Page 378 - Some Dance to Remember

348 Jack Fritscher

Was this the place of close encounters?
Far below, a light breeze swept the City from the Golden Gate, rip-
pling through the lighted flag waving atop the Fairmont Hotel, dividing
around the cold black monolith of the Bank of America, threading the
needle point of the Transamerica Pyramid, blowing across the Tenderloin,
down Market Street, past the white light of the Ferry Building, across
China Basin and Potrero, around San Francisco General Hospital, out past
Candlestick Park toward San Francisco International and the low strip of
the Dumbarton Bridge. Ships off in the East Bay, night ships at anchor,
floated quietly on the sheer face of the hidden current. All the noises of
the City mixed to a low roar broken only by the syncopated poppings of
Chinese fireworks shot off in the night. Across the tight miniature-grid of
the dark City, cars, steel units of power and light, cruised the night streets.
Closer, below him, cars and bikes edged bumper to bumper down Castro.
Revelers, crowding the sidewalks, stood, too far away to be heard, in pools
of light outside the open-faced bars. Strangers in the night.
The City’s massive Energy rose in updraft around Ryan’s naked body.
He was stripped and open to it all. How we all end up, he thought, matters
less than how we all are now. How we die matters less than how we live.
Everything froze beneath him. He recognized the feeling. It was happen-
ing. He had to make it happen. This time alone. Without Kick. He had
to conjure to save them. He saw a Face in the fog. It was his Face. It was
Kick’s Face. It was their Face. It was the Face of the Energy they conjured
between them. Ryan became the Face, became himself, became the other,
became them both, became them all, hanging suspended out of time,
spiraling above time and place, flying against all gravity, turning back
clocks, speeding forward, zooming, in himself, outside himself, directing
his Energy out, collecting his Energy back into himself, fortifying himself
for what he must do, taking himself in hand, making love to himself,
beating off his hidden rhythms, loathing himself, loving himself, in him-
self, outside himself, feeling his body, leaving his body, soaring, standing
naked on the mountain, erect, pumping, staring hard at Kick’s Face in the
fog, his Face in the fog, masturbating in wild pulses, saying, saying, over
and over, saying, “I want...I need...I need it...I need it,” hypno-chanting, “I
need...I need...to know...what it is...to be...fully...human!” His body shook
at the singsong words wrenched from deep inside him. The Face loomed
larger over him. It was himself. It was the boychild he had tried to kill.
It was the man he really was. It was the person he would become. It was
himself. It was not Kick. It was himself. Gray. Shrouded. The past, and
the future-becoming, both mysterious. Seeing Kick kneeling before him.

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