Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

The exact details no longer mattered, for not only was the plotting out of certain points in my life an arbitrary and fantastic construction, but also no one point was definitively linked to any other point, for each was a cause ad infinitum and an effect ad infinitum, within a larger system of constant flux, a web of contingency, governed by attraction and repulsion, push and pull, a sad and pointless bumping together of parts. Of course, looking at my life in a grander, metaphysical — or perhaps macrophysical — context provided me another way of sighing and slouching over in resignation. From a more grounded perspective, I was tired and confused, and I didn’t want to bother with thinking any longer. More precisely, a naked old man — his arms covered by the dark purple splotches of long ago tattoos, his belly flabby and pasty — made a grunting noise as he reached down to towel off his inner thighs and scrotum, and while witnessing this horrible spectacle, I had no idea what I was doing or how I had managed to make the sort of choices that brought me to this particular circumstance. Another old man at least had the decency to wear a pair of thin, yellowing briefs.

“We should’ve spent ten minutes in the sauna,” he said. “It loosens you good.”

“Don’t blame me,” the naked one replied. “You do what you want to do.”

“You got the appointment, not me.”

“Drive yourself next time.”

“Who’s stuffing the barrel now?”

Although this question completely eluded me, both men laughed.

“Crazy bastard,” the naked man said.

His pale penis looked like a soggy, uncooked chicken neck drooping from a puff of gray hair.

I turned away from the men. Unfortunately, before they had emerged from the showers and stationed their slow, wet bodies beside me, I had already committed myself to a locker by hanging up my muddy green coat and shelving my shoes. Since I’d been caught in the process of disrobing, I now stalled, poking around in my locker, searching my pockets, and delaying my nudity, but the men showed no sign of urgency. The one in the yellow briefs, which at one time had probably been white, sat down on the bench, uncapped a green can, and began to spray each of his feet in turn. The other man, still nude, bent over a duffle bag and rifled through an exorbitant arsenal of beauty supplies, before finally selecting his deodorant. He eventually revealed a pair of crisp, white underwear and a tee-shirt, but rather than put them on, he set the garments on the bench and began combing his hair.

I soon realized, after inspecting all my pockets twice, that I had no choice but to strip out of my clothes.

Thankfully, the men disregarded me. The one in the yellow briefs was explaining different cuts of beef, from chuck steaks to filet mignon, which evidently intrigued the naked man.

Once all my clothes were stored in the locker and a towel was wrapped about my waist, I headed toward the showers. Even though my back was to the old men, I sensed a momentary pause in their conversation and imagined them simultaneously lifting their heads and eyeing me, as though I offered them a bit of droll amusement. My suspicion was confirmed the moment I passed through the swinging wooden door and stepped onto the cold tile floor: Both men chuckled.

Of course, this could have been a reaction to my exaggerated poking around in my pockets or my silly display of painful modesty, but I felt the deeper sting of their ridicule. Despite the pale loose flesh that was draped over their deteriorated meat, packed with clumps of pudge, and held up by their brittle, rickety frames, like an overburdened coat-rack — I became fretfully conscious of my own body, as though my shrunken chest and slumped shoulders were innately humorous, even to old men.

On my left were two doors, one glass and one wooden, that led to a steam room and a sauna. Across from them stretched a long counter with several sinks, where men customarily lathered, groomed, and preened themselves. The shower room was up ahead. Although I heard no water spewing from the showerheads, I averted my eyes in fear of seeing anyone.

I silently cursed the old men, holding against them their freedom to come to the gym at eleven o’clock in the morning, on a weekday, when ordinary people were busy with life, as though the old men were slighting the rest of society and failing to respect their own decrepitude and inevitable fate. The old fools ought to have been in bed. What was additionally offensive was that the door had not even swung closed behind me before they’d begun to chuckle because they didn’t care whether or not I heard them. Instead of being enfeebled by their old age, stricken and humbled by a constant awareness of their tenuous mortality, they were emboldened. They no longer concerned themselves with civility, not simply because they’d lived long enough to stop worrying about what other people might think, but also because they no longer had any stake in society — similar to a pair of rutting high school boys, limited by the milky flush of testosterone over their spongy brains.

But then I saw myself reflected in the mirror above the long counter. Although my body might have given the two men plenty of reasons to laugh, the true cause sat atop my head: I had forgotten to take off my hat.

Continuing forward, I saw a series of hooks mounted to the tile wall near the entrance to the shower. The floor was wet, a small pool gathered about one of the drains. There were no stalls or partitions, just one common room with all the showerheads jutting out with a fierce, cold formality, such as in a hospital ward or a torture chamber.

I placed my hat upon one of the hooks, and turning my eyes to the floor, I removed the towel and hung it up also.

Naked, I stepped across the threshold into the vacant communal shower. The tiled walls were the color of peach pulp, and the dark floor glinted like the raw side of a kiwi’s skin. I selected a spot in the corner, moving somewhat slowly and warily, as though I were afraid to make any noise — but the water exploded out of the showerhead, the sound amplified by the starkness of the room.

I showered facing the wall. Even though I dispensed a long pink coil of shampoo into my palm and lathered myself all over, I felt as though I couldn’t get completely clean. A thin film of grime coated my skin. Perhaps some contaminant lurked in the public water — or perhaps it was just in my head. After all, a long time seemed to have passed since I’d last bathed, and in the interval, random forces had evidently conspired to defile me. By a volition other than my own, I had fallen on my back in a slushy street, been chased by dogs, sweated beneath my clothes, put vintage hand-me-downs over my clammy body, suffered through a police investigation, dined in disguise with Vanessa Somerset, followed a perverted creature back to its den, and escaped only by locking it out on a cold balcony. And then I had wandered the nighttime, all the while forsaken, miserable, and homeless. Despite finally having the opportunity to run away, I had continued to linger in the city. Rather than flee to a bus station and keep on traveling until I was safe from everything that threatened me, I had roamed the streets like some lost or abandoned pet, some slush-bellied mongrel. In an all-night diner, I had taken a long time eating a potato pancake. Afterwards, brandishing my identification card, I’d entered the college library, stowed myself inside a cubicle, and fallen asleep atop a musty book. Although I’d found some relief in my dreams and allowed myself to play in the garden of my memory — where I could nurture my private flowers and pluck my weeds — I wasn’t aware at the time, or perhaps I simply lacked the comfortable distance from which to speculate, how this gesture of mental retreat was merely the precursor to a more definitive action: my final escape.