What Am I?

Danny

The first thing I recall is this bright light. I know it sounds cliché but just hear me out. The light surrounded us and was so blinding that it eventually became part of the scenery, like lovely, white wall paper. I’m not even sure the color white would fully describe it. I suppose the term will have to do. There was a presence all around us; surrounding us. It wasn’t beside me, yet I knew the presence was nearby. It was so strong and overpowering; a sense of overwhelming love, a fullness of peace. We all knew we were there among that presence. The closest word I can think of to describe it would be God. We knew it was him; that is, if you can even think of God as a gender. We were in this sort of holding room, only there were no walls that I could see. It was like the place where we existed stretched through all time and space.

I existed. We existed. I know I sound like a raving lunatic. I’d be the first to commit myself to the insane asylum if I didn’t know the truth. I was there. That’s the only explanation for all of this. I didn’t have a body, at least not a human one. I was a color of light. There were other bursting orbs of light there with me. We covered the entire holding place. Some orbs were a rich blue, a light turquoise, a piercing yellow, a bright orange. They ranged in colors and shades of nearly every hue you could possibly imagine. We were just bursts of light. No faces, legs, arms, nor hands. No feet, skin, bones, mouth nor teeth. We just were. That’s all we knew. We didn’t know anything different.

But we knew we were waiting. We were going to leave. All of us were waiting to be born. We were going to be separated from one another, though we knew we’d return to be with God. There was no way to know how much longer we had with one another. Every now and then, someone would come to send the unborn below. The best way to describe them was elders. We did not dare question them. Once we were sent for, we were to meet in an enclosed room with a panel of elders. Their authoritative presence could be easily felt. They told us to look into a clear ball where we could see brief moments into our future. If we chose to accept the mission we saw we could not change our minds. If we rejected the mission, it could be an infinite amount of time before we were given an alternate mission with no guarantee it would be any better than the first. I never heard of an unborn rejecting a mission the elders brought before a soul. Each soul had different missions. We never knew our mission until we were summoned and sent to earth immediately. We didn’t know how long we would wait to be summoned and leave. There was no true sense of time. Seconds were minutes and minutes were hours. Hours were weeks and weeks were months. Months were seasons and years. Years were eternity. Neither was there the past, present, or future. It was all one.

There were three souls with me. We communicated constantly. I use the word communicate because we didn’t speak. I don’t know how else to portray it. We simply understood each other. The closest thing I can relate it to would be the thoughts you think inside your head before you speak. Those thoughts were sent back and forth between us like air waves. We just knew and understood. Communication flowed between us. All the souls were in tiny groups with each other. The groups didn’t mean you would be sent together. In fact, I don’t recall any group being sent all at one time. One soul would be taken from a back group, another from up front. A range of time may pass until finally another member of the groups would go. To us it appeared to be at random. We were all buzzing with excitement over our future mission. We were going down there. I don’t remember the term earth ever being used to describe it. We understood where we were going. We were all going to the same place. But we would return to the presence of God and each other one day.

In our band of shining souls there was Green, Blue, Red and Pink. I was Blue. We didn’t have names, at least not that I know of. Red and I were more masculine in our being. I won’t say we were males because we weren’t. Those terms didn’t exist there. Souls don’t have genders. We had no idea what that even was. Green and Pink were feminine in nature. Green was in front of me, Red to the left. And to my left was Pink. We had the same ideas shifting back and forth between all four of us but I felt the strongest pull, the greatest connection with Pink. Sometimes the thought would occur to me that I would miss Pink. Yes, Pink sent to me alone, I will miss you too. We didn’t want to leave each other, yet we did because we were anxious to please God; anxious to do what we needed to for him.

Then, one day, the elders called for Pink. We didn’t know where Pink was going. Hell, we didn’t even know where we were going. It would be a very long time before we saw Pink again. There was nothing I could do to stop it. What’s more, I didn’t want to. I knew it had to happen. The thing that gave me peace was I’d see Pink again. I knew we would reunite eventually. However, there was no promise of being reunited below. I could feel excitement radiate from Pink, and yet, there was a shred of reluctance coming from Pink. She didn’t want to say goodbye. But she left like the others did. Like they have before, like they would continue doing and like we all would. Suddenly, there were only the three of us in our intimate group then, like expected, Green left. Soon it would be my turn or Red’s.

This is the moment when my memory gets really fuzzy. I remember vague moments such as a conversation with someone, maybe he was our Maker, or at least I thought he was. He was telling me what I was to accomplish below. I had the choice to accept or decline it even as we were going down. I was so incredibly nervous and overjoyed all at the same time. I kept thinking it wasn’t going to be easy and I was afraid of messing it all up. But I wanted to do it. I wanted to prove myself and verify that I could do whatever it was he told me I was called to do. After all, the elders and our Maker had designed this role with me in mind. It was an incredible honor. I knew below would not be like the Holding Place I was leaving. It was so peaceful and as I described earlier, a blanket of overpowering love rested on us at all times. The presence would not be with me below. And that scared me. When you’re used to an experience like that, you can become fearful of the things you aren’t acquainted with. He, the one I deemed to be our Maker, gave me a reassuring smile. Unlike the elders, he had a smile. In his smile, I saw warmth, I saw peace, I saw trust.

Then there was this momentary crash of darkness. I wasn’t in the holding place anymore. There was no presence. I was suddenly here.

Chapter 1

Danny

Am I crazy? Yeah, maybe.

The insanity of life is too much for me sometimes. I suppose I never fully adapted. How did other souls adapt so easily? Was there a trick to it? Was I the only one that had these ridiculously tiny snippets of the past? Was I some experiment gone wrong? Why did I remember it? Why was I allowed to recall it? Where were the others? I was curious about them. Was Green in China? Was Red in Indonesia? Where was Pink? It was the connection with her I missed the most. As I mentioned earlier, we had the strongest bond. Was Pink on an African safari? Green and Pink were already here, I was certain of that. I saw them leave. But Red could still be up there waiting, couldn’t he? Of course he could. A piece of me wanted to find the others to make sense of this whole thing but Pink was really the only one I had an urgent desire to see. I wondered if I would meet Pink here. How would I even recognize her? Even if I did meet her there was no guarantee that she would remember anything. She might think I’m a complete nut job. What if she were old enough to be my mother or worse yet, my grandmother? I knew earthly time was vastly different from the Holding Place. How much time had passed since I last saw Pink? I knew Pink came as a woman. Of that there was no doubt in my mind. I just knew. I only wish I knew where to find her or if I would meet her on earth. I had to find her.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, I lost hope. I gave up. I lost the dream of finding her. It was hopeless, I thought. What were the odds? I didn’t have the slightest clue how to find Pink. I didn’t know her age, what continent she lived on, what she looked like. I didn’t even know her name. How could I find her? In the Holding Place we were all souls of light. There was no need for names. But on earth names mattered. Everything is objectified here. The omnipresent peace from above doesn’t reside here. To make matters worse, I can’t remember my own mission. Without knowing my mission, there was little hope of fulfilling it in this life.

I grew up as Daniel Parker in Crystal Beach, Texas. There was nothing crystal about the water. I never could quite figure that out. I was born to an unusually supportive family. We weren’t poor but we weren’t rich either. Dad worked a lot. He rubbed enough pennies together to buy me things any little boy would want, like baseball cleats and jerseys. He taught me how to play ball in the back yard. When the time came he enrolled me in Little League baseball. I was set on begging my parents to let me play Little League when they caved. As it so happened, I was talented at baseball. I never really had to exert much effort to hit the ball with my bat. I loved the sound of the clank the bat made when it struck the baseball. My dad was a natural baseball player when he was younger. Perhaps it came with the genes. My mother loved to cook, but she always managed to make it to every game even when she was sick. Dad would lean against the fence, screaming at the top of his lungs, often rattling the chain links. Ma would be in the stands, a tissue box in hand, sneezing into a Kleenex in her other hand. Southeast Texas pollens never treated her nicely. On weekends she would cook up pasta, casseroles, fried chicken, pork chops, homemade potato salad. You name it, Ma cooked it. I think it’s one of the reasons Dad married her. It was also the reason she tried her hand at opening her own restaurant and failed. Shortly thereafter, I was born. I was the only child. I was proud of that fact too. Considering the number of games I had and as much as I loved my life, I didn’t want some younger sibling to mess that up.

I don’t know how but I made it through elementary school until the fifth grade without a fight. Billy Radcliffe decked me so hard on my bottom lip that it throbbed for days. A nasty bit of dried blood caked to it and it ballooned something hideous. It took a while to come to my senses when I was hit. What just happened? I thought. Am I supposed to hit him back? Then I saw Billy’s chubby fist aimed for another swing and I caught on real fast. The teacher, Miss Trent, shrieked at us. Dragging both of us by the arm, one on each side; to the principal’s office. The rest of the class milled behind her and gossiped about the whole thing. It was embarrassing. My first fight and I didn’t even get a good swing in.

Daniel Parker, Miss Trent scolded with disappointment radiating from her green eyes. What’s gotten into you? I wondered why she asked me that and not Billy. It was a question she didn’t intend for me to answer. I knew that. Still, I answered anyway.

I frowned at the accusation. He started it. After several swings of the wooden paddle, there was no baseball for two weeks.

Middle school went along rather smoothly. There was the normal my voice croaks like a frog stage that made every guy want to hide under the bleachers when a pretty girl came by. Eventually I grew out of it. I never hid under the bleachers, thank God. I continued to play baseball well into high school. That was when I truly discovered girls. The shape of their body was like an amusement park to me. I could look but I couldn’t touch. They waltzed around the school, their looks tantalizing me. If their bodies could radiate a message it would have been come hither. It was incredibly frustrating. My hormones surged to a new high. I wanted to leave Crystal Beach in search of my own life. But man, were the girls tempting. Finally I graduated, though not in the top in my class. I graduated all the same and that was all I cared about. Ma took a countless number of pictures, so much so that I’m sure the local Walgreen’s photo shop cursed under their breath developing them.

I moved on to college, one semester at the University of Texas in Austin. It was the place to be. For some reason unbeknownst to me I chose to study Business. I wasn’t concerned with business. I was concerned with sex and lots of it. I guess I became what you would call a player. I was proud of it too. The first girl I ever slept with was Candace Gresham. Man, she was smoking. Ebony hair flowing down her shoulders, a sun kissed tan glowing on her skin and the biggest curves you’ve ever seen on a woman. When you hear people describe an hour glass figure, they’re talking about Candace. She looked like one of those Victoria Secret models only with actual breasts the size of luscious cantaloupes. I still don’t know how I got that lucky. She thought it was cute that I was a virgin. Me? Cute? Needless to say she did all the work and I reaped some heavy benefits. Later I felt bad about it, but I overcame that by bragging to my roommate. He said he could never nail a woman as hot as Candace. And so it began.

Some students have extracurricular activities such as wakeboarding or night clubbing, and I did some of that, but my main dish was sex. I became really good at it and fast. It helped that I developed abs. My roommate Bryan and I would spend several days a week at the gym working on our abs. It really paid off. Dating didn’t last longer than maybe five dates before the girl would want something more serious. They wanted to know where it was going. They wanted to know if I cared. I couldn’t give them that. I didn’t know how to give them that. Something was missing and I was still trying to figure out what it was. In the meantime it felt damn good to get off. And I was going to keep doing it. That was until my lifestyle brought me failing grades for the first time in my life. My parents ripped me out of UT so fast I felt my head spin. Bryan was left to entertain the girls he could get alone. I had to transfer to a school a little closer to home called Galveston College. Yeah, it was a major step down from University of Texas but what choice did I have? My parents were zealous enough to have paid for my college education and I’d blown it with sex. Don’t get me wrong; I never had wild orgies or anything. I was just way too occupied with the female body to care for studying. I was occupied one girl at a time.

My transition to Galveston College was something akin to a helicopter crashing and burning on a landing strip. The helicopter took off just seconds prior and some default sent it crashing to the ground, flames bellowing overhead. Yep, that was me. My lifestyle on Galveston Island was a bit tamer. And how could it not be with a mere thirty minutes and a ferry ride separating me from Ma and Dad? Every other weekend I visited them on Crystal Beach, but I honestly liked the beach rat lifestyle of the island better. The sea walls made it much more interesting with sea life art painted on them; complete with coral reefs, dolphins, and sting rays. Men with Jamaican looking corn rolls strolled along the sea wall with sandy flip flops on. The ferry would land and tourists would honk their horns, willing for the beach rats to move. Sure, the water was the same as Crystal Beach, muddy like everything else along the Gulf of Mexico, but it had a different feel to me. Strange as it may seem, the smell of sunscreen was like home to me. I’d grown up with it my entire life. Strangers in the pizza shop listened to alternating tunes of the Beach Boys and country music. The scent of sunscreen was everywhere. Common sites included girls in tiny shorts and a bikini tops and topless men wearing nothing but swim trunks. Even the normal Southern No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service policy didn’t apply here. Tandems were a dime a dozen and they often brought traffic near the ferry to a halt as passengers cycled together across the street.

I worked early shifts at a nearby restaurant making decent tips. After lunch every day I’d head back to my dorm, change clothes and trek to my classes. Around five every afternoon I’d head back to my dorm, change into swim trunks, clad with a beach towel in hand, and walk to the beach. It wasn’t like it was that far of a walk anyway. We are a small island. I’d pass numerous tourist shops along the beach front, mostly seafood restaurants like the one I worked at. Greek food was also really popular. The personalities of the people were also more distinctive than the surrounding towns. The atmosphere was casual and relaxed. The only people that weren’t relaxed were tourists driving in from who knows where. Why they came to invade our island I’ll never know. Locals can spot them from a mile away. They often drive tandems.

The homes on the island weren’t grand by any means, unless you went further north into the isolated bushes toward the amusement park. Who could blame the beach people? We’re a peculiar breed. We didn’t worry about much. When we did worry, it was whether or not we could make it to the beach before all the tourists in the middle of July. Fixing up homes was an option, painting bright colors onto houses was not. There was a part of the island we refer to as The Strand. It is the historical portion of the island. There was a classic 50’s ice cream and soda shop a bunch of my friends from college and I would hang out at on Friday nights before night dives in the ocean or counting jelly fish along the shore. Any activity was often accompanied with a beer in hand. I wasn’t a huge drinker. I’m still not. I had an occasional beer and I saw nothing wrong with it. I was a man after all, not a beached whale.

Even after college when some of my friends moved off the island to experience adulthood, whatever that was, I hung behind choosing to soak up sun rays instead. I tanned easily. I got it from my mother. She must be part Corsican or something. In school the girls let me know I looked good but after college I didn’t think much of it. It was me. There was nothing special about it. I’d walk back to my apartment after a long day at work, then laze on the beach and take a lengthy shower. Once out, sometimes I’d stare at myself in the mirror wondering who it was looking back