“Arc of a Diver”
So my friend Coast to Coast AM asked me today why I ‘did it’... “Did what??” I said. “You know, fuck with the internet, write things and post them when you know people you don’t know will have an opinion about it??” she said…
I had to think about it because there isn’t really a good answer or a simple one, or one that even makes much sense.. I tell her about my online peccadilloes and foibles and most of the time she thinks it is as funny as I do... Sometimes she doesn’t though... Sometimes we both wonder why I would bleed for people I don’t know and for the most part could care less about... Find the place the veins meet and open them onto a page…
Why does anyone do it?? Why do people write?? Why do they write about what they know or don’t know and put it in magazines, books or even internet forums?? Maybe it is a more literate version of ‘look at me’. But what happens when you get tired of being looked at??
Maybe I am tired of being tired and naked? Tired of the loud and strident voices that become the white noise and rejection. Tired of wanting to burn out the eyes of all the things that cut into me and leave. Tired of the self styled Walt Whitman Mr. Ponytail men who pour packs of nutrasweet into their coffees and calmly tell me to ‘calm down’….
But I am calm, almost catatonic in the room that is silent except for the chattering voice of my fingers on a cheap keyboard and the little things that sing me to sleep. I think about an old boyfriend and the time I wanted to die... We were sitting on a boat ramp in his car many years ago and I told him I wanted to die... Just like that... “I want to die” as if I was announcing that I wanted to quit a job... His face was bone china in the half-light and I could see the cords in his hands as he clenched the wheel. Why I thought I wanted to die isn’t really important anymore, time pushes you forward no matter what direction you are looking in, but I remember him getting out of the car and pulling me from the passenger door and into the dark water. He kissed me and then he put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me under... He held me under until red flowers bloomed in my head and I started to struggle.. Still he held me under until I was fighting him for the breath that five minutes before I was sure I no longer wanted... And he made me fight... Then he made love to me on the hood of his car until other things bloomed in me and the fresh water that ran down my thighs turned to salt.. Until the scratches on his back matched the ones on his arms...
He asked me later if I would dive for him... That he loved watching me dive... My one dive... A perfect swan... I climbed the old tree completely nude and stood on the branch that we had been diving off for years... I bounced once and flew into the night and into the dark water that slid over my skin like his hands did that night. When I broke the surface, he was standing on the water’s edge clapping for me and whistling and I knew I loved him more than anything I had ever loved...
I have loved others and other things since that time and have stood naked on other branches over deeper dark water and even now, tired and naked... I just dive...
Sometimes that’s all you can do... and sometimes you get lucky and there is someone waiting on the shore for you... Clapping and whistling for your one perfect dive.
In Absinthe Veritas,
Tallulah Crankhead
