Shawn Main

A Deleted Scene

I’ve been working on something a little different… on and off… for a few months. It tells about an insomniac who wanders out into the city at 3 AM. I just cut a chunk of text that spun the story in the wrong direction, but I didn’t really want to toss it out. So I’m saving it here… for my sake -SM

Tariq liked to think of the city in terms of bubbles. It was too big to take in otherwise. As he saw it, you have the largest bubble around your home. There you need to know a grocery store, a laundromat, a bookstore, a barbershop, a coffee shop, two bars, and a dozen or so restaurants. You learn the map of those places intuitively so that you can navigate between them with ease.

But then you have smaller bubbles. You might have the bubble that connects work with a subway station. It might, like Tariq’s work bubble, contain an office supply store, a deli, an Indian restaurant, a fast food place, a diner you’ve stopped going to, and a small park where you like to take your lunch on sunny afternoons or when you feel awkward about having nothing to say to your coworkers in the break room.

Then there are the bubbles around friends’ homes, around places you might meet someone to get a drink, to watch a movie. These can be strange places, though, because, while a friendship can fade, the bubble will remain. Only now you feel like an intruder in it. Tariq felt like an intruder sometimes. He would make an effort to avoid Shelly’s bubble. He didn’t even like taking a subway line if it meant passing through her home or work bubbles.

Tariq thought about his bubbles often. He thought about them protectively like a parent. He liked that within a city so big and unknowable that he could lay claim to something.

(via loveyourchaos)

Exposed

Note: This has some explicit bits. Also, it might be a draft. I haven’t decided yet. -Shawn

When Iris told me the story about how her childhood pet dog, Pickles, was killed by a speeding BMW, I said,”Oh, that’s awful. You must have been devastated.” But I was distracted wondering what she would look like with her wrists bound to my bedpost and red welts across her ass. I imagined her moans. I imagined her pale breasts. I imagined her dark, wide eyes. I had to cross my legs to hide my erection.

We had met one week earlier when Ursula from the IT department had a New Year’s party. I drank coffee and exchanged pleasantries with my co-workers as they nervously gulped down wine. Soon their discomfort would be abated and they would be dancing, singing, and groping at people they would be ashamed to face soberly on Monday morning.

Iris sat in a corner with her head down and wrote on her blue jeans with a sharpie. She wasn’t my type- she was too scrawny, pallid.

I asked what she was doing to her pants. Without looking up, she said, “I write song lyrics.”

I offered her a blank sheet of paper, but she waved it away. “No. This is the ritual.”

Indeed, she had scrawled all the way down her legs, sometimes circling around small tears, other times losing words into holes. I asked if I could read what she had just written. She pointed at her lap.

I said,”Excuse me while I admire your crotch.” Iris laughed and I felt terribly clever.

Written from pocket to zipper were the words:
“Why do we kiss with our eyes closed? /
Why do we make love in the dark?”

I replayed the exchange in my head until we met up the following Sunday amid a blizzard. The sky was streaked with snow and Iris wore so many layers I didn’t recognize her when she first stepped into the coffee shop. Before she could sit down, she had to unwind her knitted scarf and remove her coat, her fleece, and a thick sweater. She looked very frail when she finally flopped onto the couch.

I sipped at my dark roast and Iris ordered a hot chocolate. She asked me what I wanted to be when I was a child. I told her “an astronaut” and it wasn’t a lie, but until age nine really I imagined myself as Han Solo, not Buzz Aldrin. I spent the following several years obsessed with cooking and fixated on the idea that I would become a chef when I was older.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a cliche.” And I laughed.

Iris told me how her mother had forced her to take guitar lessons as a little girl when she really just wanted to play the cello. She used words like “patronizing bitch” and “that goddamn whore.”

I wanted to say “Poor thing” and kiss Iris on the tip of her nose. Instead, I shook my head in commiseration.

“It’s around here somewhere,” she said. She swiveled her legs in the air and located a patch of scribbles in the tangle of ink. I held her leg by its thin ankle and read:
“You don’t care who you slaughter /
But come hell or high water /
I won’t be your glam rock daughter”

“Have you ever been in love?” Iris asked.

“I’m not sure how to reply,” I said.

Iris shrugged as if it were a straightforward question.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said and slurped her cocoa.

So I told Iris about Penny because my relationship with Penny was the sort of thing that made sense. We were in college, we hooked up, we dated, we were inseparable, we grew apart, we came back together, we fought, she kissed someone else so we could end things, I delivered a box of her CDs and shirts to her dorm room.

“A big box of fuck you,” said Iris.

“And then we never spoke again,” I said.

“That’s so tragic,” said Iris and she nodded her head as if agreeing with herself. I wondered if she was going to cry.

I didn’t tell her about Shoshana because I didn’t understand what had happened with Shoshana. She was a reference librarian while I lived in Brooklyn and my senior by nine years. While helping me locate and decipher insulation regulations, she placed a hand on my knee and slipped her number into my pocket. The third time we had sex, she asked me if I would slap her and tug at her hair. I was tentative, but soon we had a pattern. We would watch a movie on her couch on Sundays and meet for drinks on Wednesdays. We’d complain about trivialities and then we’d be naked in her bedroom. I would handcuff her wrists and slip a blindfold around her eyes. I would tell her she’d been bad and whip the fleshy skin of her ass, spank her exposed crotch, bite the back of her neck. She would whimper through gritted teeth and then we’d fuck until the floor was a mess of shiny condom wrappers.

That lasted six months until, late one night, I found myself wide awake in Shoshana’s bed. I watched as her chest rose and fell softly. I studied the arch of her back and ran my fingers up her spine to count her vertebrae. I wanted to wrap myself around her and never let her leave me. I wanted to tell her all the secrets I’d never spoken aloud. I whispered,”You mean the world to me” and Shoshana said,”Let’s never change this.” That night, I slipped out and walked home. The following week, I would resist the urge to answer my phone and the calls would taper off soon after.

“I’ve never been in love,” said Iris, breaking my reverie. Her gaze was glassy and fixed on the window. Outside, the snow had made the world disappear.

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” she said without looking at me.

I set my coffee cup on the table and watched Iris chew on her lower lip. I bent forward and brought my face close to hers. She didn’t react until our lips were flush. She pulled away. She said,”What are you doing?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

I sat back, deflated. “I should go,” I said. I stood and slipped my arms into my coat. It felt suddenly too warm in the small coffee shop.

“I don’t know you,” said Iris. “I don’t know anything about you.”

Her inflection told me she wanted me to stop, but I was at the door. I pushed it open. Wind blew inside and cast up a flurry of napkins. I stepped outside into the blinding snow.

A week later, I ran into Iris in the parking garage at work. I offered her a friendly smile and said,”Hi, Iris. How have you been?”

She said,”Just fine” and walked on. I watched as she got into her car and drove away. She wore new jeans and they didn’t have a single mark.

heroines:Me llueven los ojos (via Variableimaginaria)

With You

Maria tried to listen to the priest, but she found herself instead transfixed by her grandfather’s casket. The wood was dark and polished so smooth it shone. The lid was open, but from where Maria sat in the pew, she couldn’t see her grandfather - only that the coffin was lined with something that looked like white velvet.

The church was mostly empty and Maria knew no one. It had been many years since she had set foot inside any kind of religious building.

There were a few middle aged couples with politely bowed heads. Maria watched a man remove a hard candy from his wife’s purse and cough to cover the sound as he unwrapped it. As he brought his hand back down from his mouth, he ran his fingers casually over his wife’s knee. The woman’s expression didn’t change as she crossed her legs so her foot was pressed against her husband’s.

Maria tried not to stare. She felt conspicuous and worried someone would approach her and demand to know who she was and what right she had to be there.

No one spoke to Maria.

Of course the real problem was Maria didn’t know why she had come. She had never met her grandfather. Everything she knew about him was contained in a shoebox she kept hidden under her bed.

The email from her mother was curt, but that was in the woman’s nature. Maria’s mother didn’t speak about her parents or her childhood. She certainly never mentioned that her father was in a home in Virginia less than a three hour drive away from Maria’s one-bedroom apartment in D.C.

Maria had tried to convince her brother, Paul, to go, but he brushed her aside. “Why?” he asked. “Mom has everything in order.” Maria pouted, begged, tried to tell him it would be a good bonding experience for them, that she would pay for the ticket, that she hadn’t seen him in a year, but he couldn’t be swayed. He said,”I didn’t know the man.”

After their phone call, Maria had cried. Paul hadn’t even asked her about the recital that she had written him about so enthusiastically a week earlier.

There was no discussion whether their mother would return to the states for the funeral. She would be spending the day traveling from her office in Nairobi to Kisumu to negotiate microloans.

Maria’s father would have come if she had asked him. He would have flown from Jakarta that night, but then he was a diplomat and it was in his nature to attend ceremonies at the behest of other people. He would have taken her out for dinner afterwards and asked,”How are you handling this?” He would have asked about her music and said,”I’m so happy for you. You deserve success.” Then he would give her canned replies when she asked about the embassy and excused himself early to get work done in his hotel room.

Maria didn’t consider contacting her father. She preferred her mother’s brand of earnest neglect to her father’s calculated interest.

The priest’s voice droned. Maria wondered if he viewed this funeral as practice for a more important one. She tried to concentrate, but she could hear only fragments. “…Eugene was many things during life…”

She had only been to one funeral before and that was when she was seventeen and living in Cairo. Her best friend, Maha, had been killed in a car accident. Within hours of hearing, Maria was with Maha’s family as they carried her coffin through narrow streets to the cemetery. She had never seen Egyptian men cry before, but they wept openly then and called out to God. The women screamed and were shoved away from the body. The coffin rocked back and forth as everyone reached to carry it at once. People seemed to appear from all around them. The crowd swelled and Maria bawled until she felt like there was nothing left inside.

“…leaves behind a daughter… two grandchildren… unfortunately, none of them could be here today, but I know they will join with me in…”

Maria’s legs were asleep. She shifted her weight back and forth on the hard seat of the pew. She stamped her feet against the floor.

“…be again with his wife, Mary, who was taken from him by cancer in…”

Maria stood. The priest stopped. They held one another’s gaze. The man had tired, drooping eyes. Maria thought he looked as if he were going to say something directly to her. She turned and hurried down the aisle. Behind her, the priest instructed everyone to open their hymnals and the organist began to play.

When Maria reached the heavy church doors, she looked back and contemplated the body in the coffin.



The next morning, back in D.C. Maria took the worn cardboard shoebox from under her bed. She sat on the floor and counted the faded letters inside the box. They were meticulously arranged by date: “January 11th, 1939, My dearest Mary” through “December 12th, 1961, My poor, sweet, suffering Mary.” When she was content they were all there, she flipped to the last page of the last letter.

“I’ll take the first train home and be by your side before you know it -  there to smother you with my lips and hold tight your hand. I long for your touch always.”

Maria returned the letters to the box. She shut the cardboard lid and sealed it with duct tape. Then she went to the narrow strip of yard behind her apartment building, dug a deep hole, and buried her grandfather.

(via jennilee, kim)

Way Down

When Liz got home, she found Eric flinging books out the window. He had a stack of them by his feet and, though he threw them one at a time, there was nothing ceremonial about it.

He said,”hello” and asked if the worn copy of The Fellowship of the Ring was hers. He said he couldn’t remember.

She set her work things on the table and went into the bedroom. The top two shelves on Eric’s bookcase were empty. Eight months ago, while Liz visited her parents for the weekend, Eric had rearranged everything. He’d paid particular attention to where the bookcases should go and how the books should be arranged so his favorites would be in easy reach of the bed.

Liz took off her shoes and rubbed her feet.

She picked a dozen books off the next shelf and carried them out to Eric, craddling them carefully in her arms. She added them to his stack.

“So what are you doing?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s not important,” said Eric, hefting a hardback thesaurus. “I just needed to do something poignant.”

Liz peered out the window. Six stories down the books were barely recognizable as books. They were just colorful rectangles on the pavement. A crowd had gathered and pointed up towards their window.

“Well, then shouldn’t you be throwing your paintings?” asked Liz.

“What paintings?” asked Eric.

Liz watched. Eric looked distracted. It was the same look he had when he took out the garbage or watched the news or rode the subway or met someone for the first time. It said: I’m too busy for this.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” asked Liz.

“Yeah, wine would be good.”

“Not for throwing.”

“Oh. Never mind.”

Eric lifted How to Draw What You See. He raised his arm back like a pitcher and sent it sailing.

Liz smiled. They flew magnificently: smooth and heavy as they rose, fluttering and desperate on the way down.

(via anodien)

Different

“I should go,” said Diana. She watched the full moon out the window. It reflected in the puddles on the street.

The rain had stopped and the clouds had moved on. So much for weather reports. They predicted the storms would continue into the morning.

“Oh, Magic,” said Arthur. “Did you suddenly get shy?” He nuzzled the naked skin of Diana’s hip. She had prominent hip bones. Arthur had always found them sexy, especially when she wore low jeans. In the past week, he made a series of jokes about her hip cleavage.

Diana’s phone beeped. She removed herself from Arthur and searched under the bed for her bag. It was a text message from Assam: “Hey Di! I’m playing on Friday at Canal Bar. 11 PM. Want to come?”

Assam was a friend from college. The night before graduation the three of them had climbed over the fence at a farm near school. Their intent was to go cow tipping, but they couldn’t find any cows. Instead, they climbed trees and sang rowdy songs. The night ended with a drunken pact to remain friends forever.

Diana began redressing. She collected her clothes from the floor. “Assam’s band is playing on Friday. Want to go?”

“Yeah, I think I already told him I would,” said Arthur.

“Oh,” said Diana. She considered the shoe in her hand. “He didn’t ask you to invite me?”

“No,” said Arthur. “But I figured you’d take any excuse to go to a bar after pay day.” Diana bent to put on her shoes and Arthur ran his fingers along the back of her thigh. “You should stay, Magic. I’ll be lonely without you.”

Diana batted away Arthur’s hand. “Stop. That tickles.”

The television came on in the apartment next door.

Diana cocked her head to listen. “The rain didn’t slow them,” she said. She had never met the couple who lived next to Arthur, but every night at ten, someone arrived home and they would turn on an old sitcom with the volume too loud. Sometimes she could hear their laughter through the wall.

Two weeks ago, Arthur told Diana he was in love with her. Diana kissed him. It seemed like the right to do. She cared about him deeply. It was just before ten o’clock and, soon, they had a laugh track to accompany their love making.

“What do they do?” asked Diana and she nodded towards the wall.

“She’s a security guard or something. Says it’s the most boring thing in the world.”

“So she’s the one who arrives at ten every night?”

“Yeah. Well… actually, he passed away last week.”

Diana froze. “How did he die?”

“A heart attack, I think.”

Through the wall, a studio audience laughed uproariously. Diana felt suddenly sick. She sat on the bed.

“Are you okay, Magic?”

She didn’t answer, but rested her head in Arthur’s lap. Arthur ran his hand through her hair. She thought back to when they had first met and how Arthur always played with her hair while they watched movies.

“It should be different,” said Diana. She felt tears form in her eyes. She gripped the blanket tightly in her fists. She wanted to hoist herself up and scream. She wanted to hit Arthur. She wanted to kiss him and pound against the walls.

Instead, she just held on to the blanket and let Arthur play with her hair.

(via anodien, cacaococoa)