Rebound man
I like the morning madness here, joggers and walkers, parents pushing strollers along the boardwalk.
I never liked the Jersey shore in summer until now.
Maybe it is because Ocean City today doesn’t feel like early August, but some remote time and place.
Bits of it poke out of the mists like something out of a King Arthur legend, and I wait for it to vanish at any moment.
I should be happy; I have everything I need for happiness: a job, college, a girlfriend I love.
Or is the last the problem.
Mary haunts me as I stroll along the edge of the waves, the foam just making its way to the tips of my shoes.
A rare crisp whips at my face.
My girl friend’s image floating before me, hazy among the hazy shapes of the board walk’s arcades.
The music hall protrudes out onto the sand, its body held up by stanchions through which sea gulls walk.
We have less than a month before Mary is scheduled to leave.
I know she will forget me once she gets to graduate school.
I’m as scared now as I was when I was young and tried to run away, when I thought I would never see anybody I loved again.
Last night, inside the music hall, Mary asked if I loved her.
I said yes so quickly I knew it was an automated response.
Her parents like me, but claim I’m a rebound boyfriend meaning I’m the guy who comes into a woman’s life after the breakup – the intermission boyfriend before she takes up with the next serious affair.
I want to be more than that. I want to be someone of significance, not a dating statistic doomed from the start.
So I walk the beach the morning after pondering the night before, seeing the future clearly despite the mists, and how once Mary goes off to Colorado, there won’t be any hope for me.
My best friend, Pauly, tells me some people are addicted to love and others to loneliness.
He claims I’m the last kind and that I’m not happy unless I’m miserable.
I hate thinking he may be right.
I like seagulls too much, hearing their voices, watching them soar, following their staggering steps along the sand.
In another life I was a seagull. I suspect in another I’ll be a seagull again.
Or perhaps that legendary girl selling seashells along the shore.
But I won’t be Mary’s boyfriend after next month.
And in some ways, inside of me, floating through the mists and music of last night’s music hall, I feel as if it’s okay.
Just give me a superhero uniform and call me Rebound Man as I bounce from woman to woman to woman the way gulls do off the waves.
And just as I think this I see the glint of sun breaking through a crack of clouds, not a long glint, more of a wink and a nod, as if fate or God agrees.
I turn back towards the boardwalk at the music hall pier; climb the wooden planks to the top, passing through the joggers, strollers and walkers to the sandy land, descending the plants to the sand-covered street, along the sand covered sidewalk to the sand-covered steps leading to where Mary lay asleep.
I’m thinking a month is as good as an eternity for a rebound man.