Page 377 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 347

He slowly unbuttoned the red-plaid flannel shirt. He moved careful as a
priest. He pulled the tails of the shirt from his Levi’s and peeled it from
his chest and back, holding it over his nose and mouth, breathing Kick’s
spoor, mixed with his own, for minutes long enough to know that all his
breath, and therefore his very life itself, was filtered through the gift of
the beautiful shirt. He smiled into the frayed collar. With the smile came
a squint that blurred the City lights. He folded the shirt into a tight roll
and dropped it down onto the laid-open fur lining of the leather jacket.
His own sweat raised the clean soap smell of Kick’s gray tee shirt that
fit tight across his shoulders and chest and hung full and jock-baggy down
his back and belly. Kick had taught him how to project, if not bulk, then
a certain weighty manliness he had never known as a slender young man.
He squatted down on one haunch, boot heel up against his butt, to
unlace Kick’s boots. His small feet floated in the footpads worn deep
where Kick’s larger feet had walked so many miles. He pulled his wool-
socked feet from the boots. He stood and crossed his wrists over his belly
the way Kick had taught him, grasping the bottom line of the gray cotton
tee shirt, stripping it up and off his chest and shoulders and neck. The
collar rode tight up around his head, tugged at his ears, back-brushed his
hair as he pulled the shirt off toward the glowing sky. He tossed the shirt
carefully to the pile of clothes that were now his clothes.
The night air touched his skin directly. He was stripping down to
receive all the Energy reflected up toward him from the City, out toward
him from the American continent itself, down to him from whatever outer
space there was behind the light canopy of night sky.
He unbuckled his belt and popped the buttons open on his jeans.
Uncinched, the Levi’s rode with slow gravity from the small of his back,
over the rise of his butt, down his hips, opening the cracks and privacies
of his body’s biggest arch to the warm damp of the craggy rocks. His jeans
fell slowly to denim piles over his socks. He stepped easily out. One sock
came off with the left leg. He stood one sock off and one sock on, dinkle-
dinkle dumpling, his mother’s son, so long as one sock remained; his
father’s son, so long as he was his mother’s. He was Kick’s boy. The socks
were Kick’s socks. The socks were Ryan’s socks. The socks were their socks.
Ryan stood naked, above San Francisco, his feet planted on the rough
gravel of Corona Heights. The night wrapped around him. Nothing but
volition held him to the Earth. He was more sad than he had ever been
in his life. He was more happy. He stood in the shimmering City dark-
ness. Fireworks, heralding the New Year, exploded intermittently over the
rooftops. Was real darkness in the night? Were ancient spirits in the rocks?

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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