Sunday, September 18, 2011

Swordfish

At the table I was adrift in the sea of gentle delicacies on the plate and palates of the dinner guests. "Ayn Rand was a genuis!" Person 3.0 says under his assortment of fine cheeses and crumbly bread. Their shirts are buttoned and collared; the lights are dim--ominous. In my silence I look for their eyes to question my placement at the table. They are physicists, they are lawyers, they are mystics and wise in their ether-reality. The lights go dimmer and person 1.2 gives a toast to the marriage that I knew nothing of— that is, until the toast. I look down at my plate of swordfish encircled with a granular sauce that is green and smells or tastes like life itself. I've never tasted this before. The toast ends and I look back up.

They eat, they pay; I walk in observation back to the train with the lingering feelings of firm handshakes and "It was my pleasure"s all around. And then I am there. I am back at my college, I am playing an invented drinking game; I am losing, badly. The swordfish for dinner makes my tummy rumble and the game makes my head come out of my belly then throw the ping pong ball. The college seniors gather around ye flattened table with litters of cups and gallons of liquor and scream and play and play; we are in a state of play.

"The best game since Pong!"
"No it's way better than Pong. Pong is pussy shit compared to this!"
"You're right, what am I saying? Drink that rum dude, you lost!"

Hahas, many hahas, circumnavigate my ear and eye and pink finger that stretches and points to the table. The light is there and not, and is anything really happening in those heads or in my cup? Who said that stuff? What is this game?

And I am there. I am being kicked out of an on campus party, because of the RAs, and making arrangements to pick up cocaine, though I don't snort cocaine and have only the exact amount the dealer has named as his price. He speaks terms and weights and I nod and invite him out to a party. His little neck bends downward and to the right then the left and avoids my little eyes. It is as if his profession has made him "sketchy" as if he is hoping to avoid a police sketch and is wiggling away slowly and gently from a fate that is destined.

We are there; we are...at a sophomore dorm on a bed. I have her in my arms and he lies in front of her, sleeping sleepy sleeps. This “her” and this “he” are illusory. They walked with me, they took me back to “his” place and he dreams now as she grins.

"You have a boyfriend and I am a spoon. I am a tool. Use me, whatever."
"You're the big spoon; I'm the little spoon." She says with her raspy voice, her person 0.85 voice. Her words barely come to me, they nearly get lost in some scene three years or five minutes ago.

"That isn't what I mean. Come here." I don't resist the time before now, I go to it, and as my lips push onto hers I think about the swordfish and the growling of my stomach.
"What do you want?" Persona 0.85 asks--vowels withering and body squirming.
"I don't want anything."

There I am, right there, on the walk home with the dawn squirting water onto my squeaky shoes and I spot two boys walking, smoking, walking, looking down.

"Hey, hey! Can I buy a cigarette?" I ask pulling out a condom.
"No." Person 0.3 says to me.

I stand still watching them walk away through a spinning world.

The grass palms my head and the sky pushes clouds steadily to death like the snows of yesteryear. I am, or turn into, the day before when I sent her, my swordfish, my love. And she, my world traveler said nothing. She says nothing. She is my nothing. Person 0.0 slept in the grass, and person 0.0 went to the womb then the tomb then to class thinking about the swordfish. And the days repeated.

The phone dialed, the phone hung up, the phone dialed and shut, and voicemailed once more at class or in the grass or somewhere in that night two years ago. Two years ago, I had swordfish for the first time. This cyclic progression of scenes leads me to the painful admittance that has to burst, has to erupt one day soon. “I don't want anything!” I will eternally, politely want to scream to my swordfish, but I cannot. And the days repeated.

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