SRF Heavy Industries

Jump.

Heh. No, don’t do that. Just kidding.

That’s the Pacific down there, waving at you. The moon is kind enough to draw white lines on the crests of the gray rippling waters out beyond the salt-crusted boulders at the bottom of this cliff. It might look like you could hit the water from here, maybe with a running jump, but you’re not that kind of athlete. That’s a twenty, thirty yard leap from here. You’d just smash yourself on those sharp, unfriendly looking rocks you can barely make out down there.

If you are going to jump, please wait for the tide to finish coming in. And also for the ice caps to finish melting. And then you might want to put on a hundred pounds of blubber for insulation, because that water is ice cold and it’s a long, freezing swim to anyplace you could flounder ashore. Probably Oregon.

Growing a blowhole is completely up to you. You could be creative about it, being in a position to start from scratch, as it were. Learn how to breathe through your asshole. That way when you breach you can moon anyone who is looking with complete impunity and call it a biological necessity.

Stop laughing. No, don’t do that. Just kidding. You came here to listen to me, and you deserve a laugh.

You came here to see if I would tell you to jump.

See that shack down the path? It’s there just for people like you. To keep an eye on this spot. Sometimes there’s a volunteer in there with binoculars. Maybe there’s one right now, looking you over, trying to decide if you’re cute enough to be worth saving.

Oh, wait. Today that would be you. Unless you’re there as well as right here, having walked here through one of those fractures in time you’ve always suspected of existing due to the stories you’ve heard, there’s no one in the shack to watch. Though if time is broken, there could be anyone in that shack. Or you could have slipped so far into the future that no one goes there anymore. Or maybe there aren’t any more people to go there, and you are the last.

Just think: say you’re in the shack right now, with the huge binoculars on the stand by the window, looking out to see if anyone is here. Say you’re there right now, looking, and you see you standing right here, bundled up like you are but still clearly recognizable in early moonlight, looking yourself up and down, would you come rushing out?

Hell. Did you just see a glint of moonlight off the binocular lenses? Maybe if you’d brought the binoculars you could point them back the other way and make out what that glint was.

Oh, come on. Play along. If you were both here and there, the binoculars could be in both places as well. Maybe you should go back and get them and look again. Once you’ve broken one law of nature, they are all shattered. They depend on one another.

Say you know that is you in there, watching, heart racing, breathing the dust and gym-locker aromas of a shack where unsupervised volunteers spend four- and eight-hour shifts getting up to God knows what, sneaking in girlfriends and boyfriends and leaving the debris of love and self-love in the trashcan that must be a serious health hazard to empty when they can be bothered to get the stuff to the can in the first place instead of just tucking it in the cushions of that ungodly overstuffed chair that everyone saturates with disinfectant spray whenever they think of it. Sweaty flannel has its own aroma, as does the occasional surreptitious cigarette, spilt cans of Red Bull, citrus snacks, the salt-pelted wood the shack is made from, burnt debris that makes it into the elderly space heater — but nothing overcomes the aroma of an hourly-rate hotel frequented by sex-starved bears.

Dear God, the chill out here is worth it for the sake of the smell of an onshore breeze laden with whale farts. Not that it’s ungodly cold at the moment. You could probably even ditch the parka.

But say that’s you in there, watching, trying to make out this figure in the moonlight, half in a panic over the possibility of upcoming duty. You know, but she doesn’t. How would you draw her out? How would you screw with her head?

Here’s a idea. Turn to face the moonlight and lose that massive parka.

Now slowly unbutton that plaid flannel sack masquerading as a blouse … without those ridiculous mittens. I swear, haven’t you done this before?

Let the cold wind wrap around you and  painfully squeeze those nipples erect…. They ought to be visible at this temperature even through that padding, even in moonlight, even through binoculars. Now arch, and slide a hand down the front of those jeans….

That would get you running out of that little shack, right? Or would you just keep watching, relieved your cajolery wasn’t necessary, and enjoy the show from the warm wooden bear-cave, matching her actions consciously or unconsciously….

So. Tell me. When you get a minute.

Tell me what would have gotten you to come running out here twenty minutes ago when that fat man — who might not have been fat at all under all those insulating clothes — lurched up to the edge and threw himself over. You remember. Back when you were nearly pissing yourself with fear, every script you had memorized falling out of your head and shattering on the floor like china from a cabinet during an earthquake, shortly before you took a break from all of that to throw up in the chemical toilet in that really, really very poorly insulated wooden closet nailed onto your shack as an afterthought.

Would you have come running out if he had done what you’re doing now?

Please, take your hand out of your pants. Or, you know, finish. Whatever gives you comfort.

You know, maybe that didn’t happen. Maybe that was a glimpse into a past or future timeline, and you came running out here the instant you saw it, and he wasn’t here when you rounded the bend in the path. Maybe that all happened a thousand years ago and you’re the last person on earth. Last two people, watching your little solo sex-show with the binoculars from the shack.

The moon’s just about high enough to show you the bottom of the cliff now, if you want to take a look. Unless, you know, he leapt thirty yards into the surf. And put on a hundred pounds of insulating blubber. And changed his rectum into a blowhole.

Look. Go look. Maybe you hallucinated it all.

Hunh.

He’s not there. That’s so strange, isn’t it?

Jump.

Heh. No, don’t jump. Just kidding.

[*]