Since I am not asleep (though I am hoping to be soon), I thought I would fulfill what is apparently a deep desire to see Part The Second of the Burlington Story. I hadn't realized I had left y'all with such an edge-of-the-seat cliffhangery-thing.

Which leads me to my Warning. At least a couple of you seem to think this is, well, going somewhere. Like to a point, or something. It isn't really. Well, maybe it is. But not a Big Point, or a Moral, or a Happy Ending or anything. It's just a story. It's the story of a summer that I think is the most memorable summer of my life, and is likely to stay that way. It's also definitely Odd. Some serious Suspension of Disbelief will be necessary.

All right, all right. Enough with the Ironic Capitalization, already. Chilluns, gather round. Uncle Onehanded wants ta tell y'all a story.

First, upon rereading Part I in an attempt to get myself back in the Burlington mood, I am noticing that I am writing this from the points of view of both myself NOW and myself THEN. It is very important to me to note that these may as well have been two entirely different beings. I suggest you read a back entry or two to familiarize yourselves with the younger me a bit, if you're new. For those of you too lazy to do so, I will say this. I was fucked up, both emotionally and in the literal drug use sense. I was scrawny and cute and blond and a virgin and very, very stupid about men. I had gigantic, life-altering crushes on my best (female) friends. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, although shortly after this summer life got a few ideas about what it was gonna do to ME.

Second, some of you may be laboring under the impression that I have completed my scene-setting descriptive prose. This is not so, and I am not done.

So anyway. I'm gonna assume anyone starting here has read Part I, and if you haven't, then fuck it.

We were describing the bike path, and the Places that were along it. I hadn't quite finished with the Beach. Also please bear in mind that I have never seen any of the places I am describing by daylight, so it is important that your mental imagery include nighttime and moonlight and things.

The beach. At the beach, the bike path became a wood and rope bridge. It was a very very small beach, hardly warranting the term Beach. But it is at least equally important to my relation of this story that it is known that each of these Places had a name, and this one was the Beach. I may well not remember all of the place-names, in fact I'm pretty sure I don't, but I will try. The beach was foul. Syringes littered the smattering of sand between two parcels of trees and the wooden bridge thing. The water of Lake Champlain was always freezing, and I cannot imagine anyone ever swam except the very drunk. I only ever saw the sand grey, that's how it looks at night.

Some of my geography is a little confused. But I believe that next on the path was the Factory. The Factory looked just like a factory, and I believe it was. There was an odd cartoonish pig painted on one of the associated towers, and those towers always seemed a ways away to me.

Then, a Dock. The dock never figured very much into our adventures, especially since it was full of people almost all the time. Very near the dock was a little grassy fenced-in knoll-thing. Since this is not very integral to the rest of the tale I will mention the Knoll event. We frequently used to get the toys from the quarter-machines at the supermarket. At the time I am talking about I had a strange one of those toys. I could not figure out what it was supposed to be, but I had a suspicion it was a very badly designed miniscule kite. At any rate, I was sitting, very very very high, with S. on the Knoll, whirling my pretend-kite around and around and watching it very intently. Due to my complete engrossment in the kite, I failed to notice the Cop. D1 and S. both noticed the cop. Now, this would not have been a big deal except for D1 being out on house-arrest and he was NOT supposed to leave the house without informing the parole people. Anyway, it was all fine, no big to-do or anything. I just think the idea of me high enough to be that fascinated with a not-even-a-kite is pretty funny.

Okay. Back to my verbal map.

After the Dock the bike path started heading into the nether regions of Burlington. I do not remember exactly where this was but there was also a sort of strange sewer door right on the street in a wall. I sat several times there and talked in French (oddly, since I remembered very little of my French) to a ghost. more on that later. That, I now recall, was The Door.

A bit past that -- the whole bike path was around 14 miles or so, which we would travel and back on most nights, impossible for me to think of now -- the path started heading into a gravel road.

To the coastal side, but we are now past the part where the path is right on the coast, is a Field. The field has water towers in it. It was a large field with very very tall grass, or something, filling it. The water towers were huge.

After the field is where things got very strange. There was an old railroad tunnel. The Tunnel. It had a hole in the top we could slide through, over the mud. S. only made it once to the Tunnel, because she was so frightened of it. It was, actually, frightening. D1 and I returned there at least once or twice.

It was a very strange in the not-things-in-life strange sort of way time and place. My brain mind and soul could do things then that I have not let it do in a long time. And the place itself was strange with or without me or us, that much I am convinced of.

S. was always the weakest one, both in our minds and in life. We always had to take care of her. I had managed to find a wavelength upon which I could sychronize her thoughts to mine. This was very important, because dexing, she could get upset easily. And I could always move her off into laughing with me, singing with me. I could touch her, mentally (or psychically, I suppose, but I hate the word) more easily than anyone else ever, sober or not.

D1 and I mostly had an easy and complicit and implicit understanding. Neither of us had to articulate it. We both took care of S., and he took care of me as much as he could and as much as I would let him. Today, I take care of him, so the whole thing I suppose has come full-circle. Except maybe for S. poor, poor, sad, sad S.

When I was dexing I was very fast and very strong. Everyone is, actually. And this is not just a drug-addled brain saying so. Sober persons around me and others dexing have remarked upon the same thing. I would run, run very very fast pushing S. in the shopping cart. We would giggle. She was very small.

There are so many of the places I have not described or adequately described. I so wish I could. The fact that the path was asphalt but it hardly mattered because the trees more than made up for the fact that we were somewhere man-made. The fact that D1 and I could walk the railroad tracks so fast, and so much faster than S., who always trailed, and who we had to console after. The groggy speckled memories of being something so special, being with people so special. The never getting in any trouble for things we really oughtn't to have been doing. The courage, the cold, the everything. The faith.

The faith. The faith in one another. The love for one another. We were so very fucked up, so very dysfunctional, but in hindsight, that doesn't matter. What matters is that I loved them then for who they were, and they loved me for who I was, and it was dark and crazy and there were no borders and there were no limits.

And I could not live like that now. I cannot, any longer, be somewhere or with someone as totally as I could then. I don't want to, most of the time.

But I will admit that there is some nostalgia. That at least I can remember a summer like that summer. I may have had a brief adolescence but at least what there was of it is memorable.

Chapter III to come. Not sure how many chapters there will be since I have never even talked about this really ever, let alone tried to write it out. bear with me, mg and sunny. I'm working on it.

onehanded