Cushing

N 35°58'36.3," W 096°45'55.0"

The light is dying in Cushing before I even eat my sandwich. There's two carnicerias and a ratty looking nail salon nearby, and I watch the grime revealed by sharp yellow light fade and mellow out to gold, to orange, to a rich purple. Seven people order subs while I sit and eat. No one comes in alone, but in groups of two and three. I'm the outlier. I'm the guy traveling across the country on a bicycle.
I know I've probably explained my journey a hundred times or more already. I'm not precisely tired of telling people why I'm running off after adventure, but I have noticed I give a different reason every time. Sometimes, I'm running away from a job I didn't feel was enough to fulfill me, but other times I'm running towards a person I want to be. Sometimes, I tell the person about Delight, and sometimes I make believe that a story read to me in childhood was enough to entice me into this frankly insane quest for--for what? Self-actualization? Healing? Experience? I'm starting to feel extremely lonely. The girl making sandwiches is cute. Not as bone-shakingly cute as the girl I haven't met yet in San Jon at the 24-hour Indian food restaurant. She had a tasteful tattoo and an "I hate this town" hairstyle. She didn't know what a lassi was until the other clerk called it a sweet yogurt. The sandwich girl is not as everyday cute as the gamer on Couchsurfing in Virginia who shocked me by messaging back at all. I was getting desperate with rain coming on and I sent out a dozen feelers. She got back with "Sucks I'm getting on a plane to Australia right now. You seem like we could be friends!" She's just sandwich girl cute. With all my concentration, I'm struggling to focus on nothing, if I can't focus on the sunset. I'm feeling guilty that this woman I don't know is reduced to the floating head and arms I can see above the bar and the smiles she slides across the sandwich fixings. My gut twists at making comparisons between her and other girls I've known or met, at ranking her against my wife. I've just finished reading Thinking Fast and Slow, and my self-directed bile is remarkably intellectual. I lecture myself. Humans rank the unrankable by establishing a heuristic to establish an intensity of feeling. It's the intensity of that feeling I'm ranking, classifying, comparing. How dare you reduce a complex woman to a single attribute? How dare you compare humans? But I can do it because my heuristic today is easy to articulate.
How much does this girl make me miss her?

The biggest park in Cushing is only ten or eleven blocks away to my southwest. As I pedal, I occasionally reach over the handlebars to readjust the headlight so maybe it won't blind the oncoming traffic, but still illuminate the road. I pass a church whose basement lights were on. I pass a grade school that gives me a sharp pang of nostalgia for my own classroom. The road is empty, though. Nothing is happening tonight. As the park rises up in front of me, I skirt the edge, scoping out a copse of trees on the far edge. Two dogs run off a front porch to chase me until the man on the steps barks a short "Hey!" and I slip away into the dark, past the baseball diamonds, to the perfect place. The lights are so far away I know I'll go unnoticed. The paths are all yards away. The parking lots are all further still. I change out of my riding bib down in the bottom of a drainage ditch and set up my hammock. I toss the e-reader in with my sleeping bag and heave a huge sigh. It's only seven, and I'm not tired yet. I'm dissatisfied, and there's nobody interesting to watch.
Only a week prior, I had been laughing at a couple in Seneca, Missouri. That day, I had arrived at the city park that parallels Little Lost Creek. I made macaroni and cheese on my camp stove, and when I lit it, the fireball of igniting gas fumes made a little girl jump and shout "He's starting a fire!" Her three friends all gasped in utter disbelief, and I turned around to face them with a huge frown.
"It's a stove. I'm making mac and cheese." I shook the box.
"Oh." She didn't sound like she believed me.
Ringed around the dozen elementary-aged kids on the playground, a handful of adults languished and sulked. Further away, a single gangly teenager shot up and down the creekside pathway on his skateboard. He didn't seem committed to it. Every time the board slowed on an uphill, he'd kick the tail and grab the nose and carry it to the top of the next rise. He smoked a cigarette like he didn't really enjoy or need it. I didn't really look at him until his girlfriend showed up. Together, they were mesmerizing. She was tall and thin to match his wispy build, her long hair pulled back and tucked behind her ears, her orthopedic boot thumping quietly along the sidewalk. They greeted each other with a hug, and a twelve-year-old girl enthusiastically ran up to him for a fist bump hello. I watched the trio wander back and forth while my meal cooked. Mostly, the skater stayed with his crippled girl, but once or twice, he would woop and the sister would set off at a hot run with him swooping behind, racing her on his board. I took off my shoes and ate with my feet in the water, the shocking cold a kind contrast with the warm October sun. While I was down there, the trio wandered down onto a gravel bed. The boy and the sister tossed rocks to watch the splashes while the cripple leaned against a nearby tree. By the time I was washing the cheese from my pot, the trio was trooping off to their cars, his cigarette dangling between his lips, one foot on his board, the other scooting oh-so-slowly along, his hand twined with hers, the boot on her foot dragging behind at every step, the younger sister leading the way, finally looking very bored. The couple were so concerned with how the other person saw them that nearly every moment was a calculated move: his unnecessary cigarette, her I-can't-play-in-the-creek attitude, his early arrival. But this little parade with their fingers intertwined awkwardly high, with her practically pulling him along behind her on his board, this display wasn't for anyone. They just didn't know how to be together without every moment being important, somehow. I felt a brief spike of something--not jealousy, surely, but nostalgia, maybe? A feeling of missing something important, of having outgrown the heart-shaking feeling of touching knees with a girl under the table in math class. But not jealousy.
Thinking back to the skater and the cripple, that's when I spy the over-confident couple. A hundred and fifty yards away under a streetlamp, there's a man and a woman walking slowly. With sudden aggression, he turns and mashes his face against hers, leaning into her so hard that she bends over. I can see the light flash of her arms as she throws them around his neck. It can't be a gentle experience for either of them. I feel a little voyeuristic, and I know it won't paint me in a positive light, but I throw open my pannier and slide out my binoculars. With the night glasses, I can see them much better. Her body is strained into an arc, hands constantly moving across his back and through his hair. If he dropped her, she would fall over. He's practically lifting her off the ground by her butt, both hands pulling. She's a better kisser than he is. I don't even have to kiss them both to see that already. She's aware of his body, how he must feel what she's doing with hers. She moves her hands because she knows he'll like it, but he just wants to grab her butt. It starts to get gross. I put down the glasses and sit with my back to the tree. With my perspective, I don't even have to try to find reasons why this is idiotic; I can count four teens cutting through the ball field and three teens smoking in the pavilion near the bathroom. The street light overhead washes the couple in light, a beacon that screams "I'm here! Look at me!" I feel something visceral about these two. Not jealousy, certainly. But something I can't quite put into words.
Suddenly, he pulls away. The embrace is over as quickly as it began. She straightens her shirt from when his hand went all the way up inside it, and he takes six steps away and pulls out his phone. I feel a strong spike of empathy for her, but it fades. A minute later, he's satisfied whoever called him (his mom? buddy? girlfriend?) and though they've wandered into the playground, they're at it again under another street lamp. A jogger in a bright yellow vest bounces past them twice while they're licking each other. Now, I don't fancy myself to be a particularly good kisser, but if this is the best we men have on offer, the talent on the shallow end leaves much to be desired. I get bored with his moves after two minutes. The illicit thrill that has kept me going this far fades like a polaroid in direct sunlight.
I still don't feel jealousy, watching the older, more sexual butt-gropers in the park. I've kissed girls in parks before, so it's not my superiority that separates us. It's something else.
Once I finally get to it, I sleep without dreams. The temperature is a respectable warm considering the time of year and the thinness of my bag. I wake and tear down my hammock. The sun isn't even up by the time I'm looking for a picnic table for breakfast. I roll just down the hill to the closest pavilion, and I've got most of my things out and set up for oatmeal before I notice anything strange. Looking up, I see a man get out of one of the two cars in the parking lot. A woman appears from the other side of the SUV and they walk together to the other car. As she gets in, he leans in for a kiss. It goes on. Finally, he steps back and closes the door for her. As she drives away, he walks slowly back to his own vehicle. Just like that, a tryst is revealed to me. The simplicity of it, the brazenness of it, the scrupulous way they both utterly ignored me, all these strike me simultaneously and with swift suddenness.
I'm shocked. I watch him drive away and I start to laugh. Anybody walking by would think I am a more than a little mad--a bearded man sitting with a heavily-laden bicycle making oatmeal in a park as the sun comes up, laughing loudly at nothing at all. It's starting to become ridiculous, I think, these rutting animals all come to the park, and me watching. I think over the couples: the skater and his cripple, the girl and her butt-groper, the woman and her careless kisser. Laid out like that, I can trace the growth of irresponsible love in the park from inception to zenith, and I hate it. It's humorous, certainly, but I hate it anyway because I've been lying to myself this whole time. I am jealous. Even if I know it's unhealthy, even if I know it would destroy me, I want what they've got.

The wind is at my head when I finally set my course west on OK-33. Even my downhill speed suffers greatly. Every mile is a new struggle. In the great flatness, there's nothing particularly good to see. I wrestle with my thoughts until I finally get to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Guthrie.