What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  Who’s dashing?

  Spoil them. Crap on them. Don’t insult the old guy. He’s great. I love him.

  Getting pretty hot there between you two.

  God, you’re stupid.

  Don’t call me stupid.

  Dumb, then. Because why do you say such stupid things?

  Sometimes…forget it.

  No, what? I’m sorry.

  Sometimes I have to. Sometimes we all, for whatever our reasons, say dumb stupid things.

  That could be true. I thought you were going to say something more insightful than that, but okay. Anyway, you now want to get your clothes on?

  You see—I did come. Look. There. It isn’t piss.

  Maybe it’s your juices finally coming out now from way back in your body. Once those little guys get swimming I don’t see them going back down your tubes to your testes and that other place they’re made in, just because you only got them halfway up.

  I’ll get another batch all the way up now if you let me.

  If there was ever non-love talk between two people, this is it. Are you a necrophiliac?

  No.

  A lover of dead bodies?

  I know what it is.

  Because if there was ever a dead body to make love to, mine’s it. Though don’t try.

  I’ve ways to get you going.

  No way friend—none. This body is closed, a mausoleum. Door locked, key lost, at least for you. Nothing. For you, nothing ever again.

  I know—I’d even bet—I could get you interested.

  No. Because I won’t let you. That pencil looks better than you. Just get it out of your head. All your schemes. The BS about bets.

  Why won’t you give me a tiny chance to try?

  Because I don’t want to. Simple and plain. I don’t like it with you. With anybody like you. I also hate this talk—hate you for talking it. It’s dead-body talk. Antisex. Necrospeech.

  Gets me going. Look, take a peek. You can say you’re not attracted to that?

  Jesus, what do I have here? Go. Really, your clothes on, the door way behind you. Something. But beat it.

  That gets you going? I’ll do it. Yes, ma’am, just watch me fly.

  Don’t. Please, don’t be sick.

  I was only joking. I’m not sick. That’s what happens when I’m frustrated. But more so that I can’t get what I truly want to say to you across. The nice things. Though I once did it like that with a woman. The one I lived with. It was fun. It might seen crazy now, but she wanted me to, would ask.

  I don’t want to hear about it.

  “Squirt like a fountain,” she used to say. Something like that. She was from the West Coast. That was the term they used there, she said—Oregon. “Shoot,” I think it was, instead of “squirt.” Or “make.” That’s it. “Make like a fountain,” she used to say.

  She must have been as sick as you.

  Why? She wasn’t. I loved her, she me. We were together for three years. She had a son, was once married, and for those three years I was his surrogate dad. But after being with someone that long you often try out experiments or throw a few comes away. That night we did it that way. Big deal—no harm. She’d done it like that with her husband. I think we also later made it the more normal way together, so I got in two instead of one, besides all that fun.

  I never did it that way except when that was all I was doing with boys.

  Make believe I’m a boy.

  Uh-uh. From now on you better get used to doing it to yourself and in your own apartment till you hook up with someone else.

  It’s not the way I’d prefer it now, either.

  Fine. But I’m serious. You and I—we’re no more.

  Okay, you said it.

  Then you understand?

  Right.

  Good. I’m getting dressed. Please do too.

  Come on, what am I asking for? Then I go, and for good, as you said.

  Enough.

  Honestly. A quick one. Then I never call or come back.

  I said no. I don’t want it or feel like it.

  Then I’m going to have to take it.

  Try, and I’ll kick your nuts in.

  Go on. I’d like that.

  You really are crazy, you know? Just take off.

  I want it, though.

  You want to prove something’s more like it. Well, not with me. No time. And don’t get crazier or you’ll have more than trouble from me. The police—I promise you.

  What will you say? I’ve been banging you every other day for two months. You’ll say you suddenly don’t want to?

  Don’t start with me.

  Let me just touch it.

  Hands off. Not even a look.

  Once, and more than a touch, and I swear I’ll be fast, and then I’m gone.

  Get away.

  Please?

  Get the hell off of me.

  Just a little fun-making.

  Stop. You’re hurting me. I’m not ready.

  Get ready!

  I can’t. It doesn’t work like that. And you’re already in deep trouble.

  Get ready, because I’m coming in.

  You craphead.

  Oh, I love that.

  You mother, you bitch, you whore. Get off. You’re heavy as shit. I don’t want to. Not now.

  Now.

  You’re hurting.

  Now. Oh good; that’s so good.

  Shut your mouth.

  You want me to keep it shut?

  Shut your mouth. Let me out. Get out of here. Off me. Please.

  I’ll shut up if you want. I’ll be quiet.

  Be quiet.

  You won’t complain.

  I’ll complain. I don’t want to do this.

  Complain, then. That’s actually not so bad. Complain all you like.

  I won’t complain.

  No, complain.

  I won’t say anything.

  Then, good. Neither will I. Let’s just enjoy it.

  I can’t.

  Try.

  All right.

  You won’t blame me?

  Yes. No.

  Say you won’t blame me.

  I won’t blame you.

  And you don’t.

  I don’t.

  And that you like it this way a lot.

  I don’t.

  Neither do I—not a lot.

  Please be quiet.

  It’s not a bad way, though, is it?

  Quiet.

  I will. But what I’d like to know is why we have to do it this way so often.

  This position?

  No, just doing it.

  Not often.

  A lot of the time, then.

  Not even that.

  Then once ever week or so…you got to admit that.

  Shush.

  THE KILLER.

  Falling feet first in the air I get the feeling if I wanted to save myself 1 could simply flap my arms and fly back to the bridge. Fly in loops and all kinds of stunts under and around the bridge, in fact. In fact, if I could fly like that I don’t think I’d want to die so fast. I’d first fly to wherever in whatever way I wanted to and then die by flying someplace I could only die by flying to, like straight into a building or mountainside. I flap my arms. I start to fly. I fall into the river. But I’m not dead yet. I’m zipping further down in the water like a heavy spear but more like a sleek fish. I don’t mind drowning but I don’t think I’d want to drown that fast if I could swim for a while like a fish. I’d swim to the ocean’s floor and see its strangest sea creatures and rock formations and flora, and then when I’d seen enough I’d kill myself some way like swimming deep when I knew I didn’t have the breath to get back to the top in time. Or else off a huge waterfall to jagged rocks below, or I don’t know but somehow like a fish when I no longer wanted to swim but just wanted to die.

  I try to swim and start but stop because I can’t, and give myself up to drowning, but pop out of the water like a stick and onto my back. Somehow I made it to the top, but I di
dn’t want to. I didn’t even want to reach the water alive. I wanted to die in flight as I thought people did when they jumped from so high a height, and I was sure if the free fall didn’t kill me the impact of my body against water would. Maybe the way I fell stopped me from being suffocated in the jump, and the way I landed—there was barely a splash—stopped me from being smashed. But I survived and I’m now unable to sink. This river is near the ocean and the ocean might be depositing a lot of its salt in this part of the river, and that salt bed, if it’s called that, might be keeping me afloat. But I could be wrong, as I know as much about oceanography, if that is the science that deals with ocean salt accumulating in the river’s delta or basin or whatever the right word is for the river area the ocean flows into making it even saltier than the ocean, as I do about aerophysics, if that is the science that deals with the speed of sixteen feet per second—or is it thirty-two?—that an object falls at once it reaches its maximum speed if there are no obstacles in its way.

  I let myself go all over as I do when I want to completely relax myself, but I still can’t sink. It would be nice, though not as nice as swimming like a fish or flying with my arms as wings, to float around like this for as long as I want, though only if I were able to navigate myself and go at a faster speed. But I am able to float, as I wasn’t able to swim or fly, so maybe I should float out to the ocean and somehow across it and then after a long journey down all those foreign coastlines, but more realistically just down our domestic ones, to find a way to kill myself by floating, such as going up a river where the ocean’s salt line ends and making sure I’m in the middle of this very wide river when I start sinking so there’d be no chance the current could carry me alive to land.

  I try to float faster by kicking my feet. But I can’t get up sufficient speed to make floating interesting enough to want to stay alive for the time being, so I turn over on my stomach with my head in the water to drown. But by some natural means or I don’t know what, I’m flipped over on my back. I turn over and try to swim, thinking maybe the force of my strokes and kicks will keep me on my belly long enough to swallow enough water to drown, but I’m flipped right over and floating on my back. Now what animal or insect do I remind myself of and in what environment does this animal or insect’s automatic flipping-over movement take place? The closest one I can think of is a dead fish in stagnant water being prodded onto its stomach by a stick, and once the stick’s taken away, flips back over to one of its sides. And what science would deal with the phenomenon of my being flipped over when I try hard as I can not to? Probably a couple of them, including oceanography.

  I turn over on my stomach and while I’m being flipped back I gulp a mouthful of water, thinking if I do this repeatedly I’ll swallow enough water to drown. But the moment I’m on my back again I cough up the water. I try it again and again, but my body won’t allow even a small portion of water to stay past my throat.

  It seems I’ll never get to do what I want in this water and I’ll have to float like this till one of the river’s boats picks me up or I’m washed to shore. Either way, I’ll be pampered with warm drinks and blankets and eventually they’ll find out what I was doing in the water and word will get back to some newsroom and I’ll be made into this dumb folk hero whom nature kept alive despite his most earnest efforts to take his life, which will make it even tougher for me in the future to find a solitary way to die. What I should do is backstroke to a remote shore before daybreak, get back to the bridge and my car, and find a way to kill myself where there’d be no chance I’d survive.

  But which way is shore? It’s either east or west, if I’m still in the river, or north if the current’s carried me to the ocean If I’m in the ocean and swim to shore as if I’m in the river, I’ll be on my back all night without reaching land, always parallel to shore though perhaps progressively further away from it if the tide pulls me that way, and so tired by daybreak that I won’t have the strength to backstroke to shore once I sight it or out of range of a would-be rescue boat. And if I’m still in the river and backstroke to shore as if I’m in the ocean, I’ll be swimming all night up the river, also too tired to backstroke to shore once I see it or away from a passing boat. The best thing is just to float till daybreak comes, conserving my energy for when I’m able to see where I am in the water.

  I close my eyes. Sleep would strengthen me further and even seems possible. But if I’m now in the ocean I might float too far out to swim back to land. I’ll wind up floating along till a boat discovers me or I starve to death. Starving to death seems the better of those two, but how can I be sure I won’t be rescued hours before I’m about to die? Then I’ll be rushed to shore and hospitalized till I recover and hounded by reporters and the police who’ll want to know what I was doing in the ocean and how come my car was left on the bridge and several types of scientists who’ll want to know all the scientific reasons why I was able to survive my jump and stay so long afloat, making it even less likely I’ll find, for the time being, the necessary privacy to end my life.

  I decide to backstroke to shore as if I’m now in the ocean. That way, if I’m actually in the river and found there before I reach shore, I’ll probably be looked at as just a routine near-drowning rather than the person of note I could easily be turned into if I were found floating and dying way out in the ocean. And if I’m in the ocean, then by back-stroking to shore I’ll either reach shore or by daybreak be closer to shore than if I didn’t swim to it, or be somewhere in the river between its two shores if I now, by some luck, happen to be in the ocean at the river’s mouth.

  To find land, which is north of the ocean, I have to find the North Star. And to find that star I’ll have to first find the Big Dipper, as one of the few things I know about astronomy is that the top star of the ladle of the Big Dipper points to the bright North Star. But to find the Big Dipper I’ll have to find both Dippers to see which is the larger of the two, because for all I know the Little Dipper might also have a bright star off the top of its ladle.

  I float several complete circles, but all I can come up with is one Dipper. It isn’t a very large Dipper either, as I remember the Big Dipper getting in the summer or winter. If it’s in the summer that the Big Dipper gets much larger, then the Dipper I’m looking at, and which does have a fairly bright star off its top ladle star, would be the Little Dipper, which I remember gets proportionately larger the same season the Big Dipper does. So if that medium-sized Dipper up there is the Little Dipper in its larger summer size, then the fairly bright star off its top ladle star isn’t the North Star.

  Instead of swimming on my back to this bright star, and I figure it’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s the North Star, I take what I consider a sixty-forty chance to reach land and that’s to conserve my energy till morning by floating to wherever the currents take me. By not swimming I realize I might be reducing my chances of drowning, since if I backstroke all night I might get so tired that the automatic reflex or survival instinct or whatever it is physiological that’s probably responsible for my flipping over and also preventing me from swallowing any sea water, might stop functioning. But I float, all the time trying to compensate for the decrease in my drowning chances by keeping a sharp eye on the sky for that second Dipper. If I find it I’ll be able to positively identify the North Star, follow it to land, if I’m in the ocean, or up the river and then to land, if I’m now in the river or that part of the ocean the river flows into, and get to my car, if it hasn’t been towed because of my illegal parking by the bridge, and drive it off a cliff somewhere or, better yet, into my air-tight garage where I’d keep the motor running and asphyxiate myself, something I would have done instead of jumping if I hadn’t concluded beforehand that the surest way of successfully killing myself was to jump from the middle of the south side of that particular bridge.

  I float all night without locating the second Dipper. The sun rises and I don’t see land. But now knowing where west is, I backstroke till I’m exhausted in the direction
of what, because of the moving sun, is growing to be less of a chance of being north or south.

  I see a boat and swim toward it, thinking if I get on it I’ll pretend to my rescuers that I fell off my own small boat, ask them to let me rest in a private room, as I’m feeling ill and very tired, and in that room find a means to kill myself—a knife, scissors, piece of glass which, if it isn’t broken I’ll break soundlessly, a sheet to hang myself from a pipe or a sturdy hook overhead if there’s one.

  I get within a few yards of the boat and yell for help. A man sees me and runs to the front of the boat. The boat slows down, turns around, a rope is thrown to me and I climb onto the deck. They men who help me up speak a language I’ve never heard. They crowd around me and. pat my back, rub my hair and kiss my cheeks. A man who wears what looks like a captain’s hat runs to me from the front of the boat and throws his arms around me, lifts me up and grunts and grins at having rescued me. I thank them in English, but nobody seems to understand me. I shake the captain’s hand and place my hands under my chin in a way which in my country means I’m sleepy. He nods and speaks to one of the crew. The young man goes below deck and returns with a tray full of food. “No, no,” I say. I yawn and close my eyes dreamily and pretend to snore, which have to be sounds and signs understood in every country. The captain says “Ah-oh,” and sends the young man below deck again. The man returns with bottles of whiskey and glasses for us all. The captain raises his glass to me and says something and they all slug down their drinks. He puts his hand over my lips to stop me from drinking to the first toast, but the second, fourth and sixth toasts I’m allowed to drink to. Then he escorts me to the pilothouse, points to his wallet and gestures he’d like to see mine. He takes out my driver’s license and speaks into a radio set, the only words I understand being my three names roundly mispronounced.

  I yawn and stretch my arms and mime a man lying down and plumping a pillow and sticking it under his head and pulling a blanket up to his shoulder and falling asleep, and after I’m finished the captain says “Ah-oh,” and sends the young man out of the room. The man returns with dry clothes and sandals. I put them on and sit in a chair and feign dozing off, hoping they’ll be as nice as they’ve been and carry me to an empty room so I can continue my sleep in quiet. I hear shushing sounds from the men. A blanket is tucked around me. After about a half hour I stand and beat my chest to show I’m fully awake and inhale deeply as if I’d like some fresh air and open the door so I can perhaps find a way to kill myself outside the pilothouse. The captain shakes his head and finger as if he understands what I want and I’m going about getting it the wrong way. He opens the door of a water closet, waits outside it till I’m done there, walks me to a sink and makes motions of a man washing his face and hands, and after I’ve done that, he leads me to the eating area next to the galley and sits me down at a table and orders a man to bring me breakfast.