The Sieve

Sieve
By Randee Dawn

I am falling, falling, swiftly and weightlessly and I can almost feel the steamy air beneath me part as I cut a swathe through it, tumbling, freefall. I am godlike, I can fly, even if flying is only descent, I am vulnerable and inevitable at the same time. I am falling.
And then I land.

"Asshole!" he hears from the pit below, "Get your boot offa me!"
"Hey," they shout from under him, even as they support him, trembling arms clutching every limb of his body, "Move the fuck over, I can't see!"
Swiftly, like a fragile plague they can't avoid but don't want to keep they pass him hand to hand, and as the shorter ones grab hold of his belt, his shirt, his hair he dips for a second only to rise again over the soft cushiony grip of tens of people. He is floating and in his ears the Gigolo Aunts are raging with their grandstanding pop and the singer is wailing "where I find my heaven" and he thinks, for a moment, that he's found his own and then he drops all the way down.
A stranger catches him halfway, lowering him on to the sticky black floor where instantly he feels his feet on solid ground again, and he hates it. He is always right back where he began, in the back, struggling like a lemming forward, to the stage and whoever happens to be on it. A girl gives him a sneering look and for a moment he realizes most of the women are in the back of the room. It's a wise choice, he thinks for a second, since if they try to float as he does hands feel them, grope, and tear. It reminds him of that movie, that old movie about those punks who live in abandoned houses in the suburbs. There's a scene where a slut in a dress tries to slam dance and instead gets her dress torn off, and naturally she has no underwear on, not even panties, and she screams and she screams....
Behind him he turns, hearing shouts. Someone else is surfing the crowd now and he feels the instinctual tug, stronger than the music itself, the music which really only supplies the backbeat for the soaring, frenzied feeling of floating on people's hands, and he wedges himself back into the thick, pulsing crowd.

Paul mixes more milk into his Cheerios, staring at the oat life preservers as they bob on the waves, hypnotized by grain because it is seven-thirty in the morning and he has only gotten five hours of sleep. His mother is talking, he can hear her somewhere in the background but it is like she is under water. He shovels an overfull spoon into his mouth, the cold milk dribbling down his chin and looks up at his mother, who is in mid sentence and spreading mayonnaise on his sandwich.
".....is enough," she is saying, but he isn't sure what is enough so he tries to tune in. "I mean, you've got your SATs on Saturday and Jason says you haven't gone to any of the review courses, or if you go you leave during the halfway break, and I just can't imagine how you expect to get scores high enough that even Maryland will let you in. I just can't see why you don't realize when enough...."
Of course, she doesn't mean the state of Maryland letting him in; Paul already lives there, she is referring to the University. He marvels when his mother talks in circles, like a mantra, or a rosary she repeats over and over again. They learned about the calming effects of mantras in his Comparative Religions class a few months ago and since then Paul has tried to learn everyone's. By clueing in he sees how his mother talks around and around, how his father's rhythmic patter on the plumbing, or the car is soothing, how his younger sister's constant "the car, Paul, a lesson today, please?" is a mantra. It makes people feel safe, to repeat themselves. Thinks Paul, it gives them a place to feel they are safe.
The only noise coming from his mother now is silence, and Paul panics, shoving another spoon of cereal into his mouth and nearly gagging on the spoon. "Mhmm," he mumbles through his Cheerios.
"I certainly hope so," his mother has stopped making his sandwich and waves the mayonnaise-streaked knife at him. Paul wonders what he has promised to do this time. "Because if you think you're just going to coast on into any old college you're wrong, buster. Not with your grades. MC is not where I want you headed."
The thought of going to the local community college makes Paul gag for real. They call it Harvard-on-the-'Pike but to Paul it is 13th grade, nothing better. "I'll be fine, mom," he says. "I'll do okay on the SATs, don't worry."
She eyes him suspiciously and hands him his lunch in a neatly folded brown bag. He knows he won't eat it; he and the guys will use their lunch break to grab some tickets to tonight's concert, because Hole are playing and he's hoping to watch their bitchy singer Courtney throw herself into the crowd.
"I do worry, Paul, I do," his mom says, but for a moment she transforms into Hole's singer and he has to blink away the image. "I know you think I'm a nag, but your father and I aren't always going to be around to remind you of these things. We can't always be your safety net."

I reach the front of the stage eventually and always allow for a quick glance back, into the shiny pale faces behind me, jammed against one another like cattle. I saw a TV show once where they stuck a hundred steers into a tiny fenced area and then forced them one by one through this narrow opening, then shot them as they came out. I look at Courtney, whose dress is ratty and smudged, whose legs are bruised and she stares down at me for a second, eyes like bullets and I know she hates me, she hates all of us really, so I clamber up on the stage.
And there I am, for just a second, with a picture of the grinding crowd below, their waving arms like worms, calling to me, swearing allegiance and loyalty. They will always be there for me. I am about to jump, to dive face first into them and then I feel a nudge -- a push really -- and off balance I tumble into the people.
I am falling. I fall without grace but gravity forgives me and I fall anyway, and in the split second before I land I think, Courtney has pushed me.
And then I land and when I do my hearing returns and Courtney is screeching, "Was she asking for it?" and I think I certainly was myself and the hands pass me over and back, down and up, a slithery roller coaster above which I reign. I feel safe, secure, once again I have been caught. I am passed up to the stage again but this time a burly bouncer takes hold of my legs and pulls me toward him. I recognize this bouncer; they hire some of these guys from the college to make sure none of us gets hurt, ever since that one kid fell they think they have to take care of us when we fly. He gives me a dirty look, and sets me free. Then I run to the back again.
I want to fly again.
And, I want to land.

He has always gotten what he wanted. After a fashion. Certainly, he did not get Cindy Crawford for his fifteenth birthday a few years back, and his parents gave him their old Buick instead of a new Lamborghini for his sixteenth. And when he was very young his little sister did not die a slow and painful death when he glared at her, so in a sense, he has not always gotten what he wanted. But he has gotten what he needed.
He needed better grades to go ice fishing with Jason last Christmas, fine, he stayed in a few nights and let others fly for him, and his grades rose as if by his sheer will. He wanted to dance with Polly Silver at the youth dances in 7th grade, and when he asked her she shyly said yes. He wanted a job working in that summer camp because it paid well, and he got it. Somehow, without any real arrogance, he also knows he will get at least an 1100 on his SATs on Saturday. When he has worked for what he wanted he has always been rewarded, with extra credit, with a smile, with his freedom. It is, he thinks, a pleasure to know that everything comes in its own sweet time. Sometimes, he panics at the thought of losing his lifetime security, that some day, it will all go away. His stomach will gurgle and he feels cold sweats, because somehow he has managed to figure out too early in life that everything might not be predestined for him.
So he flies.

Paul kept the article. Underneath his socks he stowed the column from the Washington Post from last summer, and thought about it until he had to touch it, and then he would take it out of the drawer again to read.
His name had been Scotty. He had played basketball, his photo showed a square-jawed boy with a close crewcut. The day the photo had been taken he had a zit on his chin. Paul sometimes marveled that Scotty would always have that zit on his chin. No one except his parents would remember him otherwise. Scotty had flown, oh did he fly.
Paul had not been there that night. Some local band was playing, and he didn't have time for local bands, so he had stayed in. That night, said the article, Scotty had passed the notice of the bouncers and managed to climb atop the enormous speaker on stage right. Paul could imagine how the rumbling of the bass under his feet would have felt, to actually feel the music in your chest and under your feet, thought Paul, was to feel charged, and alive.
At so at his most alive moment Scotty had swan dived into a crowd that felt threatened by a 160 pound boy plummeting into them from twelve feet above, and parted like sheep. Later on, Paul talked to people who had been there and they said he never even opened his eyes during descent, just swan dived into oblivion and cracked his skull wide open on the sticky, black floor.
But, thinks Paul, he really flew. He flew straight into eternity.

I remember the first time I flew. I hadn't meant to, but I was dying. I owned my half square foot of space at the front of the club, having stood there for an hour waiting for the Inspiral Carpets to take the stage. But as the hour approached, the crowd pressed ever more forward, and there was nowhere for me to go. Shoved up hard against the metal barrier in front of the stage, by the time the band came out I could barely breathe. Adrenaline surged through my head as they launched into their first songs and I fought back against the ever-pressing crowd, the steers burrowing into my back. I pushed into them, fighting with people I couldn't even see. And then I lost my balance and slammed into the barrier, the wind knocked from me. My chest felt as if a truck had driven over it, and no one even stopped to notice. The singer just mumbled, "This is how it feels when your world means nothing at all" and I gasped audibly.
Then I saw him, some anonymous raver, caught by my glance in mid air as he soared over the heads of the first few rows and landed in the mattress of arms. The next moment I climbed over the barrier and onto the lip of the stage, a foot away from the singer who eyeballed me, daring me to do it.
I stared out into the crowd and they stared back at me and then I was flying, my momentum carrying me through space, and the world dropped away. I fell and I flew, thinking of all of the arms waiting for me below. I tasted the inside of my mouth, the colors of the room bled into one mass, I smelled the hair of the girl across the stage and I heard my own heart beat as I flew.
And then I landed.

He hates his cousin Lindsay. Lindsay works in Baltimore and comes over for dinner once or twice a month, since his family is the only family Lindsay has in this part of the country. He does not really think he hates Lindsay, but whenever she comes over he manages to be elsewhere, showing up at the last moment for food, and then he disappears again. Had he been asked, "Do you love your cousin?" he would answer affirmatively, but in his heart he hates Lindsay.
Lindsay has a degree but works in a record shop. She comes over and eats their food and says, "I applied for two more jobs this week," as if this is an achievement. "And our band has a show at Hammerjacks on Wednesday night."
And his father and mother cluck their tongues and say, "Maybe this one will be the right one." Or "Well, let us know when you make your first record!" False sentiments Paul does not even bother to echo. Paul has seen them give her some money as she leaves, pulling herself into a Pinto as old as he is, the one he thinks will never make it out of the driveway. He resents that she works and still his parents give her money. He thinks, what a loser, she even went through college and can't get a job.
Once, Lindsay drove them to the Giant for some salad and Coke. As he piled Bacos onto the vibrant greens and oranges from the salad bar, he eyed Lindsay suspiciously, and kept several feet from her, as if she had a virus.
"Why don't you talk to me?" she asked him. "You just stay in your little corner and glare. Don't you like me?"
He stopped pouring the Bacos and said, "Why don't you have a job?"
She averted her eyes and stared at the bean spouts. He could see her sigh, the fog from her breath steaming up the plastic salad bar roof. "I do have a job, Paul."
"Yeah, a lame one," he said. "I could work in a record store."
She stared at him, her eyes wide and luminous, and he had not liked their glint. "You probably will, Paul, you probably will."

And so he flies. The hands are always there for him, to catch him and carry him along. But there was that one time, when he dipped into the crowd almost to the floor, and as he was buoyed back up caught the stare of a sullen girl, arms folded as if to say, I don't have any intention of helping you, asshole. Sometimes, he thinks, the net is weak. There are places, dry patches, where no one stands sometimes. But it holds, the arms always come back for him. And no matter how many times he flies, it will always support him, lead him on. Thinks Paul, someone will always catch me. I am flying.
And I will never land.