Venice

A little romance.

I woke at five in the morning. My roommates were still asleep, and there was nobody to talk with about my night or even hint that something possibly wonderful had happened with the girl I’d been telling them about. I bobbed about my bedroom, standing up and sitting down, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I went out for a bike ride, bristling with a wild energy that had only increased overnight and needed to vent or transform itself into some new form or rhythm.

I pedaled from our Venice apartment and down to the ocean, then around the Marina del Rey inlet, through the clustered parking areas and the whirlwinds of morning trash, past the long skinny sheds that house the crew boats, over the pedestrian bridge, past the empty volleyball nets, past the grittily steadfast early morning joggers who would never understand my joy.

I biked through the seaweed breeze coming off the sand and through the ocean’s morning smells, past more scattered beachfront litter and then on towards LAX and t…