Uno
This morning I woke up before dawn, dressed quietly, and drove off into the cold dark city, blue and green lights shining from my dash. NPR. At the terminus of Van Ness, where you can go no further without driving into the deep green drink, I parked and shuffled down to the concrete bleachers in flip flops, my toes cold as joggers and cyclists passed me by going the other way. It's getting light now, but the city is still asleep, and shrouded. There I met Nate, Maria, Dave and Melanie, they are already dressed and have their blood up to get it on. I told them to go on ahead; I'd catch up. I take off my shirt and warmup pants, and shiver in the fog as I pull on my wetsuit. A runner stops and asks me the water temperature. I tell him I don't know, but that two weeks ago it was 53 degrees. He asks me if I'm training for a triathlon, and I point to The Rock off in the distance, floating in the Bay. Then I ran down the beach and plunged in. No fucking around this time, I tell myself. I threw myself under the water and swam holding my breath for as long as I could stand it, trying to use brute force to acclimate to the temperature.
Mind over body.
Fuck it's still cold. But I'm prepared for it this time, and I plugged away. No allowances for gasping. No floating on my back. When I try to look around I feel slightly dizzy from the motion and temperature of the water. At the end of the first length I stop and rest, adrift in the current. I breathe through a cramp and swim again. On my third length, I hear a shout ahead of me and pop up to peep. There's a seal just in front of me, facing Dave, just feet from his face. No. No. It's not a seal. My goggles are foggy, and I'm slightly disoriented. But I realize it's a dog, a yellow Labrador. Everything shifts into surrealism for a moment, as I try to understand. It's cold. My brain is cold. And I realize the dog is swimming with his master; one of several people out swimming in nothing but trunks. I'm impressed, and I start swimming again.
A half hour later I swim up on the beach. Nobody else is here yet, I needed to leave a little early to pick up Harper who has worked the overnight shift. I peel off my wetsuit, and strip down naked under my towel. I stand for a moment and look out over the Bay, enjoying the sensation of being cold and feeling the air across my skin. I pull on my pants and sweatshirt, and take a deep breath.
My body feels so good, so alive. Have I ever been this alive? Yes. But I am reminded of life all over again. Fresh. Anew. It is Springtime, and I am strong and alive.
Dos
I am 34 years old. I will be 35 this year. I have already taken half of my threescore and ten. To what end? To what meaning? What have I done?
When I was younger, there was so much I wanted to accomplish. I was going to write and publish a book by 30. I was going to be a famous-in-certain-circles author. (But not widely! I was to be Bukowski, not Grisham.) I wanted to be lazy and to get wasted and lay around the house watching TV. I wanted money. Money, money, money. I wanted so many things that seem very trivial to me now.
Instead, today, I want to be a good husband and citizen. I want my life to be an adventure, to be exciting. I want to love my work, and to feel fulfilled by it. I want to be healthy and strong, mentally and physically.
I don't want to live my life in front of a television, nor do I care to be on television. I simply want to live as long as I can, as healthy as I can, in the great company of my wife and best friend.
Tres
When I was about six years old, in our new house, in a new city, a new state, a new nation, I was playing in the backyard when I met the neighborhood. They yelled over the fence at me, hello, hello, and then came climbing-swarming over. Boys, four or five of them, American boys. I had never been friends with any American boys up until that point, only girls, as that's all there were in our apartment building in Tehran. There was some sort of antagonistic air about them that I felt. Or maybe I just thought I did. I don't remember how things started, but at some point I decided to show off my plastic Spiderman handcuffs.
I put one boy's wrists in the cuffs, and locked his arms around the pole that held up the awning. I told him to try to get out. With a quick yank, he was free, the broken plastic cuffs dangling from a single wrist. Everyone laughed, and I told my father, who was working in the back yard. I think I was crying. He told me, more or less, that I had told the other boy to try and get out, and that's what he had done, and that I needed to work it out for myself. This was good advice, though at the time it only made me angry. If I had taken it to heart, I would have had a much easier go of it for years to come in Alabama. But I did not. Instead, I was a sissy. I wanted my parents.
The other kids laughed at me. When my back was turned, one of them hit me with a tennis ball. I spun around, really pissed now, and they laughed more. One of them, the boy, Benji, who lived in the neighboring home, called me a helicopter and they all went swarming back over the fence, mocking me, while I wailed at the sight of my broken plastic handcuffs. Benji was a year older than me, and for the remainder of my childhood he would be my nemesis, though I doubt that he ever saw it that way, or gave me much thought. Years later, when I was 15, we would become friends while working together in a warehouse over the summer.
He liked Hank Williams Jr., and I listened to The Sex Pistols. We never talked about the handcuffs.
