remembered the feeling, the burn of the metal monkey bars under them, the numbness moving outward to my fingertips. I watched one kid cry as his mother peeled him off the pole he clung to. He wanted to keep playing; he didn’t want to go home, and I remembered that, too.
“Remember that?” said Linny, “That feeling of never wanting to stop even when you were freezing cold? Where do you think that feeling goes?”
She always does that, says the thing I’m thinking. I wanted to tell her about after sledding, how Cam, Toby, Ollie, and I, and sometimes our friends Star and Teo, too, would sit on the mudroom floor soaking wet, taking off our boots, and how it wasn’t until our feet and hands started to hurt with that bad, coming-back-to-life hurt that we’d realize we’d been cold at all. But I was punishing Linny for the cheese shop, so I just shrugged.
“You can’t stay mad at me, Cornelia. You know you never can, so why bother trying?”
I didn’t say anything. We kept watching the kids. One boy, three years old or so, in a lime green parka and a ridiculous, multicolored fleece jester’s hat was still swinging. His mother was pushing him, and he was singing, unaccountably but with great brio, “Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside.” I’ll take him, I thought.
“I’ll take that one,” said Linny, pointing to the boy, “But only if the hat comes with him.” I looked at her.
“It’s not that I can’t stay mad at you,” I told her, “it’s that I can’t get mad at you. If I could ever get mad at you, I’d definitely be able to stay that way. Just so you know.”
We kept walking, “I ain’t gonna study war no moooore!” sailing over our heads like a streamer.
It wasn’t that the sex was bad. It really wasn’t. It’s that the evening was so exquisite, so without flaw in every other regard that the sex should have been a revelation; it should have thrown us over the moon. And it didn’t—not quite.
When I told Linny this, back in my apartment, she’d said, “So you’re saying that the only thing missing from a night of otherwise perfect, unbelievable sex was perfect, unbelievable sex.”
In the allegory of my life, I can never decide if Linny is Snark or Truth.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. You should have seen the dinner he made. The flowers on the table. The way the lights came in through the window. If you could have seen his face when he looked at me. And heard the things he said, not just before, but after. As a matter of fact, after was great. I loved after, and you know how awkward after can be.” I talked; then I stopped talking.
In the allegory of my life, if Snark and Truth turned out to be the same character, well, it would not surprise me a bit.
I’m a fan of suggestion, obliquity, discretion, the cut to the morning after, the camera’s eye turning upward, outward—to the sky, to the cuckoo clock over the bed, to the rushing river, away. Forget those slick bodies tangled on the floor or grappling on kitchen tables. Sexy is Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed talking into the same telephone receiver, their anger tipping reluctantly over into desire, the desire as much in the distance separating their two mouths as in their proximity to each other. What I’m saying is, you’re not getting details—not detailed details anyway. If you’re anything like I am and, like most people, I assume most people are like I am, this is just fine with you.
That being said and at the risk of your believing me insane or at least supremely weird, I’ll tell you how I think of Date Seven, how it’s parsed out and catalogued in my memory. Bullets, they call them, right? Here are the bullets:
Compliment One
Almost Rear Window
Notorious
Not Casablanca
Compliment Two
Food
Sleep/No Sleep
Compliment One: It didn’t get me into bed, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not because I’m
“Remember that?” said Linny, “That feeling of never wanting to stop even when you were freezing cold? Where do you think that feeling goes?”
She always does that, says the thing I’m thinking. I wanted to tell her about after sledding, how Cam, Toby, Ollie, and I, and sometimes our friends Star and Teo, too, would sit on the mudroom floor soaking wet, taking off our boots, and how it wasn’t until our feet and hands started to hurt with that bad, coming-back-to-life hurt that we’d realize we’d been cold at all. But I was punishing Linny for the cheese shop, so I just shrugged.
“You can’t stay mad at me, Cornelia. You know you never can, so why bother trying?”
I didn’t say anything. We kept watching the kids. One boy, three years old or so, in a lime green parka and a ridiculous, multicolored fleece jester’s hat was still swinging. His mother was pushing him, and he was singing, unaccountably but with great brio, “Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside.” I’ll take him, I thought.
“I’ll take that one,” said Linny, pointing to the boy, “But only if the hat comes with him.” I looked at her.
“It’s not that I can’t stay mad at you,” I told her, “it’s that I can’t get mad at you. If I could ever get mad at you, I’d definitely be able to stay that way. Just so you know.”
We kept walking, “I ain’t gonna study war no moooore!” sailing over our heads like a streamer.
It wasn’t that the sex was bad. It really wasn’t. It’s that the evening was so exquisite, so without flaw in every other regard that the sex should have been a revelation; it should have thrown us over the moon. And it didn’t—not quite.
When I told Linny this, back in my apartment, she’d said, “So you’re saying that the only thing missing from a night of otherwise perfect, unbelievable sex was perfect, unbelievable sex.”
In the allegory of my life, I can never decide if Linny is Snark or Truth.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. You should have seen the dinner he made. The flowers on the table. The way the lights came in through the window. If you could have seen his face when he looked at me. And heard the things he said, not just before, but after. As a matter of fact, after was great. I loved after, and you know how awkward after can be.” I talked; then I stopped talking.
In the allegory of my life, if Snark and Truth turned out to be the same character, well, it would not surprise me a bit.
I’m a fan of suggestion, obliquity, discretion, the cut to the morning after, the camera’s eye turning upward, outward—to the sky, to the cuckoo clock over the bed, to the rushing river, away. Forget those slick bodies tangled on the floor or grappling on kitchen tables. Sexy is Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed talking into the same telephone receiver, their anger tipping reluctantly over into desire, the desire as much in the distance separating their two mouths as in their proximity to each other. What I’m saying is, you’re not getting details—not detailed details anyway. If you’re anything like I am and, like most people, I assume most people are like I am, this is just fine with you.
That being said and at the risk of your believing me insane or at least supremely weird, I’ll tell you how I think of Date Seven, how it’s parsed out and catalogued in my memory. Bullets, they call them, right? Here are the bullets:
Compliment One
Almost Rear Window
Notorious
Not Casablanca
Compliment Two
Food
Sleep/No Sleep
Compliment One: It didn’t get me into bed, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not because I’m
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