By Bud Jennings
Even with his most successful years a blur in life’s rearview mirror, he finds ways to enjoy the annual summer vacation in Provincetown—where youthful vigor is the local currency, where he’d once spent lavishly, swinging ample arms, puffing a buoyant chest, sweeping his forelock back to unveil the pair of radiant, flirtatious eyes—because there’s still the beach, the heralded Cape Cod light and the gallery openings, where doddering or pulling out a crumpled handkerchief or other reminders of Time’s kleptomania don’t offend other attendees; but on his last Saturday night the power goes out all over town, making it impossible to read his book and daring him to venture out of the rental cottage and proceed carefully under a milky crescent moon that isn’t much help, his hands outstretched to protect him from obstacles cloaked in blackness, until he reaches Commercial Street, a rivulet of phones and flashlights wielded by crowds that have been pushed out of the bars and clubs, a phytoplankton tide of pissed-off queens who paid a full cover charge for an abbreviated night; and the only way they can salvage their moment is by hooking up al fresco—everywhere (liaisons on porches and behind rhododendron bushes, three-ways at intersections, schtupping in alcoves, special deliveries on the steps of the Post Office), their groaning the musical score to accompany the wispy strings of almost-light draped atop the immobile cupolas overhead and the gyrating forms at eye-level; so with the darkness blindfolding the throngs like the statue of Justice, the man seeks a brief respite from his banishment…as he approaches an animate little assembly in the parking lot of Land’s End Marine Supply, and he is grateful that no one pushes him away or can see him enough to look through him as if he were harbor mist, is emboldened to inch forward to where his shoulder brushes another’s, and when someone gently draws him into the fold, the man closes his eyes, opens his arms to memories of the long-ago epoch, evenings when some stranger’s hand would caress his skin, would summon a shudder—but then there is a flicker of light that is not lightning, followed by a few more, and finally the heartless electricity reignites at once all the town’s lamps, startling the man, who steps away from the circle, doesn’t even glance at any of their faces or let any of them see his as he turns to walk back to the cottage and his book—like the old days, when the touching stopped and he’d remember he was alone.
Bud Jennings is a former polydactyl, completed NYU’s Graduate Creative Writing Program, was a finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, has been and will be published in several literary journals, teaches English in a public high school, and with his husband is the obedient parent of two adopted cats.
Photo by China Jorrin.
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