Susan Steinberg - Spectacle - Stories

I was in this bed that was in no way my bed.

It was like pretty good amateur porn.

It was like the videos my brother got of ugly people fucking.

Nights, as kids, we would watch these videos, me and my brother and his friends, in our basement.

And we would drink what my brother’s friends brought to drink.

And we would laugh our heads off at these ugly people doing their fucked-up ugly shit.

It was just like amateur porn.

Because of his soft body I could see the outline of in the dark.

Because of the ugly words he was saying into my hair.

The words were only ugly out of context.

Like if I said them here or on the street.

Like if I said them to a stranger.

Or to your mother.

I should say he was a doctor.

I should say, as well, I was not impressed.

I was only impressed with the smaller details.

Like his eyes, his wrists, the words he used.

And the doctor’s kit beneath his bed.

It looked just like you’d think it would look.

It looked like the kits we played with as kids.

There were tools in it that looked like toys.

I was prettier than the girls in the videos.

I was in better shape than the girls, but let’s face it.

I was just physically in better shape.

My brother’s friends wanted to see me undressed.

They wanted to see me bent like the girls in the videos.

They wanted my legs behind my head, a bored look on my face.

They wanted me drugged and dumb and sweating, and my brother, I know, could have said to them, Stop.

It was my brother who told me about religion.

It was not our religion he told me about.

We had no religion in our house.

He told me about his girlfriend’s religion.

It was terrifying, what he told me.

Something about the rapture, and I was terrified.

Something about bodies floating upward into the air.

I didn’t believe in the rapture.

Because I didn’t believe in religion.

But I could imagine my body floating upward, my head pushing through the ceiling.

I could feel the force that would push my body straight through to the room upstairs.

I should say something here about my father.

But mostly I couldn’t get near him.

I mean he was too important to get near.

There was all the important work he did.

There was the study where he did his work.

There was the universe spinning around it.

I was in this bed that was not in any way my bed.

Because I was not good at getting out of things.

It was my biggest flaw that was not a physical flaw.

There was always something that made me stay too long.

Some desire to keep a light lit.

A desire I didn’t understand.

And I could ignore what needed to be ignored.

Like his soft body pressing mine into the bed.

Like his girlfriend’s things all over the room.

Like my time, my mind.

Like your pride, my brother might have said.

And where is yours, I might have said back.

My brother thought he was better than me.

Just because he met a girl he thought was kind.

Just because he left the house at seventeen.

Just because he left me with my father in the house.

It doesn’t matter how I got to his bed.

I mean the specific details don’t matter.

We had been to a dinner at someone’s house.

I had gotten just too drunk.

And I had pushed myself as far as I could.

I had pushed myself, if you can imagine, to pushing nearly out of myself.

It was all of it too ugly.

Just imagine the ugliest desperation.

Just imagine the bloom just before blooming.

I mean imagine the bloom before one can call it a bloom.

There was a giant tree behind our house.

I could see the tree from my bedroom.

It was not our tree, but the neighbors’.

There was a tree house in the tree.

There were rungs one could climb and a tiny door.

I was not supposed to be in the tree house.

But the neighbors’ kids had grown and gone.

And there were bird sounds I liked and there were leaves.

There was the sky getting darker, the sky getting dark.

There was my father calling my name and again.

And the birds calling louder than that.

Our father and mother, before she left, fought brutally.

My mother would stand outside his study screaming.

And I would slam my door, scream, Stop.

And my brother, as well, would scream, Stop.

But my brother’s stop was directed at my slamming my door and not at my mother and father’s fighting.

Then my slamming my door was directed at my brother’s screaming, Stop.

Then my mother’s screaming was directed at me and my brother.

I did not mean to push as hard, at the dinner, as I did.

But I leaned over the table, took hold of his arm.

Everyone laughed as I wrote my name across his wrist.

Looking back, I have no answer for why I did.

I blame, in part, my drunkenness.

I blame, in part, his wrist.

But these things, of course, weren’t really to blame.

Not when you think of what it is to pin blame.

Not when you think of what it is to point at the face of the thing you truly blame.

I liked amateur better than professional.

Amateur had those things you shouldn’t see, like broken nails, like messy hair, like fat.

It had people who looked like the ugly couple next door fucking or your parents’ ugly friends fucking or your parents.

I liked it because of something having to do with desperation.

The amateurs’ desperation becoming mine.

Their rush to get off becoming my rush to get off.

And that fucked-up feeling like the universe was controlled by my wretched gut.

Yesterday, I was standing in line in a store.

There was a woman ahead of me in the line.

The woman was buying a carton of milk.

This has nothing to do with anything.

But the carton of milk was all rung up.

And the woman’s money was not in her purse.

And her money was not in her coat.

She said, Hold on, and a man in line behind me sighed.

I could tell what he was thinking.

He was thinking something about this woman.

I was thinking something about her too.

Something about her aloneness.

Something about her desperation, as she dug deeper into her purse.

The man behind me sighed again, and in that moment I hated all men.

I wanted to save this woman from them.

And it occurred to me I had a choice to make, and so I made a choice.

I mean it occurred to me I could buy this woman the carton of milk.

And so I did this very kind thing.

I was in this bed that was someone else’s bed.

I wasn’t exactly proud to be in it.

I mean I wasn’t proud that a part of me was proud.

I felt so proud in certain parts.

And not in the parts literally being fucked.

But more in the parts metaphorically being fucked.

There was this one video we watched the most.

In it the woman’s tits were incredibly big.

The guys who fucked her were incredibly big.

The video was so poor quality, it was mostly big parts up close and sound.

The bed had the worst-looking headboard you have ever seen.

It had the worst-looking headboard banging against the worst-looking wall you have ever seen.

It had the girl licking different parts of the guys in a terrible up-and-down way.

And the guys biting down on their lower lips.

The guys squeezing shut their eyes.

The lines they said were just too ugly.

And we laughed our asses off.

One of my brother’s friends and I were hooking up as kids.

My brother didn’t know about me and his friend.