Ocean World

MY EYES ARE FIXED ON THE BLUE DENIM VICE STRANGLING THAT PERFECT ASS. I wish to be a folded dollar bill, a playing card, a Lego man, anything small enough to use a back pocket for a sleeping bag. I want to be consumed by the straightjacket fabric, pressed like a flower between pages to preserve me, forever, in this moment. More than ever, I want to see her face, but I’m also afraid to.

This happened to me once before at a Wholefoods in Piccadilly Circus. I was fondling some ripe, organic mangoes, eyes nowhere near the fruit, transfixed instead on God’s ass if there is a god and if he is a woman. Then this holy rump sways, angelic legs pivot, and lo and behold! I am facing a middle-aged man, a gruff, builder type with a salt-and-pepper goatee and racoon tan lines like he’d been skiing over the weekend. I felt the drip of mango juice assault my sandalled foot, the trail of nectar creep down my wrist. It was the shock of that moment, the trauma of dismayed surprise. I had squeezed the tropical fruit beyond what it could bear.

It was beyond what I, myself, could bear. To suffer like that again. With a heavy heart I diverted left, I did not pursue the cornflower canvas of two immaculate buns. I lamented the loss of those thighs, my Honey I Shrunk the Kids fantasies of being miniaturized by Rick Moranis, slipping into that Levis burrito, joyfully suffocating in my claustrophobic tomb.

Now I gaze, despondent, at two sun-baked seals. Beside them, a beach ball of primary colors floats in the aquamarine shallows. A guillotine creaks to life, raises upward, and some pale gray fish slides outward over the concrete. The seals come out of their coma. They abandon their amber blankets spun from rays of late afternoon. Frenzied, they swim-slither-sprawl along the twelve inch depth of water to devour their foul-smelling supper.

I bought the year pass to Ocean World so I could learn more about dolphins so I could impress the dolphin trainer who I loved without ever meeting. I wanted to rouse her admiration with more than my staunch willingness to sit at the front row, take the merciless waves head on. She’d surely note how I laugh and cheer, undaunted, as my matted hair clings to my forehead, as my shirt and shorts and shoes become soaking wet. Let’s face it, I bought the year pass to Ocean World so I could study marine life, and by marine life, I mean a lady I’d never had the courage to approach.

Her name is Sue. I know this not through the social ritual of introduction. I know this because she shouts it, uncannily cheerful, into a megaphone before the show. One time we made eye contact. Then a wave hit me and my eyes took 15 minutes to readjust. I sat through the remainder of the show portraying the world as if through oil-smeared glass. When my vision at long last returned to factory fresh, Sue was gone. The dolphin named Hank smiled at me through the glass. Mockery? I wondered. But then I thought maybe he was crying, though I’d never know it for certain, his tears lost to the tank.

Ocean World is a great place to take in the warm, San Diego sun. It’s a great place to scope out the hot moms, eat $7.50 corn dogs or $5.00 popcorn. It’s a great place to see orca whales with curled over dorsal fins, seals that have given up on life outside their 30 seconds of mealtime. There is no better place to see a wet tee-shirt contest for free, although, technically it’s not free. But a year pass is cheap when you come every day.

The park is thinning out. Soon they’ll usher me home. They’ll close the gates and tell me Ocean World reopens tomorrow at 8am. Funneled toward the exit, I think for a moment I see that sapphire peach, that denim gem, but I cannot be sure as she gets into her Civic, drives away, unlikely to return for years, if ever.

Most people come for their kid’s birthdays. Others, tourists passing through, a diversion to whittle away the hours before their departure flight home. Me, I come to study the marine life. I come to study the land animals that command them, teach them to jump through hoops. I come every single day. As far as I know, I’m the only regular outside of the staff.

Excuse me, they say, guide me by my sleeve if I play dumb, if I dawdle. Excuse me, they repeat, the park is now closing. We reopen tomorrow at 8am, they let me know. As if I wasn’t already counting down the hours. So I leave, willingly, but with a feeling that I’ve been asked to vacate my own home. Meanwhile, my own home awaits. Somehow, it feels like a foreign land, a place I don’t belong.

Tonight, home alone, I forgo Home Alone. Instead, I decide to watch Free Willy. I note the familiar curve of the orca’s dorsal fin, like a rainbow leached of all its color, perhaps its joy. I pause the picture at all my favorite parts, I linger for minutes over the frozen image of the dolphin trainer. She is not Sue. But she is like Sue. And she is here in my home. She is with me in my living room.

I turn off the movie before it gets to the sad bits. I only have to think of that piteous moaning, that sad song, that Willy wails, filling the night with aquatic sorrow when he thinks the little boy is abandoning him. Then I’m seeing blurry. Just like I had when Sue threw a plastic ring across the water, when Hank caught it using his protruding nose — though I think it’s actually his mouth — before slapping back into the warm, teal water, before sending aquarium tidal waves into my face.

All I have to do is think about it, of Willy and his desperate throes of oceanic agony, like Neptune’s squealing, aborted fetus. All I have to do is think of Sue, of the imprint of magenta lip gloss I want to suck off her training whistle. I sit, and think of that perfect ass encased in shrink-wrapped denim, a face I’ll never know.

All I have to do is think. It’s all I do, now, in the unlit room, sheets pulled taut to a quivering chin. Smiling, but crying, I lay there and wait for sleep. And just like Hank, tears fall unnoticed, unseen in the dark.