Meet number...

When I arrive at the starting line it is 3:15 in the morning.  There is no Renae Holiday even though I swear we somehow connected the other night. There is no chance of my name being seen in the pool atrium as the FROSH record holder even though I could have easily achieved the time earlier in the season. With two C’s and two teachers who, if you place them side by side would resemble the number ten my academic transcript is indubitably marred. I don’t know why my purported best friend aptly named David Best had to fucking transition into Benedict Arnold when he found out I was dating Renae.

It is 3:20 in the morning. It is still dark.  The sort of wintery licorice dark. The remnants of a bonfire or leaves being incinerated illegally hang strong in the air.

I take off my sweat pants. I remove my hoodie.

With the exception of my cleats and sport swatch I am completely naked.

In my right hand I hold my cousin Todd Brooks number from when he ran state  when he was a senior. Somehow it is a talisman.  I wad it up into a palm-sides fist. I clear my Runners World watch to all zeros. Somewhere I hear what sounds like birds beginning to chirp. I look down into the body that somehow, like my best friend, has betrayed me.

The moment I press the start button I take off in a roar.

It is a week after Columbus. There has been no advertisement concerning the next Young Columbus.

I am running the course around Madison golf course one final time. My breath is forming transient cartoon bubbles of smoke signals in front of me. I am moving. With the exception of my socks, shoes and watch I am completely naked. My penis slapping the white of my thigh in almost 4/4 time signature. I continue to push.  Implacable darkness has completely enveloped the course. The most visible I will be is when I run along Sterling avenue. I stay maybe five feet in from the road, knowing full well if a conical pair of illuminated headlights glare in my direction I will have to duck into the golf course.

I am running faster. I look down at my watch. My first mile is 5:30. I have had faster first miles. My testicles are poached in the crisp autumnal air. There is the sound of streetlamps hissing which I am only all to familiar with from being a paperboy.  


There is a pain in my stress fracture. I am ignoring it. I am pushing ahead.

I am thinking of Peacock. I am thinking about the FORSH record that I somehow failed to glean. I am thinking about Jose in the parking lot looking lost after the meet that was supposed to be his swan song to a glorious career. I am biting the wad of paper that is my cousin’s number from the state meet twelve years earlier. I wish I could understand just what happened to Dawn Michelle. I try not to think that she is pregnant and moved out with that loser she gave head to three weeks ago.

Somehow I feel if I run fast enough around Madison golf course that I can get the sight of Bob and his gangly penis out of my imminent vision. My own cock looks like an apparition . It is floating. It is beating a Zulu tempo against the upper white of my loins.

I am naked. I am fifteen years of age. I am a freshman in high school and everything I touch disintegrates.

I run behind the ELKS club and behind the club house. I am pushing along Martin Luther King Drive when I hear what sounds like gunshots, note being able to discern if it is coming from the hood or from the shooting range behind Kroger. I continue to press forward. As I glance down at my watch at the two mile mark I am at a respectable 11:11. A quick calculation in my head discerns that I have run the second mile just ten second slower than the first.  As I look for the final half loop I pass my clothes, a plateau of cloth, I am kicking. All I have to do is run the last mile in six minutes.  All I have to do is go all out the last half mile and the record if mine, if not in the scoreboard, in the bare nakedness of my head, in the pinned atrium of my fifteen year old soul.

 

At hole five it happens.

My right leg is giving out. It hurt like shit after Mattoon. It ached the whole weekend when Dawn was telling me all about going down on High school drop outs and Renae was duly relaying to me the narrative transcript of Beverly Hills 90210. I am pushing myself. Right turn, at the exact moment I went the wrong direction in my germinal meet vs. Woodruff, I explode in pants and grunts.My right leg is burning. It feels like it is going to crack into two. I turn. I stall, wince. I have less than half a mile left.  I’m not letting hole 5 fuck with me again.

Down manor parkway an early bird is nursing a cup of coffee while walking a Retriever. The dog starts to bark. Somehow I can hear the atavistic drum of my ancestors as I take off sprinting. Somehow I see myself a la Coach Mann as a Neanderthal man hunting and gathering, running in the fire.

 

The sun in the east is an orange streamer quivering over a pond of ink.

 

I am lashing out. I lunging forward. I flagellating my arms into my chest. I am refraining to mentally submit to the poignant twinge throbbing as if it is ready to snap and somehow erupt on the leg that has given out on me on this very course. I am pushing myself.  My penis, dangling mid-thigh, the neck equine neck of a horse that has been trained to sprint out the starting gate past the clubhouse turn. I am cursing. I am fighting. My penis is no longer slapping a rhapsodic melody against my thighs. It is 35 degrees outside. I run possessed. The sweat has trickled on my bare chest and has caked into ice.  . I push. I motor. I pee a little. I spit. I cry. I wail. I am shouting caterwauling louder than I have ever screamed before, I am asking for forgiveness. I am supplicating to be damned. I am asking whatever deity there is to fuck me up the ass with every transgression known to mankind and then to hold me afterwards only to find myself all alone in this egg-timer called life, called youth, called freshman year of high school.

 

At the end of my scream I swear I hear a snap.  I hobble. I cross the line while pressing the stop button on my wrist.

 

I look at the blue lens of my watch before letting go of a final caterwaul, an eruption of sound atomically hitting the coastline of the known universe for the first time.

 

My time says 16:39. Dogs are barking. The chapped horizon is lavender, blossoming in the east.  I am taking deep breaths.

 

I am in pain.

 

I am bleeding with joy.