I've been trying to paint a picture of numb for some time now.
  ¶ 1:17 AM 0 comments

  I still don't think this story is too bad, but I know and have known that is flawed in some way. Bill O'Driscoll, the Arts and Entertainment editor of the City Paper, thinks that the below story ranks 44th. I'm not sure of how many, maybe 44. As a rule, your first attempt at publishing is a rejection. So thanks Bill for following that old cliche. And fuck you.  ¶ 3:12 PM 0 comments

  this kneeling reality

She made him want to get in shape. After watching her he would go home to do crunches and pushups. If he didn’t, it was always his intent upon arriving home. He didn’t masturbate to the thought of her. A small part of him wanted to, only because it felt wrong and erotic, but another part prohibited the action. Her body was perfect. It was tone yet soft. He imagined lying next to her, his knees against the back of her knees, his hand on the velvet of her side, the space just below her ribs. Her skin was radiant, especially her face, although that was all the skin, aside from her arms and neck, he had seen. He could not stop looking at her. Almost as if his eyes were constantly trying to make sense of her miracle, the impossibility of her beauty, her perfection. He never looked at a girl this way before.

The first date was coffee and hello and do you like your job and I kinda like you a lot. Clive, after two or three failed attempts, which amounted to a lot of waiting and staring and coffee and cream, had approached Edith. He felt weightless, not floating, moved by impulse. “Would you like to get a coffee with me?” Her reply, which he will never forget, was, “What size?” He repeated himself, this time louder than a whisper: “Would you like to get coffee sometime – with me?” She said oh. “Where were you thinking?” she asked. “Here, I guess,” he smiled. “Ok,” she laughed. “I get off in fifteen minutes.” Clive knew she got off in fifteen minutes.

The second date was dinner and any brothers or sisters and sorry I’m always staring at you and I don’t mind. Neither of them had much money so nothing fancy. Clive asked if cheap Italian was ok, his treat. She agreed but was noticeably uneasy about him paying. He said she could pay the tip and Edith laughed. Clive was always making people laugh. He understood this.

At Edith’s request the third date had been a movie. Edith met Clive at the theater on Murray Avenue. She walked. Clive brushed his pinky up against Edith’s pinky, the movie was pictures and sounds. On the screen Edith and Clive lay holding each other tightly, Clive kissing Edith just above her lips, Edith kissing his earlobe, his eye lid, squarely on the lips, her eyes open and luminous. Clive opened his eyes, words were scrolling down the screen, the song familiar. Say goodbye good. Hey hey, hey. He was holding Edith’s hand, she turned and smiled. “Did you like the movie sleepyhead?” she asked. His smile turned into a yawn, his head bending forward, his stomach tightening. He didn’t let go of her hand until the screen was its natural white, the lights forcing them to their feet. Holding her hand felt familiar.

They started talking in the aisle of the theater. Neither of them understood the movie, so the conversation started there. They didn’t stop talking. The conversation moved to Clive’s car, and onto her apartment, two cold blocks away. It moved outside to the front door of Edith’s minimally lit apartment building, through the door, up one flight of stairs, into her apartment, where shoes were pushed aside and jackets tossed onto a recliner in the corner, hers first. It moved into the kitchen and, in a way, into the cabinets as cups were made ready for coffee, and it moved to the couch, the three cushion, and eventually, after their third cups was emptied, made its way to the floor where the backs of their bodies, an arm’s length apart, lay pressed against the beige carpet.

“Clive. Not too many people have that name,” said Edith. The room was brighter now. A ray of light extended from Clive’s feet, filled with tiny floating dots. “My Dad was a big C.S. Lewis fan.” “And your Mom?” she asked, her head now resting on his chest, eyes watching the floating dots. “I don’t know,” he said. Clive’s mother had died when he was eight. “Imagine if they named you Staples,” she said, with a smirk in her voice. He told her that was his middle name, which it wasn’t, she said oh, well, it’s not a bad name. He laughed.

“You jerk.” She tickled him as he laughed, her hands at his sides. He grabbed her hands and looked at her. He had been afraid to touch her all night. The laughing stopped and Edith looked up at Clive, her lips speaking. “It’s ok,” her lips said. “We want this.” But Clive couldn’t act. He stared at her lips, inert. His fondness of Edith frightened him, but it gave his life a fullness.

Edith inched her lips to Clive’s, her eyes moving from his lips to his eyes, lips to eyes. When their lips touched, Clive bit down. It was some kind of reflex. “Ow. What,” said Edith, jerking back, two fingers holding her bottom lip , “What was?” “I’m sorry, it was a reflex, I don’t, are you ok?” She said she was ok, she sucked in her lip, checked for blood. She looked confused and held her lip. Clive got up. “I guess I should go.” She said no, no and told him he didn’t have to go, that it just hurt and had taken her by surprise. “I’m really sorry. I’ve never done that before,” said Clive. And he hadn’t. All of this was new. Edith stood up and asked Clive if he was hungry. “Yeah I am actually. Starving.” She went into the kitchen. Clive walked towards the window and thought about leaving.

Edith walked into the pantry, the size of a small walk-in closet, and rested her back and head against the shelves. It felt good to have the shelves dig into her back. She stared ahead blankly. Tonight had not gone the way she’d hoped. She could not tell if Clive liked her or if he just thought she was interesting. None of the typical indicators were apparent. Aside from holding hands in the movie theater, which she initiated as he lay sleeping, and just a moment ago on the living room floor, Clive had not touched Edith all night. They had talked. But the conversation had felt hollow and desultory. She liked there to be points and a build and a resolve. And there was the kiss. Edith did not put a lot of emphasis on first kisses and was willing to try again, but the violent awkwardness of it disturbed her.

Clive came into the kitchen. Edith said hey and breathed in through her nose. “What are you hungry for?” she said.

“How’s your lip? Are you ok?” asked Clive, his arms folded and shoulders raised.

“Oh, I’m fine,” said Edith, touching Clive’s left forearm.

Clive smiled at Edith, looking at her eyes briefly. He stared at the floor and placed his right hand on Edith’s, his arms still folded. He rubbed her hand. Edith took a step closer, their eyes met. With her left hand she touched the loop of Clive’s belt without moving her eyes. Clive’s stomach jumped. With both of her hands she began undoing Clive’s belt. There was something Edith wanted, some end or goal for which she was striving.

“I want to do this,” said Edith, kneeling down. Clive’s eyelids were nearly shut with a slit of white visible. He bit his lower lip, his breathing grew louder, his head at a tilt. Edith knew Clive was already hard, and this excited her. But not in a sexual way. She liked that he was reacting to something she was doing, and it was something at which she believed herself to be apt. Things were finally going somewhere.

In his car on the way home, as he sat in traffic and silence, Clive cried for the first time in 17 years. He felt dirty and ashamed and vulnerable. His Edith had been betrayed by Edith. His Edith was sweet and pleasant. His Edith was passive. This Edith, this kneeling reality, was aggressive, with sure eyes. The night had gone well, he thought. The conversation was free of agenda, very easy-going, with its own rhythm. The kiss was bad, and he winced at the thought, straining his eyes as if the pain were physical. Something must have happened after the kiss, he thought. Clive thought he was missing something.

Just before arriving in the kitchen, Clive’s movie theater reverie flashed before his eyes, almost tangible, and he believed there was still a possibility. When Edith touched and looked at him that way, without any anticipation, the shock of her action was enough to excite him, but not enough to arouse him. She used her mouth, her hand, her tongue, her eyes; she moved up and down, at varying speeds and said does it feel good and you like this, don’t you? There was no foreseeable end, however and Clive knew this. She would stroke and suck and stare but there would be no result, no conclusion, no climax.

When Edith’s hand gave out and she could tell, by the perpetual limpness, that Clive was not going towards the end she so desired she sank to the cold floor, her knees pressed against the tile and her ass against the heels of her feet. She did not say anything. She stared into the palms of her open hands, which lay upon her thighs. The metal sound of Clive’s belt loop, as he pulled his pants up to his waist, was the only noise in the room. Just before closing the door to leave, Clive saw that Edith was trembling.

“Edith? Edith, it’s Clive, pick up.” It had not been long since he left. Clive could not resist the urge, or conviction as his Dad would say, to call Edith, the image of her on the kitchen floor etched in his memory. She was sitting on a chair in her kitchen next to the answering machine and listening. “I don’t know what happened tonight. I didn’t get any sleep, I mean, neither of us did. And, I don’t know, I just don’t want this to be the last time I see you. Ya’ know? I shouldn’t have left you there, I, just shouldn’t have left.” Edith heard the faint sound of cars speeding past. “Maybe we don’t work really, maybe, I don’t know, we shouldn’t see each other.” There was a pause. Edith’s hand was on the phone, “But see, I don’t think that’s right. Like tonight didn’t feel entirely right at times, but it felt good. It’s just. I like you. You know that. And when I say that, I don’t just mean in a sexual way. I think we could have an amazing time together. I really do. Like, I mean, I just don’t want to let this go. To let you go. Out of my life.”

“Thank you.” It was a whisper, but Clive heard it and held his breath.   ¶ 3:11 PM 3 comments

  birdies

On a damp patch of grass next to the Prodoville on-ramp, I took a deep breath and attempted to lay it on her. I wanted the perfect moment, and although this was not what I had in mind, the inside of my car under the overhang of trees on an idyllic street seemed too idealistic a hope. I had never sat on the side of of a swarming highway, so in that way I told myself it was perfect.

“You’re good at keeping secrets, right?” I said to her. She turned towards me, shielding her face from the noise of the cars. She said she was good at keeping secrets by nodding her head and opening and closing her mouth. She was soft-spoken so I just guessed. The clouds began moving the same speed as the cars, and the backdrop of sky was going through it's cycle of blue to black, with all the hues in between, with an about-face time of, say, 10 seconds.

“Here’s one for you: I love you.” An eighteen-wheeler, the driver apparently not checking his mirror, changed lanes causing a blurry Neon to attempt a full stop only to get rear ended by a Ford Explorer and, in turn caused a Mini-Cooper, this driver apparently not checking the view out of his windshield, to buoyantly bounce off the front of a Taurus and hover over our heads before ending in the branches of a fallen tree.

A look of alarm came across her face. I looked back at my car, parked on the shoulder at the start of the on ramp. The redwood, the size of which should have been daunting, was still crushing my roof. There was no reason to think that situation had changed. I was going to call triple A. She thought I already had and believed we were waiting for a tow truck. I asked her if she wanted to walk farther down the road or go into Prodoville to wait. She said yeah, I knew this because she stood up, and we headed down the road. She did not walk up the ramp, and it was then I realized she was walking away from me not with me. Every car on the highway was at a standstill, all driver-side doors ajar, and some people were walking along the medial strip. A migration of people started to join in, even old ladies.

I jogged and caught up with her. I asked her where she was going and if she knew which movie that was from. She stopped and looked at me with her eyebrows swooping towards her hairline. I asked her again, attempting to save face, "Come on, I know you know this. What movie was that from?" Lightning struck 10 cars simultaneously at different points on the highway. It started to hail, lightly, and the sky turned to steady dusk. Is what from a movie, she asked. She was talking louder now.

"What I said to you on the lawn. What movie is that from? It's a quote. I know you know this." I thought I had her. Her face relaxed and we continued walking down the road, the hail piercing our bodies, lightly. The road next to us cracked at the dotted yellow line and the cars fell into eachother in a stretching v. The people walking the medial strip were singing a song in spite of the world. The road gave way and every car vanished into the earth. The singing continued, their song reaching down into the depths.

I told her I would not give her the answer, and so in that way we walked down the road, away from the Prodoville exit. At the time, I believed her silence, besides the deafening susurration of singing, was a result of her attempt at answering my question. But in fact, she knew what I had said was not from a movie. Her reaction - getting up and walking away - was only to allow a smile to dawdle across her face. I did not know this then, but it was not long before she illumined my shy understanding. I could not yet understand the procession song. I desired to know the chorus.

As she held my hand the sky opened up like a zipper, the hail stopped, and a host of, I want to say, Pterodactyls were banished from the sky. I heard the faint makings of a familiar melody as the birdies sailed above our heads before circling back and perching upon every person's head along the medial. This was all very interesting.

I looked at her and then at our joined hands. I looked at her eyes as she told me she knew what I said was not from a movie. "I'd be heart broken if that was not how you felt. And maybe you don't feel that way. But I do. And I always have." Our grip got tighter and I felt the inside of my chest expand and accelerate. I moved her towards me. As we kissed the ground beneath us gave way and we descended into the claws of two swooping singing birdies. We were flying over the heads of the choir. We smiled at each other and began singing along with what we both knew all along.

Catching signals that sound in the dark,
I am listening to hear where you are,
I am listening to hear where you are.

  ¶ 7:47 PM 0 comments

  'You know, sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits,' she said. 'The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized...Without them we would be unidentifiable'...He knew what Anna was asking: whether you could love someone without habits.'
  ¶ 9:21 AM 0 comments

  She saw it men's eyes, saw it while she was still a child. You did not love her, you raped her; you did not caress her, you bit her. She was dark rooms and rumpled beds. She was the thing in men's souls that is never sated, the beast in every man's jungle...Every man wanted to own her, but no man wanted to keep her.
  ¶ 3:22 PM 2 comments

  Right behind the bushes. I was not sure if it was a person and then I knew by the way the bushes moved. It was a case of possession. Devil possession. I read about that stuff. I knew about the Salem witch trials and these two girls somehow related to this Reverend. He was possessed by the kids and they went on to do the whole Bonnie and Clyde thing. That was before the movie, but it is where the movie comes from. That was how these Mormons went on a Nationwide chase to find the possessed Reverend and his little relatives. And they had to burn them. So now I am standing here, it is not even Halloween, thank Jesus, and there is this possessed person behind my neighbor's bush.

I was outside thinking about taking out the garbage. I was going to but then I saw the movment by the bush. I live with my Mom and Dad and brother on the corner of Larimer and Decatur. The bush is the possession of my neighbors, also living on the corner of Larimer and Decatur - which I just thought about and it is weird - and the bush they possess is being moved by a possessed. It is dark out, but the street lights make things not so dark. I was waiting. I was feeling the light breeze and wanting more of it and I was looking at the bush and waiting but wanting less of it. There was no more movement now. A head popped up from the bush. Then a body followed it out into view. I stepped behind my tree, which is about a foot or two away from my house. When the possessed creeped onto the sidewalk, I saw the hideous face.

The thing that scared me about the Salem witch trials was that it happened near where I live. I live far away from Massachusetts but it is still the United States. And that was really scary to me. I heard my door open. My mom was asking me to come in but I did not want her to do that right then. I was scared the possessed might see her and burn her to get even. I know the possessed hold grudges. That was the thing that stayed with me after I read about the Salem witch trials. All those people burned, thank Jesus, but to hear that they hold grudges was too much. If I was ever burned I would hold a grudge too. In that way I understood the possessed.
My mom said she was going to get my Father, so I had some time. The possessed was creeping up the middle of Decatur, away from my house. I darted across the street, staying close to the parked cars and being very sneaky.  ¶ 9:12 PM 0 comments

 

10 May

I desire secrets like most men desire sex. I desire sex like I desire food. But I do not desire secrets like I desire food. I rarely need to eat in any Jesus-40-day kind of way. In fact, I do not think I have ever needed food that bad. And I have never needed sex that bad, either. I get an urge to have dreamlike sex or eat a luxurious meal and so I do. That is, I pretend to have sex, and usually a sandwich is good enough. But secrets are a different story. I want to devour every secret until I am soaked by scandal, awash with idiosyncrasies and skeletons, drenched by stolen kisses, hidden crushes and first times. And there is no substitute for a good secret like there are substitutes for good sex or good food.

I have read the journal of every girl I have ever dated, provided they kept one. If she says she does not keep a journal, then I look harder. I have made duplicate keys. I have broken into her apartment while she was at work. I have checked her room while she was in the shower. In most cases, I end up finding her journal. I do not know what it is about their journals that makes these girls I date so ashamed. They have some lovely prose in there. Here is one of my favorites:

I never feel like myself when he’s inside me. I feel like I don’t exist. I wish he’d stop the second he gets it inside, but part of me never wants him to leave.

That really hurt when I read that. I stayed with her the longest, but ended it when I read about some guy named Ellmore. Besides, I told myself while sitting on the edge of her bed, you’re only doing this out of pity. I put the journal under her pillow, my easiest find because it is always the first place I look, and waited for her to get out of the bathroom. It was especially difficult to end our relationship with her wearing that lingerie. Not because of how sexy she looked or anything, lingerie is ridiculous, but because she went through all the trouble. I did not buy her any lingerie and so told myself that it must have been a gift from Ellmore. I asked her, with my hand around the doorknob, do you feel like yourself when he’s inside you? She stood there speechless as I closed the door. I really hope she did not cry. I did not mean any harm.

If she really does not keep a journal then I am forced to check her email. But I know as I click on her inbox that she will not last long. I will find reasons to get bored with her and end things, or I will let her know the things that will get her bored with me. My longest email relationship was 5 months and her name was Agatha. But she was alluring enough on her own to keep me around. She was the one who ended things. If she had not dumped me I may have never left. She was an exception and exceptions are always the hardest to lose because exceptions have indelibility and I have never forgotten her. The one secret I never got to know.

Other email relationships are bland because no journal means no secrets and no secrets means no personality. I know this is true. Up until my Aggie I never seriously considered an email relationship. But everything about her was intriguing. They way she would just up and leave for 15 minutes. Where did she go? Out for a walk, up on the roof, down in the basement - who knows? I wanted to ride on her back like a koala bear. I wanted to know everything about her because there was so much I knew she was not telling me. One day I woke up and she was not next to me. I found her in the living room dancing with headphones on. I wanted to bite her cheek off. But no journal. I looked everywhere.

You can tell a lot about a girl just by the type of journal she has and by where she keeps it. A regular five star notebook means she has been journaling for a long time and will continue to do so. The five star is a treasure chest and they are my favorite. But they never last long, so I do not know why I say that. They are typically very introverted, which is cute for awhile. But it gets old. I like chatty ones with five stars, they are typically the most fun to have sex with because all that journal writing gets her in tune with her body. If it’s a five star under the pillow, then I know we will get along just fine. A five star in her top drawer is no good.

Then there is the hard leather bound. These girls still think journal writing is like keeping a diary. I’ve seen some with entries that begin with “Dear Diary”. I do not even break up with these girls. I simply walk out and never talk to them again. I mean, it is not anything special to keep a journal. It is no momentous occasion. Every hard leather bound thinks writing in her journal is a visit to royalty. I might add, unless they keep the hard leather bound mixed among books. She lasted about three months.

A soft leather bound is the hardest to define. She may have journaled before or this may be her first journal. It is so hard to say with the soft leather bound ones. Typically, these girls are inconsistent, only journaling when they feel like it. I do not go for desultory journal keeping. These too, never last long. One kept her soft leather with her at all times. That was an adventure. I stuck around just for the espionage involved in trying to get my hands on that pearl.

The one’s that last the longest are always the most unique. One girl wrote in the margins of her bible. That was a hard find. Here’s a passage, written next to Psalm 105:4:

I like the way he walks into a room. He seems to be completely at ease with himself and in control. I never see that side of him outside of entering a room, which is most odd.

I disagreed with her, but I stuck it out, if only because her journal keeping was so interesting. There was another girl who kept a journal in a plain blue binder she restocked with looseleaf. Once it was filled she threw away the first page and so on. I found the papers in the garbage before I found the binder. Here’s a poem she threw out:

I test-drove this car once up a cliff and over a tree just
Because the dealer said I could take it off road. If only
He could see me now, that mustachioed harbinger.

She hid the binder on the top of a cabinet above her toilet. It was the necessity of and addiction to the journal that kept me around.

My favorite, and this one hurts more than dear Aggie, is the one who kept a journal with cutout pictures and drawings. I thought it was just a scrapbook at first until I found the connections to her daily life. On August 12^th, the day we first made love, I found a picture of the Eiffel Tower, a field of sunflowers, and a black and white picture of her laughing. To make sure I checked the day her father died, and sure enough it was a waterpainting of her father holding a rake with leaves coming out of his pockets and dirt in his hair. There was so much beauty to her drawings, so much depth to her journal keeping, that I thought she was it. I planned to marry her and still do. But she found me reading her journal one day when I thought she was at work. I was stuck on the most recent page from the day prior. The page included a drawing of a dinosaur and a picture of me in the top right and a picture of my friend Greg in the left. I was supposed to hang out with Greg the day before but he canceled last minute. I was sure they had just hung out, so I wasn’t jealous or anything. I was hoping we could still be friends, but she will not see me. I miss you Sara, wherever you may be.

It’s an addiction, I know. I do not smoke or drink and none of the hard stuff either, of course. This is the only pleasure I take out of life: discovery. And the funny thing is, I have never kept a journal. I was thinking the other day that maybe I would be able to hold down a relationship longer if I did. So hello, journal. Glad to meet you.

  ¶ 12:19 PM 4 comments

  The goal of their lovemaking was not so much the pleasure as the sleep that followed it.
  ¶ 3:12 PM 1 comments