Oahu Burners et al -- please help me find Nicki

[Kpanozzo]

The problem, you see, is that I wasn’t thinking. I was lazing contentedly with my head on a cool crimson pillow in Center Camp, the icy cup of lemonade poised on my chest rising and falling slowly with my quiet breath. I was dreaming, dreaming among the hulas and the twirlers, poking warmly at the still-shimmering images from the previous night: the happy flitting wings of a drunken candy-colored butterfly lovingly consigned to flap-flap-flap behind the gauzy coulisse of my languid mind.

Her name, said she from a distance close enough to stir the slow-flutter butterfly (her lithe limbs stretched out straight, extending from a sheer, whimsical tutu in soft pastel – legs an alluring shade of warm, wet cinnamon) was Nicki… or perhaps Nikki. Certain only of the phonetics of her given name and sweet little else. No surname to provide you, no home address, so very little with which to ornament my hopes of finding her.

This is more or less the extent of what can I tell you…

Nicki – of 32 years and a great many more freckles, an exotic mix of Native American and European ancestry, had arrived to Black Rock City in an RV from SF with a small crew from Oahu. A hiker, a walker, a runner (those legs of hers no inutile props), a lover of nature, a waitress at a restaurant in one of the quieter corners of the same Hawaiian island from which she arrived – agreed with an adorable giggle to lend me her legs (of which I must admit a fervent postpartum obsession), agreed to be my support that I might balance above her and watch her below me from my vantage in acro-yogic flight.

But it never came to pass. The sun slipped beyond the edge of the playa as we followed our noses to a pungent bank of nearby bogs, and returning thereafter to Center Camp in the dark, it seemed the gentlemanly thing to let her go. My bike was here, hers was there, we embraced for the first (and last?) time. And as I pedaled off, I knew I would come to regret the farewell. Et voila, I am returned to Brussels, alone, sans elle.

Nicki, where are you? I miss you! I miss your freckles, your lips when they move (and when they do not), your words, your hands, your cinnamon skin.

The problem, you see, is that I wasn’t thinking. I was lazing contentedly and when I came to at camp, you no longer existed, save for on the wings of that slow-flutter butterfly flap-flapping behind the gauzy coulisse of my languid mind.

Dear reader, if you know this Nicki of which I write, of which I dream, will you please let me know?

My sincerest thanks,

Kevin
[email protected]