As of October 1997 she is experiencing her Freshman year at
Olivet Nazaren and will soon be coerced into dropping out due to a pregnancy
(not my own) for which her father will expect her to get in front of his
congregation and apologize; justifying that she is a sinner, before an encore
usurped Sermon from three summers ago about the waywardness of the world and
abortion. At this moment, she is also enjoying her Freshman year at another
private school in Iowa, taking a Liberal Arts class, reading from Plato and
Martin Luther, smiling in the wild hills that swallow up the topography of
Northern Iowa, leading up to Minnesota. At this moment, the girl of my dreams
is saying prayers to Baha u llah. She is finishing up her senior year in a
central Illinois farming community, writing a short story late at night by
candle light about two couples who are madly in love with each other. Right now
she is at U of I, getting drunk on cheap beer. She is a sophomore in Kewanee,
saying her prayers and smiling. She is at Bradley, lodged inside Geisert Hall
for Weekend Duty, heavily considering looking for an additional source of
income.
Right now,
at the very moment the two gallants stumble home, crossing L-track lines, back
to the boy with the autumn hair’s cousin, the girl of his dreams is smoking a
post-coital cigarette. She is on an international flight. She is getting tested
for multiple STD’s. She is worried that she may be carrying something else
other than a child. She is wondering
whether she forgot to take the pill, or will perhaps skip the pill on purpose,
this time, so that she doesn’t loose her current beau.
Right now
she is married, lying next to her husband of one year, feeling sexually
flustered. She is overseas, hearing bombs drop in foreign villages, looking
after her younger sibling Maya, wondering when she will hear from her father
again.
Right now
the girl is listening to Enya or Tori Amos. She is somewhere else, holding
someone else in her thoughts, a lullabye; a light kiss brushes across the
bottoms of her lips and she pauses and thinks for just a moment, reflecting in
the cool, thick breeze of Autumn, how her life will change in ten years.
Wondering what lips her only lips will perch on. Wondering what her career will
be, wondering what child will form and mix inside of her. The feeling of birth
and of creation, forming inside of her. Granting the continuation of life here
on this planet. Right now the girl of my dream, the eternal muse, is resting, a
light sleep sprinkled over her forehead, dreaming of the most perfect man in
the world to grant her simply, everything she has ever wanted in this lifetime.
“Her name
was America. She was born in Montana.” I tell Damian, kicking in the side door
to Larry and Carrie’s house. “Diet Pepsi,” I say, unearthing the door to the
fridge, staring at Larry’s magnet of Michelangelo’s David, wearing a tutu, a
blu-tank top and mouseketeer ears for a helmet.
“No,”
Damain says, walking to the bathroom, draining the fluid that is inside of him.
Three minutes later he emerged from the bathroom inquiring if he thinks whether
or not my cousin would mind if he douched his mouth with any of their scope,
saying ‘fuck’ he knew that he forgot to bring something.
In darkness
we peel back the covers, slice into them. The pillow is ploughed deeply into my
forehead. The books purchased in bulk, are piled next to the coach, William
Gaddiss on top, followed by Pynchon’s Vineland.
“Dave,”
Damain says, his voice bowling into my lobes through the darkness.
“Yeah,what’s
up brother.” I say.
“Well, it’s
just that it’s total horseshit, that’s all” Damain says again. “I mean, why the
fuck do you have to tell every single girl that you meet that you are in love
with her. Every girl you meet you use the same exact lines on and half of the
time they’re not even yours.
“Just go to
bed.” I say, swatting at his voice in the dark.
“You love
everyone Dave, everyone. That’s just not possible.”
“Go to bed,
brother. Go to bed.”
“And that
girl back there at the train stop, she was totally buying all the shit you were
spoonfeeding her.”
“Damian,” I
say, my eyelids crumpled with fatigue. “I love you brother. Go to bed.”
“Fuck you
Dave. Fuck you.”
*
“You just get a blood test honey.
That’s all you do. You’ll be ok.” Lisa says, in bed. The frost outside hits
hard against the side of the house. Her room is impeccably cleansed, mattress
layered with thick tufts of comfort. Throughout the night our bodies weave
shadows into each other, stretching out and clasping. We make love sheeted by
an impenetrable blanket of darkness shrouding our gestures, kisses snap out
like nocturnal insect, I feel the top of my body pressed into her forehead,
wondering if this is the sleeve I am supposed to button myself into, this is
the person I am supposed to wrap myself around and press into, and feel her
alive, inside, before falling back and swiping the layers of sweat from my
forehead, rising out of bed to urinate and stumbling back into the bedroom in
the dark, to find her curled on the comforter, her body nestled into a warm
question mark, naked and still moist, I grip and grope, fondle, love in the
dark is learning how to ride a bicycle all over again. She tells me that she
not as wet and inquires if she could smear some lube down there. I continue to
press down on top of her, ignoring her request and eventually we are hovering
as one flesh layered unit,, hovering in the darkness, gliding as if on training
wheels until she tells me to fuck her harder.
“Fuck me Angel! Oh, fuck me!” To
which I comply, pulling the comforter back over our dual limbs, immersing
ourselves even further in darkness, wondering if we can spark any light after
all, beneath the sheets. Perhaps a torch to illuminate our path, to leave and
come again, by ourselves, with someone else, ultimately all alone.
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