Summer Night

Laying on that trampoline, in the backyard of some friend-of-a-friends’ house, drunk on sickly sweet Vodka drinks, fruit, though they all tasted of sugar, and the balmy Summer night air. Every tiny little hair on my body caressed by every little breeze. I can feel it, as though the gentle hands of a lover, dancing over my skin.

Laying under stars, too many to count.

We’re far from the city and every little pin-prick light looks brighter than anything I’ve ever seen on the inky blackness of the clear night.

I can hear the laughter from the party further up towards the house. I can hear the beat of the wing of a barn owl as it moves from eucalypt to eucalypt. I focus on the sound that a cooler breeze makes through the grass, longer than it should maybe be, under the trampoline.

Absentmindedly, my arms reach above my head, stretching, and every single muscle in my body I can feel tense and relax. I am acutely aware of every inch of myself, but only that I am here. There’s no self-consciousness. It’s just an awareness of the body that I am anchored to, laying on the trampoline, the weave taught beneath.

Footsteps coming in my direction pull my attention. They’re uneven, inebriated.

‘I’d wonder where’d you’d gotten to- if you’d left’

‘No.’

There seems no need for words, and my voice feels lost in amongst the cacophony of the Summer night, the party back up at the house and both the near stillness of the night deafening.

The trampoline shifts, and my body with it.

A hand reaches out to clasp mine. It is warm, and rough and I feel as though it’s swallowing my hand whole.

Instinctively, I turn to the man beside me, aided by the gravity the weight of his body has caused on the trampoline. His skin feels hot, radiating outwards and it feels at once suffocating and comforting.

‘Are you okay?’ I can hear concern. People are always so concerned when you go off just to be. Especially when you’ve been drinking. And I know I should be up at the party, making good impressions and laughing along to other peoples’ inside jokes that they always revert to when drunk.

‘Yes.’

I mean it. But the night is just so beautiful, and I want to feel a part of it.

He turns to look at me, to probe my face to see if I am giving him a genuine answer. My lips reach out to seek his in response. My hand, resting softly on his cheek. The stubble on my palm is rough, the skin beneath my fingertips, soft and burning hot.

Bourbon. Velvet. Warm. Stale cigarette. In that order.

I turn back over to look again to the stars, arching my back and my neck and groaning as I stretch. I can feel his body relax into the trampoline, our sides pressed together.

There are people calling his name now, wandering down from the party.

‘Would you like to come back up for another drink?’ As he sits up in a less-than-smooth motion, and his legs swing over the side of the trampoline.

‘No’. And I smile at him, and it is not forced.

His search party reach closer, and I smile at them too, my ears still focused on the night. I can hear the wings of the barn owl carry it further away from the noise they’ve brought down from the party. From their laughter. It is loud, but it is joy.

They walk back up to the party, with my short-lived visitor in tow. I can hear him laugh.

The near stillness of the balmy Summer night returns, and I close my eyes.