Born on the Edge of an Adjective
“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked when he first mentioned this.
“Not at all,” said Neil. “After I got off my train in Monterey, I was hanging out at the wharf and I ran into this sweet couple who live in Berkeley. They were down for a weekend holiday, and it turned out they had moved from Youngstown to the Bay Area five years ago. They told me to go to the Shamrock when I rolled into San Francisco, that a lot of people from Ohio hang together there.”
So Neil went first thing after his bus reached the city, and of course this couple hadn’t been lying. The bartender, the waitresses, everyone in the Shamrock had originally grown up in Ohio, nine out of ten from Cleveland or Youngstown. The rest were from Akron or Kent. Sandy, the bartender, helped Neil find a room to rent in a boarding house run by a Pakistani family. “I could smell curry morning, evening and night,” Neil said.
“Don’t you think it’s strange?” I asked. “Isn’t it bizarre to find a sort of regional subculture centered in a particular bar?”
“Not really,” Neil said. “I mean, maybe a little at first, but after a while, it just felt natural. I met Margaret at the Shamrock, too.”
“Margaret’s from Ohio?”
Neil laughed. I imagined him shaking his head and grinning at my stupidity.
“Margaret,” said Neil, “cannot be categorized into any sort of region or geography. I’d say she’s a citizen of the world, but even that doesn’t describe her correctly. A citizen of the universe, is Margaret.”
“She’s from Mars then,” I said, getting in a little gibe on the flamingo. “That would explain her talent for floating. Doesn’t Mars have more gravity? Of course she’d float on this planet.”
“No,” Neil said. “Actually, we don’t have the capability to pronounce her world’s name.”
For every bit of information, for every detail of his life he gives me, with which to build a model of his world away from me, another gap opens in the gulf between us. When the world was still new and undiscovered, not fully charted, the old map-makers used to close off the edges of their maps with the words “There Be Dragons”. When I think of Neil and the Shamrock, of Margaret, I imagine myself in a tiny boat rocked in a sea carved with raucous waves. I reach the edge of the ocean, where Margaret Stanbottom resides, queen dragon of the depths, her scales glittering under the water, her breath foul, her rows of teeth sharp and eager, and my tiny boat slides off the edge of the world into darkness and cold points of light.
How to tally, to compose, to bring together answers? And what to do with them once they’ve been found?
We used to spend our weekends lying around my apartment, listening to music, or sometimes we’d walk into the city park, which is surprisingly beautiful and ranges for miles. The oasis in the desert of post-industry. Our favorite spot was Lanterman’s Mill, where we’d stand on the back platform, leaning against the guard rail, where we could almost reach out to the waterfall and touch it as it crashed beneath our feet, where it once turned the wheel of the mill. A covered bridge spanned the air above the waterfall, and once, on a warm spring morning, we stood below and watched a couple above us being married. Their families crossed from either side of the bridge as part of the ritual of joining. Neil felt it was over-wrought. I said it was nice. A nice thing. I felt that. I still do.
We went home from the park that day and made love only moments after returning. Neil’s T-shirt, hanging limply from the lampshade. My jeans, straddling the back of a chair. His lips moved over my body, eager, more eager than I could ever remember. I was quite taken with him like this, but also a bit suspicious. Why was he acting so determinedly passionate? Not that I minded. But my brain was saying, Something is wrong.
Afterwards, we lay exhausted on the rumpled bedsheets, staring at the ceiling. Actually how it happened was, I stared at the ceiling. Then I looked over and saw Neil staring up as well. It was a good feeling, a kind of synchronicity. I started to wonder what else we did at the same time. I listened to our breathing. We breathed in time together. I put my ear to his chest and listened to the hum and gurgle of his inner workings. I imagined mine sounding the same.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Listening.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Definitely. You have an orchestra in there.”
“An orchestra? Ha!” He threw his head back and launched into a fit of laughter. “It’s all music to you, isn’t it, Marco?”
I nodded and smiled.
