night breezes

I'm outside in the hammock under the Big Dipper, distant firework rumbles, and pulsing red lights in the sky that are alien to me although I know them to be aeroplanes. It's not so late, but it is so quiet. The air is mostly still, and today was hot enough that the usual night chill is barely even present in the breeze. Outside in the hammock under the stars, on the laptop. Now that is modern.

Life is strange and cyclical, and it's either the Spanish coffee I just had at Huber's or the cool night air that takes me back, but I remember all of those summer nights twelve years ago, the end of high school and edge of something else. I worked at a video production company, my first web development job. I would get to the office in Silver Spring around 10am in my uniform of cut-short thrift store skirts, fishnets and little boy's soccer tshirts.

After work I'd go home and make plans with Matt, Grace, or Adam. Matt was difficult to get in touch with because although he was my best friend, he had fallen for a punk rock dream and the drummer of the Snark Outs. I'd leave a message with his little brother, and Matt would call me back later with the promise that we'd hang out when school started and his girlfriend went back to Beloit. That's not how it went come September, but I must've known even then.

What did I do to while away those evening hours? What I remember best is emerging when the night had coagulated and its density allowed me to pull the parking brake, roll out of the driveway and down to the end of the street before starting the car and turning on the headlights. I'd pick up Grace, go to Tastee Diner (the original one in Silver Spring until it went non-smoking, and then the one in Bethesda), maybe go to Adam's house. Or downtown to Dupont Circle via Rock Creek Park with its unmapped curves and streetlights permanently dark to conserve energy. We'd gulp down the terrible brew at Soho coffeehouse on P Street, or walk around to see what was open.

There was so much darkness, road, and dashboard glow. That's how it felt just now out in the hammock. I won't get home at dawn, though, to sneak in the back door closed just enough so that the lock doesn't engage.

After I moved out of my parents' house when I was 17, the first time I came home at dawn was a let-down. No quiet tiptoeing, headlights blazing, and costume from the Industrial night intact. The whole charm of the summer was based on darkness and secrecy. Where are the secrets that make adulthood a precious commodity? Which are the quintessential bits of experience on which I'll look fondly back? Memory is an odd bird, and its flight path is lost in the thick summer night.