NEW WRITING: The Swimmer.
The Swimmer
He swam - arms ablaze, from one end of the dance floor - to the other. He was drunk - beyond drunk. His thin body - tight black jeans, loose old-band t-shirt, swirled with the music, rhythmed to the lights that flickered just beyond his vision. He was in place - structured within a heaving mass of the dance floor, of humanity in temporary joint venture. Yet? Yet he swam - across the dance floor, he swam vast distances in the languid droop of an eyelid. He moved across the surface of unknown giant stars - heat searing his eyeballs, frying his limbs to cinder sticks. He moved through clouds of vapour - so vast, so distant, so cold, it froze - like silver and steel - his compact bleeding heart. He moved across lives - suns, moons, places, people - in a journey from nowhere to some other nowhere. The cosmos shook and shifted as he swam across and through it. His mind numbed at the effort to take it all in, numbed at the presence of insolvent, effortless continuity and unending immortality - the immortality of his thin streaking arms as they stretched out in front of him - out, past, then behind - just like his father had taught him, and he swam the cosmic line, like only he really knew how to - swam the cosmos eternal from one end of the dance floor - to the other. And then she asked him - "Are you ok?" The question rolled beside, behind, through him. "Me?" He tried to shake his head towards clearness, but only brought his drunkenness to the fore. "Me?" The dance floor rose up and slithered across his naked feet, wound its way up his jean-clad legs like a shuddering serpent searching for the light - any light. And then it was gone, and he was standing - swaying slightly - standing next to her on the side of the road as she waited for a break in the traffic - the boy who always stood too close for comfort - in bare feet and too skimpy a t-shirt, who always talked too long, laughed too loud, drunk too often. She asked him what happened to his boots? He turned and smiled big in her direction - "You can't swim in boots! Everyone knows that." Then he whooped with excitement, raised his thin arms above him - forming a slender arc of intent, and threw himself into the swirl of traffic - his arms flowing in front of him, as he swam, swam as a ghost through hard vehicles, and harder drivers. He sawm through traffic as she screamed. He swam across the vistas of worlds without end, the swimmer of the dance floor, swimmer between heavy traffic, swimmer across the flowing eye of the unknowing god.
