The Angry Ocean

The beach doesn't care about my bare feet. This is the wrong time. Late Autumn. The wind creates lumps in the sand that look like dead bodies. There are no bodies now, living or dead. The bodies are home, working and driving and sleeping in their beds. They’ll be back, though. Alive. The beach isn’t a bed now. It’s not a place to rest. The sand accepts this simple fact and waits.

But the ocean is always angry. He is a shark with his teeth out, row after row. People or no people, it’s all the same for him. A tortured force. He tumbles and tosses and drives any and every thought out of his head. There are no seasons for the ocean. He churns on and on.

Maybe I don’t belong here. Maybe I never have.

As a child, I swore that the ocean could hear me as I challenged him again and again. I fought him for hours until my shoulders were red and my knees kept buckling. I ignored my father’s shouts from the blanket. I wasn’t ready to go back and be seven. I was an immortal warrior, fighting the formidable powers of evil. The ocean was evil. He didn’t care if we died in his watery grip. I was going to make him care because like his endless slams with his waves, I wasn’t going to stop punching back.

The difference between us is the towel. I could leave. He cannot. Where would he go? He is trapped between the beeches and the rocks of many continents. For all his muscle, he is not welcome on land.

Almost fifty years have fallen, and I stand here not far from his rage. I know his thoughts. He has made them known to me since I was a little boy. I am quick enough to catch his thoughts as he smashes his head on the shore, again and again. I could walk into his arms right now and disappear forever. Just me. The only swimmer. And I don't think there's a soul who knows I am here.

I have come alone. I have driven far so that I can park and walk the wooden boardwalk where, in summer, families and lovers aimlessly shuffle, dropping their greasy french fries and watching the seagulls swoop down to snatch them. They don’t care. Seagulls are homeless beggars.

Slim pickings now that it’s Fall. There’s a handful of buttoned up walkers with no fries to spill. These birds don’t know the anger of the ocean. They know the wind. We all feel the wind, forcing her way through the twilight of tonight. These birds are not stoics. They are desperate and loud. I could feed the birds with the bits and parts of myself. I'm sure they would scavenge me If I simply dropped down and stretched my arms and legs far enough so that the middle of me would pop open. My wounds would sing to them and they would be delighted to feast and sing their one note song.

But I won't do that. I can't give them that satisfaction. I am saving the feast of me for the sea. You see, I have come here today to swim. I am going to move my arms and legs through the water and propel myself into my own deep sleep. Because I cannot sleep anywhere else. I have been awake for too long. The last time I slept, the lifeguards were here. The children were digging holes big enough to bury their small bodies.

I wake up and wake up and wake up. No matter how many times I try, I can’t find sleep. Sometimes it’s a bottle, but liquor loosens my bindings and desperation tumbles out of me into text messages that I should never send. Loneliness is a powerful kick in the head. A gin martini and isolation make you scream out from a sleepless night to any other soul who will listen.

I am a fool. I am lonely, and I am a despicable fool. The ocean knows not to laugh at me. I do think he feels pity for me, having known me for so long. It doesn’t stop him from trying to destroy me. And now, after a few over-poured drinks (that I made for myself, sitting in my parked car, building courage), I am ready to concede to him. I am no match. I spent every summer renewing this old rivalry, always knowing that the towel waited for me. But there is no towel now. My father is dead. There is no one to call me back.

I undress. I don’t want his teeth to puncture anything but my skin. I want to be chewed and swallowed as naked as my father dead on a table. “Yes…that’s him.” There was no calling him back. He was destroyed by his own ocean. Cancer.

The seagulls are whining. They are a choir of wings. They are singing the rusty song of God. And as we all know, God will eat you just as soon as show you love. The ocean is God's mouth and teeth and throat for swallowing sinners. I am a sinner. A sinner from way back, and now is the time for confession. The beach is my confessor to hear my awful acts, but there will only be one way to wash my sins.

These birds don't show me love. They didn't when I was a boy. They frightened me. They snatched the cotton candy from my sticky hands. And yet I could not stop feeding them. I could not stop holding it up for them and watching them descend. They came upon me like a hard rain. White and gray. And even though my mind was unraveling (even back then), I was enthralled. Enchanted despite my misery.

And as I stand here staring up at them tonight, I could swear I heard them murmuring my last rights. And when I didn't die, I thought ‘there's really no other way to die except inside of him.’ All these years later I realize how wrong I was about the gulls. The birds, like God, now ignore me.They flee from my empty hands. It’s the ocean that will break my body in two.

I came back here even though the seagulls won’t listen. I can stand here crying and begging, and they won't turn their soft white heads even to see me drown.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

At least it will be a clean break. The ocean will give me that one absolution.