This is an original short story I wrote a few years ago: *disclaimer*: corny, self-indulgent, and generally trashy, but read on if you want:
~'A Study in Mysticism'~
He was alone. Not in the physical sense, forget not the untold dozens of adamantly obsessive watchers who would love just to breath the same air as him, but in that winding, heavy way the soul gets tired over time. He was never one to rest on his laurels and mope, though, always seeking greater and grander schemes to escape reality and grasp the hidden significance of moments that slid like sand through a sieve. The clockwork of his mind ran with chaotic precision, tuned mostly to another world which did not reconcile itself well with the one we dwell in. Whoever it was it who once said all great men must be alone and stand as rocks, as islands forged in raw courage against the inhumanity of the masses? He obviously was never particularly great or lonely, just alone. "Why must I live out this cruel mockery of time and place so endlessly alone?" thought the man, a boy really, new to the ways of the world in his 23 years.
They met late at night. The circumstances that brought them there were really remarkable and insignificant at the same time, because this and now was the time and place and purpose. Their eyes wandered on meaningless ramblings and trivialities of life until, as time beckoned inevitable departure, their eyes locked and time in all it's weary trodding stopped for a moment. His world froze and and drew close and fixated on the only living thing in the universe right now, this person across from the couch who was alive, with great heaving slabs of sculpted vitality, muscle and sinew taunt with life, discipline driven out of the wilderness that separated them, until now. Lips tasted of kindness and humble focused want held tight within the creases of the sheets, eyes furious and alive.
8 Months had passed since that fateful evening, and he sat alone again, on the edge of the great divide that ran past the foyer and into the study and on to the great crashing, gnawing sea that ate at the cliffs far below. The gulls cawed and circled the somber gray seaweed-covered rocks lashed by a mean salty spray which burned with life and zest, something he could use a bit of right now, he thought with bemused irony. Why she had left him was no surprise, even to him ,the designer of all grand illusions and escapes from reality. He was a hopeless dreamer, and worse, one who recklessly gave his love half-heartedly to those who claimed to seek it, only later to retreat in haste from commitment or bonds. "So I lied", he thought in bittersweet recollection over the last drops of lukewarm Chardonnay and a day-old sandwich, courtesy of the cook off to town for the weekend. "But what a magical tale of heroism and daring character I wove anyways", he reconciled, only half-ironically. "Besides, lies rule the world", he added in afterthought. "The truth has always been secondary."
The truth of course was that he lied to her not in in words but in dates deferred, a polite hug and a peck on the cheek rather than the lustful embrace she longed, and other such emotional ways of distancing himself from her. She had tried and tried, bless her, weekends in Monterrey, Palm Springs, Aspen... sailing in the Virgin Islands, horseback riding in the Tetons, fly fishing in Alaska... nothing ever seemed to spark real life in him, life for her, into those hazel eyes forever burning with that furious focus, but alas not for her. He was solitary, an island by choice perhaps, a half-hearted crusader against the injustice and ingratitude of the world. She of course has been gorgeous, in the conventional way, but nonetheless gorgeous, worldly, well-spoken, and, as his obnoxious parents might have said, "of the right blood." They were great friends, certainly, and despite her hopelessly broken heart, still spoke often, though now on dry, seemingly anesthetized terms; 'purely business' types. Deep in his soul though, under than brilliant, zany intellectualism for science and nature, that boyish charm and sculpted good looks she fell for, was a soul laid bare and hollow for the world or those that cared to see.
He was forever restless, listlessly ambivalent on certain matters and cunningly decisive on others. They had grown up not far from each other, her in Greenwich and Bar Harbor, and him in Oyster Bay and Blue Hill. The latter establishments, of course, were family summer homes, though not like the bad outtake of an Evelyn Waugh novel his friends imagined. Theirs was a wealth carefully cultivated over many generations, navy blood and crimson-tinged New Yorkers and suburbanites who managed to keep a refined indifference to wealth . He was in his last year at Bowdoin, she a rising junior at Middlebury. It was by default a party-arranged romance conspired by their obsessive, slightly neurotic parents; long time friends in the New York upper crust tradition. They had sailed together as children, had played tennis and swam in the teal sparking waters of the boat club pool, oblivious to this obscene privilege, just kids being kids when thinking about tomorrow is like thinking about the end of the world. They left reluctantly to preparatory school at the zenith of their youth, establishing a new identity among the throw-away trends of the "cool kids" and life away from home. Here they were in college, college! this supposed apex of youth and possibility and want, studying largely meaningless, obscure liberal arts perusals. Not as if any of it really mattered; a life of comfort and modest fame awaited them as the family investments changed hands from one generation to the next. So it was in this placid chaos that he sat with broad shoulder blades facing the ocean, an observer of torrents of wind-whipped seas on which gallant sailboats and watercraft wove between the green islands, the American dream, an Andrew Wyeth painting personified. It was in this conscious reflection on the meaningless of it all that he decided his next move which might break these stifling doldrums that held everything static and musty, playthings in an attic of the mind.
He thought a mused a bit over the plight of the world over a good cup of coffee and then, quite suddenly and with an inspiration that surprised him, he threw on some old Carrharts, a flannel shirt [even in Maine, this cold in June couldn't be a good sign of the state of the world], and a pair of sandals, and departed down to the docks below. He deftly rigged the ancient canvas sails and ropes that draped over the deck on grandfather's old 28-footer, a hell of a sailboat even now, ragged at the edges and in need of some bad repairs. A light breeze ran nor'westerly out of the sound under bluebird skies and warm, burning sun. He let the sails billow out in the wind before bringing them in on a close haul and the craft heeled hard leeward as sea salt lashed the week-old stubble on his chin. His gold hair, matted and wild, stuck to his head in odd clumps, and now was swept back by the stiffening breeze out in the bay. He could see the harbor on the horizon, a faint cluster of bright, gaudy lobster boats. Cottages were lined up under somber pines along the waters edge, just as they had been just as they had been when they swam together in the cove, him and that boy with the crooked smile, who was now a man really, as much as he himself was at least, of 20-something years. No bother with the wants and expectations of the world, he used to think when they would lie together in the hammock on the beach and sip lazy summer lemonade. He was gone, studying geology or botany or something out in California last he heard, and those days had faded. He wad re-discovered her at an old family friend's dinner party and thought love might actually spark if he made it, and of course, sadly for her, it never did.
So it was with this ironic memory that he dropped anchor in under clear skies in the deep blue water of the island's harbor, whose dozen or so summer inhabitants were making morning breakfast or perhaps motoring in to the mainland for the Sunday Times and a loaf of bread. The old house was still there, a grandly decrepit Victorian affair with peeling lead paint and a subtle dignified grace that shone out on the ocean below. He tied up on the town dock, greeting a passing old man in a cardigan, waved at a young girl tending a little dingy on the beach, and climbed up the rickety wooden stairs to the island's only real street, a dusty maple-lined affair of a quarter mile or so. And there, sprawled in a huge white wicker chair on the deck of that old Victorian, was the boy, reading and sipping lazily on that same lazy summer lemonade of 3 years ago. His heart stopped and would have ejected itself from his body had the lump in his throat not stopped it. He felt a tear well in the corner of his eye but summoned his most brash, manly demeanor and told himself to stop this foolish nonsense, this embarrassing show of emotion. How many years had it been? Two, three? The summer between prep school and college, he remembered, they had spent on the island, drunk off cheap wine, good company, and plans to drown the world in drunken philosophy and grandiose schemes.
In any case, the manly indifference to emotion he was insinuating with all his might failed at the sight of that crooked smile, and he ran and they embraced and then suddenly took awkward steps back and shook hands, their eyes still caught in the moment though. He wondered why he never had this feeling around her, this lightheadedness. They spoke quietly at first, then in great bounding strides of conversation, catching up on all the little nuances and life's details that exposed themselves in the three and a half years they had been apart. Things had changed, in ways they found hard to understand at first, subtle things that are manifested in lost time and place. He had been doing well he said, last year studying geography at Berkeley, busy with skiing and rock climbing up and down the west coast on time off school. He had almost been engaged six months prior but, alas, love that was probably forced to begin with fizzled and faded over lost commitments and time rather spent climbing mountains and exploring canyons. He too had that loneliness in his eyes, but kept close the shield against outward emotion, the protection of being constantly busy, school and work and the mind-numbing treadmill of society which didn't allow for things like love and regret.
They spoke of old times and how each other's families were, and for a moment it appeared as if the bright page in the novel of life that had come to such an abrupt end those years ago had magically re-opened. Alas though, those same heavy burdens and expectations of the world and codes of acceptance had to outweigh even that crooked smile, and they drifted apart again. Like the Arctic turns that rode over the salty chop as he sailed back to the mainland, so far from their home; on a journey programmed to take them away from the familiar, their paths had crossed and diverged. No one would even know of that night those years ago; that happiness which was mysterious and scary because it was so fucking real. In a way, he had not felt truly alive since, alive in the body and spirit; yes, but the soul, funny fickle creature that it is, stirred with unrest for what was forever forbidden to tell of.
