Spring Fling: The Revolution's All Talk

4th installment.


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The Revolution’s All Talk
We had our intimate moments, physical moments, explorative and fun, but Holly was a special girl and I was a special guy. The physical connection for us reached its apotheosis in cuddling. Holly was coming off a five-year relationship with a woman and had never had a boyfriend before. I was the first. Someone had to be, and I felt honored. She made it clear that when it came to sex patience would not only be appreciated but required. A simple kiss was a big deal for her, and though I loved kissing I never pressed her for this favor. What passion there was was funneled into talk, fueled by talk. Never had I enjoyed talk so much with another person, and neither, she admitted, did she. Our constant chattering had its dangers, and its blessings.
One Monday night after working late I went to her place. It was the first day of her weekend so her mood was good. Thank God for I was exhausted and feeling every minute of my 37 years. Tea-lights and votives cast orange tongues on the walls and wisps of vanilla smoke drifted from the wicks and mixed with clouds of cinnamon incense. Or the other way around. Holly packed her bowl with fresh greens and passed it to me. Her eyes were watery slits of red joy. Her words oozed slowly like dripping paint.
“Hi Spaz-bar [her pet name for me--I’ll explain later]. How was your work night.”
“Sucked.”
“Oh really? In what way did it suck. Tell me everything darling.” This, I swear, took twenty seconds in coming out of her mouth.
“Honey, I work in a sandwich shop. I slice tomatoes and squirt mustard for yuppies. The best I can say about work tonight is that it’s over.”
Holly gave me one of those “come-off-it” looks, then took a thick band of her long brown hair into her hands and pawed at it. “Did you forget your lesson Spaz-bar?”
“I--what?”
Her eyes were heartbroken blue jello. “Love yourself.”
Damn lessons. I always forgot. “I do love myself Holly. Can we please not talk about work? We’re both free now. How was your day.”
“Oh fine,” she said, peering at a candle on the bookshelf. “Maybe you’re ready for lesson two now that you love yourself.” She looked back at me and waited.
I lit a cigarette. “Sure I can take it.”
“Oh good,” Holly said, her speech quickening. “It’s one of my favorites. It’s the lesson of compassion. You do believe in compassion don’t you Spaz-bar?”
“Well of course,” I said.
“Well of course,” she said. “And tomorrow evening you’ll make sandwiches for those yuppies with perfect bodhisattva compassion. Now I want you to gage the spiritual-emotional state of each person who walks through your door, and speak accordingly. I’ll look forward with interest to a full and detailed report tomorrow night.”
My lips moved but uttered no sound for several moments. “You’re amazing,” I said, and I meant it. She cut to the core of things, and I wanted to do the right thing.
“Thanks Spaz-bar.”
“No Holly, it’s the way you twist the mundane into genius. Your talk is fertile ground. I also want to be fertile ground.”
“Paul Tillich’s ‘Ultimate Ground of Being’,” she said. “Thou art that.”
I laughed and coughed up smoke. “You know about Paul Freakin’ Tillich.”
She pointed to herself. “Hello--religion major.” Just then she crawled into bed and pulled the lavender sheet up to her dimpled chin and smiled.
I sat at her desk and untied my tennis shoes. “Snuggle time?” I said.
“Poetry time Spaz-bar. We can snuggle afterward. You start it off.”
This was one of our favorite rituals. Collaborative off the cuff, turn taking poetry.
I opened a new document on her laptop. I crushed out the cigarette and lit another. And thought about a clever first line.
“Want a hint,” Holly said. “Do you love me? Be honest.”
“I got it,” I said, and spoke out the quatrain as I typed it:
He says, look, what I’m sayin’ is
[I shouldn’t be sayin’ this]
It doesn’t matter if I’m in love with you,
Or whatever we call it.
I knew this was a risk, but we encouraged risk-taking in the Collaboration Game, I looked over to Holly who was gazing dreamily to the ceiling. “Your ball,” I said.
“Good, good. Now type this:”
She says, look, what I’m sayin’ is
[I shouldn’t be sayin’ this]
It doesn’t matter if I’m in love with you,
Or whatever we call it.
Hmm? I didn’t get the point of her repetition but I left the desk to take a piss and ponder my response. What to say? Through collaboration we had found a method of addressing the secret issues. No matter what I’d write about her some day. I’d been journaling about Holly from the start. It was my turn.
While pissing in her toilet he thinks,
If we breakup I’ll turn the transcripts
Into something publishable.
I’d used the scary, unspeakable word, “breakup.” Would she be mad? Nervous?
Maybe I really fucked up this time. I always knew it would be something I wrote that ruined everything.
“Relax Jimmy--you’re changing colors,” Holly said, then hit the pipe. “Hands on keyboard now.” I obeyed. “Ok.”
She thinks, when he talks of breakup,
Somehow it comforts me,
Puts less pressure on it,
Allows these moments of joy.
I read the words silently then aloud, and started crying and couldn’t finish. She had just taken all the pressure off, and reminded me of what it means to truly live in the present moment. I tried reading her words again and again but couldn’t get past the second line without biting back the tears. We took a little break. I think I spilled my beer and Holly chided me for fucking up. I wrote:
And he wept upon reading this,
Each time as if it were the first,
Then she says he fucked up.
Holly ran a finger along the coil of my ear, and dictated:
But we don’t remember what
And it wasn’t very important.
She was just giving it to him
Like she always does.
The revolution is all talk.
She handed me the pipe. I was getting high. There was a noise. Holly’s laughter. I typed as she rested her chin on my shoulder.
Are you making fun of me again?
She said, I was referencing your twisted little mind.
Isn’t it cute.
You love me little pervert, and isn’t it perfect.
Only a pervert could ever love me.
[check, your move]
I’m not sure if I--
And I’m Emily Dickinson, she said.
Risen again to teach you the lessons.
Stop it!
Don’t you like that? she said. A pause. Window framing waning crescent moon to the left of an old gothic church steeple. The bells of ten o’clock sounded. Things get blurred a bit. The lovers are making out. There are joy-tears, no words. The poem becomes their tongue, their joy-tears. Jimmy wiped his face, savored the smoky taste of her, typed:
I’ve never collaborated before
I don’t want to go back to a world of duality
And what if--(he eyes her breasts and salivates)
She says, our relationship is occasionally ecstatic.
Just accept it.
[checkmate, new game]
“Well that was productive,” I said.
“Jimmy,” she whispered, suddenly sounding vulnerable like a little girl. “I never want this poem to end.”
In bed that night she allowed me the privilege of cupping her breast. Warm parentheses of skin melting into twin subconscious pools of play. I dreamed that reality was a poem in one voice pretending to be two pretending to be manifold pretending to have separate memory systems pretending to take the whole game seriously with fights and fucks and money stuff, but soft feminine laughter served as constant soundtrack, and I woke refreshed as a child (so rare) and so did Holly.