As if on schedule, something autumnal. A cooler, drier wind. The cat sits in the doorway sniffing appreciatively. Matcha latte is still okay iced, but soon I will heat milk on the stovetop instead.
It’s Saturday, and the monstrous list I made on Thursday of things-to-do has been reduced by only one. How will it be humanly possible to finish all this schoolwork? I’m genuinely not sure. I suppose I could give up the biweekly incendiary sex I keep having with the neighbor; but would I really be studying or grading on those nights? That seems unlikely. Week six of the semester just ended, and I’m still trying to figure all this out. Still trying to find my feet.
Maybe it would be easier if I weren’t regularly being lifted off them and onto convenient flat surfaces (cf. biweekly, above). I don’t know. All I know is that during these encounters, which are both lurid yet refreshingly pragmatic (punctuated with necessary communication: “Sofa?” “Yes.” “…” “Bed?” “Okay.”) I am not thinking about my ex which is such a relief from that particular year-long anguish that I can only think it would do anyone’s neural networks good. My new partner is good-humored and respectful while still appropriately aggressive and unflaggingly energetic; and I fall into our sweat-drenched physical collisions with gratitude that my femaleness still exists, that I’m alive, that I am not (per Winterson) left alone on a rock hewn out of my own body. We break in the middle for mini rainbow popsicles and I find myself wanting to high-five him.
And honestly one of the best parts is that at the end of the night (3 am this morning, e.g.) he goes back to his place and I lock the double dead-bolts behind him with affable gladness and curl up in bed and cuddle with Pyewacket and add another line or two to this strange poem I am sort of writing. I don’t have to humor anyone through their mood swings, endure their hostility or dishonesty or bewildering mysterious withdrawals, try to unravel their blaming into some kind of information I can make sense out of. I am honestly so scarred from the last couple of years I can’t even begin to imagine what it would take for me to be in any kind of relationship more complicated than slutty neighbor-with-benefits. As long as I keep having screaming sobbing nightmares in which my ex tries to saw at my throat with an electric turkey-carving knife (how very Norman Rockwell gone wrong), the gentlemen of OKCupid and JDate are safe from me.
Besides, both websites keep proposing to me various guys who look like they’re auditioning for a Santa contest, alleging that they’re in their mid-forties (NOT POSSIBLE) and have found me attractive. I laugh and am relieved that the love of my life is over, and behind me, and I don’t have to worry about finding that ever again or meeting anyone else. I already did that. Checked off the list. It frees up a huge portion of my brain that would otherwise be worried about losing weight and getting expensive highlights in my hair, and turns it loose to roam in words and ideas. And as I taper off my most recent cocktail, experimentally, and I read and write again, this seems especially crucial.
Case in point: I am sitting outside writing this, while Pyewacket plays in the banana plants and a delicate charred smell wafts over the wall from the Mexican restaurant. The neighbor comes outside, says something indistinct about the day being nice, smokes a quiet cigarette, then goes back in. I keep typing and no one needs to interact. The ashtray to my right is half-full of his cigarette stubs and my popsicle sticks. The air is so mild, it makes us mild as well. I have no problems with anything. A squirrel bounds along on the power lines, its mouth full of something stolen from the restaurant, something blobby and worryingly gray.
(In the dream I am lying on the floor frozen with fear while my ex demonstrates how he would chop up my body if he were allowed to express his anger—where he would cut through the joints, which limbs he would sever in the middle. He is saying that he is not really that angry; he is saying if he were really angry it would be like this; he is saying actually he really is this angry but I never get to be angry, I never get to feel how I feel, it’s not okay with you for me to be how I really am. Then he moves the long serrated blade up to my throat, as if playfully, and says, Let me pretend, let me saw it back and forth so I can feel what it would feel like to really do it, let me, I want to, I’m going to. Then terrified sobs burst out of me, it would be so easy for him to turn on the blade, I am reduced to a craven thing that begs, no, no, please stop, I’m so scared, please don’t hurt me, please—
Somehow I get away and I run. They will believe him and not me, they’ll say I was asking for it, I can’t trust anyone’s help. I go home, try to collect a few valuables, my grandmother’s ruby or garnet earrings (which don’t exist) because I can sell them. I lie to the police when they ask if anything is wrong, I pack a valise, I lie to my new female roommates and tell them they can find me online, that my username is redbird, I take some crackers and a granola bar and scramble out a window and run as if for my life—)
October. An equinoctial contentment.
I keep a sharp eye on it. It can so swiftly, in days if not hours, flip into a bittersweet nostalgia that then slides into the real winter darkness. Nightmares like that one are a particularly distinct early-warning sign.
In the meantime I love passionately my Gender and Sexuality in World Cinema class, even as it contributes nothing to my degree plan and is really not enough of an intellectual challenge for me. But it is indecently fun. Last week, after we handed in our papers (and I wrote mine! and gave it in on time!), our bright young instructor played the first 40 minutes of Jeanne Diehlman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), and I was ecstatic. The other students suffered it gamely enough. Next week is a Fassbinder film. That class is a small glowing flame in the middle of a dull schedule and if I were not in it I cannot stand to think how bleak each week would look.
At the other end of the spectrum is Introduction to Doctoral Studies, which continues to pain me. Quite literally: my body starts to hurt around 7 pm every Tuesday. The resolve I must exert to remain motionless and attentive in my desk (we have those silly little student half-desks, the kind where all your papers and pencils are constantly sliding down into your lap) makes my limbs ache with an acute sick akathisia that rises to my brain in an inner scream. I really wish I were exaggerating. Around 7:15 we get a break and I scamper outside and press myself to the rough concrete wall of the department building to soak up the last bit of heat and light, and feverishly text Miss Bovary, desperate for some reprieve from the godawful tedium. When we go back inside and class starts again, as I doodle with my purple and green pens against the boredom I invariably start asking myself whether I should really be in this program. Maybe I’m unsuited for academic work, since it seems to make my skin hurt. Why spend another five years hiding out in higher education? Maybe I should just be more assertive about applying for jobs at Southwestern community/tribal colleges? Could I even get a job? Can you go on the job market after you drop out of a PhD program? Who would write my letters of reference? —etc.
Like clockwork. At 7:30 every Tuesday evening. By the time I’m home at 9 pm, wolfing the celebratory piece of fried chicken with Pyewacket (our little weekly mead-hall feast), I’ve pretty much convinced myself I have to drop out. And then on Wednesday at 2:30 we watch Jeanne Diehlman and I think, well, maybe I can do this after all.
I am writing a poem beginning “Dear poem,” in which I tell it what I think of it and complain because it never initiates sex.
Somehow a few nights ago during an especially athletic maneuver, the neighbor accidentally hit me in the jaw with his elbow, whereupon my nose promptly started to bleed.
The best popsicle of the whole summer is this last unexpected one, ube with bean, ube being Tagalog for purple yam, and I only have one left.
He says just don’t associate this with me, it doesn’t really have anything to do with me, your body feels amazing because of you. And I wisecrack well maybe you have a tiny something to do with it.
He says the least you can do is look at me; but I barely can.
I can’t figure out the mysterious herbal-metallic smell my house makes, like musty urine and forest leaves and something cold and insectile all at once. It’s only right by the front door, only after I’ve let it stand open for a while. It’s not outside or inside either one exactly. It probably is a sign of some kind of horrible infestation but I try not to think about that.
My avocado pit has a four-inch long stem, but no leaves yet.
My about-to-be-divorced friend R. says just don’t get addicted to him. I tell my best friend S., at the first sign of any kind of affection I am out of there.
The thing about October is, you won’t know until December or even February exactly what you did wrong. The thing about October is even when you’re not in Santa Fe, you know the sky is dark blue, the aspens are gold, every day is piercing and that you are probably headed for heartbreak no matter which way you choose. The thing with October is everything is so beautiful you can just keep telling yourself it will be okay either way.
