Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

Some women have beautiful mouths, and some women rise out of chairs, and they sit down in chairs, and some women tilt their heads, and their skirts sway with the movement of their hips, and some women yield a power in their eyes, which is soft and kind and warm, and more alluring than a siren’s song. All the while, their limbs exude sexuality like a sticky scent. They move among us, in the office, on the college campus, at the checkout line in the grocery store. These women have become their bodies. Most women, however, reserved from moment to moment, become their bodies more fully when the lights are low; against the drowsy backdrop of night, against the rhythm of a beating heart, something inside of them begins to hum and glow. But meanwhile, in a sad city apartment, a tall, awkward, pale man leaned over his sink, conscious of his own absurdity. His sexuality wasn’t so much a lure, an enticement, as it was an offense.

Although this thought bothered me for long stretches of time, I had moments when my mind turned toward other subjects. It was at these moments — when through some gradual circumlocution of ideas — my mind slid along, back to the oppressive thought, approaching it from an unexpected angle. For example, one evening I was sitting at my computer, working on my manuscript, when I paused for a second and tried to remember if I was supposed to put out the blue recycling container this Tuesday or the next. I got up and went to the kitchen to check the calender magneted to the refrigerator door. All the while, my mind was slowly sliding along a seemingly innocuous track of thought, and when I returned to my desk chair, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake by snubbing Morris the sister. This woman was in my mind, and against my will, she crept upon me as a sexual prospect. Another time, I woke up in the night to use the bathroom, and as I leaned over the toilet, urinating, in a mild, groggy daze, I suddenly realized that I was thinking about Claudia Jones, what child is this, sitting on her milkcrate and humming her song. Her plump, milky flesh — mute and stupid and heavy — somehow struck me as appealing and comfortable.

Other, more conscious moments, I tried to remember my waif, the young woman who had run off with my manuscript, but she had abandoned my fantasy life. Because I had played with her too much in my mind, she seemed to lose her flesh. Ironically, she ceased to be a real person, and thus being a fantasy, she was evicted from my fantasies. At last, I wanted something I could actually touch. Unfortunately, my social circle was so small that scarcely anyone dwelled within my range. The woman from Dyfus was just as unreal as my skinny thief; besides, the woman represented a force and a threat. I was less likely to give her a kiss than to stand upon a train track, open my arms, and take a full-bodied, locomotive kiss. Most men — perhaps driven by instinct to preserve the species — erect their whole persona upon this basic pursuit. They comb their hair, buy their cars, and build their houses the same way that a spider weaves its web. All their energy, under a thin disguise, goes toward the conquest. Like other men, as well as every pubescent boy, I was finally willing to take part in the struggle. I had discounted myself for my whole life. But now I was caught between the extremes of male sexuality, lusting after the two ends of the spectrum. They just happened to be my most obvious prospects. On one end, just one space left of the Whore, was the bovine idiot, as thick as flesh and fetish. And on the other, a little right of the Mother, was that sacred lady, layer upon layer of ivory and porcelain.

I knew that if I were to make a concerted effort upon the playing field of men, I ought to have as many fronts as possible, and thus work upon both women at the same time. For Claudia Jones, because I was a complete stranger to her, I had the bridge of apathy to cross. Of course, I could have made myself known to her; that would have been as easy as throwing a stone at her. The real task was to make her want to know me, to make her interested. I didn’t bother to consider the next step, namely how to convert docile bovinity into desire. I figured that once I was near to her, I could simply move myself upon her body, while she would put less ardor into her lovemaking than she put into her eating; all my sweaty effort could provoke no greater reaction out of her than that vague, listless indifference with which a grazing cow lifts its head for a moment, continues to chew, and then, still chewing, turns its face back toward the ground. For Morris the sister, because I had offended her, I had the citadel of animosity to raze to the ground. For all intents and purposes, I had already whacked her with a stone. I hoped that she was of that religious type who not only expected pain and suffering from the world but also wore her battle scars as proof of her faith. I wrote her a letter explaining that I fully understood why she’d snubbed me and left me sitting alone in the coffee shop. I deserved to be treated severely. As a side note, I added that on that fateful Sunday afternoon I finally realized how awful I must have been for such a kind woman to treat me so cruelly. I licked and mailed the missive. I had nothing to lose. Undoubtedly, finding the letter in her mailbox, she would first feel a bit shocked, and then reading it, she would become confused — until, of course, her eyes lighted upon the word “Sunday,” which wasn’t the day we had arranged to meet on. If she were as trusting as I hoped, she would assume that I had made an error or, perhaps, that she’d made the error. I could still be saved.

My first front mobilized, I had only to wait for the response, and if I heard nothing for a week, I’d make another advance. I didn’t know what this would be, but I knew that if it also failed, I’d try again. With persistence, I planned to worm my way into the heart of that little peach. Although all my past experience told me that women are unfathomable, distant, and closed, I recognized that the history of man was a history of seduction. Of course, I wasn’t made like a mighty son of Priam, who could take a woman by force and lock her up in his bed chamber. Nor like a young, handy, rutting scholar, could I have been bold enough to saunter up beside her, grab hold of her by the quim, and swear my death was imminent without her loving. Yet, Homer and Chaucer aside, perhaps I was able to act like a cousin to the sweet maiden, drive her around and around until her fatigue and my constancy wore her down, and then, at that moment, work my puny, insidious magic charm. Unfortunately, Victorian modesty prevented Thomas Hardy from fleshing out the details of such a young girl’s seduction, and so my manual was lacking. Even though I didn’t know how the “cousin” actually un-frocked and de-bloomered the maiden, I knew that he pestered and wooed her until she finally gave in. If Hardy proved anything about the female race, it was that a woman is simply seething passion all bundled up and straining against the seams of her corset, waiting for the slightest tug upon the slightest thread, so she may burst forth and unravel upon her man. With hope, Morris the sister, my own pretty “Tess,” may have unraveled upon me.

On the other front, undoing Claudia Jones’s knot, pulling her string, required the same sort of machination, though on a more stupefied level. I could have been a slobbering idiot who pursued her from pasture to pasture, then down across a foreign field, the both of us lumbering on, until I had her trapped in some ravine. There, in the thick purple hours of twilight, we would meld together, not just our flesh or the noise of our bellows and moans, but also the mild confusion, the indifference, and the languid passion that belongs to all the over-ripe, simple beasts.

II