Newport Aquarium

Today I went to the Newport Aquarium with E. It was a sunny and beautiful day, too hot to stay in town. So we went to the beach. When we were at the ocean, I realized the last time I was at a beach was in Aberystwyth, Wales, with EF. It was sunny and bright there, too. When I looked out the window from our hotel room, it looked just the same as it did today: bright and blue forever. The night we went to The Bae Club. Really, I felt I was at the edge of the universe. First, we were the oldest ones there...all the other kids were 18 or 19. And they were the university students, the ones who failed their exams so had to come back to retake them. Maybe that explained the group of guys--maybe their equivalents in the US would have been frat boys?--who repeatedly requested Phil Collins songs like "Sussudio" and "Don't Lose My Number". At one point they were in a line-formation, walking the beat with bent legs and arms like they were doing curl-ups. There were a few songs we danced to together. "I Predict a Riot" by the Kaiser Chiefs. Don't know who it is, or who sings it; it goes "I just wanted to hoooooold you in mmyyyy arrrrmmms..." The air was hot and muggy; I held him in my arms because I wanted to be there forever, at the edge of my universe, even though we were driving back to London the next day and I would leave him. And he would leave me there.

I miss him so much. But maybe it's the idea of him I miss the most. He was never really there. Elusive. It was at the edge of the universe, at the border between what was and what could have been. My imagination sort of tipped my vessel over the edge into non-existence, like a boat at the edge of the horizon that finally disappears, or a the driftwood that washes onto the shore and returns with the tide.