On the Pier of the Circus of My Mind (With Horses)
A perfect day.
No. A dreamy day. Warm sunshine through scattered white clouds; a shimmering blue ocean and light breeze; throngs of people in leisure activity on the world famous Santa Monica Pier, and it was all so pleasantly surreal in that true “getting away from it all” sense that most people seem to have for a better, more ethereal place, and . . .
Suddenly, in the middle of that idyllic setting, a most disruptive element appeared, negating the perfect afternoon into a questionable experience of potentially dubious consequence, as . . .
A beautiful black horse with a long, wild mane, came barreling down the length of the pier, loudly and violently rattling the wooden boards in its wake, causing children, grown women and men to scream and run for cover and . . .
All I could do was watch. Amazed and horrified, as that gorgeous beast, looking so dangerous and free, stormed down the walkway like a scene from the book of Revelations, and I wasn’t referring to the horse.
Christy. My date. My girlfriend? Well, kind of, in the most removed and dysfunctional sense, sitting atop that out-of-control animal, her face looking straight ahead, so determined and something else, suggesting she WAS in control of the situation as she held onto its full, blowing-in-the-wind mane with her bare hands, and . . .
I could only stand there. Watching in genuine wonder as Christy bolted down the pier, getting close to the end, and what would my hyperactive date do at that point? Come to a dramatic stop, then turn that beautiful animal around and calmly clop back to where I stood with some manner of explanation for such a bizarre outburst of anger?
Weird chick. She always was. Always would be, because some people just didn’t change and that’s what I liked about her, because as chaotic as the scene appeared to be, I knew she was an expert rider, spending her entire life training and riding horses, finding them far better company than humans, and who could argue with that?
However . . .
The closer she got to the end of the pier, with people panicked, cursing, and fleeing, it was obvious she had no intention of stopping, that she was flooring it all the way, as if that shiny black creature was a full blown, customized NASCAR that would send her flying off the boardwalk in a raging, roaring blaze of glory.
I could only shake my head, because I had no idea what was driving the heart and mind of my severely removed girlfriend, and by now there were police scrambling, along with officials from Cirque de Soleil, because it was their horse she had stolen for this Paul Revere-on-ecstasy ride, and—
“Do you know that woman?!” one of the Cirque de Soleil guys asked me.
I didn’t say a word.
“She was with you, wasn’t she?” the guy asked like a cop—no, in fact, he WAS a cop.
I remained silent, just watching that beautiful black horse with my graphically estranged date accelerate to the end of the pier, and hopefully no innocent bystanders would be harmed, because it would all be my fault, my responsibility, and . . .
I never should have responded to her e-mail. Never should have chitchatted away night after night, which escalated into numerous phone calls and more personal confessions, desires, regrets, and a still-breathing desire that manifested a plane ride to Burbank airport, and . . .
It was so strange picking her up, as if just another ordinary passenger from Florida of all goddamned places, giving me the more abstract if not appropriate idea of retrieving her at cargo, as if a deceased arriving in a casket, because we had each passed away so long ago in so many ways and I had no business attempting to, not so much resurrect, but squeeze a few drops of long-dehydrated DNA from her remaining existence to stimulate my own inertia, and . . .
We fucked, we moaned, we screamed, we died a little more with each tortuous sigh in the morbid comfort of being together again, of watching each other’s eyes roll up into the back of our heads like any other ordinary corpse, when we’d say “I love you” as if it validated something, and . . .
That beautiful black horse (Arabian, I thought someone said back at the circus, shortly before Christy hot-wired it) flew off the end of the pier like a giant, prehistoric bird, then . . . dramatically rose, as if in super-slow, heavenly motion, into the Southern California sky. A gracefully extinct steed of dreams, with everyone in awe and fear as, for just a moment, it hung above the water, suspended in time and physics, with Christy encouraging it to some celestial reason from such worldly mayhem, and the entire pier, all the patrons, the sea gulls floating overhead, the police, the Cirque de Soleil people, and the pure astonishment of existence in general held its collective breath as . . .
The beautiful Arabian horse, so sleek, strong, and symbolic, with the once beautiful but now hopelessly damaged and surely deranged woman guiding it, miraculously but undeniably, disappeared into the brilliant Southern California haze, as if it had never been there, and . . .
All I could think of as the police and the Cirque de Soleil people screamed at me for some explanation, was: If only, in the middle of our truly dreamy day on the pier, as we watched the exotic performance of luxuriant Arabian horses, I didn’t turn to her in a moment of absolute clarity and horror and say . . .
“This isn’t real. None of it. The day. The horses. You. Me. Why we’re here.”
Causing her to snap, to fall off the sharpest edge of the earth, leaving all reason, logic, and prayers behind, with nothing but oblivion to break her fall. However, to her resilient if not possessed credit, she took that bitter reality and drove it off the end of the pier into the nether world of light and darkness from where it had surely come, and . . .
After being released by the highly suspicious but ultimately helpless police and circus people, I picked up a pina colada snow cone at one of the food stands, then walked down to the end of the pier to gaze out at the ocean, and horizon, and blue Southern California sky, amazed and regretful to have been part of, yet, ultimately removed from true rapture.
Copyright © 2008 by Jerry Erwin
