Scarlet Letters: Clean

<body background="graphics/background.gif" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#990000" vlink="#666666" alink="#FFFFFF"> <p><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="724"> <tr> <td width="488"><font face="Georgia" size="2"><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="2" width="468"> <tr> <td align="LEFT" width="1" rowspan="3" valign="BOTTOM"><font face="Georgia" size="2" color="#CCCCCC">..</font></td> <td align="CENTER" valign="MIDDLE"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="440"> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT"><b>Clean</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="RIGHT"><b><font face="Georgia"><a href="bios_m2z.shtml#Ritchie" title="click for author info">Cinthia Ritchie </a></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He smells like sheets that have been hanging in the sun: fresh and white, with that almost indescribable scent of summer.  I sit beside him, we don't touch, we just sit there, side by side, his arm close enough that I can feel the heat of his elbow. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">We have very little in common.  Because of this, we tell each other things, the dark, hidden things we long for but are afraid we don't deserve.  We do this over the phone, late at night, both of us stretched out on couches in different parts of the city.  I always close my eyes when I talk to him, and behind my lids I see things: the velvet of a dress I had as a girl, or those swirls of oil in parking lots after it rains.  Sometimes I touch myself, my hand pressing the soft, moist skin beneath my underpants.  It isn't sexual, doing this, but a way of reaffirming who I am, that I still exist. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Because sometimes, hearing his voice, I start to fly away. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">This is the first time in my life I haven't had a lover.  It is strange, this celibacy, the way my body has settled down and become my own: smells seem sharper, and the feel of the cat against my ankle can make me cry out in pleasure.  I had been so used to sharing my body and waiting for others to make me feel good that I had forgotten how simple things could make me swoon.  Not just sex but the feel of my toes against the rug, or the sun hot on my face when I eat my breakfast in the morning. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Without a man, I feel thicker, more languid.  I spend whole afternoons on the couch, daydreaming.  I buy oranges and lick the juice off my hands.  I wear lipstick late in the afternoons, where there's no one to see it but my own eyes as I pass the hallway mirror. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Sometimes at night, though, I burn.  Tossing in the sheets, my hands hot between my legs, pressing and rubbing until I am wet and coming, and still there is no relief.  It is a torture, the way I burn, how my body consumes me, the way my desire rears up without any invitation from me.  It is an ache, sweet and awful and fine, and I tease it, feed it with my hands until they are wet with my own solitary smell. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">After five weeks, I break down and buy a vibrator.  There are still things I need.  Things I can't do on my own. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He meets me for lunch.  We sit in a small café, almost empty except for a young couple with a baby.  They are so sweet, so endearingly doomed, this couple. We smile at them, coo at the baby.  We are jealous of their happiness, the way they avoid the jarring, ugly corners of their own future and instead lean down toward the baby, their lips moving with soft, comforting sounds. The woman is plain, but the man is beautiful.  I want to touch him, walk up and place my hands beneath his shirt, feel the muscular waves of his stomach as I move my hands down lower.  I want to take him in my mouth, feed on his happiness, his false, shining illusions. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Instead, I sit with my friend and eat bread.  Later, I will tell him about how I wanted to touch this other man, this man so young he is almost a boy.  With the anonymous stretch of the telephone wire, I'll open up, reveal my secrets, my awful, shameful desire.  But now I eat, talk, laugh, my teeth ripping bread.  It is cold where we sit, next to the window, and I can feel my nipples harden against my shirt. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I think, idly, of how I will touch myself when I get home. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I've had men, a lot of men.  Forty, maybe fifty, their names repeating themselves two, sometimes three times, all those Tims and Toms, those Jims and Joes blurring in my mind until I can't think of one without the other.  This one's lips and that one's voice.  That one's chest and this one's cock.  They are interchangeable, since they are in the past, and if I work hard enough at it, I can blend them all into one perfect man. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Most of these are from when I was younger.  And blonder.  Being blonder had a lot to do with it, my hair flying out across my back, and the way I learned to push it back with one hand, a small toss of my head, a haughty, sly look.  That was all it would take, usually, and a man would come up to me. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Come up, come on, come, come, come. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I've come too many times, with too many men, for it to hold any surprises anymore.  Though of course it still does, it will.  That's one thing I can count on, look forward to, when I finally break down and fuck another man.   That wonder, that terror: the way I will come. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">His house is spotless, like a magazine photo, everything perfectly arranged and sparkling.  The curtains hang flawlessly, the toilet gleams like something waiting to win a prize.  I am uncomfortable, my back rigid, my shoulders straight and firm, the way they used to be when I went to church as a child. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">His bedroom is equally neat, the dresser polished, the floor shining beneath a rug slanted in full view of the window.  His neatness overwhelms me, depresses me.  I'm sure that it must be a weakness, a flaw, a deep-seated insecurity.  I enjoy thinking this.  It's something I can hoard against my chest if I ever need it to pounce on later.  You didn't, you should have, why do you always. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Those childish, inane arguments of misplaced passion. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">One of the men I used to see liked to tie me up. This was during my wild phase, when I wore leather and rode a motorcycle, so the tying up wasn't any big deal.  We snorted coke until my head felt large, like a spinning globe, and I twirled around and around, laughing and stripping off my clothes.  Then he tied me up with strips of cloth from a quilt his grandma had made, that old calico as soft as the inside of an arm.  It was delicious to lie there, spread-eagle, ankles and wrist tied, my head zooming and flying as he touched and teased, making me cry out with strange, high-pitched cries like an animal it pain.  I swirled and flew in it all, until I could smell myself and him and both of us, and it was grand and fine, like a piece of cake so sticky-sweet you swear you'll never have another piece.  But you do.  You always do. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Once he gagged me, the taste of that cotton in my mouth, and how my tongue pressed against it, caressing it like another tongue until I knew every stitch, every thread of that strip.  Until I could taste the colors: blues and greens and the surprising jolt of an orange. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I can't remember why I stopped seeing him, which one of us strayed first, or if it even matters anymore.  Sometimes I still think of him when I'm with other men: the way he bent down over me as I lay there, helpless and waiting, his shoulders and chest fierce, his face in the shadows moving closer and closer until I shook and screamed, over and over.  It was sweet, being so helpless, having to wait and wonder.  My hands curled around that cotton, holding and ripping, and it was so soft, so welcoming.  It was like grabbing clouds. <br> <br> I sit beside him in a dark movie theater.  We eat popcorn, my hands greasy, smudges of oil over the front of my sweater.  His hands aren't dirty, and his shirt remains spotless, even when he drops a handful of popcorn over the front.  I lean forward, pick up a kernel littering his chest and pop it into my mouth.  There is a flash of light across the screen and our eyes suddenly meet: naked, unadorned.  It is agonizing, that kind of gaze, when all of your defenses are down and there's nothing but you, staring back at someone in the semidarkness. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">We take it a moment too long, that look, until I hear the sharp intake of my own breath.  We look away, self-conscious and strangely guilty. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">It's over two weeks before we talk on the phone again. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I take a lover.  After eight months, I'm sick of the feel of my own hands, and even my vibrator feels dull and familiar, like a man I know I'm about to leave.  I pick quickly, carelessly, someone I used to work with that I see in the health food store.  We both have on shorts, and we stand there, talking and glancing at each other's legs.  His are tanned and muscular, but I know that mine are better.  This gives me an edge.  I lean over, tap him on the chest. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"Wanna go for a drink?" </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He does, we do; it's that easy.  Later, rolling around his big bed, the sheets green and slightly moldy, I open my eyes and can't remember his name.   I concentrate on his tongue, and how hot and good he feels sliding in and out of me, and really, it's okay, I come, he comes, we do what we came here for.   But later, feeling around the sheets for my underpants, it bothers me, not that I just slept with someone whose name I didn't know, but that I managed to forget it the very moment I needed it the most. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">When he gets up to use the bathroom, I slip out the door, not even bothering to look for my shoes.  I drive home in my bare feet, the gas pedal warm and comforting, and when I get home, I lie on the couch and touch myself roughly, making myself come again and again, as if in penance or solace; there's so little difference between the two. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I ask my friend the most unusual place he's ever had sex.  He hesitates for a long moment. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"On a boat," he finally says.  "In a bed on a boat.  Going down the Colorado River, during the worst heat of the day.  " </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I don't say anything, I lie there, the phone pressed to my ear as I wait to hear more.  Then I realize that he's also waiting: it's my turn.  I don't know if I should lie or tell the truth: pushed up against a jukebox, in the middle of the highway, in an elevator, a train, a speedboat as we veered madly across the lake, going at it in full view of anyone who cared to watch. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I am suddenly excited by these antidotes, these escapades, these wild couplings with men I barely knew.  I feel as if I am reviewing the life of an older, more daring sister.  This makes me suddenly brave. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"In an elevator," I say, not really a lie, since it happened, but not the truth either.  There is another silence, and then something comes over me, some type of sneering disdain, not just for him but for all of his clean, upstanding values. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"In a bar, on a motorcycle, in a used car showroom," I recite quickly.   "A train, a go cart, in the middle of the highway." Now that I've started, I have no choice but to keep on going. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"On my boss' desk, in the library, at the supermarket." I gulp a quick breath.  "Oh yeah," I say, my voice mocking and unfamiliar.  "In a J.C. Penney fitting room, at the car wash .  .  ." </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">After he hangs up, I raise the phone receiver over my head as if in triumphant.  Finally, I think: finally I've gotten rid of him. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">I see the lover whose name I can't remember at a juice joint.  We sit across from one another, sipping alfalfa juice, our lips and tongues turning green.  I think of cows chewing their cuds and I reach beneath the table and squeeze his knee.  Before I know it, we're back at his place again. This time the sheets are flowered and smell of pizza sauce.  I lie back, spread out my arms. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">"Do with me what you will," I say dramatically, like those women in old movies. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He does it fast and hard.  It isn't very good.  I stare at the ceiling and count the mold patches, the one in the far corner shaped like Abraham Lincoln's hat.  When he pulls out, I put on my clothes and leave.  He doesn't say anything, just lies there and waves his hand slightly.  I know I won't see him again so I don't even bother waving back. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">When I get home, I finish myself off, lying on the couch, my pants half pulled down, my fingers pushing up inside of me until I come so hard my eyes water.  That's when the phone rings.  I know it's him, my friend with the clean, clean hands, though we haven't spoken in weeks. I lick my fingers, my tastes and the salty residue of this lover I've just left coating my tongue.  I don't pick up the phone.  I have no intention of making it any easier for him. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">But finally I do.  His voice is soft and low, and I think of laundry soap and the way the water in the shower smells.  I sigh, say his name.  I hold the phone receiver tight against my ear, waiting for him to say something, give me a clue. </font></p> <p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Tell me who I really am. </font></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <center><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b> </center></td> </tr> </table> </font></td> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP" width="226">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="488"><font face="Georgia" size="2"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" width="474"> <tr> <td align="LEFT" width="8"><font face="Georgia" size="2" color="#CCCCCC">..</font></td> <td align="CENTER">  </td> </tr> </table> </font></td> <td align="CENTER" width="226"></td> </tr> </table> </p> </body>