The Narrator

In the summer when I turned thirteen I swam across Long Island Sound to the lighthouse on Execution Rocks. At thirteen there are nights when you cannot sleep. Not because of actual reasons for terror in the house, nor because of worries or pressures. And really not even because the hot, humid Gulf Stream air swamping New York is too still and sweat coats your skin. But because there are so many things to hope for, so many wishes, that your brain cannot file them all away fast enough to let the silence come. This was the morning after one of those nights, and perhaps, not just for me. Ten of us, maybe eleven - it is hard to count or even know all the faces now - mostly boys but not all, mostly members of the YMCA's Swim Team but not all, stood in the long gazebo at Hudson Park which overlooked the beach and the Sound. Late July, and the early morning light mixed with the incoming salt of the rising tide, and the seaweed and fish and the plants of the marshes. The flag in the p...

On those hot nights when there just was nothing to do but be away from everyone and everything I'd walk in a slow drift down to the park at the water. There were no lights at all except for one in the parking lot just off the road and the glow of the 7-up machine by the padlocked restrooms and thick lines of trees blocked any infiltration from the lamps of the beach clubs that lay east and west. So in pure darkness I'd cross the enormous lawn, flowing down the hill, to the rock shore and strip off my clothes and being relatively careful of position as far as underwater rocks were concerned, would dive into the cold silence of Long Island Sound. If I needed dreams I'd swim to the abandoned fort and climb out and walk the ancient streets. If I needed hope I'd head for a little island with nothing but trees and warm myself in the glow of the stars. If I needed simply to be gone I'd crawl all the way to the lighthouse at Execution Rocks, cutting across the...

The day had turned stunningly cold, and the salt was rising into the air from Long Island Sound, announcing a coming storm, but we had said Greasy Nick's so I sat there outside, picking a table with a bit of the shelter of the building, and waited. She would come, as she always did, in sadness. I never saw her in happiness. Only between lovers, between jobs, between houses, between dreams. Today, I already knew. A mutual friend, a hospital nurse, had whispered "cancer" to me at Dudley's last night, as we sat on the deck over the water and drank to the Equinox. I watched spots of rain start to spread across the road, coming from the shore. I thought back to our first meeting. In the park. In the rain. Both of us bruised and battered by the fists of men we worshipped. I had held her then. I had promised that it would all get better. Maybe it had. Though not together, as I had desperately wanted in that first moment. Now the rain exploded, waves of water merging s...