On the floor of my living room we were naked, the sweat of sex clinging to our cooling bodies. We were laughing at everything and nothing until the laughter escalated into a wrestling match, into a bout of mutual tickling. I had her pinned down between my legs, mercilessly digging my fingers into her ticklish belly, but, in a surprise manoeuvre, she managed to squirm and jump away from me.
She ended up on the far side of the room, staring at the bottle. She called me over to her. “Look at how the light catches it.” She pointed with one hand and squeezed my buttocks with the other. “It’s beautiful.”
At the bottom of the bottle, where light hit the amber liquid, miniature rainbows danced. If I tried to concentrate on any particular aspect of this tiny spectacle, it hid from my sight. I had to absorb the phenomenon in its entirety, or not at all.
Why had I never noticed this? Had this effect been going on unnoticed all these years?
How could I know? I had found it simpler to ignore my memento. I suppose I passively cherished its presence, but I had yet to pursue – or even to contemplate pursuing – my investigation of its contents. A council of unacknowledged, intertwined fears sat at the heart of my negligence: that my life of pleasure would be shattered by the revelations that awaited the conclusion of a successful investigation; that there were no answers to be found; that the liquid would turn out to be nothing more than wine or some other mundane beverage; that I had those many years ago lost my grip on sanity and been besieged by delusions; that my great moment of epiphany rested on an instance of madness; that the foundations of my personality were too shabby to withstand close scrutiny; and more, many more. However, this personal insight was still in my future, some time later than that evening, when I stood in my living room, my naked body pressed against my lover’s soft back, as we both stared at the contents of my precious bottle.
It seemed, to my neglectful gaze, that the dregs were somewhat more substantial than I remembered. Hadn’t there been but a few drops? There was now a pool at the bottom of the bottle.
“Tell me the story,” said my lover, tucking a stray strand of her blonde hair behind one ear.
“What do you mean?” Unsuccessfully, I attempted to resume our tickling match.
“Stop it! There must be a story! What are you hiding? Tell me. Tell me!”
It dawned on me that I had, unconsciously, tried to avoid her question. I had never told anybody the story behind this bottle. Of course, since my parents upon my return from my fateful voyage, no-one had thought to ask.
I had never told anyone.
Suddenly, I felt the tremendous weight of this secret. In her curious, smiling face, I sensed the potential for release and relief. To finally relate the events that changed my life.
I must have been silent for longer than I realized. She was gently stroking my chest. I noticed her looking at me, worried.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes?” she whispered back at me.
I led her into the bedroom, and, then, I told her.
I told her everything. My whole life. She listened to my ramblings, paid attention to every word. She never grew impatient – or at least was sensitive enough to my needs not to show it if she did. Somewhere in this great mess of a narrative, the bottle’s story came out. I omitted no detail, no matter how utterly embarrassing or unbelievably fantastic.
Why did I trust her so when I had never allowed myself to open up to anyone in this fashion before? Because I needed to. I do not mean to undermine or diminish the depth of her empathy or her curious intelligence, and certainly not the quality of her companionship. No doubt all of these aspects of her self combined to trigger my realization of this great need, this great chasm, in my life. My need may not have necessarily been to share with her, but without her I would not have been able to acknowledge – much less satisfy – it.
I can’t remember how or when, but my confession segued into sex. There is no clear dividing line in my memory between the two. It was all communion – I thought I understood that word more deeply than ever before. I lost myself in my lover and became one with her.
I also can’t remember when sex turned into sleep. One moment I was intoxicated by my lover’s smells, our smells, the pungency of our bodily secretions . . . the next I was waking up, sweetly serene, to see her eyes scrutinizing my face.
I took her hand and kissed it. “I—”
“Don’t say . . . don’t say anything. Shh.” She placed her fingers over my mouth. Her eyes avoided mine. “Don’t.”
We had been hugging in silence for a short while when she said, “We should get going. We both have busy days today.” I grabbed her wrist and looked at her watch. She knew that my next class was to start in fifty minutes. I prided myself on my punctuality. I would not make my seventy-five students wait.
I found myself irritated that she knew my schedule. I wondered – silently – about her own affairs. What did I know of her? I became ashamed of myself, ashamed at my selfishness, my egocentrism. Did I ever enquire into her daily grind? Did I ever show any interest in the details that made up her life? I hid that lack of interest under a veneer of sophistication, under the idea that we met not to encumber each other with the boring minutiae of our quotidian routines, but to escape into an oasis of sexual delight. But wasn’t all that a petty excuse to forgive myself for the lack of interest I exhibited in my friends and lovers? I was such a peacock. I was embarrassed; I now saw myself as a clumsy, transparent, ridiculous jester. As someone whose relationships didn’t matter, didn’t mean anything. As someone who didn’t matter.
I fled to the bathroom, using the time as a convenient excuse. Any feeling of communion had been shattered. I heard her walk around the apartment, heard the clinking of a belt buckle as she was getting dressed.
“Gotta rush! See you soon!” she shouted from two rooms away. In my agitated, self-engrossed state, I failed to fully register the uncomfortable and distant timbre of her tone. I heard the door open and close.
I focused my mind away from introspection and, instead, on the busy day ahead of me. I washed and dressed in a precise hurry and managed to step into my classroom a few seconds early.
That day was interminable. Illusions had been destroyed, and I was in no shape to deal with the wreckage. I yearned to see her, yet dreaded the prospect. I needed and feared her. Was it brave to stay alone? Was it cowardly to not call her, or anyone? Alone, I could hide from eyes that could penetrate my thin carapace. With a lover, I could lose myself in the waves of erotic fulfillment. No matter what I did, I was hiding.
That evening, I was too restless to read or work. I couldn’t find any comfort in music; the familiarity of my record collection irritated me, and the radio was intolerably banal. I ate incessantly, stuffing food – raw vegetables, crackers, baking chocolate . . . whatever I could find – into my mouth continuously as if the slightest respite would allow some unnameable threat to invade my innards.
It was only nine o’clock when I decided to go to bed.
Beforehand, remembering the previous night, I felt compelled to walk to the shelf where rested the memento from my coming-of-age voyage. I stared at the pool of liquid at the bottom of the bottle, dazzled by its luminous effervescence and haunted by ambiguous memories. I tipped the bottle and let the spectacle of liquid and light cascade up and down the sides of the glass. I uncorked the bottle, brought it to my nose and smelled its contents. I was no longer the inexperienced, ignorant youth who had first encountered the liquid years ago. Nevertheless, I still could not identify the fragrance that escaped from the open bottle.
I closed my eyes and savoured the exotic aroma. My lips caressed the mouth of the bottle as I recalled – with both wonder and unease – how I had come to possess it. The dampness shocked me. I clamped down on the memories and emotions the taste evoked as firmly as I recorked the bottle. I licked the liquid from my lips.
And I suddenly felt awake and vigorous. And aroused. So aroused, it pushed everything else from my
mind. So aroused, it hurt. I decided to take a shower and masturbate while enjoying the hot steam.
In the bathroom, I saw him in the mirror. His beautiful face. The subtle, mesmerizing colours running through his hair.
But he was wearing my clothes, was standing where I stood.
I had turned into a doppelganger of the mysterious lover who had left only that bottle behind – exactly as he’d looked all those years ago, when he’d kissed me.
I collapsed, tears storming out of me. And then I felt my head explode and the bathroom vanished around me, to be replaced by—
I am a boy, looking at myself everywhere in the world. I am every BODY in the world. I gorge on my own fleshy my arm disappearing down my throat. HE is nowhere. I am dancing. There are many of me. I am a boy. I am a girl. I am a man. I am a woman. I am dancing. With each whirl I take off a piece of clothing. The boys, the girls, the men, the women, I, I and I take off my clothes. I and I and I and I have sex. I MAN insert my penis in an anus BOY in a mouth GIRL in a vagina WOMAN. I WOMAN rub my vulva on the stomachs of myself BOYGIRLMAN lying on the ground. I laugh and cry. I am reading a book. Every page is a mirror. I see myself but I do not look like me. I am handsome. I am beautiful. I am charming. I am elegant. I am strong. I am vulnerable. I am everywhere and it is me. It is my body. I am not me. I am a boy. I look down MY HEAD TURNS AND SPINS and there is a boy licking my anus, but it is not him. It is not me. He looks up at me. Smiling and laughing, laughing and crying. He kisses me. I taste semen in his mouth. I take off my penis and offer it to him. I run. There are many people. None of them are me. None of them are him. They all laugh, but they do not cry. I shout: WHO ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU NOT HIM? Still, they do not cry. Where is he? The sound of beating wings. I can see myself IT IS NOT THE BODY OF A BOY running, my cloven hooves hitting the pavement, the amber blood coursing through the thick veins bulging from my hairless naked body, the lack of genitals at my crotch, the huge mouth with thick amber lips and big white teeth gaping from my belly, my full breasts covered with thick amber veins bumping against my chest. My head is spinning out of control. I am not him. On the one side, below the ring of eyes crowning my head, a penis and scrotum protrude from my face, flapping around. On the other side, a wet vulva opens deep down into my throat. I cannot cry, no tears will come. I am not a boy. I hear the furious din of beating wings. I do not see him. The black shapes come and smother me THE BODY THAT IS NOT A BOY. There is no sound. Swirling rainbows erupt from the darkness. There are bodies everywhere. Of every shape. I recognize no body.
I woke up with a debilitating headache, having no idea how long I’d slept – if I’d slept at all – profoundly disgusted by my . . . hallucination? . . . nightmare? . . . Whatever that had been. I was terrified by its oppressive self-loathing. And what was I to make of the monstrous hermaphroditic creature “I” had turned into? Cold dread spread through my bones.
I had fallen on the floor, and I could feel how I’d bumped my head and elbows. Reluctantly, I propped myself back up. The mirror told me I was myself again. Not a monster, and not my mysterious lover either.
It was that bottle. That strange liquid was some sort of drug that produced powerful hallucinations. Of course I had never turned into anything or anyone else.
Ignoring my aches and bruises, I stomped to the shelf where I kept the bottle. I picked it up, considered smashing it, or just throwing it away. Instead, I put it in a box in the broom closet, refusing still to deal with it decisively.
I spent the rest of the day dawdling – doing this and that, not really accomplishing anything, distracting myself with little pleasures: listening to favorite records, re-reading cherished stories. In the end, it was another long, dreary day. But I managed to dismiss that frightening vision as nothing more than the result of that awful potion combined with my fragile emotional state.
A few days later, I ran into my young blonde lover at the university; but her eyes avoided mine, and I had to acknowledge what, I suddenly realized, I already knew. Ah well . . . I claimed not to want serious attachments, didn’t I? I’d promised her sexual fun and ended up needing emotional comfort.
I broke off all my sexual liaisons and for a year or so mainly kept to myself. I needed that year to redefine my identity, to dig within myself, to discover the tools with which to rebuild myself.
I put the bottle – its contents and its disturbing visions – far from my mind.
I took to solitude rather well. It reminded me of my childhood, when I spent days locked in my bedroom, content with my books.
Eventually, I made new friends, or rather acquaintances. I met no-one significant. I shared lunches, occasionally went out to the theater and such. I surprised myself by staying celibate. My sex drive had simply faded away.
Years passed. I took a position as Associate Professor in my department. The bottle once again receded to a neglected corner of my consciousness.
I was flying to my home town, dreading a family event that I couldn’t avoid – a cousin’s wedding – when my parents died in a fire. The house burned down – a kitchen accident, the investigators said. The street was sealed off; my cab had to drop me off a block away. It was an impressive, angry blaze. After it had spent its fury, nothing from the house was salvageable. I was told my parents died quickly.
The wedding wasn’t postponed. I didn’t go.
Mom and Dad had always been so kind to me. Ours had been a peaceful and supportive household. I didn’t have a single resentful memory and yet I found myself unable to grieve. Not numb, not sad, not even relieved; just – and I hate to admit this – indifferent.
A year later, I used the money from the estate to buy a new house. I was charmed by the building upon first seeing it. The deal was quickly concluded and within weeks I left my old apartment. I successfully coordinated the ground floor in a few days, making it fully operational and pleasing to inhabit.
The upstairs of the house remained in complete disarray. I had been renovating, organizing, and unpacking for weeks, but I just couldn’t seem to make things jell. I was too excited at the prospect of creating this dream space. I wanted to do everything at once, with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy, but the dwindling energy of a man nearing forty. The box now before me had not been opened in years, judging by the brittleness of the packing tape. A box my mother had packed many years ago when I had left my parents’ home for university. Despite the mess around me, the pull of curiosity and nostalgia overwhelmed other concerns, and I excitedly tore open the box.
It was filled with books I hadn’t seen in years – all books I’d purchased at Lost Pages. They had such sensationalistic titles: The Transfiguration of Gilgamesh, Antediluvian Folktales, Intrigues and Scandals of the Lemurian Court, The Trickster Among Us, City of Saints & Madmen, Great Migrations of Extinct Branches of the Genus Homo, and so forth. Just the kind of thing to excite a lonely boy’s imagination. The more scholarly titles on the shelves of Lost Pages, many of which featured names and words – not to mention languages – that were, to me, alien and unrecognizable, had always intimidated me, though the serious young boy I had been would never have admitted it.
Antediluvian Folktales exerted a particular pull on me. Why had I never unpacked these before? They’d lain forgotten for so long. I grabbed the folktale collection, and the shop’s distinctive bookmark fell out. Ignoring the huge task before me, I opened the book and started reading. I completed the first half-dozen short tales, and I started remembering when I’d first read the book at age fourteen, in late August, just before school started. And then an image lodged itself in my mind, from a story I now remembered for the first time since then. I flipped through the book impatiently, trying to find a particular passage to confirm my memory. On my fifth or sixth run-through, I found it: “. . . the rich fullness of his wings, the shifting colours of his feathers, the bright sparkle of his scales, the sharpness of his beak . . .” I felt my heart beat anxiously against my chest. I had to take several deep breaths to calm myself dow
n. I returned to the beginning of the tale, “Why We Dream Nightmares.”
Long ago, in the time before the Earth had taken the shape of a globe and so night was night and day was day throughout the world, the Shifpan-Shap flew every night, battling nightmares with their mighty weapons. After the sun disappeared over the horizon, the nightmares covered the whole sky with their great number, determined to descend into the dreams of women, men, children and animals. Every night, the Shifpan-Shap fought them to a standstill, never letting a single nightmare break through their ranks. If only one of them entered the realm of dreams, the war would be lost, and nightmares would plague the land of dreams forevermore. In those days, the night sky was pitch black; no stars could shine through the dense darkness of the attacking horde of nightmares. When the morning sun rose on the horizon, the nightmares cowered back into the dark embrace of their creator, Yamesh-Lot, who yearned to rule the land of dreams.
Every morning, the Shifpan-Shap uttered a great cry of victory, mocking the retreating nightmares and rousing humanity and other animals to wakefulness. The Shifpan-Shap then flew back into the city of Shifpan-Ur – the lustre of their green, blue and brown feathers revealed by the morning sun – to rest and prepare for the next night’s campaign.
One of the Shifpan-Shap, Behl Jezath, was a proud and fierce warrior. Many of the Shifpan-Shap admired his youthful beauty, and the delights of his body were much coveted. Although Behl Jezath knew the love of many, he had only love for himself. Often he would hover over still water to glance at his reflection. How he admired the rich fullness of his wings, the shifting colours of his feathers, the bright sparkle of his scales, the sharpness of his beak, the smooth girth of his phallus!
Behl Jezath grew older, as all Shifpan-Shap did in those days. His wings became sparser, his scales lost some of their sheen, his beak acquired a certain bluntness and wrinkles appeared on his phallus. Before, his splendid beauty had been so dazzling that it outshone his great vanity. Now that his beauty was dimming, the harsh glare of his pride drove his lovers away.
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