My Evening Uncut
by Mary White
Drove home alone, marvelous blessed blessing, from Bellevue, fleeing crow-eyed blind date (I’m a pilot,” [picture of the Cessna] “I’m in intelligence…”) leaning across the sweating beer and moustache, creaking in black leather, actually showing me his ID, telling me his average annual income
“…have no fear I am no rapist no stalker no no no i only want, i just want i only want… i only need to own you and eat you softly alive and you will see this wont hurt you will like it yes you will and i will wear you on my sleeve but i will be nice and appreciate you. you and i we will sing “we, we, we, us, us, us, our, our, our” and this means i will have you in my bedroom your body will be there, you will keep the seeds and secrets i push down into your darkness, in my nakedness i will not fear you because you have submitted to me, you will like this . . . ”
and his words that float out when his waitress recedes, “you are an attractive and intelligent woman. I’d like to see you again.” God, where do I belong?
My rangy ‘77 Impala my friend, loose, predictable; I know how much play is in the wheel (Jiffy Lube boy: “Mam, this car is not drivable” hah!); comfortable, greedy, my car is greedy in a way I can forgive my car does not want to eat me alive. Duct tape dressing on the wounded sea green vinyl sticks to my thighs, plastic Joan leads the charge on horseback on my dash, her sword raised to cut a swathe in the road for me, and purple beads on yarn braided by small fingers swing from the rear view. My radio, thank you analog, has a dial and real buttons. The air is warm thick; the moon red-brown and torn, hanging limp, heavy, a casualty over the lake, barred on two sides by silhouette of firs across the water standing witness, mute bodyguards to a waning royal. Dark emerges creeping, sideswiping and snarling at the rosy yellow-orange glow still rubbing one side of the dome, and the last straggler float planes buzz hurrying heels down out of the sky to the Kenmore air park, pontoon wakes trailing barely visible on the dark waters face, like the breadcrumb trail in the moonlight. Bright Gretel thought to be not lost, thought home could be recaptured with a simple thread of light, thought not of the wild world consuming her frail path eating her childhood alive, and less, of her slight brother. Whether or not there is a Grendel in the woods, I know there is no trail lasting, no returning thread, no purchase on a tightrope dispersing gossamer at the heel. What is it, is it time? Closing with no sound and no record, like mocking water, beneath every effort to leap up and out, and closing over us again, eating us alive.
Kirkland’s night scene pregnant with the summertime moneyed; skin brown and pale, lined and smooth, moving, covered, bare, everywhere people moving emanating the salt-warm pulse ebbing back from the day, sipping beers, licking cones, walking dogs, sitting in sidewalk cafes, the talking and laughing snaking about the hanging dusk, the words and body warmth and the hum braiding, languid silk scarves following a silent leaping dancer, sound not discernable in words but sinewy uplifted and hinting the changing space carved by the barefoot body, caressing and mouthing the shape of liquid space between tongues, faces, smiles, eyes. I was there; trailing through, trying to go home, but turning touched confused colored pausing I lost myself in flight and my words-thoughts blurred and drowsed opiumsweet; I was soaking in, floating in the pulsing of the life of night and I was glad to be taken and consumed, and there was no one there with me, how was I alone?
In the Impala, heading over the slope of Juanita, around a sharp corner my headlights rake a roadside shrine, strewn up against a Doug fir, photos, drawings, notes, a red balloon, a green vase, pink and yellow Dahlias strewn like a blanket haphazard on a lap; somebody must have died here and recently, maybe on a bike. I think to turn, to stop, look, kneel; to pause and listen but my car lunges yellow-eyed onward, liquid night pouring into my window, and Walk on the Wild Side comes out of the radio, and I’m taken back to a Wisconsin tavern, dark and long and safe, cardboard coasters, lined old men talking of tractors, apple crops, who’s got cancer, and church, peanuts in the shell, ‘lil smokies, and red pickled eggs in a gallon jar. A place I spent slipping hours swimming in forgetting, playing foosball, shuffleboard, drinking cold beer, smoking, and happy-not happy, but with friends, even then knowing how brief, how soon gone like the puck slowing, sliding dropping off the end, small wake of sawdust not much witness, vanishing trail.
And Daphne is there, Marilyn-fuckable-pretty, bulimic, and head to head with me in our Shakespeare class --Deconstructing the Bard – and she runs beans for her dad on an Iowa farm in blistering summer – a black scooping tank and faded jeans saying touch, touch, touch this, please, burning chocolate eyes dark blonde loose waves, a rag circling the surface of the dark, glossy bar, slides her glance down to me smooth, practiced like a cold one, tucks cash in the drawer and dampsweat lock behind an ear. Daphne has fine beads of sweat between her breasts and on her temples too; I wonder who was the little girl Daphne on a hot sultry summer farm at the crest of her future; this makes me want to cry; like mine, her breasts speak to men, girl-shaped, saying
“have me now please this place was made for your hands and i am young love me eat me alive please i am here right now and i want to leave a trail, to find a trail, i don’t want to sink lost i am still a little girl even as i am a woman i want i want i only want for you to keep and call me and have me as you want me, please, draw me to you, sketch me into being and you will like it you will like having me i am the dark i am the furrowed earth you see the purchase of your seed, your effort in the shape of me; i wait for your turning, taking, planting me so i become here in a place and a time and claimed for a purpose."
Daphne tips her head towards Joe, tall, too thin, laughing, leaning, big yellow teeth, pool cue in hand, I think, christ she’s beautiful, he’s pockmark ugly, a lazy cock in the barnyard, and he’s looking at Daphne’s hips, knows he’ll have her later, and he doesn’t even care to rush; his indifference part of his delicious prize. Red neon light out front, Hamm’s beer ad squeaking with a flickering, backlit plastic picture of a fly fisherman wading forever casting a cold stream and the bear emerging from the wood will never make it across the meadow and the snowy peaks not melting, and somehow this plastic river shimmers and flows and sits on the wall, plastic going somewhere and still here.
Everyone is fleeting, unbearable, the world coming out of its seams, holding its breath overcharged and fallen, my beautiful infant, my sweet baby so close so unreachable, ripped away from me into the cold air, grasping my finger, already dying but so new as to not even be in focus yet; the ringing haze from elsewhere still clinging and dancing, a close cloak on my baby, and I breathe in stealing a trace of this garment and I breathe out the acid of
this world starting to bloom upon my baby even in my love and already I am grieving as my foot takes the first step down the road, my canoe glides out in the fog-dawn grating pebbles, then nearly wake-less suspended on the face of a crossing. And I breathe in, in, in, and I am in the scent of the forgotten other place lingering on my baby, and little girl me is there as well, staring through the metal screen into a long, cool Sunday rain, outdoor world sounds of birds, locust, dogs, children laughing, drifting like leaves spinning downstream, and in the skin of heat between us all, lingering in the world, is something, and I feel, I am a spreading dying wake; I am vigil at a birth.