Origin And Landscape, by Brent Powers
Terminology, by Spencer Livingston
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Origin And Landscape
Brent Powers
Her thigh was sticky, her hair smelled faintly of garlic. Well, she was a sandwich chef: her title; she insisted upon it.
“I am the sandwich chef here at Tom’s.”
To me she was always just, “salami and provolone,” a spark going through the air, her lazy smile, the way she shrugged and looked resigned.
But what’s this? We’re all over each other in the hall, we’re still at Tom’s, we’re both waiting for the bathroom. She leans against the wall and yawns, covers her mouth, laughs one of those breathy laughs you know would put little dots of spittle on your cheek if she … but she is … I’m loaded, I don’t care, I just grab for her, and her mouth gives way like soft, wet dough, her mouth opening, crackling with gooey spit as my tongue breaks through into warm wet darkness … then she’s with me, she was just going home when I groped her, so instead she comes with me to my house, which is this little place cut into the side of the ruins, the door is carved from rosewood, with grinning heads and lettering in some ancient script, not too shabby for working garbage. I think I asked her, “You like it? Thank you, very expensive, traded it for Chateaux Lafitte Rothschild, ain’t worth shit from the heat but these fools … they don’t know the world’s ended.”
She looks at me like I’m some kinda Great Man. She scrunches her lips together, reaches out and gives me a squeeze in the crotch. No. Her hand’s on it. My hand’s on her, all over her, both hands, the garlic is spreading, the world is full of sex and garlic, lips, nipples, hair, finally I’m getting into her pants, it’s been a whole year I’ve been coming to Tom’s for my Friday night sub and a jug, preparing for lonely-guy program 2.o. Since that stupid divorce from whatever her name was. Hardly knew the woman and here I’m married to her for eleven years, Christ, will ya? And the last year is how long I’ve been playing what if? with this young lady.
It’s late now. Very late. We’ve watched some ancient spy flick on the server. The dope made it better, and the wine; real wine, not some relic in a sooty bottle. We drank it straight from the jug, even took sips and exchanged it, back and forth, swish swish gurgle gurgle, the flesh is a fun thing, quite versatile the way it takes all those interesting forms that want to fuck each other and make out afterwards, smoking that dope, drinkin that wine, watch them dopey downloads, shee-ut, the flesh is good, the flesh is right. Yet why is she …?
“Hey!”
.
The sun rises over the huge slab of provolone cheese. Then a slice of Genoa salami gently comes to rest upon the white surface of the provolone cheese. This is followed by a vast slice of bread falling hard upon the salami and the provolone cheese. Day has begun. Thoughts arise from the mind of those viewing the sunrise over what is now a half sandwich consisting of fallen bread underneath which rests a slice of Genoa salami and a huge slab of provolone cheese.
She was spread out before me, a map of the Campania. Here were her thighs, sticky with garlic and love; they described the Bay of Naples, and not far arose twin Vesuvios, smoldering with my kisses. Soon enough she was the real landscape and I was a man found dead among the crates and barrels stacked on a pier. The police had arrived by now. One of them had met her in Roma and was no longer quite real. The balloon rises, carrying my soul aloft. My soul is made up of love’s memory; it is only a little knotting up of impressions, of sights and sounds and smells. It is a sigh born away by the wind.
Terminology
Spencer Livingston
She had walked away from a man without looking back when he had used the term “sadomasochism”. He had also used the common redundancy “. . .the reason is because . . .” and that also, by itself, would have led to his rejection.
A sadist needs to inflict what is not wanted or not tolerated, she knew. And a masochist desires pain and degradation; needs what is not wanted. By definition, the two can never be in a relationship together. She knew this.
But there was someone else who understood the exchange. Who knew that there was no divide except for play, who could place himself in her hands without fear, and take her in his hands when he sensed she wanted to be there.
She went to see him. There was a lot of what outsiders would call violence, and she and he were very happy. They agreed. They were happy during the violent sex and they were just as happy when they woke up together the next afternoon.
They were happy because they remembered much of the night before. They had passed themselves back and forth to each other’s care. They had shared big violence, but more significantly, they had shared tiny little treasures.
She had given, and he had tears-in-eyes received, a little dusting of dark hair on her forearms, and a beautiful constellation of freckles, and the gorgeous teardrop hips, and that little place at the small of her back, the one that only a real lover or a spine surgeon knows, and the imprints her body could make on his, some permanent, others more fleeting, and the treasured liquids, and the out-of-place other little color drops in her blue eyes, and the thickness here and the delicacy there, and the pretty flaws; and he can still hear her voice in his sheltering mind, even though she never spoke to him again. And she had let him do all of the dirty stuff, and he had done all of the other stuff too.
He found that he needed to get beyond his love, which was gone, and make something new. He made notes: “I used to be able to love. I used to love. I could love once. I used to be able to love.” He did not see how his terminology kept him from the new thing he was seeking.
I put myself in her hands. She accepted. And left very soon, but left me a good job. I have enough traces to keep me busy checking them for the rest of my life. An unforgettable scent for one. A look in the eye. A mouth twist. Easy things for such a beautiful presence to dish out. I’m studying and revisiting all the points of contact. The scars are visible to anyone. The other places can only be seen by me.
