Wide Eyed (14 page)

The ruinous “castle” was a fractured royal home built atop a network of unicorn horns. Tangled, they made a thorny crown on which the palace was balanced. I felt dwarfed imagining skyscraper-sized unicorns living in Earth’s mantle. They drilled up to the surface slaying any beast that got in their way. I was scared of unicorns when I had this vertiginous realization of our planet’s depths.

VI. Food

Love’s
sandwiches were disgusting. The turkey was dry and the lettuce was limp. People lined up for food like pigs along a trough.

Fast-food joints lined the highway. Every car was packed with obese people flaunting cigarettes, burgers, and sodas. Dairy Queens in Texas had burgers called “Belt Busters.”

Eventually we found a family-owned sandwich shop. The deli workers looked like Def Leppard. It took about twenty minutes to get our lunch, so Matt and I looked at this display case stuffed with hunting knives, switchblades, and handcuffs.

Where there are heavy-metal weapons, there are unicorns. It’s a barbarian thing. One dagger had a unicorn head tooled onto its black leather handgrip. The horse looked up at the blade with dedication and reverence. Unicorns elucidate the emotions of weaponry enthusiasts. They can convey macho illusions of grandeur with violent historical periods. The horn takes on phallic significance. No matter where I am, unicorns clarify the environment. I judge people depending on what kinds of unicorns they have. It might be unfair to remember Texas only by its unicorns, but there were so many—that counts for something.

OCEANIC

At night, paradise is a wilderness. I’m in Maui for a friend’s wedding, staying in animal heaven—a hotel where birds, fish, mongoose, snakes, butterflies, lizards, and housecats converge. During the daytime it’s sort of like Edward Hicks’s friendly painting
Peaceable Kingdom
. At night, turtles skim the sandy ocean bottom for algae and sharks lunge from the water to catch flying fish. I’m lying awake between crisp sheets, paralyzed by underwater fantasies.

All my friends are out skinny-dipping in the surf. I’m starring in
The Shining.
I’m Shelley Duvall, running down the halls trying to escape my psychotic husband. Bloody flash floods and door-choppings are my future.

When I stay in nice hotels—not the roadside kind— I get terrified of walking the dark halls alone. Too many living beings have inhabited them, or have died in the rooms. For this reason, I have a tendency to drink too much once I’ve checked in.

Everyone returns from the starlit swim.

“You should’ve come,” Heidi says. “It was awesome.” Of course it was awesome. Everything’s awesome because she’s about to get married. I sip my rum and coke.

“I’m not getting in that water at night.” I remind her about the clownfish, puffer fish, brain coral, sea bass, and purple-spiked sea anemones we saw while snorkeling yesterday.

“It’s the same fish whether you can see them or not,” she says.

Do you ever dream while you’re awake? I couldn’t sleep on the red-eye out here, nor last night after six piña coladas on the beach, following hours of floating through the reef.

The dream: I swim out to meet Heidi, who’s treading water under a rocky arch that protrudes from a deep forest of coral. Crystalline turquoise water carries honeycomb-shaped rods of sunlight hundreds of feet down. I have my snorkel and mask around my neck, but I don’t want to put them on to see how far we are from the bottom. It’s deep enough for whales to pass beneath us.

“I’m tired,” she says. “I’m swimming back.”

As soon as she turns into a speck on the blue horizon, creatures congregate below.

First, the monk seal, whose whiskers tickle my toes as he decides whether I’m something to eat or hump. While he sniffs me, I wonder would it be more foodlike to paddle my legs in a scissoring motion, or coast with no movement as if I were already dead? Next, a school of barracudas arrive to circle under him, their teeth ready to use on his brown leathery flesh. Down below the barracudas appear a pod of gray, rubbery things. And hovering below them, a massive white shadow. There’s no way I’ll put on my mask. I want to know, but I don’t.

The next morning, I put on a sundress and flip-flops, then stop at the café for a muffin and a glass of guava juice—
No rum today,
I think.
Must sleep.
In the chaise lounge area I ask the man sitting next to me what seals eat, and he tells me they eat lots of things.

“They wouldn’t eat you, though, unless you were attacking their babies,” he says, rubbing coconut oil onto himself.

The bride to be, my best friend, takes the chaise lounge next to mine—I reserved it with my muffin wrapper and sandals—and tells me my feet were twitching while I dozed on the sofa last night.

“A monk seal was about to attack me,” I say.

“They don’t eat humans,” she says, not moving her head from sunbathing position. So the man was right. Heidi knows it all now that she lives on Maui.

“The only predators out there are jellyfish,” she says, “and they’re clear, so there’s nothing you can do.”

I hadn’t thought of jellyfish.

“I can’t sleep,” I say. “I keep thinking of that part in
The Shining
where she opens the bathroom window to escape and the snow’s blocked her in.”

“You’re in Hawaii,” she says.

When I’m home on the mainland, I go out to the desert sometimes and rent a room by myself. One time I was sitting naked on the bed watching
Three’s Company.
It was hardly visible due to bad reception. Green and red lines streaked across Jack and Chrissie’s faces. I snacked on some saltines then opened the dresser drawer to check for a Gideon Bible. I read the instruction card for making outside calls, just in case. The air-conditioning froze my stomach when I stood in front of the unit.

I put on my bra, panties, and stockings, to increase my vulnerability. If a pervert were spying on me through my curtains, he would be more likely to strike if he saw me in lacy undergarments, or so movies would have you believe. Naked, I’m pale and blubbery.

When I was in elementary school and first learned about the realities of rape, I remember riding home on the bus from a field trip to Disneyland and wishing I had been dragged into Adventureland, then raped behind Thunder Mountain. Gazing out the window of that reeking, nasty bus, I felt rejected by the imaginary rapist. I wasn’t cute or slutty enough. Being slutty was what I aspired to. Bouncing up and down on the black seat helped me imagine being forcibly fornicated by some hairy-chested man. The girl sharing my seat didn’t think the rape idea was as sweet as I did; she told me no one ever wants to get raped. I felt stupid for not knowing that. I’d thought it could be fun.

Maybe the monk seal had raped me. He’d sucked on my toes as if they were calamari.

Late in the afternoon, I still haven’t fallen asleep. I call my boyfriend back home in California. “Do you ever feel like killing someone?” I ask.

“Of course not,” he says. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m so tired I feel like a shark, if that makes any sense. I look around at all these women wearing diamond rings and Gucci sunglasses, and I think they need a little poke. Sharks poke things, right?”

“I guess,” he says. “You mean you want to attack them?”

“Yeah, I wish I could shred some people up. But isn’t it weird to be scared of attackers when you want to attack?”

“Every man for himself,” he says.

I’m assigned bartender duty because at dinner I announced I wasn’t going to drink. Why they need a sober drink-mixer is beyond me. I make strawberry daiquiris, papaya margaritas, and mai tais. Another girl pushes maraschino cherries and triangular pineapple slices onto toothpicks. We’re in the honeymoon suite, which has a bar built into the mirrored wall. Every time I make a new blender full of fruity stuff, I test it and add more rum. After a while, I have three drinks going on the side at once. I check out my tan in the mirror, thinking,
I like being tan.

The groom’s best man gets out three huge joints. We pretend they’re champagne or something and make a toast. The ceremony is tomorrow.
To your life on the island,
we say.
To your life with the monk seal,
I say to myself. There’s so much I could learn: is a seal’s penis barbed?

I excuse myself and head down to the ocean. I step onto to sand and kick my sandals off into the bushes. The supply rental booth’s windows are boarded up but the door is unlocked. I go inside and steal myself a pair of flippers. Flippers will make me more attractive. Maybe seals turn one another on by slapping each other on the ass. Maybe getting slapped feels like a massage. I turn my feet out to the sides to move across the sand without tripping. It’s time to swim to my husband.

LOU IN THE MOONLIGHT

I have pleasant dreams in my moon garden. Serenity is key. When I’m sitting on that stone bench beneath the morning glories, nothing stresses me out. My dog’s red fur glows like heated copper in the moonlight. He’s a buff metalsmith protecting me from worldly harm. He wears a shredded shirt, and beads of sweat dangle off the tips of his red-orange beard as he pounds on his anvil. He has a sword tattooed on his upper arm. He’s the perfect bodyguard, the kind of man who will linger in the background and jump out with a machete if anything sketchy happens to me. My dog is the best.

Planting a moon garden isn’t difficult. I started when my dog was a puppy and kept me up all night. I needed to occupy myself during the wee hours. Before I got my dog, I didn’t sleep well either because in silence my mind takes over. I think too much. Planting datura and nicotiana seemed like the answer. Thus, I dig and weed in my pajamas. When I’m exhausted and dirty from gardening, I can get some rest. Commitment to the plants is the closest I’ve come to putting down roots. It’s like we’re married because they depend on me.

“Your garden looks good,” my neighbor calls over the fence. I’m gardening and the moon’s coming up.
Not just good, lady, magical,
I think. That neighbor bugs me. She’s a squat, pudgy troll. She thinks something’s wrong because I spend so much time outside at night. My house is tiny. I use the yard as another room. I wear my pajamas because they’re comfortable. There’s nothing weird about that. I’m nocturnal. This woman looks like an ex-boyfriend I broke up with because he reminded me of Grumpy.

I lie on the stone bench beside my garden like I’m Snow White in a glass coffin. I pretend that dwarves stand around tossing roses at me in mourning. Envisioning myself as Snow White makes me super horny, and lying in my imaginary coffin out in the moon garden is as good or better than having sex. To be quite frank, my moon garden is the horniest place on Earth. I love going there, and so does my dog. If only I had a Prince Charming.

My mom came over for lunch a few weekends ago. She’s clueless. She doesn’t understand why I like to work at night.

“What’s new, dear?” she asked.

“I found this new variety of artemisia,” I said.

“Very nice,” she said. “Does it smell good?”

“No, it’s more for color. It’s in the silver section.” I pointed out how all the plants surrounding it have silvery leaves.

“Do you want to go shopping?” she asked.

“Is that a hint?” I asked.

“You need some new clothes, you don’t have to wear pajamas all the time,” she said. “Are you depressed, sweetie?”

“No,” I said. “I just like gardening. Does it mean I’m depressed just because I have a beautiful garden?”

“You should date boys,” she said. “Instead of working out in the yard all night in an old nightshirt.”

She’ll never understand. The whole reason I’m designing this yard is to attract the right man.

Lou Reed’s
Transformer
plays in the background.
Oh it’s such a perfect day / I’m glad I spent it with you.
Cheerfully sad, the way only Lou can do. I lie in my glass coffin waiting for the scents of roses, jasmine, and honeysuckle to permeate that crack where the glass top meets the tomb’s marble bottom. My name,
Snow White,
inscribed in cursive upon the marble, is obscured by moss. I’ve been lying sedately in this greenhouse for a long time. Since I’ve been unconscious for seasons, I temporarily forget what my name is, then remember it again as I clean the letters. Venus flytraps and other swamp plants grow in here with me, and I’d be eaten alive if it weren’t for the most generous sweet peas creeping in. Their curly stems protect me, blooming around my hands folded over my torso. Only once have I felt the flytrap’s dewy tendrils snapping closed on a finger. I involuntarily flicked it away.

Besides the plants, there are several flies buzzing around me. They’ve been trapped in here for ages. They started families in the creases of my dress. Blue velvet serves the maggots well. They build little cocoons; their sticky silk adheres to the dusty fabric. A fairy gave me this dress and I have no intention of letting a few flies ruin it. I’ve spit bits of that poisonous apple down there to distract them for months at a time. It’s funny, I only took one bite but I’ve spit up perhaps seventy apples worth of fruit. I can’t wait until springtime so the glass won’t fog up where I breathe.