The Levee

At the end of the jetty, where barnacles had – century after century – made it their great quest to crawl up the timbers and reach the pier, I found myself making the same kind of progress with Linda.
The dammed-up affection within my heart marched like an army up my synapses, pounded against the seawall of reason, and, without fail, formed witty, developed lines that I knew would seem uniformly stupid when I said them. The window was running short – the electricity was leaving the air. “Is this just friendship?” I asked her. Incredulous at my own words, I bit my lip. She turned to me and swallowed hard. After struggling, after weighing, after measuring up and down like I knew she would, she timidly mouthed one word, a sweet and heartbreaking syllable: “I…”.

“Because… you know…” I stumbled around my head, looking under every bundle of neurons for something chivalrous, something great, something Byron or Whitman would say. My muscles started to shift under my skin, and I found myself reaching out to cradle her linen hand. Behind the wall of impulse and bravado, I heard my mind scream in a Klaxon shriek, reminding me how pathetic it was… couldn’t I say something smooth? Couldn’t I gallop in like a Knight Hospitaller and deliver a kiss on her lips that would make her pledge her heart to me?

I held her hand. She turned to me – her eyes lucid and drops quivering on their lids – then bit her lip and turned back, turned away from my silent plea and my pain. My throat was full of sand. With my trembling finger-pads, I lifted her chin and her face toward me. With all the courage I could muster, I carefully leaned in and opened my lips.

She rose to her feet with an animal aggression. Her pink lips, her green eyes, and her delicate eyebrows were making a variety of expressions, one after another, so fast I could not decipher them, with all the passion of a poet. She settled on shock. “I need to go…” she choked out, through her tears “My dad… my…”. Grabbing her bicycle, she mounted it in a quick dance, and pedaled away.



Two years ago, the same month, I met a girl by the Levee St. Lawrence. The sun was shining, the nickel carousels and Ferris wheel were whirring, running, and all the public lunch tables were full – except hers. I went and sat down with her, Coney Island hot dog in hand. We talked over the lunch table: our favorite music, our favorite authors. We talked about the Levee, about how it had changed, about the trinkets the merchants were selling. After a heart’s minute, we got up and walked down the Boardwalk. We stopped at the games booths – we threw dulled darts at underinflated balloons, and I won a tall stuffed rabbit. I gave it to her. We acted delighted. By the time our youthful minds could recognize the magnetism, we were down by the end of the shortest pier, one built for only small boats: dinghies and catamarans… it was evening.

I had struggled to find something to say to her that would make her swoon. At a loss for words, I had held her hand, and she had cloistered herself in the innocence of youth. I felt compelled - and I will never know why – to kiss her. Leaning in, my lips parted, she was taken aback by a gust of confusion, a pinprick plea to burst an emotional balloon. Leaping up, she mounted her bike and pedaled away.




Soon, I withdrew from my memories. In silent pain, I stared at the waves lapping the pillars of the pier, and tried to block out my pain. For minutes that were hours, I whipped myself with self-doubt, and, with the waves of the past wetting the bottom of my trousers, I waded towards August.