April - The Flood 8 страница

I shook my head. "I don't really use charcoal."

"Yes you do. I saw you using it once."

I bit my lip and struggled to think that far back. "Possibly when I was young and first going through your art supplies, but I don't use charcoal now. I don't have the need to."

Gerard, still very displeased and distressed, waved a hand at me and then began to look. He was definitely not sick anymore and all of his energy that he had lost seemed to come back in an instance. He was practically tearing apart his room.

"Do you want me to help you look?" I offered. He ignored me. I began to go through one of his drawers to see if he had put it someplace strange when he told me to stop touching his stuff.

"I already looked there, if you look there, then I'll get confused again. Please stop."

I lifted my hands and began to back up closer to the door. I stood there for awhile to see if Gerard could come around again, but he began to tear through things some more. He wasn't mad at me, I kept trying to tell myself. It was just hard for him, I guessed, having moved so many times. Even with his organization, when he finally had his stuff unpacked, he got sick, and the delirious type of sick that probably didn't help matters. He kept getting off track and it was annoying him. He wanted time to do his art, and even when I moved in and tried to help him find it, I made things worse. I was not a part of this art environment, yet, but I had witnessed how he first created this space. I tried to help from a distance.

"Do you know where your lists are?" I asked him. "Come on, old man, this is why you made them."

The intimacy of the old comment was now gone in the aftermath of lost time. Gerard stopped for a second, squinted his eyes at the remark, but ultimately ignored my gesture and tore through his room some more. It was looking less and less likely that I would get to nap with him. But I didn't want to be alone, either. It was a difficult situation and I didn't want to call Jasmine again and try and get her to work it out for me, or call Mikey. What could they do? I found myself getting anxious again and I bit my lip and just did what I wanted anyway. I crawled into Gerard's bed. He could look for his materials all he wanted, but I was going to uphold my end of the deal. He had to remember what had happened the night before, and when he got out of his own little funk, he would realize that I needed him as much as he needed that charcoal. Did he even still draw with charcoal anymore? I thought as I began to drift into sleep. I didn't find an answer before I slipped away.

I woke up with him touching my face. He had crawled into bed with me, I didn't know when, but he was undressing me with his free hand and touching my face with the other. He stroked my skin lightly, along my jaw line and then touched my lips before going back to my hairline and ear. He had unbuttoned the collared shirt that I was wearing, but he did not take it all the way off. He slipped his other hand on my skin, and began to go up and down my chest. When I opened my eyes and finally saw him, his smile grew wide. He kissed me softly and then came back for another and another. He laughed and told me that I smelt like wine. I became self-conscious suddenly, as if I had somehow sleep-walked and started drinking again. But he just kissed me again and again and then hugged me tight. He was still wearing the same clothing as he had before, but his dove jacket was over his shoulders. He must have found that instead of his charcoal and it made him forget that pursuit and come stay with me. As I began to feel more awake and returned his affection, he apologized to me.

"My dove," he whispered in my ear. "How could I be so foolish?"

I didn't answer him; I just slipped my arms over his back, underneath his jacket and felt the strong bones of his shoulder blades, like wings. He pressed his face to mine, lying down with me instead of hovering over me. We fell asleep together, like I had wanted, until Jasmine woke us both up.

Jasmine had been right: Hilda was hard to keep up with. We were supposed to meet her at Jasmine's old cafe after we were done dinner, but she kept calling while we were eating and insisting upon seeing Jasmine before then. Jasmine bushed as she held the phone to her chest to cover the mouthpiece and asked if I didn't mind her heading over earlier. I waved my hands and said it was fine. I would be sure to get there. Jasmine looked at me with a little concern, and then finally told Hilda she would be over as soon as she could. She kissed me on the forehead and warned that if I wasn't there by seven-thirty, Hilda had a motorcycle and would hunt me down. I would have to answer to both her and this new person in our life. The image of two pregnant women on the back of a motorcycle, chasing after me was almost enough incentive to not show up at all. But I decided there had been enough drama for the past few weeks. I asked Gerard if he wanted to come with me, but he declined. He was still busy drawing, and for what I could tell, had finally found what he was looking for. He promised to stay up for me though, since he had had a nap and probably wouldn't be tired. I told him it was a date.

Jasmine had been very vague about Hilda. She told me lots about her: she was a surrogate and seven months pregnant. She was going to be giving the baby to her two best friends from high school, who were now a couple, Brian and Ryan. Yes, that was their real names and the whole scenario was ridiculously cute and adorable and all those warm fuzzy feelings. They had a house in suburbia, worked at a bank, and were this-close to having a white picket fence. All they needed was a baby, and Hilda had volunteered to serve that purpose. She had no interest in kids herself, but liked to make people happy who were usually ignored by adoption agencies and society. She also just liked to try new things, although pregnancy was one of the more extreme things she had decided to do just to see what it was like in her lifetime, she did confess that this was a lot easier than sky-diving. At least, for now. I figured this zealous nature for all experiences was what had attracted Jasmine in the first place. She had told me that she and Hilda were going to be trying some of the exercises together that Lydia had told them to do, and they were also going shopping and doing the necessary pregnancy buying that she had to do. I realized that it was a lot easier to have Hilda around to do this stuff because not only was she not a typical pregnant woman, but she was also farther along in her "adventure." Anything that Jasmine had questions about, Hilda could probably answer in the absence of Lydia. They both seemed to have a lot of connections in the way of not wanting to do things normally. Apparently, the one time they had gone baby shopping together, they had deliberately moved all the pink girls' items into the boys' area and vice versa. Jasmine said that Hilda had called this "gender bombing" and they continued to do it in each new store they went to that night. At one point, when Jasmine found a neutral section where green colors and muted grays stared back at them, she spread that all around the store. It wasn't exactly a "bomb" that time; more of a passive resistance, she had said and then laughed hysterically. That was one thing I noticed about Jasmine and her relationship with Hilda: she laughed a lot more than she had been in the past. Suddenly pregnancy had became a fun and comical experience. It was no longer as isolating or devastatingly serious as it used to be. She no longer felt alone in her own body and she no longer felt like a sitting target when she walked down the street because of her extended belly. Hilda had one too, and Hilda's was much larger than hers. Hilda wouldn't even buy maternity clothing. She kept wearing her old outfits and would relish in all the stares that she received like a prize. Even when she was wearing her prized drinking shirts (Hilda, before playing surrogate, had participated and won in every single drinking competition there had been at her college) and people would come up and yell at her, Hilda was all smiles. She knew how to have fun with pregnancy and to jostle people's expectations. That had been what Jasmine had needed, desperately. But other than her laughing hysterics and the practical biography she had given to me about Hilda, I knew very little about their relationship together.

I ordered a coffee and sat at a table near the window and waited for Hilda and Jasmine to arrive. I had a newspaper with me, but I only vaguely looked through the pages. When I glanced up, I saw these two colorful masses of people walking towards the cafe and I figured that they had arrived. It was a good thing that I had gotten there early, because so were they. I guessed that Jasmine had wanted to make sure that I got here, and just in case, have time to go and grab Hilda's bike. I debated hiding and even looked around for a washroom to tease them with my absence, but that was when I noticed how they were walking towards the cafe. The masses of color began to blend together and I realized that they were holding hands. Hilda was dressed in a red low-cut top that made part of her extended belly stick out underneath under her tight black pants and Jasmine was in one of her short purple dresses that she wore over jeans. Their clothing blended together as the wind blew Jasmine's dress in Hilda's direction, obscuring their interlocked hands for a moment. Hilda leaned down and kissed Jasmine's head at a stoplight before crossing the street to get to the side that the cafe was one, and the slinked her arm around the small of Jasmine's back, eliciting a smile from the other pregnant woman. Hilda was much taller than Jasmine, and for that fact, me. She was wearing thick heeled boots that heightened this difference. Looking at them both head on, you wouldn't event suspect that they were pregnant, but as soon as they turned, their stomachs popped and so did their affection for one another. It was quite clear, from where I was sitting and drinking my coffee, that Hilda and Jasmine were more than just friends.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I was startled, but that was mostly because I was now rearranging all the conversations that Jasmine had had about Hilda in my mind and realizing that I had completely missed the yearning and affection in her voice. Her exclamations of how much she loved Hilda were no longer expressing just how cool she thought her new friend was; she could possibly love her, and Hilda vice versa. They were sure grinning intently as they had their hands around one another. My mouth hung a touch open as I tried to filter in these new images to my life. It wasn't every day that I saw Jasmine this pregnant, especially holding onto and then briefly kissing a woman who was so much farther along in her own pregnancy. I didn't even know that Jasmine liked women! I thought I had been the one in our relationship with same sex experience.

"Hey Frank," Jasmine said when she stepped inside. Hilda had been holding the door for her, and stayed there to hold it for a few other people. She stayed even when they insisted that she go in first and almost seemed to start an argument with someone when they wouldn't pass until "the dear pregnant one would." When Hilda finally got over to us, she greeted me with an eye roll and talked about how people "think I'm so sweet and delicate and I can't wait to prove 'em wrong. Usually swearing helps, but I think I need to start wearing my shirt that says 'I can't believe I ate the whole thing', or 'I swallow' and then see what people think. It could be a fun afternoon."

She smiled at me, waiting for my response. I laughed a little, but she seemed disappointed. She stuck out her hand and properly introduced herself: "Hi, I'm Hilda. I'm sure Jasmine has told you that, but I figured I better say something too in case you get me confused with any other pregnant person here. How are you doing, Frank?"

"Yeah," Jasmine added. "Were you waiting long?"

I shook my head and then motioned to the table I had gotten us. We all took a seat and I was sure that we made quite a spectacle. I had been used to getting the types of stares from other people if Jasmine and myself went out and someone with extra sense perception seemed to notice that she was pregnant. I was also used to the stares that I got if Gerard and I went out and were read as a couple. The three of us had gone out, but I didn't think it had been enough times for it to really register the stares. And most people would probably think that Gerard was a father of one of us. But this scenario, these two pregnant women who would constantly touch and tease one another and me sitting quite awkwardly at the other end of the table, it must have been quite a sight. Hilda's stomach hung out under her red shirt even more as she sat down, and she seemed quite proud of this. At one point she began to talk about her belly button and how it had finally turned from an innie to an outie this week. She lifted up her shirt to show us all around.

" Jasmine, you've seen the before, and here is the after," she said as she gestured the other direction. Jasmine giggled and put her hand sheepishly over her face and I was completely struck. Was this how she had looked when she and I first got together? Did we ever giggle that much?

I didn't want to call what I was feeling jealousy. We did not own one another. We had talked about this several different times over the years, and while them was going to know us with my in front of our names, to one another, we were always just our names. We were bonded, but we did not own. We were all irrevocably linked, after all. So the relationship with Hilda even made sense, logically. I was surprised, I guessed. It didn't seem like Jasmine's character to be into someone like Hilda, not even just the fact that she was a woman and so far as I knew, Jasmine only showed an interest in men. It was Hilda's loud and boisterous personality. It was fun, for sure, and a good change for Jasmine. But I found myself wondering what they were like intimately. Were they this loud when they were in bed together? It wasn't a creepy question in my mind - it wasn't a morbid curiously or perversion or me just wanting to watch for the thrill. It was just a curiosity. I knew what Jasmine was like with me, and to a certain degree, I knew what she was like with Gerard. I knew that Jasmine and Gerard had had their own intimate space outside of the night we had all spent together, but I didn't find my mind wandering too far in that direction. But it did for this. I wanted to know what Hilda was like, too, if she calmed down in bed, how she treated Jasmine. There was this wall of intimacy that I could not peek over, nor did I have the right to. It was always Jasmine's body and mind and she could do as she pleased. But the part of me that was linked with her ached to touch her as well, just as much, at the same time as other people.

Hilda got up and offered to get Jasmine a tea. Jasmine requested ice tea instead and Hilda nodded as if this was a normal recourse in conversation. Hilda offered to get me something too, but I declined. I had appreciated that; in spite of being completely enwrapped with Jasmine and their own relationship, Hilda was very gung-ho on including me in this. When her back was turned at the counter, Jasmine and I were alone and she reached over to grab my hand.

"I thought you knew," Jasmine said. She bit her lip. She must have seen the wide eyes I had when they first entered the cafe. "Should I have been more explicit with it?"

"No, it's fine. We've all been in our own little worlds recently. I probably would have noticed it sooner if I had been paying attention. I mean, it makes sense. I guess." I was still sorting out my feelings. It was a lot to take in at once. I didn't hate Hilda when I realized they were sleeping together, and I still didn't now. It was hard to. She was a lot of funny and extremely charismatic.

When she came back with the drinks, the real purpose of the meeting had to begin. At first, I thought we had all gathered so we could motivate Jasmine to come out at work tomorrow and tell them she was pregnant, but that was a mere footnote in their plan now. Hilda got out a binder from the bag she had been carrying, a pad of paper, and some pens and passed it all around to us. We each got a sheet of paper and I began to wonder if there was going to be some weird kind of birthing test.

"You are all having a party," she stated. "You need to. How long have you been living in that house now? Far too long. Before I met Jasmine, I know that much. And I have not seen it yet. So to get me over, you are having a party."

"A house-warming party, Frank," Jasmine added. "I had considered one before, as a way to kind of thank everyone to help us move in, but I didn't follow through with it. It just seemed so...." She struggled for the word.

"Normal?" I offered

"Straight?" Hilda chuckled. Jasmine nodded to both of our suggestions, and Hilda went on. "Well, that is why I am here. I am pro at removing all things straight and normal from just the simplest activities. By the way, Frank, Jasmine tells me about the situation you two have going on. The relationship you have with the older guy, what's his name?"

"Gerard," we both said at the same time. It was our turn now, finally, to exchange a glance and a smile.

"Yes. Exactly. Wonderful set up you have going on there. I'd love to see how you guys have the house arranged and everything. It would help me a lot, actually. It would give me some ideas for the workshops I run."

Workshops? I thought and was about to ask, when Jasmine began to fill me in. She was getting really good at recognizing my confused glances at this point, and deciphering Hilda's allusions. My knowledge of Hilda was expanding rabidly. She was no longer Jasmine's best pregnant friend, but now Jasmine's girlfriend (though they did not like that term and partners made it sound a little too badass, even with all the gender "bombing" they had done) and then as Hilda the sex and advice expert. For a living, she dealt with sex. She would answer questions at a health clinic a few times a week part-time, and then on the side had started to do workshops about alternative relationships and sexualities. She advocated for sex and masturbation and usually got a lot of hate mail and people barring her from ever giving lectures. But it didn't matter, because Hilda would come anyway and throw condoms at the stage and usually get carried away. She had been arrested more than once, but since one of the baby's fathers was a lawyer, she never had anything stick. And now that she was pregnant, it felt as if she could get away with anything. She had started to give lectures to schools about preventing AIDS, which she disguised as a typical abstinence only STD lecture, only to break out the dildos halfway through and pass them around so kids could practice putting on condoms. She would explain the reasons for condoms in anal sex explicitly and gave them techniques on how to do it properly - for both genders. She was hated and feared, but so well needed. Part of me wished I had gone to one of her lectures. Maybe I would have been less scared when my own sex life seemed to open up in front of me.

Still, her talk of workshops and our life with Gerard giving her ideas made me a bit uncomfortable. I was all for sex education and having these workshops, but it seemed too... public for me? I didn't want people to know about our relationship in the nitty-gritty bits like who slept where and how did we get it to work. We had had a threesome, and were all sleeping together, but the questions of organization and how that actually happened was evasive, elusive. It didn't seem like something that could happen in a seminar or a lecture. They would miss huge chunks of our story through that and why this had worked the way it did. It was the same reason I felt awkward when Jasmine and I went outside and people made the assumption that I was the father and we were married. They were missing huge parts of the story, that there were really two fathers, and we weren't really even the fathers per se, but My Frank and Papa. And then there was the whole issue of the pronoun it.

Hilda talked so fast, though, that I had barely enough time to keep up. As Jasmine finished explaining to me quickly about Hilda and her workshops, we were back on task to the party.

"So, who's coming?" she asked, and Jasmine began to write down a list of people that seemed never ending. The only people that were excluded were Mikey's kids, and that was because there were too many of them and most likely, the party would be way past their bedtimes. Cassandra was down, along with Noelle, and so long as they were around with the kids, it almost seemed possible to include the five from before as well.

"And we have to get used to having kids in the house, I guess," Jasmine said, biting her lips. "Although I don't know about that many."

"So. Lots and lots of babies," Hilda wrote out. "If that's the case, you've gotta have entertainment for them too. No movies, either. Like come on, at least try and challenge your kid."

"We actually don't own a TV," I told her. Gerard's old one had given up a few years ago, and we never saw a need to replace it. Jasmine and I never had one in our personal collections either. Hilda seemed dumbstruck and then reached her arm across the table and grabbed my hand. She grabbed Jasmine's with the other.

"Oh, I love you guys. Already. Perfect family." She smiled and winked at me. It felt good to hear that word, finally. Family. It was odd to hear Hilda give it to us, but I accepted it. I wanted it, now, finally. I began to realize that our list of people, as it grew and grew, were the family that we hat stitched together over these past few months. They were all centered around us - Jasmine, Gerard, and myself - and we held them all together. Lydia was the only person I didn't know on the list, and I began to get excited that I would finally meet her. Jasmine was excited too, and she began to gush again about the instructor who had changed her perception so many times. Hilda nodded along and said that the two of them had met at a workshop. She had been lecturing on the AIDs epidemic and the government's explicit denial of black people health care or the education to prevent the disease and the way the media had manipulated the public perception of the AIDs victim.

"And I had been lecturing on fisting," Hilda said, laughing at herself. "I felt like such a weak scholar in comparison to her."

I had no idea why, but I viscerally reacted to the word fisting. My shoulders slumped and my face probably did something weird as well. It was just not something that I thought about, and the mere mention of it made my eyes go wide with shock. I was not a prude, not even close, but I was not as kinky or into that intense of experimentation as Hilda was. It made me feel like I was a child in comparison, and though Hilda tried to bring me around to the idea of fisting, I was still not won over.

"It's not a fist like a punching-fist," she was explaining, using her hands to show me. She had big hands, too. They were my size, I was sure. She folded her four fingers around and then placed her thumb in the middle of them. It created this sort of flattened V-like fist that was not as intense as a punching fist, but still rather intimidating. "It's not about trying to hurt your partner, guy or girl. Both can be fisted, but I did the workshop focusing mainly on women who wanted to do it to their partners. Women's bodies can birth babies, Frank!" Hilda slapped her stomach, the sound seeming to bounce off the walls of the cafe. I became aware that there were definitely people listening in on this fisting discussion. Hilda went on. She did this for a living, after all. "Women can endure a lot, and so can men, not to discriminate. Anyway. So if you do this to someone with a vagina, you have to go slow and not just ram it up there. It's not about the idea of fisting, necessarily. It's about the intensity of the act and the pleasure that can come from it. My point is, it can be done and not always for the reasons people think it can."

I nodded. I never doubted that it could be done; I just didn't know if it was an act that I had wanted to participate in. I drank some of my coffee, but it had gone cold. The sugar stuck to the bottom and it made a funny taste in my mouth. Hilda went into the topic of the party again, moving on seamlessly from her lecture before. I looked up to see how Jasmine was doing, and she smiled shyly at me. I wanted to ask her if she knew what Hilda had been talking about, but I didn't dare. Could pregnant women even be fisted? Would Jasmine want to be? I knew that just because it hadn't crossed my mind, it was unfair to deny her.

But we were talking about kids again, and how to amuse a group of five like that. "I suppose there is always finger-painting or a craft of some kind," Hilda suggested.

"Finger painting!" Jasmine agreed excitedly. "I think that's something we'd all want to do, as adults."

I nodded and leaned forward in my chair more. I thought of the mural that I still just had the undercoat for. I needed some extra help to paint all of that. I was originally going to go with Jasmine and Gerard, but it was hard organizing their schedule with mine. And why stop the wall there? I looked at the list of people in front of us, and I realized that I wanted them in my bedroom mural, too. I wanted them inside my private space, to keep me company, to help me last through the winter. Gerard had his room that looked like Paris and Jasmine had her garden and her study with a newly arranged bedroom; I wanted my mural. And I wanted these people in my life, always. I wanted their hands on the wall, making a different type of garden. I suddenly imagined all of their handprints coming out of a grassy landscape and each one having a stem. Like it was its own flower.

"I want a garden," I said out loud. "I have a place we can paint for the party. It's the long wall in my room. I want to turn it into a garden."

Jasmine listened intently. She nodded subtly.

"Like Georgia O'Keeffe? Big vaginal flowers everywhere?" Hilda asked, partly teasing. "Because I would love a garden like that."

She bumped Jasmine's shoulder and though they both smiled together, Jasmine's eyes locked with mine from across the table. She really liked the idea, I could tell. I began to explain my garden design a little bit more, trying to step away from the vaginal motif that Hilda had suggested.

"But I like O'Keeffe," Hilda protested.

"So do I, but it's not the exact look I'm going for..."

"Hey, you know what?" Hilda asked all of a sudden, nudging Jasmine again. "We are like Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo!"

"They were together?" I asked, and Hilda nodded profusely. I scanned my memory, the book I had read on the artist, and came up with nothing."I don't remember that. I'm sure Gerard would have mentioned that. We both really like Frida."

"Well, they were together, and Jasmine, you can be Frida and we can have our mini-love affair and then I can go off and live in the dessert and be with a man half my age." Hilda let out a loud laugh and then a sigh. "Ah, yes, that would be the life. Frank, you should really know more about your artists."

As much as I had started out liking Hilda, she was now getting on my nerves. I had been impressed that she knew who O'Keeffe was, but she was looking at art a completely different way than I was. And to even insinuate - albeit jokingly - that I needed to brush up on my artists was enraging. Gerard had not told me about O'Keeffe and Frida for a good reason. It probably didn't matter at all, at least objectively, from the standpoint of how it affected their work. Gerard had not really mentioned O'Keefe at all; I only knew her from my own work with Stieglitz, and his intimate photos of her that I thought were stunning, that made me want to be a photographer just like him. I also knew her from her notorious reputation for painting flowers that looked like vulvas. Of course, that was the only thing Hilda seemed to grasp as well. I was beginning to realize that just because someone liked the same things as I did, or believed in the same idea, that did not mean that they expressed it in the same way. It was frustrating. Thinking that I had found someone awesome to share Jasmine with, I had found someone who had gotten under my skin. She was hitting all the right buttons, making me think that I didn't have sex enough or I didn't do it weird enough. Making me think that I didn't know enough about art or artists. Making me think that I was horribly normal, horribly straight, even in spite of my interests.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14