The girl in the apartment across (or as we in my family say, acrost) the courtyard from me is having spectacular sex. She and her boyfriend moved in about a year ago and all I heard from them was the boy's boorish voice in heavy and pontificating discourse, warped by walls and distance to where I could only make out the occasional word. Words like "halo" and "xbox". He moved out one day in August, one van and a buddy, his clothes and face wrinkled and worn, his hair distraught. He hailed me as I went to enter my foyer and told me he was leaving, the first words he ever spoke to me. "Off to better and brighter things!" I said. "Maybe" he said. The sex started soon after.
At first I thought she was weeping, and I put my earphones in. The walls here are very thin, and to give privacy one must do more sometimes than close a window. The weeping went on and on and I took my earphones off, concerned. Ahhhh, I thought, that's not weeping.... and back to book on tape.
Perhaps she is not having spectacular sex. Perhaps she is doing many very frightening, very exciting somersaults. Perhaps she is faking. If she is faking she is dedicated to the fraud, committing herself to the act sometimes several times a day. Somehow, I don't think this is the case. I almost feel sorry for the boy who left. Sorry you Shlub, you treestump of a man, sorry you big toe in trousers, you brown haired tousle, you shrimphook, you fat thighed monocle! You didn't do it for her! And now someone else is! All the time! Many times! I hope you're doing well! Don't worry, your girl is fine!!
I don't mind hearing the sex. They aren't right next door or above me, there is some muffling involved. From other apartments sometimes I do hear weeping, sometimes I hear fights or screaming or drunken girls in piercing hilarity. From my apartment I imagine other people hear the occasional burp, or me yelling at my cat, or both- making it sound like I am yelling at the cat for burping. Or sometimes I will sing my cat's theme song while she is furiously biting my arm Craaaazy on you! Craa-aaazy on you! Let me go crazy crazy on you! which is what I imagine she is singing in her own head but because she doesn't have words I have to vocalize for her.
I ran into a friend yesterday and I told him about the fabulous sex I am not having. He brushed aside my story like cheezit crumbs off a beautiful woman's bosom. You could be having sex.... "That's not the point! I'm not jealous, I'm just relating a story!" he didn't let me finish. You could be having sex. Lots of guys would have sex with you, but you're all "I'm May, I'm crazy!" He said this while flailing his arms in the air and running around. I would've given him five to the two if he wasn't so spot on. I arched my brow admiringly. "Oh, you're good, my friend. You're good."
I had a dream the other night that I was in a store that sold only chocolate covered banana products. Chocolate covered banana cereal, chocolate covered banana chips, chocolate covered banana bananas... They claimed to have more chocolate covered banana products than anywhere in the whole world. I related this to Mama and she said, Hmmm, I wonder what Freud would have to say about that? I hadn't even thought about it like that. I'm glad that I didn't mention that in the dream I was in the store because I was looking for someone. He wasn't there. I thought I don't even LIKE chocolate covered bananas! Now if this place sold mustard...
Petit Fleur writes about the marvelous brain and it's electric pathways, it's firesnap magic and I have to concur. While I am wandering around my days, wheeling through shifts at work and laundry and money and mold in the bathroom, my brain is doing the jizzy math of my basest instincts. My age plus my solitude multiplied by the moaning thumps across (acrost) the courtyard and divided by the heft and holler of my nephew in my arms = Chocolate Covered Bananas! You don't even like chocolate covered bananas?! says my brain How do you know if you haven't had one in a while? Look at the variety! So many kinds to choose from!
My brain may have to wait. In my head there are many kinds of brain (I'm May! I'm crazy!) and the primal sex monkey part is not the one with the keys to the kingdom. I am sober, you know. So very very very sober. It's not like I can go out with friends, get a couple of drinks in me and loosen up enough to sit back in my chair, much less let the hair down and peek over the glasses with that look that means come hither, that means maybe, I take the glasses off. No, I avoid all such situations. The compliments on my appearance I get are from old ladies at the grocery store. They like my buns, and they are not referring to my ass.
Today is the fifteenth anniversary of my car accident and I have to mention that here because it is on my mind. I do not recommend getting hit by a car, but I will say that for the first few years after the accident it imbued me with a great courage and confidence. After seeing my bones come through my skin, after watching my wounds weep red stained yellow tears, after waking up each morning crying before I even opened my eyes, falling on my hop-step way to the bathroom and waiting for someone to come along to pick me up, after all that normal life seemed so sweetly tame. The girls who intimidated me no longer had tigers in their eyes, the boys who would not give me the time of day were whitewashed selfish and preening. If I wanted to do something, like get in my truck and drive west alone with no map and no phone, I did it. If I wanted a job I just went to the place where I wanted to work and asked for a job. If I needed a cheap place to live I called a man I'd never met who I heard charged only $111 a month for one side of a duplex and instead ended up living with him, for free. Why not? But now it's been fifteen years and life has stepped in. At some point a few years ago I realized I was afraid again, and that scared the hell out of me. When I got sober, I made my life very very safe.
Part of getting sober in AA is doing a sexual inventory. You write down every sex thing you have ever done and you read it to someone. The point of this is to figure out where you have harmed others, where you've been selfish or destructive, so you can break your patterns and make amends when necessary. I thought it was great. I would go to meetings and say "So, I'm doing my sex inventory and I was thinking about the time when I was in bed with two of my coworkers..." not knowing that most people do not talk about their sex inventory at meetings. Cancer, yes. Bad haircut, yes. Sex inventory? Not so much. They'll listen, oh yes, they will listen, but talking about it seems to make everyone shy. I wasn't ashamed of my sexual behavior as much as I was ashamed of my regular drunken convivaling and besides, it wasn't nearly so interesting as I've heard through the rumor mill that it was. Three-way with the coworkers? Never happened. I enjoyed the moment but hopped out of bed before the deed was done, shouting thank yous for a lovely evening and stealing three Newcastles out of the fridge before sneaking off into the night. I'm a story whore, a make-out slut, but I get as twisted and tight as my professional hair when faced with actual promiscuity. Sigh.
So now what's a girl to do? I'm getting wrinkles around my eyes and sag around the back. If my 31 year old breasts are perky but there is no one around to see them, do they still perk? How does one go from talking about kazoos and the weather to slipping off the skivvies? I don't think it will happen at the coffeeshop, or good lord, at the Publix.
And I'm not crazy, I'm waiting to fall in love. I'm waiting for that moment of head rush, for my neck to prickle and my stomach to heave. Sex for sex sake is a young woman's game. One who believes that a tumble bump means she's beautiful, or that a warm body keeps the cold out of her own. I have showers. I have a lovely cat. Besides, I have a lot to do. I need to clean out the refrigerator and learn to cartwheel on the left side. Busy busy.
Amanda Ziller once said "Birth, copulation and death. One day I was born, someday I shall die, today I will copulate." Today, I will probably not copulate. Today I will walk to the intersection that knocked my bones out and cross the road, and then cross back. I will go to the grocery store. I will get chocolate and I will get bananas. I will stick one of those things in the freezer and one on the stove, and tonight when the cold comes in the windows and the moaning ululations reach with sticky fingers to my ears, I'll sidestep my wicked tender brain's dreamplan by distracting it with cool and sweet. You want chocolate covered bananas, you psuedo-Freudian charlatan? Here you go. You can have chocolate covered bananas. All. night. long.
