Rebecca Schiff - The Bed Moved - Stories

“At least you have a fun job,” I said. “I just tutor dyslexic teens for standardized tests.”

“The way my business is, it’s not going to last,” he said. “We’re in a sweet spot right now with the medical permits.”

Cigarette companies were already buying up the land we were speeding past for the day pot became legal.

“To put the little guy out of business,” he said. “I guess I’m the little guy.”

He was a big guy, with a vengeful ex-girlfriend, in a hundred fifty dollars debt to me. The hot spring would cost twenty-five each for day use. But we had to do things. Otherwise, it wasn’t an experience. It was just sitting in his house.

“I understand why Gretchen’s mad,” he said, eyeing a vague smear on the windshield. “She’s not a bad person. She could be really sweet.”

“I haven’t had a chance to see that side of her,” I said.

I hadn’t really dated anyone, but I had also not really dated everyone. Without a Gretchen of my own, I began to tell him about the other men. I made them seem like SAT words — this one had been impetuous, that one reclusive. My hope was to stir the pot grower to greater vocab scores.

“What a fool,” he offered. “That guy sounds like a jerk.”

“I don’t know why I’m telling you about him. He was nothing. He’s engaged.”

We pulled into a wooded lot and parked next a bulletin board that said “We Are a Clothing Optional Resort.” The springs steamed behind wet steps. Kiosk notices alerted us to internecine management conflicts, meditation workshops, the healing power of lithium. Women walked by with breasts that left you feeling conflicted. Testicles dangled. I had never even been to a hot spring with bathing suits. The grower went to the bathroom while I purchased day passes with my SAT earnings.

“It’s explained in the guidebook, but these are holy waters,” said the guy at the front desk. He had a half-shaved head and a T-shirt that said “Question Male Privilege.” He handed me a guidebook as thick as a course packet. “So we prefer you not speak, eat, or engage in sexual congress. No passion in the pools.”

We undressed in the locker room. A man rocked a woman gently in the water. A sign reminded us to be silent at all times. Sexual activity was not permitted, but the attempts to hide it were worse.

The grower and I began communicating in hot spring sign language.

Over there. I’m going over there.

Okay. I’m staying here.

His hair was longer wet.

You look like Jesus, I signed, pointing to his hair and making the sign of the cross.

He got it, smiled, gave me a wet hug. This was what it was for, dating. Wet hugs. Jesus jokes. I needed this. I would get high and have this.

I was paying for it. The weed he gave me started to even things out, but I estimated that we had only smoked a hot spring’s day pass worth of weed so far.

Smoke? I mimed. I lit an imaginary bubbler.

A woman put her finger to her lips, though we were not talking. Maybe the Original Mantra was “Shush.” I judged her breasts as revenge, but they weren’t bad by naked hot spring standards. In the southern part of the state, bodies were tanned and injected to perfection, but here in the north, where we bathed, bodies relaxed and gave in to an idea of perfect acceptance. Signs advertised workshops to reclaim powers long forgotten. People banged drums in the parking lot, unlocked childhood trauma in sacral tissue, painted their penises with raspberries.

I checked out his penis — not hard. This was also what dating was for, to see the penis at rest. It rested out of politeness to the naked strangers, so as not to disturb their patented water massage techniques, or maybe it rested out of guilt. I didn’t understand the mechanism of control behind the penis, though I respected it. I didn’t understand the mechanism of control behind Catholicism either, or behind any of the Eastern religions represented in the hot spring course packet.

We found a clearing in the woods, known around here as the Garden of Peace. He produced a bubbler from its velveteen satchel. We smoked under a Navajo quote. “Thoughts are like arrows: once released, they strike their mark.”

“More like Garden of Cultural Appropriation,” I said. This was one of the phrases you got to keep if you had not dropped out of college.

“Cultural appropriation,” he said. He tasted it on his tongue, added it to his worldview. We were sitting on a rock naked. I felt like a tutor with a promising student at the beginning of time.

“A lot of those Native quotes are made up,” he said.

“Everything’s made up,” I said.

He edged closer to me on the rock. This was my favorite kind of sex, sex based on being impressed. We kissed like we’d been kissing for days, like it was important, like something bad would happen if we stopped.

He lifted a condom out of the velveteen satchel. I checked the label to see if it was flavored. He’d bought a variety pack by accident and some of the condoms smelled like strawberries. Even high, I refused to accept a flavor in my vagina. A condom should be condom flavored, not try to appropriate fruit. Things should be what they were. But what were they?

“It’s coconut.”

“That’s not okay.”

He looked for another one, then dumped out the whole satchel. Soon we were surrounded by condoms, the ones that stimulated, the ones that delayed stimulation. One, suspiciously, promised “a swirl.”

“I’ll just blow you,” I said.

I fell back on the blow job when flummoxed. The guys I hadn’t really dated hadn’t really minded, but this guy, this grower, he wanted to connect. He wanted eye contact, he wanted smiles.

“This is nice,” I kept saying.

Like a hooker, eye contact and hand-holding had become a bigger deal to me than sex itself. Except I wasn’t paid not to have feelings. I had broken my own spirit for free.

“Look at me,” he said, while I was sucking him. Had Gretchen maintained eye contact throughout? Were two and a half years of fellatio eye contact the reason he had left her in charge of his crop at a crucial moment during the weed harvest while he went on tour in central Oregon with his bluegrass duo?

I looked at him. But there was someone coming up behind him. The guy from the front desk ducked under a dream catcher and grabbed my grower’s shoulder. I pulled my mouth off the penis like I had tasted something lychee flavored. I couldn’t stop being naked, so I laid one arm across my breasts and fanned the other hand over my crotch.

“The guidelines were clearly stated at the front desk,” he said. “I’m sorry, man, but you and your lady friend are going to have to leave the Garden of Peace.”

“We’re very sorry, sir,” I said. “Would you mind if we still used the tubs?”

I made eye contact with the guy from the front desk. Suddenly I was good at eye contact. Something was bubbling up in me, my upbringing. We had paid for day use. I had never been kicked out of anything. The guy from the front desk had only the authority of being the lone clothed person here.

After Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, could they still use the tubs? Biblical scholars were divided.

“We’ll be good,” I said, trying to stick out my tits while keeping them covered.

“I can’t know that,” said God. He had seen a lot of tits.

“We paid for day use, sir,” I said. “ I paid.”

I was trying a new biblical approach — Eve with earning power, Eve without shame. Now Adam (formerly Jesus) stood, newly flaccid, walked away from the rock, and began flipping over Tibetan prayer flags on a string at the edge of the garden. He was either too stoned to be embarrassed or was so embarrassed that he was pretending to be extremely stoned.