Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity - A Memoir

On my way out, I forgot the gap and tumbled out of the building onto the grass. Estero pulled me up and asked if I was okay, and of course I said yes, I was fine, no scrapes or breaks—maybe a bruise or two from bumping the blocks—but really I was grieving the ease I’d felt in the date space, cursing the rift already yawning between us, even as I savored what the fall had won me: one last touch.

The blessing, for an obsessed person, of living communally: you never know when you might run into your crush. The curse, for an obsessed person, of living communally: you never know when you might run into your crush.

After my date with Estero, I tried to revert to my pre-Zendik story of how to act in the presence of attractive men: Avoid eye contact. Sheen yourself in silence. Attend to something else.

My body refused to obey.

Grating carrots for salad one morning, I caught a swing of the screen door and a flash of olive drab out the corner of my eye. I stared into the salad bowl, intent on the pointed orange matchsticks tumbling from the teeth of the mandoline (which other Zendiks had nicknamed the finger-fucker). Then: the tap of boot heels on the hardwood floor behind me. And a bright red smear on the mint-green instrument, from a nick to my thumb.

Making a sign in the living room one evening, a box of markers at my hip and a pad of paper on my lap, I caught a flash of denim-clad knees, then the click of the side door. The pad lurched off my lap; the markers rolled everywhere. Crawling under the desk to retrieve some of them, I yanked the phone cord. The phone clattered to the floor.

Another morning, a week or so after the date, I was preparing to climb down from my bat cave when Loria rushed in to relay a hit-up from Estero—for Jayd. I missed the ladder and dropped straight down, knocking skull against hardwood. I sat up and clutched the hurt part. I have to do something , I thought, or it’s only gonna get worse.

A couple days later, at lunchtime, I spotted Estero in the laundry room, head bent toward the drum of a bum washing machine. The laundry room was small, with lots of windows but only one door. I could see he was alone. I slipped in beside him. He couldn’t slip out.

“Estero,” I said, “can I ask you something?”

He straightened, startled, then turned to me and smiled. “Sure.”

“How’s it possible that you can like Jayd and me at the same time?”

He leaned against the shelves—of sheets, candles, light-bulbs, matches—that lined the shed’s back wall. He slid his hands into his front pockets and met my gaze. “I get different things from each of you. You’re totally different people.”

“Yeah? Like what? What do you like about me?” I was hoping for a comment on how he felt when our limbs intertwined—for a hint, however faint, that his cells had picked up on the current that ran through mine.

“You’re really smart,” he said. “And you have beautiful eyes.”

I nodded, even as I grew more bewildered. What did eyes and smarts have to do with touch and lust and sex? If that was how he really felt, why had he said yes ?

Maybe he craved sexual variety. Maybe I was unwittingly helping him and Jayd stave off the quiz of death I would eventually hear Arol administer to couples who’d grown too close for her comfort: “If all you two care about is fucking each other, what are you doing here? Why don’t you get the hell out and get an apartment ?” But I was looking for a more esoteric explanation. Surely Estero must be acting on special knowledge accrued in his two years at Zendik. Maybe he’d taken the concept of love as interest—which I accepted only intellectually—and worked it into his body.

I wondered if I, too, could sustain multiple attractions, get different things from different lovers.

The next weekend, while Estero was selling in Florida, I arranged to go on a walk with Taridon, another Kore member. Well over six feet tall, with a straight blond mane that fell to his waist, he was a powerhouse among “power sellers,” happiest when hoisting a standard and setting off on crusade. He didn’t enrapture me, as Estero did. But I admired his status, his stature, his selling prowess. And he was handsome enough.

With Taridon, I once again traced a lasso-shaped loop through the wood yard and fields and back to the wood yard, where we stopped in the lee of the towering racks to kiss by starlight. There was warmth between us, but no electric rush. I concluded that, yes, I could enjoy the touch of a second choice—but not without aching for the one who came first.

I STOOD AT THE CENTER OF the dance room, ringed by sixty other Zendiks, about to take my vow. Earlier that night, all of us had showered and exchanged work clothes for our version of finery: slacks, button-down shirts, skirts and dresses, tunics and blouses. Silk and twill, velvet and satin. We’d been told to dress up in dark colors for our consecration as warriors. Our racing pulse repelled the winter chill.

It was December 31, 1999. A few minutes to midnight. Most had already spoken; we would finish our ritual before the millennium turned. And then? Let Y2Chaos storm the Deathculture. We told our own stories; we kept our own time.

Arol, up in the Addition, watching the Farm’s three children, was the one adult who would not stand where I stood.

I’d practiced the vow dozens of times aloud, and countless times in silence, to make sure I’d perform it perfectly, despite my nerves. I took a breath and spoke the first of three parts: “As a Zendik Warrior, I place mySelf on the Truthway and vow my Life and loyalty to this revolution of conscience and consciousness.”

To my right was a small table laden with necklaces. Behind it stood Swan—mistress of ceremonies and, to me, Cinderella perpetually at the ball. The dance room had been built for her; here she practiced and sometimes led classes. Immaculately groomed and beautifully garbed, she seemed to travel in her own galaxy of rose scent and smooth sparkle. She had blue eyes, and blond curls kinked like coral. Though dark roots peeked out even then, it would take me years to realize that her hair, beneath its gold veneer, was brown like mine.

Though just six months my senior and also a fire dragon by the Chinese calendar, Swan ranged ages ahead of me on the Zendik evolutionary scale. If she was a mammal, endowed with higher-order thinking skills and milk for her young, then I was a protozoan, just growing used to my nucleus. Born to Arol and Wulf in June 1976—seven years after they’d started the Farm—she was the first child to know only cooperation and honesty. The first dancer—the first artist—to develop her genius unfettered. She had never, her creation myth held, suffered corruption by the Deathculture. No wonder I wished I could turn back the clock and sneak into Arol’s womb next to her.

That night, thanks to my roommates, I reflected a glint of Swan’s sparkle. Eile had lent me a pair of silver hoops set with violet rhinestones—the first earrings I’d worn in years—to complement the navy blouse and slim-fitting velvet jacket that Riven, a Kore Apprentice, had pulled from her shelves.

I clasped my hands behind my back, then dropped them to my sides. Staring straight ahead, I channeled the current of excitement in the room without meeting any one gaze. The ring of Zendiks faded into a pulsing haze. Two months earlier, I would have dismissed the vow as so much mumbo-jumbo; by now I was practiced at casting vagueness as portent and bringing my own meaning. I saw myself stepping through a fiery eye into a sphere of pure surrender as I spoke the second part:

“I vow to become Affirmative in all I find true about mySelf, my world, and the Universe itSelf.”