Obsession
I collect some of her phrases as if stocking my pantry with non-perishables or stealing blooms from a neighbor’s garden:
There’s obsession on the table, she said to Molly, interrupting our phone call, while I walked back and forth in the basement of my brother’s house, stopping momentarily to take a grainy photograph of myself reflected in the black TV screen wearing only a black thong. I draped my left arm across my chest, pressing my forearm against my breasts, my bronze nail extensions concealing my nipple. I sent the photograph to her. The lamp in the background of the image created a kaleidoscopic rainbow effect in the reflection. And then I instantly felt guilty, like a dog that becomes sheepish after being reprimanded for biting playfully. Another picture, another attempt to prove my desirability. My wide net. My greed. She is a minnow, or sardine, something small slipping through the mesh.
I repeated the phrase when she finished her conversation with Molly. There’s obsession on the table. My imagination conjured endless images of different combinations of limbs or nude flesh atop their laminate table. Or open, slightly pearlescent lips, mine, like the skin of an oyster, except pink, dark and somewhat ragged at the edges and wetter, plumper near the heart. Or something more metaphysical, obsession itself, the compulsive need for something I cannot possess; the night we cross Milwaukee Ave and walk together toward my apartment even though we never discussed spending the night together again, or her mouth on the back of my neck, kissing my cervical vertebrae, her nervous gesture both erotic and sympathetic. Like closing the zipper of an ill-fitting dress.
Obsession, she clarified, is what her family calls rice cereal coated in brown sugar and butter.
Another time she told me, I got you a succubus, before handing me a succulent. Except there is no succulent in my apartment. It’s possible I killed it, over or under watered the plant until it wrinkled and browned or rotted from the base as mold grew from the potting soil, but I cannot remember throwing a plant away. My notes contained no other expository details. But the phrase is there, written in my notebook, whether the plant was transferred to my ownership or another friend was unimportant I decided. I repeated the phrase in my head with her faltering cadence, like a stray hair floating to the floor, only visible for a moment as it caught the light and then disappeared against the dark wood floor.
I recalled her misstep when one of my lovers said, You’re a succubus, after I took my tongue out of the back of his garage-like mouth. What do you mean? I asked when I finished laughing, but he became nervous and refused to define the phrase or its meaning. You’re being all coy and shit, he accused, trying to catch me up while you get to be the mysterious writer. I paused. Our conversation did resemble a tennis match, my spiked volleys rocketing past him, while I waited for him to find the ball and serve it back in my direction. All you have to do is ask me a question. I demurred. A specific question, I interjected, predicting the truncated, scattershot forming in his mind, before I interrupted again, holding the wine bottle he brought aloft to inspect the brand, the name generic and nondescript, a common American boy’s name. This wine isn’t very good, huh?
Her phrases resurface in my mind unprompted, like certain words I’ve been drawn to for years without feeling compelled to understand their agreed upon definition and use them in proper context—misanthropic, svelte, palimpsest—preferring their sound when spoken, the elongated ‘s’ and ‘t’ sounds reminiscent of those in socialist or progesterone.
The morning after the birthday party she corrected me: Nomi actually playfully critiqued you for saying you’re well-adjusted, telling everyone that you were fucking your ex-boyfriend as a counterpoint, the chink in your armor. So it was more double-edged. Her clarification cut through my tendency for self-serving interpretation.
She was our last witness; She picked me up when I finished work and drove us to Hollywood Beach. Z joined us after work, chaining his bike to the racks near the bathrooms. Z and I shared a leftover deli sandwich from Red Star and the three of us waded into Lake Michigan for a few minutes. But a storm cloud gathered along the length of the city skyline. We hurried to flee the beach as lifeguards sounded alarms and instructed beachgoers to exit the water. Some lingered to eke out a few more minutes in the water, like vermin rooting through a dumpster even after being discovered. Z left his bike, and we walked quickly to reach the elementary school where she parked several blocks west. We were drenched regardless. I jogged toward her car, clutching my tote bag closely to my chest to prevent the novel and journal inside from getting wet. She asked if Z could find her spare clogs in the backseat as she removed her squelching, waterlogged sneakers, the three of us laughing, united momentarily after witnessing this violent natural phenomenon.
She parked outside Z’s building and accepted his offer to shower and wash off layers of sand. Z and I sat on the couch. I was a paperweight again. We only touched when he needed to prevent himself from becoming separated or confused, like loose sheets of notepaper, and I enjoyed being his linchpin, to have purpose. He fidgeted, straightening the random ephemera on his coffee table: a mostly empty carton of blue American Spirits, a packet of Grindr-branded matches, an incense holder. He touched my thigh, glad, I thought, for her presence, which made our private affair legible, more erotic because there was a risk of being caught in pleasure or wrongdoing, like the night we fucked until his friend arrived to watch TV, knocking on the door while he was still inside me, both of us breathing heavily and half-dressed when he excitedly opened the door, as if this proved our ability to desire each other.
Z offered to make dinner when she exited the bathroom but she refused.
She’s funny, I told him after she left, but I’ve really enjoyed spending time with her recently. Later that week, we walked together, our usual route, Foodsmart, where we both purchased bottled drinks, and then to Unity Park. We sat on a bench in the shade while I described my reservations about Z. She was succinct and unsparing: I am waiting for this obsession to end.
Image: Nan Goldin, Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC, 1982.
Currently: Robert Glück’s Margery Kempe, another story about desire, and Oklou’s choke enough.