Jan 25, 2006
250
By Masha Tupitsyn
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Underneath a huge tree. Not the one that is 250 years old. But maybe same age bracket. Now that I no longer write in fits, I no longer think in them. No longer work, think, on a fit basis. I’m giving you a lot of time. I’m giving you a lot of space. Not that you want it, but I’m enjoying it somehow. This isn’t me being typical. Giving you this room in my house. I want bare bones. Want them to stick out. No privacy in the skin. I crushed the cedar again in my right hand. Would José say I am sentimental? No, he says romantic. José is a friend, a man of almost 70 years, in whom I confide. All kinds of things I don’t expect. I wasn’t expecting to say what I said last night. But mostly drunk, the giving was easy. The go. It’s really the way I am. Without all the layers. Spent nearly three hours with Paul yesterday, up in the Prazerés (Pleasure) cemetery, and he drove me crazy. I would have had a place to put him. Michael said he would check what I was saying in a book we both read. I felt like he was giving me things when we spent the evening together: “This is my favorite bookstore.” I think he said that three times. The magic number. He laughed even harder because I did, The Street of Short Little English People. And he also smoked with me because I smoked. I said, “Go on, have another.” He did. Had many. Was this us flirting? Sharing something, not a mouth, but something that touches it. I could have sworn his footsteps were for me, saw him walking up a hill with a grocery bag after work. His blue shirt faced me like blue sky. I made a joke about how hard he’d been at it, he picked up the joke and gave it back to me. Yeah, all that reading. More sharing? Only one thing possible. Crumbs lead you somewhere dropped in fairy tales. He makes faces when I tell him something, sometimes, that make me feel uncomfortable and stupid, like he’d rather be doing something else. Like kissing me. I swear I know what I’m talking about.
Telling me the age of the tree sealed the deal. I thought maybe I’d known him, something, that long. The desire so sappy. And now he’s not even home for another three days. I don’t even have footsteps to look at. Not even sound to grind into. He answered the door, held it halfway shut, halfway open, and I handed him the laundry clips I’d borrowed. He looked embarrassed, sorry, like he was laughing at me or himself or the situation. I swear he watched me walk back down the stairs. I had a flower in my hair, for him. Small and pink, dying. Bending over my ear. I think I picked it on my way through the park because he’d told me he planted the same kind of tree in his garden. I wanted to be something he grew. I’m not that subliminal. I told you, José said romantic. Romantics are people who do things even when there’s no reason to, nothing in return, just big gestures, mostly private, through the heart, from.
I think the nicest think about you is that you link things. My cigarette half lit---someone’s thinking of me. José said he thought you probably had a sweet tooth, a sneaking suspicion. He gave me the name of streets in English, he gave me three glasses of wine, he gave me his thoughts on different things, he gave me nothing. What’s getting?
He sat with his arms crossed, he asked me about my book. I told him more than I’ve told others. He knocked on my door and asked me to come with him. I responded too quickly. He tapped my shoulder, no he didn’t actually touch me, while I was at the café, reading. I had on red lipstick and my hair was sealed back forties style. He was happy when I looked up, his style. And surprised. His voice was private, generous, not generous. He’s full. He’s uncomfortable. So am I. I asked what his sign was, he answered. I did something like melt, felt predicable with my taste. Said something inappropriate. He looked annoyed, closed shut. He’s right. What do I think I’m doing?
Sagittarians, they’re willing to believe in things no one else will. I sink right in. I love it when the universe throws me a bone. Funny, you should knock, I’m not allowed. I just wait. Feel glad I know how. It’s such a big thing to know. If I hadn’t been home, would you have gone back up? Meaning, was I the destination, or what the hell as your arm snuck up to my door.
I did my laundry at his house and didn’t want to take my clothes out of my bag until he left the kitchen. My underwear felt sexual on the floor. Finally he left the room, then told me I could meet him and his wife and her brother at the café. They were all standing there and I had my dirt in my hands. I knew I shouldn’t take him up on his offer. I waited, that’s what I do, and wrote at home, downstairs, for a while. Enough passed, You couldn’t possibly know what I’m doing. Then I went out and sat down with them. He pulled a chair out for me, we bashed London and the English with a baseball bat, Fuck. I said the word a lot. I wondered if I was paying too much attention to him, if he was paying too much attention to me. These things are everywhere, in me. I can spot it a mile away. I can spoil it from a distance. It’s a mile long. 250. Would I have all these things if I had love? My mother said, you can eat again when you’re in love again.
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Masha Tupitsyn is a fiction writer and feminist critic who lives in NYC. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Legible, Zygote in my Coffee, Monkeybicycle, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Nth Position, Drunken Boat, Fancy, and Provincetown Arts Magazine. She has written one collection of fiction, Prone, and is currently at work on a book of film-based stories entitled, Beauty Talk & Monsters.
© 2005 Me Three
