by Steven Snell
Homes rolling through farmers’ fields. Teddy bears and crayons washing up on the shores of another country. Knocked over news reporters. Flooded sport stadiums. Clogged sewers blanketing the city with human bile and feces.
Put down the hot TVs and DVD players and food and water and smile for the camera and look good for the evening news.
Just stop forcing it.
Focus on the road.
Focus on the road.
I sent Gabriella a message this afternoon. She didn’t reply. I don’t know why I did. I was feeling lonely and wanted to feel special in someone’s eyes, maybe her eyes. I just wanted to picture her looking at me the way she used to. I didn’t hear back from her and I took two of the seven remaining pills.
The road rises before me and I listen to Love Songs On The Radio. The defroster is cranked to full hot trying to clear the windshield of my heavy breathing. I can’t focus. My vision narrows from the road and locks onto the frost expanding before me. I angle my head and try to look out from under it and find the horizon and I try to make out the shapes and I try to find myself on this landscape unfolding under me at 60 km/h.
I’m driving to rid my head of the times Gabriella never looked sweeter than the moments holding hands and making tracks in the snow in the field along the river seven blocks from our apartment.
I drive north. Just to drive. Drive. Like the monotony of doing laps in a pool, like running on a tread mill, the absurdity in stationary aerobics. Activity but no essence. Movement. Not a change in physical state. Just trying to lock into a rhythm. Back ‘n forth. Heel strikes pounding along.
My phone rings. I want it to be her but I can’t believe it will ever be her again. It continues to ring and I continue to think of you. You and I floating and frolicking and laughing and breathing and I taste the ocean on your lips and I watch you dance on the beach and I close my eyes and inhale deeply and Barcelona is dripping hot and we’re alone and I’m afraid we’ll never have each other because you’ve moved on to what you wanted, it’s what you needed, you said, and I’ll always feel us up and down Las Ramblas soaking wet underneath a summer rain shower walking and walking and walking into the Mediterranean Sea.
I’m unsure what it was or still is about her that keeps me moving, this car, this aimless driving, moving; passing minutes watching the city lights fade away in my rear-view mirror. I’m not sure how to act this anymore. I’ve forgotten how to use the clutch and the steering wheel doesn’t seem to function. The headlights point to the horizon searching for something hiding in the darkness and my eyes follow a passing road sign until suddenly quickly I pull back trying to regain control of my car swerving on the snow covered highway.
This picture and feeling it stuck inside me. I can’t toss it into the fire like everything I’ve said to her. I was just supposed to go home. Now I’m on a highway watching my headlights waiting for a deer to leap out into the illumination this car shines out into the night.
I could be okay, wrapped up in a bed, large and soft waiting for you, again and again, a thousand billion moments again and again following the last ones. Eternity is not long enough and near is not inside of you. The Pause button. The Emergency Stop. I’m ok sinking in wet sand as long as it is with you.
I’m trying to conjure up the past to live in this exact moment knowing I’m far away from your two tanks of gas put between us but all I recall the wine we held up to our mouths and the shape of your mouth and the shape of your hand holding the mug and you and I. I recognize now that I gave you little and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t hold your hand tighter when you put yours in mine as you were getting those three stitches in your knee and part of me wishes I could cry as I drive farther away from you, from us, from the west coast and your new apartment near the ocean.
But maybe I can reach you. I could lessen the distance and I think I can reach you if I drive a bit faster and I just want to tell you that you were all I needed. I had many chances to say what should’ve been said but I never did and I don’t know; I didn’t want to give myself to you like items off a list; I didn’t want you to build me up so you could pull the floor out from beneath me and there are parts in me that only function when I lie beside you and look into you and think about all that writhers through your body and I trusted you. I trust you. Those plants you gave me are growing green in the light penetrating our living room window.
You were a journey to warm in the winter and cool in the summer. You were my consistency in the four seasons. Sometimes alone and quiet and sometimes screaming at the sky, you are here inside of me. But never close enough. Never as much a part of me as I could ever desire. You are a piece of my molecular make-up – my DNA, my reactions to oxygen and my energy in light and the hairs on my neck and the heat in my belly and my feet on concrete. It’s in all of these places I feel you and all these places I need you.
And this driving in darkness, the only reflection raccoon’s eyes staring at me from the culvert and I close and open my eyes, this morning hard to wake up, this morning that boredom of not knowing where to go and that nauseous stomach ache anxiety and I knew if I woke I’d push out a bowel movement of melancholy or depression into the day’s murkiness, the absence of gravity and I need to strip away what it means to be human; me a feral child driving through the night but I need more experiences towards something that gets me from one place to another to another composition of chemicals bonded by some molecular force and I’m falling because I’ve felt others that projected hope in me but I’m afraid and I escape to another’s bed or a highway north and there is some ideal form I can imagine and fantasize about, what makes me made me scrubbing myself cleansing dirt from my clogged pores or peeling off the bandage and scab and my neck is sore and needs your hands to work deep into it and my shoulders are weak and needs your hands to work through them and my legs ache and need your hands to push along them and my body is here and needs you to lift it. At 50 km/h now I need you to lift me. I need you. I need you to lift me. Be me, me – I would’ve been you. I think I still want you.
My phone beeps. I look down at it, try to focus on it. Focus back on the road. Back to my phone. A message from Beth.
A message from Beth.
Beth.
I shake my head.
I look out through the windshield again.
The night.
Dark.
Alone.
Where am I?
I write, “Ok”
27.
I’m lying on her bed, the window open, a car passes by. It’s very late, or very early. It’s very dark. I look outside. She’s up rummaging through her giant walk-in closet looking for a condom. The sounds outside and I imagine the ocean. Escape from her backyard pool, her car, her spray tan, her jewelry, her thousand-mile-wide bed. Why did I drive here? I don’t want to be here. I need to escape.
She tucks back in, pulls her blond hair back, pushes her breasts into my back. Her hand slides down my hip, down to my thigh. I look out the window and see a beach and sea turtles and sand castles. That’s what I want to see. She starts kissing my neck and takes hold of my limp penis. She roles me onto my back and crawls down to my groin. I’m a sunbather lying on my back feeling the sun and not a breeze to speak of. The ocean’s breath on my skin and warm sand between my toes. Seagulls above and a yacht close to shore slowly passes by.
It gets darker. Clouds. I feel her breath on my stomach. Her fingers sliding up and down my penis. Waves pulling at the sand. She’s working harder. It starts to rain. Her mouth and hand up and down on my penis. It starts to pour. Her saliva on my penis. A hurricane. She’s pulling at me, trying to make me hard. Waves, waves, a squall rushes through the seaside town streets. Her.
I take her shoulders and pull her up. She’s about to say something but I quickly kiss her before she says a word. I roll her over and get on top. I push my groin into her and rub against her feeling her bare crotch and wait for something to occur inside. Something. Some movement. Get hard, Shawn. She moans
for me. Get hard, I tell myself again. Cars pass by. A horn. I work harder into her. I feel something. She moans. I’m there, enough to do this. I take the condom she’s still clutching in her hand and open the package with my teeth and roll it down my shaft. I push inside of her. I thrust hard then soft and move to her moans. Hard. She digs her manicured nails into my thighs. The room filled with the smell of death rotting in the ocean. I swear I hear someone outside calling to his dog. I lift her leg over my shoulder and roll her half over and then next leg over and I crawl up higher on her ass and thrust hard into her. She’s moaning profanities into her white down pillow. “Fuck me, Shawn! I fucking love when you fuck me!” Out and then hard down a machine carrying out its functions. She’s louder. “FUCK.” I work harder on her. She gets wetter. She gets louder. I get deeper. “DON’T STOP,” she gasps. She takes a sharp breath. Tires screeching on the pavement outside. A loud moan. “OH GOD!” Soaking wet. A scream outside. Her hands reach back and nails go deeper. Short, sharp breaths. Cars. Harder and deeper. Harder and deeper. Harder. A car slams into a light post and explodes in flames and airbag dust and deeper and another scream outside and inside an exaltation, an emancipation from some shitty bastard ex-husband on a business trip in Cancun banging his secretary and she’s cuming and gasping and moaning and lets it all go and releases and sinks into her thousand-mile-wide bed and I lie down beside her shaking body and put my hand on her lower back. She slowly rolls and sweeps back her salon blonde hair and looks at me.
She purrs, “That was maddening … thank-you.”
I hear myself say, “It was.”
“I like how hard you cum,” she says.
I didn’t cum.
She inches up against me and purrs again, “Mmm.”
I’m bored, I want to say. I want to say other things too. About how much I hate myself. About how much I hate being here. About why the fuck do we keep doing this. But I don’t. I lie here long enough. Long enough. Long enough. I kiss her on the mouth.
“I’ll let myself out. We’ll talk soon.”
“… Um, okay.”
“Goodnight,” I say.
“Um, goodnight … call me.”
28.
Beth called me. It’s two days after the last evening we said goodnight. She’s likely wrapped in a white, thick, wafer cotton blanket lying on her caramel lounger looking outside at her covered pool. It’s sunny and she’s probably wearing big sunglasses that hide most of her face, her red eyes, just hanging above those big shiny red lips on a perfectly corrected nose. Her penciled in eyebrows. She must have her pearl necklace between her fingers sliding it around her neck.
She must have been clicking through her phone, going through messages, replying to a few friends. Plans tonight? No. Shopping later? Not in the mood. No, no, later. Sure.
Then she called me. She called me once and hung up and then called me again. Somewhere between fear and nerves and hiding embarrassment in her voice that’s how she called me.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Shawn.”
“Hi.”
“…”
“Hello?”
She didn’t say anything.
I filled in the silence. “What’s up?”
“… I went … I went to the doctor this morning.”
Moisture surged into my mouth. My stomach rose and my throat constricted. My tongue expanded.
She said sorry, just above silent. She said she went to her doctor. She had felt discomfort.
I panicked. I didn’t say anything. My mind racing through a million of scenarios. What to do? Next steps. Oh god. Oh my fucking god!
“I have a yeast infection. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t continue. Didn’t say anything. Just prepared for my reaction.
I exhaled deeply, relieving myself of solid fear, but caught my breath.
She wanted me. She wanted me so bad she said. She could hide it or I wouldn’t notice it or –. She just wanted it so bad. My body. Your fucking body she said. She was massaging my neck and moving her fingers through my curls. Gosh I love those curls she said. She couldn’t help it she said. She said she wanted me. She began kissing me, my neck, my back and continued down to my hips. I didn’t stop her. My shirt was off and she looked at me and imagined me and pictured me above her.
I didn’t say anything.
Will he notice, she tells me. I wanted you so bad, she says. “I just started kissing you and couldn’t stop myself. Then you turned me over and took me and I so fucking wanted you.”
Neither of us said anything
“I wanted your cock in my mouth but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted you to fuck me! I danced my lips on your cock and all I could think about was you pounding on me and it made me so fucking wet … I forgot about my infection …”
“It’s okay,” I say on the other end of the phone and then she starts to weep.
29.
Tonight. I’m bored. Empty. That want to do but not motivated to do bored. Lonely. The streets are wet and I look out my third floor window, the city blurry with rain sheeting down the pane of glass. I lean my head against it. A young girl treks by with her hood up red jacket and green rain boots splashing in puddles, a woman a few paces behind her. I sit back on my couch, cross my arms and look up and yawn. I cover my mouth with my hand and close my eyes. My eyelids shudder. I breathe. My eyelids stop shuddering. Images now. Images from my day. Train to work. Work. Lunch at my desk. Work. Train home. The rain. A girl I saw on the train. I’m lying down and she stands over me naked. The space between her thighs the space in my apartment, outside, the night, city, the Milky Way, this dark blurry evening down my window pane and her playing with her pubic hair above me.
I feel like being fucked by a stranger.
Another girl steps into my mind and she removes her clothes and she’s sitting on my face. She’s heavy or slim or large breasted or small or shaved or not. She’s wearing a skirt and topless or still has her bra on and she’s blonde or auburn, long or short haired. She’s from down the street or Wyoming or Croatia. She’s a student or an accountant or a barista or an artist courier secretary general nanny mayor. She’s sitting on my face pulling her cheeks apart and she’s drunk enough to accept this and sober enough to know it, know that this is right for her too. Two strangers to each other naked and sharing and knowing this is enough at this moment we both need this. Both need naked. Both need to feel something intimate without shame or regret lust belief desire need need need orgasm.
I feel my penis move.
I think about masturbating.
Masturbating at some vigorous velocity.
A speed that bends light.
A speed that warps gravity.
At vectors that would create a black hole of nothingness expect for an infinitely long single dimension spew of cum.
My phone rings. I open my eyes. Rings again. The images fade. My phone rings again and I pick it up off the coffee table.
“Hello.”
“Shawn, it’s Alex. I’m drunk, so fuck off.”
“I’m bored and thinking about particle physics.”
“And I’m thinking about drinking.”
I adjust myself and look back to the rain streaking down the window. I yawn into the crook of my arm. “Sounds like you’ve stopped thinking about it.”
Alex latches onto my physics theme. “If we all come from the big bang, or that’s what we’re calling it these days, we all come from the same explosion, billions of years later life occurs but not everything becomes life, somehow only some molecules get to be life, others, bummer. Now those with life evolve and those not, don’t. They’re condemned to the inanimate.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Science and its stories just seems so bullshit and roll the dice morality.”
I hear Alex take a drink and swallow.
“Science … the creation of life with its strike of a lightning bolt and molecular shifts towards life crap.”
“I like the
science story,” I say standing up and walking to the kitchen.
He continues, “Personally, I’m a big fan of the lightning bolt striking earth theory. That sounds like a godly interventionist metaphor, if I’ve ever heard one, and people need god.”
I smile thinking about Jacob’s god.
Alex continues speaking into both his phone and glass. “Why can’t we just accept Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, A Tree, Some Rocks, A River, Shiva, The Sun – The Sun I can buy. At least The Sun has some evidence of being the harbinger and sustainer of life. Shit, there I go with science again.”
“Careful with the evidence postulations.” I click on the kettle and pull a mug out of the cupboard and drop a tea bag in it.
“Everything – just poof! Life! Lightning bolt – intervention – and then it’s there and so it is and it was good.”
“Seems convenient.”
“Too convenient. The Western supremacy God got seven days, seven long god days to create. Not a nanosecond explosion of light, and life! Life! See, a god day is like dog years to the nth degree. This seems just so obvious to me. God, dog, the palindrome just reeks of truth and God’s infinite amount of time to create.”
I lean against the counter and pour the boiling water into the mug. “Oh your tautologies, Alex.”
“And here’s the downfall of science, where the entire method falls apart. It still postulates the whole prime mover thing, just like Plato. Science is still 2400 years ago. It still has to lay out the whole philosophical trump card to really get us anywhere, to really get at the Beginning, the beginning of the Beginning.”
“The beginning of the Beginning. I like that.”
“And I like drinking.” Alex moves his phone away from his mouth and coughs.
“You serve it well.” I take a drink of tea and then return the mug to the counter and dip the tea bag in and out of it.