Photo: Chris Leipelt via Unsplash
He took me to Big Sur by way of Monterey, where we stayed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, tucked away in separate motel rooms because I was unsure of his capacity for control, not that I had any reason to doubt it other than I knew my body and that, pressed, or even teased, I may succumb, and with a clear head in the light of day I had no desire to succumb, and no preference toward him other than his ungodly skin, so pale I felt there, in the light of day, I could almost see through it, trace his veins like a roadmap to his heart, which through his thin rib cage sometimes you could see beating and wondered how long it could keep up without me if I ever were to leave, and so when he’d asked would I care to see Big Sur I said it’s been my dream since girlhood, and the light I saw in his eyes was both inspirational and gutting, the light of my lie, simple and white, and how fragilely he hung on my reaction, but in truth, I had seen that rocky beach twice already, and each time was underwhelmed, and so after Monterey and Carmel-by-the-sea, cruising in the coupe his grandmother lent us for the drive, I stayed concerned about his disappointment, and drove myself to thoughts of his body, fragile and mild, thrown by itself or a stiff wind from our chosen vantage point onto the rocks below, cracking against a bolder and shattering like a dropped family heirloom: the porcelain serving spoon I launched from the Thanksgiving table onto the kitchen tile in sacrifice, creating a common enemy for my arguing parents and step-parents, my grandparents, step-grandparents, siblings, and step-siblings who acted aghast, as if the heirloom was an item they could have potentially inherited and sold for cash, which they would have spent undoubtedly on the vices they turned out to be full of: substance abuse, gambling, and unhealthy sexual activity which led time and again to misery for all within a twenty mile radius, and drove me out to beautiful California, SoCal, my southern spirit pulled west but never north, never to the cold of Washington State, where I could have sunk into serenity, gone rural and disappeared into the rocks and brush at the base of Mount Saint Helen, and never met Christopher or his grandmother, and never taken the pity I took which led to my modern promises and lies, on this tight rope of will I, won’t I, suspended so that if I fall, he will be there to catch me and be shattered, and so rather I am shadowed prematurely by his ghost, followed even when I am the follower, all over Southern California, taking in whichever sight he thinks will prove profound and enlighten him with natural beauty and lessen that great burden I see resting upon his delicate and tragic frame; but everybody needs a bit of deception, some only more than others—some need to be deceived entirely—to go on living, to raise their heads off of their pillows and step out into light of day, which can be as blinding as it is revealing, wherein lies the opportunity for deception as an act of grace, to stand behind him atop the rocks and put my arms upon his shoulders, ask him, “Have you gotten wider? They should call you Big Sir, the man you are, the man you are constantly becoming, beautiful to gaze upon and solid as a rock.”
Maxwell Deyo is a Jacksonville, FL based fiction author, poet, and photographer. He is the editor-in-chief of Overgrowth Press. His work can most recently be found in A Velvet Giant and Always Crashing.