“Well, I don’t know about the best,” Bess smirk’d. “But you did fob off*2 that last clicketer for a whole roast chicken, didn’t you.” Bess nudged her chin towards the ruined Carcass as she walked in and closed the door behind. “Any case, Jack’s gone now, so.”
“You were going on about it last night quite a bit, you remember?”
“Oh, right.” In fact, Bess didn’t remember that. “In any case, I need your help getting on a ship.”
“I know a cove who works with the Merchant Marine.”
“Not a trading vessel.” Bess paused. “One of the condemn’d ships. They’d never permit me. But an Anglo dame…?”
* * *
—
—Not so very much later, Jenny and Bess were press’d against the cobblestone side of the Customs-Authority, the wind slapping their faces in wild nighttime Gusts off the river.
“ ’Member: you’re applying as a searcher.” Bess had to raise her voice over the lowing of the wind. She press’d the scrap of broadside advertisement into Jenny’s palm. Adjust’d Jenny’s hair against her shoulders.
“I thirst to destroy all of ’em.” Jenny had a glint in her eyes and her vengeful smile.
Bess felt a sudden compulsion to put her hands to her, to kiss Jenny’s furious lips, bluing with cold. Scamping together could raise Feelings like that. But then Jenny leaned around to the front and knock’d on the door. The lock turn’d. Bess pressed herself out of view.
Dixon, the City Alderman, swung open the door.
“What.”
“Gods, he’s an unsavory pickled apple.” Jenny winced under her breath. Bess caught a side glimpse of her ruffling her cleavage while arranging her face into a Parody of pleasantries. “Good evening, sir—” Jenny was adept at speaking in their accents. She sounded mellifluous and monied. “I’m here to apply to the Magistrate as a searcher.”
*1 Trickery
*2 Tricked
3.
Off Blackfriars, tall grass hissed in the wind, blowing grit against Jack’s cheeks. Night had bloom’d into its full dark Depth. He was walking thro’ a tunnel of sorts—a path of heap’d earth emitting the raw scent of a recent rain (the breath of worms and cold). Starlight peck’d the sky.
It was very quiet—a deep Silence marked only in its negative by the occasional skitter of some rodent and the high whistling hiccup of nightbirds. The path narrowed and the earth walls got steeper—
—Then opened onto a busy scene, an inner glen at the shore. Barricades of scrap wood, iron sheets, large tree trunks and reams of thick muslin were piled at the far edge, opposite the path, to create a wall or Fortification.
This was the mollies’ beach.
* * *
—
A cavernous shipwreck had been haul’d on shore and left to rot—the skeleton of a once impressive merchant vessel. Shadows threaded through the ship’s bones. The only sound—occasional grunts or murmurings, the lick of tongues-to-tongues, and the Shush of feet through silt.
Aurie lay up the shore, away from the hull of the ship, leaning back on the sand—a mop of beard turn’d up to the night sky. A set of blond curls worked its way up and down between his legs.
Jack sat not far off—tho’ not close enough to disturb. He shook his head politely to several venturing mollies while he waited for Aurie to finish in the boy’s mouth—four short, gruff grunts and a comradely cuff on the side of the head combin’d with hooking the boy’s neck in his elbow and pulling him up for a short, deep kiss.
“Somewhere more secluded,” he heard Aurie say into the blond’s cheek, “I’ll have this gorgeous quim. At length.” He squeez’d the blond’s arse.
“But tonight”—the blond traced his bottom lip with a fingertip—“did you like this quim*1?”
“God, yes,” Aurie groaned.
They kiss’d again. A long one now.
The boy adjust’d his shirt but not his hair, which tangl’d ’round his sunny freckled face, and Jack could see his light blue eyes looking Aurie over once—lovingly?—before he stood and made his way back towards the path. Field’s son? Aurie had describ’d him once, but never brought him ’round.
He waited until Aurie rolled over into the sand, bunch’d his coat under his head, and was near-snoring. Then made his way over.
“Aurie—”
Aurie rolled over, blink’d dirt off his eyelashes.
Jack’s eyes appear’d as if someone’d taken a hammer to them. Lids ringed with rust-red, swollen and angry.
“You look rough,” he understated.
“We fought. I left. I’m such a—” he moaned into his hands.
“All right now. All right.”
“—Something chang’d. Like we’d never been anything to each other.”
“You’re here now.” Aurie’s method of stating Facts was a dubious technique of Reassurance.
“Or, I don’t know. Perhaps it was I who—”
“Jack, sleep.” Aurie patted his cloak in invitation.
Jack arrang’d himself, still grumbling, at Aurie’s back.
Aurie reached behind, muss’d Jack’s hair.
And they fell to sleep like that, with Aurie’s hand in his hair, and Jack a lamprey riding a shark deep into cold blue Currents.
* * *
—
Jack woke gasping in the night—his chest heaving and swelling. “I’m a ghost,” he heard himself babbling into Aurie’s filthy jerkin.
Aurie stirr’d, mumbled. “What ghost.”
“Me.” He could not get a breath. “I can’t remember my name.”
His half-asleep brain was racing in circles, searching. All he could recall was P——: what Lady Kneebone call’d him, and his mother before that. What was the word for him? There was a blank, an Absence in space-time where he should be. Who was breathing. Who was crying. He touched his chest. Without Bess, nothing—not even his own body; especially not his own body—signify’d.
“You’re Jack, brother.” Aurie turn’d, held him, mutter’d into the top of his head. “You’re Jack.”*2
* * *
—
They were awaken’d in the morning by the shouts and calls of the mollies.
A commotion at the shoreline. A Procession across London Bridge. An execution-cart and its attending train. The Ordinary trotted out in front, the Marshal of the Admirality flew the flag, the Deputy Marshal held aloft a silver oar flashing in the morning sun, and four centinels on horseback followed behind. They wore all black with traditional peaked tall hats. Obsidian spots against the gray sky. The sound of the horses’ hooves against the cobblestones rang across the water. Hordes of commoners follow’d, streaming over the bridge in a far-off Thunder of boots.
“They’re heading to the Execution Dock!” a fine-featured young molly cried.
“To the Dock!” shout’d a short, thick-bellied, bald one.
* * *
—
The Thrum of drums across the water, the drone of bugles, the Din of the marching crowd. The execution-train.
*1 Based on above usage, I am led to conclude that for rogues—and god how I love this—“quim” (and all its cognates—“muff,” “tuzzy-muzzy,” “customs-house,” etc.) must signify any loved point of entry on the body, irrespective of gender or sex.
*2 Of ghosts—
“You should stay here,” my ex said, after a certain amount of time had passed. I had already been staying with her most nights for quite some time. She wanted to formalize it. I want you to stay with me, she said.
This—I know—probably seems like a no-brainer. We were doing things together. Things that I ought to have recognized as “relationshippy things.” She had planted a plant—a succulent harvested from the path outside—in the window box. We had named the plant Claw, for the curled red fists h
e had begun to sprout.
Like I said, we began to share writing, to edit each other’s work. To trust each other with words as we did with our bodies.
We started to travel together. Every time I saw the bed we’d be staying in—wherever it was—it was the sexiest bed I’d ever seen. I would be stabbed with jealousy thinking about whoever it was that would get to share this bed with her. Then I would remember that this person was me.
This snarl of self-jealousy—it now occurs to me—was a feeling. But I was a computer that lacked a translation code for emotions. I could only stare at this data, blinking.
I had not been worried about our relationship before, but once she asked me to stay, I began to worry more, not less. Her asking me to stay felt like she was rolling out a soft rug under my feet. Other people would have lain down on this rug. But me, I couldn’t stop thinking: Here’s a rug. Someone could always pull it.
“Do you have anything to say?” she asked, in reference to the me-staying thing.
“I am, as I have been for so many months now, albeit not in any ways that do you any good, yours.”
This did not come out as the reassurance I had intended it to be. More like a burned birthday cake smeared with thick frosting held out on trembling, apologetic arms.
“What is that supposed to mean.” She looked over at me while watering Claw.
I tried to make a joke about what Leo Jogiches’ long-lost replies to Rosa Luxemburg would have read like as tweets. But it was a stupid joke and I couldn’t get the words out anyway. I tried to say long-lost, but I kept saying lost-lost, and she looked at me like I was crazy.
I did move in, but the contradictions in loving her were too much.
My body clenched in constant anticipation of punishment for my happiness. Sex momentarily relieved this anxiety, but—especially if the sex was good (and it was always much more than good)—it would return redoubled. I was convinced I would be struck dead for my desire and joy in her presence. None of this was attractive. Have you ever met someone so anxious that they become an asshole? That anxious asshole, Reader, was me.
I turned, finally, out of desperation, and with a renewed devotion, to my Shprukh-Psikhish.
Of course, my ex felt strongly that I had taken my commitment to Shprukh-Psikhish to bullshit heights.
“I have to do my Shprukh-Psikhish,” I’d announce, first thing in the morning when it was clear she wanted to get fucked. But I’d have woken up with that fluttery feeling like a swarm of ants at the base of my throat leading me to scrabble at the blankets like a dog someone threw in a pool, and launch myself for the far edge of the bed that for whatever—I now realize—un-completely-thought-through reason we’d at one point decided to move from the bedroom to jam against the wall in that boiling little cranny off the living room so that exit was only possible from one side, and graceful exit possible never.
There was another room in the house that had had a perfectly serviceable bed situation, but quickly in our tenure living together, we didn’t want to be separated from the possibility of intimacy by even a couple of yards, so we’d thrown a bed into that living-room nook and were able to eat, read and fuck at the drop of a hat.
“I have to Shprukh-Psikhish,” I’d say, because my ex’s breasts would have set off a storm of one-two-three’ing, and my internal panic cauldron would be set on boil at the first stab of desire.
“I have to Shprukh-Psikhish,” I’d say, blearily kneeing her in the shin and flinging myself to the narrow corridor between her side of the bed and the wall.
Ow, she’d glare. You know those are just recommendations, right? You don’t need to become some kind of weird convert.
She would have the back of her hand over her eyes and face. But I could tell by the sad-clown tug of the corners of her mouth that she was glaring at it anyway.
As usual, she would have gotten hot in the night in the boiling recess of our nook, and she’d have shoved the blankets down to her ribs. She’d be lying on her back because of her “neck thing,” and her breasts in the morning non-light of our nook—her breasts, rising and falling with breath in the grainy, pre-dawn air that filtered through the window on the north side of the house—her breasts warm and cool at the same time, that’s how, just, wonderfully large they were: they could harbor two temperature zones (cool along their soft underbellies, radiant at their hardening peaks) at once—would be exposed to my view.
When my ex let me see her breasts first thing, it meant she’d woken up melancholy. It meant she needed me to take her before either of us got up, or she’d be in a bitter stew all day. She wouldn’t care how well I performed, or if I had a face full of acne or how awful my breath was before I brushed. She needed this because she’d woken up from that dream again, and she needed me to hold her and fill her, and show her she was loved.
Anyone observing this from the outside would have been like: FOR GOD’S SAKE, FUCK HER. Not only was it very normal that she needed reassurance sometimes (okay, really awfully frequently), but I loved the fuck out of her, and on top of it she was—and I’m not just saying this to be nice—spectacular looking. I am not shy to point out that I’ve had a lot of beautiful women. It doesn’t mean anything special about me except that sex is about the only thing I can do well besides panicking, and unfortunately these talents are related but at cross-purposes. Anyway, I am not, as I said, shy to point out my really rather comprehensive knowledge of women of all sorts. But my ex was without question the most beautiful of them all.
“I have to do my Shprukh-Psikhish,” I’d say, stumbling off to the not-bedroom, which had very little in it besides my Shprukh-Psikhish manual and my therapeutic materials.
Those patients with a panic character are paralyzed by their refusal to accept the coexistence of love and aggression. Shprukh-Psikhish does not depart from the classic Freudian reading of the causes of anxiety. However, our methods for cure are considerably different.
For those whose paralysis takes the form of ritual acts such as hand-washing, obsessive shoe-lacing, inability to step on cracks, or counting, we prescribe counter-rituals that encourage the embrace of the root cause: contradictory emotions. These patients must engage in one of the two following rituals daily, designed to encourage comfort with contradiction and an awareness that contradictory forces are nothing to fear. Indeed, contradictions are the wellspring of life and are generative of all creation:
1) Place one hand in a bowl of hot water and the other in freezing cold water. Hold hands in the bowls for as long it takes to scald one and chap the other. Only remove hands when it becomes clarified at a bodily level that each hand—and only each hand—can heal the other. Clasp them.
2) Practice moving your bowels while eating a fine meal. The meal must be as artful as possible. Oysters with a molecular lemon-froth reduction. Steak tartare. A sous-vide preparation of rosemary carrots in butter sauce. You must, while shitting, consume the meal with relish and gusto—a task that will be almost impossible at first. Remain on the toilet for as long as it takes to understand, at a bodily level, that the act of satisfying the refinements of taste, and the act of gleefully expelling foul brew into the shitter, are one and the same. When the patient can eat the meal with delight and shit simultaneously, the ritual is concluded.
(Note: this ritual is neither recommended nor prescribed for perverts. Perverts are entirely capable of eating a fine meal with gusto while shitting. But if you have turned to this manual, you are not a pervert. You are a neurotic. Perversion is another psychic fluctuation, and in fact contraindicated for Shprukh-Psikhish therapy.)
On the particular day that turned out to be our last day together, I had my hands deep in two differently punishing basins of water when my ex pounded on the door.
“The conquering of panic should not be a Fabian Strategy.”
“What’s a Fabian Strategy?”
Another of her vanguard concepts. I wanted to pretend I knew what it meant, but I couldn’t. My hands burned with hot and cold and I didn’t have the energy that day for appearing smarter than I really was.
“It was Fabius Maximus’s cowardly approach to battling Hannibal. A tactic of indirection, gradualism and constant retreat. It means, rather than revolutionary directness and decisive action, banking that the thing you want to conquer will just dissolve over time. A Fabian Strategy.”
She had that little precise snap in her voice. The one that meant: Get your shit together. The one that meant: I’ve faced down harder things than you’ve ever dreamed, and you don’t see me sitting in a room hyperventilating with my hands in bowls of water.
“What does it matter if I do my job or spend my day Shprukh-Psikhishing,” I said, shoving my hands down deeper, gritting against the pain that was seizing the muscle fibers all the way up to my elbows. “No one cares whether I do this research or not.”
“Well someone’s about to care.”
I heard what sounded like the flapping of a piece of paper.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Letter from the Dean of Surveillance.”
“Oh fuck.” I grabbed my hands out of the basins, clasping them. One two three, three two one, I intoned. So much for Shprukh-Psikhish. My heart thudded. I was already in a spiral. Sometimes when I counted to three I had to rock forward and back along with the beats. Three pulses forward then three back, three times over. I was rocking and counting when the handle turned.
“How do you plan to Shrpukh-Psikhish your way out of this one.”
Although it was grammatically configured like a question, she did not pose this as a question.
“I’ll just say I’ve been doing research.” I rubbed my jaw.
“Have you done any research since moving in?”
Confessions of the Fox Page 25