Pornography I’ve Seen
by Toby Scales
Smashwords Edition
*****
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Dream
of a Dental Sales Representative
for the North American Territory
You.doc
You’re on your way to work one morning, or you’ve just dropped the kids off at soccer practice and are returning to your car, or you sit down in a coffee shop miles away from your home town and glance across the way to see familiar eyes. Her eyes.
They are blue, or green, or deep brown. Her hair bunches around her chin, or spills off her shoulders. It is different now. She is different now, much different. But you recognize her by the way she moves. You feel your memory unlocking as she approaches. You feel the napkin, or the newspaper, or the car keys suddenly wet in your hand. You turn away. You pretend to be looking for something. You pretend to be somewhere else. You pretend you haven’t seen her and you hope to God she hasn’t seen you, but suddenly you feel her presence in your stomach. She is standing next to you. You have to face her.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asks, squirming you with her gaze. A sinking, trickling feeling races up and down your spine. Behind her a stranger turns to look at you with an indifferent gaze. She is taller now. Pencil-thin lines trace the angles of her face. She is prettier than you remember.
“No,” you lie, and your insides twist. You stretch your lips into an awkward smile. Something changes in her smile. She takes it back. Your finger twitches. You wish you could take your smile back, too. She offers you her brother’s name, and blinks her bright blue and brown and green balls of light at you. The memory rises out of you like vomit.
* * *
It is a Tuesday night. Greg’s parents are out of town. He has some friends over in his basement. There is a Nintendo there, and cable with HBO. Everyone is talking about Shari Ellis’s blowjob. Everyone has a different part of the story. Greg says it was in the parking lot. Brian says it was in the gym. John says she spit. Greg says she swallowed.
MTV is playing. Madonna’s Like A Prayer video, the one where she has sex with a statue and it comes to life. Greg’s sister keeps intruding. She wants to hang out with the boys. Nobody likes Greg’s sister. She has braces and bad hair. She’s twelve years old. She’s wearing a pink sweatshirt with a puffy picture of a unicorn on the front.
Brian tells everyone he can get beer. There is nervous laughter. Greg offers him five dollars for a beer run. You have no money. John puts in for both of you. Brian calls his brother. Greg’s sister gives ten dollars for wine coolers. She really wants to be cool. She’s trying so hard to fit in. Nobody likes her.
Greg kicks everyone’s ass at Contra. He can beat anyone at any game, except Mario Kart. John is the best at Mario Kart. Brian isn’t very good at video games, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He asks Greg if his sister spits or swallows. Greg doesn’t punch him in the arm. He respects Brian.
Brian’s brother shows up, finally, at midnight. All he bought was wine coolers. A bunch of them. He wants to hang out. He calls Brian a fag a lot. He can beat Greg at Contra. He’s a dick. Nobody likes him, but everyone respects him.
* * *
“How’s your brother?” you ask, “I heard he joined the military?”
“He did,” she replies. Something strange in her voice. You don’t want to acknowledge it. You look at your watch as if you have to be somewhere. You wonder how much she will say to you. You wish you were somewhere else.
“He always loved playing Army,” you say, automatically. She glances down at her feet.
You force air out of your nostrils in an abbreviated symbol of a laugh. You feel your smile grow tighter on your lips. Your mouth is drying out. Your heart races in your chest. You notice her breasts, rising and falling on her ribcage just below the thin fabric of a red silk blouse. You notice that they poke out to the side, and realize she’s not wearing a bra.
She looks back up at you. Her eyes are dimmed with tears. “He was killed,” she says bluntly. “About a year and a half ago.”
“Oh.” You remember hearing it now, of course. Greg Fishburne, killed in action on his second tour of duty in Iraq. You remember the feel of the phone in your hand when you heard the news, catching up with Brian but already anxious to get off. You had the TV on mute, watching the grinning silent face of David Letterman on screen. Laughing silent audience. Bald, sunglassed Paul, repeating something clever. Noiseless applause.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” It doesn’t sound real, even to you.
* * *
Greg’s sister is drunk. She only had two wine coolers but she’s laughing uncontrollably at stupid jokes. She spills part of her third wine cooler on her chest. The stain outlines the shape of her budding breasts. Not even a handful, says Brian’s brother.
Greg’s sister has braces. Greg calls her Metal-mouth. He never calls her anything else. You feel sorry for Greg’s sister. You feel sorry for her around all these boys. You can see in her drunken laughing eyes the same tense thing you feel around them. She’s afraid.
Brian’s brother smokes cigars. Brian does, too. Greg wants to try one. Greg’s sister goes to sleep. Outside the air is chilly. Inside Greg’s sister peels her sweatshirt into a pile of laundry by the washing machine. She strips her clothes off there, strips down to a pair of light pink panties with some kind of pattern on them. She goes into her bedroom.
Brian’s brother thinks George Bush is a pussy. He thinks we should go after Hussein. He thinks we should get him before he does something really crazy. Nobody else has an opinion. Brian’s brother smokes pot. He wishes somebody else did, too.
Greg’s sister’s bedroom is upstairs. There are fourteen carpeted steps. It takes a long time to get to the top, going slowly. If someone comes in, there is a bathroom upstairs too.
* * *
The lie hangs in the air between you, flopping and slapping like a big wet fish. She shifts awkwardly and looks away. You release your breath. She sighs. She looks like she is busy.
You try to think of something else to say. All you can remember is the footage on the news last night. A soldier and a prisoner. The prisoner on his knees, bruised cheeks, lips bleeding, hands behind the back. The soldier dressed in camouflage, rippling equipment. He puts his boot on the prisoner’s shoulder. Kicks him over.
* * *
Greg’s sister is breathing slowly on her bed. Her lips apart. Her budding breasts exposed. She lies above the covers, waiting. On her panties there are horses.
Greg’s sister is asleep. The room is filled with shadows.
When she wakes up, you hold her face into the pillow so she can’t be heard.
* * *
“I forgave you,” she says at last. Turning her gaze back to you, pinning you down with her eyes. Angry pity burns there. You see her suffering, suddenly, like a battlefield. She has fought and won the oldest war. She has drowned you in the whimpers of her pillow.
You cough, almost awake.
###
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She was a redhead, all right
She was a redhead, all right, a real redheaded sorrowful little slut and God wouldn’t I love to show her how to hold it in her hand and watch it grow.
But she was my friend’s sister—a good friend too, even if he is an alcoholic—and she would join us at the bar some nights, especially when she knew I was there, because she was getting off work and hated her husband. I never met him, but I know he hardly ever slept with her. She told me as much.
She’d limp down the smoke-stained stairs of that old basement bar, red hair rain-wet and tucked into the corners of her mouth, white skin glistening like music, her face pinched and glum like she needed someone to wake her from a disturbing dream. Some kind of foot problem at a young age gave her just the tiniest limp, not hardly noticeable but sad anyway, sad the way she looked when she talked about her husband or her life or when she finished laughing at something I said and didn’t know what else to do but look away.
Above her ankles she was proof of God’s erection, a put-together ice queen that wore makeup like a whore and short skirts right through Christmas. She had a kind of nervous daring to her sexuality, and a smile that melted so overtly you figured she would do you right there if you asked her right. Every time she joined us in the basement she would seduce my eyeballs, slipping off a coat or adjusting a stocking and glancing over at me with that red-waxed smile turning up at the corners of her fuck-me-here mouth.
The bar was dark and wooden in those days, and at five o’clock deserted save for us.
* * *
I like sex. I like it a lot, and I like it the way my friend likes booze. Some folks, they only like good sex but I like all kinds of sex. In fact sometimes I prefer the bad sex, sex so sloppy and painful I can’t get off. I’ll just keep grinding and grinding, trying to climb through that translucent waterfall to find the source of those colors shimmering away off in the distance, beyond death, beyond the bed sheets knotted up and leaking sweat, beyond the poor gal I’m grinding into over and over again, the one looking up at me and wondering when I’m going to be finished.
Some of them look up at you and they’re girls, others look up at you and they’re women.
The thing about sex with women is, it’s spooky. Dark and sweaty and spooky—like hiding in a closet under the stairs and hearing your own breath for the first time. There’s a wetspot smell to sex with women, a real earthy smell that is so goddamned authentic it’s downright scary, like staring into the vibrating eyes of your drunk mother. A woman doesn’t have a pussy, she has a cunt and it’s like those things in car washes, huge long hairs hanging down in your face and it smells a little old and rank in there, too.
Sex with girls, on the other hand, has a clean kind of Pine-Sol smell, the smell of white-washed skin and cheeks and skinny little arms and legs akimbo. It’s scary like a tickle-fight, or stealing a dirty magazine, or wrestling with a boy. A girl is clean as can be, but the problem is the way they look up at you. When you’re going again and again and can’t get off, they look up angry and disappointed in themselves, like they’ve let you down—and it’s a goddamn awful thing to learn you can’t be everything to everyone all the time.
Women, they look at you through the centuries. They let you go, and go, and go another hundred, and they take in all that disappointment, letting it burn inside them slowly, heating from the inside like a microwave until one day you want it back. Then they turn and smile and shake their little ringlets at you, and you know it’s gone for good.
* * *
This game-legged little redhead would have been one of those. A woman. Fingering my cigarette, I watch her freshly-painted lips part, her eyes flick over my hands. I know she wants one but she doesn’t smoke—at least she doesn’t so far as her husband knows, but I know she’s thinking of it now so I tap the extra ash off, let it sit for a while and run my eyes up and down her neck, exploring the rim of her blouse, imagining the breasts below.
My drunk friend is yammering something, I don’t know what, going on about a goddamn book he read or something and he has no idea I’m molesting his sister sitting right beside him, running my hands over every crevice of her shimmering glistening body and she’s loving every minute, she’s breathing deep so I can watch her tits fall and she’s sliding her hand along her beer glass begging me to stop, please stop, no don’t, don’t stop, no—
She reaches for the cigarette, but I put it out before she can get to it.
“Did you want one?”
“No, thanks.”
We make our way back up the smoke-stained stairs and our breath starts showing before we even get outside. I watch her navigate the ice carefully with her crooked foot while I stamp my feet on the ground as if to keep warm, but really it’s to raise the souls below.
###
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Fucking Mrs. Linneman
I had been fucking Mrs. Linneman for a whole month before I told Jeremy about it.
Jeremy didn’t believe me at first, of course, so I showed him my cell phone and her number there but he still didn’t believe it. So then I had to show him the pictures, and I knew I shouldn’t do it but I decided to anyway, but thankfully I made him come outside, past the big courtyard and the parking lot almost to the McDonald’s and when I was sure no one was around I flipped open the cell phone and dialed down to that secret folder I hid at the bottom of the other folders and showed him the couple of pictures she let me take the other day of her and her dildo and boy did he believe me then – he took my phone and I thought for a minute he’d run away with it and show everyone but instead he just held it and stared at her, almost sad at first but I could tell he was getting excited and then it felt kind of weird and maybe a little guilty to be watching him stare at her naked, looking at that smile that was supposed to be just for me but that now he’d seen, too.
Finally Jeremy handed it back to me and shook his head a few times. “Holy shit,” he said, “holy shit.” He just kept shaking his head and looking at me funny and then I told him about the handjob in studyhall and he about shit himself, and then I felt kind of proud of myself, I felt good that I had showed him the pictures of her and I wished I had more, I wanted to show him what she looked like right before she came because in that moment she was the most beautiful, even to me, and I thought he’d probably really like to see it.
Jeremy’s always been the guy that gets the girls, you know? He’s always had a girlfriend, like as long as I can remember it. Since fifth grade, even. And me, I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’m not saying I haven’t made out with girls and whatever, but I haven’t had a steady, real girlfriend ever before Mrs. Linneman. I don’t know, I guess girls just don’t think of me that way. That’s what they say to me, anyway: I just don’t think of you that way. I don’t want to ruin our friendship. For some reason that doesn’t seem to be a problem with Jeremy. I think it’s because Jeremy always pushes them, right away. He always goes for it, like, the first time a girl is alone with him he’s gonna have his hand up her shirt. He says that’s my problem, that I’m too shy and scared and girls don’t like that.
I guess Mrs. Linneman liked it, though. That’s one of the things she said to me, in fact, is that she liked how shy I was. I don’t remember when that was, maybe a couple months ago. I think it was right at the end of last quarter, before Christmas break. I remember thinking it was a strange thing to say to me, I mean I’m shy in all my classes but the teachers don’t go around telling me how great it is that I’m shy. And Mrs. Linneman was really specific about it, coming over to me specifically to say how she liked that I was shy. And touching my hand. I remember her touching my hand, definitely, because I kept thinking of how warm her fingers were over Christmas break. It got pretty cold over Christmas break but I kept thinking of those warm fingers and I was actually looking forward to going back to school. But of course I never thought anything would happen.
The first night was just an accident, kind of a totally random thing I guess. I left my book in her class. I don’t even usually take it home, because I have study hall first period and I just do my homework there, and I don’t even think we had homework that night since it was like the first or second day after break. But anyways, for some reason I went back to her classroom to get my book after school. She was kind of standing towards the back of the room when I came in, I think she was feeding the little garden snake named Harry that lives in an aquarium tank back there.
I came in and said, “Hey Mrs. Linneman. I think I left my book here.” And she turned around, and she was super excited to see me it seemed. She came over right to me.
She put her hand on my shoulder and said “Let’s see if we can find it.” And she took me over to her desk, and my book was right in the drawer there. I remember she bent over to pick it up and I could see the edge of her bra wrapping around her breasts. It was a nude-colored bra. I remember, cause I thought “nude” when I saw them. And I think maybe I blushed. Some guys think Mrs. Linneman isn’t that attractive, but nobody can deny that she has some real nice boobies. Real nice.
She held up the book for me and I guess I didn’t say anything at first. I think I was still looking at her boobs or something. And maybe she saw me, I mean I think she must have seen what I was looking at because she just casually kind of unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and opened it up a little. I remember there was a weird kind of silence for a second, and I thought she was waiting for something at first but then I realized she just wanted me to take the book. So I said, “Thanks.” And I took the book.
And just as I was leaving, feeling kind of confused and weird about the whole thing because I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me or what for looking at her boobies, she said “Jonathan,” and I turned around and she was standing almost practically right behind me. She took a couple steps towards me and I kind of knew what she was gonna do, but it still surprised me when she did it, which was to close the door and drop the shades.
I kept thinking maybe I was in trouble, but then I thought, “No, she wants to fuck you!” but then I would think, “That’s crazy! This is Mrs. Linneman!” So I didn’t know what to think, I just stood there frozen. And she went around to all the shades of every window and closed them, and I stood there totally frozen while she did it, with these thoughts going around and around in my head. And finally she closed the last shade and turned off the lights, and it was still pretty light in there but not as light. And then I was sure I was in trouble, and I had a big big boner that I thought she would probably be able to see, even with the lights off, and that would get me in even more trouble.
She came over to me and took the book out of my hands and set it down on her desk. She unbuttoned another of her shirt buttons. And then she untucked her shirt.
* * *
So then, yeah, that whole thing happened. We didn’t have sex or anything, but she showed me her boobies and we kissed for a while, and she even offered to give me a BJ but I didn’t think we probably should, so I took off. It was weird how disappointed she was when I said I didn’t want her to, she seemed really hurt and I thought that was odd because all the girls I’d ever talked to thought it was kind of gross to give BJs.
I can’t really say how we started taking the photographs and stuff. She used to talk a lot about Mr. Linneman and how he didn’t like to do crazy stuff with her, and she was always asking me for crazy suggestions and stuff, and so one day I just said I wanted to have a picture of her, so I could look at it when I was at home, and she said “Okay.”
Jeremy never said anything to the police, which surprised me, but they didn’t need his testimony anyway, cause they had the emails and the pictures and all that. I didn’t think they’d put her picture in the paper, but they did. They put her picture up everywhere. There’s a website called Hot For Teacher where they put her picture up, and my whole report to the police, and the pictures she and I took, too. I don’t know how they got them.
I still have the ones we took. I had to send them to myself when I switched phones, and they kind of shrunk down when I did that, but I still look at them every once in a while.
She used to be so pretty.
###
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Dream
of a Dental Sales Representative
for the North American Territory
She had a four-inch scar in the middle of her breasts – not a big jagged thing but a pale narrow finger, a sewed-shut mouth grinning sideways from between her tits.
She’d had heart surgery when she was a kid, she said. She had an overactive heart and it would beat too fast at times, so they had to go in and slow it down. She talked about it like it was nothing, but I could hear in the waver of her voice that she didn’t really think it was nothing. I knew that deep inside her, every time I ran my finger along that twisted smile she felt her stomach tighten and felt a trickle along her backside, because her body remembered even if she didn’t, and I always thought that was a beautiful thing to see: her body remembering something she didn’t.
* * *
The first time I talked to her she was telling me where I could get my attendee pass, very friendly but in that businesslike way that tells you it’s not real friendliness. I noticed her several times throughout the first day and was not at all surprised to find her lurking by herself in the hotel lobby after 8 o’clock, sitting in a small pool of light at the end of the bar like she belonged in one of those Edward Hopper paintings.
On-duty she hadn’t been much to look at, to be honest with you, and I wouldn’t have noticed her at all except I was in town for just the week so I happened to be looking carefully. When I sat and ordered myself a drink she smiled towards me and her smile seemed freer, easier to make when she wasn’t required to make it.
I asked if I could order her a drink and she laughed and tossed her head back, offering a glimpse of her neck by shaking the long black hair off her shoulders. She smiled and I noticed a tiny chip in her upper anterior incisor (number 8) and when she soothed it with the secret flesh of her slithering tongue I felt that pull, the gravity I am always seeking, drawing me toward her smile and into her mouth.
She ordered a Cosmopolitan with extra lime and we spoke about nothing.
* * *
I’m not an asshole. You should know that right now. I like to travel, I like to meet women and because I travel I can’t usually stay with them for long, but I want you to know I’m not an asshole about it. For instance: I find out from a woman what she likes, right away, so we’ll both enjoy ourselves. I know a lot of guys who are, believe me, a lot of guys in my line of work are wham-bam types, but I like to connect to my partners because, frankly, it doesn’t work for me otherwise.
I was raped by my uncle when I was thirteen years old. I know you don’t hear about a lot of men getting raped, and I guess I could call it molested but that sounds wimpier to me for some reason. Getting raped sounds like something you really couldn’t stop, which was what this was. My uncle’s a crazy, twisted motherfucker and he held me down in his room and fucked me hard in the ass and after a minute or so I gave up trying to get him off me and just waited for him to get off.
I’m not saying that to excuse myself, I’m just saying that as an aside because I think you should know something about me since I’m telling you all about her and her scar. She told me just before she showed me her scar that she couldn’t feel her body very much and I can relate to that. Because I don’t feel my body very much, either.
* * *
One thing I always do is sex talk. But I’m not an asshole about that, either. I don’t make them feel uncomfortable about it or anything, I don’t get sexual too quickly because I understand that women need some time to warm up to the idea. On the contrary: I want to put them at ease, I want to make them feel okay with the sudden distant touch of a stranger so I calm them down like you might calm down a feral cat, in that same soothing tone of voice. I compliment them and call them by their name and try to relate to their life. I talk about my life and I’m very open about it.
The reason she sticks in my memory is how easy the sex talk was with her. It was just natural, it came out of me like those religious nuts who speak in tongues and feel the holy spirit moving through them. I was whispering in her ear the hundred ways I wanted to possess and destroy her and she came in her jeans without me even touching her.
Then she slipped off her top and showed me her scar and let me touch it: dead-skin scar tissue sealing an old wound, the heart locked inside and the scar a source of flinching shame to be soothed by strangers in the dull dead light of evening.
* * *
When we lie beside each other in the fading glow of orgasm, I smiled and told her I had noticed her right off, could tell she was a real firecracker and she said she could hear rehearsal in my voice. So we fell silent then, her chest heaving in the stale hotel air still full of whispered sex talk and breathless exhalations.
In the giant empty hallways no one knows which room belongs to you, which room you’ve hidden all your secrets in or the lock of hair you found upon your pillow, no one knows the penetrating loneliness of travel but your fellow travelers.
I stare now at the bathroom mirror which reflects the mirror from the hallway but I cannot see myself, I cannot see myself, only this harrowing infinity of repetition.
###
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Short Carl and The Golden Box
His back was against the wall, his legs shot through the iron railing beside him and dangled off the balcony, and whenever he saw a pair of headlights he stiffened and waited for them to slow and sweep towards the driveway below. From there she would not see him waiting.
(Let’s review the facts. She said she’d call, but she didn’t. She was going to see that friend of hers, Carl from yoga class. Short Carl from yoga class.)
He sat on the balcony above the garage. From there he could clearly see her face as she stepped from her car into the blue light below, he could clearly see her expression and in that instant he would know, he would know with certainty. He waited for this certainty, and in the meantime he smoked.
(Short Carl with the bird tattoo. She likes tattoos. One on her wrist and one on the back of her neck, the one that says her name that means “a love of life” in Greek: Zoe. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe. A thousand times Zoe.)
The street below his feet stretched dark and wet towards the light of the city, where she had been swallowed up since three o’clock. There Saturday night flickered and pulsed, there she laughed, she smiled, she embraced.
(Smiling and embracing Short Carl from yoga class, flicking her hair and laughing Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.)
He flicked his cigarette onto the wet concrete and watched it snuff itself out. The dark wet street stretched toward the city and he thought again about driving into town and looking for her. Rumpus Room, The Gold Box, Sammy’s. Only a handful of places she could be. How long would it take him?
(Twenty minutes into town, then parking.)
But it was too late now. He should have done that when he was sitting in her living room drinking wine, listening to the dogs bark next door and the lowing violins of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. The cat staring at him.
(I was thinking of the Kreutzer Sonata and remembering the strange man on the train, what he said about music and how it should not be trusted because it has the power to evoke emotions over which the listener has no control.)
Of course, then he was simply waiting for the phone to ring. There was no doubt then, only the solemn stillness of a single soul, a pool receiving and reflecting light. And when she stepped into the blue light below, when he could clearly see her expression, there would be certainty again. The certainty of Orpheus on the stair, the certainty of action, of consequence, of eternity.
(I was sitting in her living room waiting for her. I was staring at the floor and the cat was staring at me drinking wine. I imagined her phone dead in her purse, I imagined her saying goodbye to Short Carl or excusing herself to go to a pay phone because I thought sure that was happening, I thought sure she would call at any minute but I must have been wrong, she was not thinking of me and calling she was laughing and flicking her hair and saying yes let’s go dancing in the city yes, yes, yes, yes in the city.)
He tried to imagine her dancing with Short Carl again, but this time the image melted into oil and slipped through his fingers, and he felt instead that she must be hurt. She must be in trouble, she’d had an accident and she must be in the hospital. Perhaps he should call the hospital?
(How do you know when to call the hospital? How do you know when to call the hospital and when someone is really late or just too damn stupid to use a pay phone? And what does it mean to “call the hospital?” How many are there? Who do you ask for? Is Zoe there? Could I please speak to Zoe? I’m wondering if you have any patients by the name of Short Carl? How about with a tattoo on the back of her neck? Like you were ordering curtains: Do you have this in blue?)
His heart throbbed and pulsed with these images and he felt the back of his neck prickling. What if she’d been killed? What if Short Carl was killing her right now? He imagined a stubby set of fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, collapsing her windpipe with the knuckles of the thumbs. But this image too became slippery and he imagined her dancing again, flicking her hair and laughing.
(When she steps into the light I will see her face and then I will know, I will know with certainty.)
A pair of headlights appeared at the end of the street, two pools of light separated by a finite distance. He stiffened and tasted suddenly the bitter cool of the evening in his mouth, smelled suddenly her hair. But the car passed, unremarkable, and he settled back against the wall.
(OK, let’s review the facts. She said she’d call, but she didn’t. She was going to see that friend of hers from yoga class. If she doesn’t come home, we’ll call the hospital tomorrow morning at seven. No, eight. Eight is better. If they’re open. Do hospitals close? Nine. Nine o’clock tomorrow, just to be safe. That’s what time we’ll call. Maybe she got stranded somewhere, maybe she had to check into a hotel, maybe she was arrested, maybe Short Carl tried to attack her and she had to get away. Maybe she had to get away from him and she should have had her gun.)
He recalled the sentence he’d written earlier that evening: “Her laugh is like scattered coins, each syllable a silver dollar.” But something wasn’t right about it now, it didn’t hold his feelings for her the way it had before. He shifted position, the concrete cold and hard against his hand.
(Damn leg’s asleep again. How long have I been up here? I have no idea. Time has stopped for me. I’m an endless void, a ghost. I have no effect on the world, I am sitting and not moving, nothing is happening but these endless endless pouring images and my mind my mind. I should write this down. I should write this feeling down. It’s me it’s me.)
He set the gun aside and carefully pulled his leg through the railing and onto the balcony, gripping with both hands.
(Ouch that hurts that hurts that hurts. Ow ow ow ow ow OW!)
He held his breath and squeezed his calf muscle, hard, trying to bring the blood back into it. He tried to shift position again and bumped the gun with his hand, causing it to angle towards the house. Suddenly it looked ridiculous and sinister: a twisted fist and stubby finger pointing stupidly at nothing, at a blank wall. Yet everything in its shape evoked the certainty of its purpose.
(I have nothing left I am nothing she has me all of me)
He picked up the pistol, cold and hard and heavy in his hand. Pulled the chamber back. Twisting the device in the light he could see the glint of the chambered bullet, and he tasted suddenly the bitter cool of copper in his mouth.
(I was searching for her diary.)
He remembered the bullet rolling out from under some papers, stopping pointedly at the bottom of the drawer. It had seemed to him anxious to perform.
(I was searching so I could know her, I have always wanted to understand her and she doesn’t appreciate that.)
He had put the bullet in his mouth while he loaded the others in the clip, rewarding its eagerness by making it the first and last, the one true bullet. Her bullet.
(If nothing else she can see that I’m persistent, I’m consistent and persistent and this just proves my point about why I always make her call me and why I tell her twice and then call her anyway. It proves that she is not to be trusted and that I’m a rational, consistent person who she is driving crazy.)
He kept thinking to himself outside himself, thinking he was thinking of it all, imagining he wasn’t there, wasn’t waiting on her balcony with a gun but remembering or reading it somewhere, safe at home and listening to opera still, writing alone this horrible story that he would repeat to her later when she came around the corner in her robe too short for her body and the shoulder would slip off to one side while she dried her hair and listened to him read it aloud, she would listen and consider and smile and laugh and toss her head and flick her hair and come to him again and embrace him. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe. All of life is Zoe. Why can my heart not stop screaming her name?
(Let’s review the facts. She said she’d call, but she didn’t. She was going to see that guy Carl from her yoga class. She has a tattoo on the back of her neck that can be used to identify her in case she’s dead.)
From there she would not see him waiting, from there he could clearly see her face as she stepped into the cool blue light below.
He wanted her to look upset. He wanted her to not be smiling, to not linger in her car for a last guilty drag of cigarette, to not straighten her hair or fix her make-up before coming inside but to come straight to the door looking worried and looking for him. When she stepped into the cool blue light below he could clearly see her expression.
(And I will come and meet you and I’ll tell you all about this crazy night and you’ll listen and look surprised and then I’ll show you the gun and you’ll know, you’ll know with certainty. I won’t have to ask you twice anymore. You’ll take me in your arms and embrace me and apologize and understand me, you’ll understand me and know me at last.)
The street below his feet stretched dark and wet toward the light of the city. He was about to light another cigarette when a pair of headlights appeared. He shifted position, and Sharon’s dogs began to bark next door as the headlights swept slowly toward his feet and the blue light below. When she stepped out of her car and looked up at him, surprised, they were two pools separated by an infinite distance.
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Pornography I’ve Seen
Copyright © Toby Scales 2010
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.