Michael Seidlinger: The Fun We've Had

Thrill seeking, the very act of embellishing every minute as something monumental. For every show of affection, they showered themselves in anxious energy.

Let’s go! He could still hear the enthusiasm in her voice. Genuine and true — nothing quite like new love.

And it was love.

He was sure of it.

As sure as he was now of where they had ended up. One oar, nothing more, did little to help him forget that these hands were not his own. These frail, thin arms couldn’t be his arms.

He looked over his shoulder, “Not much longer now!” That voice, high-pitched and youthful, wasn’t his voice.

And what did he mean? Not much longer now. Where had they been? Where were they going? Yet all questions were already answered. If he could listen to the ocean, he’d find all the information he’d ever need.

But confusion buoyed him, steering the coffin that would one day be his. Kept rowing in one inexact direction while he frequently turned to repeat the same phrase, “Not much longer now!”

Confusion is an entirely different kind of torturous wave, one that denial combats well during times of distress.

This was a time of distress. His first turn and all that could register was the denial of what had happened. Why they were here to begin with was without question the first and foremost item on his mind.

“We’re a little late but we’ll be okay. They won’t leave without us!”

He might have been confident if it weren’t for the tears running down his cheeks. He wiped them with those fragile little fingers, so frail they might break if he were to ball them up into a fist. Paleness of his palm as plain as everything he could not say, everything he might have wanted to say but when he opened his mouth to speak, what came out were old words, old statements, the filler and fodder of the life he left behind.

The life they left behind.

They were equals. From the beginning, they built their friendship and subsequent intimacy on the back-and-forth of good conversation. If he spoke, she would speak next; if she whispered, he would whisper the same number of words. Never a shout if they were going to make a real go of this.

They did. And it was love, some might say.

She used to count how many times they’d say, “I love you.” It wouldn’t have been too difficult to believe anything after it’s repeated enough times. She could count how many times he rowed using the one old, bent oar, but she couldn’t fight the current. The feeling of exhaustion weighed in deep, heavy, exacting.

She whispered, “Do you recognize this song?”

His predictable answer, “They played it on the radio three times in a row.”

It felt meaningless. The words passed by like the gentle waves: effortlessly.

Please, sit down next to me. Stop trying to row. Words that would never leave her lips, chapped and purple, lips matching the sagging facial features of someone having reached middle age. Forty plus years of stress and poor diet, the face fit well with the belly that made it impossible to see beyond the waist.

Ideally, she knew who this was. More so, she could feel the effects of a life on-edge. This body borrowed is the one hint she had to identify where they had gone. What they had done…

Where their actions led to depths beyond final breaths and final blinks.

“That silly hairdo isn’t you. It’s trendy!”

The nonsense of dead speech, of lines that had already left one’s lips long ago.

“If you miss the appointment you’ll have to reschedule.”

The back-and-forth of good conversation. She spoke out of context. He rowed with no clear concept of north.

When it was his turn to speak, she had already spoken. The voice that dribbled out of her lips was deep and hoarse, heaving with a lack of energy, complete exhaustion.

Though she may have wanted to help, she found it difficult to do much of anything but sit where she sat, watching as he repeated the same thing.

Repeated enough times and the present worries were subdued. Though displaced, cast to the borrowed bodies of familiar acquaintances, she couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t help herself, even if she tried. The belly so heavy weighed her down. The frantic, almost manic energy, that he displayed, alarmingly the image of a young girl, only weighed her down more.

If she still needed to breathe, her breaths would have been audible, anguished wheezing.

She didn’t notice the differences, how if she wanted to, she could look past him. Right through the tiny body. She could see through her body to the velvet texture of the coffin acting as the as-of-yet largely unnoticed destiny of him, her, of everyone.

The coffin floated, for now.

She sat, vaguely aware that she would be the one to recover her sense of direction. She would be the one to hear the voices trapped in the waves. She would see the hinges of the coffin and it would all come to her at once. Enough to send her into a coma until he caught up. Denied for as long as he could, she would rest, teetering in the nonexistence of this purgatorial sea.

The only way to rouse her would be to admit what they’d have to do.

“I love you,” in this case, meant letting go.

“Are we having fun?”

The sun made its first appearance, long rays of light poking through the clouds, highlighting the area where they would soon drift. By the time he’d fight the current, not that he ever won, more like the ocean let him win every time, the light pulled a few feet forward.

Always out of reach.

He stationed himself at the front of the coffin, like a captain of a nameless and needless ship. He wanted to say everything to her but all that came out was the same question:

“Are we having fun?”

The question, at first directed to her overweight and overwrought frame, soon became his meaningless refrain.

Meaningless, because if he let himself understand the question he would have to admit to all that he fought so hard to deny.

Follow the light.

He began to see shapes and other apparitions in the rays. Excitedly, the rowing became his primary focus. He held the oar with both hands, leaning to either side as he lowered it into the water. It looked painful but he felt nothing.

He wasn’t at all sure this was excitement, but at least for now, the glimpsing of something else, something, anything, was enough to keep the momentum, the same momentum that seemed to outline his days. What might have been a lazy, relaxing Saturday became a cause for adventure, a curious matching between him and her, their search to be out, on the city, the town, so as to stave off being on the outs with each other.

That’s what it is, was, and will always be.

Nothing would change. Nothing is wrong.

This is just another adventure. New thrill.

“Are we having fun?”

Of course they were. When every feeling is time-stamped and the life you lead becomes the life you led, there cannot be a whole lot more to do except admit right from wrong. However, if he could see the look on that girlish face of his, it would tell a different story.

Keep rowing to the leaking of tears from bloodshot eyes. And yet there was a smile to accompany the act.

Beyond the beyond, he thought of a horizon, of an island they once pretended to exist. Desert island adventure.

What would you need to have fun?

Cheesy lines delivered— you .

You too —followed by a list of feelings, emotions, rather than material belongings.

To feel was all they wanted.

To feel alive.

Then what does this feel like?

“Are we having fun?”