Losing It

by Alan Cumyn

  Bob opened his Complete Tales and Poems at random and read, “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.” How many times had he lectured on that particular opening sentence? The relentless repetition of tone in elegant, haunting variations: dull, dark, dreary, oppressively low, alone, in the autumn, shades of evening, finally leading to the culmination of despair, the melancholy House of Usher. Bob read the sentence again and again. The rest of the story was almost superfluous; it flowed entirely from the ache of that beginning.

  The phone still did not ring.

  He was very good. He reread “The Poetic Principle” and “The Rationale of Verse” in the small stuffed chair by the phone under a mediocre light. He started to read a graduate paper somehow connecting James Fenimore Cooper to the Transcendentalists but stopped himself after a few pages, his cynicism rising. Anyone who could bear to read large tracts of Cooper’s tortured, incompetent prose was obviously cursed with a second-rate mind; and yet that too was the famous dismissal of people too interested in Poe, whose prose was usually far finer but whose life was a disaster.

  He paced the little room. The night sky pressed against the window, which wouldn’t open. The fan rattled annoyingly, not a loud noise, but whining, like a dentist’s drill that became more annoying as the evening wore on. He turned off the fan and the air hung dead. No matter how he fiddled, the lights were either too dull or too bright.

  He ordered a bottle of Scotch from room service. He didn’t ask the price. It would be outrageous. Helen would find a way to hide it on the expense account. Incidentals perhaps. Necessities more like it.

  The phone still didn’t ring.

  The Scotch came and Bob poured himself a glass too quickly then didn’t drink it, just looked. Sienna’s poems were in his broken briefcase. He took them out and fell to reading one of them, called “Decision 21”:

  He read it again, out loud, the words falling into one another, pure sound, little niggles of half-sense, suggestions of meanings. “My hunger-hole my / weariness.” He wanted her so much. That was the truth. Bare and desperate. He was blessed with a fine wife and a new son, a satisfactory life, a good life, compared to most, a great life. But he wanted more. He wanted Sienna Chu. He wanted her youth and her mind and beauty. He wanted her and Julia and the boy; he wanted his position and his salary and perks. He wanted everything, he thought. The more he had the more he needed. This ragged desperation. Dull, dark, dreary, oppressive, melancholy want.

  He wanted Julia to call, but she was too wrapped up in her own things. Her mother’s latest crisis. One call would make so much difference. He was having his own dark night but she didn’t care. She was preoccupied, taken up, consumed by her immediate concerns, by Matthew and Lenore. Bob had done his genetic duty, now had been tossed aside. Just stay quiet, pay all the bills, don’t ask anything in return.

  He needed her and she wasn’t calling and he’d be damned if he would call again. That much was certain. He looked at the phone and at his empty glass – now how did that happen? He didn’t remember drinking it. He poured another and this time concentrated so he would remember. What was the point of paying an arm and a leg – of having the university pay an arm and a leg – for a bottle of Scotch if you didn’t remember drinking it?

  Incidentals, he’d tell Helen. He’d hosted a small gathering of senior Poe scholars. For networking purposes. Christopher Hindle and Bill Windower and Jean-Yves Rémy, who got drunk and started quoting Baudelaire. “Don’t put that on the expense form,” he’d say to Helen. She’d understand. There’s black and white for a tiny percentage of human endeavours, shades of grey for everything else. Helen did the forms, the black and white, but she understood grey.

  Bob salvaged his portable vagina from the wastebasket, which hadn’t been emptied yet. The clothes were still there too. Garbage was once a day, he thought, courtesy bar twice. He pulled the vagina out of its bubblewrap and dangled it. $149.95. It smelled now of airplane soap, was still a little wet. What a huge amount to pay for such a dopey little thing! His deformed octopus. What was the James Bond movie? Octopussy! Bob said the word out loud and it was suddenly unbearably funny. As he laughed the labia jiggled as if mouthing the word. He laughed and laughed, rolled against the side of the bed, fought for oxygen. Windows shut, no air! A tomb!

  It was too funny. Too funny for the hour, for such airlessness. He clutched himself in painful paroxysms of laughter.

  He took off his shoes and socks. Of course, he was going to throw the damn thing out. What was he thinking? But he might as well try it properly. He took off his trousers – his clean, dry trousers – and hung them up for tomorrow. There was an iron in the closet, he could press his other pair, but they were soiled. The overnight dry-cleaning service! Of course. He’d send for them right away. No, not right away. After.

  He turned the lights low, made sure the heavy drapes were properly closed, the door latched and bolted. Privacy at last. This is what he lacked. There was no privacy at home. Julia was liable to walk into the bathroom when he was having a shit, for God’s sake. That’s the kind of family she grew up in. No wonder Lenore’s screws were loose. Her whole family had no sense of privacy, of mystery and personal space. Ha! Matthew destroyed all space anyway, whatever Julia hadn’t yet taken. He was all-consuming. Couldn’t even make it two minutes into a meal without upsetting something, his milk or biscuits or a bowl of applesauce. You couldn’t think straight, there wasn’t a moment’s peace. Open a book and there was Matthew crawling up your leg. Daddy has nothing to do! After working all day, in the quiet hours needed by an academic to stay fresh, to view the chaotic madness of the world from some sort of safe perspective …

  The glass was empty again. At home Julia harped on him about his drinking, but she wasn’t here, was she? She was far away and deliberately not calling despite his present crisis, so he would turn to whatever it took to get him through. That was his right. It was his dark hour, he could get through it any way he chose. He poured another glass, not to drink but as a gesture of independence. From Julia. From the oppressive pressures of his everyday life.

  He took off the rest of his clothes. It was warm already in the room, it felt good to shed all encumbrances. He walked into the bathroom to do this right, to have a hot bath first, soak in oil. But the light in the bathroom was glaring and rude. There was his body suddenly in three mirrors all around him: huge, hairy, paunchy, old. He didn’t want to see himself that way so he turned off the light. Why weren’t candles provided in hotel rooms? A candlelight bath would be perfect.

  He skipped the bath, went back to the bed, and put on his vagina. He was much more adept this time. The floor didn’t tilt suddenly and throw him into the ceiling or wall. The clips meshed easily. His fingers knew by now. It felt the same as before, snug and interesting, nearly natural. The manufacturers had taken care. He closed his eyes and felt himself. The artificial hair, the gentle opening …

  When his penis hardened the vagina didn’t fit so well any more, so he had to put on a pair of panties quickly to keep everything firmly in place. He fished a black pair out of the wastebasket and stepped into them, then he put on the pantyhose he had slipped from Julia’s sock drawer: Whisperline, in a silky tan colour. They stretched prodigiously, held everything in, felt feminine beyond words. His black hair underneath the nylon made almost a fishnet effect. He walked to the full-length mirror to view himself from sideways, from straight on, and from behind. Ignore the shaggy legs and torso and there was a female form in panties and nylons, almost like in one of those glossy department-store flyers that arrive at the door.

  The corset was more of an adventure. It was another Internet order, flashy red satin with black furry trim, and a bodice that he couldn’t fill. It reall
y didn’t fit. He had to turn it back to front and pull hard to get the clasps to reach. Each one was a terrible effort, and there were twenty or more. He was sweating by the time he’d finished, but he was no longer hard, so the vagina fit better once again. Then he had to pull the corset around so that it faced properly. He must have put on weight recently, he thought, because it was arduous. When he was finished, though, there was a sense of having a waist. This was the discipline of being female, he thought. This feeling of encasement and support. He couldn’t bend or even walk very well; sitting was very difficult. He did it anyway, sat on the edge of the bed then crossed his legs. Flabs of belly bulged out the bottom of the corset, but that was a pair of panties covering a beautiful dark triangle framed in shimmering Whisperline thighs.

  Breathing was difficult. He couldn’t keep the corset on long. But he had to try on the slip. It was a purple silk one he’d bought for Julia the Christmas before she was pregnant. It was too big for her and, he had discovered, too small for him, but silk was strong, it would stretch and hold. He stepped into it, pulled it carefully over his bottom. He had to adjust the straps for maximum length, but eventually his arms and shoulders made it through.

  It looked hideous. Even in a darkened room, looking at himself in the mirror, he knew what a joke he looked like. Or part of him knew. But it was a part he wasn’t interested in. Sections of him looked respectably female. Or at least it was enough for his imagination to take over. It was dress-up. He’d never played when he was a child. Not dress-up as a female. It would have been too much a taboo. Too outside of himself. But that’s what he wanted now, to be someone else for a time. Not for always, not even for more than a hour, and not for public, just private. He didn’t want to go through horrendous months of operations and hormone treatments to change his identity. He just wanted to have a short holiday from himself, to play make-believe, to sink into the basement of his psyche for a little while.

  And the silk felt wonderful. He couldn’t get it on without the corset, that was the terrible thing. The corset squeezed him so badly he felt he might keel over. But the corset made the silk possible, and the silk was a flashlight down the path of being a goddess like Sienna Chu. Perfect breasts and skin, youth, tender folds, royalty of sorts. What were all the feminists squealing about no power for women? What about the terrible power of beauty?

  Bob felt himself through the silk. He walked slowly this way and that, sometimes past the mirror. Like a little girl imagining breasts and dresses, nylons and high heels, lipstick and perfume and everything sophisticated and female. It was just this moment of … transcendence. Of being something pure – not heavy and male and hairy and old, but someone thin and young and stunning. Just for this moment.

  The phone rang. Bob’s heart leapt, a moment’s panic, privacy ripped. But it was just the phone. He composed himself, tried out his voice. “Hello?” he said, practising in front of the phone. “Julia! God, I’ve been waiting for you to call!”

  He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Professor Sterling,” the voice said. “Bob! I’m sorry. I’m not used to calling you Bob.”

  “Hi, Sienna,” he replied, as calmly as he could, although he was trembling from excitement and the pressure of remaining in the corset.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I’m calling,” she said, and paused as if gathering her wits along with her breath. She seemed unusually nervous.

  “Not at all,” he replied lightly, though it was hard to breathe. He caught a glimpse of himself looking like a fuzzy joke in the mirror, a figure from some drunken Hallowe’en party.

  “Well, I just, uh – huhhh,” she said, sighing suddenly.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “I think I need to see you,” she said. “I need to talk to you about some things. Is it too late? I’m sorry …”

  “No, no,” he said, not knowing what time it was. “Come right up.”

  “You wouldn’t mind? You weren’t in bed?”

  “No, that’s fine,” he said.

  He was going to add, “Just give me a couple of minutes,” but she hung up on him before he could get it out, as if the sheer act of making the call had consumed all her reserves of confidence and grace.

  “Jesus!” he said, panicking, slamming the phone down. He tore the strap of the silk slip while trying to get it over his shoulder. Then, bunched around his hips, the slip stayed stuck for an agony of time while he fought to get it off. But that was the easy part. The corset now seemed welded in place. It took an enormous effort to twist it around back to front so he could get a decent look at the hooks and clasps, which were multiplying, now seemed to number a hundred or more. His big fingers fumbled incompetently under pressure. He’d had too much to drink! “Damn!” he said and stamped his foot, the breath squeezed out of him by the corset.

  There was no way to rip it off. The clasps were too strong. He sucked in his gut, strained to push the fabric together, then tried to pinch the tiny hooks and clasps with his fingers.

  He didn’t know how much time he was taking. The room began to spin slowly. Too much to drink, not enough air. Trapped! The window was sealed shut. He flicked at the fan button but nothing happened. He looked at it for the longest time in disbelief. It had been working before!

  One clasp and another. Now he was getting the hang of it. If he fought hard enough. Sweating now, his heart racing, one clasp and another and another …

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes!” he said, too excitedly, not his professorial voice at all. “Just a minute!”

  One extraordinary heave and he squeezed the half-hooked corset past his hips and to the floor. His panties and pantyhose came halfway, then he ripped them the rest of the way. He tore his trousers off the hanger, stuffed his legs in. Pushed himself into a shirt.

  “There in a second!” he said and excitedly gathered up the torn slip and corset, and from the wastebasket the black lace bra that he hadn’t tried on. He knelt to shove them under the bed, but there was no under the bed. The bed was mounted on a wooden box, solid to the floor.

  Into the closet. Doors pulled shut. He fought some socks onto his feet, for propriety, pushed the Scotch bottle into the courtesy bar cabinet.

  He reeked of alcohol.

  “Bob?” came the voice. Timid and uncertain. A different Sienna Chu.

  “Yep!” he said and stole into the bathroom, hurriedly yanked the plastic wrapper off the top of the complimentary mouthwash bottle. In his haste he mistakenly swallowed half a mouthful then spat it out uncontrollably, all over the mirror and sink. He washed his mouth out quickly with water. Nothing on his trousers and shirt, thank God.

  “Sorry!” he said as he opened the door. “I was just … on the phone with Windower, the conference organizer. Did you go to the events this evening?”

  She was wearing the micro-skirt from earlier, the same tight black top. But she looked, somehow, more vulnerable and thus absolutely magnificent. She dipped her eyes as she walked past him. “I couldn’t think very well,” she said in a little voice.

  He looked behind him at the room in sudden terror that he might have left something incriminating out in the open. But it looked very innocent: the chair turned sideways by the phone table, the pillows propped on the bed where his books and papers were spread, evidence of serious and legitimate pursuits. Her poems too were on the bed. “I’ve been reading some of your work again,” he said. “It’s extraordinary. I can’t say it often enough -”

  “Bob,” she said, turning to him, owning the centre of the room. Her eyes were darkly luminous. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so confused about everything.”

  “What?” he asked, and took her hands because it seemed like the thing to do. She responded immediately, held him behind his neck and kissed him deeply.

  She backed away, pushed her hands through her hair and stepped to the window. “What am I doing?” she said.

  “It’s all right,” he said softly and
walked towards her. But she didn’t want him to approach her. She wanted to talk it out.

  “I can’t believe I’m here,” she said.

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “These last weeks,” she said, not looking at him. Her face was badly flushed. “I’ve been trying so hard to keep myself from doing that.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I kept telling myself, he’s my professor, he’s off limits, he’s a friend at most!”

  “I’ve felt it too,” he said.

  But it was as if she hadn’t heard. “He’s married!” she said. “He’s got a kid! Although you never talked about that. And we never did anything, it was just talk. But wonderful, wonderful talk, and I thank you for that.”

  “Oh, Sienna,” he said, stepping forward.

  “No,” she said, motioning him back.

  “Sit down,” he said quietly. There wasn’t much choice, either the bed or the chair by the phone. She took the chair. He carefully moved his papers and sat on the bed. “Sienna,” he said.

  “I have just been torn up about this,” she said. “I’m not –”

  “Sienna,” he said again. “There’s so much –”

  “– the kind of person who –”

  “– I have to say. It has been ripping at my –”

  “We need to be -”

  “Yes,” he said.

  They both stopped talking. She looked at him with such need and want. A child, yes, but a woman too, far beyond him, he knew it in his blood. Still, an innocent, not the seductress his overworked imagination had conjured during his lecture.

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “Oh, Bob,” she said. She wanted him to come over, to bridge the distance. It was as clear as if she’d commanded him out loud. They understood!

  “Yes.”

  But he didn’t move. Something inside him knew. It wasn’t for him to move. How did he know that?

  “I want to say this first,” she said. Clear-eyed now. She was the stronger. He’d always known that. “I have always treasured our conversations. They have meant so much to me. I don’t want to lose that. No matter what happens.”