Lack of Wanting
An excerpt from a screenplay or a novel, I can't decide.
Happy Wednesday! Here is another excerpt from my current writing project, Everybody Hurts (about two Queer friends road-tripping to their dead friend’s memorial). Full frontal fiction is for paid subscribers only, but all subscribers get a lil taste, and there will be more public essays coming soon. ♥︎ x, Lex
“We’re gonna look for this spot I used to know on the Lackawanna,” Cato announces with the confidence of a former local who has heard this word so many times it has lost its meaning, except for the meaning he’s made of it.
Lackawanna River. I’m sure it’s some greedy miner’s careless interpretation of the Lenape or Algonquin. It was hard for me to hear it without my brain extracting the words that made sense to me: lack, want. Lack of Wanting River. I shame myself for this but I can’t stop thinking lack of wanting, lack of wanting, lack of wanting.
In this moment, I’d like it to wash me under, nothing left to want.
The white noise machine of its rushing gushes on the other side of some itchy, tall plants that threaten to close us in on the tiny line of a path I assume is only tread by people serious about fishing (why do I only see men in my mind?) and people trying to have a private place to get high or have their sex in secret (my mind is overrun with hearty Pennsylvania men seeking flesh and pleasure).
“Are there ticks here?” I yell several glides-worth behind Cato, and he doesn’t turn back to answer but I think I hear him say,
“Of course there are ticks here” and then I feel the legs of a thousand ticks crawling up my ankles and spine.
Cato is clad in his dad’s contemporary waders, and (lucky me!) there was an extra pair from his youth in the garage. They have rubber boot bottoms and I couldn’t imagine walking in this heat with them at the time. Now I want nothing more than to slide my sweaty exposed legs into their slimy sheaths to keep the crawlies out. But Cato walks too fast. A man on a mission that I know I encouraged but regret encouraging now.
The ugly and relentless plants are closing us in on this tiny path, and they tickle and scratch at my face. In spite of its thrum, I can’t imagine we’ll ever see this Lackawanna we’re wanting.