We've been adequately snowed-in, and our (aforementioned) glib South Dakota basement has grown even more glib, even tawdry, by the snow flitting in through the cracks in our square, and tiny, windows--like when the woman you bring home removes her underpants and crawls into your bed while you were in the bathroom and so you didn't see it, and feel cheated in some irreparable way. Did she not want you to see her as she pulled them down her legs? Did she truly think it necessary to deprive you this singular, intimate pleasure? Perhaps more intimate, even, than the act which might have followed when you, too, dropped drawers like a dope and crawled into bed beside her, plugging your chin to the bony head of her shoulder-top while she feigned sleep? This is as the tawdry snow, accumulating while you sleep, shivering, in your long bed with all your bearded brothers. They grumble, snore and snort through the night while the snow creeps in, sneaky as hell, and the lady and her underpants are whisked away with the night, with the stars, with the serpent that sits waiting for her with forked tongue just outside the door.
There is no mistaking it, folks: this is life. This is just it.
And our beards grow ever-longer, wild as brush and self-satisfied like to crush the soul of any beardless man, woman or child.
And are we tempted by the heat of other lands? Are we tempted by the boorish hands of giants, which might lift us into their palms and let us nap there awhile, closer to the sky? Are we tempted by the life our mother has chosen to lead, far away, of sewing machines, low-cal hard candy, and early nights with the television? Well, of course we are. And, again, of course.
But, Now: an offering of weirdness to cut the brutish cold from your marrow.
Becoming
He didn’t notice
at first—he never noticed much. He ate with his face turned down to the plate
and always using one specific fork from the cutlery drawer; he was like a child
in this way, and I humored him because I understood that he held onto those
things that made him feel safe because he was otherwise scared. The fork with
three tines and the outline of little daisies carved into its handle. That was
Jonathon’s fork.
+
I’d woken three
months earlier, heart-poundy, from a dream that made me understand all I needed to become in order to feel whole. It was the same dream I’d had,
recurrently, as a child but had been forced to ignore. And then it was back.
In the dream, I was
a horse. With a long mane that shone gold with twitches of chlorine blue when
the sun came up behind it and a heaviness in my limbs that felt stable and
serene. My heart was large inside my barrel chest, and I slept standing up,
surrounded by smells of dirt and the hot sun smells of grass and of sun, and
with the stars waiting to be licked up by my giant tongue which rolled out
of my mouth against my teeth, lazy, like molasses rolling down tree bark. I
wasn’t worried about anything and there wasn’t death to think about. I felt
certain. That was all it was. Being a large thing in a wide-open place
and not wondering what else you were meant for. Feeling lonely but in a sweet
way, an edifying way.
I’d once confessed
the dream to my mother who’d smacked the back of my head and then told me,
gently, to be sensible, rubbing my head after she'd smacked it. I was a girl with
long, slender limbs and a refrigerator full of whole fruit. I had a black maid
who folded my clothes like it was the nineteen-fifties, or the twenties, or the
eighteen-twenties, and a four-poster day bed with a canopy and eight full
pillows. I needed for nothing.
So I did. Become
sensible. Went to school and was not a horse because I was a girl. A girl with
a small mouth and a somewhat higher-than-normal gum-ridge who did as she was
told, who grew breasts and shaved the hair from her legs and armpits and pubis and
plucked it sometimes from her chin when people noticed and screwed up their
faces at the injustice and unwelcome coarseness of it all.
Jonathan didn’t
like hair, and was glad I was a girl who removed it, regularly, for money and
for pain and for smooth.
+
When the dream
came again, and persisted, I tried, again, to ignore it. Every morning, I woke
and brushed and cleaned away my various dirtynesses with cold water
and boiled soap stuffed with little fancy bits of shit like lavender and oat
rusk, but it came roaring against me anyway. The dream. The dream.
Jonathon, I’m
becoming something new, I told him one morning. It was raining out, and he’d
shut the window I’d left open through the night so I could smell the air rising
from the trees. I slid out of the pale sheets of our bed and opened it again
as he sat up and watched me, frowning. He wanted to know what I meant. He told
me to shut the window because it was raining and it would warp the wood. I told
him about the dream, and then he laughed and his laugh was sideways and made me
think of how much he loved that fucking fork with the daisies, probably more
than he loved me.
I’m going to
become a horse, I said. I was very serious. And I don’t think I’ll be able to
live here with you once I do.
We both watched
the buildings outside shoulder the rain. They were getting pummeled and could
do nothing about it but stand there.
Jonathon rustled
in the sheets and sighed very deeply. Whatever you want, he said, rolling his
eyes back like people do when they don’t think what you say means much. Do
whatever you want.
+
It’s hard not to
wrap my whole mouth around things I’m not supposed to. When he fucks me, it’s
hard not to bash my head down sharply into the bed like it’s grass, or a big
wet pouch of iron-y mud or to rear back and encompass his whole skull between my teeth. Sometimes I
do, and the pleasure of it is immense, like running naked into the ocean at
night in summertime when the moon is fat and hot white. When you start to
change, little things take you by surprise—like how much water you suddenly
need to drink, and how heavy and hairy your legs have become. Jonathon doesn’t
notice my hooves developing because he doesn’t want to. I haven’t decided yet
whether or not I will get shoed—different Internet forums recommend different
things. In the end, the only difference becomes the sound you make as you trot;
it’s whether or not you want to attract attention, and then it’s just money.
Showing off.
Some
people worry they are making their lovers into practitioners of bestiality
without their consent. Some do it for people they love. No one does it lightly
or for nothing. It’s not that kind of choice. One man is becoming a badger for
his Swedish boyfriend.
I tell Jonathon this,
and he says nothing, ignoring the neighing sound at the back of my throat, the
tossing of my long, silky hair after I say it. He’s eating dinner out of a scalloped
plastic container, and, he’s only got eyes for Fork.
