sitting in the nighttime
I weave in and out of the streetlight’s reach, running between dawn and dusk for every new world that each light touches. I run past facetime calls, breakups and lone cigar smokers, and take note of those who cloak themselves in the darkness between the lights. The freeway lies on the other side of the park, and I hear the dulled engines, mocking the horn of life. They take on a new hum – they lose the roughness that engines usually have, to sound almost like their own animal. The trees strain this roughness from the sound, who knows where it falls. There comes a point in which the lamps become vestigial, and my first sincerely hidden man greets me. I stare into the path; he stares into me from the casual safety of the bench. I suddenly feel naked. I can almost feel his tenderness. Observing in the darkness is more guttural than other forms of looking. You cannot see the forms, but you know they are there. You feel them through their motion, not the ‘touching’ kind of feel, but the deeper one. The ‘making-out’ of form, the construing of presence through slight shifts in the air and your own energy. People dip in and out of the dark, I tease at the surface, and feel the fear of my form slipping into the one mass of dark.
A staircase is to my left – I glance in. A man freezes, halfway up the stairs. Everyone freezes when they are seen in the dark – to no fault of their own. To be seen in the dark is to forcibly acknowledge you have a boundary. That you have a form, which is distinct and interacting with the forms around you, in such a way that you accept responsibility for your distinct-ness. For taking up space, manipulating in such a way that you turn one into another. For traversing, which feels to have the least impact- yet you do with some sort of footprint.
Even a bird leaves a footprint. Fling high above the land – the presence is still felt by those who lie below, paying no attention (or who try their best to).
This is all too much. It’s too overwhelming. I am afraid of getting Grabbed, too.
I run from the man who was watching me watch myself. He looked like the father of a friend who I no longer talked to (I ran from him too).
I see the same characters, again this time, but from the opposite direction. The asian man is still smoking his cigar (but gained a few more greys).
At this point, a group of about 20 mid 20s move slowly along a playground, with someone who dashes under the monkey bars every so often. The playground is two towers connected by parallel tracks of monkey bars and some sort of zip-line adjacent craft. The tower to the left has a metal slide – the kind that becomes much too hot in the summer and feels sticky to the point of which your thighs stick to the slide if your pants aren’t long enough. The kind that feels like it can almost hold you in place with a static force. The tower to the right has a pole for climbing that takes on a vine-like structure. It feels like every other playground.
I stop and stare, standing in the middle of the path, watching the viscous motion accented by sprints, taking on their own tides. I walk towards them. I ask a woman sitting on a bench to the side of the if this is a game.
‘yes, my vivacious 5 year old is with them.’
I asked her if I could join. ‘I don’t know them. I’ll join with you.’
They are mostly men. I wonder if they are from some massive family of 13 children with many cousins. Their ages are just too similar to be from the same family.
I asked one of the only women if I could join. She asks if I’ve ever played ‘Grounds’ before. I say no.
She tells me the rules: two people are it. These people close their eyes and grasp around to tag all the other players. If they yell ‘grounds,’ anyone who is on the ground becomes it. The game resets every so often so those who were on the ground could self-identify.
I haven’t played such a physical game in some time. All my games have taken on some sort of psychic capacity. Games almost took on this property of only exercising creative spirits, or just plain silliness. I forgot that games could just have rules, and this be it. I am so happy. I want to do this.
I agree to play. Some men sheepishly introduce themselves, saying I likely will not remember their names soon. They are correct.
The game starts and within the first 30 seconds I get out by the ‘grounds’ rule. I am on the ground, and I feel it. The girl who explained the rules to me tells me not to worry – as a beginner I don’t have to be it.
I have fun running and evading and playing. I listen to them speak to one another in a language I cannot recognize. I play for a few rounds without conversation from anyone.
As much as I want to befriend them, they speak something that I cannot recognize, even though they all seem to speak perfect English as well. I suddenly feel self-conscious, and as if I am intruding on their good fun in a space where they usually cannot practice their own language and culture.
I tell the woman who explained the rules to me that I must run but thank you for including me. I see the mother of the 5 year old in a zone which was explained as out of bounds.
Running begins to hurt, I can feel it between my left leg and my belly button. A sharp pain, parallel to my legs. The direction with which I grow up.