eyes. Sometimes we'd take off our bikini tops. Shadowboy shot tiny
gardens all over our faces.
Black had feet. But we were too drunk or stoned or sunstruck to notice, and
we slept with the day every day at noon. Sometimes we'd take it off.
Sometimes we woke up with things stuck in us, driftwood, kelp. I was left
with a sweet urge turning black.
In August, our sea skin was hit by the whisper of winter. Smooth and
Shadowboy (his drool boiling at our breasts) looked blue and rusted. In the
shade of the red rock, I took Shadowboy into my mouth. He stayed as still and
soft as a piece of produce. When he came, it tasted like snot. He smeared it
in the sand and ran.
I was left with...
I woke up with things stuck in me.
I went out into the thin sunlight, but the truck was gone.
We seemed fewer then, weakened by the strange light and lack of music and
drugs. Perhaps some girls were missing, but I had forgotten their names and
we all looked alike. We walked home barefoot, finding bruises we had
forgotten.
