My Wild Love

Jim and I walked silent and barefoot across the cool midnight sands of Venice Beach. Sand squished between our toes before being baptized by the ocean waves. With the moon shining overhead it reflected a sea of stars like tiny orbs on the rolling dark water. The constant churning push and pull of the ocean had a calming effect that only Mother Nature could bring. After a while we took a seat on the beach right by the sea feeling like we were sitting on the throne in Atlantis, just close enough for the foamy water to brush our feet like an artist's stroke. I loved the way the sand and water swirled around my skin.

Jim was staring at me.

“What?” I asked staring right back at him. I grabbed a palm full of sand in my hand and squished it between my fingers feeling the grains slip through like an old fashioned clock.

“I was wondering if you wanted to try something.” Jim said nonchalantly.

His innocent tone made me suspicious and I narrowed my eyes slightly. “And what exactly did you have in mind?” Jim dug his hand into his pocket and pulled some kind of paper out. After a moment, recognition made my eyes grow wide.

Before I had a chance to speak Jim was already talking. “I know you said acid was shit… but to be fair you haven’t even tried it. You can't knock something you haven't even tested yet.”

I looked away towards the moon as my heart fluttered nervously. “I’ve heard stories.”

“Those were bad trips. You just have to think about good things. And besides,” He paused for a second, “I’ll be here.”

Jim looked away for a split second and then his eyes held mine with an intensity that I’d never experienced before. Like a movie scene from the 1940's, it took my breath away. A few seconds passed along with some breaths before I got my mind on track again.

“Good things?” I questioned his phrase.

Jim nodded. "Come away with me, Emma. Don't let me journey alone."

So for the first time in my life I dropped acid. Jim seemed like an expert about all of it having done it manyt time before, I was sure. But he was extremely patient with my questions of how exactly to do everything and my rambling worries about spine cracking and lasting hallucinations. After placing the paper on our tongues we had nothing to do but wait.

For a long time nothing seemed to be happening. But when the things around me started to change and shift my breathing picked up to an abnormal pace and I closed my eyes tightly wishing away all the visions. Jim was holding my hand once he noticed I was starting to freak out.

He was close to me now, whispering words of advice in my ear. “Relax, Emma. Everything is going to be fine.” I could feel his lips grazing my ear slightly and it made me shiver. Jim kept talking in that powerful voice of his full of subtle command, “Open your eyes.”

It took a second to remember how to speak. “I don't think I can.”

Suddenly the ocean noises vanished away and no longer broke on the shore like plane crashes in Vietnam. The world suspended, not here not there. I couldn’t feel the ground steady beneath me nor the sand taking over the spaces between my toes. The cool night air and the stars above didn’t exist either. In fact, I didn’t even exist in this strangely beautiful world.

It was only Jim. Jim and his voice. His wonderful, moving voice:

Let’s swim to the moon, uh huh
Let’s climb through the tide
Penetrate the evenin’ that the
City sleeps to hide

Let’s swim out tonight, love
It’s our turn to try
Parked beside the ocean
On our moonlight drive

Let’s swim to the moon, uh huh
Let’s climb through the tide
Surrender to the waiting worlds
That lap against our side

Nothin’ left open
And no time to decide
We’ve stepped into a river
On our moonlight drive

And then I opened my eyes.

***

Staring up at a billion eyes, they watched me as I watched them. There were no color to them, only the whites that glowed like small suns. The bodies belonging to these eyes stayed in the shadows unseen. Maybe they didn't even exist at all. They’re twinkling pupils mesmerized me into a frozen state.

Laying there, or wherever I was, I felt something in my hand. It was coarse and rough, like nothing I’d known before.

I inhaled. The Earth inhaled. I exhaled. The Earth exhaled.

I looked at Jim. But it was a new version of him.

His cheekbones were very pronounced and there seemed to be no flush to his cheeks; he was pure porcelain. His eyes bore right into the core of my soul. He saw me. All of me; my heart, mind, and soul. I reached out daring to stroke this new creature’s cheek if only for an instant.

My hand touched his soft skin and ripples radiated from the power of it all. Weird smears played across his features like the background to a Gustav Klimt painting. Jim morphed from angel to lizard and back.

Jim now reached out to touch my face. His hand was warm and gentle on my cheek. And so we stayed like that.

Mirror images of the same being.

***

A groan escaped my throat. I was laying on my side in the sand being warmed by the morning sun bouncing off of my skin. With my eyes closed, it was oddly comforting to me. Straining to sit up on the shifting ground, I opened my eyes to the Earth. Jim was sitting in the sand looking perfectly content with himself albeit a little odd. When he caught my gaze across the sandy beach a smile awokened his features. It was not just happy, but also full of some remembered secret that only him and I could know about. The rest of the population was on the outside.

Then in one swoop last night flooded back to me. “Was… was that real?” I asked unsure of even the world we lived in now and what else was lurking around.

Jim laughed and ruffled my hair with his hand shaking some loose sand out of the strands. “There’s a whole world out there that no one knows about, Emma.”

I sat there contemplating it all. Everything. Jim seemed eager for a reaction from me. I thought though, biding my time and letting my mind run all over the place.

Jim continued on after I hadn't spoken, “They say we only use about ten percent of our capable brain function. I want to discover that other ninety. How can we let it go wasted?”

Folding my legs up, I nodded and bit my lip softly still in deep thought.

Jim sighed and reached towards my mouth to free my lower lip from my tooth’s grasp. Then he ran his thumb over my lips slowly as if trying to make them smooth again. Eyebrows furrowing together, his eyes filled with a difficult emotion to decipher that I couldn't place a finger on. He seemed to be thinking carefully about how to word something that he wanted to say. “Are you mad at me for making you take that?”

“No, I loved it.” I answered shocked that he would think I would be mad at him for something so small. Last night acid seemed like a huge moutain to hike over, but sitting on the other side, worn and energized from the travel, it seemed silly to have fretted about the drug. “I was just thinking about how many other things we don’t know about. It's a little daunting really.”

“We can discover it together.” Jim promised smiling at me and looking somewhat relieved at my answer.

But I still couldn’t get one thing off of my mind. “Jim?”

“Hmm?” He gave me the full attention of his eyes.

“What was that song you sang to me?” Distractedly I kept studying his eyes.

To my surprise he looked a little taken aback and maybe slightly embarrassed too. It was like he didn’t want me to remember his beautiful words or his beautiful voice.

“I don’t remember that…” Jim mumbled averting his eyes. After a stretch of silence, he stood up and offered me his hand. “Ready to get out of here?”

“Sure.” Agreeably, I took his hand and he pulled me up onto my barefeet.

As we stumbled off the beach dodging broken shells, I started humming the song from last night that Jim had sang to let him know I hadn’t believed his lie of a forgotten memory. Jim looked at me from the corner of his eye and his expression was one of shock, an emotion I had yet to see across his face. That shock turned into a small smile as he shook his head back and forth.

Then Jim joined in the humming as we strolled away into the warm California sun together.