The Chronology of Water (17 page)

This man was gorgeous. I’m mentioning this because women live their lives secretly waiting for their lives to become movies. We act like men are the ones shallow enough to desire an unending stream of beautiful women but really, if a charismatic narcissist beautiful bad boy man actually desires us, seems to choose us, we go to pieces. We suddenly feel like we are finally in that movie rather than a life. Just what we always wanted. To be chosen by the best looking man in the room. Rhett Butler. Even though we are of course smarter and more mature and more together than to ever want that. Or admit it.

Honestly I remember feeling shocked every time he walked up to my Toyota pickup truck and got in. I always expected him to veer off at the last moment, get into someone else’s vehicle. Or bed. Or house. Or life.

Our love, was liquid. Turned out we both loved drinking more than almost anything else. The anything else turned out to be fucking. Drinking in bathrooms and kitchens and alleys and hallways and bars and cars. Drinking all the way to the coast and all night at a bar and in the morning with eggs and oyster shooters in some crappy run-down motel and all the way back to Eugene. Drinking before, during, and after classes. Drinking in beds and in baths and at the rivers and in the rose garden and in the graveyard next to U of O and on top of Prince Lucien Campbell Hall.

We drank Guinness.

We drank cheap turn your teeth purple wine.

We drank Chivas, because he had a thing about Jim Morrison.

We drank vodka, because of… well, me.

We drank everything his favorite poet drank - Bukowski - and like Bukowski’s women, I matched him drink for drink.

We drank each other blind.

Drinking our minds gone. Drinking our lives away.

In between drinking he said I want to be a painter. I said I want to be a writer. So we drank to that. And painted. And wrote. And celebrated every hour with booze. Dancing with lesbians. Tripping with hippies. Mushrooming with artists. Slitting the tires of Republicans. We drank with bums under overpasses and on the tracks. We drank with friends and enemies and ex-cons and tat artists and once a priest and bikers and once with a famous actress and with his drunk father and my drunk mother and all the people we’d never met. We dreamed in drink.

While we were underwater stories began itching at my fingertips.

While we were drinking he painted paintings of wild
faces - abstract faces so you could never say who they were or why.

While we were drinking the chaos of art came out of us. There was nothing we could do to control anything about us.

Always we were making. Making love, making trouble, making art. We made performance art together. He made paintings and I made stories. He made dinner and I made money. It seemed like all that making had a power bigger than our dumb lives. Making and making.

Art. The expression of human imagination. Or emotions that have been locked inside a body spilled out all over the goddamn place.

Always he made me laugh. I hadn’t laughed since I was 10. It wasn’t safe to laugh as a child, and later in life when I lost my daughter, laughter hurt too much. But a drunk man made me laugh. All the time. Sometimes I think that’s the best of it.

I would have done anything for him. A love unto death. And…

Goddamn it.

I’m already lying. I’m making it all sound literary.

It was messier than that. A lot.

Like the image of him sitting slumped over drunk against the wall of an airport while I bought our tickets home from Reno, Nevada. How by then I was deadened with drunk. How I looked at him for a long minute. How I tucked his ticket in his pocket and left all our bags around him and got on a plane without him.

Let me start over.

YEAR ONE WE DRINK GUINNESS MOSTLY ALL THE TIME and we ride Mountain bikes around Eugene at night and we go to the Vet’s Club we go to the Vet’s club we go to the Vet’s club we go to the High Street Café hey I’ll give you my student loan wad of $700 if you kiss the guy who joined us for a drink he does we laugh we drink we fuck. We rent a house together near the traintracks we drink Guinness we paint each other’s bodies we paint the walls we paint an entire room we fuck. We go crazy loving we go crazy fucking we go crazy drinking we do performance art in Eugene him naked on stage with a bloody pig’s head me naked on stage wrapped in Saran Wrap we perform on stage we perform at school we perform a life his long black hair my long blond hair attractive dramatic people dramatically drinking we have our first yell fight me on one side of the bathroom door with a Swiss Army Knife him on the other side of the bathroom door with a kitchen knife we carve each other’s names into our arms we do I fall and break open the body of the toilet water spewing everywhere he breaks down the bathroom door we bleed we fuck septic water. Year Two we drink Bushmills we ride our bikes in summer at night to the rose garden we steal all the heads of roses we strip and ride the current down the McKenzie river we road trip from Oregon to Florida we drink mushroom tea and hallucinate in the redwoods we see a guy die on the road some terrible wreck blood everywhere stretchers with corpse side of the road gorgeous ocean cliff view blood and road flares
and ambulances and bodies how you loved looking just like you loved moving deathward so Jim Morrison I wanted to be in your fire we eat ecstasy and ride our bikes on the freeway we drive and drive all the southern states redneck fuckwads laughing snakeskin boots and cowboy hats all the way to Alabama his home to Florida my parents then turn around as fast as possible back to the west to Oregon where we can be who we are the west we get married in Tahoe at the top of Harvey’s Casino with my best friends lovers Mike and Dean and my sister and my parents Oedipal fakers and his parents southern Baptist fascists and we drink with the gay boys and a casino preacher with giant hair groomed black as a record album marries us says a Native American prayer there on top of Harvey’s Casino overlooking Lake Tahoe we laugh all the way down the elevators all the way through the year all the way to rings on our fingers and bells on our toes. Year three love is a series of islands in Greece the Cyclades rising from aqua ocean waters like stepping stones for dumb naïve drunk Americans with back packs riding ferries we drink Tsipouro we drink Mavrodafni we drink Retsina we drink Metaxa Metaxa Metaxa white stone buildings endless rock beaches mountains and olive hills and brown skinned people with dark hair dark eyes open arms open hands fishermen breadmakers winemakers women with giant tits and laughing until I’m drunk dumb with love drunk dumb with Greece drunk dumb blond sleeping while he goes out to sleep with Greece. Year four is London and Keats’ house and laying on the tiny bed we’re not supposed to and getting kicked out drunk tourists and Hyde Park naps and the Tate Gallery and Westminster Abbey choir boys coming out from behind a giant wooden door my crying and crying so beautiful these singing children but we didn’t come for London the food is shit the people are unattractive the Shakespearian tradition is all over everything until we fuck in a giant tidepool near the Cliffs of Dover good really good pub with no Americans but then some show up ugly very very very near to giant fistfight he’s drunk he thinks he’s Bukowski run I say run
these are English pig dog thugs we escape to where we wanted to be to Ireland. Becket and Synge and Joyce and at Yeats house we fuck in the castle against the wall we fuck on the stones at Innish Moore we drink and pass out in Joyce’s country his shoes washing away down a river my hair soaked with rain we read books we wish we were part of history we wish we were part of drinking we wish we were part of anything not ourselves we walk and walk but why do the pictures we took of each other have no smiles. Did we become a Beckett play? Year five a restored farmhouse in France my beloved Michael with us his lover with us we live there for a month we drink every French wine $5 to $500 we drink champagne we eat rabbit we eat crepes we eat escargot we laugh they taste like dirt we eat and eat and drink restaurant with menus and walls designed by Chagall the Louvre get lost and too high in all the art and high ceilings and hide in a bathroom hunched like a little troll in the corner rocking until a French woman asks “sont bien vous? sont bien vous?” Back out into the Louvre and even the Mona Lisa looks silly back to the farmhouse which is not in Paris but on the speed train taking speed on the speed train back to the farmhouse which is near Normandy on the coast - stop - war and remembrance - back at the farmhouse 100 year old restored house walk in fireplace cooking and drinking and fire. Next night nightmare we become drunk people driving and getting pulled over and me wishing wishing my beloved friend to talk to these police but beautiful gay men stay in the car and Devin Bukowski begins to fight with the French cop and a miracle we are not all taken to prison. Gay men fight in the French farmhouse we feel less alone when other people fight love. Year six yelling begins a rhythm and me writing book begins and him painting paintings begins and yelling gets louder and drinking gets louder and him kissing women I know and him kissing women I don’t know and how do people last together how do they what is a couple over time but a line and me writing more and more and him painting and my first book and his first painting in a SoHo gallery but
nothing stops the yelling that is taking over the house and drinking and kissing that becomes animal and desperate and no travel too much reading graduate school too much writing me reading and writing and language and the liquor of intellectual fights the liquor of love no travel more writing just the distance of two bodies barreling through passion but barreling differently splitting apart into the flames one mind one body splitting. Year seven I start a dissertation he quits grad school drinking and yelling: cleaved. Year eight I get a Ph.D. I get a real job someone here needs to someone needs to take care of this couple gone haywire beautiful fucked up children so full of promise so full of self loathing so full with alcohol we keep on being married and married and married and yelling and drinking and he pisses drunk in the corner and he falls down the stairs and he passes out on the lawn and he passes out driving and how do you do this how do you where is my love going? Year nine here is a job at my job adjunct pretend grown up here is a trip with a drama colleague of mine I am giving you my love go to go to Vietnam here is a life I buy him a loft along the riverfront in Portland I buy him alcohol I try and try to buy our love back I try and try but no money stops him in Vietnam he falls in love Tu-Ha he lies and lies he comes home Tu-Ha he goes back I wait in bed for him night after night he stays in Vietnam Tu-Ha I stay in bed for days and days I don’t eat I drink the drinking of alone I piss in the bed I don’t move me urine and vodka and sad sad dead childless woman with her job and her house and her first book and her cat and her dog and her money no husband Tu-Ha. Year 10 we pretend. Year 10 we go back to Tahoe to try to remember pretend. Year 10 we drink on top of Harvey’s Casino we drink in the elevator we drink instead of fucking until we can’t see or hear or feel we drink even on the way to the airport in the cab we get to the airport I go to the ticket counter to go back to Oregon but I know I’m not going to get to go back to anything just Oregon I turn around with the tickets he’s asleep against the wall snoring like drunks do all our luggage around him like children we never
had I leave the ticket in his drunk sleeping hand he’s pissed himself I can’t take care of this man. Year 10 he sleeps with one of our mutual students she emails me and tells me she is a good person she emails me and tells me he is a good person she emails me and tells me I am a good person they fuck and fuck I come home from work she is on the black leather couch passed out he is passed out on the floor. Year 10 you said you would love me until I died you said we would die together in love you said when I was 75 we’d laugh our saggy skinned laughs and drink to our old ass love you said it to me you did every year until you stopped saying it where are you where is the man who would love a woman like me there are no men if not you there never were any men for me not even a father I stop eating lose 25 pounds everyone says everyone says you look so beautiful. Like a movie actress. Isn’t she beautiful?

Am I beautiful?

Love is a lifedeath.

I KIND OF DON’T WANT TO TELL YOU THIS.

I mean I was going to write this whole book not telling you. I left words out. On purpose. But I know why I was hiding words from you.

Ask me about my life as a sexualized, gendered body, and I can tell you tales. Endless stories of a woman who was me and is also all of us. Our bodies the flesh metaphor for all human experience. This. This happened to me. This is where I failed. Where I went blind. Where I opened my legs. Where I chewed off my hand. Where I tried to off myself, or offer myself up as useful, or deigned to ask for love, or ventured into pleasure or pain. Or just got drunk and fucked up. Again. Here are the scars. I am a swimmer. My shoulders are broad. My eyes, are blue.

Ask me about writing, well, that’s a fierce private. Writing, she is the fire of me. Where stories get born from that place where life and death happened in me. She carries me and will be the death of me.

So when I tell you this, a little bit it makes me want to bite you.

Really hard.

Some people say that words can’t “happen” to you. I say they can.

One of my last nights with Devin I got all hopped up on mushrooms and went for a walk by the train tracks. We lived next to the tracks in Eugene-in a neighborhood where you would
find needles in the alley but also yuppies trying to buy and restore their way to better. I was supposed to be writing a dissertation. That night we sat down on the ground. We drank Chivas from a flask. Then a train slow rolled by, and I jumped up and chased it laughing, and then I hopped it. I have no idea why. I looked back at the image of husband getting smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see him. I loved that receding him. Maybe it was our last good night. The wind felt excellent. The motion of a self riding to nowhere for all she was worth took my breath away.