"...and we'd like to make a contact, with you, baby"

‘His obscure wife returns.’

ABOVE:

Is printed the last traceable thought Evelyn Hartwell will ever have. She muzzles her face into the dirt. ‘His obscure wife returns.’ That’s it. And something about really needing to warn others about the dangers of drinking two boxes of un-refrigerated Franzia Blush while tearfully warbling along to the Carpenters. Every fucking sha la la la and every whoa - whoa - whoa still shines, asshole. And she feels a budding remorse, ‘Yes, pissing on his favorite shirt during my sodden rendition of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft was probably an overreaction, but I have most certainly declared World Contact Day in a brave new light.’ All the oldies but goodies...

And then crawling up into her consciousness. STOP. This, she reflects, this act now, is a coiled thing, this ungating she knows she will perform, but which she has not planned. Th—And still she mumbles the stupid artifactory poesies that have possessed her lips all day. Night here. Thrusts her glass about like a rapier. Fell. And then discharges it to gravity. Fragments bleed out of the sliced air. Like a hammer. They ooze. Swift swung. They mount Karen’s sunny and spindled words of wonder and woe. Struck once. Grown brave.

She hopes these words will save her yet. This time as she moves her lips, she eats dirt; it ain’t half the worse thing she’ll taste.

BELOW:

The grass swings its over fertilized hips towards the thrust of the slight breeze. It’s a green, deep, molasses melting summer evening. The flowers lush and overgrown are whorishly bright from the Technicolor cancer that skulks beneath the pungent mulch. And she knows some of her neighbors are out grilling; if only they could see her now. But they won’t. Not because of any supernatural protectorate. She's just a buzz kill, an inexplicable drunken bitch. The specter of Evelyn Hartwell face down in her backyard digging at the dirt of her flower bed with her French Manicure, if acknowledged, would maggot their burgers, crap in their coladas, and spread her toxic malaise on their fuckin’ silvery corn cobs.

It was this same tacit conspiracy of unseeing on which the Pularski family had embarked. Understandably, Susan Pularski, out on her freshly stained and water treated deck with Rob and the girls didn’t want to be forced to confess to her little Ginny that sometimes life is jackhammer up your ass. Who would want to look into Ginny’s wide and whimsical eyes and explain that some people learn to jive with the pound and pull and others fall the fuck off. And that clearly Mrs. Hartwell had fallen the fuck off and right hard.

There were no excuses to be had for Evelyn Hartwell’s behavior: her yard was lovely, her husband adorable, her ass tight, and her career decent. Mrs. Hartwell had simply been fisted by fortune and in that act something had shifted inside Evelyn Hartwell.

As of late, Evelyn often finds herself in front of her bathroom mirror, her lips recounting the story that will finally foist her face down into the sticky hum of insects. Only once during the telling of it does she come into Evelyn and thrust her tongue about in her mouth and wonder if she has, in fact, lived what this transplanted language recounts. She tries to stop the tale with her own native words: Think small. Hand held curler or bobby pin. Mud. Syrup, maple. Who stole the cookies? Think: field, horizon, isthmus. Giraffe. Riding a silvered cable car away from someone you could have loved. Think Evelyn, Evelyn. Evelyn, Eve- And then as quickly as she had found safety in this word Evelyn, she loses the very qua of this. Her lips are slipping past sentences the way children pray and old people lose teeth.

I can not see in. Behind the shadows the endless cornucopia of a traveler’s fare: cheetos, nachos, and mini taco rolls desiccated under hot lamp light. Twinkies, cupcakes, fruit pies and soda pop and coffee.

The conglomerate knows not my secret. I swing the door open. I am forming myself anesthetic, light, mystic. I bear the code. The attendant pivots on point, a gazelle in the country ballet, the bells affixed to the door still jangle across the aisles of convenient items.

I pause to wonder whether I still possess language.

“Lost?”

I answer.

I am surprised that I can move my tongue around in the dark hole where my secret teeth sleep.

“Where are you from?”

I answer.

“I left all my crap there, long time past.”

I answer.

He tells me where to find the water. He tells me I will have to go on foot. He tells me I look tired. He tells me his name.

I will find the child’s relic. My story will be altered. My teeth are as sharp as diamonds and as white as pearls. I will pass the electric company. Having a landmark is as difficult as having great promise early in life. Even here, where very few people live, there is glass along the roadside. The transformers are megaliths in the far off world that I am always approaching, never to touch. They force me to dwell on the ancient photographs depicting how I learned to kiss.

I approach. I am a lover stroking her stomach heading to her eyes, drawing my tongue along her backbone yet never getting to the mark.

I pull off of the road. I exit the vehicle. I place my body in the red earth. The water is just past the transformers.

And I in the middle of the path. I pull my sweater tighter around my rib cage.

I must find the water.

Susan Pularski screams; her glass plummets.

Ginny has made her way down to the Hartwell’s yard and is standing slightly to the right of Evelyn Hartwell whose face is pressed into her most prized flower bed and whose hands are digging huge trenches in the Hartwell’s new sod (They had been having trouble getting the area to really take off like the rest of the yard.) She chucks the dirt behind her.

Susan Pularski’s glass impacts the pavers below the deck; it shatters. Evelyn Hartwell and Ginny both jerk around towards her. Evelyn Hartwell's face is disturbed to say the least, but her eyes – the organs themselves – are so bloodshot they bloom like Valentine roses. Her cheeks are caked with mulch and blood. Her teeth stained black.

Susan Pularski, quite beside herself screams, “Ginny, get the FUCK up here!”

Ginny just shakes her head no. Then, “Mrs. Hartwell found a girl made out of light.”

Evelyn Hartwell rolls onto her back and goes limp; she drops her head to the right and presses her ear to the ground.

“Rob. ROB. Call 911.” Rob stares at Susan. “NOW.”

“Mommy, I think she’s talking.” Ginny crouches down too.

We are at the honey covered apex, the place where the ocean leaks out of the corner of the sky. I clamp your head in my hands and I put your mouth under the spicket.

Evelyn's lips stretch into an expansive O. Ginny leans down closer to pick the mulch out of Mrs. Hartwell’s mouth.

Golden roses grow from your hair. I have placed your jaw under the flow. Your head brims. The water spills out of your ears. The ocean dances out from your lips, like peasants in films, brightly and neatly dressed. There are fish in your eyes.

The automated sprinkler clicks on.

I do all this for you because your face will be the basis of beauty in the new order. STOP.

Evelyn’s gaze recoils to see little Ginny peering down at her and Susan springing across the yard like a rabid terrier. The child is completely undisturbed by the tick of the sprinklers.

“Ginny, do you hear sirens?”

“No. Just the girl.”

Evelyn’s mind is hitting on an almost solid point, “What does she say Ginny?”

“Something about night, about how the night here was.”

Susan Pularski makes her entrance grabs Ginny's wrist and pulls her back to safety. The paramedics follow fast on her heels.

Ginny is not safe. She can hear Mrs. Hartwell quite clearly as they strap her onto the stretcher.

She says:

Night here

was smoother

fell

like a hammer

swift swung

struck once

grown brave

Night

here was

Over.

Stop.

St—

Flora and Fauna and all that jazz

Flora am running and running so fast that the ground starts to change and Flora can’t tell where Flora am going and Flora am spinning in directions unknown and Flora cannot see behind her. And Flora spins romance like a letter kills a memory. She, Flora, don’t understand where Flora have been. In point of fact, Flora don’t believe Flora was ever there at all. The land or the ground and the desert and the sky done, cooked, all gone. Flora visions prophetic shit, a deadwood diabolism:

The space ship
The metallic toy
The cedar chest
The remote control
The light switch
The mission
The stars
The force
The throttle
The choke
The impact
The landing
The nebula
The attack
The cruiser
The light
The map
The craft
The virus
The warp
The missing
The crew
The bloodshed
The flesh
The arms
The plastic
The head holes
The worm holes
The black holes
The thighs
The hair
The smell
The alpha
The bravo
The tango
This non-metered, non limited space

Possession forces Flora lips to scan fragments of every last dime store novel she ever had touched, a voice smoothing out her inside:

Music warmer, sweeter. Tea is tepid, skin smoother. The sand more separate, sky bluer whe - Stop. The lines of your body. Stop. Wrong. All’s well here. Stop.

In a kitchen, once, as children, you, with me, laughed. Air came out of me. I could see it like it was winter. It lifted off my lips and through past laughter.

Legs wrapped in the ribbons of dirty sheets beached across a small bed, an island in an ocean of sand. I will have, should have been a statue; will have, should have been the moon. FYI, this sky is not company. I should have been a strip of metallic distance stretched between the bruises of dusk and dawn. It is not the sand, nor the heat, not the wind or any combination of these; it is displacement that drives us. Yet always we end up back in the rocking of the great hand, like the silence covered by words.

And at dawn Sorrow rolls over and finds her maker lying next to her in her bed, thieving her sheets; Sorrow, she just smiles, at least he’s here.

And the Desert says to her sweet spine as she rolls over reclaiming the sheets, “The print of your hands, I made them, just wait.”

And Sorrow mumbles, more out of routine than passion, right before drifting back off to welcome slumber, “You know me, just wait, our embrace will pierce your pores and it will be a homecoming.” STOP.

If Flora brush her teeth Flora will keep moving forward. Flora am unsure if Flora want to keep moving. Then comes one word into Flora head. This word replaces Eat and Sorrow and Desert. This word is Destiny; it is sparkly and blue water and breezes and sticky damp palms on the nape of neck. And Flora love porch swings and rooftops in the summer, the swellness of hot. Flora take Destiny by the scruff like a kitten. Flora pull him forward and lean back on sandy air and Flora let Destiny down in her and show Flora who Flora am.

And Destiny say, “Summer is a constant here.”

And Flora say, “I want you to come down this time. I want to do it different. I want you to come down. Come down this time.”

And Destiny say, “Air here is the kind you can drink. Each piece of it is the world in full.”

Flora cry out for the joy. One strand of Flora hair fall over her right eye and move with a tune counter harmony to the rest. Flora don’t care what is left, or where Flora am going. There is a warm flush all around and the scent of well-cultivated tea roses.

And Destiny say, “Here, before, I spoke this very word to you in this very order. You brushed that very hair out of your very eye, placed some bright flower between your teeth, bit down, smiled, turned and laughed. I said, in this very order, I said: Hold.”

But Flora don’t know hold.

Flora get up with Destiny still on her and push forward. The lines of the lands bleed into each other, the blood of the lands smell dark. She follow Destiny’s back through the flowers. Air in particles so small they force the world to dissolve into beads of itself. A whir of bodies and Flora see people in packs all around her. They mutter; they purr, shriek, and they are talking in no language at all. And their faces fall naturally into laughter and peer down at Flora quite naturally careening into laughter.

A simple silence. Some stay silent, are silent still, and some burn out against the desert sky.

Flora cry out, “Destiny come for you too. Destiny come for you in your leisure suits and your pajamas and your bathrobes and your gowns and your jean shorts and your flesh.” Flora smile for Destiny will be atop them so, so, so soon. Flora see the same sweet immensity of blood in all the bodies, nothing but the blood; Flushed and wet of mouth Flora know Destiny is stronger than human imagined.

Flora stretch out her hands to this one small man, a spot really, just starting to move. He a young man full with the promise of new jeans and nice blazers, a good car and a handsome smile. Flora reach out so hard. Flora feel the bend, the texture, the give; it so delicious real that Flora push harder. Flora look down, down at her feet. Flora will them to slow. Flora wrench her hand flat forward and Flora hear the rip. Flora hand is gone. All the buildings are twinkling towards invisibility. It is not cold or warm – hot.

Flora love hot nights, even here tangled in the formidable nothing that Flora can’t touch, but what was touch here; it was immaterial, beams of light and a world of numerical transmissions coursing through Flora joints. And all her vassals across all the filling stations across all her sand blasted lands lift up their hands into the tooth mouth of Flora God's sky and offer her their eyes in tithe. The light from those eyes is straight up hunger, a blue shock welds the blessed marriage of silhouette and florescence, going, going and gone. An eternal tuning goes on. The birds come here to attain perfect pitch. The insects come to get rhythm. Flora have come for air. All that is left is distance.

Flora look up and don’t know if she see sky or the ceiling is a sky. Flora see a note pinned to the flat air. It read:

Night here was
darker more blue
lonesome crazy
Night here was
bare
Night here was

Over.

Stop.

Salvation

My obsession began some several years ago amidst the predominantly mahogany library of an older gentleman whose mind I greatly admired. And as the story always goes under the orange sun and the silver moon and the steel-cut stars, I was acting upon the impression that he greatly admired me for my mind as well. He did admire me greatly; he was just exactly gentlemanly enough to sheath the true metal of his admiration.

I passed precious plenty heady evening hours in awe of this dear older gentleman's bookshelves: the sprawling gilt etched and leather bound volumes, the patterns of wear on the spines of the countless tomes, the pristine battle formation of that grinding and tyrannical regiment of knowledge ever faithfully flanked by the ubiquitous bulwark of all civilization, cast-iron bookends. Through the amassed might of its accumulated terminology this erudite assembly compelled my prone body into the divan to bask saucer-eyed beneath its compendium glory, night after bristling night.

Then there were the other shelves. These shelves were not built into the walls, but purchased over time and with the necessity to placate the revolutionary tendencies of their now since sated occupants. These shelves were hauled into the library from estate sales and antique markets as the violent swarm of books dotting the borders of the Persian rug grew ever more numerous, and with each successive generation revolted against their master with ever quickening riotous ferocity. Each stack had its very own desires (by right) that were simply too progressive and too grand to submit to the indignity of piling up – one pressed down and weighing upon the other – and so they demanded, as had their predecessors in pulp, their own damn shelves.

These were the not so great books: the stacked, the cluttered, the dog-eared, the wax stained and the well thumbed. These were the books read under trees, at beaches and in warm drawn baths, under blankets with flashlights, atop porcelain thrones, at doctor’s offices and waiting rooms, on motor boats and piers, on airplanes, in kitchens, on trains, amidst the honeyed silences dotting those lazy lilting days of laughter and lovemaking.

At first blush – enticed by a foundling child’s desire for stability, security and institution – I was seduced by the stately leather of the glowering ministers peering down stodgily from their balcony seats. With age (I like to believe that the older gentleman at the time of our acquaintance came to the same knowledge of himself) I have come to appreciate that the grist of my desire can only be fulfilled on the spines of those not so great books. It is to them, and for them, that I offer up this confession.

On a night, whose details I will spare you at this point in our narrative, though rest assured I will not cheat you of the grisly blow-by-blow of that evening; I am merely, in a nod to craftsmanship, prolonging the race to our climax; after all, I am well aware that such sordid vistas are what you paid for, I will defer (for now) from the harrowing photographic recollection and simply say: on this night Possession pulled itself up the verdant lattice work reclining against the brick side of the old manse, slithered through the cracked window, bashed in the maiden’s blush of my pride with a tire iron or maybe a silver candlestick while her back was turned, watched her crumble (knees struck first and then cheek to the floor), swooped her up in his arms, absconded with her limp form and then revived her right before he had his way with her under the rose arbor.

I ascertained, while reclining after a soupçon too much port wine, meted out by the older gentleman’s carefully measured madness, that he did quite admire me, but not (as I had so quaintly believed) for the caliber of my philosophical dialogues or for the slim bundles of paper scrawled painstakingly with my deepest and most impressive thoughts, which I would occasionally slip under his study door while nervously chewing at the ragged cuticle of my left thumb.

He laughed outright as I haltingly and trip-tongued sought to explain what exactly I had thought he had brought me here to do. His body quaked from its chortling whilst my lips fumed atop the sacrificial pyre of their own worthlessness. And bless him for that. That unabashed laughter shot my sheepish girlhood execution style. The gaping hole allowed for the dispersion of those fluffy clouds of sentiment that hithertofore had coalesced over my sluggishly devotional synapses.

I could no longer remember how to truck with morals, ethics, epistemologies, hagiologies, ontologies, eschatologies, erratas, codas, philosophies. Nor could I call up the path home or the names of the flowers that lined it or the birds that sung above it. I had only one snarling and wide desire which animated my matter: to suck out and swallow his accumulated knowledge, to create of my very body a carriage for the contents of his great mind. Swallow it all down and I would be risen above the reach of that laughter for all time.

Thus, instead of scampering out the door all in a flush and a flurry of besieged maidenhood, I took a breath, shook out my curls, put my chin up (which was hard in the position I found myself in) and I started to swallow it.

I returned each and every evening until I had taken careful account of every single grand book on those shelves. He would absent the room to answer the door, to receive other guests in the drawing room (I was not fit for their discourse), to freshen his drink, to freshen my drink, to bring grapes to the side table. He brought me everything. He was afeard I might ruffle with too much excess movement. As his back receded down the golden glowing hardwood of evening hallways, I would hastily record – with acolytic exactitude – the title and the author of each volume upon each shelf on a small sheaf of paper that I concealed snug in the waistband of my skirt. The older gentleman’s downfall was that he was just exactly enough of a gentleman not to require me to thoroughly defrock.

After one last torrid evening, my inventory complete, I never again returned and he never once sought me out. Don’t fret, I will, later in our tale, provide a full accounting of our dénouement, a reckoning that verily reeks with the scent of old flesh and shimmies with the verdure of Victorian sins aquiver at the slightest unraveling of their corset strings.

After having gorged myself on the older gentleman’s vast field of accepted human understandings, at the very moment the last notion coursed into and coupled with my blood, the old gentleman fell away, passing your precious gravity. And I was left still wanting.

I found myself sneaking into the rooms where friends, acquaintances, co-workers housed their books; my camera tucked in my pocket, my skirt, my clutch. I would capture their bookshelves, their book piles and their haphazard desktops. My desire was sweeter if not as consuming as it had been with the older gentleman. But this was all merely a diminished surrogate, a crooked cobblestone on the path to a new vista of obsession.

I am finished with nonchalant strollings down hallways, darting glances back across my shoulder, snaking past the powder room, tenderly pushing in the doors of countless studies at innumerable garden parties and birthday shindigs.

I have blossomed into snapping photos of the bookshelves in Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. I discover myself, on the weekends, driving exorbitant distances to find fresh inventories. I frequently surprise myself perusing the paper for library sales and Church flea markets. When in dire need, I pull over at yard sales sinking to ever cheaper snapshots of blankets and tables languishing on lawns and in driveways spread over with abandoned books.

I wonder at the dismantling that must have scattered the older gentleman’s library after his inevitable death. Though we barely remain in the same century, the same country, the same landscape I search for the glint of his hallowed tomes amidst the crowd of plebian spines. At the sight of one distinguished leather volume slumming it amongst the self-help books I gag on my recollections.

Yet, I no longer yearn for that knowledge which is treasured, venerably pounding forth from the lips of marm and master. I seek what is cast off, scour the waste for that which we have deemed consumable, passable, excretive, and replaceable, refillable; I have a taste for trash. These acts, these objects, that afford a pleasure out of which no life can spring forth, books whose exegesis is desert, words who shoot virile like clowns in canons from the page, but who simply don’t have the staying power to father any storied discipline or prolonged contemplation, these are what fill me. I, myself, am a study in excrescence: always the lover less loved, the hand reached out and discarded, the thought pushed to the back of the mind. I am at home with what we hope to never see again, what we simply don’t have room for anymore, children never quite understood, possessions less prized, thirsts for romance slaked or staunched or fucked out of being.

I spend the hours I've been given in my photos, praying to be granted a vision of connectivity: two copies of one book, three romances by the same author, and a hymnal spread across one shelf. I am, I confess, possessed with what colors, what transgressions, what faiths, what disgusts, bitter sweet fare thee wells, renunciations, what past midnight returns to crying arms or closed doors, what lies, crimes, what forever lost love affairs and simple Sunday afternoons have brushed untold against this one shelf of discarded books.

In each store I purchase one book, just as in each house I used to pilfer one. How I choose that one book varies: sometimes it's the wear on the cover, sometimes the fact that it's never been read at all, sometimes it’s the scene of reading it conjures - a freckled boy in his backyard in a sandbox, a mother leaning against her counter with an ice pack to one eye melting over the pages. Oftentimes, I choose the book to rescue it from the two it is perched uncomfortably betwixt. But the reason is never an inscription; I don’t, as a rule, touch them before I make my selection.

I bring the book home. I place the photographs of its origin inside its cover so it remembers from whence it came, so it doesn’t get out of line, so it appreciates what I have to offer it.

Goodwill, #44: 3 shelves
Out of the Blue: Orel Hershiser, Orel Hershiser and Jerry B. Jenkins. A War in Dixie: Alabama V. Auburn, Ivan Maisel and Kelly Whiteside. Timebends, Arthur Miller. Sacred Dust, David Hill. Home Food: 44 Great American Chefs Cook 160 Recipes on Their Night Off, Debbie Shore; Catherine Townsend; Laurie Roberge. Once Upon Wall Street, Peter Lynch. Without Honor, Jerry Ziefman. Primary Colors, Anonymous. Timebends, Arthur Miller. Red Cat, Peter Spiegelman. Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive, Harvey Mackay. The Right Dose. John dos Passos, Wrenn. Research Methods for Social Work, Rubin Babbie. The Human Odyssey: Lifespan Development. Essential Oils. Uprising, MacManus. Breakpoint, Richard A. Clarke. Lady Boss, Jackie Collins. And Venus is Blue, Mary Hood. Steps to the Altar, Earlene Fowler. Tears of the Dragon, Baxter. The Ring, Danielle Steel. The Face Changers, Thomas Perry. The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown. The Alchemist, Caleb Carr. The Dragon Lord’s Daughters, Beatrice Small. Arkansas Traveler, Earlene Fowler. Those Who Love. The Double Image. The Way of the Eagle, Churchville. The Struggle for Survival. Good News Bible: Today’s English Version. Happiness is a Stock that Doubles in a Week. A New Song, Jan Karon. Stargazers and Gravediggers: Memoirs to Worlds Collision, Emmanuel Velikovsky. Last Train from Atlanta, Hoehling, Other Women's Children, Class. Dave Barry Turns 50, Godly Play, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nutrition, David Rueben M. D. Yesterday’s Children, Brett Halsey. Practical Intuition, Laura Day. The Surprising Power of Family Meals, Miriam Weinstein. Loving God, Colson. Summer Captive, Pollock. The Copper Peacock and Other Stories, Rendell. Last Wish, Betty Rollin. World Weavers: Gifts of the Unmade, Alexander. The Reader, Bernard Schlink. Red Mesa, Aimee and David Thurlo. The Gemini Contenders, Robert Ludlum. Critique of Legal Order, Quinney. Reflections From a Mother's Heart. Mistress to Her Husband (large print), Jordan. Love Finds a Home, Janet Oke. The Screwball King Murder, Kin Platt. Basilisk, N.M. Browne. Patriot Games, Tom Clancy. Sports Firsts, Patrick Clarke. Sunshine and Shadow, Earlene Fowler. The Folded World, Amity Gaige, Wanderlust, Danielle Steel. Readers Digest Condensed Books: Cold Harbour by Jack Higgins, Circle of Pearls by Rosalind Laker, The Bear by James Oliver Curwood, Finders Keepers by Barbara Mackenzie. Winter Door, Carmody. Across the top of the shelf: Sleep, Baby Sleep, Hague. A Better World For Our Children, Spock. Silent Sons, Dr. Robert J. Ackermann. Whatever Happened to the American Dream, Burkett. Regrets Only, Sally Quinn. The Rule of the Lawyers, Walter K. Olson. The Englishman's Boy, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Advances in Insect Physiology, volume 1, 1963.* Mockingbirds and Angel Songs & Other Prayers, Carr & Sorley. A God Against the Gods, Allen Drury. The Dawn's Early Light, Stowell. How to Win at Horse Racing, Robert V. Rowe. The Road Ahead, Bill Gates. The Love Letter, Kathleen Schine. The Scottish Joke Book. Cold Day in July, Stella Cameron. Tainted Truth, Cynthia Crossen. Disciplines of the Home, Ortlund. Red Baker, Robert Ward. The Last Valentine, James Michael Pratt. The Raiders, Harold Robbins. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders in Children. The Prosecutor, James Mills. Devices and Desires, P.D. James. The Journey of Self-Discovery by His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedanta and Swami Prabhupada. A Dictionary of the Environment, Allaby. Cavedweller, Dorothy Allison. Intuition, Allegra Goodman. Who Will Remember the People?, Jean Raspail. “How Can You Defend Those People?”, James S. Kunen. My Life and Country, General Alexander Lebed. Ceramic Materials for Electronics, Buchanan. Disappointment With God, Phillip Yancey. Echoes, Danielle Steel. *purchased

Fond memories of why I will never be President, #374

He is clearly unaware that distance influences the process of oral communication. And he can’t project for shit. There’s something he wants. Sadly for his desires, the rough rock scratching my ass makes it next to impossible for me to concentrate on lip reading. I have very sensitive skin. Besides, the sun is bright and I have to squint to make out anything up there. From what I can glean he has pressed his elbows together and is opening his forearms out into a V shape and then closing them over and over.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He offers no verbal reply, nothing but the arm motion.

“What do you WANT?”

He gestures for me to come closer.

I almost plunged to my death twice on the way down. I’m not going back up, not even an inch, not until the whole blasted thing is over. He is just going to have to learn to speak up.

I repeat his arm motion questioningly. And now it’s crystal; he wants me to scissor my legs open and shut. Obviously this is a joke and I misjudged the fat freaky shit; he does in fact possess a sense of humor. I have no earthly clue where it was hiding during the interminable car ride, but at least it came with. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I stand corrected; I spy his round head hovering over the cliff’s edge. He is still sliding his gelatinous arms open and shut with dictatorial precision. As per usual, I am proven a piss poor adjudicator of human character.

It hasn’t yet occurred to him that this isn't the best way to deal with a person of such delicate sensibilities as myself; I don't relish demands, most certainly not demands from pathetic Weeble Wobbles with indiscernible expressions leering at me from cliff edges, Weeble Wobbles with an inability to clearly assert their desires. I simply can’t respect this type of authority. Uncertainty really brings up my bile.

“NO. FUCKING. WAY.”

His arms move more vehemently.

“SUCK. IT. DADDY-O.”

We had coffee like twice; we discussed these things as rational people do. We addressed: 1) what he needs, 2) what I need, 3) what he has to offer me, 4) what I have to offer him, 5) what we could do together. The question is how will me sitting on this colossal rock in the bottom of a dry gorge scissoring my legs open and shut prove to be productive for either of us?

“Do you mean bring them CLOSER?”

He moves his arms in and out even more emphatically. I cup my hands around my mouth, “TOGETHER? YOU WANT THEM CLOSER TOGETHER?”

My legs are firmly glued together at the knees for the first time in years, my feet splayed out on the rock's surface; my hands encircle my open mouth. His blood is racing; he quivers, gives me two thumbs up and launches his weight from heel to toe, toe to heel. We are both pleased. This overlapping of our joys is short lived, contained solely within this luminous moment during which I permit myself to believe that I might possibly emerge from this excursion with my dignity intact.

Damn, the accursed V again. I’ll give him credit; he is persistent, but I can ignore the bastard. He can’t get down here unless he jumps. And I know, 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.' My strategy is simple: Look lost in thought, get lost in thought.

Commander Weeble is at the edge of the gorge peering down, fanning his arms in and out, the top of his bald head blindingly reflective as it reddens ever deeper under the stalwart shafts of sunlight. There are untold worlds on the mottled surface of that glowing dome. The abnormal geography of his cranium opens the prospect of freshly imagined interplanetary shenanigans: rivalries, factions, illicit couplings, cross species couplings, the leveraging of natural resources whose names and purposes I don’t yet know, social and spiritual customs, philosophies, telekinesis, prophesies.

I crash land on the surface of his skull. If it stops me from having to fully participate in my own humiliation then whatever life form finds me down here has my full permission to: burn me, bind me, turn me into pure light, imprison me, give me a thorough lab exam, take me to their leader and let him/her/it spank me, lash me, use my piss for rocket fuel or whatever else they may need. His arms are fusing together at the elbows, his skin furling open. Bone embraces bone, sinew twines sinew, re-doubling and absorbing, reforming purposes, transforming into a single flabby scissor appendage. There are civilizations of flabby scissor-limbed life forms swarming across the surface of his bald head. The ones that live in the divots are at war with the ones who live on the hillsides; they fight for what little vegetation there is.

He looks like lobster boy’s piggy pervy one-clawed cousin. He stops scissoring his arms and taps at his watch with a bombastic condescension that only an obese, balding man in his late forties sporting a plaid camping vest can pull off.

“FINE. But know that if my ass chafes, in the slightest, there will be HELL to pay.”

I stretch my legs out on the surface of the big rock, lean back on my elbows, arch my back a touch and slowly drag my legs open and closed. If I picked them up off of the rock it would be less painful. I won’t. I’m lazy and the lifting might put undue strain on my lower back. Ham hock, ham hock occupies me. Ham hock to hammock, hammock, HAMmock, HamMOck, HAmmOCK. Where did I hear that the Mayans invented hammocks? At work, could be, the fry cook is really into that kind of shit. We had drinks last Thurs—

A wild hubbub at the lip of the gorge, I squint and snap into focus to see him jumping around, clearly agitated.

“Do you want wider?”

He jumps up and down.

“I AM SO NOT GOING TO JUMP. N-O.”

He stops dead. A bedraggled styrofoam cup blows around about his feet. He is trying very hard to tell me something. I study his lips and just make out thunder or plunder. No, wonder, under? Then maybe ranger, but it could just as easily be stranger. Whatevs. I spread my legs as wide as I can get ‘em, throw my head back and try for a winning smile.

With an effete kick of his heels he plunges off into the surrounding greenery possessed of the grace of a 280 pound jackalope. It’s funny, real funny. Maybe he does have a sense of humor. It gets stone cold silent. He’s gone. Oh, no, no - no worries - I'll just wait right down here.

I don’t know how to get back to the parking area. He has the backpack. Thus he has my clothes, the towels, the map, and the snacks. All I have is my shoes. Shit.

My Obituary: Airport cocktail waitress found naked and dead on God’s Head Rock. Always gave money to bums. Survived by one mother, no friends, one cat (Lily, age 4) and half a flask of what authorities have identified as Old Grand-dad whiskey. Cause of death remains unknown.

All things considered, I am pretty excited to be in a gorge, on a rock – God’s Head Rock that is – naked and alone. It looks like it might rain. And I do love myself a good spring shower. This is some kind of wonderful. And the cherry: I’m being paid. Oh, fuck yes, brilliance hath come upon me. I am being paid to pleasure myself whilst I lay alone on a giant rock in the middle of a gorge on an enchantingly warm spring day. Technically I am not being paid to pleasure myself, but every cloud has a silver lining. The only downers are that I think I might kind of have to pee, which might ruin the moment, and I have a lot of baby oil on for sheen. Also there are parts of me exposed that don’t often see the sun.

I know way deep down within myself that I need to make the most out of this God’s Head experience. I need to do it up right, embrace my inner dryad. Behind Door Number One: an animalistic thing on all fours. Well all threes, I do need one hand free. I’m not that flexible. If I were I’d be getting paid a shit lot more and I damn sure wouldn’t need this job. Behind Door Number Two: Relax each part of my body into the rock. Seep into the stone like warm taffy. Stare up at the sky. Take it slow and steady.

For practicality's sake I’ll save all threes in case it does rain, kneeling will insure that I don't gulp down mouthfuls of rain. I'm a screamer. And the cool rain will feel great on my raw hamstrings. I do so hope he’s gone long enough for me to try both.

I stretch out and breathe. And breathe. I start to get warm, sleepy. Best get started before I doze off. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. These are the kind of things that don’t make it into obituaries. In my estimation, these are moments worth living; mortality and fond remembrances can sit and spin.

I open my eyes and stare directly into the sun. If I go blind no one will ever know why. I lick my fingers. And we’re off.

As is to be expected the inanities of natural existence pull out their tiny little pistols and take aim at my pursuit of pleasure. A fly. A fucking huge ass fly persists in landing on my hand. Once: Flick it off. Twice: Move along, there’s nothing to see here. Thrice: I can’t roll with this. The thrill sort of dissipates.

Did he say danger before he ran off? Ranger and stranger do both sound a lot like danger. Oh we’re back on, “Well excuse me little lady, you look like you need help way down there in that dry, dry gorge?” growls the vivid (if clichéd and imaginary) Dr. Strange Danger Ranger. I fairly purr, “I am a little lost down—” An isolated raindrop falls right into my eye.

Well, fuck me I’m naked. Naked and alone on a huge rock formation in a gorge with no knowledge of where the road is or what happened to the person who brought me here. He needed a model for his “art” photography and I needed a couple hundred bucks. Don’t misunderstand me, the life of waitress at an airport restaurant is surprisingly lucrative, but I’m the kind of girl who’s always trying to fluff her nest.

He could have brought hundreds of women here, well, only if there are hundreds of women as stupid as me. I told no one. I just moved here; no one’s gonna miss me. Turnover at work is pretty high, especially since the Hooters opened. My only hope for survival centers around the fact that even a casual co-worker could see that Hooters is not an option for me.

I drove two hours with a strange middle-aged bald man, hiked to a remote part of a state park, took off my clothes (except my shoes), greased up with baby oil and then handed him my clothes and watched him put them in his backpack. He wanted to get some shots of me climbing down. All this after telling no one I was coming here. No one saw us on the trail. I then proceeded to scale the wall of a gorge naked and baby oiled up. Not even nude, but naked.

And when he bolts out on me do I try to climb up and find him or escape him or escape whatever he was running from? No. Nope. Not me. I enact an obscene (and failed I may add) woodland masturbation fantasy. He’s probably watching. He’s probably taking pictures. He could be setting traps for the seasonal hunt of the stupid naked girl, who knows. Maybe he just had some sort of digestive emergency. At least the rain looks like it’s going to hold off for now.

I ain’t going out like this. When I go, I go with a bang asshole. In case he’s watching I’ll give him something to behold. I’ll knock it out with gusto. What the hell, might as well die trying.

The sky is shifting. I roll my arched back vertebrae by vertebrae back down onto the rock. The sun gets a weirdish shade whiter. That was nice, so nice that I can hear the humming of crickets in the distance.

I must be sleeping – rain coming – if I listen close I can just make out words – large rain. I dream of a boy and a girl eating a ripe unknown fruit by a blue deep lake. The boy throws in a stone, laughs. The girl throws in a stone, laughs. They lean back on their elbows with their feet stretched out in front of them and cross their legs, uncross their legs, let their toes touch the water. The boy throws a large rock in the lake and the girl throws in a larger and they laugh, let their heads loll back on their necks and stare directly into the sun. The sun is gold and bright. The sun is flying toward its reflection. It belongs to the blue body of the water and the blue body of water belongs to it. They laugh some more. They eat fruit some more. The girl she holds stones in her clean white skirt and the boy he holds stones in his stiff blue pockets.

I’m awake and it’s hot. My hands are clutching my breasts firmly, like claws. I’m wet all over. I must have slept through the rain. I detach my cramped hands from my sore breasts, lift my head, and open my eyes. God’s Head Rock is all but submerged in murky brown water. The surrounding vegetation is spindled; it looks like late autumn, but the air is way too balmy.

There are my shoes floating away down this new water way. I look up from my shoes to the edge of the cliff; there’s a little girl about seven or so, barefoot, half hidden behind a barren bush. She too is watching my shoes with rapt attention. She must sense my eyes on her; she starts, recovers and nods her head meekly. There are no flowers anywhere; she reaches down plucks a brightly colored piece of trash from the litter that surrounds her feet and affixes it to her hair. She bends down again and picks up a stone and with a firm arm throws it way down the gorge.

At the sound of the stone’s impact with the water two big elegant birds – white, but not swans – emerge from behind the curve of the cliff winging right above the body of muddied water. They swing down low over the rock; their tail feathers are brown. I watch them arc up into the gray sky.

I think I might be hungry, but I don’t know what to do about it. I watch the girl sit down on the muddy earth. She swings her feet over the edge and shimmies down the cliff side until she reaches a ledge a few feet above the surface of the murk. With a breathtaking grace she plunges in and swims swiftly towards my shoes as they bob along down the new river. I watch them both until they disappear.

Darby says, fill in the blank.

One: Is.

Atop the balustrade, she is:

casting off
her velvets

christening
her tall boots

chastising
her Age

how laborious her legend.


Two: Renounces.

To the young master’s arms, she renounces:

her tongue
her eye-wells
not merely the Tigris, but the Euphrates

her brood
her metropolis below

Herculean lanterns strung up amidst clement seaports

the microscope and its momentum
her compendium electroencephalography of Jesus
the amethyst smoking orchard.


Three: Offers.

Endearment brackets her body against the hood of the auto.

On his terms, she offers:

her vision
her blessed death
the boy at the gate
the brown rabbit

her well earned Tiara
her quiver and her mark
the aroma of roses
the prospect of orchids

admissions given in confidence to inferiors

her jealous maid
her presence
the sweetness of asylum.


Four: Visions.

On her knees, six million minutes ahead of this particle, she visions:

An ocular disturbance spinning out across the heartland
hollow cavities, fissures
monocoque malfunction
casings of bombs pre-dating their conception.

She undergoes mitosis when he preaches.

He spies her atop the widow’s walk
Sunday, just past sunset.

His ventricles ache with an awareness of their reddening,
fanning out toward the westward smoldering edge.

A locust shell on the wind
his neck snaps
vacating her memory.


Five: Has.

She has swallowed.

Where will be your earth now?

A rainbow on the tile in the early morning sun
a wet, open-mouthed and jeweled sobbing
irredeemably out there, beyond this past.

The sweetness of his body makes her:

a toothache
a boulder
a missile
an arrow in the distance.