88 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
88 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
Archive-name: Casual/whitsand.txt
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Archive-author: Pat O'Brien
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Archive-title: Whitesands
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Copyright 1993 Pat O'Brien
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All permissions reserved except for the right to distribute in
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electronic text form across computer networks.
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I went to White Sands that Sunday evening.
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After our argument I had spent the weekend in a fugue. An
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automaton, I spent hours at the computer..achieving little
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but an excellent score on Xhextris. By Sunday the pain set
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in and I had to mobilise or sink into a depression and
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emotional agony so vast that I could not contemplate its
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ending with any modicum of rationality.
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It was 6pm when I set out. The summer sun still harsh and
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bright on the road with the only consolation the traffic
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streaming towards me in the opposite lane. I had thought to
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go to Scarborough but the lure of deserted spaces directed
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me to the open beach.
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White Sands has little to recommend it. A grey beach,
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sodden to mud at low tide, ineffectual ripples of waves
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sucking desultorily at a shell-less beach. The
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ocean burps rhythmically there...it does not roar with the
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depth required by a broken heart. It does, though, have a vast
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empty expanse and rocks on which to sit and feel the sharp
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reassurance of being alive...and human.
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By 9pm the sun relaxed. It cast gold anodynes over the sands
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and I stood barefoot with the water feinting shyly at my toes.
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The horizon blankly returned my stare and a sharp well of
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pain rose in me. Alone, I allowed the desperate well to fill
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and I heard my own deep, vocal pain challenge the North Sea.
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It arced harshly over the suddenly frozen swell, a highlighted
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gold offence.
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"Shit!" The voice, alarmed, sounded behind me.
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I spun. A man, ten yards from me stood glaring in horrid
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fascination. His stance was a parody of a running
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man...a thwarted escape and frozen concern.
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Much later I rationalised my movement towards him. Misdirected
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anger, misplaced love, emotional yearning...a driving to fill
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suddenly empty places. To his tribute he stayed, braced and took the
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force of my arrival with a sharp expulsion of breath and firm
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surrounding arms. His heart was beating fast...the shock of
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the scream still alarming his blood. Then I sank into him, this
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stranger, with the live pulsing of an intensely loving animal.
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We fucked. I barely remember the shed of clothes...just the
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sudden thrill of naked body heat and the vibrant stroke; his
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sliding, shafting of me. Each leaving an ache and return
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a jubilee. This man filled me with the hundreds of lusts
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echoing in the sea...the brittle reality of grinding sand
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and the numb warmth of human knowing. I craved him and he
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completed me...urging my hunger in the cooling embergolds of
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the dying sun. I rose to him and he weighted me...I opened
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to him and he entered. I swole holistic and he prevailed.
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More than that he freed me...
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Long after the throb and revel was spent, my senses pulsed.
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That Sunday, I passed the mundane...the caught chill moment
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of the banal. I leaped into a strange dimension where all
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men and women meet in complicity...the Human. No man is a
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stranger...each an image of those who exist before and
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after, no body an `other' but the grouped and massive beat
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of the thousands of aching hearts and naked lusts.
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Each time I feel the new rejection...the sharp foil, I feel it
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shared by everyone, everywhere. I feel the abandoned child
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and the beaten women, the terrified and the starving, the
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strange eyes of the unfulfilled.
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Each time my blood seeks levels in the afterglow of this screaming
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bond it feels the deep swell of human tides...the grit and
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aliveness of a pulsing union.
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Each time I look for freedom's gate I find it in the electric blue
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blaze of a stranger's eyes and deep gold dusk of White Sands.
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--
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