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IN WHICH MY CRUSH ON AN IMAGINARY WOMAN IS UNCOVERED. FORTUNATELY GOD WAS MY GIRLFRIEND AT THE TIME.
i woke around the crack of noon, as i'm wont to do anymore, to find god sitting across the room in the big black office chair at the computer desk, looking at me.
we sat there for a month, just looking. breathing. i felt like a painting, at first, then more like a car wreck.
"mornin'" i mumbled to her, shifting in the covers, breaking eye contact.
"mornin' yerself" she replied, shifting in the chair a bit to reach (without looking) behind her for a big glass of juice offa the desk.
Then i noticed she was naked.
Well, maybe nude would be the better term. Her hair was light blond and curly, and fell just enough to cover the promise of her breasts, a pale nipple barely visible when she shifted. She looked about 30, give or take a shower. Nice.
The computer was on, but in jukebox mode, so the screen was basically blank. i could just make out The Lemonheads.
"Catch anything?" i asked her from my valleys of cotton.
"Didn't go" she replied into her juice. She was drinking from a vase, which eclipsed her face as she turned it up to drink.
She paused, giving me the excuse to call Saladin to the bed. With a cat look, a cat stretch, then another cat look, he conceded, gracing me with his presence.
"She's not real, you know. Bonanza."
"Some would say the same about you," i said half into a pillow. "Doesn't make me need either one of you any less."
The shuffle on the computer moved over the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Some acoustic thing; Morning appropriate.
"Mmmm" she said. "Feel the love."
"This is about love, is it?"
"No, it's about the here & now."
"Again, easily applied to the whole "God" problem," i countered. "Difference is, i know you. i've felt you, tasted you . . ."
"But what if it's not real, either. What if you've been sleeping this whole time. What if the world outside your eyelids is cold and Godless?"
i paused. Not for effect, or because i was thinking, but because that was a pretty asinine thing for god to say.
"That's pretty asinine," i admitted. "Why don't we just go into the whole can-you-make-a-rock-so-big-that-you-cannae-lift-it routine." i had to sit up a bit in the bed at this. She shifted in the chair a bit as well, offering the briefest of blonde shadows as she crossed her legs. Suddenly my train of thought drifted into that down, and, not for the first time in as many days, i hated being male. Clearing my throat a bit, tho not my head, i continued. "Anyway if it is, all cold and Godless that is, then i believe the proper response is either 'never let me wake,' or 'who says it isn't.'"
"Alright," she admitted. "Bad example."
There was a bit of nothing as the song ended, and cycled into The Cowboy Junkies. i never noticed her light one, much less reach for a pack, but suddenly i noticed she was smoking.
"Here," she began, "like this: would you sleep with her?"
"i'm going to assume that by that you mean sex."
"I think you know what I meant."
i answered without pause. "i dunno."
This was obviously not the answer she wanted, and she turned up her nose a bit as she drank again.
"Dunno because it's safe to say it'd never happen, or dunno because you're separating an act from an ideal?"
"Wow," i said. "Nice one. But i'd have so say that, sex aside, i couldnae separate the act from the ideal. i think that the ideal includes the act."
"But not the reverse."
"Hunh? The act without the ideal? As in could i sleep with her without her?"
"Sort of. But that moves into sex without love."
"Oh, shit."
". . . Which we're NOT discussing. I'm asking if the ideal of sleeping of her would be damaged by actually doing it."
"What kind of fucked-up question is that? Are you talking about fantasies?"
"No. Fantasies are scenarios. I'm talking about the image of her in you. Actually it's more like you in her, technically, but not really what I'm referring to. I mean The Ideal."
"i dunno. i'd suppose so, but not in specifics. It's more like asking 'does she have a purple dress,' or the like. There are no specifics in the ideal, just amalgamations.
"And me?" she asked, after a long pull on her little brown cigarette. "And you what?" i asked, cocking my head for effect.
"Aren't I an ideal, an amalgamation? Don't we sleep together?"
"Don't we? But then again, if you're an ideal, and we're sleeping together, doesn't that make this whole thing some twisted form of masturbation? When you come, do you call out to yourself when you're on the ramp? And if you come, do you even need me to do it?"
"Sounds like you needing me so you can need me to need you, even tho, in fact, I may have actually created you in the first place."
"But if I don't need you . . ."
"You do," she said, matter-of-factly.
I ignored her smug little smile and carried on.
"But in what context, and at what point is it enough that my needing you makes you more than you were before, not just to you as God needing believers, but you just needing me, or, at the very least needing me to need you, justifying your existence?"
"Do we?"
i had to stop. This time i was thinking, not just pausing for effect.
"What are you doing?" i asked her.
"If you find your 'Bonanza Jellybean', what happens to me?"
"It's a moot point, you said yourself that she's not real."
"And you said that I'm not either."
"Did not. i said that some people might, and do, argue your existence."
"But you know better." she said a bit smugly.
"As much as i need to. But i need to believe that you're real just as much as i need to believe that Bonanza is out there somewhere, ridin' around in some little red car with the windows down and the stereo fulla guitars, looking for notwolf. Mebbe god is her boyfriend. i dunno. i do know that alone is fucking awful, and this is how i deal. Girl, god, lover, ghost, whatever. Everything anymore is either fuel or fire."
U2 cycled into the machine, and god instantly shot me a look of surprise.
"Not me," she said, innocently. "Just the computer."
"Anyway," i continued, ignoring her.
"Anyway,' she replied. "Can I come to bed?"
"Depends." i said, gathering up the covers. "Are you real?"
"Am I real what?"
"Anything. As long as you're real."
"notwolf" was born Scott Wile in Texas much longer ago than he feels is actually possible. Montessori educated, he has been a fisherman, a taxi driver, a marketing consultant, a radio DJ, a publisher, a journalist, a club manager/owner, a comic shop guy, a photographer of things rated NC-17 and above, a nomad, a rock star and in love too many times . . . but never, ever a wolf. Though prone to write and scribble on just about anything that will hold ink, most of his writing these days begins at his LiveJournal, which is often the scene of equal parts chaos, bliss, and the verbal equivalent of baker's chocolate. At the moment he is basically self-employed, and sometimes would love nothing more than a normal life with a wife, kids, and little drapes over the kitchen sink, but doesn't think Eris will release him from her service. He lives in the amazing city of Denton, Texas with his obligatory (but faithful) cat, Saladin, and sundry fetishes from previous lives.
Publishing credits: Alternative Press, Maximumrocknroll, Grafitti,
Autoduel Quarterly, Pyramid, Green Egg, Green Man, Driving Tigers, Cricket, FENCE, Morgasm, G Is For Girl, Riot Grrl, Dragon Magazine, Eclipse, Atomic Petals, Comerades, the Muse Apprentice Guild, and a fist full of online review sites.
online? . . . just google 'notwolf'.
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