John Haskell - American Purgatorio

And again, I didn’t think about what I did next, I just started doing it. I suddenly started jerking around, spasmodically twisting my body until I fell onto the asphalt, writhing in what I didn’t even know, just writhing, like what I imagine someone having a fit would do, a physical seizure, and I could tell the man was dumbfounded. I was shaking my head, letting the spittle spill from my mouth, and I could hear him tell me I’d better not be faking it. He said he was going to take me to some jail and I’d be butt-fucked by certain inmates at this particular jail. So I kept writhing.

Alex, at this point, kneeled over me, and I wanted to signal to him that I was fine, but because the trooper was watching I had to keep writhing, surreptitiously winking at Alex, who kept asking me if I was all right. I tried to let him know that I was, but I didn’t stop writhing.

Until the trooper pulled from his car a first-aid kit. He took out some smelling salts and he cracked open two candy-sized cartridges and jammed them up my nostrils. Smelling salts are supposed to be wafted near the nose, but he stuck them into my nose. And so, as my writhing subsided, I lay there, breathing through my clenched mouth. I could hear Alex somewhere over my head admonishing me to “keep breathing, keep breathing,” and what a stupid thing to say, I thought. Of course I’m breathing. How can I not keep breathing? But in thinking what a stupid thing it was, I momentarily took my mind off the trooper. Momentarily my anger ran out of fuel. And at that point I could have added some fuel, could have fanned the flames of the struggle I was having, and the thing that changed was the realization of what I was struggling for.

I started thinking about Anne.

I sat up and looked at the patrolman. He was just a person, no worse than anybody else. He had the rounded shoulders of a man past his physical prime, and I could see how he might’ve felt threatened, somewhat, by my aggressive gesture. I offered a conciliatory remark, like “I’m sorry if I freaked you out” or “I got a little excited,” and we started talking. He took the broken pellets out of my nose. Still cuffed, I told him about Anne, and about why I was seeming so desperate, and he must have had a sympathetic streak. He indicated his understanding of my predicament by tying it into the passion he had for fly fishing. I could see he was attempting a rapprochement, and as we talked, the anger, which had seemed so liberating a moment ago, now seemed, in light of my desire to be with Anne, not very helpful. So I held it in. For Anne’s sake. I listened to his fly-fishing monologue, nodding at appropriate times, and in this way I created — or we created — a sense of fellow feeling. We were getting along, finding our commonality, and after about a half hour of this relational negotiation he unlocked the handcuffs, gave me a warning, and then he let us drive away.

Your arms. They’re my favorite parts of your body, from the wrist bone up through the fine hairs of your forearm, the loose skin inside your elbow, to the taut flexors and extensors of your upper arm, turning gently into shoulder and collarbone and neck. There are certain sleeveless shirts you wear, and when you do I feel like taking those arms, like autonomous entities, holding them above your head, and running my nose down their entire velvet length. I would melt into those arms if I could, but instead I do the closest thing, kissing the delicate skin of your biceps, taking into my mouth the whole fibrous mass of muscle under your skin. Because you’re strong, and because you see yourself as strong, you like to do things. You like rock climbing. We both do. We aren’t experts, but I remember one night, riding on our bikes in the wind to a health club in midtown with a faux rock wall where people practice their ascents. You’re wearing a tank top and bicycle shorts and we rent the special shoes and helmets and we’ve been climbing for about an hour, noticing among the climbers one blond man, without companion or rope, climbing like a muscular spider along the artificial notches and grooves that signify handholds of actual rock. When we finish, sitting at a table in the health club drinking some healthy drink, the man we’ve been watching walks up to us. He introduces himself as an Austrian mountain climber and shows us a book, a large book with photographs of him climbing various European rock faces, famous ones, he assures us. His accent is engaging and he offers to give us some pointers, a generous thing, except that during the whole conversation, I have the impression that he’s talking only to you. He’s looking at me but I can’t help noticing that his body is tilted toward you. And you’re turned toward him, listening to him, taking him in. After we get home, lying in bed that night, I can tell there’s something between us. I assume it’s that Austrian fucker, or your Austrian desire for him rather than me, and when we do make love I can feel a palpable barrier separating us. Your mind is elsewhere. And of course you assure me that the Austrian man means nothing to you, all the typical things a person might say, but I know, or think I know, that you’re not telling me everything. And maybe he is better than I am, stronger and kinder and more understanding than I could ever be. But he isn’t that handsome, not in my opinion. You, however, don’t agree with my opinion, and I see this unwillingness to take my side as a kind of betrayal. I see it and feel it, and it feels like a knife cutting us apart. I call it jealousy because jealousy is a famous emotion, but I could do something to change it. Attention is what you want and I could easily give you that attention. I could understand, or try to understand, but I want attention too. And I don’t want to compete for it. Not with him. You’ve taken a solemn vow, we both have, and I can’t tell if I’m sad or mad, and maybe I’m both because a gap opens up, like a wedge driven between us, and as this wedge slowly pries us apart, a hundred disparate emotions combine in me to create a sense of disorientation that never completely goes away.

* * *

Driving with Alex through West Virginia, inspecting the various clapboard towns for my old maroon station wagon, I was still feeling that disorientation, or something like it. My job was to find Anne, and in order to do that I needed my awareness focused on the world, and because this disorientation was clouding that focus, to cure myself I pulled off the highway somewhere in Kentucky.

I found a small road which led eventually to a parking lot for an overpriced tourist attraction, an underground cavern or cave. Instead of visiting the cave, we got out of the car, peed in the trees, and decided to walk down the hill from the parking lot. We followed a single-track trail that led through a pine tree forest that ended at a small round pond with a steep bank and frogs making noise. It was surrounded by birch trees and maple trees, and the good old maple trees reminded me of our garden. Which reminded me of Anne. Which reminded me of my disorientation — like the hand of the woman in the restaurant — attaching itself to my heart.

“Aren’t you coming in?” Alex said.

I sat on the grass slope at the edge of the pond watching him take his clothes off. I shook my head.

“Why not?” he said. “It would do you good.”

“Oh really?” I said, thinking that he didn’t know who I was, and that swimming in a slimy pond wouldn’t do anything any good.

He reminded me that he’d fixed the car. “Remember the car?” he said.

“I’m not a car,” I told him.

“Your body is a vehicle,” he said. And then he jumped. He was standing at the high point of the bank, completely naked, looking into the water, and then, feet first, arms flailing, he jumped into the water. He splashed and hooted from the middle of the pond, and although the water was obviously cold, he seemed to be enjoying it.