by Smith, Skye
"I read the two meat pages that were bookmarked. So where do you want to start testing me?"
"How did you know I wanted to test you?" he asked.
"Because you probably got arrested for testing pre-schoolers. I can just see you asking the moms, 'Hi, I'm gay and I would like to stand around in the nude with your five-year-old'."
"That's why the low marks. I didn't have a wide enough sampling to claim anything, or at least to prove what I was already sure of."
"Did you flunk the course?" she asked.
"It was Anthropology 201. I was an honors engineering student. They weren't allowed to flunk me."
"How do you want to start?"
"Doing the simple walk past." He stretched a tape measure across the floor and then stood at one end and directed her to the other. "I'll stand still. You walk in baby steps toward me. When you feel me, or I feel you, we will yell out, uh, what about the word 'mark'? At that point you stop, look down and tell me the number on the tape. Then start again and stop when the other person says 'mark' and tell me that number. Do you mind if we are both nude?"
"It's not being nude that worries me," she said, and then to herself, "it's being alone with you."
Over the next two hours they did sets of ten tries. First nude, then only him nude, then only her nude, then both robed, then one nude and one with a ski jacket, then vice versa, then both in ski jackets.
Afterwards, she sat outside drinking Shiraz and watching the endless vistas while he created endless spreadsheets so he could graph the results. She must have fallen asleep because she woke up chilled to the bone. It was really late. She went looking for him. He showed her the two most significant graphs he had created so far.
"Your power to both generate and to sense is more than ten times mine, and mine was already more than ten times my normal test subject from my paper. That is why we are getting ranges measured in feet rather than inches. And this one shows how yours is strong enough to go even through the ski jacket, whereas mine becomes so blocked that it isn't significant to measure it because of the margin of error.
This graph shows how your power increased with practice. Each time we retested, your power almost doubled. Look, by the tenth test it was almost four hundred times stronger than the first."
"Oh bullshit," she objected, "the tape wasn't that long."
"Umm, oh, I get it. You are thinking linear. The power moves out by three dimensional surface area, understand? To double the distance on the tape you have to have six times the power. To show four hundred times the power would be like going from one foot away to eight feet away. That last time when we were both nude you were almost twelve feet away."
"You've been in here for hours, and this is all you have?" she snarked, not really understanding the significance, though she could see that he was very excited about it.
"Oh, well," he said, stuttering a bit at the criticism, "it's this one graph that has been taking all my time. I had to import engineering algorithms into the spreadsheet in order to interpret it." He saw her face cloud over, so he decided not to go in to which derivatives he had used. "The variance in your power, and my sensing of your power is explained by resonance." Again her face clouded over. He tried again.
"Resonance is, well, how good are you at math?"
"I was so happy when I didn't have to take math in grade twelve, like, to get my diploma," she mumbled.
"Okay. Remember back when you got really good at swinging on a playground swing when you were a kid? It was when you realized that you only had to do small pumps at the top of each swing to go even higher the next time. That is resonance, sort of. You get in harmony with the back and forth, so that any new energy you put into it makes everything much stronger."
"Oh, you mean like when you blow your boyfriend's speakers out with your electric guitar? Or, or, that bridge near Seattle that they are always showing on PBS. The one that, like, waved itself to pieces during an earthquake."
"Exactly," he said, pleased with her understanding, "well, that is what this last graph shows me about your aura. It seems to know how to add a bit of power just at the right time to take the sensitivity out further and further. No, don't interrupt because here is the real news. Your aura seems to know how to do the same thing to my aura. My aura and my sensitivity were achieving more and more range not because of me, but because your aura was pushing on them."
"What? Just what does that mean," she said, "that my aura is like, messing around with yours?"
"Yes, you are messing with mine. It's like you are impatient to feel and be felt so you are goosing mine to get it going. You are resonating my aura."
"You make it sound like I'm shaking your world." We're starting to sound like fridge magnets, she thought to herself.
"You have no idea, Maya, how much you just shook my world. Everything I thought I knew about auras, all my understanding of fourteen years, has to be rethought." He looked over at the clock. "It's pretty late. Are you tired? Do you want to stop?"
"It's your tab," she said looking over his shoulder at the computer screen and trying to understand his graph, "you may as well run it. Just don't ignore me for that damn computer any more. This aura thing is brand new to me. I want to feel them, I like feeling them. Do your typing when we aren't together."
"Okay, point taken. Sorry." He looked around the room. "Umm, not more testing. Why not just have fun with them. Instead of walking past each other, why not dance around each other. Do you like to dance?" She nodded at him and gave him a happy smile. "Okay, I'll put on some music and we'll dance."
"The moon is bright," she said, "we could go onto the balcony and dance in the moonlight."
"This is Vancouver, not California. It chills off quickly once the sun is down. Too chilly for dancing in the nude. Even this room has cooled off. I'll turn the heat up." He walked around the room, and started some music, and then turned to her. She took off her robe and laid it across a chair. He did the same and then walked towards her bouncing gently to the music.
She stared at his crotch and began to giggle. "He's back."
"Don't laugh. We should probably do some tests on him. As a man is aroused it's normal for them to swell gradually. Around your aura he jumps to attention immediately, soft to hard in seconds."
"Not tonight okay?" she said, "I'd rather just dance with our auras." She watched him blush and then walk to the bathroom to get rid of it. She danced alone to the music, but it wasn't the same. You needed someone else's aura to bump into to get the delicious feelings. He had been gone at least ten minutes when she went to look for him.
He was standing in front of the toilet in his bathroom, pulling on it. "Can I help?" she whispered. "Like, it bounced up because of me, so, like, maybe my aura can hurry it up." She realized from his embarrassed look that it had been a big mistake coming into the bathroom and catching him in such a private moment.
He straightened up and turned around to face her. He was searching for words when she shrugged her shoulders and made to grab it with her right hand. She hadn't even touched it when he howled and made a mess on the wall and slumped to the floor, panting.
"Omigod, omigod!" she almost screamed, "what did I do?"
"Ahhh!!" he moaned. "It's my thigh muscles. They've spasmed - they're cramping up. Ow, ow, ow!"
She reached down with her hands and tried to massage his thighs. He stopped spasming. "That's it. That's working. Oh, thank you!" He sat up on the floor to straighten his legs and lean forward. He reached for his toes with both hands and pulled them towards him. "Oh, heaven. The muscles have relaxed." He looked at the stains on the wall and then down at his crotch. "You didn't even touch it. You were just cupping your hand ready to touch it."
"Yeah, like, tell me about it. Every date I ever had in high school ended the same way. Men and their premature whatsit."
He felt waves of aura from her. She was less than a foot away. He felt himself entering a rapturous state, the kind that he so rarely had achieved when he pr
acticed meditation. He could see that she was entering one, too. Her eyes were closing, her body was becoming limp.
He tried to shake it off, but it was so strong. He crawled over to the shower and turned it on and sat in the stream of water until the feeling passed, then he dripped his way over to her and guided her to the shower. He merely pulled her to him, and they stood there, warm water sluicing gently over them
When reality returned, he had the sense to pull the shower curtain. Too little, too late, of course. The bathroom was a disaster. The wallpaper stained. The floor swimming. "Hey, are you okay?" he asked her. She nodded back at him. "Water dampens the auras."
"Like when you've had too many mushrooms?" she asked.
He looked at her until the penny dropped. She was talking magic, not shitake. "Uh, yes. Why don't you go and uncover the hot tub and I will meet you there once I have cleaned up this mess?"
She had only just uncovered it and slipped into the warm human soup pot, when he eased in beside her. "At least in the tub we can be close without going into a rapture state," he said.
"Tell me about it," she said. She looked up at the moon so bright that was drowning out the stars. "It's getting really late. Do you want to go to bed? With me, I mean."
"I don't think that is a good idea," he said.
"Is it still called adultery between gay mates?"
"I didn't mean the sex. I meant that Karl could very well fly in tomorrow and find us lying beside each other, comatose on the bed."
"Well, I feel like having sex. Typical man. Do you think you are the only one who has been aroused during all these experiments of yours? I'm so horny I think my breasts have grown a cup size since we met."
"I'm not exaggerating the danger. I don't understand what has happened to us today. My graphs show me what has happened but not why. We are dealing with forces that seem to be getting more and more out of control. We were both passing out in the bathroom. It will be much safer once Karl arrives, so there can always be one of us acting like a designated driver."
"But I want to kiss you. I want to rub my chest against yours. I want to..."
"No, believe me, please believe me, what you are feeling is not love. Karl and I are proof of that. When we first discovered our auras we thought for sure it was true love. When our skins touched it was, was, well, so right, so complete. It wasn't love. That took us five more years to figure out."
"Love? I don't want love," she replied, her voice a little strained and whispery. "I guess I don't even want sex. I have just had a very upsetting day." She was starting to sob. "Wondrous, yes, but upsetting. This has been the most bizarre and perhaps the most important day of my life. I need a hug. Like, don't you get it? I need a hug."
"I'm," he stalled, "I'm afraid to touch you. We are dealing with things here that I have never ever imagined possible. What we discovered tonight both shock and scare me. Look what happened with your hand, and you didn't even touch me."
"Don't be silly. That's just men. My stupid mother made me promise that, like, no matter what, I would always put a condom on the boy. She made me promise that, like, when I was still playing house with my stuffed animals. On my first date I opened my purse and found a strip of three condoms that she had put in there. I would try to put them on my dates, and they would always spurt before they were all the way on."
He looked at her in shock. "Maya, I'm not a high school teen. I'm thirty-five. I don't come easily. I have total control. What happened was beyond bizarre. The speed of it hurt me, and caused my legs to cramp."
She floated closer to him, and he moved away as she got close. "You mean it wasn't the boys losing control too soon. You mean, like, it was me. All this time it was me."
"I think so, but I don't know for sure. We just met. We've done some simple experiments. Now, frankly, I don't want to do any more until there is someone else present. Karl is back tomorrow. He will understand. He will help."
"So, I don't get a hug, and I have to spend the night alone in a strange bed. I think I should go and sleep at Alicia's." She looked at him waiting, for a reaction.
"Also not a good idea. The only things we know for sure after today, is that today you found out that you could generate and sense an aura, and that in the process of practicing with it, it has become scary strong. I have some inkling about what that strength did to me, me who has been working with auras for half a lifetime. I have no idea what it is capable of doing to Alicia."
"We were fine yesterday."
"Yesterday is over," he said a bit too loudly, "don't you get it? You are not the same person anymore." She looked crushed by his words, and he felt like he had just kicked a kitten.
"How long do we have to stay in this stupid hot tub?" she hissed. "I'm feeling pruney."
"As long as you want to talk. The tub is a neutral place, so long as our skins don't touch."
"What happens if our skins touch?"
"I have no idea, and I want to find out," he said softly, "but not without a designated driver present."
"I don't get it. You're right, I don't get it. Explain it to me."
"On that final test. The tenth trial with both of us nude. I was feeling you at about a dozen feet. You started by not feeling me until a foot, and that stretched a bit, but then you started feeling me at the same time I felt you. It was like your aura was going out, finding mine and then doing something so that you felt it even at your range, not mine. Weird, wonderful.
Eventually what I was feeling from you at ten feet was making me feel very strange, dizzy, flushed, horny. That is why I had you stop. What do you think I would have felt like at five feet, or five inches, or zero inches?"
"And zero inches is ..."
"Touching," he finished her sentence.
"How do I turn it off?" she said quickly.
"What?"
"You turned it on in me. It's getting stronger and wilder. How do I make it get weaker and meeker. How do I turn it off?"
"I don't know," he mumbled.
"You don't know? What do you mean you don't know? You're the expert."
"I, I, I've only ever tried to make it stronger. Being near you has made mine stronger than I ever dreamed possible. Before, mine was blocked by clothing. I don't know if it ever went 'off'. How would I know? Maybe it is like hearing or smell. Do they ever turn off? You can block them, but are they off or just blocked?"
"The tub," she said sounding a bit frantic, "you said the tub is, like, neutral. If I, like, sit in it long enough, will it turn the volume down to where it was when we met. Like, you know, hold it in neutral."
I don't know, he said to himself, but he didn't want to say it out loud. She had to have some confidence in him. "Tell you what, get out of the tub and dry yourself on that sheet towel, and then wrap yourself in it. Then I will get out and do the same. You on that side, me on this. Then we will drop the towels. If it gets weird then we get back in the tub."
After drying they stood a while wrapped in the towels looking at each other across the tub. "Where is all this leading to, Erik?"
"I thought I knew, but we passed that point hours ago." He dropped his towel. She dropped hers. "It's back to feeling pleasant," he said. "Does it feel good to you?"
"Yes. It's the feeling I like, you know, all warm and cozy inside."
"Good, I'll put the cover back on the tub. You go to bed."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The note on the kitchen island said he would be back from the airport by noon with Karl. She looked at the wall clock. Forty minutes. She munched away at her granola and yoghurt. These guys would get along great with her mom. They had the same things in their refrigerators, except that her mom always had a baggie of grapefruit sativa buds in the freezer.
The house was so clean that it gave her the creeps. Bloody homos, they probably argued about whose turn it was to vacuum because they liked to bloody vacuum. She took a bit of a snoop around the living room in the daylight. It was tasteful, but in a comfortable, l
ived-in way. There were family photos on a shelf on one wall. She could see where Erik got his good looks from. In a prominent position on a side table, there was one of him with another man. That must be Karl. He seemed shorter, with just the suggestion of a paunch, and light brown hair just starting to thin a little. They were on what seemed to be a beautiful tropical beach, with turquiose water and palm trees in the background. They were tanned and laughing, and looked very much a couple.
She shivered a little, as she walked around. The house had still not warmed up from the night. Vancouver sun was not California sun. She pulled the robe closer around her. The silk felt luxurious against her skin.
She washed and dried her dishes and put them away. She had never lived with a dishwasher and was afraid of messing theirs up. Upstairs, she looked into their suite and saw that the bed was made and the bathroom was clean. She went and made hers, and then reluctantly took off the silk robe and put her yellow sundress back on. She wasn't imagining it. Her breasts had grown.
She was on vacation. Except for her travel jeans and a sweatshirt, all her clothes were summer dresses or skirts. Most of them from mom's big trunk of clothes that no longer fit her. She smiled. This sundress would not have fit her mom since before she was born. She had never quite gained her figure back. Close, but not quite, despite trying everything from yoga to macrobiotic diets.
She heard the garage door open, and went back downstairs, feeling a little unsure. What if the phantom roomie took an instant dislike to her? A man came through the connecting door to the garage and he said a formal' hello', but kept his distance. She had been expecting another tall Nordic type like Erik, but he was nothing like that. He was fair, yes, but shorter and wore glasses. In any high school in California he would be shunned as a nerd.
"You must be Maya," he said with a slight European accent. "Erik has just talked my ear off about you all the way from the airport. Well, you are most welcome to stay here. If you need anything, anything at all, please just ask." With that he carried his bag upstairs. Erik went straight to the kitchen and started making tea and food.