The Moves
Before he died, my father taught me his finger moves. They were movements for getting a woman off. He said he didn’t know if they’d be of use to me, seeing as how I was a woman myself, but it was all he had in the way of a dowry. I knew what he meant: he meant inheritance, or legacy, not dowry. There were twelve moves in all. He did them on my hand like sign language. They were mostly about speed and pressure in different combinations. There were some flourishes that I never would have thought of. I imagined he’d learned them when he was overseas. A sudden reversal in both speed and direction. Still fingers held like silence for a beat, and then long quick strokes that he called “skinning.” I kept wanting to write things down, and he would scoff, asking me if I would take out my notes when the time came. You’ll remember, he said, and he repeated skinning on my palm with his dry fingers. It felt like a hand massage. He was incredibly confident. I could not imagine using these movements alone, with such confidence. You’re going to make some woman very, very happy, he said. But I knew I had never made anyone
very, very happy, and I could only imagine bringing in my dad when the time came to do this. But he would be dead, and I supposed she would be a lesbian and wouldn’t want him to touch her. I would have to do the finger moves myself. I would have to decide when she was ready for six and for seven. Could she handle the intensity of the still beat and give in to the rapid pleasures of skinning? I would have to listen to find out. Not just to her breath, my dad said, but to the moisture on the skin in the small of her back. That sweat is your secret emissary. One moment she’ll be dry as a cat, and in the next moment—Cape Town is flooding! Don’t wait to be sure or you’ll miss the boat, hop on and move, move, move.
Each morning when I try to motivate toward something positive, I think of him saying this, and it is a great comfort. I know that one day I’ll meet someone special and I’ll have a daughter and I’ll teach her what he taught me. Don’t wait to be sure. Move, move, move.
Mon Plaisir
It’s lovely.
I know, but take it off. I want a chin-length bob.
You don’t want to go a little bit shorter? What if I cut it to here, to your ears?
You think that’d be better?
No, but then you’d be losing more than ten inches of length, and we could give it to Hair for Care. It’s a charity that makes wigs for kids with no hair.
Do you work for them, the charity?
No.
I think I’ll just stick with the bob, then.
You could let it grow another inch and then come back and I’ll give you a bob. That way everyone wins.
No, I have to do it today. It’s the first day of the rest of my life.
Oh. I had a day like that last week.
Really? What happened?
I woke up and thought, This is the first day of the rest of my life.
Then what happened?
I drove to work.
Oh.
Yeah.
Let’s give that kid some new hair.
When my husband saw the new short hair, he gave me the look we give each other when one of us forgets who we are. We are not people who buy instant cocoa powder, we do not make small talk, we do not buy Hallmark cards or believe in Hallmark rituals such as Valentine’s Day or weddings. In general, we try to stay away from things that are MEANINGLESS, and we favor things that are MEANINGFUL. Our top three favorite meaningful things are: Buddhism, eating right, and the internal landscape. Haircuts are in the same category as trimming the finger-and toenails, which is in the same category as mowing the lawn. We don’t really believe in mowing the lawn; we do it only to avoid unnecessary engagement with the neighbors. The neighbors trim their bushes into ridiculous animal shapes. Carl looked at me as if I were the neighbors, as if my hair were in a ridiculous animal shape. Then he continued transcribing a dharma talk by Barry Mendelson, who is sort of a local guru. He does these transcriptions for free for the Zendo we go to. Sometimes the lectures are very long and it takes him over fifty hours to do the transcription. But it is worth it for him, because when the transcribed lecture appears on the Valley Pine Zendo website, he can say: I wrote that, and in a way, this is true.
I went to our bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers. From where I was lying, I could see dust and old magazines under the bed, and they reminded me of a documentary we had watched about ants. There are entire civilizations under there, just as active as our cities aboveground. We don’t have intercourse anymore. I’m not complaining, it’s my own fault. I lie there beside him and try to send signals to my vagina, but it’s like trying to get cable channels on a TV that doesn’t have cable. My mind requests sex, but my vagina is just waiting for the next time it has to pee. It thinks its whole job in life is to pee.
At eight Carl went to tai chi but came home early because the instructor never showed up. A substitute came, but Carl said he was a fake.
You mean he wasn’t a real tai chi instructor?
He was a comedian. He kept trying to get everyone to laugh.
Oh. I thought you meant he was an imposter, like a guy off the street.
He also called all the forms by their American names.
Wouldn’t that be weird, though, if an actual comedian came in off the street and tried to teach tai chi? Like if Bob Hope tried to teach tai chi?
He called yun shou “monkey hands.” I’m not paying fourteen dollars a class to do “monkey hands.”
We go to bed early and I ask Carl if he wants to nurse, and he does not. Nursing is one of our things. Kind of like Buddhism and eating right, but also kind of not. Actually, the nursing is in a different category. Other things in this category might be:
My unexpressed anger at nothing in particular.
and:
The feeling that there is a “next level” and I should be on it.
Carl would probably have some other things to add to this list that could be called: Important Things That We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About. We read in bed for a long time before turning out the light. I read an article about autism. It seems like everywhere you turn these days, there it is, autism. If I had a baby and it started ripping up paper into smaller and smaller bits, it wouldn’t take me years to discover the truth. I would instantly think, Holy cow, I’ve got an autistic, and I would get right to work. But I will not have an autistic child. I won’t have a child; I am too old now. Not very too old, just barely. A determined woman might still try, but it is much too late for a woman like me.
I woke at seven a.m. and said to myself: This is the second day of the rest of my life. It’s not one thing in particular, it’s just the sensation of being adrift. As if the boat became unmoored two days ago and I am now on a voyage. I’m trying to notice everything, like a tourist would, even though it’s all familiar. I’ve done this before; in fact, I was the one who got me and Carl focused on health four years ago. I began with whole-grain bread in our sandwiches, and then came the tai chi, which I never fully got the hang of, and then Buddhism. Carl completely embraced the whole lifestyle after some initial derisive resistance. Sometimes I imagine he was so threatened by my new interests that he joined me out of aggression, as if to say: You can run but you can’t hide. I brushed my new short hair with the same long strokes I had used for my old hair, accidentally hitting the brush against my shoulders. It was a delicate, new strangeness, and I held on to it like a candle, hoping it would lead me to an even newer, stranger strangeness. Or perhaps I could accumulate many small new ways and pile them up to form one large new way. With this thought, I drove to the shoe store. I chose a type of shoe that was completely foreign to me. The salesgirl and I stared down at my white veiny feet in their strappy yellow espadrilles.
Do you want me to box those up for you?
No, I’ll just wear them out.
I don’t recommend that.
Really?
Well, I always wear shoes around the house for a
few days first. That way I can still return them if they’re uncomfortable.
That’s a great tip. Everyone should do that.
People love to make life harder than it has to be.
I know I do.
Wear them in the house, that’s the first step.
What’s the second step?
Wear them outside.
What’s the third step?
The third step? You decide.
I wore the new shoes in the car while I drove to therapy, but took them off again before getting out. Every time I enter Ruth’s office, dense clouds slide away from my heart to reveal a complex landscape, a gray township, a doomed city. I always become paralyzed in this place, and Ruth has to draw me out with questions, like, What is the worst thing that could happen?
We could never have sex again.
But that’s very unlikely.
Well, it feels like I might never want to have it again. Like I wouldn’t even care.
I have a client who was in a car accident, and she really can’t have sex ever again—she’s paralyzed. But is their relationship over?
Yes?
No. They have challenges, for sure, but her partner still loves her just as much.
At this point I cry because of the love between this injured woman and her partner, and as I cry, I wonder if Ruth said “partner” because they are lesbians. Of course they are, and the paralyzed woman is probably running for governor, too. I cry harder. I’d totally vote for her. But does she really exist? Or did Ruth make her up the way I suspect she invents the loving, humorous spats she gets in with her husband. For every argument I have with Carl, Ruth has an anecdote about something similar she went through with her husband—but instead of arguing, he loved her for being a sourpuss, and she laughed sheepishly about what a sourpuss she was. God, it sounds so fucking great; I want to laugh sheepishly at myself, I want to be a sourpuss. Ruth hands me the Kleenex box and our time is up. I half blow my nose, waiting until I get outside to do the full blow.
When I get home, Carl is meditating. I like this time because his eyes are closed; it gives me a chance to be more the way I wish I were around him. I put on the espadrilles and sit on the couch across from his perch on the carpet. First, quietly, I act like a sourpuss, hunching up my shoulders and scowling. Then I sit up and mouth:
Whatsa matter, sourpuss?
I hunch down and mouth: You’re always darn meditating.
I sit up: Shucks, sourpuss (somehow the silent versions of me and Carl speak like the Little Rascals), don’t go picking on me. I’m workin’ on my mind–body duality.
I hunch down sulkily: Meditating, shmeditating. I’ve got a mind–body duality, too, you know.
I sit up: Of course you do, sourpuss, you’re split like a pea.
I hunch down and get ready for my big moment. I squeeze my self tighter, close my mouth, and silently, sheepishly, laugh at myself. Mh, mh, mh, mh. First it is heartbreaking, and I start to cry. But crying is a habit, so I push onward, casting my eyes down under their lids, becoming even more sheepish: Mh, mh, mh, mh. I fall into a rhythm, forgetting laughter, I am just breathing out in intervals of four. With my arms around myself, it is a good feeling, like galloping, mh, mh, mh, mh. As I gallop, I begin to have the sensation that I am galloping alongside Carl, and I wonder if this is meditating. Perhaps I have accidentally fallen into a powerful Indian way of breathing, mh, mh, mh, mh, mh. Maybe it is something that the gurus only teach you after many years’ practice. They don’t even have it at Carl’s Zendo, you have to go to India to learn it, mh, mh, mh, mh. But I stumbled into it the way the Dalai Lamas are innocently born into their positions. I, an ordinary American woman, mh, mh, mh, mh, am doing the ancient forgotten healing breath of India. Won’t Carl be jealous when they tell him, when they take me away to a place he can’t come to. I’m sorry, I will say, but this is larger than us. He will struggle, he will try to do the ancient breath, mh, mh, mh, mh, and I will laugh, compassionately, because it is such a pathetic imitation, it makes me want to punch him in the face. My breathing is hard and fast, I am shaking my body with tiny vigorous hugs, it is real, the rage is real, it is ancient, it is forgotten, mh, mh, mh, mh! Suddenly, I stop and open my eyes. There is Carl. Feeling my stare, he opens his eyes and looks at me. There I am. Here we are, in the living room.
That night he wanted to nurse, so I lifted up my nightgown. I don’t have to do anything, my boob is just there, he sucks on it. This always makes me feel sad and thirsty. But they are reversed; the thirst has the depth and tone that sadness should have: thirst as an ache, a howl, a sob. And sadness is pathetically limited to the range of thirst, it is just a sip of emotion, tightly buckled to a frown, quenchable. These feelings probably resolve themselves logically when there is milk in the boob. I could feel Carl’s erection against my knee, but I waited it out, and after a while, it went away. He detached from the nipple, and we lay there in the half-darkness I have come to think of as our own.
Have you noticed my new look?
Your haircut?
It’s more than that.
Is it internal?
Yes, and I also got new shoes.
Oh.
A car went by outside, and we watched blocks of light slide across the ceiling. Carl pushed down on my foot, and I pressed up on his. This is something we did the first time we ever slept together, it is a seven-year-old gesture. We never really had a proper courtship; we met at a potluck where we quickly discovered that we were both recovering from a break-up. By the time we stopped talking about our exes, we’d been together for a year. I pushed up on Carl’s foot, and he pressed down on mine. If the gesture were a person, it’d be in second grade by now. But it is just some movements. Still, I feel closer to him when we do this than at any other time. It is as if our feet are in the perfect, honest, loving relationship, but from the ankles up, we are lost. I push again, but he does not push back; he is asleep.
On the eighth day of the rest of my life, I began to wonder if this was really the rest of my life or just a continuation of the same one. I had so little to go on. Step two was wearing the shoes outside, so I did that. I walked around our neighborhood. I walked onto the busy avenue and right into the popular café the college students like to sit in. I couldn’t order anything because I hadn’t brought my purse, so I used the bathroom. I used the toilet, the toilet paper, the soap, the water, the paper towels, everything the bathroom had to offer. Then I exited and stared at the community bulletin board. Many of the flyers had a row of rip-off stubs along the bottom; these were also free, so I took one of each. Then I walked home. I lay down on the bedroom floor and looked under the bed and had the exact same set of thoughts about the ant documentary. Whole civilizations. Just like ours. Under there. I flipped onto my stomach and, with my lips against the carpet, I sang the song that goes, “Why must I be a teenager in love?” But without the teenager in love, just “Why must I be?” With the same yearning, though, the same heartache. I took out the paper stubs and laid them out on the carpet. They were all different colors, including Day-Glo. Many of them only had a phone number, with no other points of reference. I put these mystery stubs in one pile and studied the rest. Three were for missing cats, one was for a free kitten, one was for extras needed for a movie, two were for sublets wanted, one was for a room for rent in a vegan household, and one was for child care wanted. I arranged them according to need, and then in rainbow order. I squinted at the rainbow until it became a pretty blur, and I whispered step three: You decide.
That night I suddenly began missing my hair. I looked up Hair for Care online and scanned the recipient photos. It was definitely too early for it to be a wig on a child’s head, but the pictures were still reassuring. The smiling little girls with luxurious hair held photographs of their former, frowning bald selves. I learned that my hair would be combined with nine other ponytails to make a single wig. And my gray hairs would be taken out and sold to a commercial wiggery to offset the costs of postage and website
maintenance. So in a sense, I was a busy woman. Parts of me were traveling and offsetting and forming lifelong alliances with parts of other women. I felt uplifted and inspired. I climbed into bed and pushed up on Carl’s foot, and he pushed down on mine.
I think we need to move to the next level.
Does that mean children?
You know I’m too old for that.
Just barely, though.
Yeah. But it’s not that. It’s something I want us to do together.
Is it a sex thing?
No. Why did you say that?
What? I thought you meant, when you said together, I thought you—
But you still like our way, don’t you?
Can we do it right now?
We did it in our way. Carl nursed and I jacked him off. Then I turned away and touched myself while Carl patted the back of my head. I came, and Carl’s hand drifted back to his side of the bed. I turned toward him in the darkness.
Don’t go to sleep.
I’m not.
Don’t you want to know what the next level is?
What is it?
I’ll only tell you if you promise to try it with me.
What if I’m already there?
You’re not.
What is it?
You promise you’ll do it with me?
Okay.
I think we should become extras. You know, background actors.
As with the whole-grain bread, Carl did not initially leap into the idea with enthusiasm. He laughed when I showed him the neon-green slip of paper with the phone number and the name of the movie: Hello Maxamillion, Goodbye Maxamillion. But eventually, he was overwhelmed by my lack of knowledge about the industry. It was so easy to know more than me, Carl could not resist the temptation. And so we began.