Shelby (21 page)

“You know,” I said, “I think I understand what you're talking about. Granted, my goals have always been less grandiose—but perhaps that was more from a lack of awareness than a lack of desire.”

“The tantra has nothing to do with desire.”

“Semantics.”

“No it's not. Desire has got to go.”

“Okay, no desire.”

“Shel, this is just my path. Don't get hung up about your own sexuality.”

“Thanks. Hey Lucy, for the record, what spe
cific
ally does take the place of ejaculation?”

“I told you, the tantra allows us to transcend the physical.”

“Yes, but what does that
mean
?”

“It means the release is ever present. It's like meditation, Shel. You have to experience it to understand it. People say, How do you meditate? You meditate—”

“Holy cow!”

“What?”

“I've had a flash—and upon brief deliberation, I can fully see the side effects of unsacred love. Therefore and henceforth, I, too, will strive for sex
only
as a vehicle of transcendence.”

“A flash?”

“And what's more, out of pure and compassionate love for the All, I am willing to let
you
have me as a partner!”

Lucy laughed. “I'm not ready yet—but thanks.”

I thought for a few seconds. “This could take weeks, couldn't it?”

“Years.”

“Still, once you're there, you'll need a partner—I mean, not
you
necessarily, but
one
would need a partner.”

“Shel?”

“Yeah?”

“I'll let you know.” She smiled and gave my arm an affectionate squeeze.

“One more thing, Lucy.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I don't necessarily agree with it, but how do you feel about the notion that every now and then, purely in the name of mental well-being, the male sex needs a damn good lay?”

“I don't buy it,” she said.

I stopped. “Why not?”

“There's no evidence it works,” she said. We walked on.

Week two began with a frustration that most rigorously revealed itself just after two o'clock on Tuesday afternoon while I was watching Oprah Winfrey and guests discuss how to keep the sexual spark alive in relationships. Suddenly and without forewarning I found myself closing the front room curtains and masturbating to the image of Miss Winfrey herself strutting before me in pleated pants, demanding my servitude. Ten unreleased minutes and a fiery bang later, I'd slammed Eric's toaster oven through the T.V.—an outburst that left me rattled over potential repercussions, relieved at the death of my 16” x 11” suppressor (perhaps, symbolically, Frank?) and fearful at the state of my mental health. Thankfully, Eric was unaffected by the event, his sole recommendation being the creation of a payback plan. It turned out to be $55 per month for six months concluding with a $70 payment on month seven. As for the television itself, we removed all the inner workings and replaced them with an aloe vera plant from the corner store on Fraser (my treat).

By Friday, I realised T.V. withdrawal was reopening my ears and eyes to the reality of three dimensional life. In fact, after spending my lunch break at the downtown library listening to a cluster of employees dicussing
Murphy Brown
as if it was significant social commentary (even her name is dumb—and Dan Quayle is right, there
is
something wrong with the American family), I penned a short yet luminous letter to
The Province
's editorial department stating recent revelations:

Dear Editor(s):

QUESTION: How in this, the media age, can the U.S. government sell arms to Iraq one week and be at war with them the next and still get support from a solid block of the American public?

ANSWER: Television. Beyond creating a simpleton society that gets its role models from music videos, gets its God from Jimmy Swaggart and dismisses poetry as passe, T. V. prevents the masses from organizing intelligent uprisings. Yes, Los Angeles was set ablaze by anger over the Rodney King beating. But what good did it do? The have nots now have even less. And is it a coincidence that atomic warfare and television came into being at approximately the same time? Was the Cosby Show truly a sign of increasing racial unity or rather an attempt by television and/or government white supremacists to manipulate the youth into believing the civil rights movement is fait accompli? Is there a link between the Beverly Hillbillies being the number one show of 1963 and Kennedy being assassinated in that same year? And, finally, isn't Madonna taking up just a little too much of our time?

Take a gander at your T.V. set, Canada, and ask but one question
.

Who's eyeing who?

Shelby M. Lewis

Vancouver

P.S. The average T.V. watcher is

witness to 18,000 commercials a year
.

That afternoon, while sorting books behind the circulation desk, I was startled to glance up and see Minnie T. standing at the book check-out, all aglow, as fat and sexy as ever, smiling and frollicking with some misogynist-looking young man in an expensive sweater. My heart pounded with fear. The last thing I wanted was to have her see me and then have me admit to the dismal state of my current life. Ashamed, I bent down behind a trolley full of books and pretended to sort them. Hearing laughter I peeked out to see that same man brush the hair away from the side of Minnie's face and whisper in her ear. Minnie shrieked with laughter, pushed him lovingly away and half yelled, “Steven!”—which looking at him, was probably spelled Stephen. They were proclaiming their love like televangelists on a money run. Stephen's beeper sounded and I fell backwards, knocking a few books off the trolley. “What, did someone's plumbing back-up?” I said to myself with a chuckle. Stephen unhooked the device from his belt and said to Claudia at the front desk, “Could I use the phone, please? I'm a doctor.” I couldn't hear what Claudia said but she did a half turn and pointed directly at me. My bowels nearly opened before I realised she was indicating the phone on the librarian's desk several feet to my right. I discreetly turned around, stood up and pushed the book truck towards the exit foyer. I stood there breathless, my heartbeat spiralling up the stairwell in echoey throbs, my jealousy of Stephen's integrity clawing at my insides, my delight at Minnie's happiness jaded only by an awareness that, thanks to my ignorance, I never took her there. Several minutes later, certain they would have checked out their books and been gone, I opened the door and literally bounced into Minnie on the other side.

“Shelby Lewis!” she screamed with a smile.

“Minnie …”

“Do you work here?” she asked.

Embarrassed, I looked away. “Um … part time … a little.”

“Wow,” she said, “me, too!”

I arrived that evening at Lucy's apartment with my first installment towards the two thousand dollars I owed her. Her calico cat was in the window in front of closed curtains. There was no answer even after repeated knocks. As usual the door was unlocked. The hallway was dark. Walking softly into the front room, I turned on the light to find Lucy's clothes crumpled on the floor in front of my feet; T-shirt, jeans, sweater, panties. Books were everywhere. I crept towards the bedroom and called her name. There was no response. My heart sprang into my throat. I put my hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open. Light from the front room streaked across the floor. Lucy was wrapped up in a white sheet in the far corner of the room, her head leaning on a pillow pushed against the wall.

Fearing the worst I sprinted to her side. “Lucy!”

Her mouth opened slightly, then closed. “Migraine,” she mumbled.

“Migraine?”

“Migraine,” she said again.

“Do you need a doctor?”

“Migraine,” she repeated, still not moving. I reached out to her and then stopped.

“Uh … Are you … What do you … do you need anything?”

“Close the door,” she said in a slow, monotoned voice. “The light's killing me.”

I ran to the door, closed it and slithered back using the bed as a guide. I sat down next to her again.

“Hi, Shel,” she said, her voice scarcely audible.

“Hi,” I said, placing my fingers lightly on her cheek. She tilted her head towards them in acceptance.

“Um … should I … can I hold you?”

“Sure,” she whispered. I unwrapped the sheet that was draped around her and put myself in a position to embrace her sitting down. We slid into each other easily on the hardwood floor. I loosely pulled the sheet around us. Lucy turned her head sideways and eased it onto my chest.

“It's going to rain tonight,” she said softly.

I cupped the back of her head with one hand and softly stroked her hair with the other. Her body was warm. No more words were spoken. We didn't move for hours.

Sure enough, it poured all weekend. In between our respective workshifts, I nursed her as best I could. It was in that time, in fact, that I was able to see just what it was about her that moved me so. In short, her idiosyncracies; the way she devours her food with gusto, the way she sucks on her cigarettes as if within loom universal truths, the way she thrusts herself into conversation like a human cannonball, the way she gyrates her ideas into my brain until her words climax in a burst of love from her life-soaked, earth-drenched eyes. Even her manic moods tickle my insides. The woman accepts pain like it's a Blue Cross from God.

By the time a cold and rainy Monday rolled in, Lucy's migraine had subsided. We picnicked on a quilt in her kitchen; two candles, a loaf of sourdough bread, butter, a bottle of Anacin, two sliced tomatoes, salt and pepper, two carafes of crappy red wine and no glasses—a pair of romancing tramps. It wasn't long before the first bottle had disappeared. I was tipsy and aroused, eyeing Lucy maybe four feet away as she painted her toe-nails.

“I'm serious, Shel, I'm gettin' totally sick o' strippin'.”

“Do that again,” I said, unscrewing the top of the second bottle.

“I just painted them,” she said.

I took a swig. “No. That thing with your tongue?” I said.

“This?” Lucy said, rolling her tongue into a U-shape.

“Extraordinary,” I said. “Praise be to dappled things.” Lucy smiled and kept working on her baby toe. “I can't do that,” I said.

“Course you can.”

“No. Watch. My tongue won't curve.” I tried.

Lucy laughed at the attempt. “Come on.”

“I can't!”

“Do it.

“It's genetic—a Mandellian acquired trait passed on through the mother. No. Wait. Wait. The father.”

“Bullshit,” she said, shaking her head and passing me the bottle.

“Why would I lie?”

“Why would something so pointless be genetic?”

“How can I even venture a guess? It just
is
.” I took a swig of wine.

“It's got nothing to do with personal choice?” she asked, still painting her middle toe.

“Personal choice? Genes come from parents.”

“Some say
we
even choose our parents.”

“Oh come on! I have serious doubts that the brain stem of a spermatozoa is emotionally capable of barrelling out of the urethra yelling, ‘Stand clear, I am choosing to latch onto this egg!' while three hundred million others exit a step behind, cheering him on and doing the wave.”

Lucy folded over her piece of bread and took a bite. I took a swig of wine. She said, “I say not only that, I say
all
things good and bad are essential for cosmological harmony.”

“What?” I shook my head and put the bottle back down on the quilt. “How can famine or AIDS be essential for cosmic harmony? How can some psychotic pulling out a machine gun and shooting his family over Christmas dinner be a necessary part of anything?” I blinked and felt the wine rush to my head.

“What came first, the sociopaths or the psychiatrists?”

“What?”

“Wars or armies? Skin colour or racism? Life or death?”

“Are you going to have that last tomato?”

“Don't avoid the question.”

“What question?”

“And second,” she said taking a snort from the bottle and wiping her mouth, “do you figure some people are more genetically predisposed to being assholes than others?”

“It's upbringing.”

“And do they or do they not serve a purpose?”

“Parents?”

“Everyday human atrocities.”

“No.”

“Then why do we keep having 'em? Why have we always had 'em?” Lucy passed the bottle back.

“To learn.”

“Have we learned?”

“Maybe humans is a
we
thing, Lucy, but I am not responsible for Auschwitz or the slaughtering of Indians or Ethiopian famine or any of that. I am responsible for seeking truth—as well as protecting my family's welfare and, on occasion, yours.” I took a snort.

“Then who stands up for the battered child and the raped forest and the ozone?”

“Well …”

“And I thought you were Mr. Humanitarian—or is that only when you're sober?”

“Retraction! Retraction! The aforementioned assessment of my responsibilities was naive. Truth is I want to contribute socially. But I refuse to flagellate myself for history's errors because they were committed by ignorant asses who happened to have the same skin pigment as me. Nay I say! Vive la global community! I have guilt to last three lifetimes.” I took a hard swig and wiped my mouth on my forearm.

“What guilt?” she asked, taking the bottle from me.

I looked up. “Where do I begin? My God. Dropping out of university. My father is crushed, all parental ties severed. Academic destiny:
gone
. Religious confusion abounds. I've made no major social contributions. Oh, and wanting
you
in a lecherous way doesn't exactly fill me with gaiety.”