I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

by Claire Vaye Watkins

  I find myself another bottle of wine and drink it on the deck or on the walk to town. At the bulletin board in front of the library I find a flyer for donation-only classes at the Yoga Yurt and begin going to Yin with Flora five nights a week. I get a library card. I win a Guggenheim and, when Andy asks Noah to “run the numbers” on free-range Christmas mini hams, I spend most of it on teacup pigs. When it’s dead in the brunch shack I go to the barn and read library books to the pigs. Thanks to this and buxom Flora’s guided meditations—I am safe enough—language returns to me, not writing exactly, but wordy drawings I leave around the farmhouse for the boys to discover and compliment. I rediscover grown-up music, especially rap, and though I know my pain is but a smidge of any of these artists’ pain, listening to rap in the woods I feel the whole smidge. I take my wedding ring off, drop it somewhere in the dark, beetley forest and let my white tears flow.

  I take a blanket and my favorite teacup pig (Wilbur, whom Noah instantly rechristens Pig Willie Style) on a leash into the woods and read there all day. I come back bug-bit, with sticks in my hair. I don’t shower much, am full-on Medusa at the beach watching the boys surf when in the sand I feel the warm drop of my long-gone menses.

  Pig Willie Style and I hike to a grassy thatch in the dunes and he watches in concern as I squat there for privacy. I pour water from a Nalgene over my fingers and press them inside myself to investigate, afraid the teeth will be gone. But they’re there, softly throbbing and laced with bloody gobs.

  “They’re there,” I reassure Pig Willie.

  We leave the free boys to surf and take the van to a pharmacy. In the sandy bathroom I fold a brand-new neoprene menstrual cup inside me. The teeth hold it firm and elegant. Natural, the way Ty describes math. I feel them through the course of the day, supporting the cup as it fills with my dark jelly. I like its weight—I feel full, pleasurably so, and when I post up in the bathroom to remove the cup at the end of the day it occurs to me that the teeth might somehow let go. I try and they do. The neoprene cup emerges.

  Furthermore, rather than cramps I notice a warm tingle has been shimmering through me. I practice this trick, pulsing the teeth with a combination of breath, pelvic floor strength and something else, more of an unaction, some deep fossil-bed part of me relaxing. I ease the teeth open, I zip them back up. It feels tremendous, like the wildest dreams of every woman who fell for the jade pussy egg scam.

  That night I fuck Noah and Andy both in a DILD. The next day, while Noah tends his flock, I let Andy finger me in the bathroom of the brunch shack. I’m cleaning the bathroom when Andy delivers a cube of paper towels, which he doesn’t ever do. He doesn’t even know where they go. I point and he leans close to get them on the shelf. He smells like the Nike flagship store. “You smell good,” I say, lion’s breath on his neck.

  He kisses me. “I’m going to finger you,” he says.

  “You are?” I say, delightedly taking my gloves off.

  “I am.”

  I will the teeth open. “You’re certainly welcome to try.”

  I watch Andy’s face for evidence of evisceration, but he looks happy, goofy, grateful. I beg him off and give him a handy for his troubles.

  That night Noah says he wants to take me out on the ocean.

  “Why? I can see it from here.”

  “You gotta get out on it. It’s like the woods but better.” He borrows Andy’s boat and a picnic basket packed with a jar of Afghan Kush and three bottles of wine.

  On the water he seems moody. I worry Andy has blabbed. Noah and I haven’t talked about ethical nonmonogamy or unethical nonmonogamy—we haven’t really talked about much, it occurs to me, a thought as shallow and dissolving as sea foam.

  Another: I wonder if Noah could become violent?

  I breathe, urge the teeth back and forth inside me where I sit, remembering I can become violent, too.

  He cuts the engine. “This is what I wanted to show you.” He points overboard, to blooms of bioluminescence glowing in our wake. At once I feel completely safe, as if no one who knows how to find nocturnal bioluminescence in the sea would harm me. He strikes me now as solemn, reverent, so much so I worry he might propose.

  Atop the shimmering bay, Noah announces he’s changed his mind about the now. He wants to know everything, every dark throbbing part of me. “Tell me your big gnar.”

  “Tell me yours.”

  He pulls away. “You already know mine,” he says.

  I don’t, but should. You fucked around with Andy is my best guess. I brace for him to say it. But a handy is no one’s big gnar. “Tell me again,” I say. “It’ll be powerful for you.” He breathes in deeply. “It’s extinction.” Noah grieves a diaphanous moss hanging from the coastal pines, gauzy beards that grow only in the cleanest air. “Half the birds in the Mojave Desert are gone,” he says, “and the other half are mistaking solar arrays for lakes and dying there. Your daughter could live to see the last sequoia.”

  “She’ll have to go to a zoo to see a cardinal,” I offer, relieved and completely turned on.

  He changes course. “Can I ask you something? It’s so embarrassing but I can’t let it go. I can’t sleep. I keep wondering. Why did you marry him?”

  “That’s not really an answerable question.”

  “What was your wedding like?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “Tell me anything about it.”

  “It was expensive.”

  “Where was it?”

  “A lavender farm. More like a hotel with some lavender growing in a field. One of these boutique historic deals with a farm-to-table restaurant and small-batch gelato and silk-screened dishrags and peacocks walking around. Not a real place.”

  “Like the Little Farm.”

  “Exactly. A content set. A backdrop for the internet. The beekeeper there has all these followers. That’s how I heard about it.”

  “What was your ceremony like?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “What were your vows?”

  “We wrote our own.”

  “What kind?”

  “Ambivalent atheist vows.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Mine said basically, ‘I’ll try.’ ”

  “Did you?”

  After the wedding I bought lavender everything, diffusers and cleaners and soaps. I hung sachets on the doorknobs. I planted lavender in the garden but couldn’t wait for it to grow, bought it potted, already in bloom and cut it (sorry, bees), dried it and hung it in our windows. I bought bouquets from the farmers market and hung them over the doors. “I was trying to repel a hex but knew the hex was inside me.” I bought lavender douches and sprayed them inside myself, the undutiful daughter, the fat twin. “None of this is my big gnar, by the way.”

  “Your mom is.”

  Warmer.

  “What was her name? You never told me.”

  “Martha Claire.”

  “You’re named after her.”

  “Yep. I got my name and my brains and my pains from her.”

  “What was she like?”

  “She was big on surrender. She liked to say, ‘This too will pass.’ ‘Resistance is futile’ from TNG. She said it rubbing my back at bedtime. After she died, I left the West, haven’t had a home here since.” I told Noah about Ohio, arriving nauseous in Columbus, vomiting on the sidewalk above a half-scale replica of the Santa María anchored in the stagnant Olentangy River, about buying a two-pack of pregnancy tests, taking one in the bathroom of the Kroger’s and the other in the bathroom of a bar, about borrowing money from my sister, about the abortion, about taking my first cab afterward to my sublet in Ohio State’s undergrad ghetto, where I soaked through pads watching The Sopranos and thinking men are weak.

  Noah laughs. His laugh, I can still hear it.

  What I really tho
ught was that I’d made a mistake. “The move, not the abortion.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought she wouldn’t be able to find me. I worried she wouldn’t know where to look. The last time I talked to her was when I told her I was moving to Ohio. I told her that she did a good job. That I never wondered whether she loved me. That I knew I’d been born at a good time.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘Iowa’s just so far away.’ ”

  I have a good cry. Noah holds me a long time, then rolls us a joint. I tell him he was right about the ocean. He says, “Can I ask you something else?”

  “I get nervous when your questions require affirmative consent.”

  “Did something happen to you?”

  “You will have to be more specific.”

  “Because you don’t seem . . . into, or don’t seem to like . . . me . . . in you? And I guess I’ve just been assuming . . . it’s because you’d . . .”

  “Been raped.”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I mean I have, I told you about that. But that’s not why.”

  “Why then? If I can ask.”

  “You can ask. You’re asking. I do want you in me. I, like, think about it all the time. And sometimes I think I want to have another baby with you. You or someone like you. But that’s off-topic!” I glug some wine. “I’m going to tell you the truth. The truth is . . . I have these . . . teeth. Inside me. This ring of teeth. A mouth. It’s a mythic thing women get.”

  He looks stricken.

  “You probably think I’m crazy. You could feel them to see—”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, gross. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean ‘no,’ like, ‘gross.’ I meant no, like: I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  “You don’t?”

  He got very tender, very careful. He said, softly, “I think that . . . if you think that . . . is happening, then . . . that is happening.”

  Maybe I don’t have to stop everything before it starts. Maybe this man can pull me back into my body. “I’m on my period,” I warn him.

  “Great,” he says, and plunges in. I breathe. It’s heavenly, to receive like the goddess his abundant Ashkenazi jīng. I breathe and no one is lacerated. Except Theo. But Theo has become only a signal contained in my phone, itself a poison thing pulled from the ground by slaves, gone from my hand to the glove box of the van, silently receiving photos and videos of our daughter, whose first birthday I miss.

  1971

  Dear Denise,

  Me and Keith broke up again. He ignored me all day. He can KISS MY ASS!!! It took me a whole five hours of tears to figure that out. I still love him and everything, but I’m sick of getting a bit of love dangled before my eyes like a tidbit before a dog. I won’t (repeat won’t) kiss his ass anymore!

  Now for the local gossip. Greg spent this weekend in the mountains, with Tom, Steve and the Dunbars and they all dropped acid. Greg really dug it. I’m glad to have them back.

  Cynthia and Greg still like each other and Pete still likes Vicky. Did you get a letter from Keith (alias: THE BASTARD, just kidding ha ha!)? He said he wrote you. Well, I guess that’s all, see you soon!!

  Later,

  Martha

  * * *

  —

  Me and Keith are completely broken up. He can shove it up his ass. We just broke up tonight. Man, he was such a pecker about it I can’t believe it. You would have to be here to understand the situation. I clean, sew, and work my ass off for him and he never has a kind word for me. It burns my ass.

  A super-lot has been happening. Greg’s getting a van and some land. I got suspended. I got busted for smoking pot. Two days later I got caught with cigarettes. Then last night me, Dickie, Scott, Greg and Brian D. got loaded in Dickie’s pool and we were pretty well fucked up when we went to the dance and I got caught at the dance completely loaded. All the faculty are really on my case. It’s been pure hell just keeping my mouth shut and staying out of trouble.

  Mom was really cool about me getting busted. All she did was cut off my allowance for two weeks.

  After getting kicked out of the dance we all walked up to Albertson’s. Scott and I were walking ahead of everyone else, singing James Taylor. That was far-out.

  I wish I liked somebody. Even if they didn’t like me it would be better than not feeling anything.

  Later and love,

  Martha

  Denise,

  I had to open my letter and put this in. It’s 1:30 in the morning. I just got off the phone with Keith! We talked for 2 hours!!! He just got back from Utah and went over to spend the night at Bobby Langer’s house. Bobby lives across town. I just walked in and the phone rang and it was Keith. He said he called three times earlier but I wasn’t home. I said no, I wasn’t home. None of his beeswax. We just talked about what we were doing and that shit until Keith said, “Know what?”

  “No, what?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Oh.”

  “Know why?”

  “No, why?”

  “How long have we been broken up?”

  “About a week, I guess.”

  “Seems like a year.” Then silence.

  I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” but I knew.

  “I’m trying to forget you but it won’t work.”

  “Oh.” I’m about in tears.

  “Martha, do you still feel for me?”

  I didn’t know what to tell him. I half love him and half hate him. “Ask me that question when you’re sober.”

  I’m hoping he won’t remember. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that before I mailed this. Maybe you can make some sense out of the whole thing. I can’t.

  Bye,

  Martha

  * * *

  —

  I just wrote you to tell you I have absolutely nothing to write about. Except this: we went to Jesus Christ Superstar last night. Me and Keith and Pete and Barb and Jack went together. It had to be the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I was sobbing by the time the thirty-nine lashes came around. I can’t even describe how fantastic it was!

  Yes, Keith and I are back together. I can’t stop thinking about him. I think I’m mentally ill. Love is a fucking hassle.

  How I Like It

  In the morning I ask Noah can we hit the road and he says hella. After breakfast we say our goodbyes. Noah walks the farm with Andy, who offers to board my passel at discount. Sadly, I bid Pig Willie Style and his brethren adieu.

  On the road I gave it some thought—this question they all like. I like it in the woods. I like it in the van. I like it on the beach. I like Noah’s hand up my dress in front of a movie theater that has pizza and beer. I like it with pizza and beer. I like it with fries, gyros, tacos from the truck parked by the paper mill. I like it with baklava, like licking honey off your fingers. I like it in the mountains, I like it on the coast. I like it in the wild, and if not the wild then at least near water, at least under a tree, at least smelling of campfire, of whiskey, of weed. I like the idea of fucking a rock-climber but I don’t like it when you go rock climbing instead of hang out with me.

  I like it beside not inside a swimming pool, a river, a hot spring.

  I like it on the Lost Coast and beneath the Trees of Mystery. I like it real working class. Filthy Carhartts, steel-toes and NoDoz. I like it in Humboldt, up all night talking about The Graduate.

  I like it when you kiss me and knock a glass off the bar and it shatters.

  I like it when we come to our senses and out again.

  I like it when you ask about my daughter but not my husband.

  I like it somewhere in Mendocino County, at a rest stop in the rain. I like when we pay for things in weed, watch a vi
deo of a baby panda finger-painting, a video of my daughter’s first steps. I like it with campfire coffee and bacon for breakfast and I like to read the Times.

  Talk dirty to me about why you’re a feminist. I like the words pussy, cunt and come. I like the word love—it’s treacherous but I do. I like it rough. I like it deadpan. I like it when you make me laugh and laugh and laugh until I can’t remember how. I like it by your side, just being there, just feeling you breathe. I like it when you pick me wildflowers even if I had to ask. I like cut lilacs in the bed because the previous spring we’d been walking together and I guess I stopped and smelled them and looked so alive smelling them it made you want to be alive too, kind of.

  I like it when a word goes meaningless from prayer, a word like death, a word like daughter, a word like wife.

  I like it after rich bitch yoga in a strip mall.

  I miss my husband sometimes, that’s how I like it.

  I like it when I say what are we doing? And you say I’d say we’re just drifting here in the pool. I like you smoking a cigarette with me. I like it better with a blunt. I like it when you say what we need to do is acid up at Malakoff like in “Slouching.” I like it at the Diggins like Didion never was. I like it during morning meditation, from beneath a handkerchief smelling of Nag Champa.

  I’d like my mother to visit. She’s found me twice before. First, she came through a skylight. This was in Columbus. I went to bed saying, I need you, and that night she came in through the skylight over my bed and said, This is just information.