DieterM
04-02-2012, 06:35 AM
It’s a strange day. A day that tastes of lemon and quinine and short sentences. I don’t know for how long you’ve been standing in front of me, leaning against the kitchen doorframe with your arms crossed, wearing that disgusted expression.
It could be minutes, it could be hours.
The space between us is crammed with repressed things: yells, tears, emotions, old luggage. All of them have become senseless by now. To open the cages feels unnecessary. The last word – still bouncing back in an endless echo loop from the clinically white walls although it has disintegrated some time ago – that last word is “stay”. Four letters. A hiss, a hard strike, a creamy vowel that mocks us.
Who has uttered it? You? Me? Someone on telly? No, the television set is mute. Maybe the fridge that purrs with unwarranted pleasure in your back? Probably not. Fridges don’t talk that much.
And what has been the precise context? Has it been ‘I want you to’ or ‘I cannot’ or ‘you’d better’ or ‘you shouldn’t’?
Context changes everything. Always. Context shapes, moulds, models, transforms, I’m telling myself, vocabulary running through my head like a synonym-program. Gladly, you can’t guess my thoughts. They remain well hidden from your scrutiny, the way they always have. You might believe I’m mulling over that last word. You might think I’m trying to find a meaning to the tell-tale silence that lies between us like a crumbling bridge.
I don’t. I’m thinking context, I’m thinking transformation, I’m thinking control. Without control, maybe I’d just snatch a knife and bury it deep in your warm, soft flesh and finish all this. Or maybe I’d slap you, I’d scream at you. Deep inside, I am screaming right now, I guess; you just can’t hear it.
In fact, all we do is stand there and stare. Stare at each other, waiting for the other one to make a move. Stare so hard that time has stopped in its tracks, so hard that we seem to float in emptiness. Stare so hard that our visions blur. We don’t see each other anymore, as usual. As soon as one of us will look the other way, though, the last bond will be cut. Our stares may be icy, calculating, unblinking, they still link us together. Somehow.
Silence and winter and sightless stares. A purring fridge. Smashed dishes all over the place, even if we know that they are neatly stacked away in the white kitchen cupboards. Screaming and smashed dishes could have made the situation easier to bear. They would’ve been convenient at least. You’re supposed to fight in moments like this, aren’t you?
A car drives by in the street downstairs. A dog barks, its owner shouts. Neighbours breathe, walk around, go on with their lives. A siren wails in the distance. “This city never sleeps,” I remember you saying. Back then, you often reminded me of that Eurythmics-tune. You just couldn’t refrain from touching me; you didn’t even leave your hat on. How often you stripped for me! Back then, everything always ended up in whipped cream and strawberries and one of us licking clean the other’s body. I remember moans, I remember half-closed eyes, I remember trembling, I remember heat.
More. I guess we wanted more. We thought we owed it to each other. We vowed it to each other in bed, anyway, whispering that word into each other’s ear. Sweet pillow talk when passion made us still breathe harder, made us feel as if everything around us was coated in extra intensity. Until, by and by, the word “no” grew and separated. “More” and “no”, a snaky venom. A short, almost insignificant addition that transforms more into no more.
I think of our last discussion, when words still existed. The “no” carried the day.
“Is there someone?” I asked.
“No,” you said.
“Have you met someone,” you wanted to know.
“No,” I answered.
“Does anything still make sense?” we harpooned each other.
I don’t think we came up with an answer to that one. Yet we could sense a “no” clear up the dimness of the unsaid.
We were sitting on the sofa. The same beige sofa that I’d be able to see if I turned my head. We were sitting there, each one in a corner, each one reaching deep inside in order to find a smile we could wear. We were acting the way grown-ups are meant to act. Unheated, impersonal, sensible. Smiling, kind of, and anxious not to smile too hard so as not to smirk. Holding out memories to each other like ritual offerings. Probing each other’s postcard souvenirs in turn. Walking as if on foreign strands. Trying to cloud the crystal clear waters one last time with personal mud of our past. “You remember,” we said, “you remember the time when we used to unzip each other’s body and feast on our hearts? You remember the suns we invented on stormy days? You remember the vermilion moons we glued onto our starless nights? You remember the cane sugar we stirred into our bitter coffee moments? You remember?”
We were wearing our love like a pair of seamless trousers. That evening, sitting on the sofa, we forced ourselves to look at the threadbare piece of cloth routine had left us with. We agreed we wouldn’t fight over who got the custody of that tat. We tacitly admitted we’d spill gasoline over it; the question was who would work the lighter?
No one teaches us how to make it work. Trigonometry, irregular French verbs, the molecular and chemical structure of what surrounds us, yes. We’re able to speak in tongues, we’re able to calculate interest rates, we’re able to comprehend global warming, even able to not give a damn. They give us the means to parry the world. To cope with the unessential.
But how do we build a relationship and make it last? How do we maintain the love between us, that love we all take for granted in the beginning?
Where did we go wrong? Where did we betray each other? You didn’t sleep around, I didn’t sleep around. We were true, in a sense. So can someone please explain how we came to be here, standing amidst this mess, not saying a word anymore because words have so utterly failed us?
“I’ll love you. Forever,” you said. And meant it.
“I’ll love you forever, too,” I said in return. And meant it, too.
Forever ends now. We’ve entered the realm of no more.
I don’t even know what makes me want to scream and be violent. We had it all, we lost it all, by agreement. I think we do agree with splitting up. No scenes, no drama, two strangers who have become lovers who have become strangers again. The cycle of modern life, I guess.
We built a home. We built careers. We built riches on our bank accounts. We built friendships. We built memories. We even built a snowman, once, when we went skiing in Val d’Isère.
We somehow forgot to build a lasting relationship.
We’ll be glad, both of us, when this is over. Yet there’s this nagging feeling that we’ve wasted something precious. If only I could find out what it was. Maybe then, I could soothe my desire to slap faces, to smash things, to break legs, to stab backs. Stay, scream, fridge, remember, love, no more…
Finally, I clear my throat, cut the tie. “I will leave,” I say, and you just nod.
“I hope you understand,” I say, and you nod again even if both of us know you don’t understand. Neither do I.
At last, you look away so as to hide there are no tears in your eyes.
“Goodbye,” I say and routinely, I lean in to be kissed.
But you stay where you are, arms still crossed, and your gaze lingers on the contently purring fridge, and you stand there, white in front of a white background, and you’re already far, far away, and I hear a car blowing its horn outside, that might be, and might not be, my taxi, and a dog barks, and the city never sleeps…
Author's note: I sent this in for the April-round of the Short-Story-Contest but apparently (no: certainly) I don't have the 100 posts required. Thus, I post it here, in case anyone wants to read it anyway…
It could be minutes, it could be hours.
The space between us is crammed with repressed things: yells, tears, emotions, old luggage. All of them have become senseless by now. To open the cages feels unnecessary. The last word – still bouncing back in an endless echo loop from the clinically white walls although it has disintegrated some time ago – that last word is “stay”. Four letters. A hiss, a hard strike, a creamy vowel that mocks us.
Who has uttered it? You? Me? Someone on telly? No, the television set is mute. Maybe the fridge that purrs with unwarranted pleasure in your back? Probably not. Fridges don’t talk that much.
And what has been the precise context? Has it been ‘I want you to’ or ‘I cannot’ or ‘you’d better’ or ‘you shouldn’t’?
Context changes everything. Always. Context shapes, moulds, models, transforms, I’m telling myself, vocabulary running through my head like a synonym-program. Gladly, you can’t guess my thoughts. They remain well hidden from your scrutiny, the way they always have. You might believe I’m mulling over that last word. You might think I’m trying to find a meaning to the tell-tale silence that lies between us like a crumbling bridge.
I don’t. I’m thinking context, I’m thinking transformation, I’m thinking control. Without control, maybe I’d just snatch a knife and bury it deep in your warm, soft flesh and finish all this. Or maybe I’d slap you, I’d scream at you. Deep inside, I am screaming right now, I guess; you just can’t hear it.
In fact, all we do is stand there and stare. Stare at each other, waiting for the other one to make a move. Stare so hard that time has stopped in its tracks, so hard that we seem to float in emptiness. Stare so hard that our visions blur. We don’t see each other anymore, as usual. As soon as one of us will look the other way, though, the last bond will be cut. Our stares may be icy, calculating, unblinking, they still link us together. Somehow.
Silence and winter and sightless stares. A purring fridge. Smashed dishes all over the place, even if we know that they are neatly stacked away in the white kitchen cupboards. Screaming and smashed dishes could have made the situation easier to bear. They would’ve been convenient at least. You’re supposed to fight in moments like this, aren’t you?
A car drives by in the street downstairs. A dog barks, its owner shouts. Neighbours breathe, walk around, go on with their lives. A siren wails in the distance. “This city never sleeps,” I remember you saying. Back then, you often reminded me of that Eurythmics-tune. You just couldn’t refrain from touching me; you didn’t even leave your hat on. How often you stripped for me! Back then, everything always ended up in whipped cream and strawberries and one of us licking clean the other’s body. I remember moans, I remember half-closed eyes, I remember trembling, I remember heat.
More. I guess we wanted more. We thought we owed it to each other. We vowed it to each other in bed, anyway, whispering that word into each other’s ear. Sweet pillow talk when passion made us still breathe harder, made us feel as if everything around us was coated in extra intensity. Until, by and by, the word “no” grew and separated. “More” and “no”, a snaky venom. A short, almost insignificant addition that transforms more into no more.
I think of our last discussion, when words still existed. The “no” carried the day.
“Is there someone?” I asked.
“No,” you said.
“Have you met someone,” you wanted to know.
“No,” I answered.
“Does anything still make sense?” we harpooned each other.
I don’t think we came up with an answer to that one. Yet we could sense a “no” clear up the dimness of the unsaid.
We were sitting on the sofa. The same beige sofa that I’d be able to see if I turned my head. We were sitting there, each one in a corner, each one reaching deep inside in order to find a smile we could wear. We were acting the way grown-ups are meant to act. Unheated, impersonal, sensible. Smiling, kind of, and anxious not to smile too hard so as not to smirk. Holding out memories to each other like ritual offerings. Probing each other’s postcard souvenirs in turn. Walking as if on foreign strands. Trying to cloud the crystal clear waters one last time with personal mud of our past. “You remember,” we said, “you remember the time when we used to unzip each other’s body and feast on our hearts? You remember the suns we invented on stormy days? You remember the vermilion moons we glued onto our starless nights? You remember the cane sugar we stirred into our bitter coffee moments? You remember?”
We were wearing our love like a pair of seamless trousers. That evening, sitting on the sofa, we forced ourselves to look at the threadbare piece of cloth routine had left us with. We agreed we wouldn’t fight over who got the custody of that tat. We tacitly admitted we’d spill gasoline over it; the question was who would work the lighter?
No one teaches us how to make it work. Trigonometry, irregular French verbs, the molecular and chemical structure of what surrounds us, yes. We’re able to speak in tongues, we’re able to calculate interest rates, we’re able to comprehend global warming, even able to not give a damn. They give us the means to parry the world. To cope with the unessential.
But how do we build a relationship and make it last? How do we maintain the love between us, that love we all take for granted in the beginning?
Where did we go wrong? Where did we betray each other? You didn’t sleep around, I didn’t sleep around. We were true, in a sense. So can someone please explain how we came to be here, standing amidst this mess, not saying a word anymore because words have so utterly failed us?
“I’ll love you. Forever,” you said. And meant it.
“I’ll love you forever, too,” I said in return. And meant it, too.
Forever ends now. We’ve entered the realm of no more.
I don’t even know what makes me want to scream and be violent. We had it all, we lost it all, by agreement. I think we do agree with splitting up. No scenes, no drama, two strangers who have become lovers who have become strangers again. The cycle of modern life, I guess.
We built a home. We built careers. We built riches on our bank accounts. We built friendships. We built memories. We even built a snowman, once, when we went skiing in Val d’Isère.
We somehow forgot to build a lasting relationship.
We’ll be glad, both of us, when this is over. Yet there’s this nagging feeling that we’ve wasted something precious. If only I could find out what it was. Maybe then, I could soothe my desire to slap faces, to smash things, to break legs, to stab backs. Stay, scream, fridge, remember, love, no more…
Finally, I clear my throat, cut the tie. “I will leave,” I say, and you just nod.
“I hope you understand,” I say, and you nod again even if both of us know you don’t understand. Neither do I.
At last, you look away so as to hide there are no tears in your eyes.
“Goodbye,” I say and routinely, I lean in to be kissed.
But you stay where you are, arms still crossed, and your gaze lingers on the contently purring fridge, and you stand there, white in front of a white background, and you’re already far, far away, and I hear a car blowing its horn outside, that might be, and might not be, my taxi, and a dog barks, and the city never sleeps…
Author's note: I sent this in for the April-round of the Short-Story-Contest but apparently (no: certainly) I don't have the 100 posts required. Thus, I post it here, in case anyone wants to read it anyway…