five ways of looking at the boat launch

a creative nonfiction essay

I: 

There is a little boat launch near the town cafe: a strip of pavement that slopes deep into the water, and a wooden dock that rises and falls with the tide every day. You could say it’s in the middle of town, or somewhat a central place for us Thorne Bay folk, because it’s between the city docks and the Port. People use it to put their boats in the ocean–someone slowly backs their truck in while someone else stands on the dock and guides them (those people were my parents a long time ago). People also go there to jump in and cool off on a hot day, or to clear their heads when the sun is going down and its final light kisses the water. 

II:

Seaweed clings to the dock, waving its arms around in the dirty ocean and tickling our legs if we get too close. I always thought it looked like mermaid hair shimmering in the sunlight, though it became less magical to me as I got older. One time the seaweed was blonde and it took me a good thirty seconds to realize it was actually somebody’s hair–my friend’s hair. “Did you know that there’s air underneath the dock?” said a muffled voice. “I discovered it that one time I got stuck underneath a boat.”

III:

Alana told me that people came to the boat launch to dump human waste, and that her mom didn’t want her swimming there. I didn’t believe her and she didn’t care, so we went and swam there anyway, sometimes making our way out to the tiny lump of an island and cutting our feet on merciless barnacles. There was one day we were standing on the little dock, but I had already decided I didn’t want to swim because it was later in the afternoon and the air was cold and gray. Alana pushed me in, leaving me disoriented as I thrashed around in the water. I swam back to shore and met her on the dock, and before I could tell her to “please don’t do that,” she pushed me in again. The tide was mostly out, so the water was especially murky and it flooded my throat in all its glory and slime. 

IV:

Someone got married at the boat launch once. I wasn’t there, but I saw some pictures and I could already imagine it perfectly: rows and rows of rusty brown folding chairs, bouquets of hand picked flowers, women wearing floral dresses, a sparkling bay to the left of them. Most people who get married in Thorne Bay will invite the whole town, because everybody knows everybody and some of them likely changed the newlywed’s diapers when they were small and chubby. This particular wedding was right by that old ramp–my sister claimed it was her idea. “I told Taylor that this would be the perfect place to have a wedding, and I was right,” she said. “I always pictured myself getting married there.” 

V:

A boy sat on the edge of the boat launch dock, gripping a bottle of Gold Peak tea like his life depended on it, like he expected someone to take it from him. I knew him–because everybody knew everybody–he went to my school and his name was Payton. Some friends and I were there to play and jump in the water, and we did that as Payton paid us no attention and simply stared straight ahead. I wondered what was in his mind that day, behind eyes that rained even though the sun was out for the first time in a while. I didn’t picture myself sitting at the end of that ancient dock myself just a few years later, wishing I could sink into that murky ocean water and let it swallow me whole.