WordSlut

Resist, He Said

I’m sitting on our Willowdale balcony with its smell of dog piss, shit, and liquid Lysol. I’d use the back yard, but the retaining wall has given way. The Tridel lawyer pitched questions like curve balls at me, questions about dates, expectations, and documents signed. I was wearing a black and red knee-length wool dress and black heels. (I still wore dresses in those days.) “Not my area,” I said. “I’m an artist and mother. That’s what I do.” Abie said I frustrated the lawyer during the discoveries. “Tough cookie, your wife,” the Tridel laywer had said.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I don’t remember dates and details. That’s what you do.”
“I know,” Abie said, “But they couldn’t believe anyone could be so clueless, so they figured you were smart enough to outwit them.”
“They’ve never met an artist,” I said. I flinched at his “clueless” comment, the way a horse’s coat twitches when a fly explores it, but you have to pick your battles and I had been in too many already. I was weary and ready for furlough. Deserting was not an option.
“It’s got its pluses and minuses,” he said.

On this balcony facing the Leslie ravine, I sit on my grandmother’s ladder back chair and read D. H., and I think ahh like sipping and appreciating fine wine, noting its name and year, and picturing the farm and wide feet and sweat dripping from the churning effort. He is like that D.H., all finery and sweat. I wander into the kitchen; there are, in the mornings, cereal stuck to bowls, magic markers on and under the table, lunch boxes, vitamin bottles, papers scattered, and I think I cannot clean this, I am too old and go to the bathroom to search my face for lines and at the same time survey my muscles against the thin straps of my T-shirt and the collage of the muscles, sun tan, and t-shirt. I shall do this, I think, I shall have the muscles and the flesh held tautly across, and I shall be my own jungle even though I cannot clean this house or intoxicate like D.H. or eat to the heart of the apple.

“Resist, resist,” says the skinny man with adult acne.The last thing I want to do is resist. Wednesday is my easy day. I suffer with Bernie on Monday and Friday. Bernie wholeheartedly embraces no pain, no gain. The weights bombard me. Muscles buckle and thrust.  “One more,” Bernie says, “show me how much you’re made of, show me how much you want it. One more inch, don’t stop, I’m with you. Last one.”

Except he’s never with me. It’s my war. Sometimes as I groan─I swore I’d never groan─there’s a man with a powerful upper torso and slight legs encased in silver spandex who groans. The first time I heard the spandex man, I laughed wildly to myself and grinned out loud. But once when I thought the weights would crush me, I made that same sound, a vocal thrust, a muted roar─sometimes as I groan I wonder, which is like the plague for bodybuilders, asking ancient questions like who am I and why am I here? And then Bernie says, “Bonus reps.” “What you mean bonus reps?” I say. “Quiet,” he growls, “growth reps, bonus, give me two, just two and you’re finished.”

Why do I do it? Because I love muscles. I adore strength. Power. Abie thinks I’m an attention seeker. I used to follow the sun around the yard. I thought the sun would make me beautiful. I sat with my head thrown back, chest up, one leg bent and poised. The gym demands more work. Muscles emerge and make their claims inward and outward and lend me direction.

Three months ago I stopped writing. There was a choice. Words or muscles. I chose muscles. Sometimes I talk in the gym. Before and after. I throw out words four times a week in analysis with a balding rowing/cycling therapist. He sits quite still while he’s working. But now here I am writing, taking up with my old flame. Who said choices have to be permanent or have any meaning? Besides, I resist.

Rolling in the Sixties

I love the sky. People love the reliable blue. They adore the sun. They think sky, sun, and ocean, though not necessarily in that order or preference. One morning I’m able to seamlessly combine all three and I think Hey man, this is it. This is fucking cool. When I’m feeling particularly ecstatic I like to slip into the sixties and roll around in its smooth idioms. I find myself in a six-passenger helicopter sitting beside a sandy-haired pilot who looks exactly like Mike Nichols─when he was making records with Elaine May─a son’s somewhere in the deep spacey blue and his mother admonishes him: “You don’t even have time to phone your own mother,” she says. Abie is always telling me I start from the tail end or thereabouts: "Gimme the subject and get to the point. What’s the point? Well?” he says. I tell him he’s a business man and I’m a writer, but the truth is he’s a schmuck.
   
Our travel agent who owns Pacific Island Adventures, which is a solid and accommodating agency as far as I can see, even though Abie refers to the owner as bitch, "the bitch this and the bitch that, get the bitch on the line,"  booked us on a flight to Kauai where we’d go on a remarkable helicopter tour. The woman in charge of the seating arrangements told us to walk along a dotted white line marked out on the runway. Where the line halted and shifted into a right angle, she made sharp military adjustment and abruptly stopped, jabbing her index finger toward the dotted line. Abie grinned and swerved into a curved pass. But then I was placed in the front seat beside Mike Nichols and Abie was directed to the back along with the girls.
   
“What’s your name?” Mike says.
“What?” I don’t hear well unless I focus. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing, I just don’t open my ear drums unless I’m expecting company.
“Your name.”
“Janice.” I don’t like the sound of my name. Next time I’m going to say Pandora which is my pseudonym─Pandora Cohen. Janice just doesn’t fit.
“Have you been in a helicopter before?” he yells.
“Once. Over Niagara Falls.” I say, expanding my vocal chords.
“Well you’ll love this,” he says, flashing a celestial smile and rummaging through a black plastic case with tapes. 
   
I’m afraid of heights. I hate roller coasters. Even children’s rides at amusement parks unnerve me. But as we soar up the sides of sienna mountains into the cavernous blue to the theme from 2001, I fall in love. Shit, I think, shit, I’m never going back. The sky taps into my veins and I’m hooked. Tracking the mountain’s slope from valley to peak, catapulting into an ancient valley where Mike the pilot-historian says four thousand years earlier, tribes chanted and danced to sacrificial offerings. “Notice,” he says, “the same waterfalls. There are hippies in these here mountains who set up camp in the sixties and never left. Even the feds can’t find them.”  I can’t stop smiling. I sit encased in glass and I'm grinning away.

When I grow old and can no longer lift weights of any significance, I’m going to phone old Mike in Kauai and take a lesson or two. Then screaming all the while, shit this is it man, this is where it’s at, I’ll merge with these Hawaiian skies, flash an ethereal smile, and become a Jewish Amelia Earhart even though I don’t identify with my Semitic tribe and could be mistaken for Greek or Italian. Still when a Jew is lost, newspapers print name, sex, and religion the way they do in cases of any race besides white, which I read somewhere is two-thirds of the world, and Jews world-wide mourn for a lost relative. I don’t want anyone to mourn for me. I don’t care whether or not I’m remembered. I just need to get away and know my girls will be fine. Sometimes I sit with myself─forty-five, I say, my voice soft and reassuring, forty-five. It’s just a number I know, but I enlarge it, keeping the original black and white which is my preference since black and white illuminate shadows which are truer to life than colour. So I create a billboard with a numerical enlargement worthy of any photography annual. I’ve always been wary of false advertising except when I was a teenager and dyed my hair red because I heard blonds had more fun and I wasn’t having a great time at all. So I used Lady Clairol, and my hair turned a pale shade of purple. Still, I repeat the number even though I know, I really do, you can’t have faith in advertising, even when it’s your own.

Fishing

“Mind if I walk with you?”
“No.”
“You mind or you don’t mind?”
“No, I don’t mind, yes.”
“I’ve seen you walking before. I thought there goes a woman in great shape. You walk fast.”
“Thank you.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“Toronto.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Baby.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It just sounded good.”
“What?”
“You’re a long way from home, baby. A song from the fifties.”
“How do you remember the fifties? You look twenty-five, twenty-seven tops.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Really? That’s amazing. Could have fooled me.”
“I work out.”
“So I noticed. All the way from Toronto, huh?”
“Yep. All the way.”

He stops and looks at me through his red sunglasses. The man has a flat mind. Good muscles. Handsome.This is one fucking big ocean, I’m thinking. Dumb schmuck and this turquoise-green ocean. Lots of sand. Some dog shit. Mountains. Volcanoes. A De Niro type walks by. Hair slicked back. If I look close I might see eyes radiating passion, intelligence, that sweet je ne sais quoi.

“So you’re a writer?” the man says and flexes his pecs.
“How do you know?” I say, holding back a smile.
“I see you writing on the beach. Anything published? Can I say I met a real writer?”
"Shit."
“Oh, I’ve got stuff in the works.”
“Really! Maybe I read something of yours, saw a book somewhere?”
“I use a pseudonym.”
“What?”
“A fake name.”
“Dirty stuff, huh?”
“Yeah sure, real dirty. Smut. But smart you know. I write smart smut.”
“You’re something else you know that? But then I guess being a writer and all.  Listen I’m going to ask you something. I mean I could be real phony and go through all the preliminaries, but I said to myself she looks like a down-to-earth type you could be real honest with, like speak your mind, you know what I mean.”
“People tell me I’m easy to talk to. They tell me things.” 

I start walking faster, heading back to the rented Oahu beach house. It sure as fuck isn’t working out, but then what did I expect of a man with shaved pecs? Everything is beautiful. Paradise has received many accolades─more descriptive, definitely more poetic. I can’t write these days. We came here by plane. Fourteen hours in two planes, fourteen years of marriage, and a husband who calls me a cunt. “Cunt,” he said, slamming his hands on the wheel, “Goddamn cunt.” We were on the way to the airport to catch the plane to Kauai. We left too late. He was lost. I can’t read maps in a car. I get nauseous. During car trips on the old highway to Lake Alverna, my mother used to warm me of the looming threat to the digestive system of reading-while-driving.
 
I wake up at six in the morning. I’m enamoured with the shore and six o’clock is a time we can almost be alone. I want a life together─me and the shore, the shore and I. I worry about grammar. But then I worry about everything. Whether or not my stomach is flat veering on concave, whether my complexion is clear, my nose too outspoken, does my ass show signs of age even though I’m a baby on the inside? Should I say hello to the old couple who still hold hands in their vigorous morning walks or the fisherman who greets me every morning?  I worry about life. Except when I’m stoned at which time I dream about and glory in it like sitting in the sun after a long winter. This morning I set aside my sky blue contact lenses and decided to face life head on with my two-hundred-and-sixteen dollar prescription sun glasses purchased from Braddock Optical in Bayview Village Mall. A real clip joint. I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s important to know these things.

Six o’clock is a nice time. The sun is just waking up and there’s a slight wayward breeze. I’m a more seasoned walker than I was nine day ago. I hum Beverly Hills Cop and I speed up the tune to keep my walking brisk when it’s in danger of lagging. Of course I sing silently. It’s all in my head. As for moving, I’m more confident lately. One leg steps forward and the other naturally follows. The beach is long. Three miles in one direction. Two in the other. The ocean is forever. I love constancy although I haven’t always been constant. I like waves muscling in. Yesterday I ventured out among them. I felt brave and simultaneously compliant. Pono, our Hawaiian guide, relishes the word “awesome.” The mountains. Lichee nuts. Taro chips. Glen Fry’s estate. All awesome. Usually he’s right.

On this beach, I wish to be awesome. I rein in my stomach and after a while my right side cramps up, but I’m a bronco champion; I keep my stomach on a short rope and I won’t let go. When I planted my feet on this fine Hawaiian sand, my stomach went wild inside, felt its right to freedom, unshackled its urban restraints.  My legs pulled out individually as if each was in therapy for different neuroses. Even my ass cheeks worked separately, each pulling to its singular rhythm and desire. Next time I’ll be leaner and tougher. I want to scale one of the mountains in the distance and remain forever on top or let this transparent turquoise water wash over me. I don’t want to be rescued and I’m tired of being grounded.

At seven the sand is already blemished with footprints. The woman with waist-length blond hair has already jogged both ways and is on her third jaunt. The old couple in their matching skimpy bathing suits and their greying dog have been out for half an hour, I guess. No one except my husband wears a watch on the beach. People go by their natural rhythms. There are many Californians here. Pono married a blond Californian teacher. Six years older than he, plump, slightly weathered from the sun, but still blond. “She moved to California, but she found paradise in Hawaii,” he said. I stand with the waves lapping around my ankles as I peer out to the edges of the ocean. Is paradise out there? On a grassy sand dune, a skinny man holds a silver tub of fish. I watch him walk ashore from his dinghy. “Good morning,” he says as I stride by gallantly holding in my stomach. “Good morning,” he says again. If I answer he might think I want him. Maybe he’ll throw me into the bushes or onto his boat and keep me here on this or another island. He will keep saying good morning until I look at him and then I realize all he knows is how to say good morning and maybe he’s just selling fish. “Good morning good morning good morning,” he chants. My bathing suit has slipped up too high. I consider swinging around and running to the fisherman: no more worries about my book being discovered, its cover spread open like a hooker on the prowl, no more trying to keep up with Abie’s panting when all I want to do is drop out of the race, no more preset smiles as I watch Caroline running like a newly born colt, her eyes clear blue as she jolts toward me. I turn around and face the fisherman. “Good morning,” I say and then I quickly walk away.

Copyright Janice Colman 2009

Hot Lines

       

In the winter, Caroline started falling. She’d walk up three stairs and lose her balance. Her doctor at Mt. Sinai said she had the flu and to keep giving her water. But she kept falling on those stairs. I phoned hot lines, the hospital pharmacy, our regular pharmacy, the family doctor, her hospital doctor, the mental health association, and left messages at Nine South, Mount Sinai’s in-patient ward where I knew some of the nurses. “Bring her in for blood work. And keep giving her lots of water,” her doctor said.  She should drink more water. Try to eat. Meanwhile that lithium kept climbing in her system—4.3 units, 5.1, and two days later after eight hours in emergency, 6.5. 

Time passes slowly and quickly in emergency. You slam down tears and related fears, and you stay in intensive for five days, head resting on the bars of bed side, eyes staring in.
“Boy, she’s tough,” the doctor said. “We’ve given her five times the regular dose and she’s not out yet.”
“You seem to have a way with her,” the doctor said.
I just stared at him.
“We’re going to cut holes in her thighs for the dialysis tubes. You’ll be alright?”
“Yes. We’re a tough bunch.”
“I see that. You hold her down and tell me if her legs start twitching.”
“They’re twitching,” I said. “Twitching again.”
After an hour, the doctor sent me out.
Abie phoned from Geneva.
“She’s going to die,” I said. “Come back. Take a plane and come back.”
“I can’t. We’re closing. We’re getting close.”
I could hear voices on his side.
“What could I do anyhow? What good would I be? Don’t worry, I’m on top of this. I’m calling every hour.”
“That’s what they tell me,” I said.
     
 I spent five days with my head pressed against the railing of that hospital bed. On the third day, I treated myself to an hour of training at the Y gym. I thought I was doing fine. I was calm, mostly I didn’t cry. Except when I’d go to the bathroom, I’d start sobbing and sounds like an animal wailing in the night would build in my chest and spontaneously erupt. Or I’d be walking to the subway and my legs would give way. But I was never alone, because in the midst of everything, all the evictions and sad times, my muscles remained intact and kept me going.
   
I hid the Western Union bank drafts in the folds of my deceased grandmother’s light blue satin tablecloth with its matching serviettes. One draft purchased a shoe box of steroids —Anavar, Clenbuterol, Winstol V—pure good shit—and later on, I added D Bol that Crazy Bobby, my coach’s best friend, gave me for my forty-seventh birthday. Bobby was in love with Sophie, a Greek lesbian whom he plotted to marry.  My coach was engaged to a sweet nurse named Kathy but he had the hots for me. That’s how it goes. Coaches fall in love with their athletes and athletes will do anything for their coaches. John was my mentor although there was a fifteen year difference between us. In my way, I was wild crazy in love with him—that is until I met Garth who stole my heart at Strictly Fitness, and by daring me to move into the Nina Street bachelor basement with him, saved my life.
   
By summer, I was slipping adavan down Caroline’s throat every two-and-a-half hours so she could sleep and stay calm. I once had dog Abie named Pluto after the planet although I never saw the link. When Pluto chewed at furniture, Abie would bind the dog’s mouth with silver masking tape and with old-fashioned zeal, he’d strap the puppy’s body whenever he ran off and when he wouldn’t listen to commands. So whenever the doorbell rang, Pluto would sneak up behind me, pry open the door and bolt.  Abie applied the same training techniques to our first born. “Disappear,” Abie would say to her as she’d approach him while was watching his TV. “Get lost.” And when she couldn’t sleep at night, the dark closing in around her, he’d yell, “I’m going to tie her down, you hear? I’m going to take off my belt and strap her and tie her down.” I never let him do any of those things. I’d stand in front of him with my strong voice and muscles and I’d say, “Not on my life, you won’t.” 

I don’t know how I found the strength to remain all those years and how I finally found the strength to leave. “You’re never going to do it,” Garth said and I took his dare. It was the only way I could exit and I guess he knew it. I left with my books and my canvases. My muscles kept me upright.

Robbing the Bank at Super Fitness (Naked Words excerpt)

“You’re the only one who comes to Super Fitness with a stash of books. You think you’re such a maven, don’t you?” says the leather-skinned consultant behind the glass and chrome counter.  I look at her royal blue spandex leotard and I think I need one of those all I wear are my spaghetti strap cottons maybe I should ask her, I talk about shopping to distract her while I rob the bank, because I’m getting in shape─two machine circuits, slipping the stick on the weight stacks lower and lower, two aerobic classes back to back. “You think you’re overdoing it?” an instructor on the floor asks, her thick legs in sturdy black cotton. She says she used to be a skater. Her hair is black, cropped close to her head and curly. I open my hardcover Schwarzenegger “Weight Training for Women” and strap on my metal sandals. “Thanks,” I say, “But I’m on a mission.”

I’m going to be thirty-six on March twelfth. I belong to two exercise clubs. Christine named the Laureleaf location after herself. She’s in all the Super Fitness commercials and when she walks onto the gym floor the women size her up: how even is her tan, look at the heeled sandals she’s wearing with those sheer shiny tights and high-legged leotard, “she sure doesn’t have a Jewish ass,” one woman in hot pink whispers and her friend says, “if she had more in the ass, she’d have more on top.” The pink woman elbows her friend.  Christine says if I want to do Nautilus then I have to work out three times a week and recommends the Sutton Place location.

“It’s going to cost more,” Abie says. “Maybe she thinks I’ve outgrown the women,” I say, “and besides I have the gold membership that lets me into any Super Fitness club.” And anyhow Caroline is going to school nearby, another private school─we’re always behind in payments. Mrs. Drummond, the obese accountant with short sandy hair and oversize plastic glasses, calls me and I say “oh I didn’t realize and I’ll have to talk to my husband he’s one of those forgetful business men, no problem, I just have to take over, you know how it is” and then I go to Abie─ “I’m there everyday and I’m embarrassed. I know they know and they don’t say anything, but they know.” Abie shrugs his shoulders.

“It’s like this,” I say to Abie one night while he twisting the fat on my inner thighs, “There are women’s days and men’s days, but it’s neat, see, because I just stride up and the stack’s at two-hundred maybe one of the guys from the day before and I hop on and press like it’s no big deal.”
“You crave attention, you know that? Turn over.”
“Why should I turn over?” I say.
“You want me to do your ass or not?” he says.
“You’re a leach.”
“Same as every other man. You know they tell the male instructors to flirt with female members. It’s part of the hype.”
“No one’s flirting with me,” I say. Although that morning a fresh-faced instructor with a crew cut showed me how to use the squat machine and placed his hand on my right quadriceps. “Not bad,” he said, “what are you worried about?” and walked off to a lady with impressive thighs on the Nautilus inner thigh machine. You have to open and close on that machine and I started checking for hints of stray pubic hairs. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re spreading ninety pounds and doing the old pubic check. So I’m buying one-hundred percent cotton tights. I want to look, need, to feel strong, Atlas strong and lean and competent in an effortless kind of way although I work out two-and-a-half hours a day, five times a week.

U B th' Hiway

ther’s 2 things that i love
words an’ music babee
words an’ music
shee-it, i wish
i had legs from here

2 ther an’ a high big
ass i wish
i had tits to match an’
long black-wild
hair an’ a smile that culd make

th erth swing open an' honee
when i’m with u thats how
i feel, like i’m queen of th wurld, six
feet tall an’ when i press

my body against u, we’re
right in tyme, cunt t cock we
stand smack tight against
each othr an’ my hips

are swingin swoop de doo
raz a ma taz, soo ee
i wantya babee yada ya
ooee. dont ya know i
smile all smirk an’ snide-wide

in yur ear, flick my tongue
on th side of yur neck, i cross
th street of yur lips, right
an’ left side of th drivr–
u bee th high way, an

i’ll take a drive in th country, jst
movin along takin in th fresh air,
th corn, animls in ther pure postcard
posin. an’ i might take

sum allurin sideroads, discovr
a pristine lake evn i know
th wurd, undress walkin randumly tward
or in de-creed order bottom t top

or top t bottom, but th point
is by th time i get
to lappin yur shores, i can’t wait
to thro myself in but i don’t, i tease
my ownself - toes in, toes out, up

to th calves, arm bendin over,
nipple jst submerged, ass kissin
th sun–oh honey my cunt
yearns, buzzin right up

an down for u, an’ when
yur on fire u know th words
r tru, my leg hurts, knee hurts 2,  lisn
i’m sayin i need

2 go for a ride, take me
fast take me slow, fingr on
my belly, mind on what’s below
fuck me, stay

any which way, i’m tired
of this weed, that music, i’m out
of fuck an’ i’m so in
luv with u make my mind sing an’ if

i’m outta tune, tone deaf, disruptin
evn th clouds, honey I luv
yur voice, yur th sexiest man alive, u got
th biggest pair of balls in town, whethr

yur up or down, th look th grandnss
of yur prick nestled
in yur orange  hair so I know this
must be heaven, remembr

that summer night u drove me clear
outta town i kept askin
where u takin me, laughin and giggling
an rubbin yur thigh with u grinnin

all the while like i nevr seen
since and the stars like heavens blanket
lyin ovr us, i drank like i was in the desert,
i jst wanna tell u th stars are hidin

under these covers, but if u tiptoe an
lift th corner, th one on th bottom
at th right, u’ll see stars shinin so bright
evn ur blind eye will blink cause it’s all

about fuck, th stars th music on a saturday
night, trees swayin like ripe asses, wind’s breath
flarin under skirts and dresses, it’s all
fuck and cock and reversing gravity
to come and come and come.

jack in janice

jack, i said, this is janice–i thought
shit such a sexy name jacknjanice
wanting to say jack c’mon over here, catch
the next flight, fuck me cause

i wanna fuck a literate
dude, i mean he doesn’t have to quote shit,
doesn’t have to whisper words in my ear, although
i’d love a breath of air and if he kisses

my neck i’ll, what the heck, can’t even
deep a cock anymore, fuckin out
of practice too lazy to write words like
he does this and then he doos dat
and then he’s slurpin on my cunt makin

all deese slurpin sloppin noises, he slaps
me on the ass you can hear WHAP! leavin
red fing r prints behind on my
be hind let me shove it behin ya,

I love your beehiny, whatya got baby show
me whatya got–i got what all th other
girls gots 2 tits.1 belly button, 1
cunt with 2 lips, 1 assholes, 2
cheeks, 1 mouth, 1 soul, maybe yours,

1 tongue and with yours makes 2,
1 cunt feelin all anxious and
zippy inside skin on tits raised
for strokin, 2 nipples
elongated from suckin, under

my man’s t-shirt on my bare
skin tonight with my cunt on
fire and sizzle spark fizz hum
hummin steady rhythm

stays on motor moanin,
fuck me jack just
find your place on top and
slam bam in, ram

and slam-bam ram, you won’t
get any complaints from me no
upright mission with holy
intentions not me, not this fuck (up)

with the wrecked-up hip and swollen
red beneath my left eye, fuck
me jack maybe I write lousy
poetry but i’m
a good fuck.

Copyright Janice Colman 2009

Massaging Back to Beautiful

“There are road bumps on the outsides of my thighs. I can’t recognize myself,” I say to Abie. “I was beautiful once.”
“You still are and you’re always beautiful to me,” he says without looking up from his magazine. He collects Men’s Health, but he doesn’t look any different.

I stand in the door way with my hands on my hips. “I don’t want to be beautiful to you. I want to be beautiful. I was an actress once. And I’ve lost it.” I lean over the brown mottled dressing room counter and put my head in my hands, my hair hangs over my face and chest.

“C’mere.” Abie says.
“What’s the point,” I say, “and don’t answer that.” He has a one-track mind. Sometimes I think he’s my male counterpart, until he makes one of his puckered-ass red-neck comments.
“It says here fat massages can speed up fat loss by thirty percent. Breaks down and helps metabolize cellulite. I kid you not. I’ve got my master’s remember?”
“You don’t have your masters.”
“Well I took masters courses. Pre-med. So you game or not?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m game.”

And that’s when Abie began those nightly massages, using the edges of his hands like a deba bocho and then his two hands to grab and wring out fat like the old washer-wringer machine that stood in the screened veranda in our Lake Alverna country house. I didn’t mind because I was getting my body back and coming into my own again. Course he’d try to slip a finger or two up my cunt and I’d get really pissed off, but meanwhile he was getting all turned on so when he finished, I’d give it to him anyway. I wanted to shine in the sun again. One day, he came home with these red steel sandals─“Put your running shoes on and these over, see, and then you do those kick outs and all that shit from the Twenty Minute Workout. And if you want to take off your clothes, you can.”

I’m still in my Clearwater nudist mode, so I slap on those five-pound sandals over my hiking boots and do kick-outs, twenty to each side and twenty to the back. Abie reads his magazines with his eyebrows arched like kid’s rendition of a bird flying, his lids lowered and glasses slipping like jeans below the hips. I have to hand it to the man, even when we come home late after a flick or a fight, he’s there pulling my flesh. I’m getting my body back, hopes of youth and joy, sweetness and dreams─my skin’s going to shimmer stars in the daylight and glow hot as a mid-day summer sun at night.