Lac Rose
A story about healing, salt, and the kind of numbness that masquerades as care.
There was just enough salt to cover the bottom of my glass with kosher crystals. Turning on equal parts hot and cold water, I swirled the liquid around with enough vigor to watch as the warm water dissolved the salt into a foggy solution. I dipped my finger in and tasted the salty potion. The cut on the inside of my lip began to burn a little. I threw my head back and swished around what was left in the glass. The burn coming from my swollen lip intensified. Grimacing, I spit it out and watched the now pink water fill up to the porcelain crack in the sink. The building was pre-war, which war I’m not sure, but we were excited to be moving in together.
Shake had just come back from a nine-month, post graduation trip touring France and his father’s hometown of Dakar, Senegal. I remember trying to stay busy when he left: conducting countless research projects on the different places he would be, anticipating stories of the breathtaking architecture of Notre Dame, the inherent romance that I dreamed wafted through the Paris streets, and the solace he would find in finally being home in Senegal, in Africa.
I, now home and resentfully alone in DC, found solace at the end of a spliff. He’d only been back a few months by the time I was kicking him out of our place with intentions on an end that was doubtful. We’d never been apart longer than a few hours since we’d first started dating a year prior. I worried about the separation.
I worried he would lose himself. I worried he would find himself without me.
I worried about how I would support my smoking habit. Daily, I reveled in the warmth that only occurs at the end of a joint. I buzzed in anticipation of rolling up. It made the solitude palatable. Shake doubled as my dealer. Without him, I was left to the arduous task of finding someone reliable, who would deliver, and hopefully throw a little extra in the bag.
I examined the inside of my mouth. Leaning into the mirror, I could still see the brown stains that dappled the inside of my bottom row. Most of the damage had been done thanks to the twelve backwoods we would roll and smoke daily that first lusty summer together. My dentist was annoyed. He thought my teeth were perfect aside from the stains.
I thought they were perfect with. A reminder of my two great loves.
The right side of my bottom lip hung heavy, cut, and swollen. Gravity was not forgiving and neither was the vanity mirror. I looked at the blushing water stagnant in the sink, then at my lip, and back in the sink. The waters of Lake Retba in Senegal are a luminous hue of pink. The salt content in the lake is oddly high and with a marriage of the sun and special algae, the combination turns the water to a rich shade of strawberry milk. “Lac Rose”, as the locals so fondly refer to it, is so buoyant its patrons float in the water with ease. If I wanted to float, I was going to have to roll one. I pulled the stopper up and watched the pink water swirl down the drain, re-exposing the crack in the porcelain.
I sat in the only chair left in the apartment. A vintage mahogany chair with mustard velvet upholstery he had found on the side of the street and carried home. The weed made my lip itchy. The swelling made it tricky to roll. I didn’t mind.
Limp, languid, and disengaged, I sunk deeper into the chair and watched as the thick clouds seeped out of my mouth and wafted through the empty apartment.
Lac Rose is healing, the puddle of pink water in my sink was not.
Neither was the joint, but it made me numb. I smoked, masturbated and waited for something to happen.