The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [77]
And then again begin.
In unending waves.
I don’t know where my thoughts went. I only know for the first time in my life I felt everything about a body. Every day. There was nothing we didn’t do, and I felt every moment of it in shuddering pleasure. More and more my stupid tumor of a life receded.
One night he put a blanket on the floor and told me to wait and when he came back he was a big 10 years younger than me beautiful man carrying a cello.
“Jesus,” I said. “You play cello?”
He played Bach. The sixth suite.
I cried. Possibly the puniest sentence I’ve ever written.
I cried for the force and strength of his body brought to the brink of tender in his fingers straddling the strings. I cried for the violence of hitting as it fell away into the tremor of holding a note. I cried for the man of him-the size and shape of my father - the brutality of muscle and artistic drive - brought to the cusp of such beauty. Bach. But mostly I cried because I could feel something. All over my body. Like my skin suddenly had nerve endings and synaptic firings and … pulse.
On my birthday he bought me a Beretta 9mm FS and took me out to the desert to shoot. It’s the first time in my life I experienced “glee.” Shooting - I liked it. I liked the kickback going up my arm and shoulder. I liked the sound, drowning out thought. I liked aiming at a target - that could be anything. I shot and shot.
When Andy Mingo entered my life, I’d walk around at my job or the grocery store or the beach or bars or parties kind of wanting to tug on someone’s shirt and say, “Um, I need to say something about men. Turns out? I was wrong. There’s something … I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something sort of … vital about them. Doesn’t that beat all?” Or I’d be mid-lecture or mid-mouthful of food or mid swim lap and think “Hey - somebody - I want to note that I’m feeling something. It feels a little like my heart is breaking. Like breaking open. Do I need medical attention? Is there a pill? What should I do?” Or I’d be in medias res lovemaking, I mean mind blowing lovewaves with this … this … man creature from another planet and think “I really, really need to go get a different degree to understand this mutual respect and compassion and fleshheartmind hunger business. A Ph.D. just doesn’t cut it. I’m quite clearly under educated. Can I speak to someone in charge?”
The one thing I didn’t think? Drink it away. Possibly the only strong thing I’ve ever not thought.
That’s why I say I didn’t get god. Everything I ever loved about books and music and art and beauty all became recollected in the body of the man I met who hit the bag and played the cello.
After that we started arranging rendezvous all over town. Hungry. Frenzied.
Did I mention he was married?
Yeah. Well. What did you expect? I’m still me, after all.
We met on benches at the ends of piers in San Diego where he’d make me cum with his hands down my pants at the end of a pier while tourists and seagulls and fishermen stretched out behind us. We met on the beach with the surf pounding and the sunset cliffs and one night even when I finished coming and sang my siren song a bunch of hippies in the cliff shadows put down their spliffs and gave me a standing ovation. We met in bars where we sat next to each other on red leather stools and pressed knees and shoulders and mouths together so hard I’d find bruises in the morning. With my fancy job money I bought us weekends back in Portland or San Francisco with rich people hotel rooms and room service and porn channels and 300 thread count sheets that we soiled and soiled. He said “Sometimes love is messy.”
It’s true his almost not anymore wife chased me in her O.J. white Ford Bronco. But our lovers story isn’t the only story. Though our affair was epic. And sordid. Narrative and passion have that in common.
There