by Steven Snell
I’m smiling. It’s past one in the morning and I’m smiling. She’s the canary yellows in my life; the warm, the happy, the better place medication, the sunflowers, the sun, the colour of the walls in an insane asylum, my first canoe, the colour I painted my second bicycle. I adored her with or without metaphors, with or without her beside me, with or without knowing what was to come of us.
But now I know.
I recall her letters.
Goodnight, Gabriella, I say to myself. I’m sorry. So very sorry. Goodnight.
23.
“I don’t know you!”
“You don’t want to know me.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Then stop bringing it up.”
“I want to know you!”
“No you don’t.”
“That’s only what you think, Shawn. You shut yourself off from me. Why would I be here, if I didn’t want to know you?”
“Are you my therapist?” I laugh and she half-jokingly pushes me away. I pull her closer and look into her dark eyes. “What? What’s going on?”
She lays here under my covers moving in and out of comfort, a sense of attachment, a sense of fear, maybe wanting me closer, my body or emotion, she doesn’t know. She’s lying down but falling. Perhaps she wants to leave her husband but needs to know there’s someone to go to. In her mind she shakes her head. She’s an actor. She can’t be single. She’s mused about it, felt empowered by the thought of it, but eventually she just needs to be remarkable in someone’s eyes. She said that to me once.
She stops talking. We lay here and minutes pass. I have nothing to talk about; she’s wondering if she does. I get up and go the washroom and return beside her. She puts her head on my chest. I continue to say nothing. She goes to say something and stops herself. More silence and then she whispers, “I can hear your heartbeat echoing in your chest.” Then quiet, almost to herself, “I feel you more now.”
She continues, about understanding me more, about knowing what I’m thinking, but it isn’t enough. No matter what she tells herself, I’m not enough. She’s reaching out to something she knows I can’t give her. But she’s hoped. After many nights or weekends of her husband working too much perhaps a change could have occurred. Emotions could have shifted. Motives could have morphed. She balls her hands on my chest.
Upheaval.
“Who are you, Shawn?” She takes a deep breath through her nose to run away from the stasis and easiness and the life she’s living created for one of her selves but not the person she is when her head is on my bare chest. “Who are you?”
She feels me more because I told her what she needed to hear during her last grasp at Meaning. Something to ground her. She had felt my heart in my chest and wanted a story. I gave her a history and a heart that didn’t just hold emotions but pumped blood, something immediate thumping in her chest. I told her of barbers and the red and white swirl outside their shop doors. The swirls heralded a time during the Enlightenment when there was a move towards invasive surgery. Physicians didn’t want to deal with Commoner matters: blood and guts, things for meat cutters, butchers, the men good with the pedestrian act of slicing, scalping, digging out meat for consumption or examination. This was when the human body was a metaphor for civilization. Physicians were philosophers, the head. Everyone else was of the torso and limbs, parts of the body that touched the ground, toiled in it. Dirtiness, that was work for barbers.
Physicians were physically removed from their ideas. I think; therefore, I am. Cognition separate from action. Something transcendent. Outside of affection. Pureness in the name of healing, fixing, remedying, curing.
Remove the stomach because the patient suffers from obesity.
Physicians were out there and could thus be absent from the act’s responsibility: the removal of the limb because the patient suffers from hives. Punch a hole in the skull to relieve headaches.
Physicians haven’t changed much. Now it’s just more hands on, more physically attached. No more barbers. They just cut hair, blood just a swirl of red paint outside their shops. Physicians do their own slicing, cleaving.
Break and reset femur to be taller.
Sever nipples to insert silicon bag for a more proportionate look.
Cleave penis to hang lower.
Prune ribs to give more hour-glass shape.
Inject matter into lips to add fullness. Like a sofa or love-seat. Cut open and add cotton. Like Ikea furniture, but no Allen key. Now stethoscope and endoscope. Hacksaws and hammers.
Poke holes in scalp to implant hair.
Cut webbing between fingers to make hands look slimmer, daintier.
Slice eyelids to make look more Caucasian.
Fuse pores to stop sweating.
Karen sweeps her hair behind her ear. “What are you thinking about?”
I smile. “The absurdity of cosmetic surgery. … Perfecting the imperfectability of the human body.”
She lifts her head to look at me and then rests it back beside my shoulder. “Cosmetic surgery has its place. Burn victims are grateful for cosmetic surgeons.”
“I don’t disagree. But that’s plastic, not cosmetic. A subtle but important difference.”
“And that is?”
“One is to relieve physical and social pain, the other to fit into some paradigm of beauty.” I slide my hand down to her lower back. “I wonder if people will start manipulating their pets. Sharper teeth. Longer ears. Bigger cock for banging the bitches.”
“You’re disturbed.”
“You’re lying beside me naked.”
“You’re still disturbed.”
I shift and roll and I’m on top of her. She makes a half smile. I take her arms, grasp her left wrist with my right hand and her right wrist with my left. I raise them over her head and push them down to the mattress and hold them there. She takes a deep breath through her nose. A deep breath, then eases it out of her. I kiss her left earlobe, her lips, the spot just below her right jaw, her lips. She lifts her breasts up to my chest. I kiss her chin and work down to the nape of her neck. She quietly moans. I let go of her wrists and move down towards her feet, her perfect Karen feet. She puts her fingers in my hair and plays with my curls. I spread apart her thighs. A moan of anticipation from her lips. I descend farther. I kiss the instep of her right foot. I slide my left hand down her right leg and put my thumb in my mouth, moistening it. I move up to her groin and slowly work my wet thumb against her clitoris. She takes a deep breath and raises her lower back as if a bridge to the Broken Islands. My thumb in small circles. Her wetness on my fingers brushing past her pubic hair. I lift and bend her legs and push her knees against her breasts, her perfect Karen breasts. She holds my hands and then releases them to cup her chest. My hands slide down below her knees and I push them to her sides to shift her pelvis up so her vagina points to the ceiling fan. I lick down her wetness, over her clitoris, over her heat and down and over her anus. A gasp escapes her mouth. Then back up to her heat and push my tongue in and out of her. I slip my index finger inside of her. All the way in I push at the top surface of her vagina. Another deep breath emerges from her lips. My tongue licks her perineum. I choreograph my fingers and tongue into a stanza to match her deepening breathes. I take my thumb, slide it down the fissure of left and right Karen and then back up to her anus. She moans. I ease my middle and pointer finger inside of her hive and my pinky into her cave. Another gasp and she moans louder.
“F u c k.”
My mouth over her clitoris and my right hand in and out of two ways deeper into her body. Her anus and vagina hot against my fingers.
“S h a w n …”
She starts rocking her pelvis in motion to match my fingers in and out of her. My left hand moving up holding her swelled breast.
“S h a a w n . . .”
Words break out of her. My tongue the Conductor. Fingers in and out. Wet and wet, they slide and slide. Warmth escaping from her body, inside heat spilling out onto my palm. She gas
ps deeper. I feel her legs start to shake and her pelvis thrusting down against my hand. My lips pinch her clitoris.
“Sh a w … … aaah.”
Sounds pouring out of her. Heat on my hand. Stickiness. Her clitoris begging to climb into my mouth. A shake out of her. A quick breath. Her back arches farther off the mattress to ascend Annapurna, Everest, the Tower Babel. A silent scream. The Hindenburg. The atom bomb. The Titanic colliding with the iceberg.
An emptying.
A moan. Cumming.
Limp.
And Karen, of nothing more than an occasional aftershock twitching in her legs. I slowly remove my fingers from her. Gently kiss her inside left thigh. Her right hip. Glide up beside her, kiss her left cheek and spoon her effervescent body. I whisper, “But I know you.”
24.
I’m immersed in a mug filled with a red wine that tastes like a barn yard floor. It’s dirty. Cynthia is onto a different bottle. “Very average, very London Millennium Bridge. Great design, poor functionality.”
I’ve been here since leaving work.
Cynthia messaged me when I was getting on the train. “I need a drink”
“I can help”
“Good. Come over”
“I pick up some things. On the train. 30-ish”
“Lovely”
I tilt the mug on my chest and look into it. Swirl it slightly. A song that’s all bass and falsetto vocals plays quietly in the background. A car starts outside. It idles. A door slams. Two dogs bark. Quiet again. Downtown white noise. A typical city eve. Five floors up we sit in Cynthia’s apartment utopia drinking red wine staring at Gehry’s Guggenheim, a tree filtering light over a girl asleep on a patch of green grass, a yellow Frisbee tossed as if suspended in air, a red mailbox, a dilapidated brown barn, the space shuttle flying past the sun. She’s on her pink bean bag chair she purchased after sitting in one at her favourite tea house in Banff. I’m slouched into her couch; my feet are on the dark wood coffee table. On it lays yesterday’s Globe and Mail newspaper, a magazine turned face down, a remote control and two bottles of red wine. I bend my leg and pull at the top of my sock from underneath my jeans.
She speaks over the rim of her glass of wine.
“You know … it’s been awhile since I’ve masturbated.”
I rest my leg back down over the other.
“Pour-quois?”
“… Because I’m somewhere between boredom and the need for more than just clitoral and vaginal stimulation. Sometimes all The Pope is is a cold dildo.”
Cynthia calls her vibrator The Pope.
“I like the heat of a cock and the pressure of a pelvis against mine. The cold, rubbery Pope just doesn’t carry that sort of mass.”
Cynthia lowers her glass, pauses.
“I miss that feeling, that second before my clothes come off. That moment of anticipation. I find comfort in that.”
She takes a drink of wine and puts her glass on her crossed legs and holds it with both hands.
“Haiti and I promised each other that sex is okay – if not needed – but if emotions start to come out for someone else, then we must talk, we ought to determine where to go from here. … I’ve gotten so used to turning it off that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to turn it back on.” She sighs. “And … that’s what I fear – and that’s why I’m bored – and that’s why I’m not into The Pope. … Oh, and The Temp is dead to me.”
She gently scratches an itch on her arm. “Don’t.” She looks at me and smiles with her eyes.
“I won’t.”
“I know. I should know better.”
“Quick beginnings, quick endings.”
“Yah, pretty much. I had hope though.”
“Hope for what?”
A robin settles on her balcony railing. It hops to her bike handlebars. It stays there for a few moments, its head darting about. It turns and flaps its wings and then flies off into the night.
I say, “The wonders of the long distance relationship. … I can relate. Could relate. I had that with Gabriella. Now I don’t.” I pause to contemplate my thoughts. “I ruined that.” I speak to myself, thinking out loud. “We sort of started local, then long distance, wanted something local, had to make it so, then it became so; local to me. … Huh, how does one determine who is to go to who?”
Cynthia nods her head.
I continue, “Was I to go there? Her here? We made the choice and I think … I don’t know … Maybe we both had these romantic notions of something –” I stop. Lift my mug to drink it. Stop. Lower my mug. “Maybe that wasn’t the only issue. I … I …” I take a long breath in, “It was having to live together. A huge step that, looking back … that looking back right now … right now I realize maybe I wasn’t mature enough to make.”
I lean forward and take one of the bottles and add wine to my half full mug and take a long sip, put the bottle down and lean back into the leather.
“It’s funny … not ha ha funny …” I smile. “Jacob said I was an idiot. He said we should have met half way. ‘Fuck your jobs and your comforts. You’ll never make it work if she comes to you. That will only lead to collision’ – quantum annihilation he called it.”
Cynthia smiles with her cheeks.
“Here is my life, join it. She’s going to be the person who made the journey and made the sacrifices, gave up more …” I trail off.
“He was probably right.”
“He was. … She went home and I’m here and I’m an asshole.”
I swallow. Listen to the music. Process the thoughts in my mind. Cynthia and I are looking at our drinks, absorbing the mood, the slow low gentle cool easy quiet white mood we’ve created. Another song starts.
I say, “… Sometimes … I think I’m an idealist … huh … but, but with Gabriella, with her, I somehow ended up … I don’t know. I became a realist, analytical. I think I over thought it.”
“You made it fail.”
I look at her; she’s looking at the wall and turns to me, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I just –”
“No, you’re right. I made it fail.”
“… Why do you think that?”
I look up to the ceiling to see if there’s a thought waiting there for me. I say, “My fear, my immaturity,” I shrug, “or a collection, a collection of both. … I don’t know.”
“I liked her.”
I tilt my head to her. She looks sheepish, “Sorry.”
I smile. “Two in a row.”
“Sorry.”
“Three.” I take a drink. “… She was the hopeful one … building us up and I was the one taking us down. She was guided by emotion. … She made me wonder if I was passionless, or if that feeling, that quality was mere background noise to my rationality.”
“Or your excessive ability to rationalize anything good into its demise.”
I take a long inhale of my wine and then tilt it to my lips. Cynthia smiles at me, sips her wine, looks out the window and says, “What happens … what happens when no one cares anymore? Does it end? Does everything fall apart? Or is there new innocence to be found? … How long is the journey? What do I need to pack? … I want to be something more … I want … I need a break from my Tin Man heart.”
She goes quiet, shakes her head, speaks.
“I need a break from my Tin Man heart.”