Our small talk continued, and before long the waiter brought our food. I glanced over at Rolanda’s plate. It contained a steamy, soupy bowl of mushroom sauce.
“Wow. That looks and smells delicious. I had no idea what to expect. I had no reference for those French words you said.”
“It is a veal ragout. The key thing that makes it ‘blanquette’ is that the meat is cooked in the stock to prevent browning.”
“I’m impressed. First the wine. Now the food. You speak the language so well.”
“What can I say? I love food.”
Throughout this exchange, the waiter refilled our wine. It made me nervous, and I had to refrain from putting my hand over my glass. My wine vanished, and Rolanda’s lingered. Something didn’t compute. She constantly sipped from the glass. Either she was trying to get me drunk, or she naturally took small sips. If I wanted a real relationship, then I had to trust her. A solid relationship couldn’t be built on suspicion. Still, I had to attempt to slow down; otherwise, I would become drunk before she finished her first glass.
After a few moments of eating, I realized that half of my food had disappeared. I rationalized. It was typical for me to eat and drink quickly under high pressure. When I was little, my parents called me “a nervous eater.” The evening would be ruined if I couldn’t calm myself. The wine imbalance was my own fault. I had nothing to worry about. I set my silverware next to my plate to prevent myself from finishing too early. Rolanda noticed.
“Are you full?”
Why couldn’t I get a handle on subtlety?
“No. I’m just taking a break.”
My paranoid brain panicked again, so I picked up my silverware and ate. But slowly now. Rolanda tried to reassure me.
“Don’t mind me. I’m the slow eater. You aren’t doing anything wrong. I like to savor every bite, which can get tedious for my dinner partners.”
I took a risk and teased her.
“Oh? Do you have lots of dinner partners?”
She took it in stride.
“No. Actually, not really.”
The truthful answer caught me by surprise, and maybe the wine made me bolder than usual. The words came out before I could stop them.
“I find that hard to believe. You’re so beautiful.”
For the first time all night, her guard fell. She blushed. Honesty arrived and knocked on the door behind which lay our true selves. At that point, I knew she wasn’t a prowler, and the conversation relaxed. We crossed from awkward small-talk into real conversation. The night became one of those perfect dates that only exists in dreams. Before I knew it, we finished our meals and the bottle of wine. I no longer cared how much I had consumed. My neurosis dissipated which enamored me even more.
The waiter came by to clear our plates.
“Would you care for some dessert?”
I never wanted the night to end, so I jumped on the opportunity to extend it.
“I would.”
My eyes shifted to Rolanda to see if she did, too.
“I’m kind of full. I’m not sure I want any.”
“I’m pretty full too. Do you want to split one? I was thinking the tiramisu.”
“Sure. I’ll have a few bites.”
Before long, our dessert arrived, and I dared risky behavior again. I took a spoonful and aimed for Rolanda’s mouth. Luckily, she chomped the gooey cake from my fork. We both leaned towards the dessert to bring it within reach. Our faces were the closest they had been all night. I wanted to kiss her, but we had to go through Phase 2. This would ruin the moment. We must have caused a small scene laughing and feeding each other, because I felt eyes watching us. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I realized that we would part soon without kissing. The moment had presented itself, and I missed it because of these stupid laws. Rolanda sensed me fretting, and with her knack for reading me, understood the gist of it. She saved me from doing something I might have regretted.
“I only live a few blocks away. Do you want to walk me to my door?”
My heart leaped. I wouldn’t miss the opportunity this time.
“Of course.”
I stood up and felt the world tilt. The wine hit me harder than I intended. I had to be careful. Rolanda seemed sober, but in my state I couldn’t accurately make that judgment. She came over and took my hand. It caught me by surprise. She made the move, so I knew we were on the same page. Once outside, the autumn night with the setting sun brought about a cleanness and crispness to life as seldom happens. The perfect air helped bolster my sense of invincibility. I felt on top of the world, and I never wanted it to end. Then Rolanda stopped.
“This is me.”
I turned to face her while still holding hands in front of the stoop. The fated kiss hung between us, suspended in the night air. She wanted it. I wanted it. We both knew that we both wanted it. Why did we need these stupid verbal agreements? Some things you know for other reasons: history, body language, the look in their eyes. You just know when someone wants to kiss you.
If I waited too long, I would ruin the moment. If I started the agreement, I would ruin the moment. Maybe it was the wine, but I felt confident I could kiss her with no consequences. I had to trust her. If I didn’t, then what was the point of continuing the relationship? As I leaned in, my pulse quickened, and the world slowed. A moment of panic flashed behind my eyes, but I continued anyway.
The experience terrified and liberated me at the same time. We had overcome the bureaucratic nonsense and connected as humans. Our feelings superseded words; language couldn’t be used to describe how right this felt. It was pure intuition that had guided me to this moment. Her soft lips brushed against mine. The thrill made the kiss an eternity. Forever ended, and we pulled apart. I wanted to look back into her eyes to get confirmation: we trusted each other.
I looked and saw a message, but it was not one of trust. Rolanda’s entire demeanor changed. Terror flooded me as I realized she was a prowler. She pretended to be afraid and yelled.
“Help. Help. This man sexually assaulted me. He kissed me without even making an informal attempt at asking for permission.”
A stray pedestrian became concerned and stopped. She asked me, “Is that true? Did you just kiss someone without asking first?”
I gaped back, unable to answer from the shock. What do you say to that?
“Well, strictly speaking, maybe that’s true, but we were lost in the moment. She wanted me to.”
I heard my words as if outside my body, and they sounded childish. Our new-found mediator turned to Rolanda.
“Is that true? Did you want him to kiss you?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t be yelling for help if I wanted it.” Rolanda looked back at me. “How could you do this to me? I feel so violated.”
I thought for sure that her over-the-top dramatics would save me. Surely this person would see that the words didn’t match the implied meaning of the rest her hysterics.
“I’m going to call the police and stay here to make sure he doesn’t try anything else. What a creep!”
I stood dumbfounded on the sidewalk while my life crumpled around me. It was true. I made no attempt to follow the law. How could I build a case or defense on that? I couldn’t deny my guilt. Still, my brain scrambled. Maybe I could convince her to forgo charges.
“Why are you doing this? I know that you wanted me to kiss you. Didn’t you feel anything for me? You can’t fake that.”
“That’s right. You can’t fake it, which is why I know you were just confusing the signals in your drunken state. You were seeing and feeling what you wanted. Not what I wanted.”
Oh no. My first thought about the wine had been correct.
“That’s not true, and you know it. Please don’t do this. You at least owe me an explanation. Is it the money? I don’t have much. Ruining someone’s life isn’t worth this.”
“It isn’t the money. Sometimes you really don’t know what someone else is thinking or feeling. That
’s why the law exists. You have to ask. You can’t do whatever you want and think it’s okay and think you’ll get away with it. We need to make an example out of people like you.”
“But you tricked me. You wanted me to kiss you. Why not go after the people that are the problem instead of tricking innocent people?”
“No. You’re not innocent. You kissed someone without asking. You had no idea whether I wanted it or not.”
The police arrived to take me away. As they put me in the car, I took one last look at my accuser. I saw sadness in her eyes. I saw that she liked me and wanted to kiss me again. She wanted to tell me it would be okay. Someone must have made her do this against her will. Then again, what did I know? Maybe I only saw what I wanted to see.
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD GONE BY
By
Joshua M. Young
How did civilization die?
Anders came to the Penitent City in the spring of his manhood with his axe, Raider’s Bane, at his back and a man’s dark growth on his cheeks, seeking secret histories of the World Gone By. The Penitent City was a grand and shining thing, all towers like polished crystal and streets like carved rock. Machines passed from tower to tower like birds. Anders had never seen its like, and the city had never seen his. Hardly a moment passed in which some individual did not stop and gawk at him.
Anders had to strain for the word “individual.” He was not an uneducated man, in his way. He had studied under his tribe’s elders and learned the tales and the wisdom of the World Gone By, but those who dwelled in the Penitent City seemed to be neither men nor women, dressed uniformly in long, flowing robes, and this caused him some difficulty. They were all pretty, after a fashion, but it was not the sort of beauty that might incite a man to desire.
Or a woman, Anders supposed, but he was not qualified to judge that.
Anders was young and strong, but the journey had been long, a fortnight or more, and he was weary. The towers of the Penitent cast long shadows in the late afternoon sun and made Anders feel as though it was, perhaps, reasonable to seek a place to rest for the night.
Fortunately, the penitents were not so strange as to not have inns for the lodging of strangers, though they were strange enough that the purpose of a given structure was sometimes difficult to discern. Anders could read, though he had been taught to read the language of the World Gone By, and the writing of the penitents was sometimes hard for him to understand. The letters were the same, but the penitents had a torturous and complicated way of phrasing that Anders realized was, in fact, a cultural tendency towards circumlocution. The phrase which meant “inn” in the Penitent’s language was something along the lines of “a place in which individuals who may currently be weary, amorous, lustful, shy, or some other emotion, may find shelter for whatever pursuits they find desirable.”
It made Anders’ head hurt, but he was weary and usually lustful, as young men are wont to be, and so he decided that it was good enough.
In the morning, Anders explored the Penitent City, enduring the stares of the strange and sexless people who lived here. Few dared to speak to him, and when they did, their circumlocutions were both tense and ultimately meaningless. He found it impossible to understand how the penitents maintained a city of such wonders when their language was warped so far from true. How could they build the great, crystalline towers of their city when they could hardly speak of them? What kind of circumlocution could describe the workings of the strange, birdlike devices that moved from tower to tower?
Somewhere deep in the city, Anders found the Schola. Though he knew roughly where it was in relation to the inn in which he had slept—east and a little north—he did not know what roads he had taken to get there. The towers of the Penitent City made navigation nearly as torturous as their language.
The Schola, unlike the rest of the city, was no shining tower of crystal. It was, instead, a low, squat building, made of rock the exact color of a muddy sheep. Anders had seen more than a few muddy sheep in his life, and supposed that the Schola found them a creature worthy of emulation. They were certainly useful creatures, although Anders thought they were perhaps more appealing to the eye when they were clean—or, better, as a chop seared over a fire and rubbed with herbs and seasoning.
In the Schola, the stares of the penitents took on a sort of hostility. Anders ignored them for as long as he could, until finally, an individual accosted him in a hallway and said, “You offend me, per. Your dress, gender signifiers, and manner make me uncomfortable. Kindly change them or leave.”
Anders blinked. The individual had a hold of his elbow and spoke with a sort of bluntness he had never before seen in a penitent. “I apologize if I have given offense…” He allowed his sentence to trail off, hoping that it might lure the penitent into providing a name or title. It did not, and so Anders said, “It was not my intention to offend.”
“It is what your kind does. You would oppress me,” the individual said, nostrils flaring like an enraged bulls, “and your beard and weapon prove your aggression.”
“I mean you no harm, sir.” To use the word “sir” was reaching, but Anders did not know how else to address this person.
“Sir?” the individual wailed.
“Ma’am?” Anders tried, to no avail. The person sobbed and fled, screaming incoherent curses and imprecations in the penitents’ usual circumlocutions. Anders scratched his beard and wondered how it proved that he meant the penitents harm when, clearly, he did not. Had he meant them harm, Raider’s Bane would have been in his hand and not at his back. The individuals of the Schola watched him from a distance, distress written clearly across their faces. When he moved towards them, they moved away. It seemed to Anders that the scholars of the penitent were as timid as the sheep they appeared to worship. He amused himself for a short time by stepping first towards one, then towards another, and watching the throng of penitents shift away from him. When the amusement paled—and it did, soon enough—he set off down the halls in search of the penitent scholar who, he was told, guarded the secret history of the World Gone By.
Anders’ quest was his own. He did not seek the secret history for the sake of his tribe, to increase their standing or power or to prove himself to an elder. Anders was driven by a simple curiosity, a desire to know the world in which he lived, and in knowing, know himself more fully. It was, however, an elder who told him where he might find a history more complete than, “Once we were like unto gods, but that was in the World Gone By. Now we are but men.”
The individual who met Anders outside the scholar’s office was as unremarkable as any other penitent in the city. He—or she, Anders supposed—had hair cropped short, a face that was feminine and without stubble or beard. Anders scratched at his beard and decided that it didn’t honestly matter. “Sir—or ma’am?—I’d like to speak with your historian when he has the time.”
The individual continued to glare at Anders but said, “I understand that you, per, are an unassimilated citizen of Penitent City, and so I will forgive your offensive manner, gender signifiers, and language. But we have many who study the truths of the past and they are all far too busy to deal with an unassimilated citizen like yourself.”
Anders frowned and the individual swallowed and looked a little more terrified and a little less outraged. Anders did not think he was that frightening a man, but, then, the scholars did seem to worship sheep.
“Perhaps you might allow me to study your books, then?”
“Impossible,” the penitent squeaked. “There are many books and not all are approved. Some contain offensive and hurtful ideas or language. The truths of the past must not be studied without a guide and mentor.”
“You mean to tell me,” said Anders, “that after I have walked many miles a day for a month or more, you won’t allow me to read a book because it might hurt my feelings?”
The penitent hunched its shoulders down. “It is possible that if you read the wrong truths of the past, someone else might find
it hurtful.”
Anders wandered the Schola in search of an exit. The walls were bare and uniformly the same dull shade of mud and sheep shit. He supposed that some might find decoration offensive, an idea that Anders found to be mildly offensive in and of itself. How could men and women exist in such conditions? Perhaps the strange sexlessness of the penitents was to blame. Or perhaps, the lack of decoration was to blame for the sexlessness.
Gradually Anders became aware that a penitent was following him. The individual was not brave enough to approach him directly, but he, or she, or it, or whatever, at least had enough spunk to follow where most fled. Anders allowed the penitent to follow him until he grew tired of seeking an exit in a building where nothing was labeled.
“How do I get out, mister? Miss?”
“Per,” the penitent said. “We use the word ‘per’ for an indeterminate and unhurtful mode of address.”
Anders sighed and scratched his beard. “I’m tired of this place and angry, per. How do I leave?”
The penitent cowered. It was brief and appeared to be a reflex. “I assumed that an unassimilated citizen would not know the preferred truth of terms of address. I apologize if I have given offense, per.”
“Sir,” Anders said. “Or Anders. I am not one of you strange things with neither beard nor breasts.”
“Anders,” the penitent said, face scrunching up as though the name tasted sour. “Anders, you may call me Hayden.”
“Hayden, how do I leave this ugly and useless building that pretends to be the center of learning for all mankind?”
The last word caused the penitent to cringe, but so did most everything else. “Oh, but it is!” Hayden said. “There are many truths that one can learn here! The paths of mathematics, the truths of the past, the proper sciences and grammar!”
“Hayden,” Anders said, “I want to leave.”
The penitent cringed, but beckoned Anders to follow.
The exit was not far, but Anders would not have found it. It was a door like any other, set in a wall like any other. Previous doors had lead only to rooms full of angry and fearful penitents. When Hayden stopped and opened another door, Anders expected to see more penitents scowling and cowering. Instead he saw, once more, the shadows of the towers of the Penitent City and the warm orange sunlight of late afternoon.
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