#218

The man at the pool who looks and talks like Jack Black drinks Coors Light, one after another, and then crushes the empties and tosses them by the lounge chairs. Two of his friends drink can after can of hard seltzer in flavors like kiwi and watermelon, while standing in soup-warm water up to their waist. The sun is prickly, spikey, you can feel each ray hit and penetrate your skin, and I listen to them have the conversations of 30-year-old Midwesterners; beer and family, fishing and girlfriends. How Florida is nice, but Arizona has better weather and smoother roads.

I sit on the edge of the pool, my feet in the water, my back to the sun, and read the book I started at the Lido in Venice a few weeks ago. At the beach there, I ate pasta so good, an Italian-American grandma might throw it in my face. I drank white wine and sparkling water and espresso, I slept under the white umbrella, I watched Germans & Italians swim in the sea. Lightly salted there, not like Ibiza or Sicily, where your skin is white from the saline after you exit.

Here, the dry air reminds me of the Mediterranean. There are bougainvillea, cactus, oleander, aloe. My feet get brown, and my toes turn white from the bleaching rays. It makes me feel clean. My hair goes streaky with bits of blonde, which I’m happy covers up the bits of white or silver that have started to grow. I feel alive, tired, well, sickly, happy, sad.

No one says anything to me at the pool. I’m left to my book, happy to take in the pages. I wonder what they think, but also don’t care enough to engage. Happy to listen to the conversations and hear about what I feel is mundane life - maybe one I’m inclined towards, in a way. Not knowing, really, what I’m doing here in this in-between place.