I asked him to stop beheading all the queens and told him that I could be a virgin every single night without even talking. At fist he didn't believe me but I squeezed my legs and said "baby, feel this, feel this it's so tight." Since my virginity was neither here nor there, I'd have to keep talking too. But I couldn't. I was in a different place. I had to focus on Ulysses but for the sake of the class and the sake of the Greeks we kept calling him Odysseus.
"Daniela, how can you even claim Penelope was a whore?"
"Look, I'm not claiming it. I'm suggesting it."
It's Thanksgiving break and I spend Thanksgiving alone. I like it. I feel like it means something. Nothing. Neve rmind.
I was trying not to look at faces, because I had to walk the dog and there were many people on the street but no matter what I did the faces would morph and turn and twist into different shapes. Why do you have to have a monster face? Why do I have to see your body crossing the street? I want to poke your stomach with a stick because you are a liar, and then the last thing I want to do is ask you how it feels. It's not just that your parents should have hit you, it's that you should have learned to shut the fuck up.
"You know if she could have told all of those stories then a woman could have made up a Trojan War."
"No one made up the Trojan War...it's just that they don't know everything about it."
"So were those people real?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean...were they real...or like as real as people in the Bible"
He starts being condscending without realizing it. Doesn't matter. He's not here. If he wanted to be here, he could be here. But he's not, so I won't cast him as the hero of the story. Instead he can be the guy at the beginning of the cartoon movie. He doesn't know what I'm talking about--- I say repeat after me:
"Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear
If they don't like your face
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."
He's so educated that he doesnt' even watch Disney movies. Fuck this. And who sings that song? That little shop keeper? What's his name?
All the boys that think theyre men got too tall. Did they get to big for the britches? Is this my favorite show after all? In my sleep I say "fuck that" to any long distance relationship. I have all your faces spread across a map but I can't remember what they're supposed to feel like.
He is screaming "I'm a solider. I'm a man." And I feel bad cause he could have had his legs blown off. I change my mind and agree that he is. But he's the same age as me. We aged a thousand years in the last decade, what did you do, stare at your hands?
When I was little I'd sometimes forget what a face was and while I was trying to sleep I'd try and get the image in my head. I'd try so hard and then I'd feel so sick that I had to get up and look at a picture.
What am I supposed to say, Mom? They don't even really look like humans to me anymore. They don't look like souls or saviors either. No, I am sorry but for once in my life I am going to need really solid proof. I am going to need it right now-- the easiest thing to say is still "that's it! I quit".
But it's even easier to do.
Baby, well, he burned up all the maps anyway. When he was making his world tour that stayed within the continental United States. His French fires did me know good and now I don't trust any babys about where they are going and when. The girl on the phone keeps asking Where are you going? Where you have been? And I like that she is obsessed with story titles too.
I agree that I would get in the truck and drive away too. That I would put down the phone and stare at the stranger.
What about when the old woman gets killed?
Oh. Oh that's a different one. I tell her to say it back to me and she whispers like I'm her worst enemy A good man is hard to find.
"You're half an idiot anyway. Not a whole idiot. Just half"
"You don't have to talk to me like that, you are being mean."
"I told you to leave me alone and I told you I wasn't going to do this anymore. Not for anyone. I want proof. Prove how the telephone works. Prove all those maths."
"Why do you always do this? Why can't you have believe in these things like you believe in the universe? Like you have believe in gods?"
"Because that is FAITH. See! This is what I mean. It's not even noon. It's not even noon. Do you even LOOK at clocks. It's not even noon. I am glad I do not have a sister. That is faith. I have faith in the universe I do not have faith in this phone!!!"
"And you don't have faith in men, either?"
"Rachel, I've been trying to tell you since before I went out to walk the dog that I don't know any men."
"Look, I'm trying to help you-- but this is just the Wellness Hotline. If you feel this is an emergency you need to hang up and call 911 or I can connect the call for you."
"I am just calling to talk, isn't this what you're here for? Don't you understand that I am feeling LONELY and no one is understanding the point I am trying to make about men or virgins or whore or my ancestors???"
Poor Rachel. I figure at best this is could practice for her. I mean, she wants to save girls, or women or the world. I bet she wishes she would have retained some dignity, not fucked that frat boy and just became a cashier.
They all turned into soldiers. Or became forty but not actors. Or lied with their mouths full of food and their teeth so yellow. I'm watching the food drop out and I want to ask "do you really believe this?" I really believe this because he wont return my calls and he is the one going bald. If he had hair I'd rip it out of my head. If he read this he'd get a restraining order.
I want Nick to be here so he can explain the difference between a story and a lie. I want Nick to be here so he can knock out all the yellow teeth. I don't think he can hit that hard, but we could practice. And if you're reading this the way you're reading it right now, then you don't even get it. I am not saying he is superior to the rest of them, I am saying that he understands why the faces are melting, and if he didn't he would tell me he did. And if he didn't mean it he would mean saying it for my sake. So would poor Jackson. But he doesn't have a face either. He doesn't like it when I start to say it's his fault about the maps. But hey baby, look at my fucking body, tell me that's not tangible. Run your fingers across the monitor and play house.
"Rachel, I have to get off the phone. I'm afraid the dog is going to eat the Sweet Potato pie."
My landlord tells me from the front porch that I don't have any friends by that name and I let him know that my first cousin's name is Michael but now he changed it to Fred. He adopted his middle name, which may actually have been his first name, and he didn't do it for our dying grandfather, though we like to pretend he did. I like to pretend, I mean.
"Daniela," my landlord must still be talking, "Didn't Frankie come over and tell you that the plastic goes in the clear bags..." and his voice trails off because Frankie smells like cigarettes and he stands too close to me when he talks.
The dog is licking my hand to say I love you and the dog is the most human one here. I'll leave the country. I'll run screaming across the Atlantic. I'll write my thesis on Homer being a woman and that woman being me and I'll say that, I'll say that.
I knew a dog named Frankie once. Ashley was lying on the ground naked, screaming at a Kermit the Frog poster screaming "Nick Scrima fed this dog steak!!!"
Frankie is a cat. Felix is a cat. There are not cats in America and the streets are filled with cheese.
"Look, I have to get off the phone...but you know what? I think Scheherazade--- I think she is the same kind of woman."
"Daniela, I don't even know what you're saying". I am talking to my mother now.
"You know mother, from Arabian nights."
"No."
"Yes. Yes you do. I even had a VHS tape when I was little-- there was cheap version of Aladdin and then Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves."
"Oh. I remember that. There was no one in it named Sherezia."
I Ask her to put my father on the phone.
I am going to write my thesis on Homer being a woman from Sicily that was unmarried and really educated because I read it as a line in a book."
My father approves. He likes my papers about the wars. My mother sincerely believes that my father is the reincarnation of a Roman general. See? None of us are kidding.
There are all these men and boys I am supposed to love so I keep losing my virginity and I keep making up new stories. But this next part is true.
Ashley and Nick and I were driving to Kansas and it was raining very hard. Everyone must have been drunk and we played many Disney soundtracks.
"Why do you get to be the virgin, Daniela?"
"I don't know. Nick will clearly be Aladdin. I'll be Pocahontas---"
Nick reminds me "but Rachel said she was too ethnic."
"Fine then can I be Cinderella?"
"No." Ashley is objecting. "I want to be Cinderella."
"You should be the little Mermaid because you have no concept of reality."
"Nick could be Tarzan."
"No he is clearly Aladdin."
"Fine," Ashley is tricking me into thinking I win
"You can be Princess Aurora because you enjoy sedatives and will probably let a prince sleep with you when you are unconscious."
"I hate Dino," I tell her.
"Okay, so Ashley is Cinderella, Nick is Javar because he keeps speeding and I am Princess Aurora."
I make one last point because no one can tell me the truth about the Bible.
I say to no one, out the window:
I want to be the prostitute from the one story-- where the Prince won't sleep with her so she calls out rape. And then some dudes are going to kill him so the seven viziers each tell a story to say why the woman is lying. Why she is unreliable.
But before I can finish the air from the window says back to me that I am already an unreliable narrator, I already am a woman and I've already confused too much. I am unreliable and just because I have convinced them all I'm a virgin doesnt mean it's dramatic irony, the audience knew from the get go and everyone in the story knows too.
The problem is that I still want to write that he wasnt an old blind guy but a young woman. And the other problem is that there is a man on the other side of the country and I can't get out of bed. But I don't remember how Sleeping Beauty ends. I can't remember the ending of the story.
And when I was little-- you know what I always hated? The choose your own adventure books. You'd pick the page and get a different story but you really had no choice. There were about three options. It was the onset for everything that is unrealistic about life.
But if I don't remember how this story ends, that is what I am going to have to do. I am going to have to choose my own ending.
For now, I remember this:
- Music:gee I think he's rather tasty
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