Dana Spiotta - Innocents and Others

Jelly especially liked when she lay on her stomach and he got on top of her, covering her completely. She could feel the weight of his big body slowly pressing down, and it made her feel contained and safe. It was a lot but it wasn’t too much; Oz was surprisingly graceful in bed. Jelly didn’t like being on top. She had no rhythm, no coordination. She banged her shin on Oz’s platform bed, she tripped against the coffee table. There was a recklessness in her limbs. She always had a bruise on her legs or arms. She could see it, barely, but everything looked bruised to her bad eyes. Oz could not see the bruises, but he could feel her flinch. Her awkwardness hardly mattered after a while. The very first time they slept together (which Jelly would remember over and over for its certain payoff in heat), Oz told her that she needed to settle down. They had already tried a number of positions. She was so aroused she nearly flinched at his touch, but he moved slowly. His patience just made her want him even more. Oz put his big hand over hers and pressed it between her legs. Her head was on his chest; she waited. His hand covered hers but didn’t move. He said, “Show me. Make yourself come.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m too nervous.” Oz kept his hand on top of hers, barely pressing. Jelly was twenty-five, but she felt younger. She reminded herself that Oz couldn’t see her, but he could in his way, he could feel every shudder and shake. Why was showing him so much more personal than when he was inside her?

“Try, please,” he whispered. She reached her middle finger out to find the little bump under skin. The touch of her finger on it was too much. Sometimes that happened. She found a side spot that allowed for indirect pressure. So difficult — why is it so complicated, so particular from day to day? Not just from day to day, but from orgasm to orgasm. What felt good reconfigured moment to moment. Oz’s hand lifted as she moved her finger, and his large fingers lightly traced her hand. She was moving faster. She knew that it would not take long. The gentle pressure of his hand excited her. Her eyes were closed, but she felt him breathing more quickly as she grew closer. She imagined it was his hand pulling this from her. Her finger thrummed in quick strokes while never losing contact and pushing down steadily. Her body clenched. She crested, Oz put his other hand on her face then, and the crest lasted for some seconds before she fell, relaxed and spent. Particular, yes, because seconds later she knew another one was possible, and she moved her finger until she found a lower, deeper spot. Oz was murmuring, one hand on her cheek and the other on her hand between her legs, when she started to come again. It was quicker this time, but it shook her body from the inside and then out and down her legs.

Soon Oz could do it to her with his mouth or his hand. She remembered the moment when she realized she no longer had to worry if she would climax — she knew she would always come. Oz liked to make her and he was very good at it. As the nights between them accumulated, she understood that she was particular in her details, yes, but not unreadable, not impossible. She loved Oz, loved fucking him. She had a sex life, right alongside the rest of her life, and it amazed her.

Eventually trying to remember every sexual act between them became impossible, so then she just thought of what they had done recently and let moments from the past leak in, every act reminding her of previous versions of the act, so nothing they did was distinct anymore. It was all part of their life, private things liked and repeated with tiny variations, the precision of pleasure eventually overcoming the hunger for the novel. She figured that was how it was supposed to go.

But other things between them were more difficult. Money was difficult. Oz lived off disability, which was a basic, rent-covering amount. Shortly after she moved in, he began to work part-time for an olfactory research project at the university that was trying to develop a truly neutral scent, the equivalent of white light for the nose. Oz’s sensitivity enabled him to distinguish subtle variations between scents. He also didn’t get olfactory fatigue, in which the perception of smell loses intensity with repetition. Which is why people can’t smell themselves or the stink of their own house after constant exposure. Oz did not get desensitized to smell. They used Oz for only a couple of hours a week, which was okay because he often had a headache for hours afterward. It frustrated Jelly that Oz, who was clearly so exceptional in so many ways, couldn’t find a real occupation. He had a college degree. He understood mechanical things very well. For instance, he fixed the washing machine in the basement. He listened to it run and located what was not working by ear. She imagined that he could listen to cars run and see where problems were. He couldn’t do everything — he was blind, after all — but what he could do, he did exceptionally well. The trouble was the world wasn’t willing — so far — to accommodate his limits to get to his skills. The world had no real use for this large blind man and treated him more like a freak: freakish high IQ, freakish flawless pitch, freakish ability to smell, freakish connection to machines. But the difficult thing was that Oz felt his own acute unusualness too. It had little to do with his blindness. Other blind people — even the congenital hard-core blind — found him unnervingly singular. He had a deep crust of self that was hard to penetrate. Even living with him, Jelly felt he operated in counterorbit from her and her life. The hardest part was that he just didn’t seem to want to share much beyond her body. As close as they felt physically, most nights they would eat without talking, or at least without Oz talking. When Jelly spoke or told a story, Oz would listen and nod. But she could tell he just heard the surface of her voice. The auditory version of when a man didn’t listen because he was looking at your face. Oz smiled and nodded when she spoke. Or he said, “Yeah,” but it was as though he were listening to music he liked. He didn’t seem to hear her. This made her talk more, but at a certain point she realized he couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. The early days when they had real conversations were gone. She wanted that feeling back — those moments when both of them were trying to reach each other. When stories were told, revelations made. It was like a window that was only open for a short time, but then slowly slid shut once they were truly together. If she only knew that back then, she would have asked more questions, gathered more of this person inside her. Why didn’t anyone warn her that as you get comfortable with a lover, you can’t hear or talk anymore? She tried not to worry about it. It wasn’t just her — Oz didn’t talk to anyone, as far as she knew. Maybe this was just what happened over time when you lived together. You didn’t need to talk. But then why did she feel so lonely?

All of Oz’s peculiar reticence about people didn’t mean he had lost enthusiasm for his phones. Most afternoons she discovered him holding the phone, whistling tones and then listening with a compulsive intensity. Oz loved communicating with the phone machinery — he felt the pulses and clicks soothed his brain. “The dial tone is my lullaby,” he said. Oz wanted to have two lines, and a big chunk of their paltry monthly income was spent paying for their lines. Even though they never paid for calls, the lines themselves were expensive. It wasn’t sustainable, and Jelly didn’t see why he couldn’t do with just one. Oz was trying to figure out a way around this, a way to cancel one of the lines and then figure out how to reconnect it, to tap into an extra line without paying for it. He wasn’t sure how far he could go in tampering with the phone company before they would figure it out. Jelly and Oz didn’t discuss it, but the prospect of always just barely getting by weighed on them. As the high of their new relationship wore off, they were left with a meagerness that started with their lack of money and then seemed to seep in everywhere.