To Feel Stuff (11 page)

I didn't get a response, and Lily came into the room, holding my macaroni and cheese. I whispered to her, “Can she honestly be sleeping?” We both looked over to you in disbelief. “She came in a second ago, and now she's already knocked out.” I could hear the start of alarm in my voice.

Lily tiptoed over to your bed and bent down to check. She stood up and mouthed to me, “Sleeping.”

And maybe you'll think I sound like a baby, but I felt your having fallen asleep as a personal loss. I'd been looking forward to your return all afternoon, and god, that sounds whiny, but there were so many things left unfinished.

I beckoned Lily over to my bedside and told her, “I've been sitting in the exact same spot all day. Are there wheelchairs around here? It would be really great if I could just look at the room from a different angle.”

Lily went away for a few minutes and came back with a wheelchair, which she helped me get into. You slept through all this, even though we were talking at normal level and my leg braces were hitting up against each other and everything. I could hardly believe your sleeping stamina. After I was settled in the chair, I practiced rolling myself backward and forward with my arms, and Lily seemed really proud.

“Now you can get your own magazines from the mantel,” she said.

I asked her, “Who would have thought I'd be so happy about being able to roll ten feet when I could run a thousand yesterday?”

She said she had to go do some paperwork, but if I got bored, I should roll myself to the door and knock, and we could hang out. She never got as far as brushing my hair, but she definitely wanted to throw some dessert in the microwave and shoot the shit.

Once I was alone, I turned myself in a half circle so that I could face you again. You still hadn't moved a muscle, and, well, suffice it to say, I guess I knew I couldn't be passive anymore. So I pulled my elbows back to put as much power into the push-off as possible (I also used my diaphragm training from all my years of singing), and then I flew across the floor and to the foot of your bed. One three-point turn, another push forward, and my nose was seriously only a foot from yours.

And, El, at first I was just going to get a good look at your face. That's it, because I'd been so drugged out before, and you'd been sitting on the opposite side of the room, and your features had been almost bleached by the window's glare. I reached out and placed both my hands underneath your left shoulder, the one that was closer to me. I slightly, slightly lifted your body. By doing this, I was able to bring a little more of your torso into view, but your face was still pressed down into the pillow, and I had to see it.

So then I tried again by lifting your shoulder back with more pressure, and I made sure to move really slowly so that you wouldn't be jarred. I lifted and lifted, and it's both hilarious and embarrassing picturing myself now, how stealthy I was being. If you really want to know how ridiculous I was, I did this for
four minutes.
Finally your chest was opened to me, and I had a look at your profile.

With the utmost care, I removed one of my hands from beneath your shoulder, and I began to work on your hips and legs, adjusting them so that I could get you arranged in a loosened fetal position. Since you balanced yourself that way, I was able to remove my other hand from your shoulder. To anyone else reading this, I must seem like the guy with the most minimal understanding of personal boundaries on the planet. But I knew you were the kind of person who would do the exact same thing, the kind of person who wouldn't stop yourself from obtaining answers when you were painfully curious. Other people never got us and still wouldn't. That I know for sure.

I put one hand up to your exposed cheek, and the other, millimeter by millimeter, I slid under your cheek that was still resting on the bed. Before I even had a full grasp on what I was doing, I was bending down to kiss you. I was thinking that you were such a beautiful sleeper.

When I realized that my lips were pressed to yours, I basically became paralyzed with shock at myself. I was in an alien situation, having no idea what to do, and I guess that's why I just left my mouth there for a few seconds. And then suddenly convinced that I was going to wake you up, and that you'd hate me and never talk to me again, I decided to remove my lips using the same slow process I'd used before. I started to pull away, making the change gradual and jerky like I was a rusty garage door going up. My eyes were open the entire time, and I kept them focused on your fluttering eyelashes.

I had no idea that outside on the curb in front of Health Services, a huge group of my fellow a cappella singers was assembling. I know you probably just thought that it was a big mix of anonymous voices, but that was the Yale Whiffenpoofs, who were visiting Brown for the weekend (they're really good), and they had joined up with the Bear Necessities because of me. We were originally supposed to have a midnight a capella competition against them, but my accident brought everyone together under one cause.

I almost had my lips removed from yours—almost. There was only a tiny bridge between our bottom lips. The room was totally silent. I remember the heater being on a break. Then the Whiffenpoofs/Bear Necessities started singing at full power, and I swear it was like war sirens bleating through the night.

“It used to seem to me—”

At “me,” your eyes flew open, and I thought, “Ohhhhhh shit” In my shock I stayed attached to your bottom lip, frozen like I was in the presence of a wild bear.

The Necessities and Whiffenpoofs sang:

“That my life ran on too fast—”

My mind raced to find an apology for you that would sound real and, above all, legitimate. I needed you to know that I had never been so instantly captivated by anyone, and I had never done anything like this before. You surprised me by not moving your face. The only part of you that did move was your eyes, which darted up and down my face.

Down below, the guys were continuing to make promises to me. Channeling Steven Winwood, they were belting, swearing to me that that I'd be “Back in the High Life Again.”

Shit, El, I was hoping that they were actually right about me getting better, but even more than that, I
did
want new doors opened to me—yours, specifically. Then, like you knew exactly what I needed, you lifted your head, bit my lower lip, and kissed me.

Paxil CR: Get back to being you

 

When those singing guys woke me up, you looked like you were on the verge of either initiating a make-out session or crying. You had the doofiest expression on, and I almost laughed. I think you were scared of what I'd do.

But I was touched by the way you looked, because I knew you'd started something that you were too embarrassed to finish. Once my mom took me to see her hypnotist friend performing at a high school auditorium, and after the student volunteers woke up from acting like chickens, they looked just like you did. I remember thinking, “Who does this? Who brings his face this close to someone who's sleeping?”

For a second I thought that it was the night before again. I thought that I was destined to live in a “Tarzan Boy” world forever. My logic hadn't kicked in yet, and I thought that I would always be at the mercy of loud singers, waiting for them to be quiet.

The difference was you, though. When I opened my eyes and saw you, you were the proof of change. Of time moving forward. I was so overjoyed that I lifted my head to kiss you, and just to make sure that you were real, I bit down on the edge of your lip.

I want to tell you how it felt to kiss you, but it turns out kissing is like sickness in that it exceeds my vocabulary. You'd think that somewhere among all the words I've collected over the course of my life—words from textbooks, words from books read for fun, from magazines, from TV shows, from love songs I've heard, from movies, from rented videos, from Pictionary/Scrabble/Trivial Pursuit, from crossword puzzles, from word searches, from historical quotations summoned for current use, from current quotations, from people talking around me, from people talking to me, from any of the many possible forms of lexicon osmosis—I would have some decent words to describe the kissing. But the only approximation that seems halfway good is that I felt I had minuscule rainbowfish (they're the jumpy, little iridescent fillers in aquariums) darting through my nerves.

After you fell asleep with your mouth still on mine, I realized that I wasn't following you anytime soon. I got out of bed and walked to the window. The street was quiet outside with most everyone having left for the holiday, and soon I saw the security shuttle stop in front of the building, its emergency lights blinking in time with my heart. There was no one to pick up. Kneeling down, I licked my finger and smeared the tally marks underneath the sill. I was declaring a new point of origin.

My junior year of high school I went through a period of insomnia, and during it I became very friendly with the Home Shopping Network. The first time I watched, a host, redheaded Kelly, was showing the lobster clasp on a pearl necklace. The way she was talking intrigued me. She said, “You could wear this, say, if you were going to a dinner party, and you just wanted that one elegant touch. Or, how about a summer vacation? And perhaps you're going on a cruise? Maybe you just love pearls, and you want to put them on with a pair of jeans and wear them when you're running errands? That's fine, too.” The clock said that Kelly still had to discuss the pearls for another minute. She just kept coming up with new options. “Or you can give them as a gift. Or you can hold on to them for Mother's Day and give them then.” She was impressive.

I was inspired and started to play along. I said, “Or you can twist them and put them in your hair. Or you can wrap them around your wrist and make two bracelets if you don't have a lot of money, but you want to look like you own more jewelry than you do. Or you can put them in the closet, forget about them, find them again a year later, and be completely surprised.” It became the late-night game I played with myself when sleep eluded me. I got so good at it that I could not only predict all of the hosts' suggestions, but outdo them with at least ten more of my own.

Looking at you, the lump in my bed, I felt like I did when I used to watch HSN. You were the source of a million possibilities. I sat on the floor, thinking, “Or this. Or that. Or this. Or that,” until I was feeling something that approached the start of lovesickness. Incidentally, I don't know why they call it lovesickness, because in my opinion the sensation feels more like an abundance of health. You start to feel like a golden retriever, since you're so frisky it's embarrassing, and if you had a tail you'd chase it, too.

Even though I spent that night wondering about you and me, I didn't want you to wake up. I didn't want to talk to you yet. What I wanted was the chance to be aware of a turn in my life before it happened. I wanted to hover there, allowing all of that hope to shimmer around me, and I didn't want to rush through the phase. I have a lot of experience with waiting. I've waited for doctors who always give me too much time to change into the disposable robe. I've waited for labs that need weeks to process blood and bone marrow samples. I've waited for illnesses that like to take their time moseying through my body. So even though my stomach was jumping, I waited to move until I had given my hope its due. By then I was worn out. I picked myself up from the floor and climbed back into bed with you.

From The Desk of Chester Hunter III

 

My dad had to call up to the infirmary three times before I finally got in the elevator, and that was because I couldn't tear myself away from you. I'm telling you this now because you were sleeping and had no idea what I was feeling. I'm sure you woke up and thought that I was gigantically fearful of commitment and had run out on you—I don't think we'd ever talked about my going home. In fact, I think we had been too busy being amazed with each other's mouths, and then we passed out.

On the plane I took up two seats, because the braces forced me to sit horizontally. My dad was sitting in one of the seats in the row behind me, and he kept leaning forward to talk to me through the crack between the chair backs.

“How are you holding up?” he asked me for the thousandth time.

“Like a champion,” I replied, and I think my dad took this answer seriously because in the past it would have been a serious answer, if that makes sense. I turned my head and looked into my dad's eye there in the crack.

“I'm certainly impressed, proud of the way you've handled this incident. Chess, this shows character.”

“Thanks, Dad. But, you see, I don't know that this shows character as much as it builds it. Do you know what I mean?” I asked.

“Mmmm, naturally.” My dad rang for the stewardess and she came right away to his seat, since she had only been about two feet away.

“What can I get you, sir?” she asked.

“I'm having a Bloody Mary. Chess?”

I said, “Nothing for me, thanks,” and then my dad was there at the crack again, looking at me with his steely eyeball. “A bottled water, then? We're going to have a toast.”

The stewardess took a step forward to get a final answer from me—she even bent over me with her big and long breasts. I'm not telling you about them in a sexual way or to say that I was turned on or anything like that, but because I remember them encroaching on my space, and I know you know about encroached space.

“What're you toasting?” she asked. “A handsome guy like you? I bet you just got engaged. All the good ones are always taken!” she laughed mirthlessly. By then, you see, all I was thinking about was you.

 

In the car our positions were reversed, with my dad sitting in the front of the Lexus, driving, while I reclined in the back. When we were going through San Jose, my braces kept clicking against each other every time there was an imperfection in the freeway. I was all woozy from the flight, so I was feeling close with the topography of the 280. I told my dad, “My body is equipped with divining rods,” and my dad looked in the rearview and asked, “Are you drifting off? I can wake you when we're home.”