Adam

There is a jetty on Lake Geneva that thinks it is a philosopher. Every few minutes a voice drifts over the water and asks questions no one really wants to answer.

That night the recording says, “who’s delusions have you drowned?”

Although the grammar is strange, the timing is perfect. I stand back from the railing and watch Adam pretend he has not heard it.

He sits alone at the edge of the lake, hood up, shoulders slightly curved, phone in hand. He always tries to look like he has himself figured out. He has not.

The man-child carries confusion like spare change in his pocket, rattling everywhere he goes. He calls himself a dumbfuck without blinking, a habit he has perfected far too early. Most men take years to earn that level of self-deprecation.

He lifts his vape and inhales with the seriousness of someone negotiating a treaty. The blue light on the device blinks against his cheek. He holds the vapor longer than necessary. When he exhales, the cloud rises in a thin, unsteady ribbon. It looks like a thought escaping before he can stop it.

The voice plays again. “Who’s delusions have you drowned?”

Adam lets out a small snort. Not amusement. Not irritation. Something in between. I have heard enough of his childhood and early years to know where that sound came from. The loneliness. The instability. The survival instincts that trained him to fold into himself. Boys who grow up swallowing questions often become men who weaponize self-insult before anyone else can.

I stay where I am. He does not need someone sitting beside him. He needs space to face himself without an audience breathing down his neck. Distance can be its own form of respect.

Watching him there, with the voice from the jetty poking at hidden corners, I feel something unexpected. Recognition. Not of him, but of the younger version of myself I have spent years trying to outgrow. The boy who hid behind achievement. The boy who confused silence with strength. The boy who had no safe place to speak honestly.

Adam takes another long pull from his vape and lets the cloud loose into the Geneva air.

The gesture makes something click that I had avoided naming. This is not just him figuring out his life. This is me seeing my own old wiring from the outside for the first time. It becomes a conversation between the boy who never learned to speak and the man still learning how.

Adam mutters something under his breath. It might be frustration or humor. With him the boundary is thin. He feels deeply but hides quickly. He calls himself Urdu medium as if it explains away layers of vulnerability that have nothing to do with language.

And yet he teaches me. He does not know this, and he would probably burst out laughing if he heard it. But the way he moves through confusion, the way he questions himself, the way he is shocked by his own potential, reminds me of parts of myself I left behind too soon. There is a raw honesty in him that adulthood tends to sand down. Watching him learn the world in real time forces me to look at my own rough edges with less judgment.

The jetty voice asks again. “Who’s delusions have you drowned?”

Adam shakes his head, takes one last inhale, and lets the vapor drift out over the lake. The lights on the water stretch into long, trembling lines. His silhouette sits small against the vastness, trying to negotiate with questions he never asked for.

I stay a few steps back. Close enough to witness. Far enough to let him breathe.

Men drown many delusions on their way to becoming themselves. Some belong to others. Some belong to the boys they used to be. Some cling harder than we expect.

The Geneva night holds steady. Adam’s vape cloud thins and disappears.

I feel the quiet possibility that there is still time. For him. For me. For whatever conversation might continue between the person he is becoming and the younger self I have only recently begun to understand.

The lake keeps moving. The voice pauses. While Adam and I stay in our separate places, listening.

from Rambling of an Itinerant

In acknowledgment: Co-created with Adam and GenAI. Witnessed in stillness. Held in quiet regard for those who teach without knowing.