I wandered the familiar worn pavement and cobblestone port city streets in the hushed afterhours. Crisscrossing alleys and parking lots with no aim, not tired, nowhere to go until work at 11am, just following the steady guiding ember of chain smoking cig in front of my nose.
After an hour I had made my way up the hill all the way to the Eastern Promenade, overlooking the bracing emptiness of the bay leading to open ocean, a barely visible extra deep blackness through the lighter black shadow of the islands, noted by the persistent warning of the lighthouse speck.
| 2am now |
I tried lying down on a bench near the top of the hill over looking the vast scene but it gave me a cosmic horror kind of vertigo and I had to leave. There was no one around, not even prowling cops or late drunks. But I still felt like I was too seen and exposed like a great unfathomable hand would reach from the space between the clammy shadows of Casco bay.
There was a clump of trees part way down the promenade with a rough clearing under them, sheltered from view of the formless dread. It was better than nothing.
I put a grey flannel on over my undershirt to keep me from chattering my teeth to dust in the deceptively cold July breeze, blowing all those whispers of North Atlantic frigid white caps right through my chest. 50–60 degrees doesn’t sound very cold until you’re out all night in it.
After smoking another cigarette and spending 30 minutes trying to find a comfortable spot on the knobby hillside with just my backpack for a pillow I gave up on sleeping and popped an addie. Might as well see the fucking town now that I’m back home.
| 3am now |
Down the hill, through the parking lot to the sandy beach where people let their dogs run at the edges of the sheltered inlet. It said “beach closed after sunset” but no one was around so I walked the shore and felt less dread down here by the water where I wasn’t affronted by the vastness of it all at once. The wind wasn’t as bad down on the beach either, the islands and twists of the coast sheltering from the hulking weight of the ocean just beyond sight.
Sands end and turn to shin height granite boulder fields along the overgrown short cliff, coming up to the marina’s grid of gently burbling docks rising and falling. I walked the docks, bobbing along on shaky land legs to the end and sat down in half lotus, smoking and riding the oily schulping swells, fighting the rising panic lump in my throat.
Enough of that, off the docks, back down town, past the restaurant where I had been at work 4 hours before and the lobster boat docks.
Empty streets all the way to the towering serpentine mile long bridge over the bay.
I wasn’t thinking anymore, solely focused on moving my feet and mindlessly soaking up more memories, nostalgia, filling everything the last few years away had taken away, broken, laughed at. That’s why I’d tried so hard to come all this way to get back here, you know.
If I could get back to where it started I could trace it ALL back and start over and be if not fine then at least better.
| 3:30am now |
The bridge rumbles and threatens to plunge me into the bay with each sparsely spaced passing late night freight truck.
There’s a little gap of a couple inches where the two halves of the draw bridge meet and you can look down 70 feet to the churning tide racing between the pillars: I jump over it.
Down the long steep twisting off-ramp from the bridge to the park below, tiny beach with rocky pebbles and sea glass looking out at the astonishing town sized oil tanker in the deep cove. There’s a nice spot to sleep here, should keep that in mind, good benches, hidden away, later though; I’d taken another 30mg addie and though calm I felt like if I stayed in one place too long I’d burst into a gooey visceral mist. I had to get my fill. I wanted to shove memories down my throat until I felt something again and could vomit out the irony and cynicism that had coated everything since I had been disowned and left to my own devices.
| 4:30am now |
I reached the park by the college where I had my first kiss. Long rocky outcropping blasted by ocean wind and spray, emergency lighthouse poised unflinching and unchanged. We’d kissed, loved each other, hid it for months from Christian cult parents, but were eventually found out. I didn’t feel bad for my parents when they found out, I was angry that it had to be an issue in the first place. I accepted the disownment and never begged. I missed them but not enough to live a lie for them. The worst part was the probing disciplinary tribunals by the elders of the cult. “Did you touch her? How did you touch her exactly?” They said I was redeemable, I said no thanks and stopped returning their calls.
Down the shore to the long sandy crescent beach where at 19 I stripped down in the effervescent late winter full moon night and swam out to die, but somehow didn’t and woke up miles down the coast at early dawn, freezing and blue to wander, wonder, back to my clothes and back into my sleeping bag & blow up mattress on my friend’s living room floor.
I walked this beach to the rocky outcrop at the end: a jutting granite boulder knife into the passing channel between open chasm of the ocean to the right and glittering amber city of Portland to the left. Still miles away but much clearer now the lighthouse persistently turned its watchful glow at the entrance to the bay.
| 5am now |
The addies started to fade and I felt the heaviness of how many miles I’d walked hit my feet like quick set concrete. I dragged them back down the salt and sand worn stairs to the beach and found a spot behind a driftwood log that was sheltered from the wind. Wiggling my body into the sand I managed to create a snug nook and slept solidly for an hour before the sun started to come up and the chill in my joints gnawed me awake. People were already walking their dogs and sipping from steaming travel mugs, soaking in the melted pastel wash sunrise over now gentle lapping sapphire blue bay.
In a few minutes my old favorite bagel place only a few blocks away would be opening with fresh salted Montreal style bagels and herb garlic cream cheese. That and a double espresso was just the right kind of nostalgia to clear out the heavy thoughts of the night before. I shook the sand off, wrapped my flannel around me a little tighter to stop from shivering and lit my 2nd to last smoke, nodding g’morning to the couple throwing a shaggy tennis ball for their golden retriever.
