Getting naked with all things Lost...collecting (levitating in love) (reprise)

The next day when I collect I hover three feet above the horizontal slits of the sidewalk. I am treading air. I am mentally sealing the lid of my third eye and reflecting over the taste of Dawn Michelle’s forehead, which I have made out with twice.

After I left the Mall Hale and I went to Maid Rite. We then hung out outside Willow Knolls movie and just chilled. When I get home I call Dawn Michelle only there is no answer.  I can still taste the fleshy residue of her forehead on my lips.  I call again a half- hour later and her brother, presumably the one who worked in the music store says that Dawn just left for the evening to meet one of the Dawns. I don’t leave a message.

I am still treading through fountains of air.

  I listen to Depeche Mode and think about Dawn.

I can’t help jouncing around the room like a disseminated video game clone when I listen to New Life.

 I can't stop thinking about the taste of her forehead.

I can't stop thinking about Dawn.

                                                          ***

They are next door. The window with the blinds that look like a yellow yawn. The window you can see through.

There is no curtain over the bathroom window. When they take a shower it gets steamed up.  When they get out they are naked you can see them moving as if through a cloud.

An angel with wet genitals.

They are college girls and they are next door, less than ten feet away, completely naked, occluding only by the geometry of fogged glass, swiping a towel through vectors of their body.

They are next door and I can't help but wonder what angels look like when they are naked and wet, drying off with the tips of their wings.

                                                                  

                                                                    ***

I call David Best.  I tell him all about the girl I met doing Music Man. I am floating as if connected to an umbilicus in space.

“Dude, you will love her. She’s amazing. She’s older. She’s hyper-intelligent. She’s probably the most well read person I have ever met.”

I ask Dave how Renae is doing making it a point not to mention that I thought she was a total stuck-up bitch when I met her at Glen Oak fireworks three weeks and another lifetime ago.

"We broke up," My Best friend alludes.

"Oh bro, I'm sorry."

“I mean, we’re still dating, we’ll still go on a date and see a movie or something, only we are not going steady.”

“You guys were going out for a long time.

“Yeah, almost a year, ever since band camp last summer.”

I tell him I remember him telling me about Kristie of the Itty Bitty Titty renown.

Dave says yeah, but were still good friends. I want to tell Dave that Renae didn’t really look like she with was you when I saw them together at Glen Oak Pak fireworks.

"There’s alotta of really cute freshman who are entering Limestone." Adding that he can't wait for band camp.

 "Band camp," I think. It's always about band camp with my best friend.

                                                                                    ***

 On television it is the first night of the Olympics. On screen there is the gymnast. She sounds like an Ozian munchkin who just took a shot of helium. She is forming origami postures with her body, pinwheeling across the matted ocean beneath. I am enraptured. The leotard she wears is the same exact color of Dawn Michelle’s forehead.

I can’t stop staring.
I am smitten. The aortic pulse inside my chest is beginning to salivate.

I am just a little bit in love. 


                                                                       ***

"Well hey, how was your first date?” Bob and Frank both inquire. When I walk in the door they immediately offer me a coke. They are watching the Olympics. The air conditioner is jacked so high frost is accumulating on the sill of the window.

“It was really cool. She’s really a special person.”

I tell them that was really nice of them to give me the twenty dollars last time and that they didn’t need to do that.

“Our pleasure.” They say, almost in unison. I note there is a heap of International male underwear catalogs on the table.

Frank fires up a cigarette

 On screen there is Kim Zmeskal. She is on a balance beam. She is performing effortlessly, pronounced angular moments, gliding across the hyphen  with grace, her toes pointed and the next thing she has tripped. There is an audible gasp from the audience. As if she is pulling herself from the pool of the gravity she alights back on to the beam finishing her routine.

Her petit face completely folds in on itself. The announcers are showing the topple in slow motion and using the word disappointment.

“So,” Bob says, cupping one hand his lips as if he is telling a secret to an invisible mannequin. “Did you get any?’

He then elbows me in the ribcage. There is laughter. He says that I don’t have to tell them. He then laughs again and elbows me and says yes you do before laughing some more.

  I try laughing back but all I can focus on is the features of Kim Zmeskal. This was supposed to be her Olympics. She was suppose to come home America’s sweetheart.

Her burly priapic-moustache nosed Russian Coach is giving her a hug.

She is not crying. But somehow it is the saddest face I have ever seen.

                                                                              ***

“You should really call Renae,” Dave says,  I mean, I think she kinda likes you.”

I say what. Dave said that she doesn't want me to tell you this but that she thinks that you are cute.

“That’s nice, but you know, I kind of already have a girlfriend. You know Dawn.”

“Dave says yeah but Renae is your own age. She won’t be graduating and going off to college anytime soon.”

In the background there is the Olympics. Because of toppling off the balance beam she is in 32nd place over all.  Unless she performs out of this world it doesn't look like she will make the individual all around competition.  

“I still don’t  know."

"No, everything is cool with us. Just call her. She really likes you."

Best then says the word alot.                              

                                                            ***

In the dream I see La Sagrada Familia and enjoining each spire, hundreds of feet in the air, is a balance beam. I am on the bottom, near the Ntaivity facade and atop Kim Zemeskal is endeavoring to traipse across from spire to spire. Next to me are  bevy of judges holding up integers on placards. Kim is twisting her body. She is holding her arms out like she is a little kid pretending to be an airplane. She is beginning to wobble. She looks like she is going to fall.

                

Belya Karoyi doesn't seem to be paying attention.  He is listening to a walkman and is bobbing his head up and down.  From hundreds of feet above me I can see that she is staggering. I can see that she won't make it across. The judges are shaking their heads. Next to the table I see what appears ot be Pam holding up a megaphone. I initially run over to hank her then I look up and I see that Kim fallen and is hanging on precipitously to the enjoined beam.



I try to tell Belya to look. I tell him that he needs to do something.  he is still grooving to music. When I come closer I see that Belya is wearing a toupee and fake Moustache and that Belya is really Dawn Michelle. I try yanking her wrist several times. She continues to  bob her head listening to what I can tell is FAT BOTTOM GIRLs by Queen.


Just as I point I see her falling towards me. I stand under her with my arms outstretched as if I am carrying an invisible grandmother. I stand and wait. The white on her leotard is getting closer. It is hammering down on me like an albino gavel and the next thing I know I am opening my eyes and there is dawn Michelle and her forehead and we are saying goodbye.

I stop at the Wahls.I stop at Old Man Andrews where it is heavily rumored that his wife is having an affair on him by the husband of a house further down the street. I walk past Bernies and the retarded couple house. I walk past the house on the corner where the old Jewish man always calls me up to shovel his snow in the winter. The woman he was living with is his sister. Years later only after I read their obituary in the newspaper I delivered I will discern they are holocaust survivors. 

I walk past the house with the middle-aged lady who tends bar at Duffy's Pour house on Western and seems to feed every cat in the neighborhood on her screened porch.

I stop at the house that always reeks of Newports cigarettes. I realize I forgot to slip her the receipt last time I collected from her when she was overdue.

She opens the door. A tuft of smoke erupts.

“Sorry, I know you paid ahead. I forgot to give you your receipt from the last payment you made.”

“Actually my step-daughter wanted to talk with you about something.”

“What?” I say, stepping back.  The lady with the Newport Cigarettes turns around and yells out a name. In front of me is one of the girls seated on the couch who were giggling the last time I collected at the residence. She has dirty blonde hair. She is wearing an azure bikini-top and ripped jean short that crumble into denim strands mid thigh.

Her cleavage is pronounced. She has the most bluest eyes I have ever seen.

“Hi,” She says, stepping out on the front porch, gently shushing the screen doors.

“Hello,”

I don’t know what she wants I look down because I don’t want to make it obvious that I am ogling her cleavage.

“Hey, this may seem awkward but I see you around the neighborhood all the time and I am wondering if you want to, you know, come over and hang out sometime.”

 I don’t really know what to say. She smells like she has been basking in the sun all day.

“We have a pool in back and I was wondering if you would like to come over and just, you know, hang out."

She is older. Hse looks liek she is either a junior or senior. She is wearing ripped jeans that look like she just supplanted Daisy Duke in her role as Southern belle.  Like Andrea from French class she smells like chlorine and sun.

I can't imagine Dawn or Kim Zmeskal wearing an outfit like that.

"So, what do you way? Do you want to come over during the day sometime next week and just, you know, hang out?"

I think about Dawn It feels like I am somehow cheating on her. 

The girl hands me a ripped shard of paper that was once part of a Far Side day calendar.

"Here's my number. Maybe you can call me and we can just hang out."

I can't stop ogling her cleavage. I smile.  I tell her I would like that even though it feels like I am being unfaithful to Dawn. 

We tell each other goodbye. I need to hurry up and finish collecting and get home.

I realized that I never got her name.

I look at her phone number.

The name Tina is autographed below the seven digits.

The eye is dotted with a little heart.

                                                                      ***

I go home and call Dawn. I  am trying not to think about how pronounced Tina’s cleavage is. I am trying to  think about how Tina looks like she wants to unbutton every cell of my body every time she blinks. I need to talk with someone. Briefly I contemplate phoning Stacia, realizing that it has been exactly a week since last we talked.


Dawn is not home. I need a voice.

Realizing that I failed to tell her goodbye. In a way I wish I would have sauntered into Andrea that night. That I would have gotten her number. That we would have found a way somehow to stay in touch.

I still have no clue of her last name.

I need a voice. I call Hale. It’s not unusual to have the phone ring twenty times before someone picks up and says what.  After twenty rings I hung up. I call Patrick and ask if he is watching the Olympics.
Patrick says that he has better things to do than watch the Olympics like think about Justine Bateman and  jerk off.

I call David Best instead.

                                                                              ***

"That's just it Dave. I was just collecting the other day and I have this new middle-age woman on my route who lives four houses down and she tells me she wants me to meet her step daughter and she is this knock out blonde and just flat out gives me her number and invited me to come over and go swimming in their backyard pool."

"Go Dave!" David Best says.

"Yeah, but then there's Dawn Michelle who's an intellectual titan a state speech champ and one of the most brilliant human being ever to possesses a solid c-cup. She's not sexy like Tina is but I feel ever since I met her that we've had this connection."

Best asks me who Tina is. I tell her its the girl who lives four houses down from me with the chain-smoking step mom.  Best says oh.

"Then from out of the mysterious blue a bunch of college girls moved in next door and I can hear them giggling at all hours of the night and there bedroom window is like right, I mean right, five feet away from my bedroom window and all I can think about is that they are probably waltzing around naked half the time and then I think that maybe I am being unfair to Dawn since I am drooling over these other girls which I just can't seem to help."

Best talks about somehow I've walked into every guys dream.

That just the thing. I keep having dreams about Kim Zmeskal.

"Kim Zmeskal,"

The gymnast in Barcelona who's been on the cover of all the magazines. It's like we have this weird bond and I can't explain it. It's like if I was somehow over there in Barcelona she wouldn't be struggling.

              “Shannon Miller.” David Best says to me. Saying the word dude.

                “There’s no way she’s better than Kim Zmeskal.” I vehemently retort, into the side of the phone. “There’s just no way she can ever come close.  I saw the footage of her from the worlds championship last year in Paris and its basically the same routine she’s doing now. Trust me (I emphasize, as if I am trying to give my friend pending advice about stock prices) Zmeskal is a gem.”

                Best jousts  back at me with a “I don’t know” bro before  telling me that he there is a two way call on the other end and it is more than likely Renae.  Before I can say that I thought the two of them broke up.

                “She’s a pretty girl.” I tell David again, only he has already clicked over. Five minutes later he is back.

                         "So Dave man, what do I do?"

Best asks about what. I say about all these crazy girls.

"Do I hang out with Tina. Do I tell Dawn that listen, I feel we have this cosmic connection and that I can talk with you forever. "

Dave tells me that if I were you I would call Renae.

"She's your ex-girlfriend!!! Intrinsically you are telling your best friend to contact someone you were intimately involved with!!!"

"I'm just saying bro, Renae is really cool. you should just call her and see."

                                                                                       ***

After toppling off the linear equator she claws her way back.

She fights. Unbeknownst to almost everyone she is in pain. She bites her lip. She launches her petite frame in the air, quashing the vicissitudes of gravity, deracinating the laws of physics. she sticks her landings like an imperialist country planting their flag in usurped soil. She forms a Y with her upper limbs. She has a long way to go. 

 She is foaming.

She is hungry.

She wants this. 


This Olympics is hers.


                                                                         ***

                                                                     

After watching Kim Zmeskal  I take off running even though I have already had a grueling workout that morning and a cool down workout in the afternoon. I take off running, shooting in the direction of Bradley park, tackling the hills, all I can think about is that I want the pixie with the turning into a screeching butterfly accelerating over the mat, I want to be in the area in my career come three years time where I cam going some place., that I want to be in that place my athletic muse, that I want to wow, to astound, that I want to eclipses the blinking digits of my cousin Frosh cross-country record come less than one month time.

That I want to dedicate my life to my craft as a runner. That I want to be able to harness the pounding lower stalks of my physiology, treading through invisible currents of space and time truncating the white stream of the finish line in times that have never been chronicled to mankind.

And somehow I want to picture the girl who is twirling, transiting her body into a unknown language, into frenzied poems of antiquity next to my side.

                                                                         ***

I arrive back home a pillar of sweat.  Before showering I take three steps at a time into the upstairs of the only house I have ever know. I enter my parents’ bedroom and use their phone, taping in the digits to dawn’s phone number as if I am releasing an SOS from a thermonuclear submarine that has just been attacked.

She picks up. Her voice is a flower.

We talk for an hour.

We make plans to meet the next day in Bradley park after she gets done with her orientation for her poetry class.

“Meet me at the Chinese Bridge,” I tell her, cementing our second dates.

I can feel her smile. 

It has been a week since we have seen each other at the mall.

She tells me it will be good to see me again.