Like there’s a train wreck inside of my head, y’know, like the wires are all messed up and I can’t think straight.  And I’m standing here feeling like the sun is shouting obscenities, and the cloudless sky is mocking me, it’s saying “Hey, it’s such a fine day buddy, and here you are balling your eyes out!”

And there’s gravel biting into my feet, and sweat trickling down my neck, and hiding in my singlet.  And y’know, all I want to do is unzip my head, and let my brain wash away in the ocean, as if it’s some sort of mutated jellyfish.

And I think I’m crazy standing here on the burning road, when the soft, cushy sand is just a step away.  And this one image keeps plastering itself all over my eyeballs – Naomi in her washed out overalls smiling lopsidedly, her hands covered in green paint as if she were some sort of Martian.

All these memories are diluting my mind - the scar on Naomi’s left elbow, and the way she would start her sentences with “Just pretend…”

“Just pretend we were kids again, wouldn’t that be cool?  Grazed elbows and eating play dough.  Hey, let’s play cops and robbers, ok?  I want to be the robber.”  That’s what she said to me one time, and I just laughed and wiggled my eyebrows. “Well you’re a pretty sexy thief, you can come steal my jewels anytime.”  And she kicked me in the knee, and stole my cap before running off.

Naomi was like that...she’d pretend all the time, and play games as if we were 10 years old.  But we were 17, and sometimes I just wished we could act our own age and do normal couple stuff, like go the cinemas, and sit in the corner, but not really watch the movie at all, if y’know what I mean.  But Naomi didn’t like that…instead she would take me to department stores, and we’d sit down at one of the elaborately set dining table displays, and muck up all the table settings – swap the cutlery around, turn the wine glasses upside down, and make the place mats into little tepees.

She’d pretend she was a spy, y’know?  And that she was rearranging the place settings to get some sort of message across to another operative.  She was a natural-born pretender if I ever saw one.  Actually, she was pretty natural at most things – swimming, surfing, public speaking, eating 5 burgers in one sitting.  She wasn’t shy about much, least of all, about what she was thinking.  

“Just pretend it was 5 billion years into the future, ok?  And the sun was about to incinerate the earth.  What do you think everyone would be doing?”

I remember that day, we were lying on the sand, and a seagull had almost pooped on my head.  Naomi was staring up at the sky, with this intense awe in her eyes, as if she could really imagine what it would be like if the sun exploded.  I scratched the back of my neck and replied, “I dunno…I s’pose people will go for a swim, y’know, try to stay in the ocean for as long as possible and not fry.”  I laughed a little, but she just gave me a lopsided smile.  “Maybe…” she said.  “Or maybe it’ll be the best thing ever.  Like people would forgive all their enemies, and stop being so mean to each other.  And everybody would say “I love you”, and then there’d be this huge, cheesy sing-a-long and everybody would hold hands in this endless chain across the city.”

I guess she was a bit of a dreamer that way…it’s not that she was naive, she could just see the world being a whole lot better than it really was.

“Just pretend that I loved you, right, what would you do?”  Naomi sure caught me off guard that time.  We were sitting in the park on Delaney Street.  I’d just flicked a coin into the old fountain with the cherubs, and Naomi was sitting cross legged on the grass with a lady beetle in her hand.  She’d said it so casually, as if it was just another one of her wild hypotheticals, and she wasn’t even looking up at me.  

“Um, did you just say…y’know.  Well…”  I sure was struggling with words, and my hands were sweating floods inside my pockets.  I knelt on the ground next to Naomi, racking my brains for something impressive or poetic to say.  My head was only good for jokes but…and she must’ve known that, because she didn’t let me speak; instead she kissed me softly on the mouth.  It was thrilling y’know… because she never did that sort of stuff with me in public.  Later on when we were sitting with our backs against a tree trunk, and our arms around one another, I said, “Pretend I died right now, y’know, I’d be a happy guy.”  She looked up at me mischievously and replied, “No you wouldn’t be.  You’ve never been laid.”  Boy that made me laugh…and Naomi?  Well, she just smiled smugly, like she knew what I was all about.

And she did, y’know?  She knew all my flaws, my instabilities, how many freckles were on my back, how I preferred sour roll-ups to normal ones, and my fear of grizzly bears (even though we lived near the beach)…and how many buttons there were on my favourite corduroy jacket, and how I secretly liked classical music, even if all the CD’s I bought were new wave punk, and…and…

There’s this ringing sound that I can’t get rid of…bells chiming, like they’ve been implanted right inside my head.  So this is where I wound up, and y’know I’m surprised because the whole beach is empty; no people, no seagulls…nothing.  It’s like anything alive wants to avoid me.

I begin mumbling under my breath – this one phrase over and over again…

Just pretend she’s not dead.
Just pretend she’s not dead.
Just pretend she’s not dead.  
Just pretend she’s not dead.  
Just pretend she’s not dead.      

But I never was as good as her at pretending.  Y’know what, I’m running across the sand, staggering as if my organs have been shot out of me, and as I reach the water, the ocean engulfs me.

And then I surface, and I’m swimming, and swimming, getting washed away by the waves, and suddenly I’m wishing that it was 5 billion years into the future, and the sun would just explode all around my head.  

At least then the world would be how she wanted it – people holding hands and singing in the street, instead of killing one another for loose change…

12/10/04