laps

one night, back when i was
good-looking and sexy,
i think i was around 25 or so,
i decided to run laps naked on
the university track.
it was around 2 a.m.
it was summertime.
the temperature was hot. and
the air was humid. it was cloudy.
there was
no moon, no stars. and back then,
they didn't have any lights
on the university track.
well, i ran a bunch of laps naked,
and, then, i put on my clothes,
and, as luck would have it,
right after i got dressed,
a policeman pulled up beside
the track, walked over to me,
and asked to see my i.d.
he was a young policeman,
cute, sexy.
well,
i felt i was in no trouble at
all, since, when i had
been running those laps,
it was so dark that no one
could have possibly seen that
i was naked.
surely this was just routine, what
the policeman was doing now.
surely i wasn't about to
be in any trouble.
still, though, i remember being
worried.
i pulled out my i.d.
i was a university employee
at the time, and i had a university i.d.
he looked at it.
looked at me.
it was dark, but he was using
a flashlight, and i could
see something in his eyes
that made me a bit jittery.
"this is a university facility,"
he said. "i'm just making sure
it's only being used
by university students and
personnel."
"that's me," i told him. "personnel."
i was a lab technician at
the time, as i recall.
veterinary medicine.
so my i.d. was in order.
and i told him i couldn't sleep,
lived nearby, and
was just out running some laps
in hopes it'd help me sleep.
i said i could usually get
a good night's sleep
after i ran a couple miles.
he nodded, looked at me
kind of funny, and
then said fine, no trouble,
just checking.
and gave me this odd
kind of look,
and off he went.
leaving me standing
there in the dark,
by the track, hot,
and sweaty.
now, i'm 63 years old,
and thinking back,
trying to remember all the
details, though of course
i can't remember each
and every one.
still, i remember i did
that more than once: stripped
off all my clothes and ran
naked in the dark of night
on the university track.
i looked good back then.
i was sexy.
and sometimes, still
naked, i'd lie down
on a bunch of mats
that were inside the track,
and i'd jerk off,
lying there under
the stars in the hot
night sky.
i never got caught.
i could have been, though.
and i know now, and i knew it
then, too, that
what i was doing was
crazy, not just goofy crazy,
but the real actual most-likely
insane kind of
crazy. i never got caught, though,
and that night with the
policeman was the
closest call
i ever had. and i think
he knew what i'd been
up to. i think he
knew i'd been naked. somehow
he must have gotten a
good enough
look at me when i was
running those laps.
but, frankly,
i think that he
took pity on me that night.
his eyes, they were
kind, and kind of
awkward, too.
eyes belonging to
a guy who didn't much
know what to do
about this kind
of trouble. a guy who maybe
didn't want
to think about it too much,
because of what this kind
of trouble might
legally require him to do.
**
now, thinking back
on all this years and years
later,
i wonder if
he would have
had sex with
me if i'd
asked him to.
**
he was young and good-looking,
just like me. and those eyes, so
kind, so awkward, so.... something
indescribable, there in
that flashlight-lit
darkness.
**
just
one of those
things you think about,
i suppose,
as time goes by.

--Carl Miller Daniels (2015)