Literally, Gordon

I know what it is to be rejected. Subtly, silently, sadly. And I’ve been cast aside like a third sock, superfluous to the beauty of human anatomy.

Let’s go back.

— — —

It was the second time I went to the cliffs, but the first time with Amy. We walked slowly, talking about her cat’s newest escape attempt and my ongoing search for meaning. Sunset was two hours off, the sky lowering slowly, darkening gently with a gold tinge. The canyon glimmered, and we were stopping every five minutes to just…look.

My problem was that I was never satisfied with the solution I found. “Meaning” had no meaning anymore; for all of my attempts, it was a pot of gold. Rumored to exist, but only in sketchy legends. Or maybe it was more like the leprechaun himself.

The point was, I couldn’t settle.

“Literally, Gord, you are the roundest square I’ve ever met.” Amy had a way with words. It’s why we often went to remote hiking spots.

I snorted. “But my corners cut so deeply! What the fuck are you talking about?”

We bantered on and back about polygons, edges, and pi, until it became clear that, to Amy, I was such a contradicting person as to be boring, and at the same time frustratingly complex in that boringness. So much so, in fact, that it was nearly impossible to diagnose why I could never be satisfied with my life, yet could still find so much joy in the moments of doing the most mundane activities.

Such as hiking.

“You’re this lump of a person, really,” she said. “A spiritual couch potato with the energy to try new things and even repeat the ones you enjoy. And yet you’re so miserable. How, Gord, how on earth do I handle that chaos?”

“You’ve been doing a fine job for the past five years,” I said.

“Yeah but I mean…Okay, what about this? Don’t you ever just exist for existence’s sake?” She stopped so my back was to the view overlooking a green field. “I know I called you a couch potato, but I meant that in the way of you just pass the time and scroll the channels.”

“Oh, well in that case.”

She shoved me playfully. “Don’t you know what I mean, though?”

I huffed and thought about it. The air was turning properly gold now, from the edges in. That field was probably misted in the glow. Shame I couldn’t see it. I huffed again. “If I were to sit and watch a movie all the way through, without breaking focus—like I’m sure everyone does these days—I think I’d have a stroke. You’re saying you want me to lay down and just ‘exist’?”

She wasn’t listening. She was looking around us, then she spun in a circle, and asked, “Isn’t there a big black rock we should be looking for?”

I stopped and joined the twirling. “Well done. You made me forget all about why I wanted to come here at all.”

She scoffed. “You mean my story about Gary jumping in my hair wasn’t distracting enough?”

I just laughed.

“And anyway,” she continued, “the rock just exists. All the time. Doesn’t it? Why can’t you?”

So she was listening. Of course she was. “‘Cause that’s not how I’m going to find meaning, Amy.”

I could smell her eye-roll. It’s a super power red heads have. It seeps from their retinas like a cloud of pressed concord grape.

“Oh, sure, Gordon. Okay.”

— — —

We spent the next fifteen minutes passing the water bottle back and forth and arguing over the shapes of clouds. I’d been to this canyon before so the path to the rock was easy. I knew it as well as the walk to my mailbox. (Intuition down a straight line never fails. People forget that.) I did, however, find myself feeling anxious. Things like that never lived up to their memory. Or mine.

I could feel myself starting to hold my breath. I had a habit of emotional masochism, or EMMA, for short. A nice, companionable name for the most strangulating sensation one could experience sans real strangulation. In a way, it brought me to a place where I could process, my thoughts spinning on fast-forward so that I would not dwell. But basically, I just let myself emotionally drown until I couldn’t breathe. I relied on my ever-present, involuntary need to live to snap me out of it.

I did this for a few minutes to lessen the worry.

“So, why are we going to the big black rock?” said Amy.

“You’ve never seen it,” I said through an explosive sigh. It was true.

“That’s never been a good enough reason.”

“Oh, sure, because I’m a hyperactive misery guts.”

“Don’t change the subject, now.”

I stalled, just walking and kicking at rocks. “We’re going because…because reasons, okay?”

She snorted.

“Fine. It’s…my dumb sense of wonder.” I glanced at her, then away. The cliff to my right was periwinkle blue in the shadow of the sunset. Stark. Like Salvador Dali’s later work. Part of me wanted to crawl inside and never come out. But Amy would just laugh at me and claim I’d get bored and leave after ten minutes.

I couldn’t say whether she’d be right. Maybe a cave was exactly what I needed.

She smiled, then muttered, “And round and round….” Then a few seconds later, “And round and round and round…” Kind of like a song.

I couldn’t dignify her with an answer.

— — —

The hike wasn't long. Maybe an hour and a half. Probably another twenty minutes passed until I recognized the path. But all in all, it took us seeing a snake, two lizards, a distant buck, and a handful of bats until we reached the big black rock. I could not feel my feet as we made our way up to it.

The first time I’d seen it, I’d been completely enraptured that I spun gold from the air. It was like entering a completely new plane of existence. I’d not dared to touch it, then, out of fear that I’d be transformed into something I didn’t want to become. Maybe something better.

I remembered wondering why the surface was so rough, so matte when I’d figured it had to be obsidian. It was literally unreal: pulsing, rippling with energy or…something. It glittered. Yeah, really. The matte rock glittered. Pretty sure my jaw hit the ground and stayed there for three hours.

I hadn’t told Amy about any of this.

Now, as she and I ascended the mini slope, I was a leaf.

“You’re really scared of this thing,” Amy said. “I can tell.”

She only said that last bit because I was going to deny it. I just kept walking.

“So is it because it’s super big, or what?”

I was quiet for a minute. “It’s just really weird.”

She thought for a second. “Hmm. Alright. I can see the appeal.”

Something had stopped me from touching it the first time, and that experience had haunted my dreams. I actually had dreams of the thing. Say what you will about my fruitless search for meaning, but that had to smite it a little right?

Then again—leprechauns didn’t smite.

Amy and I walked in silence. The sunset was in full force, just like the first time I saw the thing. The sky was on fire, the clouds having caught it like foliage and oozed with red underbellies. Behind them was a pale golden aura, the edges of lavender coming in like smoke. It really was beyond words.

Why had I decided to bring Amy with me this time? I couldn’t figure it out. I’d mentioned the big black rock, of course. But we’d been hanging out a lot lately and her strangeness seemed to fit well with this ghost. Some part of me probably knew that she was tapped into something similar. That, or she’d tell me I was an absolute nutter and set me straight.

“Holy fuck!”

Amy stood several steps behind me, gaping. I’d been staring at the sand ahead, so I wheeled around and searched for it. My stomach dropped. Yep. Definitely real.

“Of course it’s real, you ass,” said Amy, marching toward me, still staring at it. “What the hell is that supposed to be?”

“Am I supposed to have all the answers, suddenly?” I said, feeling like I’d swallowed the North Sea.

“Come on!”

She trudged ahead so fast I had to clamber through the sand to catch up.

“Ames, you aren’t gonna touch it, are you?”

“Fuck yeah, I am.”

“Oh, don’t.”

“Gordon, there is no way I am not touching it. It’s…it’s not—”

“I know, but that’s a stupid reason. Last time I was here, I–I–couldn’t…I mean–something stopped me and I didn’t—”

“You came back and you aren’t even going to touch it?” She stopped and faced me. “Now that’s a little weird.”

I gestured to the towering thing incredulously. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I—” she started. Then she examined me, my face, my eyes, and gave me a once over. “Are you okay?”

I snorted and assumed a high pitch voice. “‘Oh, Gord, you really are scared of the thing, aren’t you? I can tell.’”

She laughed, then put her hand on my shoulder. “If you don’t want me to touch it, I won’t. Okay?”

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Thanks,” I said.

— — —

As we walked up to it, the glittering surface caught my eye just like it had last time. I still couldn’t reconcile the matte texture with the way it shimmered and shifted. I could feel my mouth open in awe.

“Oh, boy,” Amy sighed. “Gord?”

I was thinking about so many things at once. There was a whooshing sound in my brain, a car through a tunnel, a wave crashing on a concrete wall and I was starting to see myself as a concrete wall. Was it wrong to want a wave to crash against me, like, maybe I needed something to hit me like that, to test if I could withstand the pressure…

“Gord?”

It had been three hours last time. I might have even blacked out. My head was feeling woozy and it struck me as familiar. But the thoughts wouldn’t stop. I was at my high school dance, then watching my grandpa die, then I was pouring grass seed on the lawn.

As if. I could never make anything grow.

“Gordon if you don’t answer me right now, I will literally smack you in the back of the head.”

Amy’s voice pierced me. I burst out laughing. “Oh, really? And what made you say that specifically, Ames? Was it, perhaps, because I was picturing being hit really hard by something heavy?”

“What? What happened to you? You went silent and completely still for like three minutes straight.”

“I was just thinking about a lot of things. Here, you look instead of me.”

Amy stepped back and averted her eyes. “I’m good.”

“First you want to touch it, and now you don’t want to even stand near it and look at it?”

“Yep.” She looked at me pointedly. “It’s just really weird.”

I looked away.

This was my meaning. It was existence. That’s what Amy had said, anyway. The rock just exists and why couldn’t I?

“Because you’re a round square,” she said. Again. “You don’t fit into any mold. How could you exist when you don’t fit? I don’t even think it has to mean anything because that’s not how you’re supposed to do it. You just are.” Amy was looking at me like I was something new. Something worse, like I didn’t get it and I’d devolved into a Lesser-Than.

She continued. “You’re like a third sock. You don’t have anywhere to go except to circle the closet waiting for your match.”

I stared at the rock, feeling tears welling up. I was shaking again. Leaf in the rain. I saw myself through Amy’s eyes and it was like the first time all over again. I could see myself better.

Except this time, I reached forward and I touched the big black rock.

“No, wait—Gordon!”

— — —

It was obsidian. Smooth like glass and utterly liquid. Not wet, though. When my hand passed through it, my body followed, and I saw all of my life in reverse before it splintered off in all directions, like a prism inside a black mirror. I was literally somewhere else, behind a veil.

The North Sea was gone and I no longer shook like the autumn.

But I couldn’t see anyone when I turned around. The sunset was still there, now purples, blues, and touches of pinks and the sandy trail was there, the canyon, the snakes, the green field. But Amy was gone. I couldn’t even see footprints or dust clouds.

You’re like a third sock, she’d said. What she’d left out was that there was never any match. Not ever.

— — —-

It's literally a cave.

Maybe more like a cave between worlds? I still can’t figure it out, exactly. It’s blueish and purplish, like that side of the canyon I saw on the hike, and I still feel light on my back as if from a sunset that never finishes.

Kind of like me, right now.

Whenever I close my eyes, I see Amy one second after I walk through the big black rock, her eyes wide, her head shaking ‘no,’ and her shoulders slumped. She stares for a while, waiting, then bows her head and presses her fingers to her lips. Then she shakes her head again and walks away, silently, without a dust cloud. And then she vanishes.

She really was beautiful.

If I hadn’t felt her touch my shoulder, heard her laugh, smelled her eyes, I would have said she’d never existed.