| Eleven, The Spelunker (cont. from page 3)
Fiction by Diane Greco language.
For which bit of bitchiness I do apologize, as I told your mother yesterday, who, perhaps by way of forgiveness-by-proxy, bestowed upon me a thin-lipped smile and asked if I had any idea what was in the little white paper cups, and then leaned upon her spade and grinned. (Your mother, I should tell you, has lately been seen digging on the near hillside at dawn, in defiance of the rules about roaming the grounds at odd hours). Speaking of homely implements like your mother’s spade reminds me of something that I have long wanted to tell you: it was love at first whack for Eleven and me. For no sooner had he begun construction on my bat house than he found, under a plank on the deck, a half-drowned river rat that he tried to kill with his drywall hammer, except that he missed and brought the instrument down on his thumb instead. I was obliged not only to kill the rat myself, which I did with the application of my heaviest Calphalon pan, but also to offer the spelunker ice, sympathy, and the glass of sherry he requested, even though it was not yet noon. Sitting on the couch, I boldly offered to kiss his boo-boo better. Yes, yes, “boo-boo” was exactly what I said, although I’m sure you’d do a better job with this bit dialogue, making my display of seductive motherliness seem at once gruesome and oddly sexy, as if I were playing Anne Bancroft to his Dustin Hoffman, except you’d give me away yet again by calling your result quote, The Graduate Student, unquote, cuckoo-ka-chew. Well, so what. Indulge me. For here I must follow my pleasure out to its natural, obvious, and, for all that, utterly delicious end: shortly I was kissing, passionately kissing, not just his boo-boo, but him.
You mean to say you didn’t know? Well, it makes no difference now, after everything that has happened. Part of my problem in telling you this potentially very profitable story is that Eleven, the spelunker, is as misty to me now as the geological prehistory of, say, the Mediterranean basin, which was, not coincidentally, the subject of my first published paper, of which you made such fun in your novel. Which was all to the good, of course. All scientific research, even my own early work, is worthless if it only sits on dusty library shelves and you, at least, have been kind enough to make use of it. Speaking of old books: When I try to imagine Eleven, what I remember most clearly has nothing to do with those few literary essentials I’ve already mentioned, but the simple odd fact that he had about him a peculiar smell, like that of a newspaper left out in the rain. If he’d been a different sort of person, more vain perhaps, I would have more to offer you here by way of memory: the precise texture of his awful skin, the position in which he preferred to sleep, how his fine hair felt when I pulled it out in clumps with my hands. Such were our ecstasies. As a literary person, I am sure you understand.
I’m also sure you know by now that, when Eleven and I started to see each other, I had already embarked on a project that I called “geoliterature,” a form of writing that would allow me to chart a course toward those happy shores of art where you have already anchored your stately boat, and enjoyed such good results (as your mud-streaked mother reminds me thrice daily, at least). Although I’d been working on my “geolit,” as I like to call it, for some time before your arrival, it was only during your first semester in our program that I worked up the nerve to share some of my writing with Eleven. It was a meditation on the << Return to TSAR Volume 8, Number 2 |
