The Atomic Weight of Love (28 page)

I’d again gone off on some obscure pathway of thought. Where were the mile markers, the directional signs?

“Let’s go to bed,” he said, helping me to stand. “You are gone,” he said. “Gone.”

I held my scarred palm close to my face, stretched the hand open and closed.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I laughed. “I can’t decide.”

“Cool,” he said, and we went inside, closed the door to the world, and turned off the lights.

I don’t possess adequate words to describe the majority of that night, what happened to me, how I felt—except to say that each minute sensation ran along the nerve fibers to my brain in a more direct, potent way than ever before, that I registered and took in every sensation. Fellatio, an act that in concept had disgusted me, turned out to be a joy. It was a joy to give, to taste and smell, to listen and to sense which of my experiments were met with the most enthusiasm, pleasure.

The boundaries that had defined me for four decades dissolved. I began to believe I could be anyone. Anyone.

It was my choice.

I TOOK IN THE
MAIL
and the newspaper, smelling some mustiness in my home, seeing a patina of dust on everything. I’d been gone less than twenty-four hours—hardly enough time to make the place seem unlived in, abandoned. It felt that way, though.

Maybe no one had lived there for a very, very long time.

Alden considered long-distance telephone charges unendurable, and so I knew he wouldn’t call while he was in New York. The only thing I had to watch out for was neighbors—nosy, ever-watchful neighbors named June.

I stopped by the library and returned
The Naked Ape
, wishing Desmond Morris well. Then I stood in front of the bank of card catalogs and stared at the petite wood drawers with their brass pulls and hand-lettered alphabets.

Clay had asked me something in bed the night before—he wanted to know if I’d ever climaxed by masturbating. I knew he’d been trying to hide his surprise, that it was something he’d clearly been thinking about since I told him that the orgasm he’d given me had been my first. I wanted to know if I were the freak I’d begun to think I might be. Men masturbated—I’m not sure how I knew that, but I did. But women?

I knew there was a report on human sexual behavior, a scientific report that was based on interviews with men and women, the first compilation of human sexual behavior. It was there, a tickle in my brain’s storage system; I just had to access that memory. The author’s name began with a “K”—that much I remembered, and so I thumbed through the cards as quickly as possible. Finally, I had it: Kinsey’s
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
, published in 1953. These women were my peers; surely I could learn from them. I found a well-thumbed copy, the edges of the pages grimy with dirt. That made me smile—I could see the Los Alamos scientists with their heads down, eyes averted, claiming it was job-related research.

In the shadows of bookshelves, hidden away from prying eyes, I found what I was after: sixty-two percent of women reported that they masturbated. So, I was in the minority—the sad thirty-some percent.

But not anymore.

NEXT TO HIS STOVE
lurked a bowl containing an ominous dark brown liquid and pale, beige cubes of some unidentifiable matter.

“This is dinner?”

“Tofu. I’m marinating it in soy sauce.”

“What?”

“Tofu. It’s bean curd, or coagulated soy milk.”

“You can’t afford meat? I could have brought some steak or chicken.”

“I’m a vegetarian, Meridian. I don’t eat meat.”

I stood there, flummoxed. Now I was involved with a
vegetarian
hippie.

“Don’t take it personally, OK? Don’t get offended,” he said.

“I’m not. I’m just thinking. But I don’t see how you can get enough protein. Fish? Will you eat fish?”

“Nothing with a face.”

“Oh.” This was getting awfully complicated, this dietary thing with Clay.

“Aw, Meridian, stop it. Try something new.”

“This looks miles from palatable.” I poked a finger into one of the mushy cubes. “You put up with this, Jasper?” I asked, grinning.

“Let’s smoke a number before dinner,” he said, moving toward his bedroom. He returned with the carved wooden box, set it on the counter, and pulled out a miniature wooden pipe. He unrolled a plastic baggie and used his fingertips to gather a small amount of pot that he then tapped lightly into the bowl of the pipe.

“You don’t worry about your neighbors, that they can smell it?”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a flying fuck what other people think.”

I laughed. “That’s a new one.”

“What is?”

“Flying fuck.”

“Well, then you’ll really like this one.
Why don’t you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut?
”

“Oh, my,” I said, laughing.

Clay laughed, too, and let out a burst of smoke. “Let me light it for you—it’s basically a one- or two-hit bowl.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I followed his lead. The smoke instantly burned my throat.

“Try to keep the smoke in as long as possible. You’ll get higher, faster. Remember, there’s no filter. It’s hotter than cigarettes,” he said, ever helpful. I imagined him teaching a roomful of Lab scientists the finer points of getting high, and that only made me laugh and then cough harder. “You’re off and running,” he said.

“Lord,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Tell me, my love, when do we eat this absolutely scrumptious banquet you’ve prepared?” And then I laughed so hard that I was afraid I’d lose my balance. I moved to the cushions, watched Clay knock the ash from the pipe and reload it.

We laughed without reason or reference. We laughed until our faces hurt, until we had to work cramps out of our jaw muscles, until the tears ran, until our sides hurt. I don’t think I’d ever really played, even as a child. It had always seemed to me that smart people didn’t play, and they certainly never nearly peed their pants with uncontrollable laughter while seated next to a vegetarian hippie veteran who instigated wholesale abandon.

I AWOKE WHEN I
FELT
the mattress moving. I rolled over, attempted to go back to sleep, and then Clay began kicking, waving his arms. It progressed to shouting, yelling, and then he awoke on his own.

He was eel-slick with sweat, breathing hard, and I could feel the rapid beat of his pulse where my hand circled his wrist. He switched on the bedside lamp and leaned against the wall.

“You had a nightmare.”

“Yeah.” His breath was shallow but slowing quickly.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Do you want to hear about it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Don’t be so sure.” He used the hem of the sheet to wipe the sweat from his face.

“Water?” I asked, tossing back the covers and pulling his T-shirt over my head.

I took one of the tall glasses from the dish rack and filled it at the sink. A full moon silvered the yard and trees. I nearly tripped over Jasper’s water bowl when I turned to go back into the bedroom.

“Where’s Jasper?” I asked before I spotted him cowering in a corner of Clay’s bedroom. “Oh,” I said.

“He’s not used to it.”

“How could anyone get used to that?”

“I was that loud?”

“You were that frantic,” I said, handing him the water glass. He drained it. “More?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead. “Meridian?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I returned to the kitchen sink and let the water run longer this time, hoping it would be cooler, buying myself some time. I could feel that my heart rate was rapid, too. Grains of sand stuck to my bare feet as I walked across the wood floor.

I handed Clay the water and sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed, watching him. He drained the glass and set it on the floor beside the mattress.

“Come back here,” he said, patting the mattress next to him.

“Not yet.” I shook my head. I wanted to see his face clearly, and that would be impossible if I were next to him in bed. And then I waited, which is easy, in concept. In practice, it’s difficult to resist the impulse to fill silence, to let the person you love off of the hook, to let them be.

It was then, while I waited and before he told me his story, that I first knew I loved Clay, truly loved him. Not as a boy, a man, a lover, but as a person—another person struggling in life’s paisley swirl of ugliness and blinding beauty. When he reached a big toe to touch my folded legs I took his foot in both of my hands and held it, looked him in the eye.

“I’m strong enough to hear this. Don’t protect me any longer.” I began rubbing the arch of his foot. “I want all of you. ALL of you, Clay. Good, bad, ugly, sad, black, gray, boring, funny, loving, angry. All of you.” I kept my distance, did not go to him to comfort or hold him. Had I done so, the story would not have emerged; he could have kept it inviolable.

“It’s pretty much the same every time,” he said. “Fuck.”

“What happens?”

A couple of minutes passed. Clay held a forearm across his eyes, and I wasn’t sure he was going to speak again. Finally, he lowered his arm and looked at me.

“My buddy dies. Steps on a fucking landmine and gets blown to pieces.”

I picked up his other foot and began massaging it.

He stared past me, over my shoulder. “He was just a few feet behind me, on patrol. I heard the click, and I know he did, too. And then that was it. He was gone, and I was down.” He took a breath. “Couldn’t hear a fucking thing, burst my eardrums; the blast took the air out of my lungs, just sucked it right out. And I lost consciousness—went out like a light.” He paused. “Could have been me, Meridian. I just didn’t step on it when I went past. Roger did. Roger took the step.” He put his hands to his face and hid from me.

Now I moved up to be beside him, to pull his hands from his eyes, kiss his eyelids. I rested my head on his chest, above his heart, and thought of how it was to my great, good fortune that he had not misstepped those many miles from home, that his chest was percussive, alive.

He wound his hands in my hair, tugged at it gently.

Neither of us slept any more that night. We held each other in silence until Jasper, who had at last crawled to the foot of the bed and curled into sleep, awoke and begged to go out.

JUST AFTER NOON,
I
went home to bring in the mail, dump my dirty clothes, and pick up some clean ones. When I returned to Clay’s apartment, there was loud music blaring from the open front door. Myriad young people sat and stood on his stoop, floated in and out of the front door, letting the screen door bang like intermittent gunfire. I parked next to a couple of unfamiliar cars and a VW bus with “Love Machine” painted on the side. I sat in my car until Clay spotted me.

“What are you doing?”

“Who are they?”

“Friends who dropped in on their way up to New Buffalo. They’re crashing here tonight. C’mon,” he said, opening my car door. I held onto the handle from inside, began a tug-of-war with him. “Come meet my friends.”

“Maybe another time.”

“Don’t be such a downer.”

“I didn’t know . . .”

“Well, neither did I. But they’re here, so come inside. Join us.”

I hated this. Hated it. But finally I grabbed my purse and a bag of groceries. I’d also bought him a couple more drinking glasses so that we didn’t have to do dishes every five minutes. He took the bag from me as we crossed the lawn, and I watched the hippies eye me.

“Everyone, this is Meridian. Meridian, this is everyone. I’ll let you introduce yourself,” he said, ducking inside the apartment with the grocery bag.

He was going to leave me here, abandon me to stand stupidly in this group of kids?

“I’m Sunset,” a blonde woman with dirty feet hugged me, and I could smell sweat and marijuana smoke trapped in the fabric of her peasant blouse.

“Hi,” I said, and stepped onto the porch.

“There are some wicked magic brownies in the kitchen,” Sunset said, “if there’re any left.”

People were either propped up against the walls of his living room or lolling in the pile of pillows. There must have been at least twenty of them crammed into Clay’s tiny living room. They passed a tall vaselike object around the room. When they inhaled, it made watery, gurgling noises. One of the men dropped a lit cigarette onto the carpet and then reacted slowly, finally flicking it off of the fibers and toward the baseboard with an “Aw shiiiiit.”

“Are you sure it’s out?” I walked over, picked it up. He ignored me, and then I heard him whisper snidely to the guy next to him: “Thanks,
Mom
.” I wanted to kick him, see if he’d even notice he’d been kicked, but instead I went to find Clay. The bedroom door was drawn partway closed. I rapped softly and opened it.

There were three bodies on the mattress, moving beneath and on top of the sheets. I saw breasts and butts and legs and arms and hair—lots of hair. Busy mouths.

“Oh, sorry!” I said and shut the door as quickly as I could. The bathroom door was open, and a woman sat on the toilet with her skirt lifted while two men perched on the edge of the tub, passing a joint between them.

“And, it’s like, you know . . . ,” she said. “Rousseau.
The Dream
. That painting? His jungle. Colors, man. Green, green, green. And water. Sweat. Dripping wet.” She picked up a paper cup from the edge of the sink and drank thirstily.

“Wet . . .” One of the men grinned lazy, wide. “Right on.”

“And then,” she continued, “it rains. Jungle mist. Wetter and wetter. And she’s naked, and her body takes it all in. All the moisture. She’s sooooooo wet. So the jungle fucks her. She fucks the jungle. They’re one.
ONE
, yeah?” she asked the men.

“I could fuck a jungle,” one of the men said. “LET ME AT IT!” he roared. I turned and left.

“Hey!” Clay said, six people deep in his kitchen. “Meridian! Over here!”

I shook my head and pushed through to the front door, stepped over a couple kissing on the steps, not sure if they were man and woman, woman and woman, or man and man. I wondered where Jasper was, but all I wanted to do was to get home, take a shower and be rid of all the filth.