This Island Toward Which I Row and Row, Yet Cannot Reach Alone

Friday night. My older sister points a beam at my bedroom ceiling so the sky appears: charcoal edging to violet, clouds in layered bruises, starlight peeping through the gaps. Claretta then directs a second beam at the wall. An impression of our city blooms there, trembling and unfocused as she fusses with the controls.

A silent view of the pulsing world outside. All of this is supposed to make me feel a part of things, less confined.

I don’t have a terminal illness. I have an interminable one. Decades still ahead, predictable ones in which my body fights with itself, breaks itself down. My joints are loose as a puppet’s. My skin’s hyper-stretchy, yet fragile as petals.

“Something’s not right,” Claretta says. She means the cityscape. “Sorry it’s fuzzy.” She zips her windbreaker.

Stay, sister, I think. Sit with me in the dark. Don’t leave me alone.

“Look!” I pinch the loose skin at my clavicle, pull it up like a beige turtleneck. One of my old carnival-y tricks.

“Quit it.” Claretta doesn’t laugh like she did when we were kids. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Can I have my visor, then?”

“Winnie, you’re getting way too obsessed with this skinshare bullshit.”

“Please. You don’t have to live a single minute like this. Like me.”

With a dubious expression, my sister fits the visor to my skull, slides the toggle into my hand. I stretch long against clean sheets to wait.

Claretta’s leaving is a brisk breeze against my spindly legs.

* * *

Not many choices tonight. Most don’t work this late.

But Squire0829 is a newbie, a blipping avatar sitting there with solid 4.9 feedback. Bio: buncha high school track medals, then the Olympic trials, doesn’t say what after. Pretty, too. Tall and strong-seeming.

I request a skinshare. Then I wait, wait.

My pain patch is straight weaksauce tonight. Discomfort erupts in three places at once. A migraine drills into my left eye socket. My clavicle—insulted by that earlier tomfoolery—registers its red-hot complaint. And my left hip, the one I nicknamed Wobbly, reminds me—twang by painful twang—why I’m a shut-in at age 38.

Finally a heralding tune trumpets.

Success! My knight has answered!

* * *

Squire0829: what do u have in mind 2nite?

WobblyWinnie: Shocked. Usually y’all are only around in the daytime for, like, hikes, tennis, golfing, boating…

Squire0829: yeah, ik. typical healthcore yuppie shit. i got windburn from sailing 2day. but rent’s due. extra hours help.

WobblyWinnie: My idea’s kinda stupid.

Squire0829: try me. upfront tho: if ur a weirdo I’ll block & report.

WobblyWinnie: I don’t want something fancy or sporty or weird. Can you just…take me dancing?

Squire0829: hmmm.

…

…

…

Squire0829: standby. linking in 5.

* * *

My pulse races. I’ve never asked anyone to go dancing before, let alone another woman who’ll now let me ride along, tucked inside her consciousness, tinier than a flea. 

But here we are.

Squire0829 has just sauntered into this nightclub I used to know. Pastel lights strobe against smoke. Music throbs, vaguely goth and mopey, last century’s depression reinterpreted, made uptempo. Ice chinks against Squire0829’s teeth as she drains the pink daiquiri I requested.

Then the sweetness hits me, chased by the shiver of vodka.

Some say skinsharing is wearing a person. I don’t like this line of thinking.

Yes, I’m inside Squire0829, sorta. But it’s not like a nesting doll tucked in another, bigger doll with cutouts for eyes and ears. No, I’m carried inside her mind, featherlight and safe, held. Shadowing her senses and proprioception, while her thoughts remain private, sacrosanct.

She squares her shoulders, then strides towards the dance floor. Loose-limbed, long-legged, confident. Everyone watches…she’s that kind of person. Magnetic, radiant, rare.

It always impresses me, what physical health feels like. I’m not just inside another person, but I’m in another place. A far-off island shrouded in mist, one I used to know, that I row toward daily but haven’t been able to reach for years.

* * *

Squire0829 dances with everyone and nobody, all at once. I catch the flash of admiring eyes, lips parting appreciatively to show teeth. She may not be an expert, but she has natural grace, creativity. She’s an athlete. Her heart beats steady and she isn’t winded. It feels like we can—if we choose—go all night.

She weaves in and out and around the other dancers. Soon they begin to part, drawing back, a dazzling tidal force.

I can’t believe it! They’ve opened the center of the floor for us! 

A ball plated in mirrors spins above, raining its confetti of lights. People clap and stomp, and a message lights up my visor:

Squire0829: ok, now it’s all you, girl. 🙂 git in there, show ‘em what you’ve got.

And I’m healthy and strong, and I’m dancing and cutting my own moves, and I do this until the roots of her—our—hair are wet with sweat, until beads of it spill down our back like a broken necklace, until everyone’s cheering and clapping us on the shoulders good-naturedly as the music fades, as we finally make our way out to head home.

Squire0829 limps, but just a little.

Still, I’m surprised by that.

* * *

WobblyWinnie: Real talk: I’m disabled so…yeah. Bed-bound. Tonight…it’s meant the world to me.

Squire0829: yeah, been down in the dumps myself. washed-up olympic hopeful. damn sprained ankle before the trials…it bunged up everything for me. I hadn’t yet found my footing.

WobblyWinnie: My destiny was set at birth. Shit DNA. Born too long back for gene edits…

So…

Listen, can we meet again sometime?

Squire0829: absolutely! 5 star review headed yr way. 🙂

WobblyWinnie: Back atcha. :)))

* * *

I lay the visor on my bedside table. The stars on my ceiling fade as morning materializes.

Claretta had so carefully made up my bed with her precise hospital corners. Now it’s a mess of tangled sheets. The tech usually dampens your ability to move, forces muscle atonia so you lie still and inert. 

Seems these frail legs of mine revolted last night, and my new friend and I? We truly danced.

* * *

Ⓒ Jennifer Lesh Fleck