One of the costs of being a
liar is that, over time, you forfeit the ability to be spontaneous.
In the pre-dawn fog of sleep
and darkness, this clear, simple thought marks the start of my day. That and the muffled sound of a small, muffled
marine diesel being pursued by seagulls. Lovely way to start the day.
Gentle rolling breeze means
calm seas. Silence says it isn’t raining. Been a hotter and dryer summer than usual,
but those sorts of things are all relative.
Other places are getting flooding and wildfires and massive storms. If this is our version of global warming, I
can live with it.
Aroma of coffee tells me the
timer on the aged coffee machine has worked one more day. Took me years to figure out that stumbling
around in a half conscious state, trying to pour water and spoon ground coffee
into tiny compartments was a poor way to start a day.
Haven’t opened my eyes yet, but
I know Butkus is staring at me. One of
those “Dog things.” Like the stories you
hear about dogs who go to the end of the driveway long before their master’s
car comes into view. And how dogs often
seem to know an earthquake is coming.
Butkus knows when I’m awake even if I don’t move.
Think of stroking his head, but two things
stop me. The first is the thought of
exposing my arm to the cool morning air;
not appealing yet. The second is
my adolescent response to the word “Stroking.”
Maybe I’ll just stay here a
little while longer. This is a signal for
Butkus, perhaps embarrassed, to leave the room.
Still too early for most of the
marina to have stirred. The engines I
heard a while ago were the fishers heading out.
Rest of the boats are still shrouded in hangovers that won’t begin to
dissipate for hours yet. So when I climb
on deck carrying a large towel, wearing nothing but goosebumps there’s no one
to be shocked.
One foot on the gunwale and a
quick plunge into the Pacific. It’s a
morning ritual, a habit established over years.
I tread water just long enough to for the initial shock to fade and to add
a bit of saline to the Pacific.
For all the years he’s been
watching this, Butkus has never come to understand it. As usual, he peers over the stern barking at
me until I pull myself out of the water.
When he was a puppy, he would dive in after me, driven by his Newfie
lifesaving instincts, but he was too smart to keep that up for long.
Back below, toweled off and coffee
cup warming my hands, I’m thinking about lying.
Here I sit, naked and grey, on the threshold of stepping into old age,
and I can’t help but conclude that my whole life has been a lie. The two features publically celebrated as
central to my identity, my bachelorhood and job, are sad disappointments.
On that cheery note, think I’ll
put some shorts on.
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