THE MORNING BEFORE THE CHANGE - Rocco Rinaldi-Rose
They will slice me open navelwise. I will be thankless through clenched teeth because they will have underestimated the amount of anesthetic to use. I am young; my body is skillful at healing – so it doesn’t much matter that they don’t numb me. There are other things my body does too, but healing is its job. The pleasure of a job well done is enough to curl me up with cash. To do a job well a body must understand its purpose and for a body to understand its purpose it must be made aware of its usefulness. My body’s purpose is to hear and feel, writhe and squirm. To experience pain. To be pulled into a kiss and told, you are useful.
DO YOU HEAR THE BELLS?
The pain was immense but still all we wanted was to put the meat of our bodies to work for pleasure; a common hound in heat. A body doing its job is beautiful to witness. A body can do its job in any number of ways. When the foot arches and then when the back arches. When the eyes blink slow like seduction and then when they blink fast to get out some contaminant. The way the belly of a sleeping man expands as in pregnancy then contracts to starving concavity with each breath. That hiss; the action of sucking air is enough to exhaust the body. I felt like that when you carried me to bed. And the covers pulled up around my neck were heavy and warm, the bells high and clear, my airways narrow.
SOMETHING WORDLESSLY SCREAMING AND ECSTATIC HAS COME TO LIFE INSIDE MY CRANNIES.
I occupy a point in space. I don’t have a memory. I live in a moment. The moment is continuous; it goes on and on but still changes character. This I know only by calculation. Consulting the second material derivative of a point in space. Mass is the first (point-prime), followed by its delta: a change in heaviness across time (point-double-prime?). You know how in the morning I am very heavy. And in the middle of the day I am very light. And then at night I may as well sink through my bed. Through that time I spin as a ballerina does, flush with my sense of personal persistence. I weave a silken barrier to separate my senses from each other, taking after certain small things that come out at night. They are barely living, near mechanical – and yet tell time. Bugs and other crawlies that eat the dust on my bed. Oh but I so admire their uncrossed nerves, even when everything is dirty and they traipse blindly through and track the dirt around. It is an ordinary psychosis in which everything is very dirty and I’m unbothered. Even when those little beetles run filth into my mouth, force it wider than I’ve ever opened. Gag me, an object. Admire this: my unbothered gape. Aren’t you proud?
I’M JEALOUS.
In my mind’s eye a woman holds herself above you on a bed, feeding you red sour straws, your saliva pooling in anticipation of the sugar and then turning sticky and pink as it dissolves. She licks the messy corners of your mouth; she tells you when you can chew and swallow; she asks if it tasted good. I bet you twitched underneath her and she let herself drip. I bet the lips of my imagined woman’s natural pussy spread sweet and warm as she lowered herself.
THIS IS A STUPID FUCKING FANTASY.
Well I have been listening to the ringing in my chest like great molded brass. I feel a sense of danger. I feel curmudgeonly sometimes. I feel self-sabotaging other times. I feel much of the time like a bad person. I feel much of the time that I should bury something deep in the ground, mark it with a line. Someone would find it and understand. I wish I could open that hole while still being alive and really – I wish you would dive right in. The rush of air over your ears would be wonderful; it would be warm like a lover’s outbreath close to the ear. Your body would plummet through the air and you would hear me, feel me, know me.
I’M NOT A CLAIRVOYANT JUST A WOMANIZER.
A line marks history. History is a long series of lines in the sediment. Lines once horizontal were wrenched into verticality by stepwise violence: first compression, then forced expansion. Slippage. Subduction. Strike-slip. The predictable steadiness of tectonic plates. There’s this fantasy involving tectonic plates. Sometimes I liked to sit on the edge of one, in Los Angeles, and consider whether I could sense its movement. Sit on either side of the San Andreas fault with you, join hands. Wait for the hot mantle to convect. Eventually we will be pulled apart by no fault of our own. Eventually even we (the most devoted and steadfast lovers) must relinquish our grasp lest the movement pulls one or both of us down. Abyssal guts of the Earth from which it will be very difficult to return. When will the force become too much? Will it be sweat that starts the separation, the slip? Which joint will fail first? Sat cross-legged on the edge of an earthen wound, my joints ache in throbbing inconsistency. First the left ankle, then the knee, then the hip. The hip is the worst – it reverberates down the leg. Focusing on ache as a devotional. The unhappy body whines for attention. Many years can be spent in this quiet practice of holding hands, noticing the growth of pain, the slow and steady spread of the tectonic plates. When we separate at last, we will look across the gap. I’ll think about you, and you me, and we’ll turn away. The tears won’t start until our backs are turned. Old people walk without looking behind them, and by this point we will both be very old. We might be skeletal, our bones dissolving steady like the plates. Layer upon layer upon layer, the only proof of a love once strong and stronger than dust. And wasn’t it that strong?
I CAN’T BELIEVE IT WAS ANYTHING LESS THAN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE LOVE.
During it all I was clawing and scratching when I should have been quiet and listening. If I had a regret it would be that. Is it too proud to not have regrets? The shape of it is something smaller than it used to be. The bells going now to silence. Forgetting is the rule of life. My lazy finger circles the shape of the ringing so this body knows its own. The change is imminent. Now I am very heavy and the day is up. Will you tuck me in?
OH BUT I JUST WANNA BE YOUR GIRL AGAIN.
The morning of the change is cold and stark with wind stripping the street of color. After a snow the salt dissolves and distributes across the asphalt like frost and makes it gray, with a textured surface. When the truck came barreling down Broadway I saw the salt cloud up like fog, and I inhaled it, and it burned the delicate mucus membranes of my nose like drugged saline without the satisfaction of getting high afterwards. Fur coat coated in salt. Lungs coated in salt. The real impossibility is to stop assuming the nature of my internals. I want my new pussy gulping air into the inside of me. I want to ask you what you want and I want to be unafraid of hurting you through wish fulfillment. I want to push you and have you push back. The morning of the change is like any other morning but soon I will be changed. An ordinary winter day thus imbued with meaning.
I’M A CONTROL FREAK LOWKEY LIKE A MOTHER & A MANIFESTER.
When I am alone I stare for hours at the surfaces. When I am with others I stare for hours just to the left of their eye. I stare just to the left of their eye so I can provide an illusion of attention. To attend to me you must become aware of the small movements of my facial muscles and fingers. I must become aware of the fall of a tear down my cheek, how it picks up dirt and grime along its path and tightens the skin too. The morning before the change I wish to photograph the path of a small bug crawling through the sand but I realize that a camera is no longer familiar to me. The morning before the change is spent laying in bed and letting the hours pass by, so now the day is half over and all I can feel is the liquid movement of rotten shit through my bowels.
THE CHANGE IS CLOSE THE CHANGE IS CLOSE.
And all I can think is that we wanted to build a treehouse. In our dreams we lived in it together and I knew every freckle on your body, just like I knew by heartfeel which branch would hold my weight – until one day the rot creeps through and it cracks underfoot and suddenly it is an emergency. And I’ll mourn for something I hadn’t even conceived of losing. Mourning is a secondary task. Survival comes first. My body hangs, weight supported on a shoulder long gone creaky. God willing you grab me by the upper arm and haul me up to safety. I will pant on the floor of the treehouse. I will be very grateful to you, and I will look just to the left of your eye. I will know what I want.
WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG DID YOU NOTICE THE CHARACTER OF LIGHT IN DREAMS?
We are creating of each other Fantasy. We are making of each other Pleasure, and these tasks are made easier by the lack of focus of our eyes. Within FantasyPleasure is this Ultimate Knowledge: we don’t need each other! But think about it, really think about it. ‘Cause if you do think long and hard you’ll realize it too; we do need each other. I am unabashed in my admittance. It is not shameful to need. It is not shameful to need! Picture it: the morning of the change I wake to your eyes and watch them move under the lids. I kiss one. I kiss the other. They move like small round slugs encased in your eye sockets. I am amazed and impressed by you, your motility and soft sleep sounds. A hand twitches somewhere, but I am not holding it. I am in awe; I long for eternity.
LOS ANGELES IS FLOODING THIS WEEK.
I said it all because if I do not make it through the change I will have regretted my failure to unburden my heart. Your heartbeat in your chest says something hummingly quiet and wordless like flushed skin and bleary eyes. I put on my beanie just now, and on the inside I noticed that there’s a tag and it says ROT. Decay. Isn’t it wild? I mean life. Living.
Rocco Rinaldi-Rose is a lifelong New Yorker, writer, photographer, and psychologist who thinks whales and wolves and certain birds are God. She will climb a tree with you, and was born on the summer solstice.