Short
Ode to My Dock
by Allie Rowbottom
I had just slept, for the first time, with the man who would become my husband. We were in bed in my ugly apartment north of Los Angeles. Sweaty, sheets tangled. His hands in my hair. “What do you think of when you jerk off?” he whispered.
A pause as I considered. Then opted for the truth.
“I think of a dock.”
“You think of a dock,” he repeated, no question mark.
“I think of a long, strong dock,” I continued, “stretching into a lake. Still water and silence all around. Not another soul in sight. Just me on the edge, naked, coming for an invisible audience. I know they’re there, but I can’t see them.”
Another, longer silence. “Oh,” he finally said. And changed the subject, his disappointment palpable.
I was only 23, then. When I closed my eyes, I could still picture the dock of my fantasy as it had been in reality: furred with sheet moss, stretching not into a lake but an earthen pond, green and teeming. This was in Vermont. I was 12. And left my mother in the kitchen of her new house, unpacking boxes. “To be alone,” I said.
I crossed the driveway, the dirt road, rutted to gullies. I entered the woods, picked my way down a steep hill. Paused when I saw the pond, dock stretched to the middle like an offering arm. Still spring air, the low droning of cicadas. I walked to the edge, boards creaking.
My mother, too, was alone. Had left her husband, my father, to be so, and now was safe. Was she lonely? When her New Age neighbour with the prayer beads and skinny scarf took her to dinner, wanted to fuck, she felt unsafe again. Started to lock the front door. Sex felt too… she waved her hands to signify chaos. She wasn’t ready, she told me. And he was angry, pushy, when she said so. She was finished with men. Might never fuck again. To my knowledge, she never did.
Alone, on the edge of the dock, I peered through murky water, the world below shielded by weeds and lily pads. I lay on my belly, looked closer. Little fish darted and danced down into darkness. A world I couldn’t see. Was not entirely sure I wanted to. But kept looking, anyway.
Later, my looking took me to cities and clubs, to sex shops and strip joints and SATC binges. Sometimes, it was like watching myself on the edge of the dock, an erotic object for my own consumption. More often, the looking was like knocking on a locked door, knowing no one’s home. I could almost join in the moment, but never quite. It was like hovering outside my body, a spectator to its failures: no pleasure, no orgasm, no little death when the soul steps forward. Like night swimming, casting about in dark waters. In over my head, trying to find a ladder, a dock. Something to hang onto.
“If water represents sexuality–” my husband starts. We’re sitting in our small office, desks almost touching. We are always together, rarely alone. His is the only company in which I feel objectified, personified, somehow all at once. His is the only company in which I feel completely safe.
No, that is a lie. Sometimes I feel unsafe, even with him. Man to whom I’ve been married a decade. Fucking for longer. But those moments are fleeting. And I know he has them too.
“Doesn’t water represent the unconscious?” I say.
“I think it represents sex,” he says. We squabble for a moment, then resolve to look it up.
“If it does represent sex,” he continues, “the dock is a removal. Where you can be close but not immersed. You know you won’t drown.”
From this perspective, the dock feels practical. Who wants to drown?
“It’s sort of sad,” he adds, “that even in fantasy, you’re so concerned with safety.”
But what if the dock is more than just a lifeline? A pedestal. A stage.
We return to our work. Return, later, to each other. Put on red lights and pull the curtains closed. “Shut the windows,” I say, “lock the door.” As if we’re not alone. He shuts the windows. Locks the door. Watches me as I sprawl on the bed, putting on a show. When we fuck, he places his hands over my eyes. Softly, like a kindness. Like he can feel me drifting and wants to pin me down. It’s dark this way. There’s so much I can’t see. I keep looking anyway.
