The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [55]
Art. The expression of human imagination. Or emotions that have been locked inside a body spilled out all over the goddamn place.
Always he made me laugh. I hadn’t laughed since I was 10. It wasn’t safe to laugh as a child, and later in life when I lost my daughter, laughter hurt too much. But a drunk man made me laugh. All the time. Sometimes I think that’s the best of it.
I would have done anything for him. A love unto death. And…
Goddamn it.
I’m already lying. I’m making it all sound literary.
It was messier than that. A lot.
Like the image of him sitting slumped over drunk against the wall of an airport while I bought our tickets home from Reno, Nevada. How by then I was deadened with drunk. How I looked at him for a long minute. How I tucked his ticket in his pocket and left all our bags around him and got on a plane without him.
Let me start over.
Distilled
YEAR ONE WE DRINK GUINNESS MOSTLY ALL THE TIME and we ride Mountain bikes around Eugene at night and we go to the Vet’s Club we go to the Vet’s club we go to the Vet’s club we go to the High Street Café hey I’ll give you my student loan wad of $700 if you kiss the guy who joined us for a drink he does we laugh we drink we fuck. We rent a house together near the traintracks we drink Guinness we paint each other’s bodies we paint the walls we paint an entire room we fuck. We go crazy loving we go crazy fucking we go crazy drinking we do performance art in Eugene him naked on stage with a bloody pig’s head me naked on stage wrapped in Saran Wrap we perform on stage we perform at school we perform a life his long black hair my long blond hair attractive dramatic people dramatically drinking we have our first yell fight me on one side of the bathroom door with a Swiss Army Knife him on the other side of the bathroom door with a kitchen knife we carve each other’s names into our arms we do I fall and break open the body of the toilet water spewing everywhere he breaks down the bathroom door we bleed we fuck septic water. Year Two we drink Bushmills we ride our bikes in summer at night to the rose garden we steal all the heads of roses we strip and ride the current down the McKenzie river we road trip from Oregon to Florida we drink mushroom tea and hallucinate in the redwoods we see a guy die on the road some terrible wreck blood everywhere stretchers with corpse side of the road gorgeous ocean cliff view blood and road flares and ambulances and bodies how you loved looking just like you loved moving deathward so Jim Morrison I wanted to be in your fire we eat ecstasy and ride our bikes on the freeway we drive and drive all the southern states redneck fuckwads laughing snakeskin boots and cowboy hats all the way to Alabama his home to Florida my parents then turn around as fast as possible back to the west to Oregon where we can be who we are the west we get married in Tahoe at the top of Harvey’s Casino with my best friends lovers Mike and Dean and my sister and my parents Oedipal fakers and his parents southern Baptist fascists and we drink with the gay boys and a casino preacher with giant hair groomed black as a record album marries us says a Native American prayer there on top of Harvey’s Casino overlooking Lake Tahoe we laugh all the way down the elevators all the way through the year all the way to rings on our fingers and bells on our toes. Year three love is a series of islands in Greece the Cyclades rising from aqua ocean waters like stepping stones for dumb naïve drunk Americans with back packs riding ferries we drink Tsipouro we drink Mavrodafni we drink Retsina we drink Metaxa Metaxa Metaxa white stone buildings endless rock beaches mountains and olive hills and brown skinned people with dark hair dark eyes open arms open hands fishermen breadmakers winemakers women with giant tits and laughing until I’m drunk dumb with love drunk dumb with Greece drunk dumb blond sleeping while he goes out to sleep with Greece. Year four is London and Keats’ house and laying on the tiny bed we’re not supposed to and getting