Joanna Ruocco, Man's Companions (EXCERPTS) by Tarpaulin Sky Press

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manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s companions

manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s companions Joanna Ruocco

PRESS

T S

2010

Manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Companions ÂŠ 2010 Joanna Ruocco Cover: Robert Hodgin Birds, 2007 Image array First edition, May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-9825416-3-0 Printed and bound in the USA Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922646 Typesetting, book design, and cover design by Cristiana Baik. The text is set in Minion Pro. Titles are set in Minion Pro and Futura Medium. Tarpaulin Sky Press PO Box 189 Grafton, Vermont 05146 www.tarpaulinsky.com For more information on Tarpaulin Sky Press perfect-bound and hand-bound editions, as well as information regarding distribution, personal orders, and catalogue requests, please visit our website at www.tarpaulinsky.com. Reproduction of selections from this book, for non-commercial personal or educational purposes, is permitted and encouraged, provided the Author and Publisher are acknowledged in the reproduction. Reproduction for sale, rent, or other use involving financial transaction is prohibited except by permission of the Author and Publisher.

For Jesse

Ugly Ducks In the waiting room, I look at the door. There is a little window cut in the door for no reason. The reasonless window is very small and a lack of color comes through, the non-descript color of the corridor combined with the non-descript color of distance, which is just a general dimming, or blurriness, applied to other colors. I find the window irritating. Most doors donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have small windows. Classroom doors have small windows and doors in mental hospitals have small windows and these small windows exist for observation purposes. Administrators need to see the children reading at their desks and the mental patients sitting calmly on their beds so that they can assess the quality of education or mental health services received by the children and patients. Similarly, representatives from the American Dental Association may need to observe various waiting rooms across the country to decide whether or not the dentists who maintain these waiting rooms should be granted ADA approval. There is nothing I dislike more than being observed through a small window. In this instance, however, I am inclined to believe that the window is a mistake, that the door with the window came at a discounted price, and that the window has no meaning in and of itself. The window is just part of a bargain. I have been wasting my time with thoughts about |1|

observation. I would like to think that waiting is not the same as wasting, but here I am given no choice. I pick up a magazine that the dentist has supplied for my entertainment. In the magazine, I read about the secret technologies celebrities use to make themselves more attractive. I look at the computer-generated images of what the celebrities would look like without the use of these technologies. Hump noses. Skinny lips. Sties. Pits. Veins. Boils. Birthmarks. Ingrown hairs. Warts. Keloids. Dermoid Cysts. Some weird dog-bite looking thing. I flip to find the “Top Ten Undercover Uglies” on page 94. The receptionist walks over and pauses by my chair, tugging at her bra strap. She’s wearing a tiny green sundress and her purse is hanging off her elbow. I can smell her watermelon chewing gum. “I’m leaving right now, ” she says. “Okay,” I say. “Meet you in five,” she says, and looks down at me with a crease in her forehead. I realize she’s talking into a headset. “Hold a sec,” she says. She moves the mouthpiece down by her chin. “It’s my lunch break,” she says. “I’ll be back in a hour. Reggie? You there?” She kicks my foot as she walks past. “Damn,” she says. The door bangs shut. I drop the magazine on my lap and look at the door. I see a face in the window and the door opens. A woman enters. I immediately notice her great skin. She smiles and her teeth are white and perfect. She has the Arc de Triomphe of teeth. I do not smile back at her. I am almost certain that this woman uses the technologies listed in the magazine. Of course, there is the possibility that she does not. The possibility that she does not use technology makes me feel worse about myself. I think about the biological shortcomings and poor personal habits that have negatively impacted the quality of my own smile. What if the woman does not use technology? What if she is the respon|2|

sible custodian of a genetic endowment that includes, among other not inconsiderable assets, evenly surfaced teeth with coloration naturally inclined towards the white? I know from conversations with my dentist that tooth enamel tends towards one of three colors: white, yellow, or blue. My own tooth enamel is strongly predisposed for a yellowish appearance and stains easily due to my chronic mouth breathing and also due to my failure to abstain from coffee, strong black teas, cigarettes, and carbonated beverages. The carbonated beverages, I have been told, not by my dentist, leach phosphorous from my bones, contributing not only to dental caries but to osteoporosis, arthritis, and a host of other debilitating and unattractive skeletal conditions. If the woman does not use technologies then I am not more attractive in comparison to the woman than I might appear to be. If she does, then I am more attractive in comparison, though how much more attractive I can’t say for sure. My best guess is that the woman’s smile is entirely engineered, that her teeth have been polished, painfully and at high cost, by an oral surgeon using a laser-based experimental whitening technique. This is how the technique works: lasers sculpt the surface of each tooth, microscopically aligning the tooth particles so that their positions and newly honed angles of refraction maximize their reflective capacity, thereby giving the smile that dazzling, fullspectrum effect. In electing for this treatment, the woman revealed not only her vain, immoderate character, but also her financial imprudence, because cosmetic procedures are not covered by any insurance plans. Furthermore, I think there is something slightly sick, unpoetic, and wrong, about extracting an oral property from light beams. Someone should tell her that. A man in whom she has a romantic interest. “You’re shallow, Jenna,” says the man. “I don’t care if your teeth are made of ivory piano keys. Even if I could play ‘Ode to Joy’ on your |3|

teeth with my tongue, I still wouldn’t date you for a million dollars. Not in a million years. Not ever.” The reception area is clearly empty, but the woman walks to the reception area, her stiff pantsuit emitting insistent, rasping noises, which are unpleasant to hear. If I entered a waiting room, and the waiting room was completely empty, except for one woman, a woman sitting quietly with a magazine, minding her own business, I would take care not to cause a scene with my pantsuit, in the case that I was wearing a pantsuit, which I have never done except on one occasion in court. The woman’s pantsuit is salmon or coral colored. Some people try to make themselves visible, and some people try to make themselves invisible. In the animal kingdom, females are usually invisible, dirtcolored, speckled things that resemble bogs, leaves, or scrubby bushes, background components. When you attract attention, this signals that you are expendable. You don’t have a uterus. You don’t have eggs to warm, or mouths to feed.

|4|

Lemmings My lover thinks we should jump from something iconic. “The Space Needle,” says my lover. My lover is from Seattle. The Space Needle is not renowned outside of Seattle. The Space Needle has a certain regional significance, but it is not, what’s the word? Worldhistorical. What is world-historical? The Empire State Building. “The Empire State Building,” I say. I am from New York City, but that doesn’t matter. If I was a nomad in the Sahel desert and I wanted to jump from something iconic, I would still think of the Empire State Building. This is how I know I’m right. There are lower-order locally iconic structures, such as the Space Needle, and there are higher-order world-historical iconic structures, such as the Empire State Building. The problem with jumping from a lower-order locally iconic structure is that these structures in no way transcend their surroundings. If my lover and I jump from the Space Needle, it will seem as though my lover had the agency in the decision, because the jumping occurred on his turf. It is much more neutral to jump from the Empire State Building. If my lover and I jump from the Empire State Building, it will not indicate anything in particular about our decision-making process. I will not be assigned greater agency than my lover, because the Empire State Building is less on my turf than the Space Needle is on | 23 |

the turf of my lover. Why? Because the Empire State Building occupies the supra-territorial space of World History. The problem with jumping from higher-order world-historical iconic structures is that these structures are often crowded with tourists and also guarded by the government. Higher-order world-historical iconic structures are destination spots or targets, not for a few people, for everyone, and often the same people see the structures as destination spots and targets, either both at once or first one, then the other. The government has to work overtime sorting out who’s who; but the sorting isn’t the end of it. The government has to keep track of everyone they sorted, because even a harmless person is liable to have intentions that change over time, probably for the worse. People tend to feel uncontainable strong emotions in response to higher-order world-historical iconic structures and so the structures are encased in plexi-glass with railings all over, and then there are the security cameras and National Guardsmen. Higher-order world-historical iconic structures are usually quite difficult to jump off. Once I release myself from my ego—in this case, I can see that the desire to jump from a higher-order world-historical iconic structure is pure ego—the solution is obvious. My lover and I should jump from a lower-order locally iconic structure to which neither of us has any connection. We immediately rule out lower-order locally iconic structures in other countries. The paperwork and expense of shipping our bodies back to the US is something that we can—and, therefore, should—spare our families. Also, the structures are taller in the US. Where haven’t we ever been? “Mount Rushmore,” I say. Did one of my aunts move to South Dakota? No, she moved to Wichita. My lover does not look happy. He hates my suggestion. He has yet to surrender his own ego. He still wants to jump from the Space Needle, and I am suspicious of his motives. I | 24 |

suspect that my lover hopes to be posthumously attributed more than his fair share of agency. Of course, this hope countervails against the supreme mutuality of the act. “Mount Rushmore is ugly,” says my lover. “Also, it’s political.” “It’s not political,” I say. “Mount Rushmore?” says my lover. “Not political,” I say. “This shouldn’t be not political,” says my lover. “This should be about love.” “Yes, but negatively defined,” I say. “No,” says my lover.

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White Horses “I hate guys with dumb theories,” says Sarah, and I freeze up a little. Does Sarah think that I’m a guy with dumb theories? I’ve got some stuff on Hoffa. Lindbergh. The Chunnel. Actually that whole category of words. Pleather. Spork. Men who use their first initials and full middle names. These topics have never come up. I am a closelipped fellow, tall, disproportioned, but I don’t think noticeably. I have long nails, not curly long, but longish. Longer than Sarah’s. She might hate that. How to judge? I pick open a pirogi and rake through the contents, shredded carrot, something white and a little mucky. Turns out she’s talking about some other guy, some guy she used to date, a luckless, goateed, underemployed session musician. A guy like the kind of guy you find at those co-ed colleges that were women’s colleges in the ‘70s. I think maybe he did go to one of those colleges and she told me, that’s why I have that impression. Sarah is a careless person, sort of happy-clumsy, with a sweet, round face. Her smile emits this soft wattage. She looks like she’s too young for me but she’s not. That isn’t the appeal though. I don’t know what the appeal is. Or I do know. It’s her body. It’s how she moves. How she is available and disinterested at the same time. She does whatever I want but insensibly, as though she’s battening her core being, giving me the edges to touch. | 26 |

The guy that she dated wasn’t a guy with dumb theories so much as a guy who had one really annoying theory that he kept harping on. His theory was that whatever kind of music you could think of Frank Zappa had done it and done it better. Rock. Reggae. Salsa. You name it. Apparently “you name it” was something he said a lot. “Frank Zappa put out a classical CD,” Sarah says to me. “Did you know that?” “I don’t know a lot of things about Frank Zappa,” I say. “He ran for president,” she says. “That’s not surprising,” I say. “Do you know what he named his kids?” she says. Then her phone rings. Later that week, I’m in Central Asia. I’m driving out to the encampment with the surveys and I see this old man sitting on a flat rock braiding grass but not into a braid, into a larger object with a domestic or military purpose. I show him the surveys and he takes them and goes inside his yurt. I don’t follow him because I’ve been trained, trained on grave trespass and how to avoid it while distributing surveys. The surveys are themselves culturally sensitive documents, or I assume that they are. I can’t read them because they are in the languages of the surveyed peoples, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the first step towards cultural sensitivity. I wouldn’t distribute a survey I could read, meaning, a survey written in English. The surveys I distribute look like products of the peoples’ environments rather than extractive instruments introduced from outside the environments. We build trust that way. After a moment, the old man comes back out of his yurt and gestures for me to follow him inside. Inside the yurt he has a pile of hides, a drinking horn, and a television on a low stool with a few wires hooking it to a car battery. The old man turns the TV to WWF and offers me a hornful of milky liquor. I bow slightly as I accept the horn. The bow isn’t part of my training but comes naturally. It feels appropriate bowing to the old man. He’s small and weathered and seems wise, like | 27 |

David Carradine or Yoda. He’s even crossed his legs, sitting up there on the hides. He doesn’t nod back because he’s watching Outback Jack get the kneedrop on Killer Khan. That’s when I see the poster stuck on the inside of the yurt. I use “stuck” because I can’t tell how the poster is attached to the yurt. Thumbtacks seem unlikely. I imagine some sort of natural gum, something from a tree or the trachea of a small animal. The poster is Frank Zappa in tight pants with no shirt. “Frank Zappa,” I say, pointing at the poster. The old man looks at me. “Frank Zappa,” I say again. “Frank Zappa.” I wish I remembered the names of Frank Zappa’s kids. I can’t hum the chorus of even one lousy Zappa song. We toss back a few more horns and then I bow again and skedaddle. I’m not in the jeep for more than a few minutes when I realize that the guy in the poster isn’t Frank Zappa. It’s Freddy Mercury. The old man must not have had a clue what I was talking about. Suddenly, a whole herd of white horses in grass facemasks gallops across the road. A facemask. That’s what the old man was weaving. The masks look terrifying on the horses, feathers and bones and mirrors woven in with the grasses, covering the eyes. One of the masks is even on fire, and the horse is bucking, whipping its head and striking out with its hooves as it runs. It’s sunset but the horses don’t race into the sunset, they run parallel to the horizon in a snorting stream. I didn’t expect this, masked horses, running. There is a box in the paperwork to record “unusual circumstances,” but “unusual” is a relative term. I’m careful with that box. I’d look foolish if I applied “unusual” to a situation which is completely normal in context, that is, a cultural situation. I try to reserve “unusual” for things that are absolutely abnormal, in some confirmable way. Studies by scientists or statisticians. I work fairly hard to remove all my personal biases.

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Flying Monkeys I get on the airplane and right there, 22B: Margaret. She looks like Margaret except for her skin, which she has tanned very orange, the color of a fresh basketball. “Ciao?” says Margaret. I sit down beside her. “Prego?” I say. I cross my legs. I take off my sunglasses and Margaret mists me with her little silver bottle. My eyes start stinging and my nipples get hard. “Pheromones,” says Margaret. “It’s French?” The stewardess locks the cabin doors and the air starts recycling. The air is warm. The air is warm and crotchlike, with pheromones. Margaret wiggles, she rubs her thighs together and then we’re both pressed back. We’re pressed back in our seats. Our breasts sort of flatten. Momentum does weird things, to breast shape. We are in the sky. “I want the aisle,” says Margaret, so I stand up and she moves over. I crawl across her lap. “The window is better?” says Margaret. She stands up and I move over. She crawls across my lap. “It’s not better,” says Margaret. The captain says, “There’s a rough patch,” or it’s the co-captain who says it, in the loudspeaker. He sounds too young to be the captain. He is definitely not married. He does | 29 |

not have a mustache. He is big and blonde, smooth pecs, no mustache. Maybe waxes? I imagine him like a lifeguard but in a pilot suit. We hit the rough patch. Margaret jerks violently. She yanks the tray and the tray covers her lap. I say, “Is it snack time for Margaret?” A long time ago Margaret was a fatty and then Margaret got skinny. Now Margaret’s face seems slightly rounder, but it could be the orange, and the fact that orange things are round, like basketballs. Margaret wiggles. “I am down to my last frayed nerve,” says Margaret. “It’s you-knowwhere. It’s in my you-know-what.” “Your fanny flower?” I say. “Your fifi? That’s what happened to your French tips? You’re like, clam-digging?” Margaret cannot impress me. “I date Europeans?” I say. “I boffed this leathered Hollander? On stage? In Holland?” I’m thirty-one. Nothing surprises me. Like with guys anymore. Hypertrophy of the perineum? Semi-circumcision? “Remember Nathan?” I say. “You can’t imagine the botch-job? We had to prestidigitate his prostate. Every time?” “We have them too,” says Margaret. “What?” I say. “Prostates,” says Margaret. “Testicles. Tucked up. Very small.” “Like pearls?” I say. “Yeah,” says Margaret. “Coated kind of?” “Yeah,” says Margaret. “They don’t, like, do anything?” “Yeah,” says Margaret. “Inert? Sugar pills? Placebo?” “What?” says Margaret, “God, I’m in a state.” “I dated a plastic surgeon,” I say. “He kept the bedroom really cold?” | 30 |

“I don’t date,” says Margaret, darkly. “I don’t have time.” “Good for you?” I say. I sip my soda water. I think, you are not better than me, Margaret. You are in no ways better. “This is flat,” I say. “She just opened the can?” “I love the light over the Pacific,” says Margaret. “That soft pink beam.” Margaret leans on the tray. We have one of those greasy windows so everything outside seems thicker. Maybe what’s inside seems thicker too, but you can’t look inside from outside unless you’re one of those flying monkeys, those weird guys, from Oz. It’s all kind of sexual. I didn’t get it then, the witch, the group thing, randy animals. Rubies. It was like, a sex dream? Big hands of some farm worker? Dingdong, ding-dong, up her dirty gingham in a windstorm, goat lips, little hooves. I don’t have sex dreams. Alright, this is not a dream. I like the word “ramrod.” I say it in my head, during sex. I wait; I hold it; it’s almost there, but I forget, like what is it, I want, it, like God what again, what is it? I kind of hold my breath, what, what, what, I say, out loud, but wah-wah-wah, gaspy-hot, in his ear or neck or something, and then I say it, an explosion, inside, in my brain, like it’s all tight, all the way through me, jammed in my head, yeah! Ramrod! I did it in my twenties but the timing is what I got right in my thirties. The thirties are about timing. “What about more than one guy?” I say. “Like at the same time?” “It doesn’t last any longer,” says Margaret. “Like at the same time same time?” “Not at the same same time,” I say. “Obviously.” “Yeah, it’s alright,” says Margaret. “I went to a therapist,” I say. “I kept stealing? It wasn’t a money thing. Like for excitement? Stealing is expensive, said my therapist. Like in another way? Like how I was paying her for therapy? $100 for three-quarters of an hour? But it’s not about money, I said. And excuse | 31 |

me, this seems to me like reverse psychology, I said. Like from grade school? Reverse psychology is a real thing, she said. Like in Vienna?” “You’re boring,” says Margaret. “Oh. Oh God. I’m having an orgasm. Because of the altitude?” “You’re right over the engine,” says the stewardess. “This is not a new aircraft. That shaking? That’s old.” “I don’t feel it,” I say. “Listen,” says the stewardess. “Now?” “Does the papaya have added sugar?” I say. “Because it’s bad. My skin?” “You’ve got great skin,” says the stewardess. “Sometimes I get splotchy,” I say. “From B vitamins? Niacin flush?” “Does sugar have B vitamins?” says the stewardess. “Date sugar, yes,” I say. “Beet sugar, yes. Cane sugar, no. Equal, no. Splenda, yes. Sweet and Low, no. Root beer, yes. Diet Coke, no. Diet Coke with Splenda, yes.” I look at Margaret. “You’re really up on sweeteners,” says the stewardess. “Are you sisters?” “No,” I say. “You look like sisters?” says the stewardess. “So do you, with the other stewardess,” says Margaret. “They have the same clothes,” I say. “Our clothes match,” says the stewardess. “There’s that.” “Is it true about special chewing gum for flight attendants?” I say. “With more flavor? For longer? Because it’s medical? For your eardrums?” “I think so,” says the stewardess. “Don’t tell anyone, but this is a shitty airline. I mean to work for. No extras.” “What about pilot meth?” I say. “Have you heard of that? It’s legal? No jitters. Better than for truckers because it’s more prestigious? You have to go to special school? Flight school?” | 32 |

“I’ve thought about it,” says the stewardess. “Flight school.” She has a shiny auburn ponytail and green eyes. One of her eyes is a little offkilter. It’s angled towards her ear. “I got shot in the head, though” says the stewardess. “Outside the Hammerstein Ballroom. As a teenager. I’m okay, but I get mini-seizures.” “What about auto-pilot?” I say. “Like how mini?” “A few seconds,” says the stewardess. “I’m also bad with depth. 3-D. Distance and objects.” “Did they have to shave your head?” I say. “Yeah,” says the stewardess. “You know what’s weird? When my hair grew back, my hairline was a half-inch lower. And I think a slightly different color.” “That happens when you’re pregnant,” I tell her. “Which one of us would you say is more successful,” asks Margaret. I’m wearing travel clothes, no harsh seams or bunching, this really breathable, cute pink tracksuit. Margaret is wearing a white sports jacket and skin-tight trouser shorts. She sits up straighter and sticks out her chest. “Are you leading with your breasts?” I say, politely. “Because we are going the same speed? Do you think your breasts will get somewhere faster?” “I used to think that if I were in an elevator at the top floor of a skyscraper and the elevator cable snapped so the elevator went plummeting down the elevator shaft I would just wait until we got to the first floor and then I’d jump into the air and it would be like starting over again from that jumping point and I’d be the only survivor.” I look at Margaret. I look at the stewardess. I feel strange about it, but I can’t remember which one of them just finished talking. “Everyone thinks that,” I say.

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“I never thought that,” says Margaret. “I’m against the grain. Frictive.” “In movies when the elevator starts falling everyone is looking at the numbers over the door and the numbers go flashing backwards so fast and everyone is screaming, but do you think the numbers really go backwards? Like if the elevator is broken?” “Give this to 26C,” says Margaret. She hands the stewardess a folded Memo note. “In the hotel pool,” I say. “Do you swim with the co-captain? Or does he stay somewhere different?” The stewardess holds the note. Her hand veins are huge and she has chapped skin on her knuckles. “Is that from cabin pressure?” I say, but it could be that her skin is burned chemically, from hotel pools. They have chlorine but aren’t hygienic. You get staphylococci? The stewardess is a vector? Sent by terrorists? The stewardess is looking at Margaret, unpleasantly for a stewardess, because stewardesses get paid to be friendly. It’s their industry. The stewardess is rolling her good eye and sneering. I would be certain that this stewardess is not a stewardess, except Margaret could make a hospice worker look like a terrorist. She is that obnoxious. Like strident? Her tan is clearly fake? I would probably kill Margaret, if I had a boyfriend in IT, or engineering. I would have him make a bomb to blow up Margaret, but not right now, on the same plane. Another time. Margaret is extremely rich. To be fair, there are other things to blame than Margaret. There is family history? Years and years ago, Margaret’s mother started the whole fashion thing, against panty lines. This was way before it mattered, about panty lines, because panty lines didn’t exist yet, in America. Women had stockings and slips and puffy things, poodle-skirts, but Margaret’s mother knew, somehow, someday, slacks and sheath dresses and lowriding light-weight capris would be wildly popular, and women would | 34 |

have all kinds of aesthetic problems, because of panty lines. Women would look terrible in a way we hadn’t even imagined yet. Margaret’s mother decided to fight, so women wouldn’t look terrible, in the future. Margaret’s mother was a visionary? She invented thongs? Or marketed them? I hate family histories. Whenever a guy tells me his family history I eat croutons. I eat the croutons from my salad and then I can’t hear anything. Nathan’s father fixed the knees of famous athletes? Or he was a theater director? Nathan had a brother? Margaret’s mother looked like Margaret, but bigger, with a paralyzed vocal chord. She always carried fifty-pound bales of hand-made Andorran garters on her shoulders, no problem. When I met her, she was maybe eighty, but with a powerful upper body, and big boobs, and her cleavage brown-spotted and finely wrinkled, like natural-fiber Japanese paper. “If a man has an ulcerated sperm duct,” said Margaret’s mother. “The seminal vesicle secretion becomes acidic. If you feel a burning sensation, in your throat, gargle immediately with salt water.” “I think your voice is sexy,” I said to Margaret’s mother, but what I meant was more specific. I meant that there’s this precedent in our country for finding sex appeal in husky, deep, half-strangled voices, but only for small, delicate-boned women, not for Margaret’s mother. One time, Margaret’s mother showed me her thong. Her thong could have been a hammock, a filmy pink hammock for a half-dozen sexy, small, delicate-boned women, on an island. You sleep on the beach, lots of girls like on Lesbos, but you meet rich men and get filmed for TV. “Swallowing is sexy,” said Margaret’s mother. “I try not to say anything.” Then Margaret made martinis. That was many years ago. We were best friends? Me and Margaret? “What do you do?” says the stewardess.

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“I’m in intimate apparel,” says Margaret and then there’s this pause so I can say what I do. The stewardess is waiting, but so is Margaret. I look at Margaret. The thing to say is “I heard about your mother. Sorry?” Margaret is a businesswoman. I imagine her smiling. “I don’t have time to be sorry?” The stewardess slips Margaret’s note under her blouse. I say, “Most women are wearing the wrong-size bras.” “Oh, I’m not,” says the stewardess. “I requested my FBI file. I know all of my personal statistics.”

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Hart I am in the den enjoying the ergonomic features of my husband’s chair. Cosmetically, the chair is not perfect. The leather has minor blemishes, but, of course, leather is subject to minor blemishes. After all, leather is skin. I like the adjustable padded arms of the chair. The chair has a heavy-duty nylon base with a dual-wheel carpet caster. They call the seat a “contour seat.” I had always imagined that ergonomics was a science devoted to the study and support of male bodies. Males have corner offices. To me, everything about “corner” sounds uncomfortable. Male executives sit bolt upright all day behind desks in corner offices. The desks have sharp edges and shiny angles. Obviously, the men need ergonomics. “Contour,” however, is a female word. The female body has more contours than the male body. Technically, this might not be true, but it seems true. I’ve heard people, if not say it, insinuate it in one way or another. “Curvy” is vernacular for contours. Land is another thing with contours, but then land is very curvy, similar to a female body. Females and land don’t need ergonomics due to their contours, which make them naturally comfortable and also comforting. Thinking about it, I realize that females and land are inherently | 37 |

ergonomic, which ties into what I thought before about supporting male bodies. I am not a male, but I do feel physical relief sitting in my husband’s chair. The discs of my spine feel spongier and the tension I hold in my sacrum has released. My husband walks into the room. It is a Federal holiday. My husband is wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and deck shoes. I look at my husband across his desk. My husband looks at me. My husband laughs. If my husband were a character in my book, laughing, I would write, “He barked a laugh,” because it’s a nice line and it captures something abrupt and harsh about the sound. Sometimes my husband doesn’t bark his laughter. He chuckles at a book or the television, I would write, warmly. I most often hear this barking laugh at company parties. At company parties, I listen to my husband and other assertive men ride each other about “performance,” which seems to be a canopy term for many competitive sub-fields. Sometimes another assertive man in a blue button-down shirt approaches the circle and says “How are you doing, ladies?” and the laughs start barking and my husband pulls me in from the outskirts of the circle, puts his hand on the small of my back and says, “Why don’t you go get Scott a Diet Coke,” by which I understand that I should not. I don’t move. I shake my head, smiling. When a man drinks a Diet Coke at a gathering of men, instead of drinking scotch or gin or vodka, he is revealing that he wants to avoid alcohol or wants to control his caloric intake. This is a social mistake. The ability to maintain composure despite a high blood alcohol level, like the ability to maintain a muscular waistline without resorting to special diet practices, is a standard of masculinity. The introduction of a Diet Coke into a gathering of men performs a shaming function, and indicates that the recipient’s sexuality is not secure in the eyes of his associates. I smile at Scott as though he were the neighbor’s child. | 38 |

“I am trying to come up with a title for my book,” I tell my husband. I tap the mouse so that the screensaver on my husband’s computer (a photo of the beach at Hilton Head) stops folding up into a cube and rotating against the black background. “I need to couple words,” I tell my husband, “that will capture the hearts and minds of everyone who reads them.” “Hearts and Minds,” says my husband. “I think you’ve just said it.” I type “Hearts and Minds” and then I use key commands to bold the words. It is a terrible title. I switch the first letters. I’ve seen this done to interesting effect, but in this instance switching letters yields “Marts and Hinds.” This is a title equal in terribleness to the first title. Hinds are good. They are Renaissance beasts, extremely romantic. During the stag hunt in Chapter Four, Rhobert stays Bryn’s hand before he can loose the notched arrow, and the young hind, still and slim and white, quivers, turns, and bounds across the stream. She slips between the spruce trees. “Mart” is from the Middle Flemish, but only scholars and writers of historical fiction would know that. To the readers, “mart” means modern, convenient, cheap. Also, there are no marts in my book, not even in the archaic sense of the word, which is synonymous with the noun “fair,” as in festival. I erase the title. “You’re making this harder than it is,” says my husband. He is still laughing, but his stance is awkward. I am very aware of my position, which is stable, well supported by ergonomics. My husband is shifting his weight from foot to foot. He puts a hand on the padded armrest. He is very near to shooing me from his chair. I look at my husband. “You have never titled anything in your life,” I say. There is a deep silence in the den after I utter those words, the silence that comes when a painful, unspoken truth is finally announced, though as the silence deepens, I’m unsure whether it was a true or significant thing to say. My husband laughs. | 39 |

“What about Andrew?” says my husband. “Andrew Payne Ellis?” I say. “Named for my father Andrew Payne?” “Oh, so you titled him?” says my husband. “Just because it’s your father?” “Fathers have nothing to do with it,” I tell my husband.

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Endangered Species We have a problem with the turtles. “What are they?” says team-leader. “What are turtles?” I check the turtles. They are ceramic. I tell team-leader, “They are ceramic.” “Don’t tell me,” he says. “The lenders.” I write the lenders. They send a letter: “No credentials.” Red stamps. Block print. Denial. I leave the mail tent. I check the turtles. What are turtles? They are textiles. I tell team-leader, “They are textiles.” “Your ass,” he says. “The record.” Shade. A rattan chair. He dandles something fuzzy. I ship turtles. They ship back: “Fumigate for weevils.” I get my knapsack. The attachments. I spray-hose turtles. I feel woozy. What are turtles? They are Zulus. I tell team-leader, “They are Zulus.” I hear: “Zulus.” It is an echo. I go far down inside the mineshaft. Team-leader, counting diamonds. “Digit digit,” says team-leader. A great distance. A metal rail. A coal cart. Fuzzy dark. Descending. “Where are you?” I hear: “Are you?” I think his linen is a headlamp. He thinks my headlamp is the moon.

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Wolves A feral girl wrote a book. Everyone is talking about it. Short-list this, short-list that. The worst part is, the book is a good book, a great book, has nothing to do with her life, the peculiarities of her circumstance, of being a feral girl, even though the feral girl has mass appeal: ‘70s porno femme, long blonde hair, firm jaw, cleft chin. Actually, she looks exactly like Darryl Hannah, there’s no way to avoid the comparison. It’s all very cinematic. Not even. Very made-for-TV. She was raised by wolves in the vicinity of a glacial lake, in Canada, but it turns out her parents were Swedish-born Neuroscientists who died several years ago in a train derailment outside Stuttgart. They were attending a conference in Untertürkheim entitled “The Effects of Meditation on the Brain.” The Dalai Lama has reached out to the feral girl, as has Richard Gere and several other celebrities. Growing up I was poor. Mother cleaned houses and on the weekends, while she mopped the floors, I washed dishes, humming along to the sound of water-pumps pulling water through the pipes. I eked a thin memoir out of that—The Pinesol Barrens—revelatory, I think, to people who imagine that New Jersey is all shopping malls and sprawl, a periurban commuter beltway looping Philly and Manhattan. The road we | 42 |

lived on wasn’t even paved. Father built the house, cheap white pine with knots that sweated in the heat. We all have pitch scars on our foreheads. Mine is near the center, above the plucked space between my eyebrows, and the boys used to call me Hindu. “Hindu you do?” they’d say, and laugh. “I’m Sicilian,” I said, and then they called me “Hindu Deep Dish.” One of the boys wore me down, kept at me day after day, tapping the eraser of his pencil on my neck in homeroom until I let him take my pants off behind the music trailer. In the memoir I changed his name to Jason Houghton but his name was Ricky Henderson. He had a knobby white face like a bulb of garlic, so much acne on his back and shoulders that I didn’t want to put my hands there. We lay down and I wouldn’t touch him. Instead I pulled up tufts of grass. “There is hope for the lyric novel . . .” is how one critic began his review of her book. “Please,” I said, and tossed the magazine onto the carpet. “It is disheartening,” said my husband, slowly, bending to pick up the magazine, to smooth the crease from the folded pages. “It is disheartening,” my husband said, “the perdurable animosity that women feel for women.” My husband is a librarian. The overwhelming majority of librarians are females. They give my husband a lot of attention, some of it critical. My husband never criticizes his co-workers. There is a pecking order and my husband is at the top of it. He only complains about the pencils, the library pencils. I’ve seen them scattered on the tables, for the borrower’s convenience. Short pencils, diamonded by incisors, lipstick-stained. I never pick them up. They look like cigarettes in an adultery. I write call numbers with a pen from my purse. Public libraries are not clean places, but they are safe places. It is not a crime to abandon a newborn at a public library. When planes | 43 |

wreck in the mountains or gondola cables snap over gorges, the children can survive on snow melt in the warmth of a foxhole. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more common, though, that children slide down into the drop box. They are carted to the shelving center. They crawl between the dark stacks, nurse at the seams of soldered pipes in city basements. Instead of birth certificates, slobbered colophons in their tiny fists, to distinguish them. I piece these images together. My husband doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell me what he does in a day.

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Unicorns I live with Dave. Dave went to boarding school and is writing a novel. He went to the same college I did, but it was the boarding school that prepared him for writing a novel. It must be the boarding school. Otherwise I would be writing a novel too. “What’s the difference between writing and not writing?” I ask Dave. “You mean like Derrida?” asks Dave. Dave likes Derrida. Derrida also went to boarding school, but Derrida’s family isn’t rich like Dave’s family. Derrida had a sports scholarship. I know more about Derrida than Dave does, because I am a woman. Dave is phallogocentric, i.e. Dave’s novel is mostly the phallus. “I don’t mean like Derrida,” I say. “I mean, really, actionably, what’s the difference?” When I am not writing, I feel bad. But when I am writing, I am usually not writing. I feel bad. I sit in front of the computer doing small, surreptitious things to my body. When Dave is writing, his face is motionless and he doesn’t blink. His posture is excellent and his fingers never stop moving across the keyboard, which is laid out in the German style for maximal efficiency. Dave doesn’t understand me. When Dave is writing there is no fraction, “not-writing/writing,” there is only writing, | 45 |

or “writing/writing,” which is 1writing/1writing, which isn’t a fraction, it’s a whole number, or as a percentage, 100% writing, and Dave can do that because of boarding school and the German keyboard and the phallus, which are all reducible to the same thing (phallus). “You are happy and repellant,” I say to Dave. The sun is coming in through the windows of our apartment. It’s almost Friday night. I take a train to Union Square. On the train, I attract the attention of a depressed man. I am reading a book, a hard-covered book, and every time I finish a page, I glue it to the page before. “Fuck you too,” says the depressed man. He means the cow on the Elmer’s glue. Elmer the cow, sneering. Elmer looks superior. Elmer is married to Elsie. They are happy and repellant. “Anthropomorphism is fucked up,” says the depressed man. “Elmer’s glue is vegan,” I say. “It’s gluten-free. It’s produced synthetically, in the United States of America, by union labor. Elmer isn’t an animal. He’s a corporate logo.” “Corporations are fucked up,” says the depressed man. “Corporations are people too,” I say. The depressed man and I understand each other. The depressed man is an artist and takes me to an art gallery in the Village. Art in the Village has gotten whimsical. Has art in the Village always been so whimsical? Whimsy is how the phallogocentric artists try to hide the phallus. They hide the phallus right there in the open, with unicorns. The depressed man and I look at some paintings of unicorns. The unicorns are doing strange things; they are floating in life rafts, or they are embracing large rabbits and professional boxers. The horns are long and glistening. We go to another art gallery. These days, the phallogocentric artists have also been knitting things on knitting machines. I think about all the Chinese ladies sewing t-shirts in windowless buildings in Chinatown and I think about all the artists knitting flowers in | 46 |

bright lofts in DUMBO. The artists are listening to The Arcade Fire and NPR. I feel self-righteous. The artists should be taken into a field and shot. Self-righteousness is irritating. I should be taken into a field and shot. I imagine myself being shot in a field, by Chinese ladies. Would the Chinese ladies feel self-righteous, shooting me? They would not. They would shoot me selflessly, thinking about higher powers, like the ocean. The Chinese ladies would look sexy, in tight jeans and cutoff shirts, holding snub-nosed derringers and lighting each other’s cigarettes. I wish I were a lesbian. I would be overpowered by a sexy gang of Chinese lady biker-girls. They would tie me down and then they would put their silicone derringers in harnesses. They would take turns inserting their derringers into my trepanning hole. I wish I had a trepanning hole. I wish pure light were pouring from my third eye. I wish I were getting fucked in the head, in a field, splashes of light, sun-squirts, little prisms of skull on the milkweeds. What if I associate lesbian with Asian fetish? That would be wrong. That would mean my fantasies are overdetermined by the power structure. I amend my imagination. Now I am being taken into a field and shot by self-righteous white lesbians whose fathers are famous politicians. Afterwards, we have a picnic, tiny tongue sandwiches, tiny watercress and cream cheese sandwiches, tiny salmon sandwiches, Prim’s, petit fours. A discreet entourage of Ecuadorian maids use hand vacuums to remove the red ants and pollens. A long time ago, I was sitting on Dave’s back. He couldn’t move his neck from hours of writing. I was rubbing my hands up and down his back. Dave has a lot of hair on his head but no hair on his back. He has a smooth, feminine back. I was using my thumbs and making pink splotches come up on Dave’s skin. I leaned over and put my mouth on the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. I let my tongue touch the skin at the same time I breathed out through my mouth. Dave stood up and put his shirt on. | 47 |

“Do you want to watch Apocalypse Now?” asked Dave. “Okay,” I said. We sat close together on the couch watching Apocalypse Now. Dave started rubbing my arm. I climbed on Dave’s lap. He put his hands on my hips then pulled his hands away. He cupped my elbows with his hands. Our faces came closer and closer together and I stuck my tongue out a little and Dave stuck his tongue out a little and our tongues touched outside of our mouths and it seemed like our mouths were going to keep getting closer together until they also touched, with our tongues inside the mouths, but Dave was pushing me further and further away by the elbows. My tongue was out as far as it would go. It felt dry. I opened my eyes. My ass was on Dave’s kneecaps. “Ow,” said Dave. “This is weird,” said Dave. “You’re my best friend. You’re a lesbian.” “Do you know those vegetarians who sometimes eat meat if they find it in the trash?” I said. “Feel this,” said Dave. He put my fingers on the side of his neck and I rubbed and could feel the flesh sliding over something flat and cornered and hard. “A microchip?” I said. “I’m afraid I’m not human,” whispered Dave. I nodded. “Have you noticed how perfect my skin is?” asked Dave. “Like, too perfect?” “Yes,” I said. “I’ve noticed. I notice everything.” The depressed man and I look at the glittery knitted flowers. I notice they were made with reflective yarn. The artists didn’t make the reflective yarn. They just knitted the flowers. Filipino kids make the reflective yarn in the Philippines. They make the yarn thinking about higher powers. | 48 |

“What’s a higher power to kids in the Philippines?” I ask the depressed man. It can’t be the ocean, the Philippines is surrounded by ocean, ordinary ocean. The depressed man thinks. “Simon Cowell,” says the depressed man. “Grand Theft Auto.” He sneers. Really, though, the depressed man’s cynicism is a veneer. Underneath he is tremulous and filled with awe. “Intimacy is the process by which two people gradually discover they are exactly alike,” I say. “True or false?” “C,” says the depressed man. “It’s always C.” “It’s not,” I say. “More than 25%,” says the depressed man. “There are 26 letters,” I say. “I don’t mean that. That was Eurocentric.” “Let’s get dumplings,” says the depressed man. We go to No. 1 Dumpling house on Eldridge Street. We crowd inside and look at the grill cook lifting the sesame pancakes out of the oil. “I want a sesame pancake with scallions and carrots,” I say. The grill cooks throws water on the grill and slams a metal lid over the dumplings to trap them inside, with the steam. Then he starts cutting up the pancakes. He stuffs them with scallions and carrots and puts them in waxed paper bags. He hands them over the counter to the Chinese people. A white girl comes in. She’s wearing tall boots and a body stocking. She has a heavy gold chain around her hips, with a gold elephant head in the middle. The grill cook hands her a waxed paper bag. “That was my pancake,” I say. “It’s okay.” “Do you think she goes to the Columbia School of Journalism?” asks the depressed man. “I think she just got married to a party promoter,” I say. “They are married, but they are in no way slaves to convention. They are nontraditionalists in the deepest sense. They will give their baby a faux-hawk and every Sunday they will vary their brunches. Some Sundays they | 49 |

will brunch on buckwheat pancakes with raspberry sauce and other Sundays they will brunch on novelty pirogi.” “Pumpkin pirogi?” says the depressed man. “I meant blintzes,” I say. It is very hot in No. 1 Dumpling House and the depressed man is not insightful. He is failing to make creative connections. The white girl looks right at me. She has that smoky eye make-up. She’s holding the waxed paper bag in both hands. “It’s okay,” I say. I wish I were wearing a body stocking. I would be working on my novel in a body stocking, with Dave, drinking, probably a gimlet. “I should be working on my novel right now,” I say. “Sorry, I need to say that sometimes. It’s a nervous tic. I’m having a good time.” “There’s nothing for us here,” says the depressed man. The depressed man is looking bleakly at the grill. “Is that a quote?” I say. Most of the food on the grill is either beige or off-white. A cop comes in. The grill cook gives a waxed paper bag to the cop. The cop sniffs it. I think about the billboards, 1-800-Cop-Shot. I think about the little red lasers people put on their key-chains. “I am pulling out my derringer,” I say. The cop looks at me. I lean against the wall so the cop can squeeze past. The cop takes a coke out of the cooler. “Let’s get Cuban sandwiches,” says the depressed man. We walk to the block with the Cuban sandwich shops. I look at the Cuban flags. “Is this new?” I say. “This block?” The depressed man orders two Cuban sandwiches in to-go containers. “Let’s walk to the park,” says the depressed man. We sit on a bench and open the containers. I bite my Cuban sandwich. It is extremely delicious. I feel manipulated. “Wonder bread is not Cuban,” I say. “Wonder bread is a franchise. There are no franchises in Cuba.” | 50 |

“The Cuban revolution is a franchise,” says the depressed man. “Castro drives a Ford,” I say. “Ford is a franchise.” “We’re wearing the same pants,” says the depressed man. I look at our pants. They are the same. “Embodiment is unendurable,” I say. “Listen to my heart,” says the depressed man. I put my ear on his chest. “Do you hear it?” says the depressed man. “My heart is going doom. Doom-doom. Doom-doom.” “Secretly, I want to be adored and accepted by everyone,” I say. “How about me?” says the depressed man. “I think it’s what most people want,” I say. “I mean, what if I love and adore you?” says the depressed man. “You’re not everyone,” I say. “To rely on one person is pathological and codependent.” I feel more sexual in the springtime. The depressed man and I are sitting very close together. I have my palm on his chest. “Doom-doom,” says his heart. “Okay,” I say. “In return, I want you to make me less lonely and to save me from death,” admits the depressed man. He looks at me adoringly and acceptingly, because everything is now my fault. “I love you,” I say. I feel embarrassed so I look down at the New York Post on the sidewalk. I try to cover the headlines with my feet but there is another New York Post on the sidewalk, and another, and another. “Did you read the article about the Pelham grandmother killed by wild dogs?” asks the depressed man. “Not this week,” I say. “She was riding around on a sit-down mower,” says the depressed | 51 |

man. “The wild dogs heard the sit-down mower and thought it was a bear, a very weak bear, dazed from hibernation. The wild dogs tore into the grandmother. She crawled heroically through the yard, the wild dogs hanging off of her, and then she got run over by the lawnmower.” “Did you read about the kids who climbed inside the helium balloon at the car dealership?” I say. “No,” says the depressed man. “Did they die?” “They died,” I say. “You are stupid and unethical,” says the depressed man. “I’m afraid I’m not human,” I say. “Feel this.” I put the depressed man’s fingers on my throat. “What am I supposed to be feeling?” says the depressed man. “I don’t know,” I say. “What are you supposed to be feeling?” I shut my eyes. I like his fingers on my throat. I wish I had a mechanical larynx. I wish my voice box were a shock collar. I open my eyes and stare at the depressed man. He has a short, depressing beard. “Everything I say is painful and important,” I say. I try to increase the voltage in my brain. The depressed man takes his fingers off my throat. I shut my eyes. I smell linden trees. The air is very still. It is room temperature everywhere except on my skin, which is body temperature. I try to stop breathing so as to equilibrate inside and outside pressures. “I’m imploding,” I say. “Okay,” says the depressed man. He holds me. I implode.

| 52 |

Acknowledgements Thanks to the following journals in which these stories appeared: “Swans,” Caketrain “Unicorns,” Fanzine “Bones,” Marginalia “Flies,” mud luscious “White Horses,” “Cat,” Quarterly West “Three Pigs,” Quick Fiction “Ugly Ducks,” “Flying Monkeys,” “Small Sharks,” Tarpaulin Sky “Frog,” Thirty Under Thirty Anthology “Dog,” Wolf in a Field Special thanks to Joanna Howard for her insights, generosity, and rollicksome genius. Thanks to Brian Evenson, Carole Maso, Renee Gladman, Brian Conn, Roxanne Carter, Linnea Ogden, Christine Gardiner, Shya Scanlon, Jonathan Redhorse, Brianna Colburn, Michael Stewart and the rest of my teachers and classmates at Brown. Thanks to my core supporters, including Corinne Teed, Chemlawn McDermott, Radhika Singh, Sarah Lee, Anna Purinton, Hana Tauber, Miriam Morales, Kallista Bley, Carrie Collier, Sarah Bowman, Deb Dormody, Art Middleton, Jen and Jason Corace, Gladys Gould, Kathy Williams, Joe Potts, David Penn, Eli Milholland, Maralie Armstrong, Anand Balakrishnan, Ian Henderson, Rhetta Barron, Jayne Stuecklen, Nathan Goldhaber, Steph Smolinsky and Nico Goldreyer. Thanks to Georgia and Joseph Ruocco, for everything, always.

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About

the

Author

Joanna Ruocco is the author of The Mothering Coven. She co-edits Birkensnake, a fiction journal. She currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

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