At Newport Beach

Abjection, I say, when Martha asked howI felt, earlier that day, watching my father rubhis palm back and forth against his girlfriend’sopen thigh. She wore a tiny neon bikini.The waves crashed. I bought donuts and coffee.I watched her wrap her taut, eighteen-year-oldlegs around my dad’s waist. I readjusted myselfon my towel. I glanced at my own body,embarrassed my bikini was as small as hers.I ordered beer at dinner just to remind everyoneI legally could. Just to place age squarein the middle of the table between the appetizersand my sweating bottle. There was a musicianI once knew who spent months recording notesmade by objects stored in a museum’s archives.He said, every object sings. He said,if I built a room it might give me an A-flatand the harmonic series that goes with it,he said, every empty space sings.All weekend I listened to hundreds of objects.All weekend with the two of them I spoke nothingsentences to pass the time. In the morningsI walked my dog to the pier. I placed my earto the empty Tecates, the can of black beans,the path along the sand, I put my ear to the sand.I needed something to measure. I neededthat beach, but alone, stripped of meaning.For the first time in a long time I wanted to be touchedby no one. I could barely stand the tug of the current. I swam only in the bay. I watchedthe girl all weekend. I watched how they touched.I was needing something. I neededthe water quiet enough to hear it cavearound my body when I plungedunderneath. Its noise stripped me of myself,and I remember this as my favorite part of the trip—to hear even the color of the algae at the water’spale surface, clinging wherever I swam,even as I pushed it away.