Day Sixteen: Virginity

SEVEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT VIRGINITY

1). A glass of milk sits on the table, untouched. Nobody wants to be the first to claim it, though everyone is thirsty. The milk is a big deal, but no one can explain why.

2). The young woman walks down the street a couple of blocks from her home,clutching books to her chest. A carload of men drives by and honks. She is ashamed of herself, even though they are the ones who are behaving like louts. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead of her, but she knows they'll just drive around the block and return. Next time, they'll be more insistent.

3). I always thought the whole concept of virginity was devoted to penis-worship. If you never had a penis inserted in your vagina, you were a virgin, even if you'd had orgasms from oral sex, even if someone had inserted his finger in there numerous times, even if you had rubbed against someone so hard that your entire body convulsed. But stick a penis in a vagina, suddenly it was a major deal.

4). The man moves towards the woman. She opens instantly. It's one of those rare moments when both people want the same thing, and aren't afraid to show it. Then they both wake up.

5). I have a dream in which I am a virgin again. I decide I don't need sex to be happy, and that I will go through life as an artist who lives alone, My only contact with men will be through postal letters. I will have an endless parade of postal lovers, who will regale me with propositions that I will never accept, and this will secretly be a relief for them. I keep the letters in a box in the closet.

6). A man went searching in the forest for his virginity. It had been eaten by animals a long time beforehand. One of the lions told him it was delicious. The man smiled, since he had been unaware of this.

7). I didn't lose my virginity. I gave it up voluntarily, and I don't want it back. If you try to return it to me, not only will there not be a reward, but I'll never speak to you again. Go find someone else's virginity. They've probably been searching for it since they were born, or they never lost it in the first place.

Day Fifteen: Taxes

TAX DAY

I don't want to live off the grid
with a bunch of livestock
in a tar paper shack with solar panels
and so I pay the price.
I wish there was a place I loved
so much that cost was no object,
but all of it is just drudgery,
receiving with one hand,
and then giving everything away
willingly, like a good citizen.
Anger is useless,
anger is being their bitch
sickening yourself
so you end up having to ask them for help--
but they'll find you eventually
even if you hide on a dirt road in the woods,
and they'll only work you over harder
if you protest.

Day Fourteen: Giving Birth

GROWNUPS

Giving birth

was much more difficult for me

than pregnancy, because

it meant I would actually have to care for a human

who was separate from myself.

My first pregnancy was easy because

I was young and underweight,

but my second was so difficult that

I collapsed in line at a drug store

on a hot August afternoon

while buying vitamins.

An aged woman in front of me

was counting out pennies for the cashier

in that laborious way that the elderly have,

and I grew dizzy, then finally

my legs gave way like soggy matchsticks.

Since I weighed 225 pounds by then

and was eight months pregnant,

this created a sensation,

even though I merely sat down suddenly

and with a decided lack of grace,

and then landed on my well-padded ass.

I've never in my life, before or since

received faster service than I did that afternoon.

The manager brought me a cup of water

and asked if I had been receiving prenatal care.

I assured her that I would call my doctor,

and that I was fine to walk home

and they watched me leave with skepticism

and concern, mixed with an odd hostility,

as if they resented me for not being helpless.

That labor was only twenty-four hours long,

half the time I spent giving birth to my son

who I swear was holding on to my intestines

to keep from emerging into a world

that was dry and unforgiving--

but my daughter was backwards

and rubbing against my spine like the edge of a comb,

wanting to leave, but going about it the wrong way.

I'd planned for natural childbirth, but

in both cases, medical science intervened

and provided me with drugs, to which I surrendered

gratefully, thinking to myself

that drugs had helped me

through so many other periods of my life,

and why should childbirth be any different?

In the end, the method was secondary

to the result, and I have two children

who have miraculously grown tall

and have learned not to ask me for help--

but in my dreams, they are still young

and need my guidance--

I guess that part of me wishes

they depended on me as much as they used to-

but the other, larger part is glad

to be able to open the door

and go outside

without wondering if it's safe to leave them for a moment.

Day Thirteen: Heartbreak

 SEPTEMBER

We sit at a table in the Midwestern sun
ninety degrees at two in the afternoon
prolonging my drive back to Illinois.
In two hours, you will be a blur
on the sidewalk, standing exactly where I left you,
but everything else will be moving,
and we'll both be swallowed up by bodies.
The desperate sex of the previous evening
still lies on the table before us,
and we stare at it as if it were a patient.
I can no longer touch you,
I can only run in the opposite direction--
and so I rise from the table,
tell you that it's time for me to go.
We walk to my car,
I hug you tight underneath the trees
while a sleeping bum snores in the weeds nearby.
We break apart eventually
and stare directly at each other
and I say “I love you”
but I am already starting not to mean it.

Day Twelve Theme: Eating Out

A SANDWICH I COULDN'T REFUSE

When I was a teenager in Tuscola, Illinois

eating out meant getting Italian beef sandwiches

from Liga's, a garish restaurant

on Route 36 at the edge of town.

It was one of those places with cherry red booths

and checkered tablecloths,

and a large neon sign featuring the Leaning Tower,

but my mother refused to eat there.

She claimed this was because the one time we did,

we were surrounded by ominous clusters of men

in shiny, expensive suits,

talking furtively amongst themselves,

which meant that Liga's was a front for the Mafia.

I never noticed, since I was

eagerly masticating shredded beef and soggy French bread

as I clutched a plastic glass filled with icy Coca Cola,

as close to nirvana as I ever got in those terrible days.

My mother's principles

were not sufficient enough for her to stop patronizing Liga's,

they only extended to her refusal to actually dine there,

and were probably influenced by her parsimony

her extreme reluctance to leave a tip.

Instead, she sent my stepfather to drive the five blocks,

and he always returned a few minutes later

with a bulging, greasy shopping bag

filled with sandwiches wrapped in shiny foil.

This continued for years, until one day

I bit into a piece of ground glass.

That unnerving crunch

was one of the most terrifying sounds of my adolescence.

A trip to the doctor met with scorn--

the doctor said, “there isn't anything wrong with her stomach”

after placing a stethoscope on it in a bored manner.

I was instructed to go home,

and only call him again if my stomach began to hurt

or I started to pee blood.

Nothing happened,

but I never ate a sandwich from Liga's again.

I wonder sometimes what happened to their family,

if they stayed in downstate Illinois,

or had an offer somewhere else they couldn't refuse—

the restaurant closed some time during the 80's,

and hasn't re-opened in another location, as far as I know.

I'm still sad about those sandwiches,

they proved to me

that you don't need many options to be happy,

just one thing that you like enough to have over and over.

Day Eleven Theme: Swimming

DISCOUNT LOVE

the
heartbreak
hotel
is
available
on
priceline.com
for
forty
bucks
a
night.
I
hope
it
has
a
pool
and
hot
tub.

Day Ten Theme: Road Trips

 THE GRAVEYARD OF ABANDONED SHOES

We stopped for an unauthorized piss

at the side of the road in central Mexico

in our Pinto hatchback, the kind

of car that explodes when you rear-end it.

We had stayed well ahead

of the other cars, but it still seemed

that we weren't moving fast enough

to conceal the fact we had stolen our license plates

from an abandoned pick-up truck in Iowa City.

Any cop running the numbers

would see that we weren't a Chevrolet Silverado,

and we'd be pissing in the corner of a cell for sure,

but we weren't in the US any more.

We were in a Mexican field surrounded

by all manner of shoes,

plastic sandals in women's and children's sizes

crude muddy hiking boots, hastily discarded,

stiletto heels by the dozens,

tennis shoes with holes in them.

Someone had thrown a pair of shoes into a tree,

just as folks like to do in the states,

they swung in the breeze like a merry corpse.

Word had somehow traveled

that this was the ultimate destination

for the release of unwanted footwear,

perhaps with a glossy catalog advertising its charms.

We completed our own release, got back into the car,

pulled onto the dusty road,

and watched the shoe graveyard recede

in the rear view mirror,

hoping that nobody had seen us.