The nights were getting colder. It had been long since Erin's presence had smoothed the chill between their tangled bodies. He was beginning to forget how she felt. As the temperature cooled on his skin and in his heart, he began to remember how Phylicia's hand felt as it collided with his cheek. The words she said in the snow and the hand mark left on his face began to warm him far more than any feverish touch or tingle found underneath, on top of, or inside Erin.
After a few thousand miles running together, just as bonds run thick, conversation begins to run thin. Eventually, around mile marker four, Scott brought up the subject:
"If you could stick any animal up your ass, what would it be?"
There was silence. Not the assumed flabbergasted response expected at say, Thanksgiving dinner, if someone were to casually mention this. Instead, the silence was thoughtful and contemplative. The time the friends spent together had long ago worn down the rough edges of societal expectations. Personally, I thought this question was brilliant. I, of course, answered with a small antelope. Scott and some of the others shrugged off my comment with a bemused smile, but were actually slightly annoyed. This was serious. Scott answered quickly.
"A snake. A small one."
Tyler gave a small accusatory giggle.
"You know, that could be a sick homosexual bestiality fetish depending on where you are."
Someone else suggested a mouse. Fears of squirming pushed that choice aside. The subject of small birds were approached, but quickly denied after the thoughts of beaks and talons and their hunger for worms. Despite the fear of warts, frogs was widely agreed upon to be the best choice. This near unanimous decision was aided by a helpful does of charades by Ralph, consisting of a cup gently and push method.
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That night, surfing the web, in addition to some interesting information about "snake fucking," I found that our frog choice actually had some advantages. See, in medevial times, they believed that a remedy for a cough was frog secretions. The easiest way to get these secretions into the throat was through direct application; that is, sticking a frog in the patient's mouth and shutting it. Hence the phrase, "frog in your throat."
Of course, I shared this information the next day, but by then the moment was gone. To be honest, the unashamed honesty of the previous day was what had disappeared. We were all embarassed that we had discussed animalia anal insertions, just like I am slightly embarassed sharing it now. Strange as it sounds, that day was a defining moment in my life. It didn't matter what we were discussing, it mattered that we belonged. In that moment of shit and amphibians, we all belonged to each other. We were no society, but friends. We had no stigmas, we had no boundaries. We had each other. It may seem silly that I choose this moment to remember these friends since our bonds and ties go much deeper than assholes. But to me, its not silly. That was real life I witnessed.
Eventually, our thousands of miles took us to college and into the arms of some girl. She was a stunner, full of beauty and cigarettes and stories and dreams. Just like Scott ran out of acceptable words on the trail, I quickly ran out of words with this new girl. Unfortunately, this came long before any sense of belonging that by now was a fleeting fading feeling from those days with Scott and the others. In downtime, I asked her:
"If you could stick any animal up your ass, what would it be?"
This girl who smoked quickly responded that we that we do not do anal. It's dirty and unhealthy.
With no more words and no sense of belonging, there was nothing left to do but snuggle. Eventually, there was accidental contact between my small snake and her rectum. Good thing this had been discussed before: Yea, we don't do that. Anal no no. It's dirty and shameful.
The image of my penis as a small snake reminded me of Scott. This was the first time I thought of animal insertion since that day on the trail. Suddenly, here I am thinking:
No. Anal is not dirty. Nothing is. If animal insertion wasn't embarassing, then why should this be. This girl has apparently seen the world, danced with foreign countries, romanced with drugs, all in the search for some kind of answers. But why is it that she hasn't found what it is to have true friends, to live a true life, where one needs look no further than rectums and frogs to find happiness and answers. A life where one doesn't have to be embarassed of anything. A life where one doesn't have to go on adventures to live it. A life where one doesn't have to run away from herself to find out who she is.
For a second, maybe I could show this girl that you can live without cigarettes and regrets. Maybe this girl, who sucks in life with sweeping French drags, in through one hole and out the other, can be content to just relax for a minute and look around at what she has, which happens to be her smokey past and me.
Where we have been always leaves marks, just ask the shit covered frog fresh from the rectum. Where I have been has left me with a frog. Where she and her cigarettes and French exhales have been has left her with smoker's cough. Wait a second, is that a frog in her throat? Don't I have the perfect cure? I shoved that frog right up her ass. I wanted it to squirm its way up to her throat, in one hole and out the other, just like her smoke. Oh, um, we don't do that. Anal no no. Well, today we do. In one hole, and out the other.
It's not so much that I am scared off it. It's just that I am waiting for it. Every minute passes and this feeling inside me builds. This tell tale heart need to confess something, or to possess something, or to be possessed or found or lost or hurt or loved. Every mundane part of my life around me is building. Every piece of my life is so absurdly normal without you in it for the moment that all of these things are shaking, as if suggesting the nearby presence of a Japanese movie monster stumbling towards me riding an earthquake after swallowing a power electromagnet. Each mouthful of food, each blinking turn signal, each change of the channel is speeding, increasing, rumbling into a crescendo. But towards what?
I've felt this twice before. The first time was before I met girl number one, the second time was before I met girl number you. Heh, right before we met, I remember staring at a paper towel roll casually laying on its side on a shelf by the air conditioner. Within moments, I slip from hazily gazing on my way to a nap at this quick pick up marvel of the cleaning world, into staring with a face wide eyed with shock. Out of no where, I feel the paper towel roll is moving faster, harder, methodical. It's no longer waving lazily in the air, it's now breathing, soon to be beckoning, belaying all of this feelings. I'm not scared, I'm just anticipating an explosion, ejaculation, exclamation, everything or anything to climax this buildup. I never napped. I got up before the AC unit could become a monster and my blue quilt a suffocating tidal wave. Out the door, around the corner, to see you for the first time.
Today, I felt that again. And I'm scared. I don't want another big change like that. I could be so happy with you. I haven't lost you, but that doesn't explain why my Christmas tree lights are quivering in anticipation of some huge occurence in the near future. Maybe I'm fucked up. I am fucked up. I feel like Scrooge, with the three ghosts. I'm waiting for the third ghost to wake me up from this dream I've been living with you. I feel like your going to disappear from my life, dissolving with all the smoke and leaving me with mirrors to see my sorry state. I feel like I'm going to be pushed into the arms of some new girl who will teach me, love me, and then ultimately fade. I feel like the only reason I am having these incredible experiences with girls and ghosts is because I need to be taught something. I'm scared. I'm supposed to change the world. I have to. I have all these things to say and I don't know how to say them. And I want to. And I have to. I am the world. I am a piece of the world. I'm fucked up because the world is fucked up. I can fix the world to fix myself. I want to. I have to. I need to. So just don't leave me. Don't be another ghost. I want to slow everything down. I want to ritardo this crescendo. I want to learn more from you, I have to. Chain yourself to me like Jacob Marley. You are going to be my past one day, so chain yourself on to me now like you will whenever you are in my past. Haunt me now, in the flesh.
He had this habit of swallowing all the cruel things she said, all the cruel things she did that left his heart dead. He had this habit of following this digestion with the internal suggestion that his heart was left whole, a reminder that the remainder of this division left him ok. Wrong or right as this was, with his heart whole, it was impossible not to love her. She once asked him if he thought they would always be friends. Her with her instinctive life, refusing to look past tomorrow, daring to ask the truth about what he felt about the future. Honestly, he loved her so much, that whatever she did to make him stop loving her would be enough to make him hate her. All the words, all the jealousy, all the boys with their limbs and voices, all her choices, these things he swallowed, would come back up as bitter bile. All of the hurt would squirt from his heart, his mouth, his eyes. When the spew left him empty except for the taste of her in his mouth, dripping out to stain his sheets, he would lift his head. He would kiss her and ask her if she liked the taste of her bitter past.
