Some Day She’ll Tell Me About the Komodo Dragon

When I wake up she’s gone. She hasn’t left a note this time -- but I

find her panties draped over the bust of Beethoven that sits on what used to

be my piano but is now a warped writing desk where I never write. Warped, I

imagine, under the weight of Beethoven’s crazed head, although the symbolism

of the panties -- crotch over his nose like a protective mask, his eyes

covered by waist-band to blind him from the horrors of the 21st Century --

holds its own weight and is not lost on me. Our relationship, hers and mine,

has been reduced to symbols, gestures, and surreptitious clues. She has

known me long enough that she’s fully aware of how haphazardly abandoned

underclothes fill me with panic. I am so filled with panic this morning that

I crave news from the outside world, information whose only use is to remind

me of what I am not, but I sold the TV along with the piano in order to

support my latest addiction -- her.

So, dressing appropriately first, I rush to the corner to buy a newspaper

but when I get there I find all the front pages spinning inside the boxes

like top stories anticipated in old movies, and my appropriately conditioned

brain supplies the appropriate, anticipatory, frantic soundtrack, but the

headlines refuse to settle, the papers keep spinning and spinning and I can’t

put my coins in the box out of a fear that when retrieving the paper my hand

will be shredded to pulp by timely reports on the state of the world. Or am

I the object that is spinning?

I am saved by the scent of a Chinese bakery -- the only thing that smells

better than a bakery is a Chinese bakery -- so I run from the whirling

newspaper boxes and dodge into the storefront. I don’t speak Chinese and the

clerk doesn’t speak English so I just point at the most appealing shapes and

the clerk punctuates his nodding and bagging by telling quick, obscene jokes

about my latest addiction -- her -- because even in Chinese I know when

somebody is telling dirty jokes about my wife and I remember that, yes, she

is my wife, and there was a time before we were married when she marked her

territory -- my apartment -- by leaving stray bits of underwear behind, and

eventually she left her small, ovoid-shaped container of birth control pills

in my medicine cabinet and so the next day I asked her to marry me, and now

we have come full circle, instead of her body next to mine in bed in the

morning we’re back to discarded undergarments, and I’m so offended by the

Chinese comedian that I say, "Hey, that’s my wife you’re talking about," at

which time he just laughs and laughs and takes most of my money but I have a

bag full of wonderful smelling pastries so I leave.

Back on the corner, the newspapers are still spinning in their boxes but

they’re spinning clockwise and weren’t they spinning counter-clockwise

before? Is this a sign, and if so, of what sort? Has my wife orchestrated

this as a maneuver to confuse me?

I eat my pastries on the way to the pool hall. I have decided that the

only thing that will combat this feeling of ennui or existential angst or

fear of inadequacy or nagging back pain or whatever it is that’s bothering me

is to go to the pool hall and lose game after game to men who are far less

educated but make far more money than I do. 

I lose six straight games and the rest of my money but I win it all back

on the seventh game because I sink the eight ball on the break, and I’m sure

that my luck is changing. But the guy I beat starts in with the jokes,

"What’s the difference between you’re wife and a bowling ball? You can only

fit three fingers in a bowling ball. What’s the difference between your wife

and the Titanic? Only 1500 men went down on the Titanic." And on and on. I

try to remain calm. Then he takes out a brightly colored envelope fresh from

the one hour photomat and begins to show me a series of photographs of my

wife in various naked poses, most them involving other men and in one case a

komodo dragon, and the worst thing about them is her big cheery grin,

although they seem to have been done professionally -- the backlighting is

exquisite.

Back at the corner, the newspaper boxes have been replaced by television

sets displaying images of crackling fireplaces, fish tanks, and the Mormon

Tabernacle Choir singing "You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my

eyes off of you. . ." In my apartment there is a new message on the

answering machine from my therapist. He says he badly wishes to discuss my

fear of my wife’s infidelity, which, he says, is entirely irrational, but it

kind of turns him on, although I can’t see him until I pay him the money I owe

him, and goes on to name a quite substantial amount. Having sunk the eight

ball on the break in the seventh game I happen to have the exact amount in my

pocket, but I decide to spend it on something more spiritually fulfilling,

like more Chinese pastries perhaps, or a hooker.

I bring her back to my apartment. Her name is Clarise and I say "Oh like

Silence of the Lambs?" and she says she gets that all the time. She starts

taking off her clothes so I start taking off mine and there we are, naked.

Except I can’t go through with it, because despite the fact that she’s

adequately attractive and there is also the wonderful promise of no emotional

attachment, I still know full well that after it’s over she’s going to want

to see other people. I just can’t deal with that, so I pay her anyway but

ask her to leave.

When my wife comes over that night she finds a bright red bra and asks

whose it is and I say it’s Clarise’s and she says "Like in the silence of

the Lambs" and I say yes, exactly like that. She says, "Oh, my," and spreads

herself on the bed and her pose reminds me of one of the photos the guy at

the pool hall showed me, except without the exquisite backlighting, but it’s

still quite provocative. I’m inspired, and I take her by the shoulders and

lean over her and start reciting lines from the Maltese Falcon.

"If that doesn’t mean anything to you we’ll forget it and we’ll make it

this: I won’t because all of me wants to -- wants to say to hell with the

consequences and do it -- and because -- God damn you -- you’ve counted on

that with me the same as you’ve counted on that with the others. I won’t

play the sap for you."

And she says, "Oh, my."

And I say, "Some day you’ll tell me about the komodo dragon."

And she says, "Did you hear the news today?"

And I say no. Later, I start saving up for a new piano, so that one day

she will say, "Stop playing that damned piano and come to bed."

from March, 2002

--Matt Ernst