Other Voices Magazine

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Winner December 2008

“The big question, I jotted down during the long wait at the airport, is how to hope and what to hope for.” – May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude

This ain’t no disco

Walking to your car, you’re remembering class. “Freedom? Yes, well, it’s all yours, according to Jean-Paul Sartre.” You recall the bewildered faces. A student asks: “But what about the afterlife? If all your choices are yours, you know, and there’s no divine intention or influence over your life, then what happens in the afterlife?” “Possibilities,” you responded. “See you next week.”

It’s dark, close to 9:30 p.m. on a Thursday night. You like how alone you feel when suddenly you think of him: Dad. You remember his laughter and how he was such a great audience for all your stories. And then you remember how right after your divorce, you went on one of many trips to Greece and when you got back, you told him about one particular trip and how you had hoped to meet someone new, a cool guy to sweep you off your feet. You told him how one day around sunset, you observed a man swimming in the Aegean Sea. You could only see the back of his head until he turned around to face the shoreline where you were sitting at an outdoor restaurant, enjoying some calamari and a Heineken. The guy was beautiful, you remembered telling him, chiseled face, with this long, wet hair resting on bronzed shoulders. You said you remember smiling at him. Then he stood up and revealed he had only one arm. Your dad laughed at this, so you built up the story, always playing to his emotions. “I discovered he was only half a man!” and he was beside himself, laughing at you and your adventures. “Yea, I travel across the world to find the ‘perfect’ man and I only manage to find half of one!” He laughs again, but then there’s an awkward silence as you both see the irony in your quest for love: how he had spent his life trying to prove himself as the better man; how he had three marriages and numerous girlfriends in between to discover his failure; how he still had hope for love, despite all of that . . . and how his hope always gave you hope.

You told the class that in the afterlife there are possibilities . . . you didn’t really know what you meant by that, but now it seems you do: there are possibilities of ongoing conversations between the living and the dead—the kind that stop the living in their tracks on a dark night and make them remember, make them remember how to live.

Terri Pyle is… just another girl.

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