From The Pursuit of the Whole Is Called Love

1.

Today I am to be a boy; Cam, a girl.

She tells me this as she crouches over our sleep-slicked nest, painting her hair brown with

her fingers, drawing it out longer and longer until the curls brush the wings of her

shoulderblades. Behind her the television speaks in bright voices and static; she turns to it,

distracted, her beautiful red eyes turning blue in its glow, her hips swelling in its waves of light

and sound. She mimics the woman on the screen, twisting her torso to and fro, pressing her

buttocks together. Her fingers are perfectly straight when she picks up the imagined bottle of

water and strokes its long sides. Silently she mouths its magical properties, casting the world into

a state of thirst.

I ache with love, watching her. My better half, I tell the people we speak to. Everything

good in us, everything bold and vivacious, stands naked before the television laughing into an

imaginary phone, feigning delight at how cellular phones make the world so small, how they

bring us closer to each other.

Never as close as Cam and I.

Cam, youre so alive, I tell her. You can be anyone, better than they are.

She looks over her shoulder at me with those strange blue eyes, her plump cheeks

flushing prettily. I am already blushing, my cloacae are opening, and I can smell her at once, her

rising dew a mirror of mine. I know she is as wet within as I am, I know how my hands would

slide inside her smooth glossy flesh, deep within to where her own sun lies.
 Come back to bed, I coax. We can go out tomorrow.

She shakes her head, her hair falling around her face like leaves. Just be a boy tonight,

please?

Or blonde to your brunette? I start to stroke my pectorali, sweeping my flesh with my

cupped hands, coaxing my moist skin up and round, up and round.

A boy, Jess. She smiles at me. Its my turn to tell the story tonight.

Once upon a time, Cam says into my neck, on a beautiful sunny summer day, Cam and Jess

went out to have an adventure.

We step out into a world half-erased by light. Cam out the door first and the sun takes her

into itself, she disappears for a moment into the glow; and then I am following her into the heat,

the lovely white sunlight. We still exclaim over it, day after day: doesnt it feel good? Could it be

warmer than yesterday? We always cross to the sunny side, we stand before the whitest walls and

let the reflected simmer bathe our bodies, Cams face in my neck, my hands in her pockets. The

fabric of our clothing hangs like sandpaper between us. I want nothing more than to strip us both,

I see us in my minds eye: our soft open cloacae sliding, gripping, our skins merging to form one

seamless undulating surface, pulsing with the rhythm of our heartbeats, and beneath it all that

sweet tremolo, our own particular frequency

And they filled their arms with food and drink, I say, and went back to their little nest,

and they ate and drank and touched until there was no Cam and no Jess but only I.
 Shh. Her hand on my mouth tastes like the sun, like my own skin. You always want the

end first. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, the air laden with the smells of the first

gardenias, every bud opening its creamy petals to the suns loving touch.

We are walking. I had not realized we started walking, her head nestled against my

shoulder. Cam fretting over my height before we left, pushing me higher, lower, stretching and

molding me until her head fit just right in the hollow. Details matter, she says, and its true in this

place, more so than any I have yet seen. The more she fusses before we leave, the more people

look at us, smiling as if they know us: a beautiful couple, look at how well we go together. Like

we were meant to be.

My better half.

Details matter. I have our little streets almost memorized now, I can see them in my

minds eye as clearly as when we walk them: the greengrocers, the newsagents, the launderette.

When we pass the florist he beams at us and gives Cam a rich purple flower; she presses it to my

nose and hers, dusting our faces with its yellow pollen. Its petals are spattered with dark spots,

the very center shockingly white.

That is how stories should be, she says, and I start to agree, they should be like this,

painted gaudy and dark and that glow within, that beautiful heat

The words should smell like flowers, she continues, they should taste like candy. The

sun filled their bodies with light and warmth, it touched and caressed them and they were one

with the sun, Cam and Jess. And they knew, from the tips of their toes to the crowns of their

heads, that such gifts must be celebrated . . . properly.

For a moment her voice slips, becoming thicker in her throat, and I feel my insides

tremble.
 But we just got here, I whisper. And our nest fits us just right.

Its time, Jess. Cam licks my neck, crushing her flower between us. So they prepared a

great feast for their bodies, Cam and Jess, and the sun was so pleased it stayed in the sky for

three whole days and nights, celebrating their great renewal, bathing the world in heat and love.

She giggles into my ear. Besides, Ive already found one.

We pass through a maze of unfamiliar streets, the hot sun beating down, until we reach a place

where the walls are covered in layers of peeling paper, the closest thing to history I have seen

here, the posters and notices thick and yellowing. All is covered in grime; somewhere there is a

muffled rhythm, like an earthquake, and when we step through the doors it explodes into sound.

My chest vibrates, Cams hair shimmers, and for a moment I nearly lose my body, the frequency

is so strong and strange.

Wait, I say.

But Cam doesnt hear, she doesnt hear, she pushes her way into the darkness, moving

through a narrow hallway choked with sweating, firm bodies and I lose sight of her for a moment

and the panic fills me, it fills me. Cam! When we finally emerge into the bar I am coated in a

film of others and I take her hand but shes as gluey as I am, I can barely feel her. She could be

anyone. And still it doesnt end, the room larger but still as crowded, there are open doorways

leading onto a shadowed porch and that too is crowded. Why would so many choose to be here,

shoulder-to-shoulder at the height of the day, sticky in darkness and being vibrated out of their

skins?
 Cam tugging on my hand, leading me through the crowd, and when she looks at me she is

laughing. I cant understand what she finds so amusing, I cant even understand if shes laughing

at everyone else, or at me, or at all of us. As if we were all the same.

How did you find this place? I ask her, but she drops my hand and leans over the bar,

waggling her ass in the air. Stop it, I add, my voice sharp.

The bartender comes to us, he saunters, I know this even with the bar between us. He

saunters over and he is all hair, it sprouts from his face and hands, it clings to his shirt collar like

the honeysuckle creeping along our window. When he rolls up the sleeves of his plaid shirt his

forearms are the legs of an animal. Cam looks at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised, and

for the briefest second her eyes flash red at me.

Jess, this is Dave, she says.

I raise my hand in greeting. But Dave leans over the bar and holds out his hand; holds it

out, putting his bristly arm between Cam and I.

Hey, man, he says.

And I have no choice, what am I to do? Cam smiling, smiling on the other side of his

arm, so close and yet in another world. Two disparate halves, severed. Is this the story she wants?

What am I to do?

I place my palm against his and at once I shudder, as Cam must have. Its there: an

essence in his pores that makes my skin slacken, makes my cloacae open to him. Though I have

touched others here that left me drenched in dew the moment we touch; he barely has it, why

does she think hell satisfy us both? Im not even sure how much of my wetness is him, how

much is the others that are still brushing against me even now, buffeting me like waves, leaving

me dizzy and off-balance. The music thud-thud-thud shaking my very frame, the sweat of others,
and I am open beneath my clothes: who knows what is seeping in while I stand here clutching

this mans hand?

But Cam was right: its there. Though there isnt even a word for it in this miserable

world.

Its there, and I hate him for it.