When Nobody's Watching [Dane Stalling & dearestdarling]

[Dane Stalling]

November 12th, 1967 clear, 50°

Odd, the physics of rooms, how they can expand with one companion and contract with another. The room of my mind used to seem like a colorful open place. I never felt alone here. Now though, it's a grey space like the thin fog over a mown field in the morning. Grey, except when the sun shines through it and makes it bloom bright, a prism at the edges of sight.

I'm thirsty for you and I am forgetting why I've clung to darkness. I used to love its liquid cover because I didn't think I could ever get close to you, to anyone, except by haunting. I don't remember what happened to me that I ran to the shadows. Some cruelty a long time ago, which I won't remember.

I can smell the nape of your neck any time I want if I concentrate. I keep touching my lips with my thumb. I think of all the things that could break, that will break when you see me and know. Is it possible that nothing would break? I haven't ever thought I was fragile, but maybe I am. Fragile like heated glass with a taste for cool water.

And that's just me. Maybe you'd rather have your monster Cupid than a grocer, a plumber, any of a dozen boring shadows I might turn out to be.

You answered coolly when I called you at your desk this morning, before you heard me say your name. My whole body burned, watching from the booth on E 7th and South Lamie. You lit up. I couldn't see your knees, I could barely see your shoulders, but I felt you open to me and I hated my darkness. I should be able to walk into your office and kiss you. Not just your cheek, not just your lips. I should be allowed to make you burn in any light, not just half moonlight and snuffed candles. I meant what I said too.

I have ideas, half plans, half wishes, ways to taste you that are more dangerous than wise, but I feel unwise today. I feel careless.

R

P.S. If you place that ad, you will get a carefully written letter from Robin. She has been accepted to American College of Hair Design and needs reasonable lodging.

 

[dearestdarling]

November 13th, 1967

I wondered if maybe you would try to call me at the paper again, but I thought I might surprise you at work instead. That sunny spot by the window was so warm that I started to feel a bit uncomfortably hot in my wool skirt... so hot that it seemed almost reasonable to slip out of my pantyhose, and when that wasn't enough, my panties too. What you wouldn't know is that I didn't go unnoticed; a man sitting two tables over must've seen my movement, and I met his gaze by accident when I leaned up again to ball those unwanted layers in my lap. He couldn't be you, I've studied your smile and you have the slightest gap between one of your top incisors and its neighboring canine. I know that gap intimately. The stranger looked away and I tried not to squirm. I want to save all my squirming for you.

I didn’t think my beacon would work nearly as well as it did.

Then I felt your presence behind my chair, though I don't think you said a word to let me know you were just behind me. I wonder if you saw the chill you gave me, the way my skin prickled before you even touched me. "We shouldn't here," I think I said, as if I had even the slightest intention of stopping. I could feel you just brush the back of my chair. You wanted me in daylight, and though I seem to be a bit more shy about saying so, I want you in daylight too.

“Here, then,” I think I said. It was supposed to be a question, but I couldn’t manage it.

“Not here.” Your voice, I wish I could bottle it. “Philosophy and religion. Meet me in three minutes.”

I spent the next three minutes wondering how magic tricks could work in broad daylight, disappearing acts that always needed the cover of darkness and mystery before. The thought of finally seeing your face made me feel weak. I know that Hinckley doesn’t think much of philosophy beyond the tired questions that Pastor O’Bryan trots out every Sunday service. A lonely place for lonely people. My anticipation surged with each stair step as I chased you to the second floor. I don’t know if anyone noticed my bare legs, but each time my thighs met

I didn’t know that it worked that way, backwards

It happened so fast in that tight little aisle, barely enough room for both of us to squeeze in. It had to be you but it felt so different from before, the rush and your hands shoved under my blouse, like you were stealing something. I still have marks from where your fingers dig into my skin; the idea of them fading away saddens me. I thought that you might press me too hard into the bookshelf and send it all toppling over with the force of it, of you pressing between my spread legs and... I’m not sure what to call it; it seems like it should have a different name than the things we’ve done before.

Pounding?

It was probably what Joyce would call fuc

Thinking that this had to be the last time we dared to do this, but knowing that I’m already addicted from just this first taste. You taste different in the daylight. You’ve made me so hungry for it. Peaches from my cousin’s farm, fresh and sweet and bigger than my palms.

It happened so fast that I forgot to look at you. It’s all I can think about now, but everything is different. It feels like a gift I’m not supposed to open. I don’t want to rattle it in case it breaks. I know how to find you now, but that’s not the same as actually following through. I don't know a grocer or plumber that keeps midnight hours.

I'm not sure that I would accept Robin's answer. Hairdressers make me nervous, always chirping and gossiping and never leaving a moment of quiet that my own thoughts can collect in. It would be such a luxury to have my hair cut in silence. But maybe it's the act of cutting hair itself that makes people talk; even Mama becomes chatty when she trims my bangs. I might pass over a chittering Robin, but if a quiet, thoughtful Raymond were to respond

I shouldn’t admi

Tonight in the auditorium. Wear your mask if you want to. I’ll wear a smile and my good wool coat.

Psyche

 

[Dane Stalling]

November 13th, 1967 clear, 28°

Pastor O'Bryan wouldn't know philosophy if it knocked on his door and introduced itself. The man's a shameful shell and anyone could see it if they were watching. Why do you think Mrs. O'Bryan only sings at her laundry when he's away at Sunday School conferences? You'd think there would only be one a year, wouldn't you?

That story's almost as good as the one about the mysterious knife-wielding predator among us.

You can feel that story developing around us, can't you? The jealousy is almost palpable. Some wish they were me, slicing the panties off my victims, bewitching them so they are too overcome to report me to the authorities. Some wish they were you- stalked, seduced, ravaged.

"What wiles must he bring to bear," you could write, "on the innocent beauties among us? What whispers turn our daughters into accomplices, victims, unwilling or not, participants in debaucheries about which we can only speculate?"

The truth, though, is what they will not imagine. I fucked you in the religion aisle of the Pettis County Library. We did not bother ourselves with victims or perpetrators. I was your man, and you invited me. Do you remember what you said? I had my thumb between your teeth then. "Never stop," you said.

Maybe we can do that. Never stop. Every word we write is fucking. It always has been. Me in you, you surrounding me. I never stop thinking about you. I wonder why you shudder sometimes when there is no draft. I don't wonder. I shiver too, at the sound of wind, like it sounded that night in the tent. Remember it told us stories? Maybe we told the stories. I tasted you for the first time that night, wine on my tongue, and your liquor. We left some on the carpet of the religion aisle.

I apologize that the marks from my fingers are not permanent. I was shuddering into you, taking you when I scraped you, as eloquent as anything i could ever think to say. The best I can do is to remind your skin again when it has forgotten me.

He watched us, you know. Listened, anyway, from one aisle over. Forgot his Louis L'Amour paperback on the table. I'm not the only one that will sleep with your voice tonight. Or maybe he was just very interested in the Pottery of Asia. Some people are.

Tonight. There will be a chair on the stage for you. Come in the backstage door on Finlay. The headliner never comes in through the box office.

R

P.S. I rarely answer to Raymond, although my grandmother called me that before she died. She was convinced I contracted malaria on a trip to St. Louis. "Raymond," she said, "those shivers are the germs getting stronger."

My hand doesn't shake when I write here. Your hand pressed the Scofield Bible Commentary back a hair's width every time I pounded into you. Nobody will ever find it where you made it go.

 

[dearestdarling]

November 15th, 1967


Even with all the tools I have at my disposal— which isn’t much until I’ve written a story that Hopkins nods at, but tools nonetheless— you seem to be barely more than a ghost in public life. I wonder about what led you to hide, but if it’s tender, I won’t poke at it. It seems natural for you, the nocturnal act, and while some well-meaning Sally Savior might try to draw you out from the dark, I won’t.

I wonder what you answer to. In the dark, when nobody’s watching, I whisper for you but I must’ve not gotten right yet because you don’t answer. Or maybe you just don’t come when you’re called. You aren’t mine while I don’t have your name, and maybe that’s right. I’ve thought it over a thousand times but it feels like forbidden fruit, and I have too much foresight to play at being impulsive for more than a spare hour here and there and wherever you like me.

There are seven mauve marks across my rib cage where your fingers dig too hard into my skin. When I close my eyes I can still feel you, so solid and closed in right behind me, not a smidge of room between us as you pressed and pressed and pressed... it was so different from before in my room, but still somehow magic... I wanted want to give you everything you could take from me and more. I never thought I could enjoy having power over someone like this, but I want you to think of me. It almost feels like some kind of revenge for all the space you take up in my mind... every tiny reminder expands and swallows up every inch of available space until I find my hand straying under my desk, up my thigh... I catch myself, of course, but that I do at all alarms me.

It’s too cold for tents though, now, and we’ll need to find cozier places to continue. You’ve mentioned a car that I expect is old but in pristine condition. If it suits you, I want to go for a drive. I’ll need to interview this androgynous potential roommate if we’re to cohabitate. I’ll need to know all of their habits and oddities before accepting their application. Every detail, off the record of cour. If you supplied a blindfold, I’d wear it. Anyone who saw us might think that you were kidnapping me, taking me somewhere unsavory to perform unspeakable acts. Please don’t let them down, and please narrate each sin we indulge in it. Your words light every ordinary thing on fire. We live in a private inferno, too tender and intimate for any passerby to notice. I can’t stop burning.

Abigail

 

[Dane Stalling]

November 17th, 1967 scattered clouds, 43°

Sally Savior's a drag. I've met her, endured the persistent pull into the potluck scene. She'd have had me in establishment grey suits and ties, all groomed into an acceptable crew cut and white Fruit of the Looms. She probably fretted about the lost jewels in her crown when she lost this ghost. I wonder sometimes if she lusts, and whose face attends her temptations. Pride is a deadly sin, I know, but you've tasted its fun too, haven't you, when I admired your breasts in your room by candle light? You should be proud.

You say I am not yours. Maybe you are not mine either, but every moment I am not changing a battery or turning a key or punching a time card is full of you. You in the library, in the tent, in the Halloween gym, at church. I could feel you trying to discern my name with your body in the stacks, as though your body could ask bold questions of my hard. Turn my divining rod against me. Maybe it gave you an answer in the library. I would not be surprised at such a betrayal. It wants you to know my name, to know its secrets and delights. You guess them though, and that is nearly enough. It is not enough.

I stood outside the Goody's dressing room when you tried on the dress you wore in my car. I could not see the dress as a garment to wear, but a garment to remove. Every step you've taken in it I saw how it could come off. I watched you climb down the trellis, careful in the dark, and pick your way shivering across the lawn, pulling your coat close. You shed the coat right away in the car though. I had the heater blowing. My Chevy is ten years old- you guessed, and it does run quiet. Your glasses in the glove box would have been blindfold enough for me, but when I slipped the cloth over your eyes I saw your tongue touch your lips. I was jealous of both your lips and your tongue. Your left hand curled over the edge of the seat and you moved to the center of the bench, the gear shift between your knees, your left thigh warm against mine.

"Go ahead," I said, shifting into first, "Interview me." I turned on South Grand toward 65. I did not put my hand on your thigh.

You waited an eternity to begin. "Do you expect many visitors?" you said.

"Only one," I said, "but she's nosy and she might drink your wine."

A car passed us and I saw a pale face look at you in your blindfold. It sped up. I told you to put your feet on the dash. You only put your right foot up. Your left foot stretched under my knee. Your skirt bunched around your waist.

"Do you have any bad habits?" you said, and I smiled and changed lanes.

"I abuse myself on occasion," I said, "but lately only when someone's watching. Do you?"

You didn't answer, but I watched your right hand slip up your thigh. "Watch the road," you said, and I did. US 65 South was my blindfold, that dark highway. I know you could see down past your nose and I could only see what my headlights illuminated. White lines and the rise and fall of hills. Rise and fall of breasts, of your wrist.

I would have died happily, driving off the road to what you did- you with your hand under your skirt where I couldn't see and your left knee tucked under my knee. You found my hard in my pants.

"No," you said, "of course not."

A '62 Peterbilt pulled up next to us. I knew you heard it when your foot slipped wider on the dash. "Stop," I said, "hands over your head. Feel the dome light? Turn it on."

How did you feel then? I could smell your perfume, your sweat, with your palms against the roof of my car. Your head turned up to peek-- not at me, but at the truck. I could see your lips in my mirror.

That's when I put my hand on your thigh. Goose flesh, Abigail. I pressed you, like in the tent, matched the rhythm of the lines disappearing under the car. Tap tap tap tap. You tapped my hard too, in time. You jumped and laughed when the truck driver hit the air horn but you did not close your legs. He turned off at 52 toward Cole Camp.

"Do you have any pets?"

"I'm not fond of tame creatures," I said, "Take off your dress."

"No," you said, and turned off the dome light but you started unbuttoning anyway, one handed. You took your time. By the time we got to the big intersection in Warsaw, it was just your red lace and I could only catch you out of the corner of my eye- your smooth and soft. I turned toward the dam and parked at the boat launch and you remember what happened when I finally did tear my eyes from the road. I'll buy you another pair. How did you imagine what you did with your tongue? I haven't ever even... Sometimes I don't know you, I realize maybe you're as unknown to me as I am to you. Then the strangeness ignites and burns hot, sweaty, dark. I swabbed my shoulder with wine when I got home to see your face again in the sting, undone under the blindfold in the back seat.

The return trip you put your head on my thigh, the blindfold somewhere on the floor, your feet on the passenger window. I slipped my fingers through your hair as the wind opened and let us flow through it unimpeded, with no turbulence, both of us ghosts and flesh at the same time.

R

P.S. "You have ghost flesh," you said, "Here, on your arm." Your fingers brushed the underside of my wrist, and it was the most intimate thing anyone has ever done to me.