The Chronology of Water (23 page)

“Excellent then,” he said.

We switched from lattes to wine.

It wasn’t just man thing that impressed me. It was his story. How he’d escaped Reno and moved to San Sebastian, Spain, where he briefly witnessed a series of ETA events - the armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. How he later lived in Italy where he coached a not very good Italian American football team with guys named Mauro Sassaligo, Ugo Spera, and Giacamo Piredu. How he’d interview members of the Earth Liberation Front, how he’d cyber-pirated Bill Gates
Microsoft.edu
. How he came back to the states - the Northwest, to be exact - to be a writer. Then he said something remarkable.

“In Italy I read about Ken Kesey teaching at U of O. So I applied to the university creative writing program and was accepted. We moved to Eugene. But the Kesey workshop had already happened. I did meet some cool writing teachers though.”

“Really,” I said. No shit? I got kind of excited but played it smooth and nonchalant. This was my opening to impress. Ahem. “You know, I was in that Kesey year long workshop. Funny, huh.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. I think I saw you in the creative writing department hall after that. Did you have one side of your head shaved back then?”

“What?” I definitely needed more wine.

“Did you have…a very unusual head back then?” He was staring at my hair.

Man alive. What are the odds? “Well, yes. Yes I did.” I slugged what was left of my merlot.

“If you don’t mind my asking, why the hell did you do that to your head?”

“Suave,” I said, laughing.

“No, I don’t mean to sound like asshole, your hair is beautiful. It’s just, it looked kind of…”

“Severe?” I offered.

“Severe,” he agreed.

Why did I do that. Why did I. I got butkus. Then it just sort of came out of my mouth as, “I think I did it because I was hurting. I think I wanted to mark that hurt on the outside. I think I wanted to be someone else. But I didn’t know who yet.” It almost sounded aware.

“I see,” he said, “and who are you now?”

Goddamn this guy just goes straight for the kill. Aren’t guys his age supposed to be shallow insensitive arrogants? So I said, “I’m your teacher.” We both cracked up. The kind of laughter that reveals a gaping fault line big enough to drive a U-haul through.

Then it just got ridiculous - I couldn’t stop watching his lips move and I couldn’t shut down the electricity creeping up my spine and then it became impossible to maintain the teacher student charade when he took off of his sun glasses for a moment and I took off mine and I swear he performed some kind of sly guy Marlon Brando like from Streetcar eye hoodoo on me. Still, I gave him my written comments on his work like a professional should and sent him away. But he already knew my weakness.

“ Um, Dr. Lidia? Don’t you need a ride home?”

I know you are not used to women saying this, but I wanted him to drive down into me and eat me alive.

OUR FIRST “DATE” ANDY SAID HE WANTED TO GO SWIMMING with me. He knew all about the swimmer of me from reading my stories, which he’d apparently gone home and looked up that night. Also from stories he’d been told. Now that I look back at it, it was a brave move. He wasn’t that great a swimmer. He was great at other things - but not swimming. So that must have taken some man guts. And he was mildly allergic to chlorine. When he dipped himself in chlorine for long periods, his nose ran. Non-stop. Still he asked to come swim with me. No one has ever done that.

No one.

So we swam. In a little Y pool near my rented one bedroom house in Ocean Beach a block from the sea. In the pool he fought the water with all his might. Six foot three and built like a tree his body was meant for land. But he swam with me. Lap after lap. I lapped him a dozen times. Still he swam. His nose ran. He stayed with me in the water. When I finally stopped, he looked me right in the eye. Chlorine smell between us. His eyes were bloodshot because he refused to wear goggles. He was more present than anyone in my entire life had ever been. He smiled. Snot running down his mouth. I smiled back. Fear in my chest. You can’t order a highball in the pool to calm the fuck down.

The second date he took me to a ratty little hole in the wall Ocean Beach gym where he hit the heavy bag and did mixed martial arts things I’d never seen, nearly making me cream my
jeans and pass out. I know. How not evolved of me. How not feminist and Ph.D. and university professor. I’m just saying. You could have hosed me down and carried me out on a stretcher.

Then he wrapped and wrapped and wrapped my hands and put the red gloves on me and took me over to a smaller weenier bag and tried to show me how to hit it. Everything smelled like man and sweat and leather and socks. I was the only woman there, and I was not young and hot. I was 38 and he was 28 and it looked that way. But I put my fists up. For him. For him, I tried to find some game. It was going OK, but mostly I bat at it like a girl. Not because I couldn’t bring something harder, I was an athlete back in the day after all. But I was COMPLETELY UTTERLY STUPIDLY RIDICULOUSLY SELF CONSCIOUS. Middle-aged woman with hot guy in an O.B. gym.

At one point he tried to help me improve my jabs by having me put both gloves up in front of my face - I didn’t realize I was supposed to protect my face, I was intently staring dreamily at his, hoping to look at least minimally sexy. So when he jabbed at my little red paws? I ended up punching myself out. My eyes watered and my nose went numb for a bit. But I stayed. And I hit the bag harder and harder. And when I hit it as hard as I could? It felt good. Um, really good. I hit it and hit it and hit it. I hit it like I was hitting my own past. Then he hit the heavy outdoor bag and knocked it off its metal moorings.

So, yeah. You know those illustrated Karma Sutra books? Here’s a brief run-down: stimulations of desire, types of embraces, caressing and kisses, marking with nails, biting and marking with teeth, on copulation (positions), slapping by hand and corresponding moaning, virile behavior in women, superior coition and oral sex, preludes and conclusions to the game of love. Oh and it describes 64 types of sexual acts (10 chapters).

Upstairs in his house was a carpeted little attic room. And him. And me. And a bottle of wine. And pot. And no clothes. I don’t know what the neighbors heard but I can tell you it must have been a startling interlude from the mundanity of their
nightly televisions. One thousand nights in this first night of his mouth on the mouth of me my mouth on the cock of him his fingers inside my wet inside my ass my fingers around his throbbing inside his ass my legs on his shoulders my feet over my head then sideways like scissors then me on all fours then him underneath me riding and riding then him lifting me my whole body a muscle my back on his belly and chest me on top of him on my back his hands working my tits his hands working my clit my back arching up his cock so far up me my spine went loose my legs shook I screamed and screamed I bit his neck I scratched a self into the very flesh of him I pounded my body down onto him I made an ocean of bed. The sleep of lovers.

And then again begin.

In unending waves.

I don’t know where my thoughts went. I only know for the first time in my life I felt everything about a body. Every day. There was nothing we didn’t do, and I felt every moment of it in shuddering pleasure. More and more my stupid tumor of a life receded.

One night he put a blanket on the floor and told me to wait and when he came back he was a big 10 years younger than me beautiful man carrying a cello.

“Jesus,” I said. “You play cello?”

He played Bach. The sixth suite.

I cried. Possibly the puniest sentence I’ve ever written.

I cried for the force and strength of his body brought to the brink of tender in his fingers straddling the strings. I cried for the violence of hitting as it fell away into the tremor of holding a note. I cried for the man of him-the size and shape of my father - the brutality of muscle and artistic drive - brought to the cusp of such beauty. Bach. But mostly I cried because I could feel something. All over my body. Like my skin suddenly had nerve endings and synaptic firings and … pulse.

On my birthday he bought me a Beretta 9mm FS and took me out to the desert to shoot. It’s the first time in my life I
experienced “glee.” Shooting - I liked it. I liked the kickback going up my arm and shoulder. I liked the sound, drowning out thought. I liked aiming at a target - that could be anything. I shot and shot.

When Andy Mingo entered my life, I’d walk around at my job or the grocery store or the beach or bars or parties kind of wanting to tug on someone’s shirt and say, “Um, I need to say something about men. Turns out? I was wrong. There’s something … I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something sort of … vital about them. Doesn’t that beat all?” Or I’d be mid-lecture or mid-mouthful of food or mid swim lap and think “Hey - somebody - I want to note that I’m feeling something. It feels a little like my heart is breaking. Like breaking open. Do I need medical attention? Is there a pill? What should I do?” Or I’d be in medias res lovemaking, I mean mind blowing lovewaves with this … this … man creature from another planet and think “I really, really need to go get a different degree to understand this mutual respect and compassion and fleshheartmind hunger business. A Ph.D. just doesn’t cut it. I’m quite clearly under educated. Can I speak to someone in charge?”

The one thing I didn’t think? Drink it away. Possibly the only strong thing I’ve ever not thought.

That’s why I say I didn’t get god. Everything I ever loved about books and music and art and beauty all became recollected in the body of the man I met who hit the bag and played the cello.

After that we started arranging rendezvous all over town. Hungry. Frenzied.

Did I mention he was married?

Yeah. Well. What did you expect? I’m still me, after all.

We met on benches at the ends of piers in San Diego where he’d make me cum with his hands down my pants at the end of a pier while tourists and seagulls and fishermen stretched out behind us. We met on the beach with the surf pounding and the sunset cliffs and one night even when I finished coming and sang my siren song a bunch of hippies in the cliff shadows
put down their spliffs and gave me a standing ovation. We met in bars where we sat next to each other on red leather stools and pressed knees and shoulders and mouths together so hard I’d find bruises in the morning. With my fancy job money I bought us weekends back in Portland or San Francisco with rich people hotel rooms and room service and porn channels and 300 thread count sheets that we soiled and soiled. He said “Sometimes love is messy.”

It’s true his almost not anymore wife chased me in her O.J. white Ford Bronco. But our lovers story isn’t the only story. Though our affair was epic. And sordid. Narrative and passion have that in common.

There’s a story under that one.

In addition to loaning me his car, he began driving me to and from my communist re-education drunk driver courses every night for eight weeks. Bringing me a bottle of wine or vodka on the floor of the car when he picked me up. You know, kind of like a best friend would do. A kind, sly one.

He also drove me to and from my exhausting road crew days for eight weeks. Cooking me pasta when I couldn’t lift my arms. He went to my mandatory AA meetings with me and sat through the 12 steps and nodded and smiled in his black leather jacket all the way up until we’d get home and I’d rage rage rage at god and fathers and male authority and he’d dismantle my rage with funny jokes about jesus and monkeys.

He treated this thing I’d done - this DUI - the dead baby- the failed marriages - the rehab - the little scars at my collar bone - myvodka - my scarred as shit past and body- as chapters of a book he wanted to hold in his hands and finish.

But there’s even a story deeper than that. After he moved out of his wifehouse and into my little one bedroom seahouse a block from the sunset cliffs in Ocean Beach, after he finished his MFA and I filed divorce papers and he filed divorce papers, after I had to go into the English Department Chair’s office and lie like a rug because his wife went in and spilled the shit, after
we both bit the bullet and said the “L” word out loud, something better than sexual and emotional zenith happened. I didn’t know that was possible.

Night. Ocean sound. In my tiny seahouse. On the sofa. Both of us scotch handed. Mazzy Star playing all night all night all night. We’d been admiring his Karma Sutra book and he’d been explaining the Tibetan Book of the Dead to me. Sexuality and death. Home run.

He put his hand on my heart. I could feel the heat of his skin diving down into the well of me. He stared so deeply into me my breath jackknifed. I began shaking. Just from that. Then he said, knowing everything I’d told him about myself, he said, out of the blue, “I want to have a child with you.”

 

.

?

.

Well you can imagine how many ways I tried to say “No.” I wanted to pick up a phone. “Um, hello, human race? Can you connect me to the dreaded relationship department? I need to say something. I’ve got this man thing over here, and well, bless his heart, this man is confused. He’s clearly mistaken me for someone else, and he needs rerouting. Different area code. Different address. Different woman. Is there a special number to call? I know. It’s crazy. He thinks he wants to have a family. Yeah. With me. Nuts, huh? So can you just, you know, give me the number to relocate him? He may need prescription medication. I can stall him for awhile, but you may want to send someone out.”

His argument against all my fluttering resistance? One sentence. One sentence up against the mass of my crappy life mess.

“I can see the mother in you. There is more to your story than you think.”