Evening Star

It's been such a suffocating summer for me. I haven't really traveled, and I have gutted it out, so to speak, withdrawing from a bad designer drug (prescribed legally) and trying to make the most of the day to day inside the house with my former roommate, who was brave enough to ride it out with me - enjoying the pool, reading, watching DVD's, late evening outings for bike rides and tennis. And it's so weird that after one of the worst days of summer (yesterday) and the first day and evening of "summer is over" relief (today,) he is gone. He is just gone.

After a sad separation last night, today brought that first odd sensation, barely believable, but undeniable: that I could turn off my house air conditioner, that the air felt softer and less invasive. The heaviness has lifted. After a hot as boiling molasses, humid (and rainless) day yesterday - felt like August again -, it's clear that the fall equinox is hovering near, and ready to give its transition towards the beautiful, and much-needed, fall and winter here in the low desert of southern California. We don't really have winter. Maybe I shouldn't worry too hard about a pending season that will freeze the oranges (still struggling for hydration - I watered them deeply today) or make me feel iced out and alone, isolated as in summer's heat-wrench, in my house.

I have a career. A house to take care of. Pets. My 20 year old daughter wants to talk to me and is chastising me for what she perceives to be the end result of my poor judgement with people. I am a professional. Important student learning outcome meeting to attend tomorrow morning. Must maintain. And so I try to keep it normal. Check in with my online classes, work on my various literary magazines. Read. Eat. After dinner, ride my bike into the dusk, a nice 10-mile-clip that takes me an hour to complete and guides me through the transition of another twilight into deep night. But I'd rather have gone to play tennis at one of the many public Palm Desert courts I've been visiting at this time of night lately.

I have just picked up my tennis racket and the ball basket that's been in my former tennis-playing family for years and years, since the 70's, the days when we would spend family weekends at Spring Valley Lake Country Club, and where I won the club women's singles champion tournament at the age of 15. I went on to be the #1 varsity player on the CIF-league champion, undefeated team (two years in a row) for Apple Valley High School. But, as things go, life led me into other things. I've played a bit on and off, and admit I have a preference for hitting in poetic meditation against a big, concrete wall - I miss the one at Victor Valley College, where I used to play for hours, in some kind of childlike absorption, and enjoy the breezes that ruffled the feathers of the big cottonwood trees near the track (since, painfully and violently cut down for reasons unknown - the poor, nesting owls!)

But I've lost my tennis partner. I have a very hard time finding someone who is a good match for me on the court. I don't like competitive playing anymore. I want the zen, the poetry, the rhythm, and I have just, after a few weeks of evening netting, been regaining my pulse and swing. I wanted to play tonight, but my room-mate is gone. He left a lot of things, and took others, including a costly video camera I'd purchased from him for $500- out of spite. I didn't know last night, as he left, if I should hug him and try to heal the pain we both felt or to step back and let him go. He is just 23, and we are both baffled and confused about our relationship.

It's my house, "BFD," I say: I'd sign it all away in a minute for the right reasons, because he and I found a perfect match in our desert hikes, in camping trips, going to Deep Creek Hot Springs, Anza Borrego Desert, ZZYZX Springs, poetry readings, even the White Mountains this summer. I am not saying I'd sign the house to him, but I have no reason to want to be in a position, to have wanted to be in a position, of being older, of being the one with more natural incentive to take control, for him to feel humiliated because he hasn't lived those 22 years in between and gone through the extra two decades of developing what we might call a life: a child, a house, a career, lots of pictures of people and places and things he'll never know. And I could erase it all, because it's my life already spent, and today's a new bank balance - the desert is clean, and I'm ready for new adventures and hikes. And desert outings remain cheap, they are the most priceless things.

What brings us together? What drove us apart? I've never experienced a lost star like this - on my solitary bike ride, wishing I was playing tennis, my tall friend opposite me, and so perfectly matched. Hitting just the right way, the right strength, the right shots, and this from our very first time on the court a few weeks ago. Uncanny but so tuned in. The way his chin rested on the top of my head, perfectly, when I put my cheek against his chest. A perfect match. Moments transcending fear, and resentments, a lost tennis ball, a missed shot. Sometimes, though, and often, the ball goes back and forth, over a perfect net, and connects with racket and then racket, passing back and forth gracefully. I circle in again, displaced nesting owl that I am, on something precious, recognizable, instinctive, from my past. As retrievable as the pattern of sunrise to sunset, and again the break of day after the quiet holding of moon and stars. Even in the falling, things fading back into perfect place, my life the dark ocean again, and tennis balls like glowing comets! If only they had tails.

We've both endured so much public scrutiny, in our past 8 or 9 months of what you might call dating or being in a relationship (preceded by about a 6 month friendship) when out and about - am I his mother? I have such a nice son. What is HE doing at a photographic exhibit for UCR-Palm Desert (is he old enough to drink wine, snipes a friend.) Why am I at a hip hop spoken word performance (partially cuz of him, homie, but also because two of my beloved student-performers are on tonight and have invited me and in fact smother me with hugs - showin' me the love in this their thug life!) It's taken a toll. That, and our longing to match up in perfect planetary alignment with: life experience, career, income, and so many other things that fuck up the kind of extra-special something we both think we've shared. I want to be 23 again. He wishes he had the standing and social respect and financial acumen of being 45.

The star winked at me, it was the only one in the half dark and half light sky as I headed west, and a giant bulbous thunderhead reflected the last of the waning sun. It's quickening September and I haven't been this alone in my house since January, when he came to stay. And now he is gone, and his drum is on my room, and his "love and peace" bumper sticker is still on my bedroom door, and I can pretend the angry things he said to me as he packed books and clothes were never spoken, I can close my eyes and, I guess, for no other reason than to try to say something that makes it seem like I can use a cliche to fill in the gaps he left, the odd sky color before the milky way pulses from rim to rim, I can always wish upon a star, and watch the night yield to its many twins. And I did, and I winked back, and then I felt the tears. For the first time since he drove away. And tennis balls go flat, when they get wet.