Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

For one second I thought of Chapter Eleven. He was living in a shack in the woods like this. I asked myself if I missed my brother. I couldn’t tell if I did or not. I never know what I feel until it’s too late. Chapter Eleven had smoked his first joint at college. I was four years ahead of him.

“Hold it in,” Rex coached me.

“You have to let the THC build up in your bloodstream,” said Jerome.

There was a sound out in the woods, twigs snapping. The Object grabbed Rex’s arm. “What was that?”

“Maybe a bear,” Jerome said.

“Neither of you girls are on the rag, I hope,” said Rex.

“Rex!” the Object protested.

“Hey, I’m serious. Bears can smell it. I was out camping in Yellowstone one time and there was this woman out there who got killed. Grizzly could smell the blood.”

“That is not true!”

“I swear. This guy I know told me. He was an Outward Bound guide.”

“Well, I don’t know about Callie, but I’m not,” said the Object.

They all looked at me. “I’m not either,” I said.

“I guess we’re safe, then, Roman,” said Rex, and laughed.

The Object was still holding on to him for protection. “You want to do a shotgun?” he asked her.

“What’s that?”

“Here.” He turned to face her. “What you do is one person opens their mouth and the other person blows the smoke into it. You get totally fucked up. It’s excellent.”

Rex put the lit end of the joint in his mouth. He leaned toward the Object. She leaned forward too. She opened her mouth. And Rex began to blow. The Obscure Object’s lips were a perfect ripe oval and into that target, that bull’s-eye, Rex Reese directed the stream of musky smoke. I could see the column rush into the Object’s mouth. It disappeared down her throat like whitewater over falls. Finally she coughed and he stopped.

“Good hit. Now do me.”

The Object’s green eyes were watering. But she took the joint and inserted it between her lips. She leaned toward Rex Reese, who opened his own mouth wide.

When they were finished, Jerome took the joint from his sister. “Let me see if I can master the technical difficulties here,” he said. The next thing I knew, his face was close to mine. So finally I did it, too. Leaned forward, closed my eyes, parted my lips, and let Jerome shotgun into my mouth a long, dirty plume of smoke.

Smoke filled my lungs, which began to burn. I coughed and let it out. When I opened my eyes again, Rex had his arm around the Object’s shoulder. She was trying to act casual about it. Rex finished his beer. He opened two more, one for him and one for her. He turned toward the Object. He smiled. He said something I couldn’t hear. And then while I was still blinking he covered the Object’s lips with his sour, handsome, pot-smoking mouth.

Across the flickering shack Jerome and I were left pretending not to notice. The joint was ours now to bogart as we wished. We passed it back and forth in silence and sipped our beers.

“I’m having this weird thing where my feet look extremely far away,” Jerome said after a while. “Do your feet look extremely far away to you?”

“I can’t see my feet,” I said. “It’s dark in here.”

He passed me the joint again and I took it. I inhaled and held the smoke in. I let it keep burning my lungs because I wanted to distract myself from the pain in my heart. Rex and the Object were still kissing. I looked away, out the dark, grimy window.

“Everything looks really blue,” I said. “Did you notice that?”

“Oh yeah,” said Jerome. “All kinds of strange epiphenomena.”

The Oracle of Delphi had been a girl about my same age. All day long she sat over a hole in the ground, the omphalos , the navel of the earth, breathing petrochemical fumes escaping from underneath. A teenage virgin, the Oracle told the future, speaking the first metered verse in history. Why do I bring this up? Because Calliope was also a virgin that night (for a little while longer at least). And she, too, had been inhaling hallucinogens. Ethylene was escaping from the cedar swamp outside the shack. Dressed not in a diaphanous robe but a pair of overalls, Calliope began to feel very funny indeed.

“Want another beer?” Jerome asked.

“Okay.”

He handed me a golden can of Stroh’s. I put the sweating can to my lips and drank. Then I drank some more. Jerome and I both felt the weight of the obligation. We smiled at each other nervously. I looked down and rubbed my knee through my overalls. And when I looked up again Jerome’s face was close. His eyes were shut, like the eyes of a boy jumping feet first off the high dive. Before I knew what was happening he was kissing me. Kissing the girl who had never been kissed. (Not since Clementine Stark, anyway.) I didn’t stop him. I remained completely still while he did his thing. Despite my lightheadedness, I could feel everything. The shocking wetness of his mouth. The whiskery feel of his lips. His barging tongue. Certain flavors, too, the beer, the dope, a lingering breath mint, and beneath all that the actual, animal taste of a boy’s mouth. I could taste the gamy tang of Jerome’s hormones and the metal of his fillings. I opened one eye. Here was the fine hair I’d spent so much time admiring on another head. Here were the freckles on the forehead, on the bridge of the nose, along the ears. But it wasn’t the right face; they weren’t the right freckles, and the hair was dyed black. Behind my impassive face my soul curled up into a ball, waiting until the unpleasantness was over.

Jerome and I were still sitting up. He was pressing his face against mine. By maneuvering a little, I could see across the room to where Rex and the Object were. They were lying down now. The tails of Rex’s blue shirt seemed to flap in the wavering light. Beneath him one of the Object’s legs dangled off the bed, the cuff of her pants muddy. I heard them whispering and laughing, then silence again. I watched the Object’s mud-stained leg dancing. I concentrated on that leg, so that I hardly noticed when Jerome began to pull me down on our cot. I let him; I gave in to our slow collapse, all the while watching Rex Reese and the Object out of one eye. Rex’s hands were moving over the Object’s body now. They were pulling up her shirt, moving under it. Then their bodies shifted so that I saw their faces in profile. The Object’s face, as still as a death mask, waited with eyes closed. Rex’s profile was rampant, flushed. Meanwhile Jerome’s hands were moving over me. He was rubbing my overalls, but I was no longer in them exactly. My focus on the Object was too intense.

Ecstasy. From the Greek Ekstasis . Meaning not what you think. Meaning not euphoria or sexual climax or even happiness. Meaning, literally: a state of displacement, of being driven out of one’s senses. Three thousand years ago in Delphi the Oracle became ecstatic every single working hour. That night in a hunting cabin in northern Michigan, so did Calliope. High for my first time, drunk for my first time, I felt myself dissolving, turning to vapor. Like the incense at church my soul rose toward the dome of my skull—and then broke through. I drifted over the plank floor. I floated above the little camp stove. Passing by the bourbon bottles, I hovered over the other cot, looking down at the Object. And then, because I suddenly knew that I could, I slipped into the body of Rex Reese. I entered him like a god so that it was me, and not Rex, who kissed her.

An owl hooted in a tree somewhere. Bugs assailed the windows, attracted by the light. In my Delphic state I was simultaneously aware of both make-out sessions. By way of Rex’s body I was hugging the Obscure Object, nuzzling her ear . . . while at the same time I was also aware of Jerome’s hands ranging over my body, the one I’d left on the other cot. He was on top of me, crushing one of my legs, so I moved it, spread my legs apart, and he fell between them. He made little sounds. I put my arms around him, appalled and moved by his thinness. He was even skinnier than I was. Now Jerome was kissing my neck. Now, advised by some magazine column, he was paying attention to my earlobe. His hands moved up. They were heading for my chest. “Don’t,” I said, scared he’d find my tissues. And Jerome obeyed . . .