The bass drops, vibrating through the original Douglas fir floorboards of the old cathedral. I land softly, rolling through the spine. I turn sixty today, yet I am lighter than I was at twenty. Back then, I was heavy with dissociation, a ghost haunting my own skin, utterly disembodied. It took decades of somatic work to finally inhabit this frame, to replace that numbness with this fluidity.

The track shifts to something primal, heavy with drums. I crouch low, slapping the wood, claiming my square footage in this sea of a hundred sweating bodies. My face crumples; I let the old grief and sudden, animal fear ripple through my jaw, eyes wide, acting out a silent scream. Tears mix with the sweat dripping off my nose, and it feels holy.

Then, the melody breaks—a high, flute-like synth. The fear dissolves into a massive, golden-retriever grin. I explode upward, arms wide.

I lock eyes with a tall guy near the altar. I initiate, tossing a wave of energy his way. He catches it, grinning back, and we spiral around each other, a non-verbal conversation of pure kinetic joy. I see others watching—a woman in linen, a younger guy in athletic gear— and their faces soften. They feed off this battery pack I’m carrying.

Outside, the stained-glass twilight gives way to the high, crisp brightness of the afternoon. We migrate to the nearby park, a slow-moving caravan of sweaty, smiling pilgrims, and soon the grass is hidden beneath a patchwork of colorful blankets.

I unpack my lunch, the sun warming my damp shirt while the air stays comfortably cool—that perfect, sharp San Francisco spring weather. Around us, dogs blur past in joyful, chaotic orbits, chasing tennis balls and each other.

The conversation flows as easily as the movement did earlier; there’s no friction, no awkward small talk. It’s a specific kind of intimacy. I might not know the name of the person passing me a container of berries, but ten minutes ago, we were mirroring each other’s chaos on the floor. I know how they grieve and how they celebrate because I saw it in their spine and their hands. We are technically strangers, yet the silent language of the dance has already done the introductions. We sit in that familiar comfort, eating together like old friends who just happen to be meeting for the first time.

Then I notice her—mid-thirties, sitting on the edge of a blue blanket. She’s the same woman who stopped me earlier, the one who caught me off guard by telling me I have striking features. She’d looked right at me and mentioned my “beautiful eyes and long eyelashes.” I had blushed then, confused by the sudden praise, and I feel that same heat rising up my neck now.

She’s looking at me sideways, fidgeting slightly with a blade of grass, clearly wanting to bridge the gap but waiting for a signal. The blood rushes to my cheeks, hot and undeniable, but I don’t look away. Instead, I turn my body fully toward her, claiming the moment.

“Hi, good to see you again,” I say, my voice steady despite the flush.

“Hi,” she replies, breaking into a big, beaming smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes.

I lean in just a little, eager to keep the momentum going. “So, what do you like to do?”

A warmth begins deep in my pelvis—a rich, rising heat that travels up through my torso, flooding my chest and climbing toward my neck.

Then Varan, the reptile, wakes up.

He clamps down on my neck.

Sudden.
Strangling tightness.

The warmth never reaches the surface of my face.

Varan: “Sex is dangerous. Stop.”

The heat hits a wall. Before I can breathe, Chorus chimes in. “She is so much younger than you. Shame on you! People will mock you. You look like her father.”

The transformation is instant. The flush of life drains out of me as if someone pulled a plug. My face goes starkly pale. My eyes, which had been bright and inviting moments ago, go hollow and distant.

I drop my awareness instantly to my hips, seeking the damp, solid earth beneath the wool blanket. I demand that the ground hold me.

Varan is there immediately, tightening the screws on my neck, hissing, “Stop. Danger.”
Chorus ramps up the shame, screaming, “Old man. Creep.”

I fight back, but clumsily. I shove the panic down and overcompensate, widening my smile until the muscles tremble. I lean in, perhaps a fraction too eagerly, projecting a hyper-focused interest to drown out the noise inside. My face feels hot, animated, vibrating with the effort to look relaxed. But I know I am not fully online. Varan and Chorus have seized the territory of my throat and chest; my body is not free.

She answers, seemingly unaware of the civil war inside me—or perhaps just polite enough to ignore the slight manic edge to my attention. “I’m a graphic designer, mostly freelance. But honestly? I mostly just like to wander the city. Get lost on purpose. See what happens.”

I force air through my constricted throat to bridge the gap.

“Getting lost,” I manage. My voice sounds thinner than before, stripped of its lower resonance, the sound of a man speaking through a tightened vice. But I get the words out. “That is… usually when the best things happen.”

I hold my ground, stiff and terrified, but present.

That night, I leave the day behind and walk a trail into wilderness. I find a grassy hollow anchored by a redwood, spread my blanket, and surrender my weight to the earth.

Lying beneath the redwood, I feel the shell of social conformity crack and fall away. I become porous, my skin no longer a boundary but a gateway for the wilderness. I feel myself as forest: a living density of roots working in the dark, alive with my own impulses—birds and snakes deep in a rainforest. As the crickets vibrate through my marrow, a thought sparks—clear and sharp against the dark.

Varan and Chorus… they are just bodily memories—ghosts stored in the muscle, not present dangers. They can’t hurt. Let them have their own life in the body. Let everything flow.